The fundamental debate of Christianity is this: Are we loved unconditionally or must we do something to earn that divine love?

That’s it in a nutshell.

If you are convinced that you must do something to be worthy of God’s love, then you are engaged in a futile task and a most discouraging future. If you think you must love everyone in order to be loved by God, I submit that you will soon discover that either you must lie about your true feelings for certain others, be they next-door neighbors or Arabic foreigners, or face eternal damnation. Such lying, of course, only creates its own kind of hell.

If you decide that God will love you only if you believe a certain way, then any hint of doubt or question puts your soul in jeopardy. It is better to be ignorant than damned, you will have to decide.

If, on the other hand, you are graced to discover, what I believe to be utterly true, that God’s love for you is not dependent on anything that you do or believe, you will enter into a promised land of enormous beauty and unending power. It is the Kingdom of Heaven and it is precisely what God desires for all of us.