Unconditional Love

I feel like yesterday at church I learned something that I already knew. If that is confusing, what I mean is that I learned something that I always thought I knew, or something I always say or that I have always believed but I didn't really understand it until yesterday.

This is what I knew before: In The Family: A Proclamation to the World it says, "All human beings--male and female--are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny." In the Young Women Theme that I recited every Sunday as a teenager it says, "We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him." In the New Testament, Romans chapter 8, verses 35, 38-39, it says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakeness, or peril, or sword? For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And I love what Sheri Dew says: "You did not come to this world to earn your worth. You brought it with you."

So that is what I knew. But what I learned is that this love from God, this divine nature, this divine worth that we have been given, is not something determined AT ALL by us. God's love for us is not connected to our actions. It's not determined by how many people we serve, how many times we've been to prison, how many visits we make as visiting teachers, or how morally clean or unclean we are. Now, this might sound contradictory to what you've always believed, and at first I had a hard time reconciling it in my mind. But it is true. We always say that God loves you and wants you to be happy, He wants you to return to Him if you have strayed, He is like the Father in the story of the prodigal son, and loves us constantly no matter what. But do we really understand what that means?

He values us because we are His, not because we are righteous, or unrighteous. Not because we do good things or do bad things, and not because we have at all earned His love. He just loves us, unconditionally. That word really hit home yesterday. It doesn't matter how pretty, smart, talented, good, or spiritual I am, I can't make Him love me any more than He already does. And by the same token I can't make Him love me any less. To us humans, that kind of love seems a little incomprehensible, even if you're a parent. (But it's probably easier to understand if you're a parent.) Often seeking for the love and appreciation of your peers can seem like an impossibly frustrating task in this life. I get discouraged as I seek for approval from the world, in areas that the world deems important. But really all that matters is what God thinks of me. And even when we realize that, we are all so flawed in the way we view one another that we begin to skew the love of our perfect Father in Heaven.

What we often confuse with love is blessings and punishments. Because we have to suffer the consequences (good or bad) of our actions, we often think God is punishing us, and that He therefore doesn't love us. Not true. He has laws He must follow, and when He says something, it has to be fulfilled. So if He puts forth a law, and consequences for that law, He has to follow through. That's just how it is. But commandments and laws are not given to us to give us a way to EARN God's love. They are a way to make us happy. He loves us enough to show us exactly how to be happy, but He also loves us whether we decide to follow His advice or not. My actions determine my happiness, not my divine worth.

It's something I want to ponder some more, because I think it will make us change the way I view sin, repentance, my fellow imperfect humans, and many other things in life. But at any rate, it certainly was a message I needed to hear yesterday. Seeking to better myself, and become more like my Father in Heaven by keeping his commandments, is a good thing. But God won't love me any less if it takes me a while.