Love is very healing
Unconditional love is a conundrum. (i.e., How can we love someone who hurts others, especially dogs.)
I think we cannot love anyone who’s hurtful without understanding why.
Mental illness pervades humans in varying degrees.
A means to understand and help mental illness in people is to research the “why” someone is ill and counter the “why” with rehabilitating therapy. Easier said than done. The most important part of therapy is discipline. Jail works for some. Love works for some. The ability to forgive and a repentant heart works for everyone.
Dogs show us how to behave in a positive manner when they’ve been treated in a positive disciplined manner. Same holds true for people.
Many people are not treated well, especially as children, and grow up vengeful. Some grow up hunkering down in fear until they either explode or seek help.
People are much more difficult to relate with than dogs because of pervasive human mental health issues. Every single one of us is subject to some form of mental illness at some point in our lives. God hears us and helps us. God communicates with us through everyone and everything in Creation. To know this, we have to be able to judge well in seeking help and then be able to listen. Again, easier said than done… for many.
Unconditional love toward fellow humans is very difficult, sacrificial, and uncommon. Conditional love is much more prevalent. Those with mental disorders have greater challenges to overcome for “unconditional” love than a well treated and mentally healthy individual.
Hurt is passed down the tree of life until something good makes enough of a positive change to help towards healing the hurt.
Jesus gave us a positive behavioral example. The best we can do is TRY to follow… but we WILL fall short of perfect. It’s delusional to think we, or anyone else, can always be perfect. Delusion is a symptom of mental illness. So is guilt. So is self abuse. So is victimization.
Connecting to God with humility, has to be Love unconditional in order to have a good relationship with Him. Maybe that’s what Jesus was showing us; how we should relate to the Father of creation.
In relating to other people, we usually include Satan in the mix, because he can influence us. We need God’s Love armor and example of forgiveness to help us deal with Satan’s influencing.
Unconditional love is easy to say but not easy to practice when it comes to our fellow humans. God and dogs are an easy exception. Dogs reflect their owners. Their owners reflect their relationship with God. God reflects in all of creation. When we love God unconditionally, we’re loving everyone and everything. Including an ant. Or another human… even one who’s very different from ourselves.
But we don’t and shouldn’t love evil behavior. Jesus did a fair amount of casting out demons from people.
We can work towards unconditional love if we use common sense and common examples to target.
We can take a lesson of unconditional love from our dogs who greet us gleefully, even after we’ve abandoned them for an unspecified amount of time to run an errand.
Glee is very contagious
