Why Love? Why Jesus?
Come, follow me as I dive deeply into the two most important words of our time, and of all time.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one other, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:11-12
Welcome to Love and Jesus, a deep and spiritual exploration of what I believe are the two most important things humans need to understand in order to live the life God intended for us:
Love, by which I mean God, by which I mean the invisible force that naturally draws us toward one another; and
Jesus, His life and death and resurrection, His teachings and story and mythology, and His wisdom and humanity and divinity.
We should be clear on what I believe about Love and about Jesus before we begin this exploration. If after reading what follows, you find yourself guided away from these writings, I will take no offense. But if this sounds right to you, stay with me.
What I have come to believe, through a spiritual journey that took me from agnostic to atheist to Stoic to near-Buddhist to baptized Christian, is that Love and Jesus are the answers to all our deepest questions, the antidotes to all our greatest worries, and the guides for us throughout these challenging times and whatever is to come.
What I believe about love
Love with a capital ‘L’ encompasses all the lowercase-L versions of love (romantic, friendly, altruistic, etc.) and surpasses them. It is deeper and broader.
Love is God. God is Love.
Love is what the universe is made of. It is the gravity and magnetism that draws things closer together. It is what pulls at our heartstrings, and what lifts our hands in worship, and what puts the butterflies in our stomachs.
Love is what God wants for us. Throughout all of human history, God has tried to guide us toward Love, and we have mostly resisted Him.
What I believe about Jesus
I believe Jesus is God, and God took human form through Jesus (we’ll talk more about the Holy Spirit later). I believe Jesus was the human manifestation of God, which is to say the human manifestation of Love. He was the living example of how God wants us to live and treat each other, which is with Love.
Jesus is the living embodiment of Love, the one who was sent to show us the way and to teach us how to live with and among each other in God’s love. For two thousand years, Jesus has been calling on us to love each other and to love ourselves and to love our enemies, and we have not been listening.
If God is Love, then Jesus is the door to Love. Jesus is the way. Believing in Him and living like Him is the path.
Why I’m writing
Jesus said to there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend, and in some respects, I have chosen to lay down my life in order to live fully in Love and to follow Jesus wherever He leads me. I am learning to let go of my own worldly wishes and desires and goals in favor of abiding in love for all, and listening to the word of God as it emerges in and around me.
I wrote a fair amount in the early years of my growth journey, including a daily blog, one little book and a few articles.
But as my journey became more spiritual—culminating with my conversion—I resisted the urge to write publicly. I never felt settled enough in my thinking to dive in and write about what I was experiencing.
Now, I believe God was with me all along, holding me back until I reached this point and found the real truth I was seeking. As the idea for Love and Jesus came into form, the message I heard from Jesus was: Write about Love until you run out of things to say.
And so, here we are.
Where this goes
Love and Jesus are foundational to my life, but how I understand them, and what I believe about them, will never stop evolving. God is a mystery and will always be a mystery, and Love and Jesus are both God, and so all of this will forever be a mystery. The best I can hope for are glimpses of truth and understanding, and these I will endeavor to share with you.
I don’t know how I often I’ll write or how long this will last. At the end of the day, if anything I write here moves one person closer to Love, closer to Jesus, or closer to God, then I believe this work will have done some good and will have been pleasing to the Lord.
I hope you will follow me as I follow Jesus on the way to Love, or that Love will lead you to Jesus. I hope you’ll enjoy our time together as much as I do, and I hope you will tell me your thoughts.
And if you love any of this, please share it with someone you love.
“Write about love until you run out of things to say” -I love this!!!
So many Christians misunderstand what it means to be a disciple. We are not called to judge, but to love others and bring people closer to Christ. Keep sharing your message. Thanks for including me in this blog. I look forward to reading more of your posts.