A Reflection for Friday of the Third Week of Lent
Find today’s readings here.
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, ”Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”(Mk 12: 28-31)
Probably every one of us has a friend, coworker or acquaintance who has uttered the following commonplace about ethical living: “It’s okay enough just to be a good person.” It’s a nice sentiment, and most of the time I’m sure it’s true. Unfortunately, when it’s not, it’s really not, in part because most human beings find it rather easy to gin up for themselves a pretty awful definition of what it means to be good. Some of the worst crimes in human history have been committed by folks who were sure they were just being good people, and definitely the worst crimes in your parish’s history have been committed by the same.
I think much of the time the sentiment is expressed as a reaction against the rules and heavy burdens that religious people can bind up for themselves and for others. And to be sure, that reaction is often enough a deserved one. Ask a person prone to scruples or who suffers from O.C.D. what it’s like to be a strict Catholic. You might be horrified at what the rules for a moral life feel like to your neighbor, or what he or she has been told by other Catholics that the Lord demands.
Jesus in today’s Gospel says “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” something that I think Kant or Aristotle or John Rawls would also more or less agree with. The best way to live is to treat someone else like you want to be treated yourself. If nothing else, it’s the sine qua non for a functioning society, the notion that at least a majority of us will go along to get along. And surely if one is being a good person, one is treating others as one would want to be treated.
Note the difference, though: Jesus offers this commandment as the second one. It comes only after he quotes from Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Is the command to love one’s neighbor secondary to that first commandment, dependent upon it, subordinate to it? Regardless of the calculus, one clearly doesn’t exist without the other.
And maybe the best way to show one’s love for God is just to be a good person. Certainly all the other rules are there to help us to do both, not just to bind up heavy burdens for each other.
But there’s something about that phrase, “with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,” that makes me wonder if Jesus wasn’t looking for something different from “it’s okay enough just to…” when it came to loving God—no matter which way one chooses to do so.
