Dustin Lolli
26 min read ⭑
“I don’t want to be the authentic me because the authentic me would probably hide in a cabin. I want to be the most Christlike me.”
As the lead singer of the Grammy-nominated band Sanctus Real, Dustin Lolli has spent years sharing messages of hope through music. But to him, faith is about more than writing chart-topping songs or touring for a new album. It’s about living the way of Jesus and loving people the way God does. In today’s interview, he’s opening up about what it looks like to walk like Jesus, battle apathy and pray with simplicity. This honest conversation with Dustin happened here, at Rapt, and nowhere else — for Rapt readers like you.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
My go-to meal would be less about the food and more about the vibe. I think I’m pretty low-key; half the time, I don’t actually know what I love. Today I want tacos, but tomorrow, I’d like a burger or steak. I don’t ever really have an all-time favorite restaurant because it changes based on the day. But I do love quiet atmospheres so that conversations can be had. A lot of times, you go to restaurants, and there’s so much noise, so you find yourself looking around all the time. Anything I do revolves around why I want to do it. If I’m going out to eat, I want it to be about being with people, having interesting conversations and reflecting on what community and relationship look like.
My favorite food is Mexican food. That says hometown to me. I was born in Detroit, but I grew up in a town called Adrian and had a youth group. We had a lot of Mexican culture in the town. I used to do quinceañeras all the time. I was always eating Mexican food, and it was great.
That said, I’m also Italian, so I find nothing wrong with a good Italian restaurant. But for me, it’s more about the vibe. I think my dream food is with people I really like.
As an artist who tours frequently, what does that typically look like?
When I’m home, I don’t even like to go out. I’d rather have people over for dinner. It’s funny because we try to open our home a lot. My wife loves to have people over, and I love to have people over because I don’t have to go anywhere. There’s not a whole lot of going out to eat for us when we’re home. But when we’re on the road, that life revolves more around finding food that doesn’t make me fat. Most of the time, everyone wants to get you their best, and it’s usually a lot of heavy carbs. So I have to find a balance between being nice and needing to not gain 20 pounds while I’m on the road.
There are a lot of things in life that allow us to pause and sit down and actually take the time to have real conversations. That’s why I love a good cigar. I love to sit down and have a drink with people. It’s not even about the thing itself. A cigar forces you to sit down for an hour. You can’t go anywhere once you light it. It’s where I’ve had some of the best conversations with friends.
Food, to me, is the same thing. It’s a chance to slow down, sit down and have these conversations. You don’t find that a lot on the road because you’re always on the go, so you have to make those moments throughout the day, and that’s hard, too, because you’re always really tired. I could spend an hour talking about how trying to look like Jesus on the road is one of the hardest things because of the fatigue and the wear and tear. I’m an introvert at heart, which is why I love to be home. But when you get on the road, you’re a professional extrovert. It’s really hard to find those spaces where you can take a breath. I’ll be honest, when I’m on the road, I’m actually looking to eat alone most of the time because that’s the only time I get to be alone.
Alexandre Trouvé; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
If I’m totally honest, I’m not a creature of habit, not even with food, as I mentioned earlier. We use the term “spiritual” to compartmentalize, and I think that’s completely anti-biblical. In a lot of ways, it’s cliché to say that everything’s spiritual, and I don’t think everything’s spiritual. I think God is real and logical. He created all knowledge, and it’s not just spirit. It’s everything else we see in our world, even the everyday moments.
For instance, this conversation could be viewed as part of my job, or it could be viewed as an opportunity to reflect Jesus to the people who read Rapt. This moment is just as spiritual as a Sunday morning. If we believe Jesus and reframe our thinking, we can try to make each moment the same as a Sunday morning. It’s funny — half the Christian population may take offense at my mention of a cigar, but the truth is that those moments have produced some of the deepest conversations with people who have gone through a lot. We tend to see things in such black and white that we miss the reality that God is in the why. We always want to do the what, but he’s in the motives, too. Some of these things are tools to be able to reach people’s hearts.
I’m really against checklists. Humans are always looking for structure, but God, at the risk of sounding New Age, is in flow. Jesus would say, he goes where his Father is going. There’s no checklist there. I’m going to do what’s right, wherever I go, wherever I see, whatever I’m going to try to bring. In my family, we call it being an agent of good. A lot of Christians are more about being on the right side of the law. But I want to be on the right side of good, bringing hope and peace and all of those fruits of the Spirit. Being an emissary of Jesus means I’m going to be an emissary and a reflector of what is good.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
I would start by saying that I don’t hold to the term broken because the only way you know something’s broken is if you know what it’s supposed to look like fixed. I’m not sure any of us know what we would look like if we were whole. Often when we say we’re broken, we’re basing it on some absurd notion that at some point everything’s great, but everything can’t be great. That’s physical, too — we’re tired, and we struggle. It’s not just emotional; we humans fixate on the emotional part of us, but do you know how much damage happens to the emotional part because you’re fatigued? We don’t want to embrace the fact that human bodies are finite, and therefore our emotions are finite, too. A lot of times, I look at this word “broken” and think, That’s a scary word because you don’t know what you look like whole. Yes, there are times when I feel really broken. It’s just that I don’t want to get into this idea that I would know what I look like perfect.
That said, I think my kryptonite is apathy. I have a hard time motivating myself. This is going to sound strange, but it’s been a family trait. My older brother, who does really well, and I talk about this all the time — how it takes a lot internally to be driven. Some people are just naturally driven. I’m more often convincing myself not to hide. It’s hard for me to stay. In the music business, though, you need a lot of drive, so I need people around me who are driven. I might be the only guy in this entire industry who wasn’t actually trying to get into the industry at the time. I’ve always struggled with this. I wrote a song about wanting to be purposeful and have purpose in my life, but there’s another side of me that wants to go find a cabin in the woods and never come out. That’s my thing.
In the kingdom of heaven, you have to engage people, and there’s a big part of me that struggles with that. It looks like laziness. We did some genetic testing and found that my father and one of my kids struggle to break down certain vitamins, which makes it difficult to keep up their energy. Historically, people like this were just considered lazy. The truth is there’s a lot more to it than that. When you’re tired, it changes you. You don’t have the energy reserves to do a lot. You’re grumpy, or you mistreat people more than you would normally. It creates a lot of apathy, to the point where I’m tired of fighting. I would rather not do anything. I think more than anything else, that’s probably the thing that I struggle with the most. Just being motivated to keep doing what I believe in. I love being on stage, but getting to the stage is tiring. I used to love to travel, but now it’s hard to get up and go. I’m pretty simple and low-key with our family. Some people may struggle with really hard stuff, but I struggle with laziness.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’ve been in Sanctus Real for 11 years now, and they’re an interesting band. They had already been going for almost 20 years before I joined. This is their 30th year. They’ve gone from cool pop punk to a marriage band on K-LOVE to all sorts of variations in between. They’ve changed styles in some ways on purpose and, in other ways, not. Part of that’s business culture because we all have to feed our families. But when I joined, they were kind of down. Everyone in the Christian music world said it wasn’t going to work. We lost label booking, management and pretty much everything you need in music. We got along really well together, and we were writing songs that we thought were cool. The problem is, in the music industry, there’s a box you have to fit into, and trying to be cool is not a part of that in some ways. You have to fit a certain vibe, and we weren’t really fitting that vibe in the beginning. It was hard for us, especially for me because I was doing folk music with my wife. As a band, we wrote songs that we believed in, but we wrote songs in that box, which is honestly a great thing. It’s how you succeed, and we’ve had success. We have a song that went platinum, which is honestly incredibly mind-blowing, especially if you knew where we came from. We have another song that went gold, and over the last 10 years, we’ve had more success than people think. A lot of people view Sanctus Real as an old band. But because we haven’t had a label, we’re always flying under the radar. We’re not even mad about that.
All that to say, we’re now in a season where we either say the things we really want to say, or we hang it up. There’s no other option.
My apathy is only defeated when I feel real purpose. If we’re just making music to appease people and make money, I don’t feel motivated. At my age, with older kids and all of the responsibilities that come with that, I wanted to be done. But we started writing these songs, and they really say the things we want to say. The weight of having a platform is heavy. I think more artists need to understand that music is shaping our culture. I would say we’re not doing a good job of it, but I don’t think it’s because we have bad people. I think a lot of times, it’s because we’re not understanding the weight of that, especially in radio music. They want a certain type of message in radio, and that’s OK. But the truth is that it doesn’t allow songs to go deep. At the same time, it’s not about personal gratification and telling people how bad it is for us. There are two sides: “Oh God fixed everything” or, on the other side of it, “This is so dang hard. Everything is so miserable.” Both of those things sometimes come from the same place of needing attention. That’s where I don’t want to be.
The band has talked a lot about this topic, and we want to find the underlying hope in everything we do. Paul writes about learning to be content whatever his circumstances. A lot of times, Christianity is focusing on the situation — whether good or bad — not on believing in Jesus, who gives you stability through the good and the bad. We are so often consumed with the next hot thing that we don’t stop and say, “What is it about what we believe that actually gives people the strength to get through this life?” Not fix this life, not repair. We know nobody makes it out of this alive. What is it about this thing that allows us to walk through real hardship, real pain, real bitterness, but also allows us to grieve with hope? That’s what separates our belief system from everything else — we’re going to experience the same thing that everybody else experiences, but we’re going to experience it with a hope that you can’t get outside of Jesus. We don’t want to write songs anymore about how life stinks but then God makes everything perfect — because that’s not real life. For us, it’s really coming down to where Jesus, the way of Jesus, fits into our real lives, not our compartmentalized Sunday morning. We’re not trying to use sad stories for business purposes. I’ve seen that happen a lot. I feel like the motive is as important as the thing you do, and a lot of times I’ve not done the thing I probably should do because I was worried about how it would appear. Sometimes, I need to grow up and understand that there are just some good things to be done and to give God the motive.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I don’t always know it’s God. I know what God wants, and I know what he has called us to do. But I don’t need it to have a God prompt all the time. We over-spiritualize everything. We say, “Hey, I have a calling to be on a stage” or “I have a destiny” or “God is calling me to great things.” That’s bull crap, and I believe this with all my heart. We already have a calling, and that calling is to reflect the nature of the one we believe in.
So whether you are a cashier or a CEO, it really comes down to knowing what is right or wrong. You know what to do. We don’t have to sensationalize it and make everything prophetic. Do I believe in some prophetic? Yeah. Do I believe most of it is crazy? Yeah. But I don’t discount what God can do, either. I just know that Scripture, from front to back, is about God showing man how to live. When Jesus came, he said, “I’m the fulfillment of the law. When you see me, you see the Father. You see the nature of God.” So when we reflect that, we know we’re walking the way that we’re supposed to walk. We’re looking like our Father. There’s more Scripture about love, looking like Jesus and walking in his way than anything else. The prophets said God didn’t want sacrifices; he wanted people to live this way. It was always about a way of living. I don’t need to know that God prompted it.
What I believe in prompts what I do. If I believe in Jesus, then I am compelled to live a certain way. If you’re not compelled in some way to do that, or if you’re struggling with hope, you have to first examine what you believe in. To believe in Jesus is to have hope. To believe in Jesus is to believe in the way of love and the way of serving people. Now, is there nuance in there? For sure, but it’s not complicated for a Christian. If you have to have a move of God to treat people well, we need to have a conversation. We need to figure it out. If you have to have a move of God to write things about the one you believe in with all your heart, we need a conversation. Jesus said he does what he sees his Father doing. He went to hard places. Let’s go. Let’s go figure out how to reflect Jesus in some of these harder situations. Honestly, today’s world is brutal because everybody thinks they’re right. Every side of the political aisle, every denomination, every theological discussion — everybody thinks they know everything. How do you convince somebody who thinks they know everything that it’s not even about knowing anything? This is where we fall into a trap. As believers or secular people, we think our importance lies in knowing the answer. Paul says people want knowledge because it makes them feel important. I’m sure this has held true throughout history, but it seems even more relevant today. Everybody wants to be the adviser. Nobody wants to be the listener. But truly, it’s about how you love, not what you know.
The way we frame prophecies or whether something is from God often gets in the way of the simplicity of “I believe in Jesus. I believe he existed. I believe he lived a certain way. I believe he calls me to look like that.” This life is a journey. I did a study and wrote this devotional, and I found something so fascinating in the book of John. The word “believe” was never a noun; it was never “faith” in the Greek. It’s always a verb, which is continuous. Even in John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that whoever believes” — the word “believe” actually meant an ongoing process. It’s not a singular moment. We’re so consumed with a moment that gets us to heaven that we don’t realize that we’re supposed to be reflecting heaven every single day of our lives to people in this world.
The simplicity of the gospel has been missed so much because we’re trying to hyper-spiritualize things. The kingdom of heaven is not a kingdom of equal talents. We all have different talents. You started this question with whether someone was a CEO or a cashier or a clerk. Well, the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of equal worth. Forget your talents. You might hold a different position on earth, but you hold the same position in the kingdom of heaven. All of our actions are then guided by what we believe in when it comes to Jesus — the way of love, joy, peace, hope, long-suffering, kindness, meekness, temperance and self-control. All of these things reflect who Jesus is. The answer is to look like Jesus and be like Jesus. I don’t need a spiritual moment to do that.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I try to read the Bible through every year because the first time I did it, I fell in love with the story more than I ever had. To give a little background, I was born in a Pentecostal church. It was Pentecostal to its core; it was so charismatic, and everything was so emotional and sensationalized. A lot of verses were used to back up what they believed rather than to create what they believed. You see that a lot — verses taken out of context. I knew a lot about the Bible. I could quote a lot of Scripture, and it wasn’t until I stepped back and started reading it as a story that I really fell in love with it. Growing up, I often heard people ask about the atrocities of the Old Testament. How could God allow this? But when you read it as a story, you understand the nature of humans versus the nature of God.
Over the last five years, I’ve taken every morning to read 10 to 20 chapters, and I don’t try to stop and savor each word. I’m not trying to spiritualize it because I think this story is so beautiful. It shows the depravity of man — because man wanted to be like God. We discovered there was a moral code that we couldn’t live up to. And so God said, “Well, now that you are like me, let me show you how to be like me.” He gave us the law as a direction, but they never got the heart of it. They screwed it up over and over again. Then the prophets are this beautiful glue to show us that God was not destroying them because they didn’t sacrifice. He destroyed them because they were starving the widows. They were hurting the orphans. They were unjust. They were taking advantage of people. Nobody helped each other. And then Jesus came and said, “You never understood the law. Never. I’m showing you the heart of it. I’m showing you the way of love.” I love it.
What’s really crazy is I used to think I’d hate reading books like Leviticus, but I love the story parts of it. I really do. People might think it’s boring, but I eat it up because it’s so historical. I try to get into the minds of a culture that existed thousands of years ago. You can’t throw your morals onto them. I just find it all so really fascinating. It makes the life of Jesus that much more beautiful. The context of Scripture puts the gospel on a pedestal. The Old Testament puts Jesus on display. The Bible reveals the purpose. Throughout the day, I try to keep it in my head. “OK, your purpose is to be kind. Your purpose is to try to live like Jesus.”
My wife is a partner in this. She’s the same way. She’s so kind and hospitable. Our life goal since our 20s has been to look like Jesus. All the religious stuff was driving us crazy. I found that some of the most spiritual people were also some of the worst. It didn’t make any sense to my young mind. How does this reflect Jesus at all? This guy speaks in tongues and does all these charismatic things, and yet he’s engaged in this sin, and he talks to people horribly. It didn’t make any sense, so we started trying to live differently and be open books and not have anything to hide and just love people. Honestly, it has worked. People think God is just pouring out blessings, but the truth is, he created a natural law: kindness is met with kindness most of the time. I attribute a lot of the gifts in our lives to Jesus — but only because we made the attempt to look like Jesus. I don’t think it’s favoritism. We’re not favored. People talk about anointing when they really are talking about talent. The true gifts come from looking like Jesus. And it’s reciprocated. A lot of times, nice people get treated nicely — mostly. Obviously, there are exceptions.
It’s about simplicity. My prayers are simple. I don’t like elaborate, showy prayers. I don’t even like praying out loud for food. Not because I’m ashamed of anything, but a lot of times, it’s more performative than it is real. When people ask me for prayer, I’ll say, “My life is a prayer. I don’t need to pray out loud.” That sounds cool, but I’m not trying to be. I feel like I grew up in such a sensationalistic culture that I’ve reverted to the interior and the heart and the way of Jesus rather than trying to perform. I’m not against praying out loud, and I’ll do it, but my prayers at home are usually quiet, internal and for family. I do it throughout the day. I don’t sit and pray for an hour in the morning, but almost every morning, I get up and read 10 to 15 chapters of Scripture.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
C.S. Lewis is my favorite author. With him, it’s usually not about being right; it’s the tone that I love. The thoughtfulness. Even when he is against something, he doesn’t attack; he logically lays out his argument, and it’s loving. His book “The Great Divorce” is so good. It is one of my favorite books.
I grew up a reader. I’ve probably read the whole “The Chronicles of Narnia” series 130 to 140 times. I just love the way he writes, and yes, I still read it. I started reading it when I was 6 or 7. I had five siblings. I was one of the youngest, and we didn’t have our own rooms, so my parents got me a little tent to go over my bed. I would sit up at night with “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and a little flashlight to read. I fell in love with the characters and the story. As a kid, I would read it over and over again. Then even as a teenager, there was such a nostalgia that I just loved the story so much. Then I discovered that there were more books than just “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
In the beginning of the book, C.S. Lewis writes to the woman he wrote the book for, “Your kids will love this, and then one day when you’re old enough to not care anymore, you’ll go back to reading fairy tales. You’ll realize that they’re for everybody.” It’s a great little line. I remember thinking as a kid, I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to stop dreaming. I think something people miss sometimes is how deep those books can be. There is so much depth in who Jesus is, so Lewis writes through characters. I love that. Because of the nostalgia, I’ll get this itch to reread it once a year. I read fast, so I can finish one of the books in a day or two.
It’s the same thing with “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve probably read that 30 or 40 times. Once a year, I’ll pick it up, fly through it, get that fix and be good. I see God a lot in stories. We see morality more clearly when it’s laid out in front of us. It’s really hard when a movie ends without justice, without the good guy winning. I remember thinking to myself, I’d love to see a movie where the bad guy wins. Well, then I saw one, and I felt sick to my stomach and never wanted to see it again. Even though Hollywood can be immoral, it’s hard for them to make a movie that doesn’t reflect true goodness — because humans catch it when we’re watching it. I think stories are such a mirror to our souls and our moral makeup.
I don’t watch a ton of movies. I’d rather read books. I’ve always connected so much to C.S. Lewis because he shares truths in story form. For example, “The Great Divorce” shows how good things, when perverted, are the most evil things. You see that in our world so much.
Obviously, music is a big part of my life. I love the older hymns because they’re not singing about us most of the time. I love and contribute to modern music, but much of it revolves around how we feel and our emotions, which is good in some capacity. But when you’re a 45-year-old man, you get tired of singing about God like he’s your boyfriend, which is a little awkward. I think you start reverting to what I would call “less rich language.” My wife and I were in church the other day, and they were singing a song about laying your head on his chest. It was so romantic. And I’m like, There’s a reason why guys my age are not connecting. That feels really weird.
While music has always been a part of my life, I could probably spend all day on books, even if I didn’t agree with all of them. There are books with premises I don’t agree with, and they have been huge factors in my life because they helped me to see the big picture. We Christians often struggle with seeing the big picture. We want to read things that motivate us or that make us feel as if we’re right. But I don’t think anybody’s got everything. Even books by people viewed as heretics may still have some good logic. I grew up in Michigan. Rob Bell was a big name. A lot of the books that got him in trouble were often based on “The Great Divorce.” If you didn’t understand where his reasoning came from, you’d find yourself thinking that he was this awful human being. Because of the way the church world talks about him, you wouldn’t realize this wasn’t that far from what a lot of people think. I understand what he was trying to say in some of his books. Does it mean I agree with everything? No. Does it mean I agree with everything C.S. Lewis said? No. But I love the way they say it, and it gives you a bigger picture to understand where they’re coming from.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
If you struggle with the phone, you need to put it down, but if you don’t, then you could use it for great benefit. For example, if you struggle with pornography, you need to put the phone down. As believers, nothing in and of itself is a bad thing in terms of technology until that thing is controlling us. Being able to say no to something is greater freedom than anything else. A lot of our issues with technology come from the fact that it’s so addictive. We’re making it God rather than a tool. If the apostle Paul were here today, he would say, “Well, when I was in Rome, I became a Roman. When I’m with the Jews, I act like a Jew.” I’m sure he would say, “I figured out a way to turn technology into a tool.” That tool might be for his own personal growth, or it might be to share the way of Jesus with people. I think a lot of these questions, even about technology, come back to the heart of man rather than the technology itself. What is the problem with the phone? It’s that we can’t put it down. That’s on us. That’s not on the phone. It’s not even on the makers, even though they could be evil and might purposefully make tech more addictive for your brain. But the truth is, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s freedom.
My older brother is a real techie guy. He started showing me Claude Cowork recently. The things it can do are incredible. It can code when you don’t have the technology, and you can use it for such good. On the flip side, there are a lot of questions when it comes to AI and creativity, especially music. If this thing takes all the jobs, then yes, that’s a terrible thing, but we’ll never be able to stop it, so we have to figure out how to make it work for us. For your question about using it, spiritually or for the betterment, it’s not about putting your phone down. It’s about putting your phone down if it controls you. It’s about whatever app you feel you have to open every single day. Is there anything wrong with opening that app? Probably not. But is there something wrong if you have to open the app? That’s called an addiction, and that’s no different from nicotine or alcohol. What is it giving you that Jesus is not giving you? We need to think about how we’re using things, not the things themselves.
I don’t have an app I love. I use a little bit of AI with Claude Cowork, but I do not like AI in the creative space because that’s cheating. As a songwriter, you’re competing not with humans anymore but with a creation that’s stealing from what people have already created. It’s just recreating. It’s not real. It’s not fair. When it comes to AI stealing from people and even coding, there are gray areas that I don’t understand. I’m not going to pretend to know. I think you have to walk a line of grace with a lot of it. I use Claude Cowork a lot for my own business because it keeps me organized. But I don’t have any apps or tech that have helped me when it comes to the way of Jesus. In fact, I feel like having my phone near me while I’m reading or doing something is very distracting, so I put it away until I’m done.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
A lot of it is about what I call a reflection of good. The reality is, our world is full of religious stuff, but it’s not full of a lot of examples of good living. It’s because we don’t even take the time to know the people around us. I spend a lot of time on stage. I know what it’s like to have people love you for something you did rather than who you are. There’s such a danger in that because even Scripture says to know those who work among you. You haven’t walked around with these artists you see on stage. You don’t know them, you don’t know their personal lives, and you don’t know if they’re living the way they say they’re living. I say that about me, too. None of your readers know if what I’m telling you is carefully crafted bullcrap or truly how I live. I wouldn’t expect people who haven’t walked with me to trust me. Please don’t put your trust in something you don’t know or understand. We do it all the time. We do it with celebrities constantly, which is why when we find out that they’re not who we think they are, we’re so crushed. But why are we crushed? It doesn’t change our belief system. It doesn’t change Jesus. We just put faith in somebody we don’t know. Your favorite preacher, your favorite singer — you don’t know them. I would rather have around me a group of people I love, know and trust and who love, know and trust me in return than have a million followers.
What’s stirring in me is how to use that to live out what I believe without becoming like everyone else. You get on X, and everyone is looking for clicks. But how much does what they share really help people? How often can we honestly say that something we read online made an actual life change and that we are now filled with joy rather than saying we’re on a journey and that we’re broken? What’s our outcome? Everybody’s looking for something to fix their lives, but that doesn’t exist. Jesus doesn’t even come and fix your life. He just says, “Let me show you a better way to live.” It’s pretty amazing. I am at this point where it’s not even about being real because our world is just so full of words. I don’t want to be the authentic me because the authentic me would probably hide in a cabin. I want to be the most Christlike me.
We give too much advice. Sometimes we give advice to people who are hurting, and it’s more damaging than it is helpful because they’ve been abused, taken advantage of or sexually assaulted in the past. We give advice like it’s this flippant thing, but who am I to tell somebody what to do to be healed, especially if they’ve been abused? Sometimes the thing you say can have a worse effect. Even something that sounds theologically correct can damage a person, and I don’t think God would do that. Jesus saw people as individuals. He didn’t throw stones at the woman who committed adultery. He didn’t condemn her. He knew her. We think the woman at the well was a terrible person, but he told her that if she asked, he would give her living water. He saw people as human beings rather than X statements. He saw people as actual lights who carried God inside of them. He breathed into us. When we see people like that, it’ll change our lives. There’s a heaviness to having a platform where you can put out a song, and within two weeks, a quarter of a million people might hear it. There’s more pressure because you’re speaking to a lot of different individuals with different stories.
I think my next season is about being very thoughtful regarding that. How do you represent Jesus in a way that’s not trying to be cool, not trying to be famous, not trying to be anything but just reflects goodness? To do that, you’re going to rock a few boats. Jesus couldn’t be Jesus unless he rocked a few boats, usually with the religious cultural system of his day. I wouldn’t want to upset people just to upset people. I only want to do that if it’s because I’m looking like Jesus.
We have so many people trying to have revelations, but ultimately, it’s about how Jesus said to live. What are the two greatest commandments? Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s very simple — if you love someone, you’re not going to hurt them. If you love someone, you’re not going to commit murder or adultery. It’s beautiful that Jesus says to love yourself, but what he’s really saying is that you naturally want the best for yourself. Loving yourself means that, if you have an addiction, you break that addiction because that’s the best thing for yourself. Well, if you want the best for yourself, Jesus is asking you to want the best for others. This is not sloppy, emotional love. This is choosing to want the best for people rather than wanting to win. If you’re driven by the desire to win, we probably need to talk.
Sometimes the biblical command to love others can feel so abstract. Yet John tells us, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18, ESV). Love is action. It’s motive. It’s Jesus.
What does love look like in your life this week? Who, and how, is Jesus calling you to love?
Dustin Lolli is the current lead singer of the Grammy-nominated, Dove Award-winning band Sanctus Real. Hailing from Michigan, he began songwriting at the age of 15. A worship leader for 15 years, Dustin has a heart for communicating hope and love through music. In 2013, this passion sparked a folk/pop side project with his wife, called James and June. It was this record that caught the eye of Sanctus Real, and in 2015, he joined them as lead singer. Since then, Dustin has been a writer on every song on both their Changed and Unstoppable God records, including the top-five song Confidence and radio hit Unstoppable God.