ensuing thoughts

But wouldn't it be easier if that was all it took to show reverence to God? If all it took to satisfy God's desire for our love was a dress code, or some behavior. That would be a whole lot easier than loving people. A lot easier than feeling emotion for some hard to grasp concept. That's why love grows from relationship, and without relationship, God is just a concept and we feel like we've got to invent some kind of visible proof of an emotion we don't understand. Haven't you ever asked why God would create beings who were capable of not loving him? Why didn't he just create folks who had no choice but to go around doing as he wished?
God understands that though love may manifest itself in behavior, it is not a behavior. Though love may manifest itself in submission, other emotions could manifest themselves in submission. Fear for example. Most folks would submit to a man with a gun, but the submission is to the threat posed by the gun. The man won't get respect from waving a gun. The gun's potential will be respected and submission will result.
I know teachers who refuse to allow the students to participate in class in any way other than hearing what the teacher says because further interactivity erodes the respect for the teacher as authority. But these teachers aren't receiving respect, they are merely managing behavior.
What sane husband ever was satisfied by forcing his wife to behave according to his whims? What father ever felt love from children who were terrified not to do exactly what he demanded? What bully ever received what he'd been missing by terrifying someone else and forcing them to meet his random demands? Any lonely person who as ever tried to be loved by demanding it, can testify that it is empty and unsatisfying. Anyone who has tried to feel love from his television, to which he holds the remote and can turn it on and off as he wishes and switch the channels when it says something he doesn't want to hear, can certainly testify that a television's love is empty and unsatisfying.
We've sure made a bomb of love and respect. How could we ever confuse our own control with someone else's love for us? How could we ever have mistaken our inherent need for love as a desire for control?
But we have. And we impose our mixed up understanding on God. Some of us mistake his love for a us as a desire for control, and some of us even try to control him by demanding that he show his love to us by meeting our demands.