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I’m reading back through Thomas Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God, and I love this bit of reasoning about what it means to love and be in relationship:

Jesus’ interests are so tightly interwoven with those of his own loved ones that, if we do something to them, it is as if we have done it to him; and God’s interests are likewise so tightly interwoven with those of his loved ones that, as a matter of logic, we cannot love God and at the same time hate those whose God loves. Indeed if we say that we love God whilst hating some of our brothers and sisters, then we are liars. But the reverse is true as well: just as we cannot love God and hate those whom he loves, neither can God love us and, at the same time, hate those whom we love. If I truly love my daughter as myself, then God cannot love (or will the best for) me unless he also loves (or wills the best for) her. For I am not an isolated monad whose interests are distinct from those of my loved ones, and neither is anyone else. If God should do less than his best for my daughter, he would also do less than his best for me; and if he should act contrary to her best interest, he would also act contrary to my own.

Talbott’s paralleling the human parent/child relationship with the God/human relationship is what really brought it home for me on a first read. He makes it quite explicit here:

An additional point is this: so long as I love my daughter as myself, I can neither love God nor worship him unless I at least believe that he loves my daughter as well; the idea that I could both love my daughter and love a God whom I know to hate her is also logically absurd… If I truly love my daughter, desiring the good for her, and God doesn’t to, then (a) my will is not in conformity with God’s, (b) I could not consistently approve of God’s attitude toward my daughter, and (c) neither could I be grateful to him for the harm he is doing to me. This is not merely to register a point about my own psychological makeup; the whole thing, I want to suggested, is logically impossible.

I agree.