The Wound That Blinds Us to Love

The Wound That Blinds Us to Love

There are people—many people—who grow up without ever knowing what true love feels like. Not just people raised under strict conditions, but those who were abused, neglected, unwanted, or simply unseen. Children whose hearts were left unprotected, whose souls were never nurtured.

And the tragedy is this: people who never knew love as children often become adults who cannot find it. Not because they’re unworthy of it, but because they don’t know what to look for. Unless by rare grace or chance, love remains out of reach—always longed for, but never fully grasped.

Even those who thought they were loved—those raised in homes where love was earned by being good, successful, or compliant—often come to realize they were never loved unconditionally. That kind of love is rare. True love—the kind that heals, that holds, that stays—is rare.

So we replace it with ideologies, identities, and systems. We find a place to belong: Republican, Democrat, Palestinian, Jew, Communist, Socialist. We cling to what gives us a sense of safety or meaning. But these are not love. They cannot heal the deep wound of having never been known or cherished.

Very few grow up in the light of God’s love flowing through a parent. A parent who reflects God’s nature—who loves without spoiling, who disciplines without shaming, who delights in their child simply for being. That kind of parent is almost mythical in this world. And so we grow up not knowing what love is supposed to feel like. We say the word “love,” but more often than not, what we experience is fear, performance, or longing misnamed.

And yet—Jesus.

Jesus is not a metaphor. He is God in the flesh. God stepping into our pain, our humanity. The greatest act of love and solidarity in history. He came for the broken, the lost, the ashamed—for the wicked, the adulterers, the liars, the thieves. For us. And in doing so, He revealed what love truly is: sacrificial, redemptive, and unearned.

But He didn’t stop there. He gave us a command: Love your neighbor as yourself.

And who is our neighbor?

It is not just the one we like. Not just the one who believes what we believe or lives how we live. Our neighbor is the person whose ideology we can’t stand. The person we might fear or judge. Our neighbor is the sinner and the saint alike. We are called to love as Christ loved us—to stand with those we don’t understand, to lay down our pride, our ego, our superiority.

This is love. And it is very difficult.

But this is the call. Not just to receive God’s love, but to become it. To embody it. To offer it. To step into solidarity with the broken, just as He stepped into solidarity with us.

We were made for love. And in loving like this, we might finally begin to understand what love really is.

Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

John 11:35 (KJV)

“Jesus wept.”