Jun 3, 2009
Why Would God “Command” Us to Love?
There are two commands from scripture that stand out as the greatest:
1. Love God
2. Love Others
Everything flows out of these two commands. And yet, it’s a bit strange to think of God commanding us to love him. I can’t imagine that working out all that well in a typical human relationship, so what is the deal here?
God’s love is developed fully throughout scripture as a relational, self-sacrificing love. God is compared to a lover whose spouse has been unfaithful—as in, people are the unfaithful ones to God. While we were sinners, Christ died for us. And so God has made the first, most costly move to have a relationship with us.
Also, if we’ve learned anything from our history, we are very adept at creating our own religions and ways of worshipping God. We tack on guilt, extra sacrifices, and come up with a list of reasons why we are unworthy of God’s love.
Keep in mind that the command to love God in Deuteronomy comes on the heels of Israel’s 400 years in the land of Egypt amidst all manner of idols. If Christianity can become so pervasive in America without being state sanctioned for the past 300 years, you’d better bet there are ramifications to living in a nation where the Pharaoh stands at the top of a long list of gods. Four hundred years in such a society will influence how you relate to God.
I read God’s command to love as counteracting these influences. The most important part about worshipping God is learning to love God, not what we bring to the table.
God has already loved us, desiring that no one should be separated from his love. Will we reciprocate this love, and meet God on such simple and beautiful terms, or will we try to figure out our own way to God?
I have been thinking about idolatry recently after yesterday’s OT lectionary reading of Deuteronomy 12. We so often see idolatry as the antithesis of our worship of God, the worship of a false God, but yesterday as I read I noticed the syncretism warned against in the passage:
[2] You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. [3] Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places. [4] You shall not worship the LORD your God in such ways.
We are commanded because not only do we slip into idolatry and chasing after false gods, but we also can stumble into worshiping God “in such ways” as greater society, creating a syncretism of our worship with how the world worships. In today’s evangelical landscape there are so many instances of this in the way we worship and celebrate God: through rock concerts, conferences, building gigantic sanctuaries, erecting church campuses, huge church staffs, etc.
Most egregiously, we have concocted the shrewd and calculated idea to hire huge church staffs so that they can be our “love liaisons” for us, getting the congregation off the hook from worshiping God the way he wants to be worshiped so that we can worship him on our own terms.
Yeah, syncretism hits us in ways we often don’t expect, making it all the more dangerous for the church.
[...] this week Ed Cyzewski wrote about the question: Why Would God "Command" Us to Love? The Greatest Commandment is to "love God and love others," so why this command? Ed [...]