"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.