Deuteronomy 6:1–9 (Shema or Great Commandment)
While I stood in the hallway outside my grandparents’ bedroom, I worried that something terrible was about to happen. During the past year while I was in grade school, Grandma’s ulcers had made her sick, and now the doctors wanted to remove part of her stomach. After Grandpa told me to wait in the hall that day, I watched the grown-ups go in and out of the bedroom, speaking in hushed tones. Everyone seemed scared about the surgery, yet no one would talk about it, which to me meant Grandma might die.
Right before my grandparents left for the hospital, Grandpa told me to go into the bedroom, and Grandma asked the other people in the room to leave so she could speak to me alone. When I entered the room, she was lying pale and weak against the white sheets. She told me to sit down on her bed and took my hand. Then she asked me to promise that I would always believe in Jesus. As I made this solemn oath, I knew how much Jesus meant to her, and I wanted to do whatever she asked to show I loved and honored her. But I did not make this promise just for her sake. I felt she wanted me to count on Jesus so I would have a better life.
Although Grandma lived for many more decades, I still marvel at her clear-sightedness before her operation. Back then, she did not know whether she would return home or who would look out for me. She could have told me how much I meant to her, or she could have given me guidance on the best way to live, or she could have assured me that everything would work out well. Instead, she focused like a laser beam on Jesus. She knew I would be fine if I put my trust in the Lord.
In subsequent years, I learned that the biblical book of Deuteronomy advocates Grandma’s approach. The book tells us to make God the center of our lives, and if we do, it assures us that everything else will fall into place. It considers this message so important that each generation must teach it to the next. To do so, the book itself shows us how to reach the heart of the next generation and make sense as the culture changes. Such an approach is especially critical given the skepticism and individualism of our age.
The Bible’s Story
Deuteronomy is set on the border of the promised land. God already had rescued the Israelites from slavery and given them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. But now the older generation had died, and a new generation would be continuing the journey.
Before entry into the promised land, Moses gave a series of motivational talks on how the Israelites should live in their long-awaited home. After reminding them that God had liberated them from slavery, Moses repeated with some variations the Ten Commandments, and he added other laws for their community. By living the way God intended, Moses said, they would find the source of life and well-being; otherwise, they would face destruction.
Even though the generation that escaped slavery had died, the new generation was treated as if God had saved them from bondage and given them the Ten Commandments. Moses urged them to pass along their story so that later generations could relive the experience and commit themselves to the Lord. In response, all the Israelites—men, women, and children—stood before the Lord to enter a covenant that supplemented the covenant previously sworn at Mount Sinai.
At the core of the book, Deuteronomy 6:4–5 affirms that God is the center of life: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In Jewish tradition, these words begin the prayer called the Shema, the Hebrew word for “hear.” In Christian tradition, these lines are known as the Great Commandment. When Jesus was asked which commandment was first of all, he said that the entire divine law hung on the Great Commandment along with a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18 to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love of God and neighbor did not mean simply personal feelings, emotions, or beliefs. The Israelites were expected to express their love by their conduct, and their conduct involved their heart, soul, and might. Heart meant what we now consider both the heart and the mind. Soul meant the vital life strength infusing an entire person and empowering desire, thought, will, and movement. Might meant power or strength, emphasizing the force of loving the Lord. To the Israelites, such love was a stance of loyalty and devotion to a divine being far greater than themselves.
Following the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:6–9 urges the Israelites to keep the Lord’s commands in their hearts. To internalize them, they should: “Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” As reminders, they should wear the commands on their bodies and inscribe them on their doorways and gates.
While emphasizing Israel’s relationship with God, Moses made the clearest statement of monotheism in the Bible’s first five books. In Deuteronomy 4:39, he told the Israelites that “the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” Although the Ten Commandments and the Shema demand exclusive allegiance to Israel’s God, they do not deny the existence of other deities. After monotheism became the dominant view in religious circles, the Ten Commandments and Shema were reinterpreted to affirm God’s greatness as the sole God in heaven and earth.
Although Deuteronomy tells the ancient story of the exodus, it tells the story in a new way to a new generation. For several centuries, the Israelites had been besieged by foreign powers. During that time, the Israelites questioned whether their God was still powerful and loyal to them. In response to their concerns, Deuteronomy initially urged exclusive devotion to Yahweh and eventually recognized Yahweh as the sole God of heaven and earth.
Living by the Story
In writing Deuteronomy, the scribes valued tradition yet related it to the political events and culture of their era. Parents were urged to tell their children the ancient story of the exodus and commandments.
Like the scribes writing Deuteronomy, we face the challenge of telling the ancient biblical stories in a new way to a new generation. Instead of foreign powers and their gods calling into question the Israelites’ faith, our views are more likely to be influenced by our secular culture with its emphasis on individual freedom. When we tell the biblical stories, we need to show that they still make sense in our society, and we need to do so in a way that reaches the heart of the next generation. In doing so, families have a critical role, just as Deuteronomy suggested.
As noted by sociologists Christian Smith at the University of Notre Dame and Amy Adamczyk at the City University of New York, the most powerful causal influence on the religious lives of American teenagers and young adults is the religious lives of their parents. Parental influence while their children are living at home lasts after their departure for years, decades, and often lifetimes. Crucial to transmitting faith are a warm, affirming relationship between the parents and children, conversations in which the children ask questions and talk about religion in their lives, and the conveyance of consistency and meaning in the parents’ religious teachings and related conduct.
Smith and Adamczyk attribute the significance of parents to cultural shifts in our society. A while back many Americans took for granted that they belonged to a particular church or synagogue with the authority to teach the right way to live. But now we have more freedom to decide who we want to be and how we want to live, and we keep changing our views throughout our lives. Under these circumstances, families provide a place where we can talk about what matters to us and how to make good choices.
As described by Smith and Adamczyk, parents still maintain their traditional role of passing down their faith. To do so, they are more effective if they exemplify it by their conduct, talk about what it means and why it matters, and combine clear expectations with emotional warmth. But simply passing down their faith is not enough in today’s culture with its changing views of spirituality. Parents now have an additional role of teaching their children how to make decisions about their spiritual development in later years. By talking about good choices, parents help their children learn the skills needed in our society to keep reassessing their spiritual direction.
Substituting for my parents, my grandparents passed along their faith so that I would take it to heart. During a disruptive stay with my mother and stepfather, a remnant of faith continued to shape me, and that was enough for me to rework my religious views in later years as a basic part of my identity. Some of my friends who grew up in religious homes had similar experiences. Even though their views or circumstances changed, they still had the wherewithal to keep searching for answers until they made sense of their spiritual concerns.
When Grandma talked to me before her surgery, she had a simple message to convey: Life is better when we put our trust in the Lord. For many people, the values instilled in us as children provide a framework for the rest of our lives. Like the scribes writing Deuteronomy, we may expand our views as our cultural perspectives and personal circumstances change. But we are still guided by core values that shape who we are and where we are going.
Adapted from Living Well: Inspired by the Story behind the Bible by Starr Tomczak. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com.
