Ways to love : My view

Hi Steemians, hope you are having a great day. All these while I have been trying to understand "LOVE". What love is? The different types of love? and the ways to love?. It has been very interesting, educative and fun. For me, learning new things daily has always been fun, especially this one " love" that I can identify on my everyday life. All these has brought me to one realisation "we are incapable of loving anyone if we can not love ourselves first".

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Let me explain. Even the bible tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves. If you do not know how to love yourself how would you know how to love another person. That's why i have realised that people who maltreat or say evil of others or accuse others are just exhibiting their own fears, past experiences or present wrong doings, so just take note " it is not about you, it is about them.

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You must start from within then you can move out, as it is usually said "Charity begins at home". You can not say you are a Philantropist and you do charity work by donating food to orphanages while your wife and children and brothers and sisters are dying of hunger, that's just suspicious.

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This also goes for us Christians, it does not matter how much you sing in church or clean the church or preach in church to prove your love to God, if you do not love your neighbour it is all a waste of time since the bible clearly says we can not say we love God who we do not see but detest our neighbour who we see. A good example of this is we may have money which we want to use to pay tithes and offerings, then we meet a man sick or dying of hunger, we ignore the man in need and take all the money to give in church. What do you think? Do you think God will be pleased with such offerings?, but most of us do that everyday.

Even the bible tells us in 1 John 4 : 20 that "If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates (works against) his [Christian] brother he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen".

Please do not get confused, it is a good thing to love God and be active in the house of God but that light you have received through the knowledge of Jesus Christ should shine bright in your actions and your dealings with people around you. This is why the bible says in Matthew 5:16 King James Version (KJV) "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven".

Concerning love, Jesus gave us two laws : ### Matthew 22:37-40 King James Version (KJV)
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

It is therefore clear. The bible clearly gives us the solution to life and love, we should love God wholeheartedly and love our neighbour AS OUR SELF. They are therefore two sides of the same coin. Loving God and loving your neighbour, you can not love one and detest the other and expect to succeed. You should love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbour as yourself (since you can only love your neighbour as much as you love yourself). So start by loving God and loving yourself, them the love for your neighbour will naturally come in.