Two great commandments for our election season

Wondering how to evaluate political candidates and policies during our long and divisive election season? Here is a paragraph from “The Last Week” by Borg and Crossan (2006) that offers guidance for Christians, and perhaps for people of other religious persuasions as well:

“[Jesus’s] twofold great commandment—to love God and love our neighbor—is so familiar to us that it has become a Christian cliché. But behind the familiarity is their radical meaning as Jesus’s summary of his message. To love God above all else means giving to God what belongs to God: our heart, soul, mind, and strength. These belong to God, and (to refer to a previous episode) not to Caesar. This is radical monotheism: if God is Lord, then the lords of this world—Caesar and his incarnations throughout history—are not. And to love one’s neighbor as one’s self means to refuse to accept the divisions rendered by the normalcy of civilization, those divisions between the respected and the marginalized, righteous and sinners, rich and poor, friends and enemies, Jews and Gentiles.”