further extrapolation : what if you had God-like powers and could create a being with an eternal soul, and one that could only be happy when directly worshipping, serving and loving you. You then gave them a finite amount of time to choose to love you voluntarily or choose not to and spend eternity miserable. Are these actions good or are they repulsive?
Imagine you said to your wife or your children " I only want you to be happy when your loving me, thinking about me", would that be glorious?
Your question treats God as though he was just an ordinary human (with God-like powers).
According to Christian theology, God is Love. All love and goodness that exists comes from him. Peace, joy, wisdom, faith, hope and every positive thing about humanity is a part of his nature. All of it springs from God’s creative power. No virtue could exist without coming from God, for every virtue is a part of him. Whenever a human engages in any virtuous act, they do it because they are made “in God’s image.” God’s goodness is shining through their actions.
You would agree with me, I think, that when humans do good things, they deserve thanks and appreciation for what they do.
Every good thing comes from God, so how much more does he deserve thanks? And giving thanks while meaning it creates joy in one’s heart naturally (I discovered this experientially). Thus when you thank God, you give yourself joy as well as God. God also praises his followers for the good that they do. Our good acts are cooperative acts between their human wills and the will, power and grace of the Holy Spirit.
Now consider your question above from the perspective that God is the source of all virtue and that there cannot be any virtue in anyone in separation from him (since he is the source of all good qualities). That is Christian theology.
God is Love. Therefore no one can love without being connected to God’s nature through their love. Human love is a reflection of God’s nature that results from our being made in his image.
You seem to be imagining some kind of better world in which people didn’t have to love God to be happy. However, since God is Love, a world that didn’t love God would be a world that didn’t love love. A world that didn’t care at all about God wouldn’t care at all about love, since God himself is love. Without God, the world could not love. So you’re saying people should be able to live lives happily without loving anyone.
Similarly, peace, joy, wisdom, kindness, compassion, gentleness, patience and hope are part of God’s nature. If you were to have a world where no one has to love God to be happy, you’d have to have a world without peace, without joy, without wisdom, without kindness, without compassion, patience, gentleness, hope or any virtue. You’re asking for a world in which everyone is happy without possessing any virtue. Since God, according to Christian theology, is the source of all virtue and is himself Love, a world without God would be absent of any virtue.
That is why people end up in hell, too. Hell is the absence of God, the absence of all virtue. Some people want that for themselves and seek it. The further people turn away from God, the heart of virtue, the further they walk toward hell. Hell itself is simply the final destination of the journey they’re taking in this life. That’s why we see such terrible things in the world today- people create little hells in this world, on their way to their final damnation. The more people turn away from virtue, the more they must by necessity turn toward deeds that lack virtue, and which are considered despicable.
God wants people to love and embrace all that is good and virtuous, all that will make them happy by the very nature of what it is (peace, joy, goodness, all that comes from God). This is what people come to when they worship God, for worshipping God is adoring the source of all goodness and is loving pure goodness itself. We’d both agree that loving goodness is good, and praising good is good. Well, the purest goodness and source of all good is God, so loving and praising him is that much more good and worthy.
Some people do want to live happily without God. God gives them permission to make their own way rather than submitting to his perfect will. Since those people reject perfection, they will find imperfection. Since they reject that which gives complete satisfaction, they will necessarily find dissatisfaction. They cannot be truly happy without God, because people that do not love cannot be truly happy. To the degree that their nature is in tune with God’s and glorifies him, they will be happy. Another way of saying this is that to the extent that they love, they give glory to Love through their loving actions and find their heart’s delight through loving.
The pleasure of heaven is not sitting aournd on a perfect beach, or floating on a cloud, it’s in worship. Christianity is like a form of self obliteration - we are not supposed to be happy, we matter only as much as our ability to glorify God, like empty vesicles. Our existence is to demonstrate God’s creative ability, his mercy for a few if he so chooses (and his justice for rest). Feeding the poor, demonstrating compassion, it’s all to please God, not the recipients, not because their lives have any innate value