Why Love?

After seven years behind this mic and more than seven decades of living, I want to answer a simple but dangerous question: why love? Why has love become the center of my faith, my work, and this podcast?

This episode is personal. I talk about growing up in a home shaped by addiction and silence, the moment my father finally said “I love you,” and how that single sentence changed the trajectory of my life. From the Lord’s Prayer to Love’s Creed, from Jesus’ call to lay down our lives to the words of Brené Brown, I trace why real love is not sentimental, commercialized, or safe. Real love is gritty, justice-seeking, and life-risking.

I’m not interested in religious performance, slogans, or spiritual noise. I’m interested in the kind of love that actually transforms people, communities, and faith itself. The kind of love Jesus talked about. The kind that costs something.

If you’ve ever felt burned out on religion but still hungry for meaning, beauty, and truth, this conversation is for you.

I’m Bishop Randy Dean. I’m alive to love. And I’m glad you’re here.

The Bible has been co-opted as a book of hate, and I am here to tell you that is BS. Love alone is credible. Love alone tells the truth. Whenever any lesser value replaces love, it quickly turns into manipulation, fear, and spiritual violence.

In this episode, I speak plainly about how Scripture gets cherry-picked and weaponized, used to shame, control, and threaten people into belief systems that look nothing like Jesus. I offer a different way to read the Bible by putting Jesus Christ over every verse as the template. If you cannot see Jesus in it, his healing, forgiveness, and love, then it is time to read it again.

We begin with the Lord’s Prayer as meditation, grounding ourselves in wisdom shared for more than two thousand years. I also share Love’s Creed, a personal creed that reminds me why I am alive. I am unavailable for anything less than love. From there, I reflect on how the Bible often reveals human brokenness rather than God, and why Jesus is the clearest picture we have of who God truly is.

I return to a powerful line from To Kill a Mockingbird, reminding us that the Bible in the wrong hands can become a weapon instead of a healing balm. When love is restored as the center, Scripture becomes a source of restoration rather than harm.

I close by inviting you to breathe, to live fully in the now, and to practice the most powerful words in the human language: I love you. Say them with intention. Say them while you still have time.

Thanks for being here. Be present. Be kind. Love more. Love now.

In this episode, I strip spirituality down to what actually holds: faith, hope, and love. I’m not interested in religious performance, fear-based preaching, or bait-and-switch faith. Love alone is credible, and if love isn’t at the center, everything else eventually collapses into noise.

I challenge the idea that spirituality is mostly about what happens after we die. I believe eternity isn’t something we enter later, we’re already in it. The real question isn’t heaven or hell someday, but the heaven or hell we’re living right now. Where you are is where you’re going.

Drawing from Jesus, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13, and my own long walk through church life, I name faith, hope, and love as the pillars of a genuine spiritual life. Not faith that dominates, hope that denies reality, or love that enables harm but a grounded, courageous love that knows boundaries and still chooses compassion.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, breathe, and live differently. Be present. Be kind. Let love, not fear, control, or certainty—be what you’re known for. If the world is going to recognize anything as truly spiritual, it will be a life rooted in love.