Introduction- Unconditional Love or Unconditional Affirmation?
It is increasingly becoming popular in culture to think that unconditional affirmation of one's thoughts about themselves (identity), whether objectively true or not, is a necessary feature of unconditional love. The idea is that if you claim to unconditionally love someone, you will always affirm their identity and celebrate every action and behavior that reinforces their identity. If you do not affirm and celebrate, then it is impossible for you to unconditionally love that person.
This cultural idea, though, is increasingly showing its intolerance of even the slightest disagreement, even among those who generally agree on a modern view of tolerance. Those who have championed this view for years are now finding themselves splitting from each other along the lines of sexual identity- not just what they prefer but what they are.
I believe that this newer cultural split and even the foundations of the modern tolerance movement are enabled due to a conflation between the meanings of "love" and "affirmation." Unless and until our culture distinguishes between them again, the modern tolerance movement will continue to splinter along ideological lines until every individual stands alone with neither the love nor affirmation of another.
What is love?
Traditionally, the concept of "love" has been described using the words of the famous biblical passage in 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Notice the characteristics of "keeps no record of wrongs," "does not delight in evil," and "rejoices with the truth." When these are taken together and not isolated from one another, they inform us that love recognizes that people can (and do) do wrong things. Love strives to correct wrong behavior, but it does not hold past failures against the person. "Love is patient." It is patient with the person who is authentically struggling with a desire or behavior that is wrong in their life. Love does not affirm a person's false view of themselves nor does it affirm every desire or behavior they exhibit. A person who exhibits true love distinguishes between what is true and false and what between what is right and wrong, and they use those distinctions to gently and patiently lead the person they love toward what is true and right.
When we crave unconditional love, we crave not just someone who will be there through thick and thin, but who will always want the best for us and tell us when we are on the wrong path, even if that is not what we want to hear. If we crave unconditional love, we crave gentle, patient correction.
What Is Affirmation?
Affirmation, though, does not have such goals. While love recognizes dangerous behaviors and necessarily warns against them and protects from them, affirmation ignores dangerous behaviors and encourages or even celebrates them. When we crave unconditional affirmation, we crave people to tell us that everything we are doing, no matter how dangerous or antithetical to our purposes our actions and behavior may be, are good.
When we crave unconditional affirmation, we do not want protection, warning, or even caution. We do not desire to have someone else looking out for us, who may merely suggest an alternative direction. We desire full ignorance of even the possibility of an alternative to our behavior or lifestyle. It is fully autonomous and self-centered (the polar opposite of love) in that we think we can navigate this world and its dangers safely using only our feelings and desires in the present moment. When we crave unconditional affirmation, the only purpose we have for others is to affirm us at every turn we make and every step we take, even if they cheer us right off the edge of a cliff. And when we show unconditional affirmation to others, we do so knowingly or unknowingly with delight.
Which One?
In today's culture, many people confuse unconditional affirmation for unconditional love. They look for and value unconditional affirmation but call it "unconditional love." They are not looking for someone to walk with them and warn them of the fun dangers of life- in fact, some people surround themselves with those who are the fun dangers of life. They deceive themselves into thinking that these people provide unconditional love to them, when what these people really provide is unconditional affirmation. These people, unconditionally, will not try to protect from harm, will not attempt to warn of dangers, and will not support in behavioral struggles, for there are no behavioral struggles in a world of unconditional affirmation. These people turn a blind eye to the safety and ultimate purpose of the person they are unconditionally affirming.
This relationship is so far from true love that it borders on true hate. It encourages, if not ensures, the destruction of the person who has deceived themselves into euphemistically labeling the affirmation that they crave as "love." In word, it seems good; but in deed, it is devastating. That devastation comes from calling something we crave "love" when an essential component of true love is missing: concern for the person's future well-being.
Interestingly enough, unconditional affirmation begins to show its intolerance. The intolerance for a person's future well-being is accepted and even demanded because tolerance for a person's feelings and pleasure in the current moment are the most important virtue.
Tolerance Of Unconditional Love and Unconditional Affirmation
Unconditional love places the value of tolerance on the future well-being and not necessarily on the current moment. This, of course, requires true tolerance and not the counterfeit that we are subjected to today.
In order for tolerance to exist, differences must exist. Tolerance is the recognition and allowance of differences even though one may not agree and, much less, encourage or celebrate the alternatives. Tolerance recognizes that people do have free will and can choose destructive beliefs and behaviors despite warnings of such implications (love). Tolerance recognizes disagreements with one another yet allows us to still live peaceably together.
To tolerate someone is not possible unless there is something to tolerate: a disagreement. The modern cultural sense of tolerance, though, demands full agreement with and celebration in the current moment's desires and behaviors of every individual. As a result modern culture has conflated "tolerance" with "agreement" and "celebration." Modern "tolerance" is not really tolerance because there is nothing that we are allowed to disagree with in order to tolerate.
True tolerance, because it exists where disagreements exist and because it promotes peaceful coexistence, is where love can thrive. Love also recognizes disagreements and encourages peaceful coexistence, but it allows for gentle and encouraging correction of the current moment in favor of a better future. From the big picture perspective, true tolerance and true love ensure the future existence of our species despite the wrong and destructive choices of a group of individuals.
The lack of disagreement or lack of communication of disagreement is intolerant because tolerance can only exist where multiple views are present and/or communicated. Where disagreements are not permitted to exist, tolerance is also not permitted to exist by logical necessity. Unconditional affirmation does not allow for disagreements or multiple views, thus unconditional affirmation is actually intolerant.
If multiple views are not permitted, then the held view cannot be wrong, thus it cannot be corrected. If correction, when a view is wrong, cannot exist, then the intolerance of unconditional affirmation goes to the next level of being unloving. Many people think that being unconditionally affirming is the loving way to be, but in reality it is not loving at all. At best, if we are unaware of the wrongness of a view, we are unloving by ignorance; but if we are aware of the wrongness of a view and refuse to warn against it, we are hateful by choice.
We should not be cravers of unconditional affirmation
No one should crave unconditional affirmation. Unconditional affirmation merely addresses immediate desires and lusts, and it never considers future implications and consequences of fulfilling such desires and lusts. Craving unconditional affirmation reduces you to a hedonistic chunk of meat and bones. It denies you any and all long-term, ultimate, or intrinsic value or purpose. Unconditional affirmation defends your sensibilities from all evidence of future consequences, and it does so repeatedly until you ultimately become a desperate peddler of your humanity in exchange for a fleeting moment of pleasure.
Jesus Christ vs. Unconditional Affirmation
Christ showed us what it means to unconditionally love. He explicitly identified what is false and wrong in peoples' lives and encouraged them to turn away from it, no matter how much they desired it at the moment. But He did not just make these claims and offer them as differing opinions. He offered them as truth- features of reality, that if rejected, have real consequences. Here are the claims He made:
- Christ claimed to be the all-loving and all-powerful Creator of the universe
- He claimed to know that every person is sinful
- He claimed to be the only way to spend eternity with God
- He claimed that all His claims about reality would be confirmed by His overcoming something that no person had ever overcome before: death.
Christ' bodily resurrection from the dead demonstrates the truth of his claims about unconditional love and the future good we will experience by rejecting the feelings of the moment and accepting His sacrifice for us.
If we are willing to allow reality to guide our decision and not our feelings, then we can investigate the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has made some big claims and promises, and He has given us the evidence to believe that they are true. The question is whether we are willing to allow evidence from reality or our desires for momentary pleasure to guide our decisions.
Conclusion
When we surrender our humanity for the sake of the moment, we deny the value of humanity and even ourselves. Unconditional love recognizes the intrinsic value of the individual. If we go back to the source of the concept of love, the Bible, we see that we are created in the Image of God, which gives us intrinsic value and means that God has created us for so much more than just a destructive, fleeting moment of pleasure. He has created us for pleasure that goes beyond the current moment and even beyond this life where we often chase future moments of pleasure and call it "future-thinking". God's plan for us is not limited to the moment nor even to the few decades we have on this earth. God's plan for us is to come into a loving relationship with Him, the all-loving Creator. But for that to happen, we must deny ourselves (our destructive and sinful desires and behaviors of the moment), take up our cross (be prepared to crave and accept unconditional love), and follow Christ (accept His atoning sacrifice for our sins and unconditionally love, not affirm, others).
To investigate more on unconditional love and Jesus' resurrection, I highly recommend these books: