Our Moral Life and Our Emotions

My initial reaction to Vacek's statement that only a few Christians talk about their love for God was to feel a little strange. On deeper reflection, I think this may be true for ordinary Christians not because they do not give importance to loving God, but perhaps it is just difficult to talk about it in a real, concrete sense. Perhaps to many, talking about love for God is somehow abstract, and so to define such love is to talk about it in terms of loving one's neighbor, the poor, the needy, and loving one's self, too. I also think that our feelings for God is so personal that words are not really enough to describe our experiences of God.
 
On the other hand, I cannot agree with the objections of those theologians or mystics, and what they raise seem too philosophical, and I believe that it is not the way to approach God, or the idea of God. It all boils down to being humble before the Creator, the Supreme
Being who is the Source of all there is and all we are. It is also being thankful for being what and who we are; moreover, for just the fact that we are. So whether there is an ethical obligation or not to love God is besides the point, I think, because like Jesus has commanded us to do, we should really love God above all things. And because Jesus said so, and He Himself lived by what He taught, then we professed Christians should do likewise.

Moreover, as the author states "we cannot hope to become fully human unless we love God. We are essentially relational beings." He also states that we have a "native desire for God and our hearts will shrivel up unless they beat for God." If we love someone, we do all our best to please that object of our love, and when we love deeply and truly, we even profess to die for that person. This is a very human experience and if humans could profess to love another human being in this way, then we should all the more love God in this way.
 
It is easy to understand then that the love for God is also basic for our moral lives because we are orienting or directing our actions to Him, and therefore, we strive to be good to please God. We also know that our Ultimate End is God Himself, so loving God is really important and should be the central focus of our lives. This article is a thought-provoking piece and helps us re-think our priorities and examine closely how we are living, and how we are living out our Christian faith.
 
Since loving God also deals with our emotions, then it is just right to consider our emotions as important aspects of the totality of our personhood and in relation to our moral lives. Since by loving God, we are inclined to do good, then it follows that by our own emotions, we can "live a fully intelligent and human life" when we are able to "integrate and harmonise reason and emotion, head and heart into our personality and humanity", as Bill Cosgrave tells us in his essay. He states that "we have a duty to do all possibile things to reach emotional maturity in order that we may live a morally mature or intelligent life, whether we are christians or not." If one is emotionally immature, he cannot act wisely, but rather selfishly or negatively to the moral detriment of him/herself and others. Christ himself experienced emotions and he expressed them in such a human but appropriate, intelligent way that should be the example of all of us Christians. So I agree with the author that our emotions play a very important role in our moral lives and we should indeed strive to be emotionally mature.
 
Thus, we can see that being loving to God, being spiritual and emotionally mature are ways of becoming morally upright individuals. These are ways by which we define our moral character.