IS GOD REALLY ENTITLED TO ALL OUR LOVE?

“There is always the danger that we may become only social workers … our works are only an expression of our love for Christ". Mother Teresa 1969.  That is an accurate paraphrase of Jesus' doctrine of love.

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 with 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).
 
Jesus said that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (which is commanded by the depraved prophet Moses in Deuteronomy 6). That is, God is to be loved wholly. We do not love him most and give the rest of our love to others. We must love him alone and love others for his sake.
 
How does the command to value only God absolutely tie in with the bloodshed endorsed by God in the Bible he wrote. The violence commanded in the Old Testament scriptures against some sinners such as adulteresses and fortune-tellers indicates that the love of God must be chosen if there is a choice between protecting a life and loving God. God is so lovable that those who insult that love grievously must be destroyed. The laws go as far as to make no provision for lessening the penalty and no provisions are made to open the door to forgive those "criminals" should they repent. Whether you execute sinners or not, you are in principle saying that if need be they should be killed for the love of God.
 
The absolute loving of God is the foundation of morality for Christianity and many cults and it is a bad foundation and only good for a foundation of emotional and mental instability.
 
Jesus said then that we must love our neighbour as ourselves. If we serve the needs of our neighbour for the sake of God and to please him then just as when you do good for others to benefit yourselves it is not loving them at all so it is when you do it for the Lord God. It is deceiving them, it is manipulating them.
 
When people base happiness on God and see the truth they will be destroyed. Religion tries to condition people so that they are emotionally programmed to need God and religion at least to some degree. Religion wants to make addicts of them.
 
It is disgraceful that religion tells you to sacrifice for God even when your faith is weak. It has no right to.
 
Is God really entitled to be loved by us instead of ourselves and everything else?
 
Does it matter that God loves us immensely? Infinitely? More than any human person no matter how loving that person is? If we just need to be loved enough then we do not need God.
 
The idea of some writers that loving God with all our hearts merely means keeping his commandments is an over-simplification. It is supposed to be that but more. If you love God's commandments, that does not mean you necessarily love God as a person. To love a person's rules is not the same as loving the person. Jesus said that we are to love God as a person with all our hearts. That means we do everything for God alone. We love God with all our hearts. Our neighbour is not to be loved with all our hearts. Neither are we to love ourselves that way. Why are we to love God then that much? Is it because he is good? It can't be for we are to love our enemies. Is it because he is a person? Then if he is, what about the people around you? What about your children? He might be a person with infinite power but he is still just a person. His power or rank makes no difference. Perhaps we owe him obedience because he made us? But he needs nothing for he is perfect and happy. So we owe him nothing. God should not be loved more than any other person.
 
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.
 
If you ask your lover to love you with all their heart and soul and strength and mind you are asking them to love only you and not themselves or anything else. That is how we would understand such a request. Some seem to think that when God asks such a thing he means something different. Wishful thinking!
 
Why are we to love God then that much? Is it because he is good? It can't be for we are to love our enemies. Is it because he is a person? Then if he is, what about the people around you? What about your children? He might be a person with infinite power but he is still just a person. His power or rank makes no difference. Perhaps we owe him obedience because he made us? But he needs nothing for he is perfect and happy. So we owe him nothing. God should not be loved more than any other person. We are loving God more than others when people suffer and we say God is justified in letting them suffer. We are doing wrong against those people. God is not that important that we should condone what he does or what we think he does to others.
 
Liberal Christians sometimes deny that there is a being out there called God and see God as a myth or symbol for love. To love love is to love God. Thus they redefine God and that is how they are able to say that the atheist who believes in love is not a real atheist. Are we to love God for the sake of love? You can't love love just because it is love. You have to love it because it does good and results in good and is good. Good for what or who? Good for the person would be the answer. To love God does not mean you love love but that you love God as in personal being not God as in power or God as in myth or symbol.
 
It is inaccurate to say that Jesus' commandment means you make love the sole purpose of life. It means not that you make love the sole purpose but make love of a personal God the sole purpose of life.
 
The absence of adequate justification for such a love of God makes it all the more wicked. Any degree of justification is impossible to achieve.
 
The absence of justification for the existence of such a God makes it all the more wicked still. Miracles cannot be taken as evidence for God unless one believes first. So what does God do them for when there is no point? The believer then does not accept miracles as evidence for God but as evidence that his notion that God has revealed himself to him in faith is true. In other words, the believer treats miracles as backing up his faith in his own ideas not as backing up God. That this is arrogant is proven by the inability of Christian sects to agree with one another on what God has revealed.
 
It is evil to love a being totally when you only believe in that being. No belief justifies that level of commitment as belief is not 100% certainty.
 
Modified View: Love everything but simply love God the most
 
The Bible commands that all things are to be done for the love of God only. Some lie that he is merely to come first and we are allowed to love ourselves and other people. They allege that we are even commanded to love other people.
 
The same say that even when we barely believe in him he comes first. God says he wants us to believe in him which means he will help us to see that he exists and comes first. If we don’t believe it is our fault.
 
You can only believe that you should put God first if you believe that he exists. You must also believe that he asks to be put first. You cannot love a God you do not know so if you are to love God, that implies that he can reveal himself to you so that you know him.
 
When God is supposed to come first that means that it is evil and sinful not to believe in him. It is the greatest sin. The love of God is the greatest duty and greatest love of all.
 
Since you cannot love him as much as you should without a firm faith, it follows that to have a different opinion from God is sinful. If you had a right to your own opinion and disagreed with his followers about his existence, you could not put him first. So you don’t have that right. If you had you would not be under obligation to agree with them, but God says you are.
 
It must be a sin to refuse to believe in God. If God exists he made us for himself and so he expects to come first so the Bible is right to deduce its fanatical love of God from the concept of God as a perfect being and creator. This tells us that belief in God automatically implies that freedom of thought and speech is immoral and indeed that there can be nothing worse.

God is not worth our love for we need to direct our love to what clearly loves us.  We are going to end up feeling ignored.  We are going to end up maybe saying that God has to ignore us for a purpose.  Surely that risks hurting others if not yourself?