Laura

At some point in my childhood, despite countless renditions of “Jesus Loves Me” and reassurances from Sunday school teachers that God loves the whole world, I somehow became convinced that God’s love for me was dependent on my good behavior.  Perhaps it was an unintended outgrowth of my deep conviction that salvation is dependent on obedience. Perhaps it was a feeling of utter shame and humiliation over my own sin and inability to believe anyone capable of loving me because of it.  Perhaps it came from my competitive nature, self-reliance, and pride. 

Whatever the case, I’ve spent most of my life (subconsciously) trying to somehow buy and earn God’s love.  I suppose the thought process was something like this: if I can place first in Bible Bowl, memorize enough scripture, avoid sinning (at least the big ones like having premarital sex, drinking, cursing, or doing drugs), have all the answers to religious questions, learn Greek and Hebrew in an effort to find the answers to those questions, major in Bible, be elected as women’s chaplain, be the smartest, the kindest, the best speaker, the most prayerful, the most generous, etc., then I will have somehow racked up enough extra credit to outweigh all my sin and be worthy of God’s approval and love.

It hasn’t been until the last few months that I’ve realized how warped and dangerous this line of thinking can be.

Worse still, this twisted view of God’s love has made it extremely difficult for me to honestly and completely love other people.  I’ve imitated what I thought was God’s love - a love with strings attached; a love with expectations, requirements, and conditions.

The result has been that I’ve loved other people when it’s convenient, benefitted me, or made me happy.  I’ve loved others because they’re beautiful, funny, smart, generous, moral, kind, cute, pitiful, perfect, damaged, insightful, helpless, or cool.  I’ve loved people for their attributes and actions.  I’ve loved people both for who they are and for what I hoped I could mold them to become.

But that’s not God’s love.  God’s love is universal and unchanging.  He loves sinners and saints equally and alike.  He loves us before we are born, while we live, when we rebel, through our change and growth, and even when we die.

I can keep his commandments perfectly and he will love me.  I can reject his commandments completely and he will love me just the same.

It’s a great challenge to love the way that God does.  It means showing equal love to all people, from our Christian best friends to our atheist enemies.  It means loving regardless of the benefit or inconvenience that love will entail.  It means loving when people are stupid, hurtful, and volatile.  It means loving an imperfect person with no expectation for them to ever change.  It means loving for no other reason than for the sake of love.

May we each learn to recognize and embrace God’s incredible, unconditional love for us and learn to share his love in exactly the same way.