It’s disturbing how many articles and interviews I have seen just this week by professing Christian pastors and writers that are singing the message, “Love is god.” Even more disturbing are the droves of followers singing along. There’s this sense that doctrine divides and love unites. And as much as we may be hearing about a love for God’s people and a love for God’s Word, it seems that we are looking to larger than life people to unite us. The message is that Love unites.

This is the title of a song by the band Hozier. The song is pretty disturbing, and yet it is an enlightening and honest picture of the state of our culture. In one quick listen, it’s pretty clear that “church” is neither Christ’s bride, nor the meeting place of his people for worship. No, church is the self-destructive worship of a person. Church in this song is in the bedroom, and as it turns out, church is more specifically an act of homosexual love.

No, it’s not a really a song that a good Christian girl like me should be singing along to. But the rhythm is pretty darn catchy. The one thing that I respect about this song is its honest depiction of the state of our culture. Love is god. And the order of the words here are very important.  To say that God is love is to say something very different. In the former case, love is however the individual defines it, and is usually attached with a sensual feeling. And this Love must be worshipped. This Love is supposedly what unites. And this Love is what is expected to save.

Of course, we can sneer at this song for its depravity. But I think that we need to be confronted with its message. The lyrics reveal the singer’s turning away from one church to another, “Every Sunday’s getting more bleak.” His lover “giggle’s at a funeral,” revealing a disregard for death and its eternal consequences. This lover laughs at mortality. He’s encouraged to “worship in the bedroom.”

This act of so-called Love is more sacred than the church. Stronger than death.

As disgusted as we may say we are by this message, what if this song is also a cultural expression of much of evangelism? What if, like Daniel Siedell says about the painting The Scream, this song is interpreting and interrogating us? It’s disturbing how many articles and interviews I have seen just this week by professing Christian pastors and writers that are singing the message, “Love is god.” Even more disturbing are the droves of followers singing along. There’s this sense that doctrine divides and love unites. And as much as we may be hearing about a love for God’s people and a love for God’s Word, it seems that we are looking to larger than life people to unite us. The message is that Love unites.

“Take Me to Church” points to something that draws us all: the self-destructive worship of a person. We like the idea that we are the authority of what is good and loving. And so we use words like love and unity, and we decide what that means.

But in God’s Word, we have Jesus praying for the unity of all believers.  In his prayer for his disciples, Jesus says, “Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.” This is a very theological prayer. We see that God’s people are set apart by his Word. While we easily talk about our unity in Christ, love for him and for one another, it is more difficult for the church to be theologians of the cross that he carried. Love can’t be separated from truth, and God’s people are set apart by that truth.

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