Love Unconditional

I have heard about the concept of “unconditional love” since my Primary days.  Unconditional love was the kind of love Jesus loved us with.  Heavenly Father did, too.  Remember this simple little song?

Jesus said love everyone,

Treat them kindly, too.

When your heart is filled with Love,

Others will Love you

My favorite reverent song of all time.  When I served as a Primary President, watching the littlest faces sing this song filled me to the top.  I loved Primary.  The simple messages, the small scriptures that spoke of love, learning about the warm soul hug from the Holy Ghost; I reveled in the safe nest created there.

Have you seen this in your email inbox?  I have received various versions of the same email.  Some professional asks a group of kids to define love.  Here are some of the best.

What is love?

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

“When you tell someone something bad about yourself and you’re scared they won’t love you anymore. But then you get surprised because not only do they still love you, they love you even more.”

Children understand love.  If only it could stay that simple.  Instead, something gets lost along the way.  Those little scriptures from the New Testament get overrun by the heavier dogma.  “Judge not, lest ye be judged” turns into “And after they have fallen asleep the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the enemy, even Satan, sitteth to reign—behold he soweth the tares; wherefore, the tares choke the wheat and drive the dchurch into the wilderness.”

Childhood ends and labels are born.  Sinner, saint, active, inactive, apostate, convert, faithful member, Mormon, Christian, nonmember…the list is endless.  Lists divide; labels plow unconditional love deep into the earth.  The conditions enter the picture; one after another they pile up.  This is the list of the things you must do, the choices that have to be made to stay in that Happy Place.

For some very good people, that list of conditions becomes the proverbial millstone around their necks.  Why?  Because they wish to sin?  Not at all.  Some of those conditions go beyond love.  Some require them to deny parts of themselves.  For these people, what they are asked to deny is as much a part of themselves as the heart that beats deep inside the chest.  

Inevitably, struggles and heartaches follow, not because they have turned from the love of the Lord, but because someone changed the rules.  The rules will bury those who exist outside of the circle.  Those caught up in the landslide are denied compassion and acceptance.  Once again, the lists divide the loveable from the unloved.

Intellectual, gay, lesbian, apostate, doubter…those unworthy of the conditional unconditional love.

The other day  I overheard a conversation about gays, genetics, and choice.  I was astonished at the opinion of one well-spoken young woman.  “I don’t care if there is a biological reason for people to be gay,” she said.  I prepared for a bigoted statement.  Instead, she followed with this, “to me, if you have to ask, you really don’t accept them.  If you did, it wouldn’t matter.”

Amen.

Everything I ever needed to know, I could have learned from a little kid.