Love is Fundamental

 Why do the Ten Commandments exist? Because G-d loves us.

Why do the often sometimes severe punishments exist in the Torah? Same reason.

I am sometimes guilty of regarding other things, such as truth and justice, as the more fundamental parts of G-d's nature, but really the fundamental thing as far as human beings are concerned, is love.

This love is love of humans, not of beasts with human faces, and so it is very concerned with the structures of society and families necessary to make truly human humans. The Jewish word "mensch" is the kind of human meant: a humane human.

To have a happy and healthy world (and G-d who loves us wants us to have that,) you have to have a world of humane humans. Moral humans. So even the sometimes rather strict rules of the Torah are intended to that end: having a happy human society of happy well adjusted ethical humans.

Why does the Torah concern itself with sexual immorality so much? Because the absolute bedrock foundation of building this world of happy humans is stable families. One mother, one father, loyal to and procreating with only each other. Sex is powerful, that is why it is surrounded by proscriptions in the Torah. It can create life, and it can destroy lives. G-d's rules about it are designed to build healthy stable families that produce healthy stable humane humans.

You also cannot have a better world if that world is fundamentally unfair. Some people get acquitted when they are guilty; some get convicted when they are innocent. When that happens, people tend to take matters into their own hands, and that makes for a very unhappy world indeed. G-d was so concerned about this that in addition to prohibitions against false witness and unjust judges, He said that the economy basically of society should be reset every 49 years. Everyone goes back to their ancestral lands and gives up their holdings in the regions of other tribes, every slave is freed. We don't now know how that worked in practice, because if it was ever practiced it was practiced a long time ago.

The Ten Commandments exist for the sake of making societies of happy humans who can fulfill the potential of the image of G-d within them. It sounds as if I am making a relativistic statement but I am not, because there is one truth of the matter and that is G-d's truth.

G-d understands how to make happy societies far better than we do. So when we make various innovations to G-d's laws that are intended to make people happy - well, they don't work. Even if they make the individual happier, they make the society sicker. G-d is no respecter of persons: He wants the whole thing to be good, not just better for a few people.

So for instance G-d's now "controversial" laws against homosexuality: our society embraces homosexuality because we want people to be happy. You're gay, you want to be gay, so be gay and be happy. Makes things easier for you in any case, but not better for society because it erodes the fundamental structure that makes humans humane: families. Sex is a powerful drug, perhaps the most powerful, and as such it will corrupt and destroy society unless it is kept within the bounds it was created for. What was sex created for? To create new humans in the context of a loving family unit composed of one man and one woman. Imagine if heroin were suddenly legal: bodies would be piling up in the streets. Well, sex is more corrupting than that. How many people have suffered and died because of it? How many have murdered in fits of jealousy, and how many died? How many have been driven to suicide by despair? We will never know the total body count on that one.

G-d made sex powerful to make sure that humans would procreate, and to cement the bond between man and wife. Removed from that context, it is a dangerous drug.

G-d isn't just being a prude, He made his rules because He loves us. Because He loves us, He does not want us to live in deteriorating families and societies, and doesn't want us to live a beastlike existence of depravity. To not seek to fulfill the image of G-d within us, is to not aspire to be human. To not aspire to have dignity. To wish to live in a world where human life has no worth except as means to one's own ends. Because He loves us, He does not wish that for us.

People see all the rules, all the do's and don'ts, as fundamental. Non-religious people do, and sometimes religious people do too. They are NOT fundamental. LOVE is fundamental. It is just that to create a better world (and you don't love humanity if you don't want that,) you can't just do whatever you want. There are rules for how you create and maintain that world. It is not loving to be an enabler to sin, even if your intentions are good. It is not loving to the sinner, and it is not loving to society.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

~Deuteronomy 6:5-6

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
~Leviticus 19:18