Religious Teachings

The New Testament and Gospels are written around the time of Christ and show God as very loving, compassionate and forgiving. The New Testament has been written around the life and teachings of Jesus, as the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) was written about the covenant between God and the descendants of Abraham. The Old testaments includes rules of how to live, these include the 10 commandments. The New Testament builds on the old with Jesus showing how to be kind and generous to people, and looking after those that need help even if you get no materialistic item out of it.

Love is defined as “A number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

Jesus wanted humans to make love the basis of their behaviour and emotions.

Jesus gives us numerous examples that love is one of Gods most important teachings to people. Jesus told us that the two most important commandments are to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with your entire mind and with all your strength. And to love your Neighbour as you love yourself (Mark 12:28-31). Hence Jesus teaches us about love in the hope that humans would live more harmoniously with one another. If respect extended to the world around us you could then hypothesize that the environment would be better off since expediency and profit would not be the only driving forces. Similarly John records:

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

If we took the advice from Jesus and used love in our everyday life and thought processes love would be a motivating force. If people acted with positive feelings people could work together for a �win-win’ situation. This would consequently help others to be treated with respect and kindness, a difference of opinion or culture would not result in people feeling threatened but accepted as natural, not expressive and threatening therefore other people would not have to resort to defensive or attacking behaviour that we observe so frequently today, to defend opinion and freedom of expressions and misunderstanding that build up over time, for example, the 9-11 bombings, WW2, Afghanistan War and Iraq War.