Emotions cannot be commanded. Injunctions to love our neighbor can only be directed to our will, not to our feelings. The will guides our choices, decisions, and our actions. We will ultimate good to all men: good in the next life, and in this one to the extent possible within circumstances. A moral disposition to invoke good to individuals in the here and now is burdened with contingencies, ensnared in dilemmas. The constraints of prudence and justice to which we are also commanded tug at responses to the divine dictate. Our single word love—a sweeping blob of a thing—is too indeterminate to justify the the range of human responses that make claims on it.
Perhaps this will help: Love (Theological Virtue). I was taught, starting in Catholic grade school, to distinguish between love and luv. And there's this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Oh, and the Greek word for instinctual love is στοργή — storge, not sturge.
Oh, and the Greek word for instinctual love is στοργή — storge, not sturge.
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