“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22: 37-40
There is a path forward through the strife and the chaos of the present day, and it is summed up in the second law — “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Our society has a big problem with the first law, “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” How can we be sure of things unseen and all that.
But your neighbor is right in front of you, or right next door, or across the street, or in the next county, or on the other side of the world.
Your neighbor is chanting slogans or resting in homeless shelters. Your neighbor is a thief on the cross or a sullen clerk behind a counter. I may not know how to solve their troubles, but I can treat them with love.
Love is a commitment, not an emotion. Love is respect and treating others with dignity, even when perhaps they don’t seem to deserve it. Paul said it for the ages: Love is patient and kind and doesn’t tally offenses.
The path forward is to do all things with love, and in the name of the Lord. And there’s the big problem again: “Who is this Lord? How dare you claim to speak of one true God?” Fair question.
In our heart of hearts, we seek peace, and peace is found in loving our neighbors, treating all we meet with love. It seems to me that a God of peace, who encourages us to love above all else, and whose defining act was to die for humanity in the name of love, must be the one true God.
