Thank you so much for all the awesome encouragement I received about my new song “Jesus Kind of Love” released last Friday. It’s been a blast reading people’s comments on Facebook and YouTube. Did you get to see the lyric video? It’s super fun – watch it on YouTube here or at the bottom.

Why Is This Song So Important To Me - Part 2

Last week I wrote about why this song is so important to me because of how I wondered if I’d ever do music again after the pandemic shut everything down.

There’s another reason why this song is so important. It’s because I’m convinced the message of this song is very possibly the cure to a lot of our society’s ills. Audacious? Perhaps. But I’m all in on it.

How I See it:

1. I’m absolutely convinced that everyone desires to be loved all of the time. But they’re not. The harvest is ripe. So many people need to know they’re loved by God and by us.

2. I’m believe that most people desire to be loving at least most of the time. But this love comes across to varying degrees. Some forms of “loving” come across as judgmental or controlling.

There’s a disconnect between how loving we feel we are being, and how loved people are feeling. We need to love each other better than we have been doing. As a creative artist, I want to continually cast a bold and courageous vision for how we can do this.

Why is Loving People So Radical?

You and me might differ on how we get to a definition of what it means to love someone, or even what it means to love God. I believe God is love, and that as Jesus stated in John 15:12-13: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down [their] life for his friends.”

That’s radical Let’s do that!

Jesus didn’t say, “Get all your theological beliefs in order, and that’s how people will know you love them.” Instead he said, “Give away your life caring for people in need. Help people. Clothe people. Feed people.”

I certainly don’t have God all figured out. I also understand theology is complex and varied. But if my theology makes me more “right” than loving, I’m doing it wrong. If my theology makes me more “certain” than compassionate to those in need, I’m doing it wrong.

I’m committed to an “other-centered” love. If my attempts at loving someone doesn’t feel like love to the other person, I’m doing something wrong.

I see a Jesus kind of love as a great cornerstone from which to operate on this grand mission of love. Jesus knew he was loved by his Father, and so was able to demonstrate that same love to everyone on his path. As we grow in our understanding of how loved we are by God, the more able we are to show that same love to other people.

In “Jesus Kind of Love” I wanted to acknowledge, even apologize for, how I have loved people pretty poorly at times. There have been many relationships where I was so focused on how they should change to be more the way I thought they should be (or how I thought God wanted them to be), that I just made them feel horrible about themselves, pushing them away. I justified this by saying they just didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus, when in fact, I wasn’t even showing them Jesus.

That’s why I wrote the bridge of the song to say, “When I look at you, I see amazing, a special one-of-a-kind creation. I’m so sorry I haven’t always treated you that way. But now I want a Jesus, I want a Jesus kind of love.”

I want to be better. Do better. Love better. Not just holding tightly and rightly to my theological beliefs about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Cross, death, resurrection, Eucharist, baptism, etc. A hurting world doesn’t care if you believe in the Trinity. They’re looking at us to see how we’re going to love them.

Let’s just love, showing care and compassion, and offering practical help instead of platitudes. Let’s lay down our lives for others.

It takes more faith for me to believe that God will work through my simple attempts to love others, than it ever took trying to convince others to change their theological beliefs to be more like mine.

“Paying attention to things — it’s how we show love.” —from HBO’s “The Last of Us” heart-wrenching episode 3.

If you’d like to help spread the word about “Jesus Kind of Love”, please visit my Facebook page for stuff that you can share to your friends. Or check out this post I sent out last Friday with all kinds of link and sharable stuff. Thank you!