All You Need Is Love
The man on my doorstep wants to know if I’m aware that God has an active organization in use on Earth today. I’ve already revealed myself to be an agnostic, which to the man means I have both an open mind and a fear of commitment. He shows me a verse in the book of Matthew, meant to persuade me that God does indeed have an organization, and that I should desire to join it. He tells me I’ll know the organization by its fruits, one of which is the work he’s doing, standing at my door talking to me.
There are a lot of organizations that do a lot of good things, I say. Certainly God’s not going to blame anyone for choosing to join the wrong fruit-bearing organization, or for failing to choose at all.
The man smiles. I like his smile. He seems genuinely friendly. I decide I’m not going to tell him that I used to do what he’s doing now—it would spoil the warm regard we have for each other.
Still smiling, he tells me that Earth is a stage for a great contest, that God’s sovereignty has been long ago challenged, that there are only two sides in this celestial debate. To that end, God has endorsed only one organization to represent Him. It’s all very clear—he reads another scripture to show me how clear it is.
I ask if I can show him a scripture. I’m not being flippant. Usually I shrug off the doorstep evangelists, but the weather is beautiful today, perfect for verse-swapping, and I’m wondering how keen my recall is. I flip through the gilt-edged pages of his Bible and read, finally: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” I suggest that perhaps the best we can hope to do is live kindly and otherwise tolerate each other, and the rest of life’s mysteries, divine and otherwise, will resolve themselves, for the most part, regardless of what we believe. This is not, I suppose, a sophisticated piece of exegesis, but I’m not trying to be clever, either.
This man cannot know that I’m reenacting, accidentally, an ill-conceived confrontation I had with my father years ago. So I expect the man to argue or at least quibble with me, to insist I’ve taken the verse out of context—but no, he agrees. “You’re absolutely right,” he says.
“What?”
“Love, that’s the thing.” His voice is deep, almost jolly. He does not qualify his agreement.
“Gee, thanks.” I mean it.
Perhaps he was brushing me off; perhaps I gave myself away in the end. It doesn’t matter. The rest of the day, when he leaves, hums.
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