Friends,
I’d like to share a little email exchange I had with someone none of you know. She has a mailing list that sends out health tips. She sent me a short email about “unconditional love” and the following messages were exchanged. Tomorrow, I’ll share with you my final response. Take a few moments to consider how you might respond.
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Original Email from “Sally”
What is unconditional love?
Unconditional love is accepting someone as he or she is, without judgment. And it doesn't just "happen". It is a mountain we must climb, constantly fighting our compassion fatigue, restricting our desire to give up, drawing on inner-strengths we knew nothing of, and looking to the peak even when we've been knocked down to our hands and knees. This is unconditional love.
Who needs your unconditional love today? Find a way to put your judgments aside. Love people for who they are.
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Daniel’s Response
Why should we?
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Response from “Sally”
We should because God commands us to love!
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Daniel’s Response
Where does God command us to love in the way you have defined? That is, where has God commanded that we “accept someone as he is with out judgment”??
Thank you for your response.
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Response from “Sally”
Let’s see… judge not lest ye be judged… love your neighbor as yourself (not only if they are perfect)…. Agape love is God’s love for us which is unconditional… He loves us even when we aren’t behaving the way He wants us to. It’s His kindness that leads to repentance. Loving a person without judging them doesn’t mean you condone whatever they do that you disagree with, etc. But I believe it’s Christ’s love through us that will lead them to repentance. I heard once that judging someone deems them unworthy of God’s amazing grace.
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-Part 2-
Friends,
Below is my response to “Sally”. I hope you can sense my sincerity of love in it. It’s important that we stick to the Biblical definition of love in this age in which the memory of it has faded to a dim flicker, even in the churches. God bless.
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There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is the ways of death. - Proverbs 14:12
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Daniel’s Response
Your notions seem to be naïve, without really dealing with all the Biblical data. You’re original email (which went out to a lot of people, I assume) defined “Unconditional Love” as “accepting someone as he or she is, without judgment”. The Bible doesn’t give this definition of love. In fact, we have to respect every part of Scripture, and put it all together to define what love is.
Consider this statement by Jesus . . .
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." -Matthew 18:15-17
Jesus tells us there is a point to stop associating with a person who will not repent. Does this fall under your definition of “accepting” or is Jesus teaching us to not be loving here? Additionally, Paul tells us . . .
"But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler--not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?" -1 Corinthians 5:11-12
Does “not even to eat with such a one” fall under your definition of “accepting”? Paul tells us here to judge those in the church, but your definition of love says we are not to judge. How do you reconcile these teachings with the ones you loosely quoted? Are we to love our neighbor? Of course, but what does this love look like? That is the question. We should be careful to not use just any definition that might look good on a Hallmark card. Sometimes, Biblical love is tough. Sometimes Biblical love calls us to tell someone they are wrong. We judge their actions as wrong, and we warn them. Sometimes Biblical love calls us to totally reject someone, being unwilling to even eat with them. Is the love conditional? No, but the acceptance is. Our love is constant, and the object of that love is God, himself. This is the first commandment, and the second flows from it. Out of our love and respect of God, we obey His commands in how we treat other people. We pray for them when they persecute us. We bless them when they curse us. We do good to those that hate us. Why? Because our God, whom we love, told us to.
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As to the “judge not” passage you mentioned, Matthew Henry says some helpful things here . . .
We must not judge our brother, that is, we must not speak evil of him, so it is explained in Jam 4:11. We must not despise him, nor set him at nought, Rom 14:10. We must not judge rashly, nor pass such a judgment upon our brother as has no ground, but is only the product of our own jealousy and ill nature. We must not make the worst of people, nor infer such invidious things from their words and actions as they will not bear. We must not judge uncharitably, unmercifully, nor with a spirit of revenge, and a desire to do mischief. We must not judge of a man's state by a single act, nor of what he is in himself by what he is to us, because in our own cause we are apt to be partial.
The office of the judge is often to render a decision where there is not total clarity. We are to be careful not to do this with our neighbor . . . not to assume the worst of someone, and judge them to be guilty of things or motives we cannot be sure of. This is especially true when we are so unwilling to think the worst of ourselves, which makes us to be a hypocrite, which if you read the entire passage is the emphasis of Christ, for he says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.”
There are often times, however, when we are sure someone has done wrong and we do see clearly, and we are not to “accept” them in their wrong, but should rebuke them.
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Concerning “agape”, the word does not necessarily mean “unconditional love”. If it did, the translators should have translated it that way, and if they had, then we would have verses that read like this . . .
“Do not unconditionally love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone unconditionally loves the world, the unconditional love of the Father is not in him” – 1 John 2:15 [ULV] – [Unconditional Love Version]
--Your other comments depend heavily on what is even meant by “love” . . . for example, you say that God “loves us even when we aren’t behaving the way He wants us to”. If here we define “love” as “acts to do us good”, then I think the statement can only be meaningfully applied to God’s chosen people. [Romans 8:28]
However, even given that definition, what does this love sometimes look like? Was God loving Aaron when He burned his sons to death in Leviticus 10:2? I would say so, but the Hallmark company probably wouldn’t. God knew that the best good he could do for Aaron would be to protect His own Holiness…so that Aaron could see it and savor it forever.
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So, let me sum up. Biblical love has several facets that must be understood. Sometimes this love requires us to “reject” people on the basis of their behavior. To do this, we need to be able to “judge them” in some sense. Our love is rooted in God. We love Him, and out of that love we obey His commands including those that inform us how to treat others. When we obey these commands, we are being loving, by definition.
Given all this, I hope you will reconsider how you define love, and how you encourage others to love. Also, I hope you will not be offended that I took the time to share with you these thoughts, as I believe I am doing the very thing you asked me to do . . . that is . . . I believe I am showing you love.
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There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is the ways of death. - Proverbs 14:12
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Shortly after reading Unconditional Love, my wife decided to forward it on to some others on her e-mail contact list. On the same day, she received this response:
"Isn’t it interesting how a person can search the Bible and find verses to justify their actions and beliefs? Sally wants to love, so she finds the verses to justify love. Daniel wants to reject and judge, so he found the verses to justify those actions.
I’m in the same boat as Sally. Which boat are you in?"
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This is unfortunate & sad for many reasons. Knowing that this came from a church-going person, I deemed it appropriate to respond. Here is how I responded:
Isn’t it interesting how a person can search the Bible and find verses to justify their actions and beliefs?
[It certainly is! It happens all day, everyday. Unfortunately, this is just as prevalent within the professing Church as it is without it. Our haste in lifting a line of Scripture here and there to "strengthen" or "build" a case for this belief or that action happens, most times, to our peril. Each single line of Scripture is encased in an immediate context, and that immediate context fits into an even more large body of 66 books.
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 [ESV]
I have found that when one is unfamiliar with the larger context of Scripture (3/4 of those in our churches), and this one quotes a verse in order to make a point, the supposed point isn't usually made at all. What's worse, when one takes a verse out of context in order to make a case, being unfamiliar with other portions of Scripture, they run a great risk of misinterpreting Scripture in such a way that a perceived contradiction is raised within the Bible. What I mean by that is this - let's say that I have a certain view/conception of "love" and that I take that to the text and find a verse or two that contains that word. If I prematurely interpret said verse according to the preconception that I brought with me, then what happens further along down the road when I discover that my rendering of that verse runs directly contrary to something else that I find in Scripture? When it comes to this, is God's infallible revelation to be discarded due to the error found within (i.e., error meaning the supposed contradiction that has surfaced), or should I revisit my methodology of handling words, sentences, and paragraphs that were meant to be taken as a unified, cohesive whole? What say you?
"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." - 2 Timothy 2:15 [ESV]
Maybe the "contradiction" that has been raised in such an instance is not actually a contradiction after all, as careful study could prove. When one handles the Bible (again, meant to be taken as one unified, cohesive, flowing whole) so loosely & carelessly, the necessary implication is that that one doesn't have enough respect and reverence for God (seeing as how the Bible is His revelation . . . the portion of His mind that He has decided to reveal to us). How frightening is that? When folks unintentionally, yet out of carelessness and out of a failure to do the tough work of careful study, set up a perceived contradiction within the Bible, which does not contradict itself, the onlooking unbeliever is strengthened in his unbelief and the scoffing from the unbelieving scoffer will only continue (i.e., "I told you that the Bible contained error!!," etc.). Have we not any more respect for the Almighty than that? All of that said to say this - it is not only interesting how a person can search the Bible and find verses to justify their actions and beliefs, it is a self-centered, careless, dangerous, and sinful practice (i.e., sinful in that it constitutes "adding" to or subtracting" from the revelation that God has given us). If the Bible says that the barn is red, then the barn is red. If a person says that it is blue, or even pink, regardless of whether or not it will give warm fuzzies or sound neat on a hallmark card, then I must judge that as wrong. Context makes all the difference in the world.
"Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." - Jude 1:3 [ESV]
"Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you." - 2 Timothy 1:13-14 [ESV]]
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Sally wants to love, so she finds the verses to justify love.
[But Sally, sadly, never defined love from the Bible and never justified her belief from it in the least; she (if one would only carefully read her response) simply asserted an arbitrary definition of "unconditional love" . . .
Sally: "What is unconditional love? Unconditional love is accepting someone as he or she is, without judgment . . . This is unconditional love."
. . . only to string a few incomplete fragments of out-of-context Scripture together as her response, which was no response whatsoever. When pressed just a tiny bit, Sally could not answer . . .
Daniel: "Where does God command us to love in the way you have defined? That is, where has God commanded that we 'accept someone as he is with out judgment'??"
Sally: "Let’s see… judge not lest ye be judged… love your neighbor as yourself (not only if they are perfect)…. Agape love is God’s love for us which is unconditional… He loves us even when we aren’t behaving the way He wants us to. It’s His kindness that leads to repentance. Loving a person without judging them doesn’t mean you condone whatever they do that you disagree with, etc. But I believe it’s Christ’s love through us that will lead them to repentance. I heard once that judging someone deems them unworthy of God’s amazing grace."
Read carefully, for Sally never answered Daniel's simple request (a request certainly warranted due to the amount of folks that that this person is potentially leading astray), and by so doing, failed to provide ANY justification for her stance whatsoever. By the way, the last sentence is one of the most unbiblical things I have ever heard . . . none of us are unworthy of God's amazing grace (grace is by definition unmerited favor; we are not only unworthy of it, we are deserving of the opposite. What we are dealing with here is a person who has, over time, drifted from the harbor of Biblical truth, only to sail her boat directly into the harbor of political correctness, esp. relative to the world's view of judging another. Her views have more in common with man-centered popular culture than with anything Biblical.
To see what's wrong with the premise that it is wrong to judge, check out the following imaginary exchange:
Sally: "You shouldn't judge!"
Daniel: "Well, why not?"
Sally: "Why not . . . because judging is wrong."
Daniel: "If judging is wrong, then why have you just now 'judged' me as being wrong in my views on judging?"
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See the intellectual suicide that just took place? Let me ask, would you say that what the terrorists did on 9/11 is wrong? If so, you just judged. In fact, and more relative to your response, your actual response shows how you have already judged the Daniel/Sally exchange! If Matthew 7:1 teaches what Sally says it teaches, then Sally should not deem what the terrorists did on 9/11 as wrong, lest she fail to meet her own self-imposed standard of unconditional love. She worked herself quickly into a knot.]
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Daniel wants to reject and judge, so he found the verses to
justify those actions.
[Not at all. You accuse a person of eisegesis (reading something into the text that isn't there), when technically sound exegesis (working from Scripture to a position) has clearly occurred. If you believe that it has not, then the burden of proof now falls to your shoulders to provide the correct interpretation of the relevant passages covered in the exchange, which I hope you would be willing to take the time to do, considering the brevity with wich you treated a fine handling of Scripture. Take a week to respond, if need be! I truly mean that with all sincerity. When I read the above sentence of yours, I had to ask myself whether or not you actually even read the entire correspondence . . . it doesn't seem that way. If you did not, then I would encourage you to do so. Maybe you didn't read closely enough, in which case I would again recommend that you re-read the brief exchange. Did you take the time to consider the relevant texts, examining their respective contexts, or did you simply read and then side with Sally, who never gave a coherent Biblical argument? As a professing Believer, and as one that I would assume considers the Bible as her final and ultimate authority on matters of faith and practice, I would ask you to re-examine this correspondence in light of this. As Daniel so clearly pointed out . . .
Daniel: Are we to love our neighbor? Of course, but what does this love look like? That is the question. We should be careful to not use just any definition that might look good on a Hallmark card. Sometimes, Biblical love is tough. Sometimes Biblical love calls us to tell someone they are wrong. We judge their actions as wrong, and we warn them. Sometimes Biblical love calls us to totally reject someone, being unwilling to even eat with them. Is the love conditional? No, but the acceptance is.
Sometimes, if we are to take the Bible seriously, our loving of another might need to be expressed by rejecting that one in the hopes that they will repent, for it is the Bible (not hallmark) that defines love. I'd like to know your views on what the Bible says about church discipline, when you get a chance.]
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I’m in the same boat as Sally. Which boat are you in?
[If I take Scripture seriously at all, I must make the judgment that Sally's boat is sinking, having no Biblical basis whatsoever. To jump ship to, or to remain in, Sally's boat would be tantamount to drowning due to intellectual suicide. If you are in the same boat as Sally, then I will ask you what Daniel first asked Sally . . . Where does God command us to love in the way you have defined? That is, where has God commanded that we “accept someone as he is with out judgment”? I look forward to your response. Again, please take a week or two if need be, as I realize the hectic schedules that we all keep don't always provide for this sort of thing (at least, not for an immediate, detailed, thoughtful response). I look forward to hearing from you soon.
"A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." - Proverbs 18:2
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I pray that you will understand that, according to Biblical standards, I have shown love to you by writing this to you. I pray that this will be very fruitful in the long run. May God be glorified in all of this.]
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For further reading, please see:
http://www.vincentcheung.com/2006/12/27/speaking-the-truth-in-love/
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