True Statements About Love

Some statements about love which I think are true:

(Not necessarily in order of importance)

• Love is not a feeling, but love has feelings.
  • A person who loves often feels the feelings of the person he or she loves, although they might not be recognizable as such.
• You cannot love if you reject the love of others.
  • You cannot love yourself or others if you reject the love of others or yourself.
• You cannot love other people if you do not love God.
  • You cannot love God if you don’t think He loves you.
  • You cannot love others if God doesn’t love you.
• Love says, it’s good that you exist.
  • Love says, it’s good that I exist.
• Love comes from God.
• God is love.
• God loves you.
• A person who loves should believe there is love in the heart of the loved one.
• We cannot live without love.
  • We want and need to be loved.
  • We want to be loved, in particular, by the people we love.
• We cannot make anyone (or everyone) love us.
• Love is a commandment of God.
• When someone loves us we tend to feel ashamed.
  • When we are ashamed we often do things that don’t look like love.
• Love is often hidden under other things like self-righteousness and fear. When we clear away those things the love remains and appears.
• Love moves toward people. [Paul Miller]
  • Love doesn’t leave people alone. [Miller]

Here is something else I have been thinking about that is worth exploring:

Love is like light. As per theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, it has properties of a wave and a particle.

Love Follows Knowledge

Dallas Willard quotes Thomas Aquinas in The Divine Conspiracy.

"Love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved." And: "Love follows knowledge." Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good.

Now Willard goes on to relate the principle to the process of our learning to love God. We learn about the Person of God. And with that knowledge we get a vision of all the good He is, and so we love Him. But in my view it also applies to knowing and loving people.
I remember when I used to go to Theotherapy Seminars, after a person in need had worked through some knotty personal problem expressing all the good and the bad in themselves, everyone present always felt love for them. You might think people would be turned off by the expression of all kinds of personal and relational dirty laundry but no. And the reason is that after the revelations we knew the person a little better and could empathize and feel love and compassion.
I often say to people who are worried about the possibility of their being rejected by another person, "When they know you better they will love you more."
If we hide behind facades others will not know to love us and if we do not seek out others, allowing them to share their lives with us, we will not have any real grounds for really loving them as they are.