Loving God

A philosophical defense of the commandment to love God has to define both terms -- love and God. 1 Corinthians 13 contains a positive definition of love that is better than anything else that has been written on the subject: "Love is patient, love is kind....it keeps no record of wrongs. Love...rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." The definition of God is found in the Bible as well, in many different passages -- the Creator of everything in Genesis, the "Father" that Jesus refers to, Jesus himself, the Being who walks with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and makes covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Holy Spirit that comes to Earth as a counselor after Jesus' physical body has been taken up into the clouds. The definition of God from the standpoint of reason is that God is an omnipotent, omniscient creator of all things who both ordains all aspects of existence and exists himself both outside and inside that ordained universe. The Bible supports this reasonable definition of God. Also relevant is a simple definition, from 1 John 4:8, "God is love." God has those attributes defined in 1 Corinthians 13, which makes him easy to love. He also has those attributes defined throughout the Bible of holiness, power, eternity, and fierceness that inspire worship rather than love. To love God is to love love, but not in a sappy, sentimental way. There is an element of fear in the love of God, even though "perfect love drives out fear" (also from 1 John). Because human beings are imperfect (see below), we do not have the ability to love without fear. God alone gives us the ability to love perfectly, and that ability may only come through a lifelong devotion to him. Loving God, then, as a commandment, is the pursuit of the ultimate love. God pursues us with a fierce, passionate love for as long as we live; by loving him, we learn to pursue God with the same passion.