Thankyou for your obviously well thought out response. It is very informative and it's certainly taken me a while to digest it. Myself, I am a man of fewer words, so I hope you won't be offended by a shorter reply.
Not at all
I believe the love you are describing is conditional love.
Maybe I believe that love means something different than you. I believe that love is a choice, not simply a fleeting emotion. Many, many people, in my opinion, wrongly equate love with feelings of strong sexual desire.
But part of the problem is likely in the English language itself. In the Greek, there are five different words for five different kinds of love.
Agape being the kind of love God has for his creation.
Philo being the way that you love a sibling or a dear friend.
Eros is the kind of sexual desire you might have. I can't remember the other two off-hand, but the point is that the English language has not equipped itself to defining different types of loves. Which, to me, is a bit perplexing given the obvious difference in the emotions that different kinds of love illicit in us.
quote:
I don't think you have to stop loving a person even when they wrong you. In Christian terms, you would still care for that person, be in prayer for that person, and wish them the best.
How does this help or support the abuser? What is the point in loving someone this way other than to feel good about yourself? If that's the truth then no problem.
You don't enable the abuser. By enabling them, you become a co-conspirator in your own misery. But enabling means that you are allowing them to treat you poorly because you have not stood up for yourself. However, that says nothing about loving the person, or not loving the person still.
For example: Sometimes we see a falling out occur between parents and their child who is a young adult. Suppose the son of the parents has been on all kinds of drugs, is living out a destructive lifestyle, and has become increasingly disrespectful to the rules of the parents household. At wits end, the parents say,
"We have loved you your whole life. We will continue to love you. And though this may be a hard lesson for you to learn, we are opting for some tough love with you. We will no longer enable you to ruin your life. You are of the age where we can't stop you from doing what it is you want to do. But you don't have a right to any of this in my household. You are always welcome back for support. But until you request that help from us, or get help for yourself, you may not live here."
Do the parents now "hate" their child? Or do they love him enough to instill some tough love? I know that this isn't beyond God. When I do wrong, he allows me to make my mistakes and only intervenes when I request him to. Does he not love me anymore because I have done wrong?
The only definition I can find in your post on unconditional love is :
quote:
The unconditional love means treating people the way you would have them treat you.
In my experience this doesn't work either. I practised this definition of unconditional love for 26yrs. I forgave and forgave for this is how I wished to be treated. I wanted forgiveness for my sins.
Treating people with the Golden Rule does not always make them come around. That much seems obvious because there would, in effect, be no more wars, strife, or enmity. The idea is to keep yourself pure. By staying pure, people take notice of it. You will make people hungry for the Lord by living a good life rather than telling people what to do and how to live.
None of us are perfect, are we?
Not a single one of us.
The forgiveness did not come back. My sins were used against me and I forgave that too. In truth, neither of us loved each other unconditionally. How could we? We did not understand each other.
I don't know the details of your relationship, so I can't fully comment on them. But in my own experience, couples tend to hold on to things that later become weapons. It shouldn't be, especially if someone has either been forgiven for it or if they have rectified the supposed deficiency.
There is no magic wand that is going to make people see things the way you see things every time. And you may fail 100 times. But that 1 time may make all the difference. Keep yourself pure, and by doing so, they will eventually hunger for it. We all hunger and thirst for it at some point.
It seems difficult for most people to accept that the love we experience is conditional love. We even love ourselves this way. It is what it is. Why deny it?
I believe once we know this and accept it as true, then we will find the true definition of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
We do put conditions on people to remain in a relationship. We all do that. The parameters are, don't lie to me, don't harm me, don't cheat on me, don't degrade me, etc, etc, or I will walk away. But this perhaps is the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. There is always room to love someone -- anyone. To treat them with basic respect and dignity. But it does not mean that we have to enable them, nor must we approve of their conduct.
“First dentistry was painless, then bicycles were chainless, and carriages were horseless, and many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, telegraphy was wireless, cigars were nicotineless, and coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, the putting green was weedless, the college boy was hatless, the proper diet -- fatless. New motor roads are dustless, the latest steel is rustless, our tennis courts are sodless, our new religion -- Godless” -Arthur Guiterman