søren kierkegaard

It is a sad but altogether too common inversion to go on talking continually about how the object of love must be so it can be loveworthy, instead of talking about how love must be so it can be love.

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The Christian point of view is that to love is to love precisely the person one sees. The emphasis is not on loving the perfections one sees in a person, but the emphasis is on loving the person one sees, whether one sees perfections or imperfections in this person, yes, however distressingly this person has changed, inasmuch as he has not ceased to be the same person. He who loves the perfections he sees in a person does not see the person and therefore ceases to love if the perfections cease, when the change begins, although this change, even the most distressing, still does not mean that the person ceases to exist...
Christian love is not supposed to soar up to heaven, since it comes from heaven and with heaven. It comes down and thereby accomplishes loving the same person in all his changes, because it sees the same person in all the changes. Purely human love is continually in the process of flying away after, so to speak, or flying away with, the beloved's perfections. We say of a seducer that he steals a girl's heart, but of all purely human love, even when it is most beautiful, we must say that it has something thievish about it, that it really steals the beloved's perfections, whereas Christian love grants the beloved all his imperfections and weaknesses and in all his changes remains with him, loving the person it sees.