Circular Reasoning
and you shall love the LORD you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength Deuteronomy 6:5
Strength – Most Christians think that this verse is about parts of my spiritual anatomy. So, we refer to the quotation of this verse in Matthew 22:37 or Mark 12:30 or Luke 10:27 and we end up with my heart, my soul and my mind (or something like that). That’s a real stretch, especially when this Hebrew word (me’od) isn’t even a noun. It’s used 300 times in Scripture, and almost always as an adverb, something that modifies an action, not a thing. Most of the time it means “exceeding” or “great” or “much”, like the way it is used in Genesis 1:31 or Exodus 1:7 (“exceedingly good”). Literally, we might translate this commandment like “love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and exceeding-ness.” Of course, that contorts the language so badly we can’t stand it. Rabbinic scholars opt for “with all your resources,” but that’s just another noun in place of a modifier. What are we supposed to do?
You might say, “So what? I get the idea. Isn’t that good enough?” You might be right, but what if God has something really important in mind here and we miss it, just because it is difficult to grasp? Jesus quoted this as the greatest commandment. That should be motivation enough to dig deeper. Fortunately, someone used the shovel for us.
McBride suggests that this commandment is not about parts of my body at all. It is rather about concentric circles of interest, like a bull’s eye target. The deepest, inside circle is the “heart.” The Hebrew is lev, the seat of my will, emotion and intellect – in other words, my entire personality. The next circle is “soul”, how we commonly translate the Hebrew nephesh. This is not the “soul” in opposition to the body. That idea is Greek. Nephesh is the full embodiment of the person, the whole self, the unity of flesh and blood I call “me.” Then there is one more circle – the me’od. That circle covers all that I influence, all that I have stewardship over in the world. In other words, all that my person and my body affects – the extension of who I am in the world.
Seen this way, the commandment is totally encompassing. It is not just about the parts of me. It is about me in relationship to myself, my presence in this world and my effect on the world. The commandment is the call to let God be the Lord of all that I am, embodied here and now, in community and interaction with what is.
Do you suppose that Jesus made a little play on words (in Hebrew) when He said that this is the greatest commandment? It is the me’od commandment about me’od.
Now you will have to go back to Matthew, Mark and Luke and re-write those verses. You might even have to ask forgiveness for restricting God’s sovereignty to some Greek idea of body parts.
Topical Index: Commandments, Greatest
