(June 12, 2016 at 4:52 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:Quote:34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:34-40
Love... perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Is it a feeling, or is it a choice? The greatest commandment says to love God with all your heart. This would seem to imply that love is a choice, that we can choose to love or not love God. Those who advocate that love is a choice talk of choosing to commit to the one you love and engage in loving acts towards the loved one, but do these same choices apply to loving a disembodied spirit? Loving somebody with all your heart and mind and soul seems to speak to love as a feeling. Does the heart or soul choose? Is it possible to choose to "love God with all your heart and soul and mind"?
These are excellent questions. Perhaps they are the most important question anyone can ask? What is love? How do I love best?
It seems to me that neither 'feeling' nor 'choice' adequately capture the entire reality which is love, but both describe different aspects of the same reality. I, by no means, propose the following as a fully adequate answer to your questions. I simply offer my thoughts as some first steps.
In one sense, humans have a natural attraction to things that are satisfying for them in different contexts. Consider hunger. Hunger is the manifestation of a desire. Through our experiences we discover different things which sate that desire, and we become attracted to them. In this sense, the desire for satisfaction and the attraction to things which satisfy could be called "feelings".
Consider the same hunger under a different aspect. When we experience the "feeling" of hunger, there are many different ways to go about sating that desire if we choose to sate it at all (and if we have the means). As rational things, we can be aware of the desire, aware of the options to sate it, aware of our ability to sate it, and aware of reasons for sating it. We are better or worse at allowing that desire determine our actions, or rather directing that desire to a specific option, and carrying it out according to reason. In this respect, our feelings/desires have directed us to a choice. If we choose to sate the desire, and we actually sate the desire well, we may take pleasure in that satisfaction, and we get more feelings.
In short: 1) There is a desire/feeling for nutritional satisfaction, 2) We grow in our knowledge of what nutritionally satisfies, 3) As knowledge increases, we are able to better choose and better satisfy, 4) Better satisfying action provides greater nutritional health
So what about love? 1) There is a desire/feeling for ontological/existential satisfaction (i.e. a desire of "goodness", of what fulfills a human life), 2) We must grow in our knowledge of what satisfies a human life, 3) As our knowledge increases, we are better able to choose and better satisfy our humanity, 4) Better satisfying action provides for a fuller human life.
Part of our ontological satisfaction of our own humanity is directly related to the ontological satisfaction of other people's humanity.
1) There is a desire/feeling for the human fullness of your neighbor, 2) We grow in our knowledge of what fulfills your neighbors humanity, 3) As knowledge increases, we are able to better choose and better satisfy the humanity of our neighbor, 4) Better satisfying action provides for a fuller human life for your neighbor, and therefore, yourself.
That entire reality is human love (at least a feeble attempt at its expression). Feeling, knowledge, choice, action, and satisfaction. The more we know about it, and the more we practice loving well, the better we are able to love ourselves, other people, and anything else that exists.
There is a difficulty with God. We experience hunger, and we have discovered ways of satisfying it. We have experienced the desire to live for another's good, and we have discovered ways of satisfying it. Where is the desire for God? We know what hunger is, we know what the desire for sleep is, we know what the desire for companionship is... is it just as easy to point to the desire for God? No. The best we can do (at least in my judgment) is point to desire in general, and say that in the abstract, it is a desire for goodness.
But should that goodness ever speak up, as the Christian revelation claims it has, and tell us that it has come to us, to satisfy us and to give us an abundant life, then the choice lies in allowing it to do just that, and to rest in that satisfaction.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.
Can we love God with our whole heart soul and strength? If he loves us first, and allows us to live through the Son's life, then I think we can grow to love God this way.
