AND THEY ASKED HIM NO FURTHER QUESTIONS
I have always loved the story about Hillel the elder, who when asked by a prospective convert to Judaism to teach him the whole Torah while he stood on one leg, replied: “That which is hateful unto you do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah, The rest is commentary. Go forth and study.”
Love God, Love your neighbor. Nothing else needed to be said. No other questions needed to be asked. Do those things and you are not far from the kingdom of God. But you must do them both. Not one or the another. There is no competition between the two, even though many have tried to do that. The right and the left; pro-life and social justice; the crucified Christ vs. the glorified; the suffering church vs. the glorious.
Rabbi Heschel wrote in No Man is an Island, “It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined, not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.”