One of the most interesting topics I remember from Gaudiya Discussions was the following discussion about the interplay between loving God and loving (all) others.

I felt it was worth drawing attention to and perhaps continuing to discuss the relationship between these two types of love. Nitaidas' recent comments about romantic love also brought it to mind.

Are these two types of love mutually inclusive or exclusive in your own belief system (assuming you believe in a Deity or Deities)?

Why wouldn't Gods be glad if those who love Them also love each other? I don't believe in the "limited love capacity" theory - there is no cause for Gods to be jealous of the love that is spent to other beings.

For me, Radha and Krishna are the sources of love, and the being's capacity will therefore grow as they gets through the spiritual advancement.

i agree, its very important that we all learn to love each other but some people are being stupid idiot a$$holes and not loving each other

It's interesting to me that various religions stress treating people well, loving your neighbor and all that, yet it doesn't ever seem to extend beyond one's religious or community group. Thus we have religious wars and genocides. How can we get beyond the platform of identifying with those like us to loving those who are very different?

I don't think that we can love all living beings, or all humans, or even all our co-religionists. That's special, and we can't distribute it broadly - indeed, we can't instigate it for even one being, if it doesn't get birth by itself.

Treating others well - that's a whole another question, although folks keep mixing it up with loving others. You can treat others well without loving then - when I help out a centipede from the watery pit it fell into, I treat it well, although I certainly don't love it; I'm full of fear of that hideous, freakish creature. But I don't like to see it suffer for no goal.

Now about interreligious well-treatment - I don't know the recipe, only some factors that can help it to be. If someone thinks that God wants those others to be punished, he will punish them by himself, because he thinks that will be service to God. If someone believes he has only one life to get to God, he will naturally want to destroy anything that can misdirect him to leave the path - especially if he thinks that the misled will be cast to hell. Even stronger is this effect if he is to be isolated from others. To be really isolated, he is forced to behave as if he'd hate the others; the others will answer to the perceived hate with hate; and that reinforces the hate of the one whose religion prescribes the isolation. And if someone's religious leaders are into political power, they will instigate him to hate their enemies and rivals.

You are sadly rather right about this. For example - the "morality" at the time of Jesus would have said - do not steal from your neighbor. Since one's neighbor was only one's fellow Jew, it was ok to steal from a non-Jew.

Remember when Christ asks the lawyer what is most important and he answers to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. Christ in reply to this tells the story of the Good Samaritan - namely to stress that our neighbor includes all and not just those of the "in group." Considering the context of the time, this was a new concept. Unfortunately many of Christ's followers do not even follow his words.

Last week I was reading an old 5th century Church History about 4th century and early 5th century Byzantium. Often a criterion of how good a particular bishop was, was how tolerant the bishop was of those outside of the Church - whether they be heretics or non-Christian Pagans or Jews. The same could be said of the caesars. The saintly bishops & emperors would not persecute those in other groups and would be equally charitable to all, regardless of faith. The bad bishops & emperors (and these were usually the ones from the groups that we Orthodox would call heretics) were usually the worst - resorting even to murder and pillage of those outside the group. An exception to this seemed to be the Novatian* sect which was very strict internally, but rather kind to outsiders and got along well with non-members. The Arians especially, however, were brutal.

The exception to well-behaved Orthodox seemed to be the Alexandrians - but I think this was more a cultural thing rather than religious because the Alexandrians of all sects and faiths seemed to be rather intolerant against each other and this was even mentioned in the histories. This is no excuse, however - and it is worth noting that Alexandria quickly ceased to be majority Orthodox by the mid 5th century.

I find it strange that it is currently fashionable to present the opposite as "truth" and claim that the Arians were the poor, persecuted sect - when in fact they were very violent - whether "in power" or not and meanwhile the Orthodox at the time were in fact the persecuted and usually tolerant. It is true that the Roman Church became very intolerant once it ceased being Orthodox! I think that our modern historians confuse Roman Catholicism with all of the church in general and this is why our modern students are being misinformed. Even still, before a certain time, Rome was very tame and this should not be forgotten.

What is sad is that some religions or sects lionize their brutal leaders and this sets a bad precedent and is hardly conducive to peace. Such persons would only be revered by Orthodox if they spent much time in repentance for their previous brutality and openly admitted their error.

You get an impossible situation when 2 groups war against each other and both have this same approach. There will never be an end until both destroy each other. Sad.

*The Novatians were Orthodox in theology, the main difference being that they had very strict standards of behavior and would excommunicate for life those that violated those standards, while the Orthodox only used temporary excommunication.

This seems to be a good description of how the religious right operates. It is too bad the (Protestant) Christian Right hasn't bothered to read their New Testaments - because Christ & Paul over and over stress that only God has the right to judge and punish sinners. We are NOT doing service to God by usurping this right. Namely we have Christ's parable of the wheat and chaff. In Paul's letters he makes it clear that if there is any censure - it takes place only within the church against church members who put on a pious face to the world and in the meantime do things like molest children in the name of "Christian freedom from the law." As for those outside of the Church, only God is judge. It is ironic that Luther's Protestant revolution encouraged reading the whole bible rather than fragments here and there - but reading fragments is precicely what many modern Evangelicals do. They go from passage to passage and underline verses without knowing the context and through this create "proofs" to their very unchristian ideas.

I really hate people that don't love everybody

Why not? People are, and God are, in the words of Jay Glass, just the ultimate Alpha Male, an imagined leader of the human pack.

The One Whom I think the most often of when I think of the word "God" is not male, so She can't be the Alpha Male of humanity.

People are jealous - this is the expression of a more general pattern of living beings wanting more for themselves and wanting others to have less. This is adaptive in the material world - those who don't operate in this way will lose their body quickly. But my Gods are out of this frame.

If I can love just just one who exists to hate me, I will love forever.

Let's be kind to our enemies; we've made them.

What if you have no enemies, yet some people trip over themselves to become your enemy?

you kick their asses if possible, of course