The addition of “social” to “justice” negates justice. Justice is equal treatment of everyone. Social justice chooses groups for unequal treatment. Justice originates in scripture, almost as old as the earth. Social justice arose in the 19th century. I’m saying that according to a leftist viewpoint the addition of this adjective corrupts justice. It’s not justice anymore.
I turn your attention to love. Love also doesn’t need an adjective, but leftists also add to love, unconditional and now transactional. Love is a stand alone. It stands alone in the Bible. It doesn’t need an adjective to clarify or specify.
The word “love” as originated in the English language proceeded from the Bible. People know the word “love” because of the Word of God. Scripture defines love. We can know what it is from the Bible and then just use it and understand it that way.
I’ve never been comfortable with “unconditional love,” as if love is unconditional as a defining quality. I’ve found that the one most interested in “unconditional love” is the one who doesn’t want any conditions himself. I see conditions for love in scripture. That’s why the adjective doesn’t work. Consider Deuteronomy 7:6:
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
That is self-explanatory. We would not be loved by God if conditions were required for Him to love us. We love Him because He first loved us. However, despite his love arriving to us without conditions, much like we love an enemy, it doesn’t mean that love itself is unconditional. Consider John 16:27:
For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.
“Because ye have loved me” is a condition. Also consider Psalm 139:21-22:
Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
A condition exists for God’s hatred. Neither is His love unconditional. Jesus said in Luke 16:13:
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Based on conditions, someone is loved and someone is hated. The explanation behind “transactional love” is that someone has applied a condition and that’s bad. If the recipient of the love doesn’t behave, he should be treated the same as if he did behave. This twists the biblical truth of love again.
A father chastens a child, because he loves the child, not because he doesn’t. Hebrews 12:6 says:
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
The child should be afraid of chastening. That is a motivating factor for obedience. A loving parent won’t allow a disobedient child. He will chasten. Actual love is called “transactional.” It is a term intended to diminish biblical love as unloving, merely transactional.
I’ve read the adjective “narcissistic” applied to “transactional love.” A narcissist apparently sets terms, selfish ones, and expects the recipient to fulfill those to receive the desired treatment. This transaction must be selfish, so it isn’t loving. This parent wants an obedient child, and the idea here is that he withholds his love in order to get that. No. The parent wants an obedient child, so he chastens, because he loves the child. God wants obedience. Success is obedience. He is caring for his child by providing discipline.
Because of phony adjectives like unconditional and transactional, another adjective is now added, “tough.” A parent, a boss, a teacher, a pastor use “tough love.” Reach into your love tool box for whatever brand of love it is, and in this case, “tough” is the tool needed. I get it, but it’s still just love.
“Transactional” is a negotiating ploy by a narcissist. He wants to get away with sin, and actually keep receiving good treatment for sinning. When he doesn’t, he claims he isn’t being loved. Wrong. He isn’t loving. He is using a manipulative, rebellious behavior to browbeat and coerce. He’s a hateful person, who wants good treatment in a transaction himself. He provides actual bad behavior and wants acceptance and approval for it. Some might call this coddling. He’s coddled, so he always feels like the victim when he’s treated badly for bad behavior.
Love is resplendent. Love shines through a prism into various colors and hues, a veritable kaleidoscope. It is of God. God is one. Love is one. Love. No adjectives.
John 15:14
Ye are my friends, IF ye do whatsoever I command you.
Yes, DanielL.
There are ways that God's love is unconditional, what some have called his benevolent love, He loves the whole world, rains on both the evil and the good, but then you have verses that state these conditions that debunk the contemporary evangelical understanding, used as a means of pandering, because especially millennials want to live like they want with total acceptance and approval, and feel entitled to label it has unloving if they don't get that.