As the song goes, love indeed is “Many A Splendid Thing”, especially during this month of February. With love in the air, we are bombarded with candied hearts carrying love messages and Cupids shooting love arrows!
Flowers, valentines, and chocolates all feed into many of the myths about love. Myths that project that love can be “wooed” with sweets or flowers and can sweep someone off their feet into your waiting arms!
But love is too important to leave to the commercial interests. In these February posts I want to explore some ideas, myths, and concepts about this all-important concept of love.
To begin, I’d like to examine one myth about God’s love.
I, like many of you, grew up in a religious family aspiring to God’s love for each of us. We learned that God is an all-loving Father.
At the same time learning that God is all loving, I also absorbed the concept that God the Almighty Father, handed down his wishes as commandments to be obeyed. I memorized these rules of conduct, tried to follow them, and if I failed I could go to confession to be absolved of my sins.
And in my childish religious immaturity, I came to the conclusion that somehow God’s love for me was CONDITIONAL. God, my heavenly Father, would love me if I followed his rules as my earthly father would. “…on earth as it is in heaven.” Right?
Wrong!
While my earthly father may have withdrawn his love and affection from me because I did not follow his wishes, my heavenly Father would not, does not, and never will rescind his love for me. God’s love for me is not contingent.
Let’s break this myth that has supported our false image of God’s love.
God ‘s love for us is not dependent on what we do or don’t do.
God’s love for us is unconditional.
Just think about that powerful concept for a minute.
We are so loved by a God who truly cares about us that nothing we do or fail to do will EVER change that. This may be a difficult concept to grasp when in the past one has had “conditions and consequences” as the basis for their choices.
Finally, as we celebrate the commercial idea of love this month of February, let’s truly rejoice, tossing the concept of God’s conditional love aside, and revel in the acceptance that the love God has for each of us is boundless!
