The Central Demand

What is the central demand in Jesus' teachings? Surely it is that we are to have absolute trust in God. No "conditions" are attached, no concessions are offered. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind" (Luke 10: 27).

Total commitment to God is the obligation of the Christian. To have this commitment is to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and to enter the Kingdom is more important than anything else. There must be a single-mindedness about this pursuit of the Kingdom and this love of God that nothing else can stifle. If your eye causes you to sin, it is better to pluck it out than to be cast into hell. If wealth threatens to keep you out of the Kingdom, you must "sell all that you have, and give to the poor," for, as Jesus points out, "You cannot serve God and money." You must love and serve one or the other. Which one? "You shall love the Lord your God. . . ."

He makes the same point negatively when he says, "Do not be anxious about your life" ( Matt. 6: 25). To be anxious is to have less than complete trust in God. Anxiety and complete trust in God are mutually exclusive. Jesus tells of a rich man who was so anxious about the future that he tore his barns down and built bigger ones so that he would have security against possible famine. But he was a fool. He was concerned only with his property. He thought that property was enough, and that with it he could provide ultimate security for himself. But he did not take account of the stern fact, "This night your soul is required of you" ( Luke 12: 20).

The emphasis upon complete trust in God is closely related to another emphasis. The second commandment, which is like the first, goes, "You shall love . . . your neighbor as yourself" ( Luke 10: 27). I do not love God, in other words, just by going off to think deep thoughts. I love God by loving Joe Doakes, or Susie Smith, or whoever my neighbor is.

But who is my neighbor? When somebody asked Jesus the question, he replied with a disquieting story about a Samaritan ( Luke 10: 25-37). The story is familiar enough, although we do not usually make it disquieting enough. For the point of the story is that a neighbor helps anybody who is in need. The one who "proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers" was a Samaritan, which meant, very simply, a mortal enemy of the Jewish people to whom the story was being told. (It is as though an American should illustrate what it means to be a good neighbor by using someone like a Communist as his example.) The person who was helped was "a certain man," not further identified. No inquiries were made, about the color of his skin, his social background, his schooling, his loyalty, the size of his income.

The only necessary information was that he was in need. The love about which Jesus talks is "universalistic," knowing no bounds. It is all-inclusive.

And that is a rather tall order.