Is Unconditional Love Possible?

Listen: “When It Don’t Come Easy” by Patty Griffin

I’ve often wondered if unconditional love is humanly possible. As a pastor, I have heard plenty of evidence to support this uncertainty. During the course of my pastoral career, I have counseled with hundreds of couples torn apart by relational conflict. I have counseled with hundreds of parents who were facing destructive struggles with their children. I have counseled with the victims and survivors of abusive relationships. I have also consulted with hundreds of churches across denominational lines and continents concerning congregational conflict and disharmony. I have also witnessed the toxic dysfunction of political, cultural, and racial divisions threatening to tear nations apart (whether it be in America, Ethiopia, Ireland or Israel). Quite frankly, there are times when I think unconditional love is an unrealistic longing or a sentimental platitude. No one really loves another human being unconditionally—not really. We love because we hope to get love in return.

On the the other hand, I think we do hunger to be loved unconditionally. I desire to be loved unconditionally. Despite this hunger, we recoil from exposing our true self for fear of being rejected. Naked vulnerability? No thank you. Too risky. We say to ourselves, “I’ll keep my mask on and be very careful about who sees the real me.” And yet, we hunger for people to know us, really know us—with all our flaws and imperfections, with all our beauty and originality—and still love us. This is the kind of love for which we hunger.

This kind of love is risky. Human love cannot exist without boundaries. Some human beings seem to be incapable of healthy, loving relationship. They only seem to inflict harm and abuse on those they supposedly love. How can we love another human being unconditionally when they can’t be trusted? When they are repeat offenders? Or when we need to end a relationship in order to stop the abuse?

Maybe, unconditional love is only possible with God. God is love (I John 4:8). God is able to love unconditionally. It’s somehow comforting to think that a God who knows everything about us, about me, still loves me. Even when I am at my worst, God’s love for me does not change. God’s love never fails (I Corinthians 13:7).

Perhaps, the extent to which we love others as God loves them is the extent to which we know and love God. As challenging and daunting as this thought is, is there really another way to love someone? How do we love others and still have healthy boundaries? How do we love our enemies? Jesus taught us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43). How do we love our enemies without empowering abusive, unjust behavior and systemic injustice? It seems to me that the Anabaptists (certainly not the Magisterial Reformers) and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela have something to teach us along these lines.

I still want to strive for this kind of love because “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them” (I John 4:16; NLT). And I long to love and be loved by perfect, unconditional love. There is always a risk. Maybe Jesus’ death on the cross speaks to this risk for all time—sacrificial, subversive, radical love. What are the alternatives? Endless hatred and retaliation? A cycle of retribution and revenge? An eye for an eye where no one ever wins; no one ever gets even; and everyone is blind?

C. S. Lewis wrote a wonderful book based on the four Greek words for love (storge, phileo, eros, and agape) entitled, The Four Loves. Here is my favorite quote from the book:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Shalom

©realfredherron, 2021