Love for God

The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ / Love for God

Love for God

The main ethical principle of one’s relationships with God must be love for Him. “Love your God!…” — this precept of the Old Testament Jesus made the most important one in His Teachings (Mark 12:28-34).

Love for God includes attraction to Him: a desire for meeting, contact, Mergence. Mergence with the Heavenly Father is the Highest and Ultimate Goal. Without love-attraction to Him, it cannot be attained.

… But it would be wrong if everybody starts to require from each other: “Love God! Love God!” and to read prayers and kowtow all day long. This would be an absurdity. However, there are people who behave exactly like this.

We have discussed already that only intellectually and ethically mature seekers are capable of really cognizing God-the-Father. The task of the rest of people is to strive consciously for this maturity by receiving education, working for the good of God and people, learning to love them and everything.

Moreover, God can be cognized only through meditative work; but if one involves immature people in this work, they turn it into a childish game, which may lead to gross ethical perversions. And this may even result in psychopathology.

Practical observations demonstrate that it is better to keep many people away from religious zeal: they can do nothing good there anyway. For example, in Russia there are many pseudo-religious groups and communities where the world outlook of people is a mixture of urinotherapy (drinking urine), fascism, and astrology; they have Orthodox icons at home, paint eggs for Easter, and consider themselves Christians. If such people get engaged in spiritism or establish “telepathic contacts” with “representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations” and after that develop mystical fear (it is quite easy in such cases), then even psychiatrists are not able to help them.

The other typical Russian example of the way to developing schizophrenia is a situation when people incapable of understanding anything serious about God get immersed into a primitive religious environment where they learn only ideas about world full of demons, vampires, warlocks, “zombies”… It would be much better for them to remain atheists rather than to accept such a “faith”!

No one explained to these poor people what God is, where to find Him, what He teaches us, and what we should do about it. And that we must inquire about Him, not about demons or devils, because we really attract with our attention that which we think about.

So, if there is God, what do we have to do then?

First, to try at least to remember about His existence, to perceive Him as our Goal, the Goal of only intellectual search, in the beginning.

Second, to strive to perfect ourselves for the sake of fulfilling His Will (“… Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect” [Matt 5:48]). This implies, first of all, a) intellectual self-development through all possible means, b) ethical self-transformation through studying His Will for us, through conscious development of positive qualities in oneself and struggling with negative ones, and also through serving other people: helping them in everything good, trying to facilitate their earthly lives and spiritual growth.

In particular, by helping others we perfect ourselves, because we learn Love, Wisdom, and Power under the guidance of God — these three main aspects of the Perfection. This process may be especially successful if we ask God to help us in this service and take heed of His advice and instructions, which may come to us in the form of Revelations, dreams, actions, and promptings given to us by Him through other people or books…

But what should we do if we have no love for Him but want to have it?… If one can neither see nor experience God, then it is hard to fall in love with Him; for many people it is even impossible to do in the near future… This is why Jesus suggested: first, learn to love each other, develop thus your ability to love!

Love is an emotion. An emotion is a state of consciousness. Love is also a state of God’s Consciousness…

Irritated angriness is a state of inhabitants of hell. On the contrary, if we have love, it may draw us to God. What should we develop in ourselves then?