Published April, 1999

Six teens sat, each with a parent, on the television stage.  Everyone’s arms were folded, and twelve frozen glares faced the camera.  For 50 minutes they had accused one another of years of pain and suffering, prodded by a talk show host and audience anxious for a shouting match.

Quiet now, they waited for the last ten minutes of the talk show to find the cure for their hates and anger.  After laundry detergent and car commercials, the host finally announced the arrival of her favorite psychologist, who appeared center stage.  Looking to the teens on her left, and then to the right, she made her pronouncement, “What we see here is a lack of unconditional love.”  Twelve heads nodded in agreement

Unconditional Love, it sounds so pretty, so full of promise.   If unconditional love is so important to the salvation of the world, if so many people extol the virtues of unconditional love, why is there such an overwhelming lack of it?  Just keep your eyes on the pointing finger, and we can trace its directional aim to the source of the problem:  that person over there.

Like the teenagers and parents on stage, I fold my arms and set out my own mental demands for the world, “Give me unconditional love.” I want unconditional love.  I want it from everyone:  from her, from him, from you, from everyone.  It will make me feel better.  I deserve it.  I’m a good gal.

Meanwhile, day by day, I am unnerved by the flow of unloving thoughts that crowd my mind.  Just a little judgment here.  And there, a little anger.  There’s that person who is critical of me.  Another who rejects me.  Several who talk about me behind my back.  A job supervisor who plots the destruction of my love one.  Classmates who snub my children.  I would love to love them unconditionally.  Just as soon as they clean up their acts and love me unconditionally.  I’ll wait.  If only I could understand what they are waiting for!

While God directs his message of love to each of us, we turn our gaze and our pointing finger at our opponents, shifting our own personal duty to love others as we would have them love us into a command for ‘them.’  How many of us cry out in despair, “Lord, why do I fail to give unconditional love?”

As I retrieve my demands to receive unconditional love from other people and focus my eyes toward those needing my own unconditional love, I run into insurmountable difficulties.   I’m willing to love them,…as soon as they get their act together, repent, reform, and deserve.  It appears that unconditional love is more blessed to receive than to give.

Unconditional love is a modern phrase being used to browbeat others.  It is a hammer covered with rose petals.  Beautiful and full of promise, but beneath, it remains a hammer.  It is a demand handed down from pedestals, following the path of pointing fingers.  Long pointing fingers, which never turn and accuse the person behind them.

Nowhere in The Bible does God command us to evaluate the love other people give to us, making sure it’s the unconditional kind of love.  Every command of love presses upon us,–upon me.  “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”[1]

God’s Word provides the key.  It is no mistake that The Bible places great emphasis on forgiveness and humility. Under the command to humble ourselves, God demands forgiveness of others, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy‑seven times,“[2] in preparation for us to step out in love.

Humility requires a loving identification with each and every person we encounter.  Humility does not fold its arms and arch its eyebrows, waiting for perfection in others, “but in humility consider others better than yourselves.”[3]  The minute we draw a line between ourselves and others, we have failed in love.  Love is God’s command.  Not his suggestion.  Love, by God’s definition, is always unconditional.

This is the mystery of the love of Jesus.  This is what draws me to Jesus more than anything else.  At the top of the cross, looking down on our hostile crowd of humanity, he chose to forgive.  He chose to love.

Jesus needs no further explanations attached to His love.  He would not need to call it “unconditional.”   His love was His “Yes” poured out upon us in forgiveness.  Nothing more.  Anything more would spoil it, covering it up with explanations and apologies.  Love.

Looking inward, I fall to my knees asking forgiveness that my Love is so small.  It rests inside my heart waiting for the moments when I feel like loving.  It waits for people who deserve love.  It hides behind my excuses for withholding love.  Meanwhile, Love chafes and bridles at the suggestion that it needs explanation, a long word “unconditional” to explain it.  Love.

“Unconditional” is the ultimate decoy.  It sets us to watching the other guy, waiting for him to fail in his love “test.”  “See, there, he put a condition on his love,” we are tempted to protest.  We fold our arms.  We glare at those who fail to love us.  We wait.  But if we pause and turn to look up to the cross, we can feel the loving gaze of Jesus upon us, asking us when we will take up our cross and share His burden.  Love.

Love,– one word, one syllable, one command.  Love.