“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” ~ Luke 10:27
First, love God. Second, love your neighbor.
It’s the simplest law, elegantly pure, easily understood. It cuts away all the confusion and shines a light on the truth. It burns away the fog of moral ambiguity that we love so much. Just apply the formula:
• What does God want?
• What do I want?
• Do that also for your neighbor.
By this law, politics and Christianity are inextricably connected. It is the underlying basis for all law. It is also the never-ending source of our conflict.
Because, if you first love God, utterly and completely, then you cannot love the king above all. By political standards, that means you can’t be trusted. If you secondly love your neighbor, then you cannot ruthlessly enforce the king’s will over his subjects.
You see the problem.
This simple law stands between the king and his subjects and at the same time strips away the moral authority by which he holds power. It is a direct threat to the king.
This is why Jesus went out of his way, even on the day of his crucifixion, to explain to Herod that his kingdom was not of this earth. Jesus did not question Herod’s authority to put him to death and he did not defend himself. Because escape was not his goal.
But a spiritual kingdom is not where we live. Our neighbors, that we are commanded to love, are right here in the middle of messy political governments. And the U.S. republic was founded from biblical principles into a new kind of government where citizens are uniquely responsible for its operation.
We are, by law and grace, responsible.
So, let’s ask the questions. What does God want? What do I want? And what, in love, do I want for my neighbor?
I want to worship God with the all-encompassing love He deserves. I want the freedom to talk about God. I want the freedom to work and conduct business so we can eat and have shelter. I want the God-given right to defend myself. I want peace to raise and train my children in God’s ways. Or you could say, I want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And these are the things I want for my neighbor. Because they are the things that I love and the principles that will allow us all to have the most amount of control over our lives.
If only it were that easy.
I am daily reminded that, even though we share the same core beliefs, I have trouble getting along with my family that I love dearly. My church disagrees like a great big family. And there are many churches of many different beliefs.
Jesus even warned us that he didn’t come to bring idyllic peace, that brother and father and sister and mother would decide in different ways about him. Add to that the sordid history of church corruption and power-grabbing after the fall of the Roman Empire and you have a hot mess for two thousand years.
But still, we have the two-fold command: Love God completely and love your neighbor as yourself.
Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody ever said we would get it exactly right. But God has not given us a loophole. It’s still our command to follow. How we can do it in the foggy bog of politics is an ongoing question.
Loving my neighbor is the place I will start.
