Further Thoughts on Unconditional Love

I welcome feedback on my drashes, whether you heard them in person, read them here, or heard them on my podcast site.  Even if you disagreed with something I said.  Perhaps especially if you disagreed with something I said!  If you disagreed, that means that I provoked you to think about the subject.  If you took that disagreement and used it as the basis of a respectful dispute, then you took the opportunity to think more deeply about it.

          Last Shabbat, I gave a drash about unconditional love.  I said the Torah teaches that God’s love for Israel is not unconditional.  But we already knew this,  If you follow the narrative flow of the Torah, you know that Israel’s behaviour often provokes God’s anger.  On at least one occasion, to the point where He suggests to Moses that the two find a new people to bless with the covenant.

          If God does not love us unconditionally – assuming that you accept the premise – how can we expect unconditional love from one another?  A child expects unconditional love from her mother, and it is really the calling of a mother – or of a father for that matter – to love their child unconditionally.  But when we grow up, we must not expect unconditional love.  Not from our spouse or partner.  Not from our friends.  Not from our extended families.  We cannot expect to take advantage of, abuse, or neglect those close to us over time, and still expect their love.  Oh, we should be forgiving towards one another.  We should be willing to tolerate one another’s imperfections, one another’s foibles.  But to say that one should love another endlessly, without regard for how that someone treats you in return, is quite unreasonable.  And in last week’s Torah portion, there was a strong message that we should consider love to be conditional.  That’s how an adult approaches love.

          A correspondent, a friend back in Colorado, challenged me by asking if perhaps God’s love is not conditional, but His favour is.  This friend, who is a very close and treasured friend, is a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.  And of course, in my drash I juxtaposed the very common – some would say essential – Christian view of God’s love as being unconditional, with the Torah’s teaching – at least as I saw in last week’s parashah – that perhaps God’s love is not quite so unconditional.  And perhaps in my presentation last week, I made it sound like something of a polemic against Christian teaching.  So my friend’s reaction made me go back over my words and realize that they did sound something like a polemic.

          But to respond to my friend’s feedback.  We all know that the English word ‘love’ has many different meanings.  Likewise the Hebrew אהב, (ahav) the word most often translated ‘love.’  In the first two verses of Ekev, two different words are used.  In the first case, in Deuteronomy 7.12, the noun translated ‘love’ is חסד, (chesed) which more often translates ‘compassion’ or ‘unbridled mercy.’  In the next verse, 7,13, the verb translated ‘love’ is from the root אהב.  But I think both are talking About the same thing, if in a different part of speech.  Neither is talking about the ‘love’ that is an emotional response to another person.  Both are talking about something that might perhaps better be translated, as my friend suggested, ‘favour.’  When we favour someone, then we desire to be in a deep relationship with them.  We want to bless them in any way that we can reasonably do so.  But we can have love, meaning regard or concern, ro someone even when they have done nother to deserve it…or perhaps have even behaved in a way that would make it difficult to love them in this way.  In that sense, there is not real disagreement between my friend and me.  We both understand that there are different kinds of ‘love,’ and that not all of them are necessarily conditional.  Thanks, Chad!

          The second piece of feedback came from someone who was present at Friday evening minyan at the Southport Community Centre where we celebrated Shabbat together.  He pointed out that a dog’s love for its human companion is unconditional.  And that’s why so many people put up with the hassle of having a dog: to get that unconditional love.

          And he was absolutely correct.  Surely, this unconditional love and loyalty that a dog gives, is the main appeal of having a dog.  There’s got to be some reward after walking the thing and picking up its poo!

          Although I have not owned a dog in a long time, I am a confirmed dog lover.  If you’ve ever had me over to your home and saw how I reacted to your dog, you know this.  And I agree that a dog’s love for its human companion is one of the truest, purest, and unconditional-ist loves around.  But to compare a dog’s love to, say, that of a spouse, is a bad comparison.  A love between two human beings, especially two adult human beings, is far more complex than the love of a dog for its human.  To think that a human companion should love us as unreservedly as a dog is unreasonable.  And to forsake a human companion in favour of a canine companion because of the difference in the way a human loves, is ludicrous.  And I might add, that the friend who pointed out to me the un-conditionality of a dog’s love made it clear that he was not suggesting a dog’s love as a substitute for a human’s love.  Rather, he was pointing out the appeal of dog ownership.  That it comes with the ‘fringe benefit’ of that unconditional love.  Which is something that, even though we should not expect it of one another, still tugs at the heartstrings.

          So no matter how strong the appeal of unconditional love might be, we should not expect it of one another.  What we should expect of those whom we love and who love us, is a degree of forbearance.  We can and should expect to be cut some slack at times by those who know our good and not-so-good moments.  That’s something far different from unconditional love.

          As always, thank you so much for your feedback and for caring enough to dialogue with me!  Shabbat shalom!