{"id":9218,"date":"2017-07-17T04:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T04:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/?p=9218"},"modified":"2018-01-23T17:12:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T17:12:28","slug":"love-is-indiscriminant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/soul-significance\/love-is-indiscriminant\/","title":{"rendered":"Love is… Indiscriminate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consider a rose.\u00a0 Can a rose choose who it will share its breath-taking beauty with?\u00a0 Can

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. ~ Mother Teresa<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> it withhold its captivating fragrance from bad people and share liberally with good people?\u00a0 The sun shines, and the rain falls on the saints and the sinners alike.<\/span><\/p>\n

Authentic love does not discriminate, like the beauty and fragrance of the rose, the sun,\u00a0and the rain – love is.\u00a0 God’s love is never in response to the performance – good or bad – of a person, for God is the source of love itself. \u00a0 Suggesting that God stop loving perfectly is like asking the rose to stop blooming or to withhold its fragrance.\u00a0 Love is not Gods response to our performance rather the very nature and character of God Himself.\u00a0 For God to stop loving is to ask God to stop being God.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this end, we too must learn to love like God, but it is not something that cannot be forced or faked.\u00a0 It’s not something we can grab hold of, control or own. Rather, it is something that we begin to grow into as we learn to let go.\u00a0 To let go of judging others as good or bad, for to do so only propagates the fruit the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil<\/em> – of self-righteousness.\u00a0 To let go of this is to learn to see others through the eyes of Jesus on the cross when He petitioned \u201cFather! Forgive them; they don\u2019t know what they are doing!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the idea that no one who \u201csins\u201d knows what they are doing really.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean what they do is any less unhealthy or somehow justified, but if they truly understood what it was they were doing – and that there is a better way – they would turn towards the better way.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is amazing how we discover an increased capacity for love as we let go of our desire to judge others. We cannot love well and judge others at the same time.\u00a0 This is a good first step towards Becoming Love.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn\u2019t put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams. Matthew 13:3-8, MSG<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Inspired and adapted from: The Way of Love. Anthony DeMello, S.J. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consider a rose.\u00a0 Can a rose choose who it will share its breath-taking beauty with?\u00a0 Can it withhold its captivating fragrance from bad people and share liberally with good people?\u00a0 The sun shines, and the rain falls on the saints and the sinners alike. Authentic love does not discriminate, like the beauty and fragrance of…","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[99,348,482,534],"class_list":["post-9218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soul-significance","tag-christian-formation","tag-love-paradigm","tag-spiritual-formation","tag-value-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}