When
the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered
together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, "Teacher,
which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with
all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is
like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the
prophets depend on these two commandments."
Matthew 22:34-40
What
does it mean to love God?
We
often assume that the second greatest commandment is really the explanation of
the first: to love one another is to love God.
But is that true?
We
also often assume that to act as
though we love each other - doing nice things for one another - is the moral
equivalent of genuinely loving - falling in
love - with each other. But is that
true?
Can one be commanded to genuinely love another? Or is this something other than a command?
Can one be commanded to genuinely love another? Or is this something other than a command?
