Consciously or subconsciously, the things we do are because they have a self-interest value, partly coded in genes (like how dogs vary in temperament with breed), partly enforced by a societal grouping that has provided survival advantage (compared to the lone-wolf alternative). A culture that fosters kindness is more likely to survive during times of hardship than one that doesn’t. Hence the reinforcement.
The bedouins are fanatically hospitable to strangers in the desert, for similar reasons. Reciprocity.
God is just a placemarker concept as far as I see, to give the above a descriptive form that one can pretend to relate to, or seek comfort in.
Everything that God has communicated about Himself, he has had to teach by accommodation: that is, by adapting his message to our very limited ability to receive it.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. May I tell you the gist of it?
I've been thinking that if a 4-year-old asked you "What is the sun?" you might respond, "It's a big ball of fire. When it comes up in the morning it gives us light, and heat, and the plants drink it in and it makes them alive. Then the sun goes down and you'll see it gets cold and dark."
Well, everything in that description is "wrong" in a literal sense: the sun is no ball of fire, which entails a rapid oxidative process; it's a thermonuclear hydrogen fusion reactor. And it doesn't come up in the morning, it's the earth that turns in relation to it... etc. etc.
And yet that's the only way you could have answered the 4-year-old's question, and it's over-all right, to the measure that the child has the capacity to receive it.
So everything we know about God, we know by virtue of His accommodation to us. It's all analogies. Analogies are not false, but when applied to God they are always more false than true, because God is infinite, and whatever we "capture" in an analogy, there is always an infinity that was not captured. No matter how large "n" may be,
The only way to grasp the whole of God, is by love, because love itself is infinite.
OK, now I've gone all mystical on ya. It's past my bedtime, I'll go sleep it off! G'night, James, and God bless you.