#unconditional acceptance

God's Unconditional Love in Your Darkest Moments

Have you ever felt so broken that you wondered if God could still love someone like you?

There are moments in life when shame whispers so loudly that we can barely hear anything else. Maybe it's after a moral failure that disappointed everyone, including yourself. Perhaps it's during a season of depression when you feel like a burden to everyone around you. Or it could be in the aftermath of a decision that hurt people you love. In these dark moments, the enemy loves to convince us that we've crossed a line, gone too far, or become too damaged for God's love to reach us.

But here's the truth that shame doesn't want you to know: there is no depth of darkness that God's love cannot penetrate. Romans 8:38-39 declares with absolute certainty: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

King David understood this personally. After committing adultery with Bathsheba and orchestrating her husband's murder, David felt the crushing weight of his sin. In Psalm 51:1-2, he cried out, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." Notice he didn't appeal to his past good deeds or promise future perfection – he appealed to God's unfailing love and great compassion.

The woman caught in adultery experienced this love firsthand. Dragged before Jesus by religious leaders ready to stone her, she faced certain death under the law. But Jesus responded with grace that shocked everyone present. After her accusers left one by one, Jesus asked, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" When she replied that no one had condemned her, Jesus said, "Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:10-11). His love didn't excuse her sin, but it didn't define her by it either.

Peter discovered the depths of God's love after his greatest failure. Despite promising to die for Jesus, he denied knowing Him three times when the pressure mounted. The guilt must have been overwhelming – he had failed his Lord at the most crucial moment. But Jesus didn't write Peter off. After His resurrection, Jesus specifically asked the women at the tomb to "tell his disciples and Peter" that He had risen (Mark 16:7). That little phrase "and Peter" speaks volumes about God's heart for the broken and ashamed.

God's love isn't based on your performance – it's based on His character. You cannot make Him love you more by being good, and you cannot make Him love you less by being bad. His love is constant, unchanging, and unconditional. It's not a feeling that fluctuates with your behavior; it's a decision He made before you were born.

When you're in your darkest moments, remember that God doesn't love the perfect version of you that doesn't exist – He loves the real, messy, struggling, imperfect you that does exist. He sees all your flaws, knows all your failures, and loves you completely anyway. His love isn't naive or blind; it's informed and intentional.

Okay I know I made a joke post about the haunted house last night, but I have more serious, writing-inspiration-oriented thoughts as well.

A theme throughout the haunted house, and a lot of horror in general, is the concept of a person who is desperately in pain being inherently frightening. We had creatures who were begging us not to leave because they were lonely, clowns who were crying, people who were in cages or tied up and being electrocuted screaming for us to let them out. Villains in horror tend to be people who have literally died, or lost a child, or witnessed mind-breaking amounts of violence.

There is some notion that when a person is desperate enough to relieve their pain, they become dangerous. At that point, ethics are forgotten - suffering must be relieved by any means necessary. There is the notion of "hurt people hurt people" and it's true. In that state of total desperation, there IS an inherent danger. This is how cycles of violence form, too. A person is hurt and becomes desperate to relieve their pain by any means necessary...including inflicting pain on others.

But I can't say this is the whole story, because what about the character from the haunted house who was just laying on the ground, bleeding out, calling for a medic? He wasn't trying to hurt anyone, he didn't threaten us in any way, and he couldn't have done so even if he wanted to. Yet he was supposed to be horrifying and to most people, he was. Why? Because he demonstrates the suffering that it is possible for the human body to undergo. His presence inflicts pain via empathy. It's secondhand pain. We can't bear to look at him because we imagine ourselves in his position, and it's devastating.

So what do we do, in either case? We run. We fight. We kill it. That is the premise of horror - the villain is too hurt to be saved, and often too powerful to be overcome. But if the exact same situation were presented in a non-horror context (in whump, for example), there would be a conversation about how to help this character. It's so easy. They're desperate enough to do anything to get help, so just...help them? Even if there is some risk involved in getting close enough to do so? It breaks the premise of horror entirely.