The Second Oxygen

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4

Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and you have water. You can drink it and live. Add one more oxygen and you have hydrogen peroxide. Drink that and it will take you apart from the inside. The elements did not change. The arrangement did.

That is what unsettles me about our faith. We are rarely wrong about the ingredients. We say Father, Son, Spirit. We say sin, we say grace. Ask almost anyone in the room and they will hand the words back to you correctly. But the words are not the thing. What matters is how they are combined, and whether we have quietly added a second oxygen.

Grace, held together with the Father who loves you, makes a life. Grace held next to a small view of sin makes permission. The same word. A different arrangement. Holiness, held together with grace, makes a saint. Holiness held next to fear makes a Pharisee, and Pharisees are built entirely out of true things.

You do not usually go wrong by believing something false. You go wrong by holding true things in a combination that will not carry life.

Which is why Moses does not begin with a list. He begins with an arrangement. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Before anything else, God is not an assortment of parts. He is one. Not a Father you go to for comfort, and a Judge you avoid, and a Spirit you call on when you are desperate. One. And the love he asks for is not divided either. All your heart, all your soul, all your strength. Not a portion set aside for him and the rest arranged around other loves.

That is the confession. It is also the only combination that yields water.

So look at what you actually believe today. Not the words, you have those. The arrangement. What have you set beside grace? What is sitting next to the Father’s love in your chest, so that it cannot be all his?

You may not be far off at all. You may only be one oxygen away.