People make me sad. My hiking buddy and I spoke at length about some of the people we have lost this weekend. In some cases, we saw it coming. In others, it happened without warning, in an instant, and without recourse. Some of them are dead. Some of them are dead to life. Some of them are dead just to us by their own choice. Some of them saw so little point to living or to living well. Some of them really wanted to find a better way but didn't know how to find one or couldn't summon up the courage to strike it out on a new road. Others might have only desired a better way with words. We miss them because we love them. That's exactly how we should feel. Joseph Smith Jr. wrote that the closer we come to Christ, the more we feel the urge to help others, to cast their burdens on our backs. It's because that's what family is supposed to do.
I look at the world with a different perspective than most that regards other people as members of the Family of Man. God is our Father. We are all His children, and consequently we are brothers and sisters even if we have never met. For this reason, the two commandments given by Christ make sense: love God and love one another. In essence, Christ commands us to be a good family. We are to love and honor our Father God and love and respect our spiritual siblings. Yet, we do so many things that are not love and, like Reuben and Judah did to Joseph, sell our brothers into tribulation for a handful of silver coins.
When we truly understand and believe our relationship with one another it changes our behavior. Just as Levi and Simeon did not tolerate the abuse of their sister, we have no desire in us to offend the virtue of our sisters in Christ. Just as later Reuben insisted that he be held as hostage rather than Benjamin, we sacrifice for our brothers. Just as Joseph demanded that Isaac be brought to Egypt, we long to be with our families. We behave as siblings do who love each other, and the commandments begin to deal with things that would never cross our minds. We don't need to worry about stealing, coveting, lying, adultery, idol worship, idle worship, irreverence, blasphemy, murder, or any kind of sin. Looking out for our siblings constitutes the same thing as looking out for our own welfare.
This is not just a concept of the clergy or Christianity. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins explains altruistic behavior in a sibco of family units. Even aunts and uncles without children sacrifice to aid the survival of their own families. The rest of the animal kingdom looks out for the family of their own species. Only humans go to war with other members of their own species. Cutting a member of our own herd down weakens us against predation by other species or illness or calamity even when inorganic in nature.
For a long time I struggled to explain why I do the things I do. Understanding my relationship to my fellow men helps me understand why I should live as I do. I would not want my siblings to reign over me, so I don't exercise hegemony over others. I would not want another man to mistreat my sister, so I try to treat women with respect, reverence, and requisite virtue. I would not want my brother to rob me of anything, and so I deal fairly with men that I meet. I treat others as God would have me treat them. Sometimes people ask us to treat others as God would, but God is a parent, and His behavior is different. Parents can punish. Siblings cannot. Parents can guide. Siblings can only encourage. Parents have perspective. A parent would ask me to do different things with my siblings than they would do. At times, and under the right circumstances, some things normally forbidden are permitted. God would have our family persist, but only under His direction. Ergo the family and His permission to have sexual relations with certain of our spiritual siblings if and only if we are married and committed to the success of the family unit.
Violations of these sins wins us wrath from God the Father. He has a plan. He asks us to do certain things at certain times and in certain places under certain conditions because He's trying to vouchsafe and secure the Family of Man. Those who refuse to comply with His efforts to secure the survival of the family suffer the same fate as Cain. They continue to live, but they are cast out of the presence of the Father, doomed to wander on their own. This is why God hates war, lasciviousness, licentiousness, abortion, drugs, and crime in general. It weakens the family ultimately. He does not want the family of man to fail, and only He can banish or punish or decide to terminate the life of a member of the family. Only He knows what He wants His family to be.
During our third hour at church Sunday, I reread the account of the creation. God starts His family with Adam, a man after His own heart. Then He gives Adam a help meet for him, a woman, who was after the heart of the man. He commands them to multiply and replenish the earth and to take good care of the garden. In essence, He asks all of us to take care of what He created. Sometimes, there are things to cut. Sometimes there are things to plant or dung or prune. It is not up to us to decide whom to hurt or snub or ostracize or favor. God alone directs how the family operates. He asks us to love our families even when they hurt us, betray us, feed us fruit from the adversary or cause us to be cast out. It's not an easy thing, but it's impossible until you try. Some of us don't treat each other like family. Some of us treat each other like enemies and enemas, to be cut off or cut down in order to advance ourselves. Paradoxically, we hurt ourselves when we do this.
I have been watching the CW's dramatization of Kass Morgan's novel about The 100. The more they fight each other, the more they weaken their prospects to survive. Although they are more related than they know, they decide on criminal behaviors over Christian behaviors only to weaken themselves against their enemies. Like those woebegone survivors, we came down to this earth to live, and we are all we have. Either we hang together or assuredly we will hang separately. We may not like each other, but we are a family, and when we behave inhumanely towards man, we evince that we hate ourselves most of all. These two laws above all the others- love God the Father and love one another. That's all we really have to do. If it's not love, abstain. Doing nothing means at least doing no more harm than already exists. In the worst case when we ignore others we at least don't make it worse. In the best case, when we try to help maybe we help our own survival.
The tale is told of a wealthy man on a journey to a distant country. Along the way, he comes across a man begging for money in the cold who has no coat. He gives the man some coins as well as his cowl and tells the beggar, "I have money and you have need, and perhaps the day will come when you have money and I have need". Sure enough, one day the prospects were reversed, and the first man, now brought low to poverty from his once lofty station receives beneficence from the beggar he once met. "Now I have money and you have need, and what I have literally is yours." In saving our lives, in saving each other, ultimately we may indeed save ourselves. We believe in Karma, in the Law of the Harvest. If we want to survive, to thrive, and to live, then it behooves us to help other members of our own family do so, even if we don't know or like them. Maybe the soul we save will ultimately be our own.
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