When I was a kid, I was taught that God created everyone and everything – and that people were brothers and sisters because we had the same creator. As a child, I often wondered if I was also a sister to all of nature because God had created nature, too. But then, I really didn’t want to be a sister to spiders and roaches and snakes. I didn’t want to love these “disgusting” creatures, and since the Bible never required me to love nature or to think of myself as a sister to all of nature, I decided I didn’t have to. 

But when I read through the various sacred texts, including the Bible, I can’t help but feel convinced that love for all things is not just part of spirituality – but it is the entire point. Love is either overtly or covertly an underlying part of just about every faith tradition and religious philosophy there is. 

“Let all that you do be done in love.” – 1 Corinthians 16:14

“Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your hearts burn with loving-kindness for all who may cross your path.” -‘Abdu’l Baha, Paris Talks

“Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings.” -Karaniya Metta Sutta

“…All things are loved not for their own sake, but because the Divine Beloved lives in them. The Divine Beloved must be realized.” -Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.4.5

“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” -Leviticus 19:34

“Listen, I tell you the truth: Only those who have loved realize the Lord.” -Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, 856

The Tao Te Ching is no different in affirming the importance of love in our collective human experience. Love is not merely part of our human existence, but it is who we are at our core. If our creator is love, and if our universe was created in love, if the end result of spirituality is to become whole or to become one with our creator – then we also, are love. 

Love is our identity and our purpose in this world. 

In the Christian tradition, love for all tends to refer to how we treat other people. People are created in God’s image, and therefore every human life has inherent value and dignity. In more ancient traditions, like Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism – it seems that love for all also expands to every sentient being. All things (not just people) are loved because Divinity lives inside of each thing. 

Because of our shared spiritual essence with everything that was created – we are interconnected. We are each other. And what happens to one of us, is happening to all of us. When I think about loving the whole world “as if it were myself,” then what happens to the spider I think is gross and step on has also happened to a part of me. When animals are displaced from their natural homes because of human expansion – part of me is displaced. When humans hurt each other, we are hurting ourselves.

I think the implications of this type of interconnectedness are huge. And this is why most of our spiritual traditions have love at their core – because we are love at our core, and because love is the point.