Why does God want us to Love Him?

The way I look at Gods love is like this-

Love is by its very nature creative. At an authentic level, even sinful humans will sometimes create, just to create. Paint a painting or write a song. But then, if we are pleased with what we created, we want to share it with other people.

Then we go and create other humans. Now obviously part of that is because the process is pleasurable itself. But take a look at my kids. They are pretty cute and nice and easy to love, but at the end of the day they are a lot of work and self sacrifice. If I had kids because of what I thought I would get out of them- love and affection and companionship, say- then I would quickly discover that a baby can't meet my needs. Most people know that ahead of time, but have kids anyway. Because they want to give their love to someone else!

So I think God created us for very similar reasons. He loves to create, and wanted to have someone who would rejoice in his creation, and someone he could love. He gets nothing out of the deal- just a lot of work and sacrifice. But it is worth it anyway, because love just wants to give of itself.

I think we make a mistake when we try to evangelize or encourage people to have kids or figure out why God does what he does- and that is that we assume that the only reasons for doing things are selfish reasons. So we try to compel people to Christianity or to have families by telling them what they will get out of it, when in reality it's a no brainer to realize that the sacrifices are huge. We have to appeal to a different part of people- the part that is self giving, or capable of love. Because that is what it is really about!

On a different note, I think people make the smae mistake when determinning their vocation- they look at it from a selfish perspective, and most people, selfishly, want to get married. But people who get married for selfish reasons will often get divorced for selfish reasons. It's funny that we keep acting like it is OK to get married considering only what the other does for you. I also think that this is the danger in immature (high school) dating. You commit only until you no longer get what you want out of the relationship, then the commitment is no longer binding. Rather than train you for marriiage, this trains you for divorce!

God lacks nothing and is not at all selfish, so he can't have wanted to make us because he wanted something for himself. Rather he made us because he loves to create and loves us!