Real Religious Living
Jesus said in Matthew 22: 37-40, “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 commandments hang all the law and prophets.”
These two commandments are the whole essence of life. They explain the only real religious living that honors God, others and all of life. These are beautiful and famous words. But organized religion has often misunderstood, misapplied and misused them. The church has focused on doing these commandments the hard way and missed God’s way which is much easier.
We should have focused on being, instead of struggling so hard trying to keep these commandments. We should have followed Jesus’ law of least effort and learned to naturally live and obey these beautiful and eternal words. But our focus on trying so hard has made these commandments a divisive thing.
By focusing on doing, trying hard, with great effort to keep these commandments, Christians caused a split between the select few who can devote their whole lives to loving God and those who spend a little time each week in loving God in structured worship. The Roman Catholic Church calls those who spend full time trying to love God, “the religious,” and they are in special orders, monasteries, convents and the priesthood. Throughout history for many of these folks, the full time religious approach has not worked very well.
Protestant Christians put their full time “religious” into professional religious or church roles. This too has not and is not working very well for many of them. The mental health of American Protestant ministers is perhaps at an all time low. In fact a Protestant or Evangelical minister who does have a sound psychological healthiness often winds up leaving the professional ministry because he does not fit in with what many of the church people expect him to be. This very false division of labor among Christians is based on the assumption that Jesus was talking about something terribly hard to do, something that takes enormous time and effort. It is an assumption that God is hard to please and is easily displeased. But a God who fluctuates all the time between being pleased and not being pleased is not a god of grace for grace is unconditional love.
Actually, Jesus was teaching wholeness in this passage. When a person gives his mind to loving God, transformation always takes place. For God is our Source. Choosing to love Him makes us aware that our soul is one with Him. In Unity with Him, our very breathing becomes loving him and others as we consciously choose to love. Love does not have to be performed according to our mistaken views of perfectionism. It instead is to be done in an effortless, natural way. This is the meaning of the law of least effort as taught in the sermon on the mount. Love comes naturally when we simply believe in the God who dwells in our souls.
Our children loved art, music and writing. No one had to force them to do art, music or writing. They turned to it naturally whenever they had the time for these were things their inner being found joy in. If children know they are loved they naturally turn to and love their parents and others whom they know love them. This is the way Jesus meant for us to keep the great commandments, joyfully without effort. And it begins when we begin to love our own souls which are already connected to God.