Jan. 14, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
06:16
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Love God and not behave properly? | |
| And can you behave properly and not love God? | |
| How's this? | |
| Are you ready for a confession? | |
| I don't find it easy to love God. | |
| I never did. | |
| I am God-centered. | |
| I want to do what God wants me to do. | |
| I've always felt that deeply. | |
| It is the animating impulse of my life. | |
| But I don't find it easy. | |
| The amount of suffering that is built into this world does not make it easy for me. | |
| I've had a great life. | |
| I mean, I've suffered, but everybody's suffered somewhat. | |
| But compared to others, I haven't. | |
| On scales that I know exist. | |
| And, by the way, I think that... | |
| I am a reason that there is a commandment to love God because if it came naturally, there would be no commandment. | |
| As I said earlier, there's no commandment to love your child. | |
| That comes naturally to normal people. | |
| So, this is a very real question. | |
| Believe me, there are people who think they love God and they don't act very well. | |
| Alright, let's see here. | |
| Tim in Detroit, thank you for calling. | |
| Hey Dennis, I got a quick question. | |
| You said earlier that a commandment that comes, something that comes naturally to you, God did not command us. | |
| So I was wondering, right when you said that, I'm a yeshiva student, I study the Torah the whole day. | |
| And so one question that came up to me is that, We are commanded to love our parents, right? | |
| No, we're not... | |
| We're obligated to honor them and love them. | |
| That's right. | |
| No, no. | |
| Just honor. | |
| Just honor? | |
| Yep. | |
| Okay. | |
| In fact, I write about that in... | |
| Take a look at my Torah commentary, The Rational Bible. | |
| I write when it says, Honor your father and mother. | |
| It's unique. | |
| We're told to love God, love the stranger, love our neighbor. | |
| But we're never told to love our parents. | |
| So, too, we're never told to honor anyone except our parents. | |
| Parents are unique. | |
| Whether you love them or not is your business, not God's. | |
| Whether you honor them or not is God's business. | |
| Very important call. | |
| Glad he did. | |
| Okay. | |
| Let's go to... | |
| Let's see here. | |
| David in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. | |
| Hi. | |
| Dennis? | |
| Yes, sir. | |
| Long-term listener. | |
| Thank you. | |
| My favorite. | |
| Very good question to ask, sir. | |
| You brought up the issue of the Ten Commandments, and rightly so. | |
| My perspective on that, from a 5,000-foot view and looking at the Ten Commandments, we use those as a measuring stick. | |
| To see how well we're doing. | |
| Now, looking at loving the Lord, we have to look above and get ourselves away from the world. | |
| How do we do that? | |
| We have to pray, spend time reading the Bible, because if we love the Father, we want to get to know Him. | |
| All right, so let me ask you the questions that I posed. | |
| Is it possible to love God and not do what he commands? | |
| Yes, because we're sinners and we constantly... | |
| No, no, okay. | |
| Well, obviously, I understand. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Let's put it... | |
| All right. | |
| Alright, is it possible to love God and be a serial murderer? | |
| I wouldn't think so. | |
| Is it possible to do what God wants and not love him? | |
| Thank you. | |
| That informs some type of detachment from God, which... | |
| No, it's an emotional detachment, not detachment. | |
| It's emotional detachment, but it's not detachment. | |
| Look, I'm a living example of that. | |
| I admit it. | |
| And it may be disappointing to some of you, but That's okay. | |
| We'll both have to live with it. | |
| I just, by the way, my theory, and I know I've done this so long that I know this theory actually works. | |
| The more real you are, the more people will take religion seriously. | |
| A lot of religious people, in a well-intentioned way, but they offer some sort of Pre-written script About their religious convictions and it doesn't come across as real There's nothing quite as Influential that is influencing of others as real then people can |
Export Selection