Taylor Swift, Tacos, and Jesus

What do we mean when we say "I love Jesus?" Is it like our love for Tay Tay? For tacos? For a spouse? Something else entirely?

I used to be obsessed with Jesus.

What does that mean, though?

Like truly, for just one moment, stop and think about that sentiment. What is someone saying when they say something like that. It is rather strange isn’t it?

In a material and pragmatic sense, there is no Jesus to be obsessed with. He hasn’t been on the scene for a couple millennia. How can someone be obsessed with a person who existed so long ago, whom they’ve never met, and whom they realistically can’t get to know?

Even if someone is an ardent believer in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and even if you fully and utterly believe that the body of Jesus not only rose from the dead but also then disappeared from this earthly realm and now resides as a physical being in a place called heaven… granting all that for just a moment… the question still remains, what on earth does it mean to be “obsessed with Jesus?”

Maybe “obsessed” here is too distracting. Let me put that down for a moment and replace it with the more gentle, “in love with.” When people say, “I love Jesus,” are they saying they’re in love with him? Or is that not quite right… maybe people just mean they love him, not that they are in love with him. But either way, what does it mean? Again, setting aside for the time being the question of whether or not he is alive in some sense, no one today has ever met the guy. He has been dead (or, risen-and-ascended) for 2000 years give or take.

Now, I’m not saying I’m no longer obsessed with Jesus (though I don’t think I’d use that term anymore). And I’m not saying I don’t “love” Jesus. These are not the points I’m making.

My point is (or rather, the thing I’ve been thinking about is), what can it possibly mean for a person to say something like this? That they are obsessed with or that they love Jesus?

Another way to get at this is by asking, Can you love someone you’ve never even met?

What it means to love someone we’ve never met

I consider myself a love optimist. I love love. It’s part of why I enjoy officiating weddings so much. I root for love, I celebrate love, I believe in love.

So I hope my questions here do not ring with pessimism. I’m not sitting here thinking, pfff… you can’t love someone you don’t even know… that’s dumb.

On the contrary I think it’s totally reasonable for people to say things such as,

• I love Taylor Swift

• I’m obsessed with Wes Anderson

• I adore Rupi Kaur

even though they’ve never met the person in question.

Statements like these are making a claim about how a person legitimately feels toward someone else, even if they’ve never met. This is fine. We all do it.

However, I do think that a more precise claim would probably sound more like,

• I love Taylor Swift’s music (or, songwriting, or, as an entertainer, etc)

• I’m obsessed with Wes Anderson’s films.

• I adore the poetry of Rupi Kaur.

In other words, when people make statements of great adoration for someone they’ve never met it’s likely that what they’re really saying is that the work/art/influence of that individual has made such a profound impact on their life that it has created feelings of deep affection toward that person. It’s less about loving the actual person than it is loving what the person represents, or how the person’s life has impacted us.

To say it again, this seems totally reasonable to me.

Love for a virtual or long-distance person

Now consider how we might have feelings (that call love) for someone that we’ve never met, but it’s still someone that we would say we know.

For instance, in our virtual/social media world we are often connected to people that we’ve never met in real life. And yet we’ve perchance had lots of interactions with them (messages, comments, maybe even phone calls, etc) to the point that it might be accurate to say we love them. Could be romantic, could be platonic, whatever. The point is, while the above examples are about expressing a love for people that we’ve never met and don’t have personal relationships with, now we’re introducing the category of expressing love for someone we’ve also never met but with whom we do indeed have a relationship with.

Is this what we mean when we say we love Jesus? I’m not so sure, because this category seems to require a back-and-forth. A relationship where get to know each other. And while I’m not meaning to disparage prayer or Bible study, I think it’s reasonable to say that we aren’t getting to know Jesus in the same way that we are getting to know people on the internet or across the country. Jesus isn’t out there liking your selfies, sharing your inspirational memes, or messaging you late in to the night and holding space for your deep vulnerabilities.

Love is big bucket

At this point we should probably pause and say a quick word about the word “love.”

Love is a big bucket, holding all manner of meanings and implications and feelings. We understand this intuitively as, with a straight face and in all earnestness, we might say in one sentence that we love tacos and we love our newborn baby. Both are true.

And also, it’s an absurd thing to say if we do not have a flexible, broad application for the word love. No one actually means that they love these things in the same way, or even equally.

So then, going back to the examples above (regarding loving Taylor Swift, Wes Anderson, etc), I submit that these are categorically different expressions and intentions of “love” than when we say we love our significant other, kids, parents, friends, etc. In fact, loving Taylor Swift is probably closer to our love for tacos than it is for our parents.

On the one side (Taylor and tacos) are objects at a distance that have significant influence over how we think and feel—in a positive way. They make us feel good. The sound of the music and the taste of the carne asada light up our pleasure sensors by releasing endocannabinoid molecules in our brain (The Bliss Molecule). Whereas the kind of love we point to when we say we love someone that we know is a different phenomenon. Such an experience probably feels good to us because of the release of oxytocin (The Bonding Molecule), especially in relationships where there is physical connection.

Yes, both things feel good. We have warm feelings toward tacos and toward our brother. And it’s fine that we use “love” for both, but we appreciate that we are naming different realities and experiences when we do.

Okay, back to the question at hand…

What does it mean when people say “I love Jesus?”

I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that people probably don’t love Jesus in the same way they love their spouse, friends, kids, etc. if for no other reason than because they’ve never met the man, and I do think that loving a person in that kind of way requires, if not physical connection, then at least an emotional or psychological connection. A reciprocal relationship where you witness the other person’s humanity, you see them in all their best assets and ugly warts, you experience their personality and are drawn to them, you might feel a sense of responsibility to them in a protective or nurturing way, and so on.

I simply do not know how a person could feel that kind of love toward Jesus.

But I don’t think that needs to diminish a person’s love for Jesus at all. I just think it’s worth putting it in the right (or at least a better fitting) micro-bucket within the larger bucket of love.

I imagine someone might object at this point and insist, “No, Colby, you’re wrong. That is what I mean when I say I love Jesus. I have met him here, in my heart. And I do feel like I know him and he knows me.”

Look, I don’t necessarily want to take that away from you if that is you. You know your feelings better than I do, and if you insist that is the way in which you love Jesus, go for it. For me, though, I’d rather try and better understand a fuller, more precise meaning of how I think “love for Jesus” actually works. And maybe it is just me here, but I think it necessarily must be in a different category than the way we feel, express, and experience love toward people that we actually and tangibly know, can touch and feel, have a conversation with, and so on.

I’ll pause there and pick up this topic later.

For now, I’m curious: What do you think about all this?

What do you think it means “to love Jesus?”

Is that something you say now, and if so, how do you mean it?

Is it something you used to say, and if so, how did you mean it?

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Last week I wrote a reflection on the challenges of facing the Firsts after you endure grief, loss, and tragedy. Those first holidays after a divorce? Brutal.

They Say the "Firsts" are the Worst

Touring Two New Talks

I’m currently touring with two new talks.

1. Not an Oxymoron: Why LGBTQ Affirming Christianity Makes Sense

2. The Not-So Secret of Life: Reimagining Faith, Hope, and Love

On that note, I’ll be doing an UnClobber Workshop (a sort of extended version of Not an Oxymoron) at Epiphany Lutheran Church in Pickerington, OH next Saturday (Sept 28). Then guest preaching at their services Sunday morning (Sept 29)

Then driving to Medina, OH and performing The Not-So Secret of Life at Medina UCC at 4pm on Sunday Sept 29.

Interested in hosting one of these talks in your area?

Shoot me an email!