The Personality of Love

If love were a person how would we define its personality? There is indeed a very simple answer; from the person of Jesus Christ—as God is Love—we may get to know the personality of love, from this carpenter-come-teacher-of-life. The person who was both human and God epitomised the character of love, and perhaps this love had one central quality that, when nurtured, makes love what love is.

This character quality is safety; the ability to create within other people this feeling of a safe haven through us. Certainly there was no one who approached Jesus in humility who could have feared him. He was gentle and humble in heart and dealt with people with kindness and grace—especially the outlier. He was safe to be around. And the Spirit of God is safe to be around today.

Our lesson, if we wish to be more loving, is to become more accessible, more amiable, and genuinely safe to be around.

We cannot be good at loving others if there is any threat that they can hurt us. The way to get beyond being hurt is to do our healing work with the Lord. Where we remain with any stones unturned regarding our fears, failures and inadequacies the devil will get in there and cause sufficient mayhem that we cannot be safe for others.

We cannot be safe for others unless we are first safe for ourselves.

We have to emerge in ourselves safe enough that little children would approach us without hesitation—and for good reason. Too many children, however, have approached or been cajoled by adults who are not trustworthy. Too many children are being, and have been, abused. Of course abuse is the exact opposite of love.

The person who can love has done their inner work to a point where they can be themselves without having need to put on a mask.

The personality of love can be described in one word: safety. Safety is reliability, the appropriate caution, other-mindedness, and perhaps most of all it’s what causes us to relax for appropriate reason. It would be no good to relax in an unsafe environment.

***

The most loving of people are safe to be around. They project safety by being approachable, amiable, humble, appropriately fun-loving, and most of all real. They manifest the personality of love, because they are so other-centred.

We cannot be safe for others, and therefore loving, unless we are first safe for ourselves.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.