The reminder in “Excess Love” by Mercy Chinwo is critical to my understanding of God’s character. The song was sent to me by my old family friend, Chika Onyewuchi. My family and her’s have been close since we were children. I’m so glad she sent me this song. The reminder of the expanse and depth of God’s love is one that I wish everybody would accept. God’s love is excess, plentiful, good, endless. No matter what we do, how far we fall, God’s love is big enough to catch us and embrace us in forgiveness if we ask for it.
This song has deep political and humanistic implications. If we remember that God is supernaturally loving, how can you be racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic? God is none of those things, so if you use God’s name to hate, your God is not this loving God. How can you think that your culture and your understanding of God is superior to others? How can you imagine that our ancestors’ understandings of God, without knowing the word/name Jesus, damned them to hell? Check yourself! This is why I sometimes struggle with this Christianity. So much of the organized Christian church is judgmental and hateful. I grew up learning that God loved me so much that Jesus died for me. That is LOVE. I’m so grateful for this foundational example of LOVE. And that love is understood in different ways around the world. God is too big to be limited to only one interpretation. I wish we would embrace all the complexions of God’s love. Yes, my experience with God’s love is through Jesus. Someone in a small village somewhere may have another experience of God’s love. And that is a manifestation of God’s excess love!
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believed in him would have eternal life.
Gospel from Friends 