When a lawyer approached Jesus with what he thought was a clever question, asking which commandment in the law was the greatest, he was not merely testing Jesus’ rabbinic knowledge. He was asking something that every thoughtful person eventually asks whether they realize it or not: When everything is on the line, when the pressure is on, and when I do not know what to do, what is the one thing I must get right? Jesus’ answer in Matthew 22 is famous, perhaps too famous for us to feel its weight anymore. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets rest on these two commandments.” Jesus is not merely ranking commandments as one might rank items on a list. He is giving us what I want to call a fallback position, a default posture for Christians when the map runs out.

Recovering this sense of the two great commandments as our default is one of the most urgent tasks for the church in our moment.