What does it mean to experience and express God’s love? The answer to this question is not as easy as it may seem. Well-known Catholic author Richard Rohr notes that “most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change.” This means that most of us were taught in church that God’s love was conditional. If we changed to how God wanted us to be, then we would experience God’s love. If not, we could expect to experience God’s judgement. Oftentimes, the whole notion of God saving us was tied to this conditional understanding of God’s love. This conditional type of love is also what many of us as children experienced often from our parents. If we were well-behaved, our parents loved us as children. If not, we, as children, often found this experience of love taken away from us. What I have found interesting from the Diamond Approach is learning how our early childhood experiences when we were merged in some way with our parents shaped significantly our experiences of God. In other words, if we experienced lots of conditional love from our parents then, we will also experienced God’s love in a similar way throughout our life until we work through these difficult childhood experiences. In other words, not only are we taught that God’s love is often conditional in the church, we often caught this teaching about God’s conditional love from our childhood experiences. However, Richard Rohr also talks about another understanding of God’s love. Rather then God loving us when we change, Rohr notes that “God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change” (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461968-most-of-us-were-taught-that-god-would-love-us). This teaching of God’s love suggests that God’s love is unconditional, that this love is always present within reality, and that it is this experience of God’s love that causes us to yearn for change and makes spiritual transformation possible. The gospel writer John notes that “God sent Jesus not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3: 17). Often, we, as Christians, interpret this verse through the lens of God’s love being conditional, as Richard Rohr notes. Through people believing in the saving acts of Jesus, the church has traditionally taught that their sins are forgiven and they are no longer under God’s judgement. But if we see God’s love as unconditional love, that is, love that is always present in reality and seeking to be expressed and experienced in our lives, than how does Jesus saves us, as the gospel writer John indicates? By helping us see that this judgement trait that causes us to believe that God’s love is conditional lies within us, within the conditioned structures within the human soul or within human society, and not within God. When we review the ministry of Jesus, we see a human who practiced an unconditional love to people. While he confronted the fallen power and religious structures of his time, when it came to people, he sought to include them within God’s Kingdom. This is why Jesus preached the famous Sermon on the Mount where he taught, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Creator in heaven; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt. 5: 44-45). When love is unconditional, there is no judgement within it. Love is always present seeking to manifest in all who are open to receive and experience it….just as the sun is always shining warming the world despite there being clouds that keep certain parts of the world from experiencing directly the sunlight. This link between judgement and God’s love is really important to understand. One of the key teachings of the Diamond Approach is that the experience of unconditional love can’t arise when there is judgement present. Conditional love can coexist with judgement, which is always tentative, but not unconditional love that allows our soul and heart to settle, rest, and expand into the supportive holding experience that comes with this agape love. Now judgement is a dangerous dynamic for whatever we judge as bad or wrong or evil, we want to separate from ourselves. Everything we judge bad, we seek to create a barrier or wall between ourselves and it, but we believe that we will only experience peace if we get rid or annihilate that which we judge as evil. Many of the conflicts in the outside world are connected to this desire to get rid of the perceived enemy. But this judgement process also happens within us. Every part of ourselves that we judge as sinful or bad, we often bury, repress, and cut off from our experience. We are so accustomed to cutting off the parts we judge as negative that we are often not even aware that we are doing it. There is a humorous scene within the comedy movie, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" that captures in a very graphic way the cost of such repression. We see, Arthur, the White Knight blocked from crossing a bridge by a solitary guard known as the Black Knight. Because the Black Knight is unwilling to let him by, an absurd sword fight happens. Throughout the fight, the Black Knight begins losing parts of his body. Seeing what is happening, the White Knight pleads with the Black Knight, “you got to stop fighting.” But the Black Knight totally denies what is happening to him, “Oh, it is nothing. It is nothing but a scratch, a flesh wound. I am fine.” In the end, the Black Knight is just a stump. This notion of conditional love and judgement is quite dangerous and painful, both to ourselves but also to human society including God’s creation. How can we move from this place of being conditional lovers to being unconditional lovers? There is a famous Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) who wrote a book, “Revelations of Divine Love.” It is the first known book written by a woman in English in the Western World. She was known as a spiritual authority and people looked to her as their counsellor and advisor. Julian grew up in the time of the Black Plague in Europe. When she was six years old, ¾ of the people in her city died. The plague persisted for 3 years and everything in the city came to a standstill.(https:/thefreelancehistorywriter.com/2014/02/14/julian-of-norwich-mystic-theologian-and-anchoress/%20). Between 75 million to 200 million died within a 4 year span in the continent of Europe. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich). A plague-like disease returned when she was aged 19 and when she was thirty, she herself got sick with a fatal-type disease and came close to death many times. It was during this sickness that Julian had many visions that led to her writing her famous book on Divine Love. People believed the plague was sent by God as punishment for humanity’s sins. This was the common view of that time including the church. But Julian had a very different view of sin. She saw sin as both the cause of pain but also the doorway to blessing. She writes, “God showed that sin shall not be shame, but honour to man – for just as for every sin there is a corresponding pain in reality just so, for every sin, to the same soul is given a blessing by love” (http://www.melbourneanglican.org.au/NewsAndViews/TMA/Heroes%20of%20the%20Faith/Julian%20of%20Norwich%20-%20Heroes%20of%20the%20Faith%20-%20May%202012.pdf) For Julian, sin was not something to hide from or suppress or reject. Rather, it was something to honour, to acknowledge and welcome, and in doing so, this experience of sin led to an experience of God’s grace. A very different way of holding sin, not one of judgement but rather one of unconditional love, a love that is able to hold, without judgement, all experiences of life. It is from this theology of love that Julian penned the following words, “Sin is inevitable, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Within one of my Mennonite Church song books, we actually have a song based on these words of Julian of Norwich that is a favourite of mine. Let me share with you some questions to help you explore your experience of God's love:
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