Unconditional Love

Unconditional: (def.) not subject to a condition or special terms.

We hear a lot about unconditional love. About its importance and how we should strive to share it with those around us. It may be easy to picture when we think about our families; our spouses or our kids or even some of our relatives, but what does it mean when we think about those of the opposite sex that are not related to us?

To be honest with you, up until a few years ago I didn’t know what unconditional love meant outside of family (if I even knew what it meant there). The love I knew with the opposite sex…….well, it was conditional. In return for my love certain things were expected.

When I was about 13 a friend of mine found a large brown paper sack full of pornographic magazines next to the local convenient store dumpster. To the little boys who now had it in their possession, this was a gold mine!! In reality, as a 36 year old divorced father of 3, it was a curse!! You see these magazines were doing more to me than just bringing me pleasure and quick satisfaction; they were shaping my mind and my heart.

I quickly began to see females for their body parts, and not for their hearts. For this very reason it was very hard to have friendships with women. Actually, I didn’t think they were possible or that they really existed, because my mind had been shaped by the images that I had been staring at in those magazines. Sexual attraction accompanied most, if not all of the friendships that I did have.

Now there is a lot of good and bad that I could tell you that happened between now and then, but really to the point of this post it would really just be a lot of filler. The reason why I am writing this is to explain how our minds have been distorted by some of the very things that have given us enjoyment. For men, it may be the same porn magazines that I enjoyed; for women, it may be the love novels, soap operas, or even the glamour magazines (maybe porn as well). No matter what it is, they all have one thing in common…..they change our expectations, the conditions for which our ‘worldly’ love is built. They tell us that we can have something that is not ours for the taking, when we want it and how we want it. And that this, the expectations of our love, is how life is supposed to be.

But when I think about what true unconditional love SHOULD be between a man and a woman, I think about the relationships that were shared between Jesus and the women in his life. Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), the sinful woman (Luke 7:36-50), and the revealing of His resurrection to Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18) are all fine examples of the blessing He was to the women in His life with no expectations, no conditions. Even when you look at Paul and Silas with Lydia (Acts 16:11-15, 40) you see a relationship with no expectations other than that of a friendship, and a place to stay; with no expectations, no conditions.

My pastor recently did a series on friendships which included a sermon on community. There was nothing about the idea (biblically or otherwise) of friendships or community that excluded members of the opposite sex. Therefore when I read Acts 2:43-47 or Acts 4:32-35 I think about the ways in which we should love each other unconditionally; sharing what is ours (our possessions, our beings) without the expectations of anything in return.

Let’s face it, in a ‘Christian Singles’ world where we are given the idea that we are supposed to sit back and wait until God miraculously brings us our husband or wife in on a glittered unicorn with a bright flashing neon sign above their head that reads “Future Spouse =>” we tend to evaluate every man or woman that comes into our life as if we are looking for that SIGN. In reality all we are doing is throwing away opportunities for real authentic unconditional relationships.

I am not saying that we should not pursue “love”, we should, I believe that God wants that for us. What I am saying though, is let’s stop throwing away good friendships for the pursuit of it. Let’s get past our selfish nature and enjoy the people that God puts in our lives. If something more comes of it than great, but let us not be afraid to step back from that pursuit and look at that person through God’s eyes and love them as our brother or sister. We all have been made with different gifts and abilities, with different characters and personalities; let’s enjoy our differences and learn to live together per His requests, as one huge happy family.