Love Your Neighbor... Good Enough?

Why do we need to love God? A pretty basic question, I know. But I've been thinking "What's to say that a life of commitment to simply following the Golden Rule of love your neighbor as yourself" isn't good enough?

We need to love God, because God is love. It's simple, but profound. We need to love... love.

Let me try to explain why I think this is important.

If we don't put love first in our lives, someone or something else will become "first" that we will love. Everyone has someone or something that is "first" in their life. It's impossible not to.

But why do we need to define love? Because there are a lot of things that masquerade as love, that aren't love (co-dependent relationships, lust, sexual flings, etc.)

Let me say this another way. There are a lot of things that masquerade as God, that aren't God. (power, pursuits of wealth, political structures).

Cutting out God and just saying "we'll love others" isn't as easy as it sounds because there is a lot of smoke and mirrors in our world that redirect our intentions of loving others into diluted forms of love at best, and self-serving forms of love at worst.

Side note: I get why some people would want to cut out God and just seek to "love others" -- because religious can be ugly and complicated are a couple of reasons. But let's not throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater...

Those who seek to live a life of loving others will find the best way to achieve this is to seek God because God is 100% pure love. We seek to imitate God because there is no better goal in life than to love others with a pure love.

When Jesus was asked by a religious person what the most important religious law was, he told him: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"

Loving your neighbor is LIKE loving God -- but it's NOT loving God. We still need to put God first over others SO THAT we can be our best in loving others.