However, the Bible does say that he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes (1Jn.2:11). In other words, it is not love that is blind; it is hatred that is blind.
There is a difference between true love (that really loves the other) and fake love (that pretends to love the other but actually is in love with self). For instance, a young man feels that he loves a woman; but, he finds out that she doesn't reciprocate his feelings; so, his feelings turn to hatred towards her. This is not true love. This is selfishness. If he had truly loved her, then he would be happy with what she is happy with; he would seek her happiness, not his. But, the fact that his feelings have revealed hatred prove that what he had in the first place was not love but hatred.
Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?
Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. (Jam 3:11-12 NKJ)
And the very fact that he was in selfish, idolatrous love only with himself proves that he doesn't have the capacity to love any other. He who is in selfish love with himself cannot love any other. For, no man can serve two masters; he will either hate the one and be loyal to the other, or be loyal to the one and hate the other (Matt.6:24).
To love oneself more than others is hellish (2Tim.3:2). The only true way to love oneself is to love others as oneself. The Bible says that a Christ-like husband loves his wife like he loves his own body; in fact, he who loves his wife loves himself (Eph.5:28).
Lust is a form of hatred; because the fruit of lust is not love but hatred. A man who forces a woman, a man who engages in pornography, a woman who seduces a man through lustful attraction all actually hate the other. They will rather desire that the other suffer than they suffer the consequences of their lust. Such was the case of Amnon who raped Tamar, his half-sister. His love (lust) for Tamar was consuming and passionate; it tormented him and made him feel ill (2Sam.13:2). The consuming passion was like the hunger of a beast who longs for its prey, not because he wishes the prey to live, but in order to satiate his own pangs of hunger. It cannot love the other. And so, when Amnon had done the abominable, the hatred of his lust became evident (2Sam.13:15).
When one shuts the other down, deletes the other, slanders the other, has ill-will against the other just because the other has not responded in a "complying" manner, then such aggressive behavior is only proof of the lack of the Spirit of love.
"For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
"And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? (Mat 5:46-47 NKJ)
It is impossible for love not to love in any situation (Matt.5:44); for love is its nature. It can bear no other fruit.
But, true love is longsuffering, patient, kind, not easily provoked, not rude, not envious, not self-seeking; true love is rejoices in the truth, i.e. it accepts reality; true love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; true love never fails (1Cor.13:4-8). True love is not blind.
Later Quotes & Entries
...the relation of self-affirmation and love toward others. For Spinoza the latter is an implication of the former.
Erich Fromm has fully expressed the idea that the right self-love and the right love of others are interdependent, and that selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependent. (Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.22)
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