“To know me…” my friend Rick used to say, always with a sly smirk, “… is to love me.”
And for most of us, that certainly is the logical order of things.
Step 1: Get to know someone. Or something. Step 2: Decide whether you love them or not. Step 3: Relate accordingly.
As the mystics tell us though, it is exactly the opposite with God. According to one of my favorite writers on faith matters, Fr. Richard Rohr, we cannot truly KNOW God until we first LOVE God.
And so for skeptics and non-believers, this order of things presents a giant obstacle. “Let me examine the evidence first,” they might say. “Let me weigh up the pros and cons, interview the eyewitnesses, search the literature for secondary warrants and then – and ONLY then – will I make my own, scientifically-informed decision about how I feel.”
The problem with the scientific/rational approach – as the scriptures tell us – lies in God’s essence. 1 John 4:16 reminds us, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
It’s not that the path of intellectual assent to the reality of God is weak or flawed. It’s that it is simply not AVAILABLE.
In other words, we can’t study our way to union with God (with apologies to my seminary profs). We can only love our way there. Or as The Teacher reminds us, “Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”(Ecclesiastes 12:12, NRSV).
Words to live by.
But trust me… they won’t suffice as an excuse for not turning in your homework.
Russellings of the Spirit 
I enjoyed this perspective! And thankful God loved me despite the “unfavorable “ evidence. He makes love look easy and I want to love like HIM. You also had me thinking 💭 this~”My apologies for not getting that research paper completed ~I’m loving my way through my education” (it does sound good though!)! Lol! Love this post!