Monday, April 04, 2005
Looking At Love
A blog called Seeing Life Differently is doing an examination of "love."
Huh!?!? Yes, you heard me right. God's love is not "Unconditional Love" either, at least not as we're used to thinking of that. Its something much better than that. Let me see if I can explain.Well...those are words of wisdom for our time. This may be a blog to keep an eye on.
You see, when people talk about God's "unconditional love," they are actually getting the answer partially right - they are realizing that ultimately none of us have anything to offer God; if there is going to be any acceptance for us, it can't be based on our ability to meet the conditions. We're his enemies, for Pete's sake! (Rom 5:10) We're dead in our sins! (Eph 2:1).
Nevertheless, God does accept us. So we tend to use words like "unconditional" to try and capture just how generous he is - he doesn't say, "clean yourself up and then I will love you" - he says, "I love you even though you are a slut and a whore and you are absolutely incapable of cleaning yourself up because you are addicted to your sin."
The only stipulation is for us to believe. So there is a sense in which "unconditional" is a very appropriate term.
But there's a problem with it too. Many times when people say love should be "unconditional" what they really mean is "Stop judging me! Don't say my actions are wrong! I want your love and approval, but I don't want to change my behavior. You should accept me the way that I am!"
