I'm still working on the concept of love, but I had a realization this week that I feel I ought to share. I realized that even I, with all of my great facets, frequently love conditionally. I love, hoping that people will do or choose or be what validates me, and when they don't I am upset. I guess I never really knew better, but it also means I may have never really ever loved.
Beginning with a principle, we see the truth in loving without conditions. When you hurt your arm, you do not cut it off. You nurture it, protect it, take good care of it, minister to its healing. You are not concerned so much with whether the arm brings you flowers or heals back perfectly; you are happy that it heals at all. You know it's better to have a lousy arm than none at all, and you are anxious to preserve whatever function and form you can of what was once precious to you.
People too sometimes get hurt. If we really love them, then we continue to take care of them, love them, and befriend them. We do not cut them off when they do not meet our expectations, validate our opinions, or satisfy our needs. That's not love, or at least not the love we all discuss and allegedly seek. That's self-love, selfishness that says, "Give me what I want, or I will be a miscreant". It's conditional, and so it is not pure.
God loves us because of who we are, not because of what we do. He knows that even the best of men are exactly that- the best of men, and men are pretty inconsequential on a universal scale, despite what the government says. I am not claiming His love is unconditional, but what I have realized is that it's not conditional. The Atonement has occurred. It paid the price for all human weakness of all time, and if we really believe that we must embrace that Christ has already made the mistakes of men right unto us.
Of course, we prefer a particular outcome. When people begin to suspect our love is outcome oriented, they resist. I know scores of people who love conditionally, codependently, exacerbated by the notion in popular media that "I love you and I know we'll be together no matter what, and I won't rest until we are". That is selfishness, and I love nothing so selfishly that I will not allow it to leave if it chooses or let it go for its own good. It's in the songs, the books, the cinema, this bastardized love that says I love you because I obtained a certain outcome or because I expect my love to lead us there whether you know it or acknowledge it. I have been guilty of this as well I realized over the past few days, and I am ashamed.
I still don't know how to do this. You see, most people love conditionally. Even those who mean well don't really get it, and maybe that's the problem. You can't learn how to love perfectly from imperfect beings. You can only learn how to love like God if you allow Him to teach you how He does it. He will, and I have already started my lessons. Wish me luck.
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