In Walker Percy’s 1971 novel “Love Among the Ruins,” the central character is a psychiatrist named Tom More. More is a Roman Catholic who no longer practices his faith, although he still believes. He describes his situation as follows: “I believe in God and the whole business, but I love women best. Music and science are next, whiskey is next, God is fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all. Nevertheless, I still believe.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that the First Commandment and an overall theology of God teach that God is primary, always. This may never be ignored, but we also know that God is wise and trustworthy. Yet God did not make us with powerful proclivities that instinctually and habitually focus us on the things of this world and then demand that we give him the center of attention all the time. I know a man, a writer, who has been lovingly and scrupulously faithful to his wife through more than forty years who, by his own admission, has a crush on a different person every other day. This hasn’t threatened his marriage. Admittedly though, but for a strong spirituality and morality, it could. God gave us a nature that is affectively wild and promiscuous. God expects us to be responsible for how we act inside that nature, but, given how we are made, the First Commandment may not be interpreted in such a way that we should feel guilty whenever God is not consciously or affectively number one in our lives. God doesn’t demand to be the center of our conscious attention all the time. Like a good spouse, what God asks is fidelity. There are times when we are called to make God the conscious center of our attention; love and faith demand this. However, there will be times when, affectively and consciously, God will take fourth place in our lives – and God is mature and understanding enough to live with that. But the more deeply needed understanding is the question we must ask ourselves: what ultimately are we infatuated with and longing for when our focus is on other things rather than on God, knowing in the depth of our soul that even in that, it is God we seek?