The Shema (3)

And you shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Deuteronomy 6:5

Your God – Not just any god.  Your God. eloheikha.  How did that happen?  Well, it had nothing to do with our decision.  “You will be my people and I will be your God.”  It was His choice.  He established the relationship, not us.  We belong to Him because we have been chosen, grafted in, adopted by Him.  Of course, there is a reason for this – but it is His reason, His purpose, not ours.  Once we were chosen, we were obligated.  “You will be my people,” doesn’t mean that we can determine how we will belong to this nation.  He determines how we will belong because He constituted us as His people.  Once we were lost.  Now we are found.  We are found within the congregation of Israel.  We are commanded to love this particular God (who happens to be the only God in spite of other claims of divinity).  The reason we are to love Him is because we belong to Him – and He belongs to us.

Heschel makes an interesting observation.  “In this world God is not God unless we are His witnesses.”[1] God is not restoring the world to its perfect original condition without us.  He is in cooperation with us.  We are partners with Him.  We have been invited to join the work party, to complete with Him the master plan of the redemption of everything.  He is our God because we are wedded to His work and His character.  Under these circumstances, the command to love Him is entirely reasonable and acceptable.  How could it be otherwise?  Under these circumstances, to act on His behalf in the work of restoration is to love Him.  Only those who put hand to the plow demonstrate that He is their God.  They love Him with every furrow, with every drop of sweat, with every callus, with every aching muscle.  There is work to do – His work – and loving Him is feeling the blade slicing through the good earth.

“Ultimately religion is not based on our awareness of God but on God’s interest in us.”[2] He declares us His people just as His Son declares us His friends.[3] Both have obligations.  Both are Hebrew tautologies.  Your God = His people.  To be known = friends.  People and friends = obligation to respond.

How will the world know that He is our God?  Not because we proclaim that we believe He exists.  The divine principle of first cause is not our God.  He is the God of the philosophers.  The heavenly overseer of higher ethics is not our God.  Our God is the God of Torah and if we are to be His witnesses (and He is to be our God), then we will live according to His demands – and not anything else.

Is He your God?

Topical Index:  your God, eloheikha, witnesses, Deuteronomy 6:5

[2] Abraham Heschel, Spiritual Audacity and Moral Grandeur, p. xxii.

[3] John 15:15