The Two-Play Playbook

     I'm not very good at sports.  If you've known me a long time you are nodding your head or thinking this is an understatement.  If you don't, let me give you a brief history.  In third grade I decided to play softball.  I finally hit the ball at practice and proceeded to run straight to 3rd base.  My brother still makes fun of me for this occasionally.  The coach, wisely put me in the outfield where I daydreamed my way through our first game.  And then I abruptly ended my softball career.  The only thing I enjoyed was that the uniform was hot pink and black, which looked very cool.   In fifth grade I was a cheerleader.  I had fun with the other girls.  But, while I thoroughly enjoyed doing the running man and the roger rabbit to the tune of "Gonna Make You Sweat" during half-time at the basketball games, I decided I didn't have what it took to be a cheerleader long-term.  My tumbling was basically just a somersault and all the screaming hurt my ears.  In sixth grade I took up basketball.  I liked basketball.  I really did.  I suppose if I had stuck with anything it would have been this, but I wasn't good.  Like at all.   And I worried about my hair during the game.  Not cool for a bball player.  In junior high I became the statistician for the boys basketball team and did that throughout high school.  I rocked it like a boss.  But no one gives trophies for basketball math skills.  Weird.  In high school I became the vice-president of FCA.  The president and vice-president went to FCA camp each summer so I signed up.  What could go wrong?  Well, it turns out that at Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp they assume errbody is an athlete.  Rude.  I played every sport on the planet that week.  I even puked in front of everyone when we had to run laps around the campus because I don't typically run unless I am being chased by something very scary.  People kept trying to guess what sport I played, and the answer was always "no".  Soccer was the only sport I didn't stink at, and that was the first time I had played it in my life.  I actually loved FCA camp though - other than the physical torture and grand embarrassment.  My sports career carried on to college where I played intermural flag football and basketball for the Christian Student Center.  I had fun because we enjoyed each other so much.  But I bet the other girls wished I was just the statistician.  My skills were lacking.
     So, yeah, sports and myself have an agreement.  You do your thing.  I'll do mine.  But I live in a house with some sports enthusiasts.  So I know a thing or two about playbooks.  Also, I watched every episode of Friday Night Lights, so basically I'm a sports genius.  Here's what I know.  The players being familiar with the plays is of paramount importance.  A coach can coach most effectively only if his players understand the plays he is calling.  It is basically understood that if you are going to be a part of the team you have to know the plays.  That is a lot of pressure, especially when you are in the intensity of the moment and have to recall the details.  You can't just do your own thing out there on the field or the court.  You have to work with the team and know the plays.  The plays are important, and there are usually many of them.  What is your point, weirdo?  Stay with me.
     I recently started graduate school in theology (Bible).  My first class is "Critical Interpretation of the New Testament".  I'm only a few weeks in, but nothing could have prepared me for the impact this study would have on my life.  If you want to blow your mind start spending at least 10 hours a week studying about mostly Jesus and how the Bible was compiled.  As I have started reading about a lot of the questions people have about the Bible (many to which I had never been introduced), I have had to do a lot of soul searching and fact searching to see what I believe about the Bible.  I will be working this out for the next several years I'm sure, but (without getting into all the details of what I'm studying) here is what I have realized.  Many people treat the Bible like a spotless perfect document that we have to interpret every word of literally.  That's not the real truth.  I 100% believe that the Bible is God's inspired word given to His people.  I 100% believe that the Bible is living and active in the life of believers.  It changes and forms us into God's image if we allow it.  And I believe that all parts of the Bible are valuable to believers.  So please don't hear me say anything contrary to that.  But here is what I also believe.  The reason that there is so much debate about what we have in the gigantic playbook for Christians is because on a lot of things we just don't know.  We can't know so many things about why, when and for whom things in the Bible were written.  To say that we can know all of these things is arrogant and misled.  We have to take the heart of it and the central message and apply it to our lives.  I can't know all the answers to all my questions on this side of heaven.  But here is what I know.  Jesus Christ is the focal point of the entire thing.  The gospels ring true and eyewitnesses told us what was true of the man whose life we base our entire faith upon.   We have these treasures of things said and done by the author of our faith.  We can only come to the Father through Jesus.  Jesus died for us and rose again.  These are the absolute nonnegotiable cornerstones of being a Christian.  So if we know that it's all about Jesus, what do we know about what he said?  With all of the questions we can pose about culture and Christianity, biblical accuracy, the Hebrew and the Greek meanings, and the different English translations, how do we know what God expects of his children? What if I understood this verse or that verse incorrectly and I'm messing it all up?! 

  We have these words from Jesus that so beautifully sum up the answers to all our questions about what God expects of us in Matthew 22:37-40 when he was asked what was the greatest commandment.  “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.’”  And there we have it.  Studying all of the Bible is wonderful and blessed by God.  But we have this simple equation to know if we are pleasing him.  All the laws hang on these two things: Am I loving God and am I loving others?  We have this two-play playbook right here that says love is what everything else hinges on in our faith.  1.  Love God with all your being.  2.  Love others as yourself.  Side note: I want to point out here that Jesus does not ask us to refrain from loving ourselves.  In fact it is almost like a given here that you cannot really love your neighbor unless you love yourself.  There are a lot of things about following Jesus that require sacrifice, and he certainly asks us to take up our cross and follow him (Matthew 10:38).  But I think this is sometimes confused with the notion that we should treat ourselves poorly in an attempt to love our neighbor.  Jesus asks us to pick up our cross for HIM, not for others.  Yes, we humbly put others ahead of ourselves as Paul says in Philippians 2:3.  But we don't devalue our own lives to the point where we lose our own identity in Christ or repeatedly accept abuses.  Love looks like many different things.  And sometimes it looks like defending what is right while still loving the person who is hurting you.  I think this is a struggle for many Christian women in particular as we take up the banner of serving everyone in our lives and forget to even spend time with Jesus ourselves.  Self-love and selfishness are not the same thing.  Self-love maintains personal well-being while living out the call of Jesus everyday.  Selfishness says that my needs are more important than anyone else's and I will do what is best for me at all costs.  So please don't be afraid to love yourself.  Jesus is crazy about you.

 So we have these two commands: Love God and Love Your Neighbor.  At the beginning of the story of the Good Samaritan the man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  And Jesus turns the question around on him and asks "What is written in the Law?  How do you read it?" and the man answers with these two commands to love God and love your neighbor.  Jesus tells him he is correct and that if he does this he will live.  But the man doesn't walk away.  In fact it says in Luke 10:29 "But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'"  And in reply Jesus tells him the infamous story of the Good Samaritan.  The wording of Luke 10:29 catches me sharply.  "He wanted to justify himself".  It didn't say he wanted to understand Jesus' command more deeply or he was genuinely confused.  He had a goal, and it was to justify what he thought about who his neighbor was.  How often do I open my Bible only trying justify what I already believe instead of hoping to be transformed by its words?  So Jesus (because he is brilliant) tells him this parable about the man who was beaten and half dead.  A priest and a Levite (the religious leaders) both saw him and passed by.  But the Samaritan man (basically the scourge of society to them) took pity on him and went above and beyond to care for him.  And then Jesus says "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"  And the man replies (I'm guessing sheepishly) "The one who had mercy on him."  And JESUS says "Go and do likewise."  I don't even think this requires much commentary on my part.  I mean really, Jesus requires absolutely no commentary from me.  But he makes it pretty clear here that if we want to know what the second play in our playbook looks like - THIS. IS. IT.  We have two plays, you guys.   We have TWO PLAYS.   Love God.  Love others.  Which others?  All of them.  ALL OF THEM.  If we pass them by and leave them to die we are not loving them.  But this becomes much easier when we don't have to pass them by.  It's convenient that we can choose not to see what is going on in the world around us.  We can turn a blind eye and continue to enjoy ourselves.  But we have no excuse.  Because WE KNOW.  We know better than anyone in the history of humankind what is going on in our world.  And I see all around our country right now that the Priest and the Levite are walking on by, but the Samaritan (not the scourge of society, but rather the unbeliever) is picking up the cause of the oppressed.  And shame on us.  Shame on ME for not being more concerned about ALL of my neighbors.  Shame on "evangelicals" for caring so much about our comfortable lives that we care more about protecting them than about helping our neighbor.  We have two plays.  TWO PLAYS.  And if I ever wonder if I am following the Bible and pleasing God and don't know for sure, I can just ask myself two questions:  Am I loving God?  Am I loving my neighbor as I love myself?  Two plays aren't so hard to remember.  Why do we make it more complicated than it has to be?