Hard Love

            Something I hear a lot lately is; I believe that God is love and love wouldn’t allow people to go to hell. It is perhaps a comforting platitude, but I don’t think it is particularly accurate. The thing is that love, real love, is hard. Real love does the hard things of life. It is real love that drives a husband to get up in the middle of the night with a crying child to allow his wife to sleep. It is real love that leads a woman to choose to make healthy meals for her family over McDonalds even knowing they will complain about her efforts. It is real love that corrects and properly disciplines a child in error so that he or she will grow into a productive adult. It is real self-love that drives a person to get up to exercise over sleeping in to keep his or her body healthy. Real love is what took Jesus to the cross and held him there for our sakes, talk about hard things!

            Many have fallen into the delusion that love means allowing anyone to do whatever and not interfere with them because, it’s their life. We have lost sight of actions leading to consequences, in the scientific world it is called cause and effect. We have tumbled into the idea that we “deserve” things a certain way. After a hard day I deserve a large chocolate bar or a hearty alcoholic beverage. In and of themselves these are not “bad” things however, there are consequences to these things. It might be a hangover or intense guilt for overindulgence when one has tried so hard to get healthy. I would rephrase it to earning something which implies that we have set a goal and worked towards that goal, it is intentional and thought through. I suppose it is semantics in the choice of words however I find when we say we deserve something we are often attempting to justify it to ourselves. We don’t have that need to justify something when we have intentionally planned for it.

            When we truly love others or ourselves, we want to do what is best. When I was in nursing school, exams quite frequently instructed us to choose the “best” answer; meaning there were usually two answers of four that could be right, but one was just a bit better. I hated those questions! But that is what life is like, always trying to choose the best answer. Often it is overriding what is best right now for what is best down the road. Instant gratification is Satan’s playground. That isn’t to say all things we choose quickly are bad, rather that this is where Satan places that reputed banana peel for us to slip into deeper troubles. Maybe it is food, alcohol, drugs, anger, violence, theft or even debt; in the long run it will steal your joy in life.

            It is hard to stand your ground when your child is crying and pleading with you for something you know is not good for them but not immediately detrimental, nevertheless that is what love does. Childhood is the time in life when a person can make a mistake and learn from it before it becomes a larger, more dangerous mistake. It is also a time for child to learn about disappointment and loss in the environment of parental love to guide him through those feelings and learn coping strategies. Real love makes the hard choices now before they become harder choices later. And I believe that is what God does for us; He stands his ground. He allows us the free will to choose but he does not relieve us of the consequences of our choices. Real love gently corrects, guides, and persuades us to take the path that will lead to a successful future. My vision of a successful future is eternity with my God, surrounded by a love that is unfathomable here on earth.

            1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God but that He first loved us and sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  If we break apart that word atoning; it was Jesus sacrifice that allows us to be at one with God. That, my friends, is where I long to be, I hope you do too!