"Love never works coercively. It only works persuasively."

This quote was by Norman L Geisler, Ph. D, and I obtained it from "The Case for Faith" p. 198. Here, I'd like to assess the validity of the above claim. Does love really works only persuasively? Well of course, from what we learn from God, we knew that it should give freedom. This view is consistent with the acknowledgement of the intrinsic values of human beings, as was mentioned by J.P. Moreland, Ph. D in p.253. Judging human beings using instrumental values is dehumanizing. It is similar to denying the 'free will' that has been given as the highest blessing. But now arises a question. If love just works persuasively, how would you explain a situation where a mother was trying to force her child on drinking, say, a medicine? Surely this violates the above principle isn't it? If we want to stick to it, then the furthest we could say is that the mother should just persuade her child, and not forcing him to drink. By applying a force, perhaps through beating, a common scenarion, it simply means a 'dehumanizing' act, stripping the child of his freewill that has been granted upon him. But a contrary to that situation, for a mother that would let her child suffer would also be crazy. Then how would we resolve this issue?

What I think is that, well, the above quote is true, but incomplete. My guess is that the quote works for people who has reached a certain level of maturity and therefore is able to discern for themselves. A child, therefore, I must say, doesn't have a 'complete' freewill like adults do. And towards them, a dehumanizing act is permissible. But of course, this also means that by treating them based on an instrumental value, the right and wrong question must also be shifted towards the ends of the action; that is, we must judge whether the action has a morally good end or a bad one. Thus, moral standards are not neglected.

Hence, to sum up, if we love or care about something, we should not be coercive but instead, be persuasive. However, this is only valid if consequent party has reached what I termed 'maturity'. Well..actually this can be a general principle that can be applied in many aspects.

In politics for example, freedom of choice, or in other words is democracy, is good. It simply gives back a meaning towards human dignity, which is in accordance with God's will. But the 'maturity' assumption tells us that likewise, democracy is good only when the group of people has reached a mature understanding towards politics. Otherwise, we should adopt the spoonfeeding approach, like that of a mother forcing a child to swallow a medicine. I'm not discrediting democracy. It is good, respectful, but perhaps it works best for a mature society in which freedom of choice can be really exercised without unfair intervention of outer parties.

The next issue that I would tackle is whether a constant act of persuasion would be equal to a coercion. A common misconception is that constant, intense persuasion would mean a 'psychological coercion'. This is a hard issue. But I'll try to explain this by use of an analogy. Well, my point is that it is quite absurd to label an intense persuasion as a coercion. To understand, let's compare it with marketing. One marketing strategy was to make use of psychology. Well, perhaps constant persuasion might be annoying, just like advertisements do, but labeling it as coercion is like sueing McDonald's for 'psychologically affecting' us that we walk into its store and buying their meals.

Comics / Animes

The most recent 2 comics/animes that immediately became my favourite was One Piece and Naruto. I dunno why, perhaps I like those comics whose main character are strong. Strong in the sense that they believe in themselves, they show determination and have the right principles that act as a resource to their strength. They may be weak, but they are not giving up. In One Piece and Naruto, the 2 main characters, Monkey D Luffy in One Piece and Uzumaki Naruto in Naruto, show these characteristics. Perhaps it's also true for KungFu Boy and Samurai X, my old favourites.


Now, a question that arose is, whether this 'not willing to give up' spirit is relevant for reality? Is a 'sheer determination' in our strengths a good thing? Is it a 'right thing' for us to adopt certain unchanging principles and fight for it till the end? Well, I would think the answer is yes and no.
Stiffness is good. This essence of 'unchanging' is awesome. It represents faithfulness, either to a choice we made or a principle we adopted. But it could be a 2-sided coin. It can give you either a very good impact, or a very bad influence. An unchanging principle grounded on wrong concepts are extremely dangerous, while that which is based on the right principles is the worthiest thing you could ever ask for. Take Zoro in One Piece for example. I think he too, was a man that has his own principles. But too bad, the he has a wrong base for his principle. He was too arrogant when he quoted that "I never believed in Gods, I require none of them." Another example would be like Haku, Gaara, and Kimimaru in Naruto. I think what Gaara said when he appeared for the 2nd time, after he had 'realised' his mistakes makes a lot of sense.


This is a conversation between Gaara and Rock Lee after Gaara defeated Kimimaru :

Gaara : You're the same. If the person you admire is insulted, you became angry. If that person is important to you... To fight for that important person.. (referring to Orochimaru, the most evil). He, (referring to Kimimaru), was the same as Uzumaki Naruto (last time Naruto was fighting Gaara to protect his friend, Sasuke and Sakura). But the person who is important to you isn't always good.

Rock Lee : Really? You don't have to take someone bad as your important person.

Gaara : No... Even if you knew they were evil.. People can't defeat loneliness.


Yep, finally, I also think that comics may give a good or bad influence towards us, depending on how we see them. One pitfall would be, we may be relying on ourselves too often, because of the influence of this believe-in-ourselves spirit advertised heavily in comics nowadays (maybe i can't generalise it coz its just based on the few comics i've read). So perhaps we should learn to notice them and pick just the right thing. Never giving up spirit was great. Faithfulness towards a (correct) principle was awesome. But unlike the characters in those comics, we should rely ourselves on God's power. To add on, perhaps believe-in-ourselves spirit in reality may sound a bit too naive, people may think. Afterall, I also didn't quite agree with the familiar phrase 'if there's a will there's a way'. I think that will is not the only factor. There are others such as ability, or perhaps, opportunity? No one who has a sheer will can become a tennis champion when they wanted to start playing tennis just when they're 20 years old. (Well of course, we couldn't make something that's undergoing a process to be an absolute, but I can say that the probability is nearly zero). But still, having sheer will is great in the sense to maximise your maximum potential and it's been proven to boost your capacity.


To sum up, I believe that comics can give either a very good or very bad impact. Principles are good, it might lead us either to a good person (if we have correct ones) or a very evil person. But still, I admire those who have principles (regardless of whether they're right or wrong) more than those who don't.