Otherness wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 10:27 pm
Greetings Brother Dizerner,
Please elaborate on your thoughts here so I can get a better sense of how my words precipitated them. Your first two sentences kind of tie together, but...perhaps if you expand on them, I could agree – completely.
On the other hand, your last thought leaves me just...wondering. Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength is not idolatry simply because (the true) God cannot be loved too much. To lose oneself in (the true) God is to find what (and who) oneself really is. And then to have that very same “love for the world” that God has (John 3:16), is to live in it for His purpose for creating it.
You are equating the word "other" with the word "God."
Those do not necessarily correlate. If God is "other" oriented, this means God is oriented on something OTHER than himself—patently false, because God receives the worship of all things.
To put ANY "other" in the place of God is idolatry—it is taking his place.
If you equate "other" with "God" in ALL circumstances, you should instead term it "God-centered."
People seem to often fall under the misapprehension that because God committed the ultimate sacrifice for humans, this means God "put humans first above himself."
This is logically false—the whole reason God had to sacrifice at all was God's own established rules, God's own established holiness, God's own requirements for atoning sin, and God's desire to be glorified and share his glory—all God-centered.
God's sacrifice was GOD-centered, and NOT "other-centered," which equates to valuing something above or equal to God.
I hope that clears it up.