Is unconditional love possible?

Not to get too controversial hopefully, but I feel like Western religion DOES NOT support unconditional love. There are MANY conditions for Yahweh and Allah's love, and I think this reflects why people who follow those religions do not have unconditional love, except at best for their own family, most of the time.

A loving society is needed. I wonder why to use unconditional love while love on itself does it all. Saying unconditional love makes me go out of my head. Love is all you need. also, there needs to be more junk around. Places are too beautifull it isn't natural anymore.

I agree that we are discussing two very different things. Love in the moment, and love eternal. A love that is subject to choice, and a love which is not malleable.

If something is given, it can be taken away -- therefore the only love that can be unconditional would seem to be a love which is inherent, or exists beyond our ability to create it. I concur with my friend Astyanax that "mother love", seemingly the closest thing to unconditional love that we can point to, is more a matter of instinct, and is breakable -- my own daughter's mother abandoned her at an early age, because her love of self trumped her love of child.

As a person of faith, the best explanation of unconditional love, from God's perspective, that I've read is a simple one:

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less.

(Sorry about the lack of a source -- I think that it came from a book called What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey, which I read a few years ago, but googling the quote finds a lot of people claiming to have made it.)

This is a deeply Protestant view -- it really gave me a lot to think about, but my Catholic wife was considerably less interested, because it doesn't hold the same meaning for a Catholic. It takes things a bit past "would you stop loving someone if they murdered everyone on Earth," as the thrust is more along the lines of "would it change, in any minute way, your feeling towards someone who..."

Unconditional is just that, nothing that happens has any effect on, not just the existence of love, but the amount of it. Love your spouse more today than the day you were introduced? Then your love is not unconditional, and that logically makes a lot of sense -- how could you love someone the most you ever could before you even met them?

So, I'd say that yes, unconditional love is possible, but not in the sense that we view love between people or things.

Your assumption is based on free will and consciousness. Without consciousness, without freewill, we are as we are, and things work as they should.

In other words, the instinct to kill your enemy is there, and its only because of free will that you can choose to disobey it and turn the other cheek. Without freewill, we would be as the animals are, in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Animals will fight and kill each other, but do they feel pain, or are they simply feeling pain because we are around to watch them? If we feel sorry for an animal, are we really just stealing its energy to feed our own self-pity? When we feed an animal, are we really depleting it of energy so we can feel good about ourselves for being "charitable" - such questions must be answered.


And finally, when we are turning the other cheek, are we only doing so because we have faith in God's vengeance?

reply to post by SystemResistor

Your assumption is based on free will and consciousness. Without consciousness, without freewill, we are as we are, and things work as they should.

I’m not sure who it is you’re replying to, but you’re right.

The thing is, however much one disbelieves in free will, one is obliged to think, talk and act as if one really has it. Besides, what does free will have to do with love? Does one freely will whom one falls in love with? Surely not?

If we are capable of unconditional love, we would have realised it by now. With the amount of nonsense going on in our world, it looks like we are not even close to actually believing in it. But its possible.

The ingrediants are sacrifice, mutual respect and universal awareness. Its all about the individual. I have been with people who are so selfless and are service oriented. Mother Teresa-isnt she an example of unconditional love? These days, you can make the headlines if you help someone and you are termed as a person 'making a difference'@: Is helping someone is like being different?:@

reply to post by radkrish

Mother Teresa-isnt she an example of unconditional love?

Not so much as she was a cause of huge amounts of unnecessary pain and suffering. She stole from the poor and gave the money to the Church. The Fanatic, Fraudulent Mother Teresa.

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

reply to post by Astyanax


Well, I personally wouldn't depend on an article to rate a person. We need to look all the aspects of one's life because people and articles may mislead.