The center of everything

An expert in the law asked Jesus to name the greatest commandment, hoping to trap him in the rankings. His answer has been the center of gravity for the moral universe ever since:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

Look closely at three things.

All your heart, soul, and mind. Not the heart alone, warm feelings, and not the mind alone, correct opinions. Everything you are, aimed in one direction. Love of God, in his teaching, is a total orientation, and it shows up as a life, not a mood.

As yourself. You already know how to do this. You feed yourself, defend yourself, forgive yourself, give yourself the benefit of every doubt. He is not asking you to learn a new skill. He is asking you to widen an existing one until other people fit inside it.

And they hang together. He was asked for one commandment and refused to give fewer than two, because in his teaching they cannot be separated. You cannot love God while treating his children with contempt; the claim simply fails. Everything else, every rule, every prophet, every hard teaching of these 40 days, hangs from these two nails.

He also gave the working formula for the second command, simple enough to run a hundred times a day: in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. Before you speak, decide, reply, or post: is this what I would want done to me?

Tomorrow: the log in your eye.