Candace

Talmadge

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December 10, 2007

The Best Christmas Gift: Unconditional Love

The holidays are upon us. Not just Christmas, but Bodhi Day, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Long Night, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Yule and others, too.

No, this isn’t a salvo in some imaginary war on Christmas. It is an attempt to recognize that there are other holidays this time of year, even in a nation where a solid majority of more than 70 percent identifies as Christian.

Let us speak of Christmas, then. December 25 marks the birthday of a man whom Christians refer to as the Prince of Peace. In that spirit are some seasonal questions and thoughts for all of us to ponder.

When will we bless the peacemakers as much as we do the warriors?

When will we order up a national day of parades and recognition for diplomacy veterans the way we do now for war veterans?

When will those whose hands wield the ploughshare be as revered as those whose hands wield the sword?

When will we live our understanding that might does not make right?

When will those who turn the other cheek be admired as principled instead of being scorned as wimps?

When will those who strive to love their neighbors as themselves be emulated instead of derided as “politically correct”?

When will we stop regarding love as just another four-letter word?

When will we actually practice compassion in our national policies instead of reserving the word solely for political slogans?

When will our national tax policies do far more to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

When we will stop demanding a pound of flesh whenever we feel the slightest bit wronged?

When will we honor God’s creation – planet Earth and the space surrounding it – as much as we do making a profit?

When will we recognize that most illegal aliens are, in fact, economic refugees and show them mercy instead of ugliness?

The values of this world – wealth, status, power and dominance – are most definitely not the values Jesus espoused or lived in the four books collectively known as the Gospels.

But notice something critical and often overlooked or ignored. Jesus did not force anyone to adopt his values, even when he was overcome with disgust and threw the moneylenders out of the Temple.

Instead, the longhaired and bearded blue-collar worker (carpenter) from Nazareth challenged his followers and audiences to examine their own beliefs and values. He preached by example as well as by word, living his precepts in his daily actions, showing those of his time the possibilities of faith.

The most important message that Jesus conveyed was simply that God was no longer a judgmental deity, ready to damn and/or wreak havoc upon those who broke the tiniest of thousands of rules of conduct and belief.

Jesus instead made clear that God is unconditional love, that all of us merit such love, and that the sole challenge for us was and remains to learn how to love others and ourselves in this same unlimited manner.

Our fears and our judgments lie to us when they whisper in our ears that we cannot have this kind of love for ourselves or give it to others – that such love is impossible or impractical with the world the way it is.

Yet unconditional love is the simplest kind of love there is – and the best Christmas/holiday gift we could ever give to anyone, starting with ourselves.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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