LOVE GOD ONLY COMMANDMENT IS A BURDEN

The New Testament is clear that Heaven is about a relationship with God so you can only go there if you love God not for anybody not for you but for him.  Your love for him is about him and your gift to him.  God is said to be the maker of all we have and are so God by definition is really alone what matters. Paul in the letter to the Philippians chapter 3 tells us what that means. It means that nothing can happen that can match or outweigh a relationship with Jesus who is worth the loss of everything for compared to him everything is rubbish.

If you worship God because of what you think he should do for you that is not really worship.  It is one-sided and all about you. You won't evangelise for God and when life goes bad you turn against him.  It is not the same as you loving God for he loves you.  You can love him for how he views you but that is different from wanting bikes, career and holidays from him.  Loving God for he loves you and not for any benefit is an imperfect relationship with God.

For Christians, Jesus Christ is the infallible voice of God and the Son of God. If his major doctrine is untrue then we must dismiss him as yet another religious fraud.
 
Jesus when he was asked what the greatest commandment of morality was replied as follows.
 
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31, King James Bible).
 
There is no room in this for thinking, "Okay they are the same commandment. Loving God above all is a metaphor for loving your neighbour as yourself. If you obey the command to love neighbour you automatically keep the first commandment." If that were correct we would be reading, "“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength which is to say, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than this” (Mark 12:29-31, King James Bible). Or in the light of the fact that there would be no need to mention God, we would be told, “The first of all the commandments is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than this” (Mark 12:29-31, King James Bible).
 
Jesus said, "There is none other commandment greater than these”. They are inseparable but they are not one commandment. And we must remember that the command to love God in the law is given the status of a core teaching. It is emphasised. The command to love one's neighbour however is not. It appears as if by accident where it could be easily missed.
 
What the Church means by saying that the two commandments go together is that God wants you to do good for your neighbour so if you really love God you will put it into practice by serving others. Loving your neighbour is essential in the sense that it means demonstrating and proving and practicing the love of God. The logic is that actions speak more than words. Serving your neighbour is practically speaking all about God and doing his will. If you do good for your mother-in-law not for her but for your wife, it is all about your wife no matter how much the mother-in-law benefits. Love of neighbour refers to how you treat your neighbour not how you value her or him.
 
The two commandments though inseparable cannot be equal in value because one commands that God be loved more than anybody including yourself as in love him totally and the other says love your neighbour as yourself. You cannot love yourself wholly or another wholly and love God wholly. Remember Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was and he said it was to love God. He was not asked for the next greatest but gave it anyway. If you cannot keep both, you have to keep the commandment to love God alone. If it hurts others then tough!
 
If you love God totally, then you are only to work for the wellbeing of your neighbour (love) in so far as he commands it and solely because he commands it.
 
Jesus is saying we must love God not with some of our energy, most of our energy but ALL our energy. In other words, everything we do must be solely motivated by what pleases God. It is all about pleasing him. When you help the sick, it is not done to help the sick but to honour God. It is done for God.
 
To say you must love God with all your powers is to automatically make this the main rule and the greatest commandment for you are being told to sacrifice all to God. Accordingly, that is very serious and heavy stuff. A rule concerning the love due to such a supremely good being would have to be the greatest rule for that being is the greatest. Since loving God alone is the greatest commandment according to Jesus, the Son of God (Mark 12:29,30) to undermine and fail to teach this commandment is the greatest sin.
 
The Jews were right to make sure that reminders containing the text of the commandment were stuck up everywhere so the Christians not following suit shows that nearly all of them are under divine wrath for the commandment is so serious and so difficult that one cannot be allowed to forget it even for an hour. The commandment is part of what Jews call the Shema. The failure of the apostles to make sure the Shema was exalted to a prime place in the symbolism and literature and worship of the Church indicates that they were heretics. If the apparitions of Jesus and Mary were real they would recite the Shema first thing every time they appear so they are either empty spaces or demons. The Shema implies you must have an appropriate view of God - a God who is worthy of that devotion. The god of the Mormons then would have to be out for being only an exalted man he would not be entitled to all that devotion. So the Shema requires you to be an expert on the nature of God both intellectually and spiritually.
 
Those who are not experts will not be saved. Deathbed conversions are no good unless the dying person is an expert. Believers with little faith and Atheists and Agnostics are committing the greatest evil possible, not preaching and living out the Shema. It would be madness to execute murderers and not kill them or at least dump them in dungeons and persecute them. The Law of the Land needs credibility to have authority and if we undermine that we should be destroyed or persecuted for we are opposing the Law and bringing trouble on it. Every sin is against the greatest commandment. It is declaring yourself independent of this commandment despite its greatness. Therefore every sin is grievously wrong. Every sin no matter how slight we think it is, has only the eternal punishment of Hell as it’s due.
 
If we love God with all our hearts, we will be unable to love the person who hates or works to harm God. You cannot love the person who is about to murder your wife. If you do then you do not love her. You do not care much for her wellbeing. We will hate God's enemy if we love God a lot. We will hate the enemy completely if we love God. To love God totally means, "I am completely for God's well-being and nobody else's".
 
Some seem to equate loving God with merely obeying what he asks. But this is not loving him. Love is a relationship and not just mere obedience. A wife can disobey her husband and love him and may disobey because she loves.
 
If God is pure love and you are in a relationship with him, you will serve him because you want what he wants and not because he commanded it.
 
One thing is for sure, the sort of God that commands you to love him is certainly saying all that matters is obedience.
 
Yet we are told that Christianity is not at its core about ethics or morals or values. It is about loving God and what he has revealed. Thus loving God does not mean merely keeping his commandments. Loving God is shown by doing his will but that does not mean that is what it is all about. To say that our morals which are so important to us are not as important as God is to admit that God alone is to be loved. How? Because our morals help us form a community in which people support each other and engage with one another. Even that does not matter in comparison to God.

FINALLY

To love is to give a person what they need but God has no needs. Thus to love God is an oxymoron.  Those who say they love God are lying and fooling each other.  God religion asks people to love God and few even try.  The religion is to blame for any evil that happens for it asks something basic and not only basic but stupid or impossible.  It is as good is thriving on NOT loving God though you are led to believe that you SHOULD.  That is no foundation for morality.
 
The doctrine that we are to love God alone gives you a way of being a sociopath without seeming to be. The believer has the kind of faith that will demean others even if it does not seem to do much harm.
 
 
BOOKS CONSULTED

A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, CTS, London, 1985
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image, New York 1964
AQUINAS, FC Copleston, Penguin Books, London, 1991
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin, London, 1990
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1960
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, London, 1995
CHARITY, MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1973
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973
CRISIS OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1995
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
ECUMENICAL JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
GOD IS NOT GREAT, THE CASE AGAINST RELIGION, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM, London, 1963
HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
MADAME GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1986
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans Green and Co, London, 1912
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996
PRACTICAL ETHICS, Peter Singer, Cambridge University Press, England, 1994
PSYCHOLOGY, George A Miller, Penguin, London, 1991
RADIO REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
RADIO REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940
RADIO REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1942
REASON AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
THE ATONEMENT: MYSTERY OF RECONCILIATION, Kevin McNamara, Archbishop of Dublin, Veritas, Dublin, 1987
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, Jonathan Edwards, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
THE BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978
THE BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF PADUA (Vol 44, No 4)
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE MORAL DILEMMA, G R Evans, Lion Books, Oxford, 2007
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE NEW WALK, Captain Reginald Wallis, The Christian Press, Pembridge Villas, England, undated
THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1981
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1972
THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990
THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books, New York, 1969
THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner Maine, 1982
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982