Unconditional

“To be loved is to be changed”

I saw a cartoon recently that showed a bunch of animals walking and observing all the humans closed off in their home habitats. The caption under the picture said, “so this is what it feels like to be in a zoo.” Like many others, I kinda feel that caged up feeling. For two months, I have felt the drain as the fears and worries of this pandemic grab and claw away my sense of freedom. I’ve learned that being caged up is not fun; it’s now how I want to live. 

I want to fly. I want to stretch and soar. I want to run and go and move. I know how silly it sounds, but I also know I’m not alone. There is a deep-down sense in all of us that longs for freedom – that longs for life. I talk and interact with folks all the time and the brokenness of being caged up is written all over their faces and throughout their behaviors. We are built with a desire for something “more.”

A couple months ago, we decided that our refrigerator needed to be replaced, so we began the process of researching and purchasing the one we wanted. The day it arrived, we couldn’t help but be awed by it as it stood so shiny and new. We wiped the handles down profusely after each time we opened the doors. We remarked at how crisp the water was and how lovely the ice cubes were. 

Then a week went by and we no longer paused to take in its brilliance as we walked by. It’s still the same awesome fridge, but we don’t wipe it down quite as much, and we’ve already started flinging the doors shut. In another week or so, the “same-as-cash-payments” will begin. And in no time, we will go from anticipating its arrival, to working to pay it off, and finally, it will just be an appliance doing its job. 

This is the religion of consumption. We “need” something but those needs often end up consuming us. We consume clothes or tech or bottles of wine or fancy cars, all with the promise of meeting our needs. But in no time, the things we were promised will make us happy end up possessing us – controlling us – binding us. The religion of consuming promises the “more” but it rarely lives up to the bargain. It often leaves us emptier. It ends up caging us and clipping our wings. 

Clipped wings and cages create huge regrets, and regrets open us up to see just how needy we are. Henri Nouwen admits “when I think about how I live my life, and how others live their lives, I am amazed by how enormously needy I am.” Needs of affection, attention, affirmation, praise, influence, power, and success become the drive for much of my consumption. He continues “needs lead to wounds and the wounds create new needs, and on and on it goes.” 

I hate when I read a book and it dials in and touches a nerve. 

But I love it when I’m also given the way out of the cage. 

When I live out of my wounded-ness, my goal becomes to satisfy my needs on my own. In that wounded-ness, I forget that the most important need I have has already been filled. The greatest need any of us have is to be loved and accepted. Every other attempt is a way to fill an un-fillable hole. I have been given a gift, and yet, like a bird sitting in her cage with the door open, I don’t access it.

In Hebrew, the gift is called the “hesed” of God. Hesed is almost untranslatable – it’s too big of an idea. We often say it is the loving-kindness and mercy from God that embraces us as we are. In Greek, the words is agape – the highest form of love. Agape is the best intention for another regardless of our feelings. In the ancient world, agape was merely philosophical; that is until the Jesus-people started turning up with a God who unconditionally loved all people. 

According to Nouwen, it’s the unconditional love that we all crave and we need it. When unconditional love is held back, we ended up wounded. And from wounded-ness, we seek ways to fill the hole left with anything we can find. In the search, we end up feeling empty and disappointed; still longing to fly but stuck sitting in a cage. 

Yet, this is exactly what Jesus came to invite us into – this is the gift! He came showing us the God who is Love. It’s not good enough, as my old professor Ben Witherington says, to talk about a loving God. Instead, we have to start with this one phenomenal reality-bending statement – this isn’t just a loving God, this God is LOVE.  Most of the world’s gods are anything but loving. Other gods are petty and demanding. Other gods are transactional in their love – we give and we get, but the God who is LOVE sees us exactly as we are and still loves us.

This God sees the messes we make – the wounds we carry – and desires for us to be made whole. Is that not remarkable?!? This God of Love knows our deepest need and knows we can’t be whole and healed until we experience the Love only he gives. This love invites us to be found in his Love.

So did the Beatles get it right? Is it true that “all we need is love?” I guess it depends on the love we’re talking bout. Hesed and Agape are completely different from all other loves. On their own, the other loves are consuming and needy. Unconditional agape-hesed love never leaves someone the same – it transforms and fills and frees rather than creates a list of mandatory steps that repay. 

God’s Love is unconditional; accepting us just as we are and inviting us to never be the same. God’s love removes the stigma of our wounds and replaces our loss with belonging. God’s Love brings us out of the cage and invites us to soar. God’s Love always brings abundant life. God’s love doesn’t invite us to consume stuff but consumes us in the brilliant purity of holiness. 

If you are wounded right now – if you are racing to consume – if you are looking for love but only finding that you are being caged, then can I invite you to take a small second and hear this truth. You were made for more. The God who is LOVE loves you – no strings attached. You don’t have to clean up for it to be given. It is there and it is yours. But I warn you, God’s love will transform you. It will change you because that is its power – it will bring out the best in you and it will challenge your thoughts and beliefs. It will reveal the places where healing is needed – dark places, scary places. It will also revive, and fill and renew you unlike any other counterfeit. 

I hope you will hear these words today – you are loved, unconditionally. I hope if you have heard those words before, you might see what cheap knock-offs of love you might have returned too. I hope you’ll see the transformation this week and that you will have wounds healed. I hope we will get lost in the love of the One who is LOVE and that as we do the world will hear us say “Hey, you are loved too!”

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