I keep coming back to love. I wonder why we spend so much time arguing over rules and interpretations, especially when the way we use them works against loving one another or leaving judgment to God.
After two thousand years of people telling, writing, translating, and interpreting, I have questions about what we’ve added or lost along the way. The message I keep finding is love one another. Of all these, the greatest is love. That’s where I want to start and finish.
Lyrics
I've spent half my life wonderin'
How love became a list of don'ts
How we learned to quote a chapter
Then forget the words He spoke
I've heard a thousand certain answers
From folks who swear that theirs is clear
If the greatest two are greatest
Why don't we start and finish there?
Love God, love your neighbor
He didn't make that hard to understand
Love the God who gave us breath
And love the ones who breathe His air
I don't have to call wrong right
Or pretend that evil's good
I can leave the final judgment
In the hands where judgment should
Two thousand years is a long road
For words to travel down through time
Through the memories and the tellin'
Through every human heart and mind
Through the hands of kings and preachers
Through the faithful and the flawed
I can't know where we left our fingerprints
On what we say came straight from God
Love God, love your neighbor
Maybe that's the place that I should start
Love the God who gave us breath
And love the ones who breathe His air
Love don't mean there's no accountin'
Grace don't make the darkness good
But another person's actions
Don't make it right to hate
I've done my share of judging
I've decided who was wrong
I've looked at some and wondered
Why they got to breathe so long
So I'm not standing here above you
I'm still learning what love means
Maybe mercy starts by knowing
I ain't as certain as I seem
So Lord, if I've misunderstood You
Let it be because I loved too much
I'd rather stand before You guilty
Of giving grace instead of giving up
I've read the words and heard the answers
But this is what I'm certain of
Love the God who gave us breath
And love the ones who breathe His air
And the greatest of these is love