Matthew 22:36-40
Two Greatest Commandments
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.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Love is Many Things
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 John 4:8
God is LOVE
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
I read a question, from a non-believer, that caught my attention: Why would a God who created man and endowed him with his highest capacities, those of reason and logic and critical thinking, then turn around and make an even higher virtue out of rejecting precisely those highest human capacities in favor of faith in the unknown and the untestable propositions about the universe, and even more so, plan to torture man for the rest of eternity precisely for using the highest capacities with which he is endowed?...
Our highest capacities, what really are they?…We do have thinking power over all the other creatures of the world, that God created…I am assuming the questioner means our personal reason and logic are man’s highest capacities…But all men differ in their ability to reason and to think logically…Some do it much, much better than I can...But man can reason and think logically above all the other animals that God has created…But this does not mean we do not need other things to give us purpose and meaning and happiness?…And everything does not come out of our reason and logic…We not only have a thinking and rational side, we have an emotional and feeling side, that is not so rational and logical…Carl Jung, a psychologist, called these two different sides our thinking judgment and our feeling judgment…(He also further said we have two perceptions, which further complicates the complexes of the brain, that God created)...
So our feelings and our emotions have to included as a large part of us…I think everyone would agree they are an important part of us...Many of us think emotionally and some use their personal feelings to make decisions…Emotions and feelings cannot be tested, yet we have them in our daily lives...And one might argue that human feelings and the human heart also separates us from the other animals that God created...We base our marriages on many of the emotions we have and then base are most important relationships on love…We want our feelings validated, and if they are not validated at a young age, we suffer from this…Then we have a more difficult time being rational and logical in our lives…So we very much need the feelings and emotions that God created in us…And maybe faith is part and parcel some rational and some emotional…And maybe, just maybe faith, hope, and love are more important than our logic and the reasonable parts of our mind…Maybe faith is closer to love than it is to logic and reason...
So maybe reason and logic are not the highest of our virtues or attributes or capacities…Maybe faith, hope, and the ability to love are the highest capacities of man that we have been endowed with…Paul told us that faith, hope, and love are the three greatest virtues...And Jesus tells us in the two Greatest Commandments that love for God, and love for neighbor are the two Greatest Commandments we have...And God is LOVE...Not only are these our two Greatest Commandments, love eternally connects God and man...