Boiling it All Down and Summing it All Up

One of my favorite bloggers is Brant Hansen who wrote the following recently about what it means to belong to God. (This is a portion of his post. If you want to read all of it, you can find it here: http://www.air1.com/blog/brant/post/2011/11/07/Does-Falling-in-Love-with-Jesus-Skeeve-You-Out.aspx)

"I'm not the one who chose the 'bride of Christ' metaphor.  The Great Wedding Feast is going to happen, and you're not invited just to attend.  You're invited to be standing up, front and center...And I didn't write the Song of Songs, or Hosea, who got to understand how God feels as a jilted lover.


'But there's a lot more to Christianity than 'falling in love' with Jesus.'
 
I used to agree with that.  Now?  Not so much...Jesus was the one who boiled it all down, and, you can bet, the religious folk didn't like it one bit, when he said that all the rules could be summed up with one, and another like it.  "LOVE the Lord your God..." 
 
Love God.  With all your heart, soul, mind, strength... love.  Jesus said that.  Too simple?  Yeah, it still bothers religious people.  We desperately want to make this a pure intellectual exercise, checking off beliefs and arguing doctrine.  We want our religious educations to mean something, all those hours at seminary, or in Sunday School, or listening to sermon after sermon, or reading Christian books.  And then someone comes along and "sums it all up" with love?
 
Some didn't like that, and some don't like that.  And then he went and picked a bunch of uneducated types to be his disciples.  Rabbis don't do that. It's a point no one could miss, and the religious didn't like it.
 

'But it makes things too simple.  It sounds like something a young Christian, who doesn't know much, would say.'

Maybe.  But you know what?  It also sounds like something a very old Christian would say...We start with 'Jesus loves me, this I know,' and then we complexify everything, and debate pre-destination and women's roles in the church or whatever, but when we're sitting on the front porch, in our twilight, watching our great-grandchildren, we're not into debating anymore.  It's back to 'Jesus loves me, this I know.'

'But isn't it going too far to say it comes down to just 'loving' God?  Just 'loving' Jesus?  What about all the stuff we're supposed to do to prove our love?'

Jesus said there would be impressive-sounding religious people who will say to him, in the end, 'Lord, didn't we do all this awesome religious stuff for you?' (my paraphrase) and he's going to say, 'I didn't know you.'

He wants our hearts.  We are to love him.

'But that sounds almost childlike, like just anyone could do that, and -- '
 

YEP."