jammin' with    God
a Christian musician’s perspective by Pete Caputo

Jam#1     Who is God?
If you drive, you know what it's like to check that rear-view mirror, as you make your way down the road.  It's just a glance, just a split second, and most of the time, you don't even realize you're doing it.  It's a reflex, a habit, (actually it's a good one, at that).

Well, whether we want to admit it, or not, we all spend a good amount of our waking hours pondering this simple question;  Who is God? 

Even if we know Him, even if we profess to be deeply "religious" or "spiritual", or whatever label you like to wear, we all still have this desire to know just a little bit more.  Yet we continue to try and get our arms around an answer to "Who is God", as if our finite brains will someday figure it all out.  Funny thing is, even if you don't know Him, even if you are a card carrying Atheist, and say you really don't care about any of this, you still spend a good amount of your time, trying to make sense of your God-less paradigm wondering why so many others spend so much of their time thinking about a supreme being that you are convinced does not exist.

How do I know this?  Simple.  It’s because, we're all the same.  We all bleed, we all sleep, we all eat, we all communicate on some level, we all love and we all hate.  We're all made the same way and so, on some level, we all think the same way.  We all seek to know that which we cannot explain.

But, here's the kicker.  Since we can't see or measure God with our eyes, we have this tendency to become a little complacent about God.  It's too easy to just place him in a box labeled, (God, Lord, Head Honcho, The Big Guy Upstairs, etc.), and leave Him there so our minds eye can conjure up a place to find Him when we need Him.  But there's another way to think about who God is. 

No matter who you are, no matter what you've been through, we all have known love.  Whether it's the love of a mother, father, guardian, mate or child, chances are we have sensed it, and we know what it's like when it's near.  Love has been defined as an emotion, right along side to anger, joy, hatred, fear, jealousy, affection, and all the rest.  But love is different.  Now I'm talking about real love, real unhindered, unadulterated, unselfish, unconditional love.  The bible calls it Agape, which we Christians describe as the Love of God.

Well, this is very true.  However let's take it one step further, for a moment.  If love, in and of itself, were just an emotion, then there wouldn't be much need to discuss it any further.  Love is love, an emotion, and that's all she wrote.  But that's not the case, is it?

Tell me, how many songs, from the beginning of time, have been written on love?  I know it's a question that's probably impossible to answer.  But consider this.  If you pooled all the other emotions together, including those not mentioned earlier, I would venture to say that the sum of all those emotions would only be a small fraction of all the songs written on love.

Why is this?  Simply because love is more than just an emotion.  Some have said that love is the greatest power in the world.  We tend to scoff at this, because for most, it conjures up worn out images of the early 70's, flower power, anti-war demonstrations and carefree hippies lying waving the peace sign.

Well let me bring you back for a moment.  If love were just a power, a force to be reckoned with, then once again it would not have gleaned the type of attention it has raised throughout time.  I mean really, how many songs do you know about gravity?

This brings us to the obvious conclusion.  Let's give love a capitol "L" for a moment, because since we can not explain it or measure it, and since we obviously can not understand what it does to us, there is only one thing left to say. 

Love is in fact God..., and..., God is Love.

Let that one sink in for a moment.  God doesn't just have the capacity to love.  He is Love, (1John 4:7,8).  Suddenly God isn't so invisible in your life, is He?  You see, it's not so difficult to realize that God has made himself manifest in our lives when we think about what Love has done for us, and what Love has helped us to do.

Here's your first Jammin' exercise:  Interchange the name of God with the word Love, and visa versa.  See if you don't start looking at your world and your God in a different way.  Now don't go saying that you "God" your pizza!  Use it only when you’re facing real love, and sincere moments of your thoughts on God.  That's the time to do the switcheroo.