With whom should the prime relationship be?

Do we need to reveal our love of God before we can truly love ourselves??

You pose a very abstract and complicatd question, to which my response may be an even more complicated answer.

I first must ask, who are we revealing the love of God to?

If to ourselves then I believe it is a personal understanding of what the love of God is.

God's love to us is forgiveness, acceptance and a desire that we prosper in all that we do.

It requires that we change the way we see ourselves to the way God sees us.

Our ability is now limitless because now we realize as the scripture says, "I can do ALL things through Christ who strenghtens me".

I can forgive myself. I can accept myself. I can love myself. And now because of my personal understanding and acceptance of God's love to me I can display this love to others.

Secondly, if revealing the love of God to others, I believe the same still applies.

If you have no understanding of the love of God how can you display the God kind of love to others.

I believe having a healthy, loving relationship with yourself (The Prime Relationship) is key to having a healthy love of God. Man is created in the "image and likeness of God", however, historically, man has cast the Creator in his own image and consequently all manner of atrocities have been committed in His name, from the witch hunts of the Inquisition, to Western slavery to 9/11, all in the name of "God."

How we see the Creator is a reflection of how we see ourselves. Getting in touch with the God within us is an exploration of who we are. To love ourselves in a healthy way is to delve into our humanity and behaviors seperate and apart from our social conditioning, parental, religious or otherwise. On this quest our God concept and his "love" becomes less exclusivist and arbitary and more expansive and unconditional.

We then can begin to respect the journeys of ourselves and others, and also begin to love ourselves and others in healthy, self affirming ways. So, I say all that to say that a love of God, or an understanding of Who God is, our purpose and how this impacts our daily lives begins with a healthy love and relationhip with the self. Our concept of ourselves is revealed in the God of our understanding.

Although I respect anothers personal concept of God, I must say this viewpoint requires that we place getting to know ourselves above getting to know God. Yes, we are created in God’s image and after His likeness, so we do have the capacity, or the ability, to love. But how can we properly exercise, or demonstrate, that ability without first knowing the One who is love?

It’s always convenient to say that our concept of God is based solely on man’s interpretation or image of God. And it’s convenient to blame history’s atrocities on man’s warped perception of God. In fact, these evils were the result of man’s warped perception of himself. Man didn’t really know himself because he didn’t take the time to really know God. Beginning with Adam, mankind has failed to cultivate and maintain a relationship with God, shoving Him aside and putting Him on stand-by, while placing the focus on himself, then blaming God for his actions. God never told anybody to hunt witches, enslave human beings, or fly planes into buildings. These were all man’s ideas – ideas which the God I know would never put in a man’s head. But the people who did – and do – such things don’t understand that because they never took the time to get to know God, who is love. They only look within for their morals and their motivation. If unregenerate, fallen man is supposed to first look within himself to find love, and how to display it, before he looks to God who is love, then we are in really big trouble (and we are).

God Himself knew man didn’t know how to love, so He sent His Son to show man how it’s done. Now, all the how-to’s of love are now revealed and available to everyone through Jesus Christ. So those of us who are born again, not only have the capacity to love, we know how to do it, because we allowed God, through Jesus (the Word), and by the Holy Spirit, to tell us how to do it. We didn’t rely on our own intellect.

Of course, none of this means anything if we don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God; that it’s just a bunch of words made up by men with serious control issues. If that’s the case, we can just throw it all out. Like Paul said, “If Christ be not risen from the dead, (then) we are men most miserable, and our preaching is in vain.”

Bottom line, we can’t know love until we know Love.

I'm not suggesting placing ourselves above God, that's impossible. To say our concept of God is based largely on man’s interpretation or image of God, is not just "convenient" but true. Historically, man's concept of a wrathful and avenging God is mor a reflection of the social and political climate of which the particular author was a part. This is not just conjecture, but the opinion of biblical scholars.

The search for truth begins with seeking the devine within through our own experience. We can't know love until we develop a working, self affirming definition. We live in a society, where we are conditioned to define ourselves by things external to who we are. Consequently we see the creator as some external manipulator to whom we project a plethora of behaviors, often contradictory. We have assigned roles to God that have used to seperate humanity as opposed to leading to a celebratrion of the unity of us all.

We may love the color red, blueberry pancakes, or white wine and we characterize the Love of God as similar to the arbitary and capricious nature of the love we humans exhibit. I believe that we must develop a responsible love and understanding of self, no easy task, particularily in this society before we may even begin to fanthom the Love of God.

If our experiences are filtered through our beliefs, then the quality and outcomes of our experiences, are clearly shaped by our beliefs.

According to world relgions, there are many words. Some in support of each other, some a distant cousin, and some,not even at the familiy reunion. So if the world were to end tomorrow, and as some religions point out, God, ( he?)will pass judgement; how would all the other non Christians fare, in God's eye(s)?, for exercising their beliefs?

And while we're on the topic of God's possisble displeasure, is God capable of anger,mood swings, jealousy? Which reminds me, while growing up in a Baptist household,attending church every Sunday, I remember learning? over and over again, that God was a jealous God. Scared the hell out of me! I'm not sure of the results folks were going after, but it can certainly have a neurotic affect on a young mind, which is not healthy.
Is this the beginnings of having a true relationship with God?

And if God is capable of jealousy, anger etc., as I have been told in my attendance in church, then why stop there? How do we selectively ascribe some emotional conditions, at the exclusion of other.. Doesn't sound like a well adjusted God to me. Sound like God's denying his(?) other sides. And we all know what can happen if you deny your other sides. When it is denied, it gains an autononmous life of it's own, and can become destructively evil. Does God need therapy to help him(?) create healthy allianaces with all his sides?

So let just say, as a child, learning the many emotions of God,and in particular,that I can piss God off, I develop a fear of God. Would he(?) consider me punk? Or would God be thinking to himself(?), I've should've placed this child, lower on the food chain. What was I thinking?

I may have taken certain liberties, in a chideful way, to point out that, I believe how we experience God, is directly connected to our neurotic egoic existence of self, as well as the nature and quality of the relationships we have with ourselves. Christ's command to love thy enemies, appears to be his understanding of this, that is, if we are truly on a path of having a healthy relationship with ourselves,transcending our realtionship with God and others,(self/God),then there's a path beyond our neurotic egoic existence, that blinds us, to what we truly can be on any level. Which clearly speaks to, I believe, no matter what, the path to discovery of self, is that same path to God. I think it was Saint Clement who said, "When you know yourself, you know God."

If we truly beleive that God exist within, then the starting point for God, is through self. And God and self are inseperable. No matter how you live, I believe, God exist within. The quality of your relationship with self, simultaneously, is the quality of your relationship with God.

So I beleive, the more we seek a path of self discovery, the more we enhance the relationship with the God, within.

Contemporary society lacks a unifying religion,that will/can resolve all of it's chaos, so it's easy pickens for the dark elements to have their field days,as well as God's current and future messengers who seem to be the only one who has God's ear(s)? to pass on the word! Which by the way, is filtered through their experiences as well.

World religions have created an authority as to their understanding of God, but very little for transcending our humanity for each other. Is that part of God's plan? Or was God having a bad human day??

Within ourselves, we find our deepest self, our true self, and then we can begin to recgnize that we are not only more than we can imagine, but more than what we can imagine.

God is and forever will be first and foremost in my life. God lives in us all. Most of us are so conditioned or hardened by society and all of its trappings that we allow the God/Love in us or our true essence to simply lay dormant. It takes faith, hope, courage, and discipline to be guided by God/Love. Instead, many of us are guided by wall street, politicians, fashion, the latest and greatest pop stars, anything and anybody but God/Love. Society has all the answers, so why should we labor painfully to know ourselves? Yes, the journey we must take to know self can be painful. Some of us study the Bible but we don’t take the journey to knowing self. I admire the scholarly pursuit to having a deeper understanding of God. Still, we must delve deeply into self to come in touch with the God/Love within. God/Love is more than a scholarly pursuit ... it is life in its purest form. God/Love is more than words ... it is deeds and often it is silence. Christianity is the religion I have chosen to express my love of God. Christianity is not my essence. My essence is God/Love. I believe we must look inward and reconnect with the God that exists within. Then, love of self and our neighbor will be unconditional.

A few years ago I was heavily into the church. I felt that I was only minutes away from being God like...until one day when I was having problems with a few members of the congregation. After many tears I decided to talk it to over with the pastor of the church. His response was 'who do you think you are? you are no better than God.' I remember felling as if I was going to die right there on the spot.....What that conversation did for me was made me look at myself and ask some questions.....Could I fogive? (Not right away) Could I turn the other cheek (Not without breaking somebody's arm if they tried the hit the other cheek.) Could I love unconditional? (Nope).
I realized that once I answered those questions I could in no way deal with the crap God dealt with and continue to love myself or anybody else..... If I asked myself those same questions today my answers would be as follows: I will never forgive immediately but I will forgive eventually. I will turn the other cheek but I will probably grab the hand that tries to hit my cheek. I can love semi unconditionally (whatever that means). At this time this is the best I can do knowing that there is always room for improvement. To me allowing myself to grow, changing what I can change within myself, and listening to the whispering voice that teaches me to love myself more and more everyday is all that is needed.