My subject is the birth of love in human relationships. What causes a person to love (as opposed to being indifferent, or even hostile)? What causes you and me to love another (as opposed to being merely dutiful, or resentful, for that matter)?

I recorded the cast because one is bombarded these days, within mainstream Christian circles, with calls to love, summonses to embody the way of Jesus, His program, as it were, for this broken world. These calls are sincere and appropriate. But they lack something. They lack motive. They lack the motivational power to perform the deed!

The Gospel is summed up in one easy sentence from I John 4: "We love because He first loved us." A person can't love on his or her own steam. Love is birthed from prior love.

This is true for Bobby Sherman, in the somewhat dumb but overwhelmingly true song from 1970, entitled "Julie, Do You Love Me". If 'Julie' loves me, I can do anything. But if she doesn't (love me), I'm an unanchored buoy floating on the surface of the ocean towards the royal road to nowhere.

With love, human and divine, everything hinges on the starting point. And that is the being loved, not the loving. But when you are loved, loving someone else becomes the most natural thing in the world.

Oh, and listen to "Easy To Be Hard", by Three Dog Night (or "Hair", depending on your record collection). Those lyrics have never been bettered. LUV U.