I saw “You are loved” on a church sign. Not the first time I’ve seen this sentiment but it’s the first time I can remember this occurring to me. What’s being proposed here is that the all powerful super creator of humanity and the universe has particular care for each of us, as individuals. Anything good that happens to us comes from that care, anything bad doesn’t matter because he’ll make up for it when you’re dead.
What I realized is that this lets all xtians off the hook from genuinely caring about anyone. If young jeezy is taking care of everybody, we don’t have to do that at all. He exhorted people to care for the poor and the ill, but clearly that is just a hobbyist pursuit – not a genuine responsibility – because god’s love is enough.
That would be a good logical excuse for why xtians hate social services, but I suspect there’s no reasoning behind it. Rather they just don’t want to pay for the care of others and assume their religion endorses any given thing they feel as part of their conservative identity, without any need for actual knowledge of the words in the holy books. Much like “geeks” assume they’re intelligent because it’s part of the geek social identity rather than any useful metric (assuming such are even possible).
That’s all.
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That slogan raises so many questions starting with by whom and for what and why and what now?
You are loved said the farmer to the turkey sharpening the axe for thanksgiving..
You are loved .. said the stalker to the target of their unwanted affections seeking toescape them and fearing they’d be killed.
You are loved but for what and will the one who loves let you be you or seek to control and make you into what they love not who you are?
You are loved .. but what good (or ill?) will that do for you and a certain old song spirngs to mind ..
A lot of Christians dislike government social services because they want social services under the control of the church. That not only makes the church looks good but is a great venue for recruiting people trying to use the service.
What I realized is that this lets all xtians off the hook from genuinely caring about anyone. If young jeezy is taking care of everybody, we don’t have to do that at all. He exhorted people to care for the poor and the ill, but clearly that is just a hobbyist pursuit – not a genuine responsibility – because god’s love is enough.
The whole idea of transferrable omnipotent love seems to ignore that love appears to have something to do with knowing a person as an individual and caring for them because of or in spite of who they are. Jesus doesn’t get to issue a blanket “I LOVE YOU” without doing any of the work, as the work is crucial to what “love” appears to be.
Seems as if we’re looking at another example of christians making unsupported claims about moral issues. God loves me? How the fuck am I suppose to know that? Is it because I found $5 in the change machine at the car wash, or is it because of the tumor that is growing in my body? The “love” of a divine being for a frail human would feel something like me loving a specific bacterium. I suppose I could come to love a bacterium if I were omnipotent, but the whole thing sounds pretty dodgy.
You’re overthinking this by several orders of magnitude. “You are loved” is nothing but cloying emotional manipulation, aimed at people who are in uncertain places and vulnerable to such fake offers of assistance or support.
I did say “I suspect there’s no reasoning behind it.” I don’t think people like us can help but consider the meanings of words, even if the people spouting them have not. And sometimes useful information can be gleaned from side-eyeing thoughtless spew.
It’s been a long time ago now but I don’t recall there being a whole lot said about that in the catholic grade school I attended. By highschool it’s a bit late to start defining love so I know they didn’t talk too much about it there. It certainly wasn’t a message that got through to the school bullies.
By this point christians (in the US at least) have been running their PR campaign for so long that even the people promoting it have forgotten it’s a PR campaign and that somewhere, in some way, there should be tangible results or it’s all BS. They’ve bought into their own PR so much they don’t even look for it to be true, they just believe it is. And when you start to notice this it looks really bizarre.
the “jeezy loves you” thing is very american protestant flavored.