Todd posted on a topic that I have been thinking a great deal about lately. This post is my comment on his post that got way too long to post as a comment. He posted the following verse & asked a few questions afterward.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matt. 22:36-40
I think that this verse & this discussion both point out a great area of weakness that our generation sees in a great deal of mainstream Christianity. I think we also see it in ourselves more clearly than our parents’ & grandparents’ generations have been able to. I’ve been reading a really interesting book that talks a little bit about why that is, & if you’ll bear with me through a fairly lengthy explanation, I think it may contribute to the conversation.
During the time between roughly 500 AD & 1500 AD, orthodoxy, or “right thinking” wasn’t a big issue. This was because only the priests had access to the scriptures & they merely had to dictate to the laity, or the common man, what to do & believe. Since the laity did not have access to the scriptures, they had no reason, or basis, to disagree with their decrees. It wasn’t really a big focus within Western Christianity. After all, the early Christians had dealt with & finally settled the big issues of doctrine through the canonization of scripture. It was just a matter of dispensing it to the world.
But then comes the printing press, & a new ability to mass produce exact copies of accurate translations of the Bible to an increasingly literate common man. This, of course, led to disagreements, not only with the established church, but also between various groups of Christians that were forming based on new interpretations of scripture. This period of time is referred to in the Western world as the Reformation. All of a sudden, orthodoxy was a big deal again. All of these new groups of people had to sort out who was “with them” and who wasn’t. All of this within Christianity coincided culturally with the Renaissance in Europe and its elevation of humanity & the ability of the human mind.
So, the general Western population is now simultaneously developing 2 new & very significant characteristics: 1) they have access to information on a much broader scale as a result of the printing press, & 2) they are becoming more confident in their own individual ability to process information accurately & make decisions based on that information. It is easy to see how these 2 feed one into the other creating a snowball effect. This snowball has been rolling now for about 500 years & has ultimately led to an industrial & technological revolution unmatched throughout all of human history. For quite a long time now our knowledge & abilities as a species have been growing exponentially with each passing generation. This is a direct result of the emergence of those 2 characteristics.
Obviously, there are 2 sides to every coin. Not every development that has come over the last 500 years has been positive. One of the negative developments with regard to Christendom is that we typically value thoughts & beliefs much more than action & outcome. The reformation brought “right thinking” back to the forefront of Christianity, & as people have grown more & more confident in their ability think “rightly,” the walls that we use to separate “us” from “them” have grown thicker & thicker. Churches have become less concerned with what other churches are doing & more concerned with what they believe about “essential” doctrines of faith.
Culturally, the Western world began to place a greater value on the individual as opposed to the larger whole of which the individual is a part of. This individualistic mentality combined with our ever increasing economic wealth creates a culture with a focus on consumption. We have seen this reflected within Christianity as the phrase “developing a personal relationship with Jesus” has dominated church mission statements & “seeker-sensitive” evangelistic efforts have become the norm.
As they say, hindsight is 20/20. We are able to see how these things began for good reason & even how they progressed, in most cases, in healthy & productive ways. However, I think most people, Christian or not, are able to see the flaw in a church that is not only made up of primarily individualistic consumers, but plays into that mindset as an institution.
So we look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 22, & we see two commandments. Todd asked the question in his post, “Isn’t it interesting that many Christians have part one down fine, but struggle mightily with part two?” I believe the reason that we are so “good” about the first part is because it is very easy to twist the meaning of the commandment. Heart, soul, & mind are located internally. It’s no trouble at all for the modern day person to focus on him or her self. Almost every single aspect of our culture actually encourages it.
The second command is much harder to twist to fit our liking, & therefore more difficult for us to be “good” at. It’s very difficult to make “Love your neighbor as yourself” about me because then I’d have to buy my neighbor a brand new 36” flat screen LCD HDTV, too (because that’s how we love ourselves these days). I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have the kind of money or time that it would take to love even one neighbor as myself, much less “neighbor” in the way Christ defines it. I think most Christians & non-Christians alive today have struggled with this before, but I think that our generation, specifically, just might be frustrated enough by it to do something.
I think we are starting to realize that these are not two separate commands. You’ll notice the person asks Jesus “what is the greatest command?” Jesus, in his all-knowing wisdom, realized that, yes; it starts with you & God. But, just as there are two sides to one coin, truly loving God will lead directly to loving others. So, if we are finding it so very difficult (and I will confess that I am) to love our neighbors, then maybe it’s time that we re-examine our “love” for God & how we may have misdefined & twisted what “loving God” means & what it looks like. So, I pose these questions in response to Todd’s question;
What does it truly mean to love God with all our heart, soul, & mind? What does a person who does truly love God look like?
