You know what they say - love is blind.
I don't think anyone can grow unless he's loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.
For every child who wants to be accepted wholly and loved unconditionally, there are others who simply want to be accepted for who they are, even if they receive only a fraction of love. I don't think one cancels out the other. I don't believe that there is any right or wrong... we simply coexist.
If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended - we could not make enough room inside the building.
Oh, it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I'd had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that's what it would be like. But it wasn't just smoking or skirting around Mother. It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.
Love is always open arms.
I think we should love sinners, and welcome them, and open our arms to them, and then we don't totally accept them into our fellowship as believers and as Christians until they have repented their sins and changed their way of living.
Actually my relationships with my girlfriends have become that much deeper and more profound, because I'm like, huh, yeah, I don't have to judge you, or you judge me. It was a lot of - I didn't want to be that crazy girlfriend.
