Why does unconditional love only have to be for your kids?

Question

A lot of people say the only people you can and should love unconditionally are your kids.

An argument you can make for this is that if you unconditionally love your kids, you can't unconditionally love anyone else, because you would stop loving them if they hurt your kids, making the love conditional for anyone but them.

I would argue against this in two ways. First, you can love somebody else who's not your kid as much as you'd love your own child, be it a niece or nephew, best friend, or even your boyfriend or girlfriend. You don't call your boyfriend or girlfriend "baby" for nothing.

Second, it's possible to have unconditional love for two people, even if one love is stronger than the other. For example, I love my mom. If I had kids, I'd love them more than I love her.

If my mom did something horrible to my kids, I would avoid her, but I'd still want what was best for her. There's no reason to lose her as well as my kid, even if things could never be the same.

Answer 1

Unconditional love is impossible, loving nothing else? That's beyond reason. You should love them a lot, but also make sure that with your love, you have to do what's best for them.

Answer 2

I totally agree with you in every respect. Love is large, expansive, and limitless. Love is loving, love does not compete with love.

We can love a person unconditionally and still have boundaries on their behaviour. If you had two kids and one of them was beating the other up you would intervene to stop it, and you would likely impose consequences on the bully. But you would do so from love, and you wouldn't love them less than the one who was being bullied. Same principle as with what you say about your mum being horrible to your kids (which I'm sure she wouldn't ).

It's actually possible to love everyone you meet unconditionally. There are only two obstacles, which stop most of us from actually doing so: "I want", and "you should". But Buddha managed it, so did Yogananda, Krishna, Sathya Sai Baba, Gandhi, Jesus and other great souls.

Answer 3

Geez - I never heard that there was a book of rules about love. Guess I missed that one.

Answer 4

To love "unconditionally" isn't applied just to ones children.
It applies to all people and even "things" such as dumb animals and our planet.
Its does not mean to love as TO GIVE ALL>
but to accept the faults that we all have.

AGAPE-God's type of love; the highest kind of love. AGAPE is "seeking the welfare or betterment of others even if there is not affection felt" (a paraphrase of Happiness Explained by Bob Rigdon). AGAPE love does not have the primary meaning of affection nor of coming from one's feelings.

Jesus displayed this AGAPE kind of love by going to the cross and dying even though He didn't feel like dying. He prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Mt. 26:39; Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:41-43; Jn. 18:11). Jesus sought the betterment of you and me, regardless of His feelings.

We, too, can AGAPE love our enemies even though we don't have a warm feeling of affection for them (Lk. 6:35). If they are hungry we can feed them; if they thirst we can give them a drink (Rom. 12:20-21). We can choose to seek the betterment and welfare of others regardless of how we feel.

The Apostle John said, "Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth" (1 Jn. 3:18). Jesus referred to His love for others (Jn. 13:34; 15:9,12), but He never directly told anyone, "I love you."

SUCH AS
JOHN
13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.


John 13:34-35

God is showing through the church that all the prejudices against God and man can be dissolved and overcome through Christ. "New" here implies freshness, rather than from the point of time. It is part of the different perspective one receives upon conversion. Doing what He says to do is new for a convert because it means operating from the perspective of cooperation rather than competition. It is a new thing for a convert to show love, which is the exercising or the application of God's Word.

we need to learn to "tolerate" and " accept" others.
We have faults as others do.

Our children are far from perfect as we are as parents and if we can "overlook" their imperfections (which resembles ourselves) we must overlook and accept those of people around us.
We accept faults in our mate and close friends--
why do we then try to correct all the other people's blemishes and errors that we perceive?

We get steamed when one points out our downside yet sometimes we are far to quick to point out faults in others.

I'm glad people like different foods and different sports..

If everybody loved fishing like me--- I couldn't get any of my boats out on the lakes....nor out to the gulf stream....