The Moral Unitarian Univeralist - Cardinal sin eleven: conditional love and indifference

Cardinal sin eleven: conditional love and indifference

The mission of UU A Way Of Life is to improve spiritual health, reduce immoral and sinful behavior, and work across systems for positive societal change. This article is another in  a series of articles on reducing immoral and sinful behavior. “Sinful” in the context of the UU A Way Of Life mission statement is defined as mistaken. The mission statement could read, “reducing immoral and mistaken behavior” but the mistakes being referred to are ones that cause spiritual injury and so we use the word “sinful.”.

The eleventh component of spiritual health is unconditional love, What is the opposite of unconditional love? It is conditional love and indifference. Conditional love is “I’ll love you if……………………” of “I’ll love you when……….” Another form of conditional love is indifference, avoidance, and rejection and abandonment.

If you ask people what is the opposite of love they most likely will tell you hate. But this is not true. What do love and hate have in common? You care about your relationship with the person sometimes passionately one way or the other. What is the opposite of caring? It is not caring. And so the opposite of love is indifference, avoidance, rejection, and abandonment. These four things:indifference, avoidance, rejection and abandonment are another form of separation. Separation from the Unconditional Love of the Oneness which is the original sin when we began to think that we had separated ourselves from the love of God. This “tiny mad idea” as A Course In Miracles names it, gave birth to the ego and all its idols, and led to the worship of false gods.

The cardinal sin, mistake, is made many times a day and thousands of times in a life time. Every time we think and treat someone as “the other” we have sinned. There is no other. We are all part of the Oneness. When we have abandoned, judged, and rejected the other we have harmed our Self. The navigational north star as we decide on our own conduct and our relations with others, is the question, “What would Love have me do?” Love would have us extend the unconditional love of the universe to others. As Peace Pilgrim said, “I look for the divine spark in every person and focus on that.”

In what do we put our faith: conditional love or unconditional love? Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is in this inherent worth and dignity of every person that we put our faith. It is the foundational belief of the Universalists that God loves all of God’s creation unconditionally and there is no hell other than that of our own making. We put our faith in Unconditional Love on earth as it is in heaven.