I’ve recently had a revelation about how men receive love. It seems that for the most part, men are only loved when they are providing a service. I know men are supposed to be providers, and I guess even in our modern times of enlightened thinking, we still haven’t shaken this off. Considering that, your family may love you unconditionally, but I personally don’t believe in unconditional love inside the human experience. Even your family has conditions to loving you.
We have to understand that love on this earth is feeble and very conditional. The only love I’ve ever experienced that’s stood the test of time it the love of my Heavenly Father. Jesus is the only person that ever walked this earth that truly loved me. Even when I couldn’t love myself. People will display random acts of love toward me here-or-there, but it’s rarely anything with depth. What's typical is for individuals to get in my "good graces" because I can provide them something for later on down the road or in response to something I did for them in the past. Earthly love has such a cause-and-effect structure to it that once you realize that routine, it robs you of all the warm fuzzies around said act of love. Solomon said “with much wisdom, comes much sorrow…” I’m someone who intrinsically struggles to believe people love me, realizing the "service model" to earthly love only pours gasoline on that fire. It’s sad because even when I’ve felt the warm fuzzies of romantic love - those that happen during the infant stages of courtship, it still looks like it was just leading to the service structure of love. Maybe that’s the only way we as humans can experience love? In order to test this, to receive something, we need to receive love from someone that doesn’t owe us anything. That’s how Christ’s love resonates in my life. He loved me even when I was a rebellious sinner. Realizing that love changed my life, but only because I could see how important his service at the cross - on my behalf - was to my salvation. Another question: Do I feel Jesus’ love because he loved me, or because he provided the service of redemption to me? I don’t claim to have answers to all this, I just like asking the questions that get me thinking…
I honestly try to live my life as if there were no heaven or hell. So I’m not trying to escape hell or work toward heaven's blessing, but just enjoy the relationship with my Savior. I try to live from a place of appreciation for what Jesus has done for me. This is why I feel so worthless when I fail because disobedience has always been deeply connected to an immediate detachment from being loved. I can’t help but feel unloved or even unlovable when I sin and break Gods standards in my life. I think the enemy uses this against us constantly, and if he can convince us that God only loves us when we’re doing everything right, then we will naturally experience that inevitable detachment from God. Guilt and shame will always bare witness with our flesh. Guilt and shame are the creepy candy coating on worthlessness. Truly believing you have no value or purpose. But this does not reflect the character of God. It’s our dysfunctional thinking that tries to recreate God as petty and vindictive as we are. We are so stuck in the service-based love mindset that we struggle to believe God could love someone so rebellious and prideful as we are. This toxic thinking is imprinted on our psychological DNA from the trauma of our childhoods, abandonment of our romantic relationships as adults, and overall views formed by the service-based society we live in. Society is the first to say “if you're not providing a service, you don’t deserve to eat or have any form of happiness. Only the strong survive!” Therefore, knowing this, is it any wonder we struggle to trust God so much? It’s only through Bible study and prayer, that we keep our God-centered love compass correctly calibrated. God is not one of us, therefore he loves beyond anything we will ever be able to understand in this world and most likely the next. As for navigating love inside the human experience… I think we have to come to peace with what it is. Human love is conditional acceptance based on providing support to others that may or may not reciprocate that support. At times it’s wonderful, but risk of getting hurt or even victimized is just part of that paradigm here on Earth. Earthly love is impossible without this risk.
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