Love....the only commandment

Love God.  Love your neighbor. 

Some version of this lies at the heart of most religious systems.  Love involves empathy, sacrifice, and concern; all of this is wrapped up in being able to see the unbreakable connection between each of us and each of those we call 'other'.  Love involves relationship.

In 1923, Martin Buber, a German philosopher wrote a book called Ich und Du, usually translated I and Thou.  Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:  first, in the attitude of the "I" towards and "It", that is, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.  The second approach is in the attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds, where you and I are connected in some manner.

One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships.  In Buber's view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.  A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an "I-Thou" relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general, and thus recognizing the stranger as a person as well.  (thanks to Wikipedia for this succinct summary).

You might not understand what Buber is proposing, but let me put it this way.  We are supposed to love people (thou) and use money (it).  We are prone to love money (thou) and use people (it).

Buber offers us one way to talk about how we get this 'love' thing wrong.  We might think that loving the neighbor requires warm, fuzzy feelings which we often cannot conjure up.  In the end, it doesn't; it requires we sustain relationship with the neighbor.  This is what makes loving your neighbor infinitely ore diffiult than loving God because our neighbors are so very human. They are smelly, nasty, hurtful or in a thousand other ways less than ideal companions. In Sonnet 116,  Shakespeare writes "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds....".  Buber would say that love isn't love when our commitment is to our own comfort and not to the relationship between us.  Love cannot make an object of the other, make it into an 'it', a tool to be used whether for pleasure or gain or safety.  Love requires relationship.

  

Love looks beyond the surface in the neighbor and sees the flawed, scarred, struggling humanity we all share.  Such are the demands of love, that we see worth in every face.  Ergo, loving the neighbor is a tall order on any day of the week.  It's easy to see that loving a God who doesn’t party loudly until 2 am is a lot easier than loving your neighbor who does. 

Yet, it all begins with the neighbor, for how can you love a God you cannot see when you do not love the neighbor you can?  First feed the hungry child and then talk about your love for the Divine Creator.  Love for the Divine Creator is manifest in love for those whom the Divine Creator created.  First, connect with the lost and lonely in person before you talk about connecting with the Divine God who is both mystery and spirit.  

In the end, the commands:  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  are at the heart of our faith only when they are at the heart of our lives.