Discerning True love

Ryan Franco

Love can be identified with emotion, feelings, attachment, fondness, loyalty, and affection. These are properties of love and would be found wherever true love is. However, you can manifest any of them without genuine love from the heart. They all could be produced because of what we have gained or stand to gain. Love then can be said to be more than feelings. Rather, it is an inner virtue deeply rooted, which makes you put others' interests above yourself. Genuine love makes you prefer to suffer

True love is nondiscriminatory but transcends tribe, colour, gender, age, and social status. It is sacrificial.

This love does not depend on whether the other party is good or not, but it accepts the other person unconditionally. It is not put off by the weaknesses of the other. It is an accepting love.

(Image by billy cedeno from Pixabay)

True love does not wish or do any evil to anyone. It will always do good. This love is not segregational. It loves the lovable, and will not do evil to those who maltreat us but repay them with good. It won't curse the enemy as it is being done by many today but rather blesses them.

There are lots of misconceptions about what love is, both in the years and now. Even when the activity of an individual is the exact opposite of love, people claim they are in love. We need to understand what real love is so that we are not deceived and become easy prey of exploitation in the hands of the wicked one who is seeking to destroy our destinies.

Amnon and Tamar

Amnon claimed he loved his half-sister, Tamar. This can't be called genuine love.
Tamar was a very beautiful and attractive lady. Amnon's love was no doubt most likely based on physical appearance.
The fact that Amnon accepted the ungodly counsel of his friend and could go ahead to plan a rape for his sister speaks volumes!. That cannot be genuine love.

Pretending to be sick, the king, who was his father came to see him and he deceived his father further by requesting for the services of Tamar, which was ignorantly granted. This cannot be genuine love, because love does not behave unseemly.

The so-called love was based on falsehood, in that he refused to eat while others were present in the room because of his hidden agenda of rape lurking in his mind. This is far from genuine love. The whole plan was a plot or set-up to rape Tamar. This also cannot be true love.

All the pleas of Tamar to make Amnon see why he should not commit such an atrocity fell on deaf ears. This cannot be true love because love is easy to be intreated.

Amnon forced Tamar and raped her. This is the height of injustice, self-centredness and wickedness done to an innocent, naive sister. Genuine love neither works evil nor ever hurts his neighbour.

Amnon also does not care in the least that the act will lead to great reproach for Tamar. True love cares not to do any evil or wickedness to anyone to satisfy his own, so the callous action of Amnon cannot be accepted as true love.
Let's love one another genuinely because it is unconditional love that can change people. It is true love that made the prodigal son remember home.