When seeking support and advice, we have a right to expect that when we enter the search for truth those who counsel us must first understand what is the fundamental character of love.
On what basis is love defined? Can love be unconditional? Is love able (or should be able) to cover all actions and behaviors?
To a Christian, the definition of love comes from the Christian documents.
These documents form the rational basis whereby love can be defined.
Logically, love is moral or it cannot be love. The Christian documents support this foundational idea about love.
Within a wider sense of community, every human right (legal and social) is founded on the concept that love must be moral. Love, to be love, inherently has boundaries and standards.
To love your fellow-man, morally obligates you, to provide your fellow-man social and legal respect (protection) for his/her (God defined) RIGHTS.
Conditional love has liberating implications regarding the nature of Justice, itself -- within all its aspects; -- the nature of a just government, the nature of justice within the family and the nature of individual liberty.
The biblical definition of love is that it must be conditional. Christian love in its essence is grounded in and founded on a specific moral viewpoint - the nature of the biblical God.
A woman or man attempting to live under the false teaching that he/she must love his/her spouse unconditionally, has no moral basis by which to activate divorce for immorality as Jesus Christ taught (Matthew 19:9). A marriage with no conditions is not marriage.
A person attempting to live under the false concept that he/she must love unconditionally has no basis whereby he/she may leave a relationship because of physical and/or psychological abuse.
A child that has been taught that he/she must love unconditionally (teaches the child that he/she must obey his/her parents unconditionally) imprisons the child in evil.
The false idea that the child (or adult) must be taught to love unconditionally imprisons the child (or adult) in every environment, he/she finds him/herself. This teaching denies that a child (or adult) has any human rights. This teaching ultimately calls God a liar when He states that we each have a right to act out a protective self-interest.
Parents taught that they must love their children unconditionally have no moral basis to refuse to tolerate anything the adult child decides to do or any lifestyle the adult child determines to express.
This is in direct conflict with the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:32-39
Parents, sisters or brothers who are taught they must love unconditionally have lost the biblically stated right to remove themselves from an evil environment or reject any behavior that is not consistent with Bible teachings.
Any person who has accepted the false idea that he/ she must love others unconditionally is "morally" (if they are rationally consistent) forced to endure all kinds of evil within his/her personal world, work world or political world in the name of Christian "love."
- The Foundational Premise By Which Love Is Able To Be Defined - Rationally and Scripturally - Lies In The Nature Of Who God Is
THE BIBLE AND TRUTH
The Bible declares that its writings are grounded in truth. Inside its pages are the mind-gripping affirmations that the two most important commandments in all of life are:
"Thou shalt LOVE the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind . This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" Matthew 22:36-40.
What Is Love?
The Christian source for the definition of love is scripture (The Hebrew and Greek documents that make up the Bible).
The scriptures claim that God is Love.
ROMANS - CHAPTER 5 ~ Where We Find Ourselves in A Real World ~
"Therefore, just as through one man (Adam's choice against God) sin entered into the world, AND DEATH THROUGH SIN, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned____for until the Law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (Verses 12-14)
We Are Born Into A World That is Condemned Already
All human beings are born into a world already judged. All are under the penalty of death. Satan rules this world (see John 12:31)
"But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many." - Romans 5:15-16
Jesus said: "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." - John 16:33
What does it mean for Jesus to have said: "I have overcome the world"? How does, what Jesus did at the cross, impact us within the pain of "relationship" gone wrong?
Within the biblical documents under examination are the rational and moral foundations for human rights in every situation and in all relationships.
Our primary and foundational understanding of God's nature -- which is LOVE -- forms the reasoned basis for an understanding of what love is and what love cannot be.
Invitation To Visit ~ Interesting And Helpful Links Below ~
Feel Free To Copy Link to Bible Commentary site -copy Banner and site address - http://biblecommentary.2itb.com/index.html
TheChoiceMaker
"Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator, The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the criteria by which it perceives and measures values." J. Baxter - TheChoiceMaker