Tough Love Is Still Love

I am sure most of us are familiar with the phrase "tough love", but for those of us who have not been familiarized with this concept, "tough love" is essentially where we give constructive criticism to someone who means a lot to us. It can be by any number of mean, direct conversation, the silent treatment, forcing/encouraging us to do things we don't want to do, but we need to do to better ourselves, etc. Some people take tough love as being a way just to be abrasive or tell the person how wrong they are. In other words, instead of being constructive in their criticism and calling out, they forget the "love" part, and they are just "tough." Tough love though is an essential part of the Christian life, and I will explain what I mean if you are confused how it could possibly be good.

I think this tough love concept is something that we need to hone and perfect in all of our relationships as Christians. We need to be able to show tough love with other believers in our Christian community and also realize, and this is going to startle a few of you I think, that God is going to show us tough love. The thing to keep in mind with that, is that tough LOVE is still LOVE. If you tell me that "oh, Hunter, there is no way you know what you are talking about now. God is only the lovey dovey kind of love with unicorns and butterflies." I would challenge you to show me where it says that in scripture. I am not claiming to know exactly how God works, but to me it should make sense that as we are created in God's image, we can look at how we tend to love, and that is just merely a SMALL glimpse of how his love works.

If we understand that in truly loving someone, we have to call them out when they are hurting themselves or others, I should think that the creator of the universe would notice that too and the difference with his love is that he will actually always step in and help us. God is truly involved in our lives and loves us. In his love, if we are not doing things right or are down a wrong path, he will help us, but he doesn't just pick us up and put us on the right path. God will guide us and lead us back to where he wants us and where we should be. How he does this can be any number of ways, but don't you think that showing a "tough love" to us would be an efficient way to get us where we need to be and also break us of the bad thing we were doing or to help us learn a lesson to stay on the right path? I just want to make sure that we all understand this, me included, that just because God isn't making us feel all warm and fuzzy inside 24/7 does not mean that he isn't showing us the love he has and getting us to become the creatures he intended us to be.

I think I have gotten the point of God's tough love across, but now I think it is also important to make a quick note about our use of tough love with each other. I encourage tough love, but make sure like I mentioned before that you don't forget the "love" part of it. Using it effectively can be very beneficial for those around you, but if you are just plain mean to them, it can make things infinitely worse. An example would be when someone is struggling with some issue, and instead of just coddling them and telling them it's going to be okay and blah blah blah, you are real and honest and just tell them that it's not okay what they are dealing with and they need to do something about it. Explain to them that this thing they are struggling with is hurting their relationship with God and with others and that they need to rely on God to help them get back on the right track. Don't forget to mention to them that although you see their need to fix things, you and the rest of their friends are there to help and to pray for them. A support system isn't worth much if we are only their for each other to tell each other how great we are and not to let each other know when we are slipping down the into places we shouldn't be. In short, it is all in the approach.

I hope and pray that this has somehow helped you guys to better understand how and what tough love works. This is just what I understand of it and how I see it after much prayer and reflection about it. I have wanted to write a post about this for a while and after much prayer and thought, this is what I felt called to write. I hope God has spoken through me so that you feel more comfortable with the concept.