The Sin of
Unconditionally Loving Others and Yourself
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
The ideal love according to the world is only unconditional love. There is no,
“I love you because - " That because implies that you love something the person
can provide more than the person. If that thing vanishes the love for the person
will vanish too except that it was never really about the person in the first
place.
Unconditional love towards a person comes from knowing them enough to see their
good side. It has to evolve from loving a person because of their goodness
to loving them whether it is there or not. It develops over time and needs
work to maintain it.
A good understanding of unconditional love is that it is doing good without seeking anything back or wanting or needing anything back.
Love may be unconditional but relationships certainly are not. They involve rules whether spoken or unspoken. In fact being loved is a waste and good for nothing unless it bears fruit in a relationship. Unconditional love is just overrated by religion for its own ends. Some religions condemn sin for appearances and then manipulate members to do harm by telling them God loves them without having reasons and then they end up settling for that. To put being unconditionally loved first puts the need for deep relationship far down in the importance rankings.
Loving a person unconditionally while not trying to have a relationship or without being open to it is not really loving them. It is self-deception. It can be convincing but that does not change how fake it is.
Nobody treats the person they love unconditionally right
every day. You either love unconditionally or you do not. When it has to be
gradual and worked on what you have is love you tell yourself is unconditional
and love that you believe is unconditional. But is it really? Believing you love
unconditionally is not the same as loving unconditionally. And if you really
loved unconditionally you would know it not believe it.
Not all forms of conditional love are equally bad. It is better for people to
love you because you are fun than for them to love you because of your bank
balance. Unconditional love can never be proven. It does not seem to really
exist. If it does not exist or if we think it does not exist then we will learn
to be content if not happy with what is available.
To unconditionally love God you would need to be in a relationship with him that
has no worse a risk of delusion than a relationship with a close friend. But
believers admit that delusion is a risk because you can imagine God is blessing
you and guiding you and be wrong. Unconditional love of God is never man to man
so it is a delusion. We delude ourselves that we love others unconditionally so
the risk of deluding ourselves because of God should be greater.
ONLY GOD ALLOWED TO BE LOVED UNCONDITIONALLY
God is supposed to have made us because he loved us unconditionally and he also
looks after us because of that love.
That is the Christian teaching and the doctrine that you must return all the
love in you back to God without conditions goes with it. After all fair is fair!
Jesus said we must love God with all our hearts and minds and strength. The
neighbour is to be loved as yourself meaning it is a sin to love a person with all
your heart and mind and strength. The mere fact that you are told or ordered by
God not to give too much love to your neighbour indicates that God alone is to
be loved without conditions and without limit.
To say I must love others for God is to say I love them conditionally. I will
not love them if there is no God. I need to believe in God to treat them okay. I
need to accuse non-believers of being moral curses. If I say I love the sinner
and hate the sin, how can I really mean that? If I use God to subliminate my
hate for my neighbour and particularly my sinful neighbour, who do I think I am
trying to fool by claiming to love sinners? Do you see now the lethal problem
with saying that the love of God and people go together?
Loving others without a because would be a sign of humility. I would be
suspicious of people who claim to love others without conditions. If they say
there is no "because" they cannot want or expect you to believe them. It would
violate their humility.
People using drugs MDMA have said they found that they love others even
strangers unconditionally. If so then you need chemicals to love that way not
God. God is not God if chemicals give you the most important thing of all - the
power to love.
The neighbour is loved conditionally. To limit the love you allow your neighbour
to get from you is making is conditional. Loving a person because they do good
and not for themselves is conditional love. The reason is because of a limit.
You limit yourself to loving him for goodness and not for him. Unconditional
love for the neighbour is a sin. Despite her good works, the true follower of
Jesus is not a good person inside. Her love of humanity is conditional. "I give
God the best of my love because he is God and I refuse it to you because you are
not." In so far as she does not love the other person, she is indifferent to him
or wishes evil on him.
To love God totally while you love your neighbour not totally but as yourself
means your love for the neighbour is limited. You can't go beyond loving them as
yourself - no more and no less. The limit itself implies the love of neighbour
is conditional. "I will love you but not more than myself" is conditional love.
It says, "Even if I could love you more than me I refuse to. And I refuse to
even if you need it and it would cost me nothing."
To say God is to be loved most or first of all is to preach that we should give
God most of our unconditional love. But that is impossible. The love is
portioned out so it is conditional. The command to love God completely means
that we are to unconditionally love him with all our power.
Unconditional love for yourself means you will not give all your love to God.
You ask him to torment you if he needs to in order to help you love him properly
or better. The believer says we must consent to the troubles and torments that
come to us for God sends them. If we get them it is because God is using them
for a greater good and making us closer to him through them. The believer holds
that the more suffering one finds God in the better for the more one is
sacrificing and proving the love. If God does not send torments, the believer
reasons, "He can't for he has other considerations and it's a pity he can't."
If Christian leaders are honest, they will start to emphasise their doctrine
that unconditional love for another person is a sin for the only being deserving
of it is God. Christian teaching claims that if God is perfect goodness he loves
us unconditionally so then he deserves to receive perfect unconditional love in
return. But the Christian leaders know people will loathe the faith then. They
prefer only to propound the repulsive doctrine when they are asked.
Jesus said the main commandment was to love God as Lord totally - that is
without conditions attached. Total love and unconditional love mean the same
thing. Jesus commanded that we see the main commandment as the main and greatest
one.
God is loved not as love but as Lord. Jesus said that the commandment was about
the Lord our God who is one Lord. This was to stress that you can't have God as
main Lord and other Lords under him. Unconditional love of a God of love would
be hard. But unconditional love of God as an authority would be soul-destroying
and ensure a trip to the mental asylum. The answer of Christians is, "God's
authority is love." But authority is authority whether it is loving or not.
Authority may be based on love but that does not mean that authority is love.
The Christian answer contradicts the meaning of Jesus' commandment. The
Christian is to love God as authority just because he is authority. It is not
about his goodness or love.
It's dishonesty to pretend that love of God as Lord is the same as love of God as
friend.
Jesus does not say that loving ourselves or our neighbour must be unconditional.
He cannot say it for if he did, it would contradict the first commandment. If we
love others for the sake of God we do not love them unconditionally. The
condition is, we love if it pleases God. If it were his will not to love them we
wouldn't. If he does not exist, then we should not bother loving. This is
hypothetical but it is no less real. It is still their attitude.
Conditional love of self and others for the sake of God is as much conditional
love of self and others for the sake of money. It may not look like a vice but
it is thus it is a deadly vice. Better the devil who lets the true colours
shine!
LOVING GOD UNCONDITIONALLY IS EVIL
Why should we love God unconditionally?
Religion might say it is because he is perfect and loves you unconditionally.
But to love God unconditionally because he is perfect and loves you
unconditionally is a contradiction. That implies you would not love him if he
became imperfect and had an ulterior motive for loving you. But unconditional
love is loving regardless of what a person does or becomes. It is just loving
because you love. If you love God unconditionally you would love him if he sent
you to an eternity of extreme torment. He would have the right to do this in
order that you might try to love this way if love comes first. He would also
have the right because you imply consent to being sent to extreme eternal
torture.
Is unconditional love due to God because he is a person or three persons (as you
have it in Roman theology)? If that is so then God deserves no more
unconditional love than anybody else does for all are persons. He is certainly
not to be put first. Atheists would be happy enough if religion would simply
teach that. It would mean that all the harm and fanaticism that comes with
loving God would be undone.
Is it because he is God and not just a person? But that is not his doing and it
is not my father or mother or wife’s fault that they are not God and so they
should be loved like that instead. It makes no sense to say that I should love
God unconditionally and nobody else or that I should give most of my love to
God. Humans need it more.
The most important part about being a person is being conscious. Even when your
will and your memory is temporarily out of your consciousness you are still a
person. So consciousness is your principal component. Your will and your memory
are only things that consciousness focuses on so they are not essentials. So if
God is loved because he is a person that means he is loved because he is aware.
That means then he should not be loved any more than any other conscious being
should be. To say he should is no better than saying the pope should be adored
above all human beings. It’s a kind of racism without the skin colour element.
The only reason religion can use for saying we should love God unconditionally
is because God says so. That really means that we are slaves of God and we must
not make our own decisions but go with his decisions. “Because God says so,”
answers no questions. It’s not an answer at all. The theists are really saying
that it is because they say so for we have only the word of human beings for it
that God did say that. Even God has no right to make hard demands without giving
good reasons. Trust does not come out of thin air. You need reasons to trust. To
say you don’t is to say you should take silly risks. That would mean you can’t
trust yourself so how could you really trust anybody else when you think so
little of yourself?
It is not that we don’t trust him, it is that we don’t trust ourselves to serve
him without explanations. If looking for explanations denotes mistrust then
nobody trusts anybody else for we all need and expect them. The excuse offends
reason and condemns reason. God has always been useful for getting innocent
people to submit to clerics.
The only reason that interests people in loving God unconditionally is the
following, "God is so good that to love him unconditionally helps us want to be
like him. It helps us become good people." Such logic insults the atheists who
are eager to do good. It leads to conditional love for God. If you want to love
God unconditionally because you hope it will make you a happier and better
person that implies that if it does not work you will drop him. So you are only
kidding yourself that you want to love God without conditions attached.
When the unconditional love for God is unjustifiable which is the case, there is
no need for belief in God and a God would not have made us and certainly cannot
be good when he lets us suffer. Belief in God is evil and destroys belief in
right and wrong because it can’t give me a reason to love God unconditionally.
When I don’t have a reason I don’t have morals for morals and what is reasonable
and defensible go together.
A REDEFINITION
"I love you no matter what happens, bad or good" is said to express and
summarise unconditional love. It is not about you. It means that if something
terrible happens to the other person you will not turn your back. A God then who
cannot suffer or die then is a bad target for unconditional love. It is plainly
better to love even a criminal than God. If there is a choice then who do you
choose?
Unconditional love to most people means more than just loving them in good times
and bad and no matter what terrible things they do to other people. It means
loving the person no matter how terrible the things they do to YOU are.
Unconditional love that loves the other person only up to the point where they
hurt you very badly is not unconditional love. It is strange that it is okay to
love a dictatorial tyrant who is paradoxically very kind to you but who loves
seeing innocent people suffer but to withdraw love if he starts on you in a big
way. The underlying thought is that others do not matter as much as you do. That
is not unconditional love. It shows that mostly what passes for unconditional
love has a dark side. It can lead to you being gravely hurt to becoming the kind
of person who is okay with the evil person as long as it is other people who
suffer.
Loving a person in spite of how unlovable they are is said to be a choice but it is not. It struggles too much and if it were real love it would not be doing that.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE IS AN ARROGANT BOAST
When you claim to love another unconditionally or God unconditionally or the human race unconditionally then you are saying you are occupying a very high and wonderful pedestal. It is very easy to pretend or imagine you love anybody unconditionally so it should be easiest of all with God. Is that why the God idea is so popular?
Who is the biggest hypocrite?
Person A who loves God, another and all people without reasons or conditions.
Person B who loves another and all people without reasons or conditions.
Person C who loves another person.
It is obvious that it is Person A.
CONCLUSION
Conditional love is given only if x y and z is demanded and done and if they are
not then it is withdrawn leaving either hate or indifference. Unconditional love
for man is conditional love in denial. Unconditional love especially for God is
a pack of self-delusionary lies. It is dangerous to counterfeit unconditional
love. People wonder why their unconditional love is so toxic, fails so often and
is unsatisfying. That is because it is not real. We see why the unconditional
love displayed by Christians simmers and finally explodes with terrible results
for innocent people. The love fuels the evil and thus is not truly love.