Unconditional Love

     One of my college professors mentioned recently that unconditional love does not exist. It took me a minute to realize what she was saying, and then another minute for the fact to sink in and although it was surprising to me, everyone else in the classroom was in complete uproar within a matter of seconds. 
     The professor says that from a sociological perspective, unconditional love does not exist because no matter what you do, or how you look at love or whatever it encompasses, there will always and as she said, "[she] means ALWAYS be a condition". She used her daughter Dori as an example. She spoke about how on a particular morning Dori did not want to get ready for school. She told Dori once to get dressed and the four year old said no as she kept on playing with her dolls as little girls typically do. Awhile later Dr. Clark-Miller walked by again and told Dori to get dressed and once again Dori gave a firm no and did what she does best, but by the third time, when her mother walked past her bedroom and told her daughter to hurry up and get dressed for school the little girl put her hands on her hips and told her mother that "No! [She will] not get ready!" 
     The professor explained that as much as she loves her daughter, at that specific moment, her love for her was bound by certain conditions. That even though she would do practically anything for her children, her role as a mother is to teach them right from wrong and that in order to do that properly there are strong boundaries that need to be set. 
     Needless to say very few students agreed with her that day, but I have to admit that it was a great topic for discussion and it has certainly kept me thinking these past few days. 
     From a sociological perspective, I can agree with my professor. Love has conditions but is it fair to say that because some types of love has conditions that ALL love does? Is there no form of unconditional love? What about God? Are there conditions on the love that God has for us?
     Certainly God wants us all in His kingdom, but sometimes that's just not the case. How good do we have to be to make it to Heaven? How many times can we mess up before it's too late? I'd like to think that unconditional love exists depending on the definition. 
     In other words, sure... a parent may not always be able to love without condition but their love is unconditionally there for that child. I think that conditions to the conditions placed on unconditional love will absolutely always exist.
     I'm no sociologist and I'm certainly no God, but if I were to lose hope in the love that God has for me I'd be losing hope in humanity altogether and I'm simply too young for that. We'll save the crazy cat-lady stuff for years later, I have to figure out if I'm ever going to be married first! 

"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

~John 16:33

P.S. We've also been looking at statistics in that class and I simply cannot believe that facts that I am seeing that I never knew about before. Open your eyes and look around people, single parents stigma vs. married couples (whole 'nother blog post!), poverty threshold, etc. It's kind of scary when you look at the numbers.