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Our world often turns simple decisions into complex problems. Want raisin bran for breakfast? Walmart offers at least 9 options, not counting the size of the box it comes in. Raisin Bran comes bearing multiple brand names - Kellogg's, Post, Great Value or General Mills. You can have it with extra crunch, extra raisins, oat clusters or cranberries. There's an organic option if you're concerned about your health. (Does anyone really eat raisin bran for any other reason?) So before you consume raisin bran for breakfast, you have some choices to make.
This idea that simple choices can become complex has resulted in a new word for the dictionary - simplexity. Simplexity acknowledges that simple tasks can often become more complicated over time, but that complex tasks can often be simplified when they're broken down. Simplexity can be illustrated by smartphones. We now expect our phones to give directions, take dictation, help with our banking, remind of our daily calendars, keep us up to date with the news and entertain us with music, video and games. Making a phone call isn't even the most common use of our phones. One manufacturer provided an instruction book for the phone that maxed out at 124 pages; phones aren't easy to use! But if you need to take something that complex and make it simple, pull up a YouTube video and let an expert (probably a teenager or very young adult!) teach you how to use your phone.
In the Bible, the Pharisees turned religion into something complex. They analyzed the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) and found 613 laws - one for each letter in the Hebrew Version of the 10 Commandments. After further analysis, these Jewish scholars determined that there were 248 affirmative commands (Thou shalt!), one for each of the bones they counted in the body. That's combined with 365 negative commandments (Thou shalt not!), one for each day of the year. Learning and remembering all 613 commands would be a tedious and time-consuming task.
It gets worse. In order to keep from breaking any of those commands, the Pharisees erected a "fence" around the law - a set of rules to keep one from breaking one of God's commands. So, in order to "Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy," the Pharisees came up with a list of 39 prohibited behaviors - what they called the melakhot — activities they said would amount to "work" and break the Sabbath. Good Jews were prohibited from plowing, planting, harvesting, threshing, cutting, dyeing, demolishing, building, unraveling, tearing, combing, shearing, and kneading along with 26 more prohibited activities in the list. Imagine trying to remember and honor all the "fences" put up around each of 613 different commands!
No wonder one of the Jewish religious experts asked Jesus to simplify things a bit: "...Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" (Mark 12:28, NIV). Jesus quickly answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27)."
Expositors might be tempted to explain Jesus thinking by analyzing each of the 4 areas of life Jesus mentions, the heart (emotions), soul (the psyche, the seat of the will), mind (the intellect) and strength (energy). But there's a better way to gain understanding.
Repetition clues us in on the importance of biblical concepts. The more something is stated, the more obvious it becomes that this concept matters to God. When a word is repeated, it merits special attention. The word that's repeated in Jesus' summary is the word "all." All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.
"All" is easy to understand. Imagine a husband having this conversation with his wife on their wedding night: "Honey, I love you and I want to give you all my love. So, just for clarification, how far can I go with another woman before you feel cheated? Is holding hands okay? Hugging? Kissing?" How far down the list will the husband get before his new wife very loudly defines "all" for him?
So, if you want to live the Christian life, then just build all your life around God. Worship, prayer, giving, morality, evangelism and growth will all flow from that simple choice. Put God first, and treat the people created in God's image (ALL people) with love and respect. The rest will fall into place. It's simple.