A Toxic Kind of Love

A TOXIC KIND OF LOVE

“God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way.”

That never made me feel good.
I could never figure out why.

Now I can.

Because of a simple analogy.

What if I said to my daughter, “Casile, I love you just the way you are, but I love you too much to leave you that way”?

That should make it clear.

When your spirit is so constantly demoralized, threats sound like promises.

Hopefully Casile was raised in such a way that if I said to her, “I love you just the way you are, but I love you too much to leave you that way”, what she would actually hear is:

1. Dad’s love comes with conditions.
2. Dad’s lying because the second part negates the first.
3. Dad thinks there’s something wrong with me.
4. Dad thinks I need to change.
5. Dad thinks he’s better than I am.
6. Dad’s love means I have to work.
7. Dad thinks I’m a project and he needs to fix me.
8. Dad will love me more if I change according to his wishes.
9. Dad will withhold love unless I change.
10. Dad says things too good to be true, like he loves me just the way I am, because he wouldn’t love me to stay the way I am.

Can you see how hurtful, harmful and loveless it is?

But, like I said, in a culture where we believe that…

we are bad, sinners, broken, unworthy, and hopeless;
we need to change;
we need some kind of divine intervention to save us from who we are…

… then yes maybe this makes sense.

But this isn’t love.

This isn’t love.