christopherhildreth

In the church world, it is easy to continually ruminate over the ins  and outs of dogma and theory. We can find ourselves questioning this and that, but never asking what are perhaps the better questions. Tons of paper has been used to print volumes of commentaries on Scripture. Men have made their lives work a quest to finish a complete observation and interpretation of what they think the authors meant.

 I was listening to Dennis Miller yesterday, and he quoted Bill Hicks as saying, “Never trust a man who begins his sentence by saying,’I think what Jesus was saying here was…’ ” I thought that was right on. Even though I’ve spent a great amount of time reading and a lot of money purchasing those same commentaries, the ultimate point of decision must lie with me.

When I read scripture – at least currently – I keep coming back to the place where the Pharisees ask Jesus which commandment is the greatest. Jesus had a wealth of both oral and written tradition to choose from. I still find myself feeling a little amazed that he comes back with “love”, as in “love your neighbor as yourself”. He says that we should love God, but He makes a point to identify loving each other as paramount.

Over the past few months I have parked here often and pondered over the little word “love”. So much is contained in those four letters. To be a people who follow the teachings of Jesus – whatever else we differ on, we cannot differ on the issue of love.

This entry was posted on March 22, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Belief, Context, Cultural Ideas, Life. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.