&quot;Love, defined in many conservative christian circles, is devotion to the Church, the Husband and God, to the exclusion of all else.&quot;<p>Please do not read any tone into what I&#x27;m saying here, because if you&#x27;ve gotten that message I honestly don&#x27;t know how.
&quot;A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.&quot; - John 13:34<p>The verse you reference above is in the context of marriage and you hear it a lot at weddings, but the context of love within Christian community is always going to go straight to the way that Jesus defined it. There&#x27;s no part of the Christian community that is going to try to override what Jesus said. &quot;Just as I have loved you&quot; means unconditionally. It doesn&#x27;t mean as long as they agree with you, have the same color skin as you, speak the same language as you or fit some specific stencil.<p>I realize this is a bit off-kilter for Hacker News but sermons that talk about how we are all sinners in need of forgiveness are there specifically for two reasons.<p>1. No matter what you have done, God will forgive you. No matter what you have done, God loves you.<p>2. Because God will forgive the worst of us who truly asks for forgiveness, we have no right to deny forgiveness to anyone who truly asks for it either.<p>I&#x27;ve visited a lot of different churches throughout the southeast in my life and I&#x27;ve never once heard a minister say anything that implies anything other than the above.