I seek to love my neighbor as myself. That would seem obvious for a preacher of the teachings of Jesus, but maybe we need to say it again. Love one another. And I don’t remember any additions to the command.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s hard enough without trying to add a lot of fine print. Love your child, your grandchildren, your neighbor you don’t agree with. Love them, gay, straight, trans, prisoner, judge, immigrant and the DAR lady. Love them, Trumper, Liberal, and none of the above. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Rotarians, Knights of Columbus, or atheists. Love them before and after the election.Love the kid nobody likes and the Homecoming Queen. Love them all, because these elections will neither bring God’s kingdom or destroy it. Love them—rich, poor, and hanging on by their fingernails to pay the bills.

Love them, whether they are descendants of slaves or ignorant deniers of their ancestors sins or clueless trust fund babies who never worked a real day in their lives. Love them who disagree with you and leave them alone to live in peace as much as you can. You have enough in your own soul to worry about.

Fight for what you believe is right, but love the opponents whether you win or lose, because you don’t have a corner on all truth. Open your hearts and your minds. This is a nation, not a college football rivalry game. No political party can save us, but they can sure tear us to shreds.

Love them all, without exception. With no favoritism. Especially us professing Christians. We preachers are condemned if you fail this. We were to teach you this if nothing else in our careers. Love one another as He loved us. Did we not tell you enough? Only two things in all those years, love God with all you are, and your neighbor as yourself.

Love with justice, fairness, forgiveness, and repent of anger, resentment, arrogance, condescension, prejudice and hate. Love them if they hate you. Love them if they think they’re the first ones in history to know God’s will better than the Lord does. Argue with them, then go to lunch together. Love God, love your neighbor.

Only those two, if you got nothing else from our preaching. If we don’t get those two right, all the politics and culture warring in the world cannot save us. Mostly I am waiting, hoping, that maybe we’ll remember, and like the Prodigal children we are, remember where we came from and go home again.

Love them. The First Amendment lets you do this without interference. You cannot do violence against them or oppress them or harass them or mistreat their children. We have laws the Founders came up with so we could live together and let conscience roam freely. But we can do this. Nothing prevents it. It’s like lettuce in a diet. Eat all you want.

I don’t mean syrupy feelings and sentiment. I mean costly, swallow your pride, something’s-got-to-die-in-me-for-life-to-bloom again love. Suffering love. Examine yourself and fix it love. And that love will make you stand up occasionally almost alone against snarling crowds and powers that be. But even as you do, do not become the very ones against whom you must fight. Love them with forgiveness who do not know what they’re doing—and they’re usually the ones running the show.

I’m worried like we all are. We’re a mess in our attitudes and actions to one another. Our leaders seem to drain one swamp and fill up another. The rich get richer and the middle keeps shrinking. Corruption is still with us, and stupidity is spreading like a stomach virus.

But this one thing we can do. It’s something. When you and I get this right, we’ll move on. Look around. You’ll know what to do.