You Had Me at Hello

Dave Brisbin 9.15.19 Our main mission at theeffect is to reintroduce Jesus to Western people. To meet Jesus again for the first time is to meet an ancient, Eastern Jesus who can speak again for himself, stripped of two thousand years of Western commentary and interpretation. And looking at Jesus through the eyes of those who followed first, hearing him from his own context and worldview, what is the essence, the foundation of his life and message? That’s what we really want to know, but to simply know is only an open doorway. Jesus’ real message is about what happens when we walk through and what it costs to walk through. To say that Jesus’ essential message is love is both true and misleading at the same time. The Father’s love that Jesus is trying to convey is so absolute and radical that it levels each and every one of us in the sameness of its indiscriminate covering. We strive our entire lives to be different, to be above, beyond, better, bigger, than others in order to be noticed, loved, and accepted. But what Jesus is trying to show and tell us is that when love is perfect, we’re not loved because we’re different, we’re loved because we’re the same. God’s love levels us before it lifts us; we can’t have one without the other. And if we’re not willing to accept the leveling, the sameness of the love and ourselves, we can never experience the lifting. As we work so hard to get God to overlook our flaws and focus on our accomplishments, reeling off our justification for ourselves, God is simply waiting for us to take a breath so he can interrupt and say, relax, it’s alright, hush now…you had me at hello.