From time to time, I refer to love as central to Christianity. That this might be the case is often not evident from the behavior of Christians both through history and today, nor is it always clear from simple interpretations of Scripture. The goal of this essay is to introduce the perspective that love does underlie the faith.

Aesop’s fables present us with a curious paradox. If we approach them as literal accounts, they are demonstrably false—foxes do not engage in philosophical musings about unreachable grapes, nor do tortoises and hares arrange footraces to settle questions of persistence versus natural ability. Yet dismissing these ancient stories as mere falsehoods would be to miss their essence entirely. The truths they convey transcend their fictional narratives so profoundly that, millennia after their composition, we still invoke “sour grapes” to describe the all-too-human tendency to disparage what we cannot obtain. The fables are false in letter but true in spirit, false in detail but true in wisdom.

This same framework offers a fruitful way to approach Biblical interpretation—to read Scripture not merely as a chronicle of historical events, but as a collection of narratives that point toward deeper, enduring truths. This is not to argue for a wholesale rejection of historicity. Few Christians would embrace a purely allegorical reading of pivotal events like the resurrection of Jesus. Rather, it is to suggest that the primary value of Scripture lies not in its narratives as such, but in the profound truths those narratives illuminate and embody.

This naturally raises a critical question: what are these fundamental, basic truths that Scripture seeks to convey?