THE TRAIT CALLED LOVE

Love, the undefined gift

Love is one of the most used words around the world, but it is amazing that nobody has been able to rightly define it yet. Some call it mystery yet claim to have it for the other person. It seem like anyone that claims to love the other person is only unsecured and want security; most likely have no idea what they are saying. How do you give people what you don’t know?

Many believe love is a feeling, a sensation; a deep craving for the other person or thing, but whatsoever it is, we all know there is something that exists and we call it love. The Christians believe God is love, which is the closest one can get trying to define love, but they can’t really explain it well.

Everyone talks about love even when they have no clue what it really is, it is said that “love” is the most misused word in the dictionary; we often use it to get what we want because everyone wants it. Everyone keeps saying “I love you” even when they have no idea what it means to love the other person or have consciously tried it. Most of us would have been right to say, “I just want to use you to express love to myself and show people how capable I am” If truly people love the other person as they often profess, the world would have been a better place with no problem for God to solve, he would be sleeping yet we will do fine. That’s what love can do.

Love, a God’s trait in us

Love is God’s trait in human beings which makes them to nurture and preserve their lives. However, abuse of selfishness, another God’s trait in mankind makes them limit love for themselves alone, without caring about others. Does that mean they don’t have love in them? No, they do. Every human being have love, it is one of the traits that make them the image of God. The difference is in whether they limit it to themselves alone or they expressing it to others. Love and selfishness, according to THE IMMAGE OF GOD, a book written by African foremost writer, Soul’e Rhymez are traits inherited from God, but abuse selfishness which is self-centeredness aids limiting love to oneself.

Describing love, John, one of the disciples of Jesus said, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John 4:8)

 Though he was talking about love for the other person, he made a very good point, saying, “God is love” that’s absolutely true because love is one of the traits that make up the personality of God and being his image, we have this trait in us too. Remember, John didn’t say “He that loveth not is not created by God”, that means everyone has ability to love but can choose to make use of it or not, having said that, showing love to the other person as much as you show to yourself is the right use of love. This come as a result of right use of selfishness without which one would have acted against God’s plan for it and it will confirms John’s assertion that “he that loveth not knoweth not God.”

The culprits

Self-centeredness and mismanagement of ego cripples people’s ability to love just more than themselves and what they own alone. It is impossible to love the other person when you are self-centered. I once said, “When your life is all about you; how you feel, what you want and how you want things done alone, then you are ungodly and a problem to yourself as much as you are to everyone else. This seem to agree with John’s assertion, I guess the inspiration came from the same source.

Ego is an expression of self importance and once you don’t know how to manage it, you will have a huge issue loving the other person.

Ego not evil, according to THE IMAGE OF GOD; it is an attribute of pride, one of the traits that make human beings the image of God, but we abuse it.

Self-centeredness which prevents people from loving others is a major problem the world is facing, from it comes stinginess, greediness and leads to several other social vises such as stealing, corruption and several wicked acts. In reference to this, I once sent a quote out saying, “If all you care about is you and your immediate family alone, then you are a big problem to the world; a potential disaster that does not deserve life.” Here is what it means, caring about yourself and your immediate family alone means you love yourself and what you own and do not care about others. That doesn’t mean you don’t have love, but it is limited to yourself alone. This is inspired by self-centeredness and it is a horrible disaster.

The horrible disaster

Talking about hoarding love to oneself alone, this is why we have people in government who embezzle public funds in order to have enough for them, their families and their unborn descendants alone.

This is why Warlords wage wars, have people kill each other, but won’t step out or send their own children to such wars.

This is why, people send their own children to schools abroad without caring about the education of other children in the country.

To mention just these few among millions of them, you will agree with me that caring (loving) oneself and immediate family alone is a disaster to the world.

Hoarding love all to yourself is an abuse of love and it is more disastrous than you can ever imagine. This is why people commit all sorts of atrocities. Talking about sex, which is a major way of expressing love to oneself and the havoc it has caused around the world. You will agree with me that loving oneself, without loving the others just as much is a horrible disaster. We have cases of rapes, pedophilia, rejected pregnancies, most of which cripple people’s lives and contribute to high rate of mortality around the world. These acts are carried out by people who only love themselves and don’t love others as much. They do to others what they can’t take because of the love they have for themselves. If they love their victims as much as they love themselves, it will be hard to hurt them.

The Pride of Ownership

The world gets worse by the day, not because love has seized to exist, but because people hoard it for themselves alone leaving virtually none for the other person.

Most people think they love the other person when they are actually out looking for people through which they can express love to themselves and be respected for so doing.

For instance, on my street lives a lady, who I do not like because of her less attractive appearance, the more I tried to like her, the more I see faults on her outlook to pull me back. Regardless how cute she tries to look, all I see was ugliness. It never occur to me what I wanted from her was just sex, it wasn’t exactly in my mind neither did I think of it to her, but it was in my sub-consciousness.

I was subconsciously living with the mindset of dating every other girl I meet which included her. Even though it wasn’t visible in my mind and she wasn’t beautiful enough for me to imagine making love to her, I didn’t like her simply because she didn’t fit in as a girl I can eventually have sex with and be proud to do so.

Dating her does not mean I love her, not that I hate her too; it only means I wanted to use her to express love to myself and since her appearance won’t earn me praise among my peers, I didn’t like her and couldn’t help but admit she’s ugly.

After I rid myself of wanting to date her and get sex from her; which is an expression of love to myself and not necessarily to her, I started to like her and she no longer look ugly to me. This is why I said, “If your love for people is always determined by their physical appearance, it means you are always focused on what you want from them which is often sex and sexual activities.”

Message to the atheists

Sorry to disappoint the atheists; there is no way you can talk about love and not include God because God is love. Having said that God is love, he doesn’t just show this love to himself, we know that he is love because he expressed his love to us, first by sharing his traits with us, one of which is freewill that enable us to even make choices against him, but he won’t stop loving because that is his nature. He could have kept his love to himself but he didn’t, he decided to show us how to make use of the trait.

He gave his son to die for our sins (John 3: 16) without requesting anything in return, no love is greater than this and it means the author of love have shown us how to use the trait.

It doesn’t matter how eloquently you can speak against God’s existence, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you think you are, much that being a theist is intellectual suicide to you, the fact that you show love to yourself and at times to others is a proof that God exists. It is a trait you inherited from him. The extremists who commit suicide bombing are only being indoctrinated against loving themselves; not putting the love in them to use. They need to love themselves first before they can love others, but even though no one can love you as much as you love yourself, it is futile to hoard love all to yourself; loving others just as much as you love yourself is the right use of love with eternal reward.

A Clue from Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ in one of his teachings made a world-class speech that the world never thought was about love and here is it, “and as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6: 31) as simple as this statement look, it is what the world need to be a better place. He didn’t say, treat others the way they treat you; that would have meant revenge, but aware that people hoard love to themselves alone and always want it from people, he told them to treat others the way they want to be treated. Jesus was not being religious or spiritual here, it is a psychological statement; nothing makes interpersonal relationship better than that statement. It is simple, anything you expect people to do to you, do it to them first.

This encompasses loving both your friends and enemies alike as it is about doing to people as you would want them to do to you and not doing to them, what you do to yourself or what they did to you. However, people have become so self-centered about love that it takes oaths with consequences of breaking them, to get them to share some dose of love with the other person. I tell you, If loving one’s neighbor as oneself as said by Jesus is understood and put to practice, the world would have been a better place and there will be no need for the contract called marriage which sometimes reduce the quality of life.

The abuse of love; being self-centered about love is the reason why the world is on a massive decline and nations wage war against each other.

Celebration of vanity in the name of love

Many events are set up, such as wedding, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and so on, these could aid sharing love with other people, but even during these times, people only crave for more love from others without giving out. They take delight in insignificant things such as colour of clothes, gifts they get from others and places they love to visit. Many people believes wedding is a celebration of love, but it is actually a celebration of pride and vanity.  If not why do couples divorce on the basis of infidelity after lavish weddings?

It will interest you to know that marriage, a supposed love union is not actually based on love. Many people go into marriage, not because they love the other person, but because they want to look responsible to people and earn some respect.

The first thing that comes into play in marriage is pride of ownership. Why do you think that lady wants a tall, handsome and intelligent man as husband? Why do you think that man wants a curvy, sexy and industrious lady for a wife? You think that’s inspired by love for the other person? Not really, they are only in love with the qualities through they will show more love to themselves, enhance their pride and earn some respect for doing so. In Marriage, 'I will love you forever' simply means 'I am glad to own you forever’, this is why infidelity is hard to forgive; it is a break of vow since sex is a major reason for such vow.

If marriage is truly marriage is founded on love, then couples will forgive infidelity and still be together.

Or does love not forgive again?

If it is hard to forgive such then it is a testimony that such union is not based on love.

Attributes of Love

According to THE IMAGE OF GOD, the attributes of love are as follows: attention (attraction), kindness, giving, forgiveness, patience, perseverance, boldness and justification. These are explained in details in that book.

Whosoever these attributes are expressed to, it means love, but unfortunately, we are selfish about them, we don’t give people attention, we are cruel, stingy, inpatient, lack perseverance, fear and at worst, we judge other people, these shows lack of love for them and it’s often due to lack of understanding of what loving the other person really entails.

According to THE IMAGE OF GOD, the most powerful and visible attribute of love is kindness and without giving, kindness will seize to exist thus, there is no way you will love the other person and not give them things that are valuable to you such as time, attention, which is the first attribute of love, money; helping hand and sympathy (patience and perseverance), those are acts of kindness and it shows you love the other person. Love, according to Sir. Paul Aboje, a cinematographer and church member of mine, is all about sacrifice, that’s absolutely true. Loving the other person means you have to sacrifice (share) for their sake, most things that make your life worth living in order to make theirs worth living too.

This essay is adapted from “GOD IS NOT RELIGIOUS” a book written by Eneji Stephen Toluwalashe, popularly known as Soul’e Rhymez, a member of Great Minds Initiatives International. He believes if love is rightly utilized, the world will be a better and safer place to live in.

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