“And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and they should choose me, their Father;”
This direction, which is the same that is described in Matthew 22:36-40, Luke 10:25-27, and again in Mosiah 4:15, represents the purest, fullest, and truest form of love that is able to be learned – Godly love, the love a Creator has for the workmanship of His hand.
The scriptures are replete with examples of Godly love. In the New Testament, the Savior identifies that the first and greatest thing we can do is to wholly love our Father in Heaven, or, in other words, to “choose” Him. And the next best thing we can do, which will help us to attain eternal life if practiced earnestly, is to love one another. Why is this significant? The Lord gives us the answer in Matthew 22:40:
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
How true this is, especially when we look at our purpose here in this life. Before we came to Earth, we were spirits who lived with our Heavenly Parents and when we expressed a desire to be like our Heavenly Father, He developed a plan that would allow us to become exactly as he is (to have gained a body of flesh and bone, to have the knowledge and power that he has, to be immortal and to have chosen to do so.). Our time in this mortal existence would be our classroom and proving ground, for which a syllabus would be provided to guide our choices and to ensure the appropriate learning had occurred. To put all in this in place and to enact it took Godly love from Heavenly Father and the Savior, and it is upon the principle of that love the laws given to man were founded. It is this same love, and all its subtypes we are here to learn. So, how does all the law hang on these two commandments? How are they so all encompassing?
Let’s look at what he says first: Choosing the Father
A true love of God precipitates a man’s faith in his Creator, by way of trust, obedience, and hope. A man’s faith in a loving, literal Heavenly Father is a daily choice, brought about by way of honoring what God has asked him to do, as well as by much study, meditation, prayer, humility, and believing, which is answered by God through blessings, and the great teacher and revelator, the Holy Ghost. As a man continues in this fashion, he increases in truth, knowledge, and light; he weathers life’s tests more readily. As he seeks to understand the divine outline Heavenly Father has for him, his relationship with God becomes more individual, personal and reverenced, thus increasing in love and the cycle continues in this way. I believe the key here is the obedience that comes from this love.
Now, let’s look at the second component: Loving One Another
Love can be defined as unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another. If this is so, then the Savior’s love for us is truly perfect. In 3 Nephi 27:27 as well as in Matthew5:48, we are commanded to become as he is, and invited to live the Higher Law. In order for that to happen, we must learn to love as He loves, for love is the only thing strong enough to allow us to forgive when an offence has occurred; to endear the less fortunate to us, to render us patience, to allow us to hope, to feed our faith, and to bind us together as families through any number of disagreements and joys. This is evidenced by our baptismal covenants, found Mosiah 18: 8-9, to which we are bound to uphold if we want to gain eternal life:
“8…willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;
9. Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”
Learning to love people we don’t have an attachment to is hard, I’m not going to lie, but it will come with time the more you actually practice it, whether you feel love beyond yourself or not. Allow me to cite two examples.
When I was little, my parents had my brothers and I involved in doing what my mother called “good works.” These good works ranged from staying after every church activity to help clean up, showing up to every Young Women’s service project, making meals for new mothers or post-op recoverers, volunteering at the hospital, you name it, we did it. For the longest time, I never fully understood why we were (or at least what I thought) guilted, or trapped into doing these things; I just assumed we were doing it because no one else was going to do it. However, helping out became a habit, and as years passed and I matured, I learned through trial, error, and many hours of long suffering what it was to fill a need.
Example #2. When my oldest brother was in medical school, he’d often complain about the types of people he’d see during his rotations (the biggest patient population that my mother and I would tease him about was pediatrics, because he felt like he couldn’t talk to them intelligently. Now, you have to understand, if you’ve ever seen the TV show “Frazier”, my brother is Niles Crane.). My family and I subsequently took it upon ourselves to educate him during his early medical training on what it mean to truly be a doctor: that it extends beyond the science. Mind you, my brother isn’t an unfeeling individual at all, he has a very big heart, but it needed some higher education, if you will. Fast-forward a few years. During his residency, he related two experiences that signaled to me that he had progressed, and had, in my opinion, grown as a physician.
The first experience, he called me at the end of one day to tell me that I’d be proud of him. Naturally, I was curious. He proceeded to explain to me that he had just gotten off a night shift in the care units where he had gone in and checked in on every single one of his patients personally, turning off their televisions and room lights as he left so they could sleep. To one patient in particularly, he read aloud a small stack of cards they had received in the mail before turning out the lights. The second experience, he emailed me last year after working a shift at the children’s hospital with a little story of a little girl who had to get an MRI:
A little present for you - I was working in the MRI scanner today and took care of a little 9 y/o girl who came in for a repeat MRI brain for evaluation of her seizure disorder. What made me think of you today was the little girl came in clutching a stuffed saber-toothed tiger in her arms [much like yours]. She looked very cute with it and I promised her her tiger would be with her throughout the scan even though she'd be under general anesthesia. Since the tiger itself contained no metal, this wasn't a problem. The scene was so memorable that I had to [tell] you…the little girl under general inside, and the readily identifiable tail of her stuffed saber-toothed tiger lying on top while she went through the study. Don't let it ever be said that I don't have a soft spot.
I told my brother the same thing after each of these experiences, “Now you know what it means to be a doctor.”
What my brother and I had were a change and a progression of heart. We began to feel love for those we barely knew because we then began to see them more as our Father and Savior saw them: as our brothers and sisters, regardless of race, religion, creed, body type, hair color, financial status, or orientation. As Elder M. Russell Ballard stated in a talk from the April 2001 Conference, “…a doctrine of inclusion…That is what we believe…If we are truly disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will reach out with love and understanding to all of our neighbors at all times.” As my mother always said, “We all bleed red blood.”
It really is wonderful how simple the Gospel really is. If you truly love your Father in Heaven, as well as your neighbor, then you’ll do everything that needs to be done in order to return to live with God. With love, we become increasingly concerned, as Enoch did, for the welfare of that co-worker, the woman who sits next to us on the bus, or the man at the grocer. As we more fully reconcile ourselves to Heavenly Father’s plan, the more we’ll want to share it with others, be it those who we see in this chapel from week to week, or those whom we have yet to. I guess the Beatles were on the right track when they said “All you need is love.” Now, to echo the Savior at the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, I challenge you to “go, and do likewise.”
To this I add my testimony...
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