By Scott Dickison
It would be difficult to grow up in our church and not learn the verse from Scripture that Christians around the world know simply as the “Greatest Commandment:” You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. You would almost have to try and avoid it. I’m sure that’s true at most churches.
This is the first verse our preschoolers learn in Sunday school as part of our children’s ministry “benchmarks,” where we outline everything we think they need to know and understand to begin their own journey of faith. It all starts here with this verse, because this is where we think Jesus would start.
And of course, this commandment didn’t originate with Jesus. The second part about loving your neighbor comes from Leviticus, and the first part is from the Shema, a passage in the book of Deuteronomy that’s so important to Judaism it has its own name: Listen O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your strength. It goes on to say that these words should be kept “on the heart” and that parents should “recite them” to their children and “talk about them when you are at home or when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” This has been the first verse people of faith have been teaching their children literally since Moses came down the mountain.
But it turns out that Jesus actually quotes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was commonly used in his day, which leads to a slightly different version than what’s found in our modern translations of Deuteronomy, which are based on the Hebrew text. Along with loving God with all our hearts and souls and strength, Jesus adds a word that’s in the Greek text but not the Hebrew, that we should love God with all of our minds. It’s a subtle difference, but Matthew, Mark and Luke all include it, and our church has run with it.
Yesterday was our “Back to School” Sunday, when we offer our blessing to all the students, parents, teachers and administrators who are beginning a new academic year. We even ask the students to bring their backpacks so we can bless them, too (some teachers have even been known to bring their briefcases and laptop bags). We lift up all the students, parents and teachers who aren’t a part of our church, too, and even our school system in general, recognizing how important education is to our community as a whole.
We do all this in part because the rhythms of the school year are so important to so many in our church, and because I believe part of our role at the church is to help folks think theologically and spiritually about their lives, especially those parts of it that happen outside of church. But we also do it because we think it’s important that we love God with our minds — that we as a church think and learn and grow, and that we teach our children to do these things as well.
But I’ll admit that we do this with some trepidation. Not because I worry about what our congregation might think or the questions they may ask, but because I get a bad taste in my mouth from churches who position themselves as “thinking” churches and who can’t wait to tell you how enlightened they are, or how “different” they are from “other” churches — churches presumably whose pews are filled with sad, dull, “non-thinking” people. The truth is that these “thinking” churches usually come off like the guy at the party who can’t wait to tell you he went to “good school X.” The only thing worse than people who know they’re smart is religious people who know they’re smart.
Loving God with your mind means using your mind the way Christ used his mind, which Paul tells us was with humility. Using it to love, to build up — using it to create. Some have said God’s image in us, the way we resemble our maker, shines through most brightly in our ability to create — our creativity. It also means embracing mystery.
One of our members shared a story some time ago about trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to her 5-year-old daughter. After the mother had rambled on for a few minutes, her daughter looked at her and said, “I think I’m beginning to believe it because none of it makes any sense.” I’d say she is on her way to loving God with her mind.
And I’d like to say that she learned something of this wisdom and humility by growing up in our church. But if she did, it wasn’t because of something we did one Sunday at the start of a new school year. It was because of what we try to do every other Sunday of the year and what her parents recited to her when they were at home or away. That part’s the same no matter which translation you choose.
