How to Love God

Many church people would likely nod in assent if someone spoke of faith as "loving God and loving neighbor." Loving one's neighbor may be difficult at times, but it's fairly easy to come up with a long list of things that fit into that category. I'm not sure the same can be said for loving God.

What exactly does it look like to love God? What things count for and against it? Those who speak of Christians as hypocrites suggest we think attending worship and believing in Jesus suffice. Churches certainly have their share of hypocrisy, but many people diligently seek to live their faith. Even so, they may struggle with what it looks like to love God.

Thoughts on what loving God looks like arose for me after reading Fr. Richard Rohr's daily devotion. He tells of a sidewalk frequented by the homeless of Albuquerque, NM, where he once observed something written in chalk. “I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing—thereby keeping us out. Truly God is hated here.”I thought of all the church congregations in this country, many of them segregated by income level as well as race, and pondered that phrase, "thereby keeping us out."

But Rohr's quote wasn't nearly so troubling as the lectionary verses from 1 Samuel. There the newly anointed King Saul is rejected by God. Here loving God is equated with obedience, and Saul's failure is not bringing total destruction on the Amalekites. He was supposed to commit genocide as well as kill every animal, but Saul spares their king and keeps the good animals and other booty. (He later claims he is bringing them as a offering for God.) Issues of compassion are not raised here. Saul kills all the women and children. The only issue is his absolute devotion to God, or the lack of it.

This is not the only time genocide is commanded by God in the Old Testament. Historically speaking, this was a violent time and it was not uncommon for conquorers to wipe out entire towns, but I don't know that context makes God come off much better. 

Strangely enough this story may be, in part, Israel wrestling with questions about what it looks like to love God. When Jerusalem was destroyed and its leaders and intelligentsia taken into exile, much soul searching took place about how Israel had failed to be the covenant community God had called them to be. They had loved God when it was easy and convenient and ignored God when it suited them. One way they had been "unfaithful" was in hedging their bets by dabbling in the religious practices of their non-Israelite neighbors. The local Canaanite gods and goddesses were of the fertility variety, and fertility is a big issue in agriculture. So a sacrifice here and there to Baal was a bit of crop insurance. 

But in light of defeat and exile, Israel contemplated her failure to love God with total devotion. One obvious problem: they had not been pure enough. They had not totally wiped out those Canaanites whose religious practices had tempted them. The Old Testament is hardly of one mind on this. There are regular commands to care for the sojourner and alien, and the book of Ruth celebrates the devotion of a non-Israelite. But clearly there was a school of thought in Israel that equated loving God with a purity requiring genocide.

This school of thought still has its adherents. They don't generally favor genocide these days, but their love of God does come with a fair amount of hatred for the impure, the heretic, the pagan, etc. Such folks usually refuse to acknowledge the varied witness of scripture on this and other issues. The Bible is in full agreement that total devotion to God is required, but just what that looks like is debated within scripture itself. Some of the prophets point to Israel's failure to do justice and care for the poor as the real failure of love. And those who demand covenant purity sometimes seem to forget that the original covenant with Abraham and Sarah promised that through them, "all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

This bedrock covenant of Israel is cosmic in scope, but Israel, just like religious folks today, were prone to narrow its focus and constrict it to their purposes. And the resulting biases find their way into sacred scripture. It is all too easy to spot, both in Old and New Testaments.

Fortunately for Christians, we have a remarkable example of what loving God looks like, namely Jesus. And while this example sets a very high bar, it is amazingly devoid of any zealotry aimed against outsiders (though later followers of Jesus would add that). Jesus' take on devotion and love for God demands much of us, but in service to others and not at their expense. Jesus seems totally to reject the school of thought that would connect devotion and purity to genocide, not that this has always restrained his adherents. 

And so I find myself back at that indictment in the quote from Rohr. "Truly God is hated here." I know people who are very angry with God. I know people who don't believe in God, some whose disbelief is so intense they despise people who do believe in God. But I've rarely met anyone who claimed to hate God other than in a fit of pique. So how should we describe ourselves when we deliberately live in ways we know are at odds with what God wants and expects?

This post is a lot longer, and probably more rambling, than  most. That's a sure sign of my own internal wrestling on this for my own life of faith, including its many failures and refusals to trust that God/Jesus' way is the right one. Do I love God? Do I hate God? Or am I so lukewarm that neither really applies? 

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