I find the universal love of mankind a little creepy. For example, I recall once having an exchange with a rather stridently anti-Mormon evangelical who kept assuring me that he loved me and all Latter-day Saints. I did not, however, feel loved. Mainly I just felt bugged. It wasn’t the fact that he was attacking my beliefs while professing love. It seems entirely plausible to me that one might attack the beliefs of another while loving that person. Indeed, one might attack the beliefs out of love for the person. Rather, what bugged me was this guy’s claim that he loved me despite the fact that he didn’t know anything about me. What on earth could it mean for him to say he loved me when he didn’t know who I was? I wanted to say, “How do you know that you love me? For all you know, I am filled with annoying tics and horrible characteristics that you hate.”
I had a similar problem on my mission. First, there was always something a little hollow to me in the words of missionaries — especially greenies — who professed their undying love for the Korean people. I always wanted to ask, “Which ones? Have you met them all? If you haven’t met them and don’t know them, who or what exactly is that you are loving?” Of course, I understand the importance of “loving the people,” of serving out of regard and affection for others rather than out of duty, ambition, or the desire for praise. Yet I couldn’t help but thinking that “the Korean people” was an abstraction that often had little relationship to the actual Koreans that I met and interacted with day to day. As for them, some of them I loved, some of them I was indifferent to, and some of them (and here, unfortunately, I include a couple of my investigators) I positively disliked.
Indeed, I repeatedly struggled with the problem of disliking my investigators. Of course, I knew that it was important — vital — that I love these people. I tried by an act of will to love them. Yet I knew that if I was honest to myself, I actually thought that they were insufferable, arrogant twits. (No doubt the feeling was mutual; an entirely justified reaction on their part.) Don’t get me wrong. There were some of my investigators who became my friends. I loved these people, and tried to pour my soul into serving them. But it was precisely the intensity of my attachment to these people that forced me to admit that there were other investigators that I just couldn’t stand.
It strikes me that knowing and loving a comparatively small handful of individual human beings is a daunting task. I have difficulty even remembering the names and faces of more than a couple of dozen people. This is why the command to love our neighbor and to treat everyone as our neighbor has always struck me as the most daunting of all commandments. Understanding what this might mean — at a minimum do I need to remember everyone’s name? — is difficult enough. Actually doing it, strikes me as quite impossible.
I think we throw the word “love” out around too much. I think God can love us the way he does precisely because he knows us so well. While we are to love all people, we can only love them to the degree we know them. Now I actually do think we do know each other fairly well – even those we’ve not met. We share a culture and a humanity and we know that. That enables us to love up to a point. But beyond that we really have to work to know the others.
Not really your point. But your initial two paragraphs made me think of it.
Dostoevsky uses his characters Ivan and Alyosha to broach this question in Brothers Karamazov, chapter 35:
One of the most difficult things for me when I arrived in Guatemala was this exact problem. Everyone that comes back from their missions says how much they loved the people so I naturally assumed I would automatically love them when I got there. I sure didn’t. I would always ask my companion how I was supposed to love these people who I don’t even understand. By the end of the mission I definitely had a greater love and appreciation for the people, in general, than when I arrived, but I think a lot of that is an acceptance and love of the culture (and thier traditions).
You can always take the Freud approach and say it’s imposible to love all mankind and some men are unworthy of love anyway as he does in “The Interpertations of Dreams.” He actually has quite a problem with that particular commandment. It one of the things he blames for giving Western Civilization a guilt complex.
I once came upon a small event in the parking lot of a convenience store where the mayor of Baltimore was passing out free hot dogs and bags of chips to promote the city’s upcoming bicentennial celebrations. It was enjoyable to watch a professional working the small throng, being our mayor. One impression I was left with is that the mayor of a city has to care about every person in it, has to be willing to be the leader of the whole city, or he’s really not suited for the top job.
Part of the problem for me is the word “love” is way too vague to describe all its meanings. It would be easier if love was graded on a scale of 1 – 100. Then we could say I love the English people 6, because like Rusty says after 2 years you accept them and grow to love their culture and traditions. Then you could love some English people 42, because they are nice people similar values and didn’t throw me off their doorstep. And then those who you served, taught and joined the church you could love 87. God of course would be the love 100, if and when we ever reach that degree.
One problem with English is that it’s ambiguous, especially when you’re talking about emotion and/or love. (I understand Greek to be much better for the task.) I don’t think the commandment to “love thy neighbor” has much to do with affection per se; it brings more to mind the idea from marriage therapy that “love” is an active and not a passive verb: an “anxious concern for the welfare” of the other person. Perhaps someone who professes to love all Koreans is not merely venting the gushing feelings of his heart but also committing himself to a course of action. Later on, when he is gritting his teeth at the way Koreans in general and Wong Fu in particular keep e.g. touching him on the elbow, he’ll try to recapture the state of mind he had then, have charity, and see the whole _person_ as well as the visible behaviors of the moment. (Having regained this perspective, he might also explain that Americans need a lot of personal space.)
That said, it’s certainly true that “unconditional love” is not a scriptural term, and that all loves are not equal. There’s a reason why Jesus is referred to as the “Beloved Son,” and in my life I certainly think it’s easier to feel close to and treat with respect people with whom I have a good relationship. At the same time, when someone is annoying you, I think remembering how you deal with those you *do* love personally can soften your reaction to those whom you are merely trying to love on principle.
Just for the record,
Max Wilson
Good post Nate.
I always felt uncomfortbale in the singles ward (and this really happens only in the SW), when someone would get up during testimony meeting and cry and say, “I want you to know I love all of you so much!” And I would think, “Really, because we have never spoken.” As Don notes it is too bad there isn’t a love gradiation scale.Then they could say “I love some of you as a 6 and some of you as 19 and you, Tommy, with the beautiful blue eyes, while I haven’t told you yet, I love you 99.”
My heart was changed over a decade ago when I received unconditional, and very undeserved, love from a priesthood leader who was helping me. That opened my heart to God’s love, which filled it, and life has been simpler and better since. I found that “remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love (Mni 8:26)”
Like Lehi in his dream, once you’ve tasted the fruit of God’s love, which is most joyous to the soul, you want to share it with everyone else. You find that you’re no longer worried about having enough sustenance for yourself. “Once you have felt your Savior’s love for you, even in the smallest part, you will feel secure, and a love for Him and for your Heavenly Father will grow within you. (D. Todd Christensen, GenCon 4/04). Then you become like “A man filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race (TJPS P. 174).”
I like the experience and comments Ester Rasband shared about this:
——————————————————————————————
I remember once, many years ago, walking with a friend to Sunday School class as she criticized a speaker who had just concluded his remarks.
“I just hate it when people say that!”
“What?” I asked
“Oh, that business about ‘I love every one of you.’ He doesn’t even know every one of us. It’s just a show. I’ve never even met him.”
“Hmmm,” I answered. “Don’t you think that you can love people you don’t know? Or even people who aren’t lovable?”
“No, of course not!”
“I think you can. I think the kind of love he was talking about is an action, not a reaction. I think he feels so full of love this morning that nothing he could know about us would stop him from loving us.”
“Well,” she said, “I’d have to think about that. When I love somebody it’s because I’ve got to know them and found them lovable.”
“Yeah,” I answered, “I think most of us do that most of the time. But there are times when I’m so grateful for being loved, of so keyed in to God’s love for me, that I really have it pouring out to everyone. And I think there are even some people, like my children, for instance, for whom I’m so grateful that I have love for them all the time. Anyway, I know that my love for others comes out of me — not them.”
A few years later my friend was leaving the ward. She stood at the pulpit and said, “I can’t bear to leave. I love every one of you. If you’re like I used to be, you don’t really believe that, because some of you I don’t know ell at all. But I do love you. I am so full of love for you that nothing I could know about you would change my mind. There are also people in this ward whom I admire. But I love you whether or not I have had the opportunity to find out what I can admire in you. I thank my Heavenly Father for giving you to me to love.”
Imagine what might have been her farewell address with her previous mind-set. And let’s all admit that at times we have felt the way she might have felt at one time: “I love this war because so many of you are professionals. You have great musical talent here, and your Sunday School teachers are marvelous scriptorians. Many of you are charitable people and brought food to me when I had my baby. Some of you are so friendly; you smile at me every week. I wish I had know more of you, because I’m sure there are more people here I could love as well.
With this approach, many of the ward members would have a moment of pride. It would feel very good indeed in the short range to those who were professionals, musicians, or scriptorians. Those who had brought in food would have felt a nod inside that they too had been acknowledged, and those who always smiled would also have felt temporary self-satisfaction. What of those who were not included in the groups she mentioned? What pain of guilt or inadequacy?
For all, there would have been some pressure in the long range, some condition on their security. If I am “loved” because I have a great musical talent, for instance, how do I feel if I make a mistake in my performance? Might it lessen my desire to risk performing again, or perhaps pressure me to perform well again to feed my insatiable need for recognition?
With the farewell address this good friend gave, however, everyone felt the love of their Heavenly Father. Everyone could go home feeling that they wanted to learn to love in the same way that had brought her such joy. Everyone could feel a connection to her, a true sisterhood or brotherhood, that allowed them to forget themselves and feel love for her and for God. All were energized be her love to risk loving others themselves.
That’s what nonreactive, unconditional love does. It energizes. It empowers. It eliminates the fear of risk, the fear of doing, as when Isaiah, by the Lord’s mercy, was given the strength to say, “Here am I. Send me” (Isa 6:8). Unconditional love eliminates the insatiable need for recognition. It makes it possible to get one’s strength from the Lord and to keep the commandments: “Perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hat torment” (1 Jn 4:18).
We have all heard people give talks like the on my friend might have given. Most of us have even given them ourselves in one way or another. My own past is littered with such speeches. I once honestly believed that admiration was peace giving. But it is the love that comes out of the giver that is the great source of energy.
— “Confronting the Myth of Self-Esteem,” pp 54-57. Out of print, but available used on Amazon.com
Can we lay-off of the book-length quotations from other authors?
Oh get off it. You don’t have to read it.
Eh, Harvard people are just snobs anyway. ;o)
Actually I thought it a quite pertinent quote. Thanks.
Re: Comment 9
For all, there would have been some pressure in the long range, some condition on their security. If I am “loved” because I have a great musical talent, for instance, how do I feel if I make a mistake in my performance? Might it lessen my desire to risk performing again, or perhaps pressure me to perform well again to feed my insatiable need for recognition?
I take your point about pressure to live up to expectations. I think you’re generalizing way too much, though, when you say “all” would have felt long-range pressure and a “condition on their security.” I’ve known people who would say the opposite: that loving someone unconditionally disregards their merits and devalues them as human beings. If I ever lose all good qualities and become a Son of Perdition, I don’t *want* my friends to still love me just as much as they do now–that would mean they’re totally oblivious to qualities that I think are important and put a lot of work into. More to the point, is it really useful to think of people in a way that expects to minimize the damage when they fail, as opposed to expecting them to succeed? Some people might be more hurt by that vote-of-no-confidence than by the “pressure” to succeed.
I’m not arguing that the concept of unconditional love is bad. Some people get quite a lot of mileage out of it. I’m simply arguing that it’s a many-sided concept and not universally applicable.
Respectfully yours,
Max Wilson
I think Clark’s comment (#1) is very important. We can only love to the extant that we know. For me it seems that the more I know someone one of two things happen 1) I like who they are and start to develop love for them or 2) I don’t like who they are, but begin to understand who and why they are the way they are. I begin to love them, but in a different, more “charitable” way.
I have often (although not always) noted a sort of patronizing, even condescending, tone when returning missionaries and mission presidents talk about developing a “great love for the _____________ people.” Like Nate I often wonder that this means. Coming from the academic world this reminds me of the attitudes of the early anthroplogical excursions among the “primitives”–aren’t they cute? Almost like real people!!! I would much rather hear about interactions with specific persons, not an amorphous “they” under the “people” rubric. On the discussion of unconditional love, Elder Nelson penned what for the Ensign amounted to a provocative article in which he argued that God’s love is a lot of things, but unconditional is not one of them. Russell M. Nelson, “Divine Love,” Ensign, Feb. 2003
Thanks manean. I was trying to remember where I had read that. Rasband’s book is wonderful, isn’t it?
Loving is different than admiring. I love my children because they are my children, not because of how they look, what strengths they have, etc.
Loving everyone is a commandment, like all commandments, that comes more easily to some than to others.
Isn’t the problem here one of confusing love as an emotion that one feels for another–which almost certainly requires that I know that person–with love as a relation we have to another? I don’t see any problem with having a relation of love to another, indeed to any and every other, if that relation doesn’t require the emotion of love from me. I also don’t see why recognizing that relation couldn’t issue in an emotion, not a feeling of emotive love for every person, but an emotive recognition of the relation even to those whom I do not know.
I suspect that most of the time when we see “I love you all,” we aren’t speaking honestly in either sense of the word “love”–not that we are lying, but that we are overcome by our emotions and saying what will turn out not to be true if we think about it carefully. Nevertheless, I don’t think that love for everyone is conceptually problematic unless mistake emotion for relation.
Thanks, Nate, for making us think about the expression “I love the people”… Such expressions are part of a certain rhetoric we use in Church and which seem to be transmitted from group to group, both as unifying discourse and as a message to ourselves. Several commenters (Don #6, Max #7, Jim #18) have drawn attention to the various meanings of “love”, a word with already varied Indo-European roots, one of which, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, relates tot the Germanic *galaubjan, “to hold dear, esteem, trust”. Applied to a whole people, the expression would then in the first place denote acceptance, which is already a giant step away from the “normal” enmity one would feel towards strangers. Is it not so that quite often in Christ’s words the term “love” is in the first place the simple refusal of enmity? “Love your enemies” is already a revolutionary statement, considering the usual feelings between nations. Coming back to our missionaries, if they can bring themselves to the point where they accept “others” as equal to their own compatriots, the statement of love as acceptance is very plausible. Not that it is easy to even reach that stage.
Jim: I vaguely remember having this discussion with you in the past, but it seems to me that love requires some sort of emotive component, even if I am willing to stipulate that it cannot be reduced to mere emotion. It seems to me that love ought to involve a relation — by which I am assuming that you mean things like care, service, etc. — yet it seems to me that there is an emotive component that accompanies such relation activities which is part of what we are trying to get at when we talk about the distinction between say serving out of duty and serving out of love.
After my first several decades of praise-for-performance, I was austere, lonely, and bitter. I performed my callings out of a spiritual knowledge of the truthfulness of the Church, but I had no heart in it. Lacking love, I found substitutes. Having a contrite spirit, I talked with my priesthood leader. After an hours-long interview about how I had done very unlovable things, I expected discipline, chastisement, and rejection. Instead, he then hugged me and told me frankly that he loved me! The first time I’d heard that after the other person had just learned UN-lovable things about me. That’s when my heart broke and I felt for the first time God’s love wash through me. I haven’t been the same since. One of my favorite passages now is: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” (Ezek. 36:26-27) Interesting that only stony hearts can be broken; fleshy ones yield, adapt, and embrace.
It took a while to trust that this newfound sense of well-being could last. Msh 4:11-12 has been an important key to preserving it. Once trusting God’s love and filled with Alma-like gratitude for the healing, there is this incredible desire to share this joy with others. The thought of others’ suffering is painful and you instinctively want to lift the hands that hang down and to strengthen the feeble knees. Life has more meaning as you unconditionally help others and seek their joy. After living in concern of how you match-up with others and how they conditionally feel about you, it is wonderfully liberating not to even consider what they think of you or what you think of them – just to seek how you can help. This works because God’s love is an endless supply and you lose the fear of not being loved. Until you have that, the rest is too much work!
Maybe it’s that having found joy from God’s feeling of love and it’s expression through the atonement’s soul-healing, you can’t abide the idea that other’s will linger in the same pains that you had. “Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”
14.
Max, the quote I posted is part of Sis. Rasband’s larger explanation of not worrying about meriting God’s love because we never will deserve it. However, He loves us regardless and we become liberated by accepting his love as an undeserved gift. Once we trust God to be a bottomless wellspring of love, we can forget about seeking enough for love for us and, filled with His love, reach out to others to lift their fears and burdens. “Charity seeketh not her own.”
“If I ever lose all good qualities and become a Son of Perdition, I don’t *want* my friends to still love me just as much as they do now–that would mean they’re totally oblivious to qualities that I think are important and put a lot of work into.”
When a young man murdered his wife in SLC recently, his family reported him to the police. They said that they loved him still, but he would have to accept his consequences. They loved him, maybe, hopefully as much as before. It wasn’t conditioned on his position on a love-deserved spectrum. This truth is so poignant that a lawyer radio host here in SoCal made a point of saying that was exactly the right way for them to feel: continue to love him yet maintain dignity and standards. This, of course, is how our Heavenly Father works with us.
“More to the point, is it really useful to think of people in a way that expects to minimize the damage when they fail, as opposed to expecting them to succeed? Some people might be more hurt by that vote-of-no-confidence than by the “pressure” to succeed.”
Love, not admiration, doesn’t look at whether you will fail or succeed. It cares for you and rejoices when you succeed and offers a hand when you fail as different manifestations of the same feeling. However, by removing the performance pressure, love honestly can thank the stumbling 12-year-old for sharing his thoughts and testimony in a technically deficient sacrament talk. Imagine how much joy this brings him, knowing that he, with his widow’s mite, is accepted. This is much more helpful than respectful silence after poor performance.
17.
JKS, Sis. Rasband’s book focused many of the things I’m learning. I carry copies with me to share with others. Rasband for already-members, BoM for not-yet-members.
18.
Jim, what I’m talking about is the “emotive” love. As in the quote of Jos. Smith in #9, once filled with the love of God, you do love others and want to help because of the emotion propelling you. It isn’t based on knowing and admiring them, but on having love within to share.
19.
Wilfried, loving enemies is revolutionary, but necessary (for missionaries) to touch their hearts, opening them to the Holy Ghost’s influence. (BTW, is it possible that the burning-in-the-bosom feeling of joy that comes from the Holy Ghost is love? It feels the same to me and it’s is centered in the same part of the body that we say feels love.) Christ must have felt it when he asked forgiveness for the people in the act of killing him.
Somebody is going to bring in Abraham Lincoln’s rejoinder that he is destroying his enemies (as enemies) when he loves them.
Nate (#20) (and manaen, #21): You’re right that there’s an emotive aspect to it (just as there is a relational aspect to love in its usual sense), but that emotion is different than the love I feel for my children or my wife. It would be a travesty of our marriage or my parenthood if I loved them the same way I love everyone else. And love isn’t confined to family. It includes friends: if I love my friend in the same way I love everyone else, then he is not my friend. But I went too far when I said that the love we can feel for everyone wasn’t emotive; there is an emotive aspect to it. I’ve felt the love that maenen describes from both sides of the desk. It is real and it has an emotive quality, but it is quite different from the emotion we usually identify as love. (It seems to me that it comes as close to the feeling of gratitude as anything else.) So I think the problem is that which Wilfried has mentioned: we often confuse different kinds of love when we say “I love everyone” or when we question whether that is possible.
Danithew beat me to the punch, but I like a different Dostoevsky passage better:
“‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself…. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience…. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men
individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.'” [BK Book II, Ch 4, Garnett translation]
My wife studied anthropology and likes to make fun of herself and her kind b/c they’re the worst this way, self-righteously loving distant and exotic cultures while despising their own culture, neighbors, etc.–esp. at BYU b/c the mostly female anthropology students are so insecure about being a white Utah Mormon woman who wants to get married and raise a family….
Uh huh…that’s why in every ward the Utah Mormon intellectuals sit together, the ex-cheerleader young mothers sit together, the young singles sit togther (the cute ones), etc. etc. They are all creeped out by the universal love thing. Who was this Jesus anyway? what is this ‘inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these my brethren’ thing? We all want to play at Club Mormon….(Can we get a membership committee soon to vet new members?)
not
texasviolinist just described every ward I’ve lived in. The same people that would proclaim how much they loved everyone in the ward wouldn’t be caught dead moving out of their clique to actually speak to all those people they love.
Because so many people are hypocrites about loving everyone and because we can’t possible do it we should give up on the notion right?…..??
wrong
manaen and texasviolinist — you girls (guys? whatever) are on a roll today. Keep ’em coming. I am enjoying your comments. Rasband sounds good. i might have to buy the book, though I usually avoid overtly Mormon books that don’t promise doctrine a la Nibley like the plague. Guess you’re helping me overcome one of my prejudices.
27.
Daniel, good to hear you found some value. Sis. Rasband’s book opens a door that leads from the world of doctrine, exposition, analysis, critical understanding to one of peace, caring, spirit. From pride to humility.
Then, once through that door, one’s heart is ready to be filled with God’s love and to guide you in self-less love for others. This life becomes very simple: just find ways to help. We can drop all the tiring analysis of who’s more (insert favorite basis for pride here) because we now understand that anybody can give what they have to the Master, which, feed-my-sheep style, means to any neighbor. Those comparisons are pointless because anyone can give what they have: the retarded child in Chile can wish the President of France a good day. Service is not limited comparative ability, just by the willingness to help.
The two basic commandments of love God and neighbor become not just commandments but the veiwpoint from which you see the world. You end up doing what seem like goofy things, like stopping 3 times in one night to help stranded motorists, because you enjoy it and you can’t bear not to help. When filled with God’s love and forgiveness, we can’t refrain from helping. As Scrooge said in my favorite film version, after showing his new-found love on Christmas, ” I don’t deserve to be this happy… but I just can’t help it!”
We naturally feel not only “inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, …ye have done it unto me,” (Matt 25:40) but it’s following opposite, “inasmuch as ye did it *not* unto the least of these, ye did it *not* unto me.” (v 45). How is this? Here’s a possibility: If Jesus suffered for the sins, illnesses, pains, afflictions, and infirmities each of us have (Al 7:10-12), and we lessen those our neighbor has, do we then lessen the suffering Jesus felt in the atonement? LIkewise “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (Jn 14:15) may not be a request for obedience as obeisance so much as “If you love me, don’t add to the pain I endured for the commandments you do not keep. I love you and I will take this pain for you, but if you love me, don’t add to it.” I’m not sure that we literally can lessen the pain that Jesus felt in Gethsemane and at Golgotha with our service and obedience. However, I am sure that the Father and the Son now grieve for our pains and disobedience and that we can lessen their sorrow or increase their joy today.
My dad lived in Korea as a young man. He served with the ROK dragon battalion doing forward fire control in ’69-70. He did flood rescue field work during the flood in ’73 and served a mission not too long ago. When he says he loves the Korean people there is nothing of “a sort of patronizing, even condescending, tone” about him.
On the other hand, I merely like the Koreans I know at Church. They are neat and I really liked the son I taught in Primary.
But we can be filled with compassion and charity for all mankind.
And feel sorrow to know that someone’s parents have been divorced, regardless of what we think about them otherwise.
I suppose it’s time to throw in Pres. Kimball:
“It is better to be respected than to be loved.”
Love can be given freely to people we really don’t have a high opinion of.
Elisabeth in Pride and Predjudice said something similar: “There are few people I really love and even fewer of whom I think highly.”
When you consider what a twit her mother (and some of her sisters) was, the statement becomes clear. She was constantly embarrassed by her mother and didn’t respect her at all. But she did love her (which might be why mom’s antics pained her so much).
Well, in her pride did Elizabeth not rather value her own gifts above those of the others? Jane she valued and admired and adored for her goodness and generosity, which Elizabeth acknowleged were greater than her own. Yet what gifts were her mother and younger sisters given which she didn’t possess and didn’t see? It’s hard to tell from the book, really. Because she didn’t see them, she didn’t show them to us. Yet they were certainly there. Perhaps it was only the humility to see and daily experience Elizabeth’s disdain for them and not love her any less for it.
It’s very difficult, the injunction we’ve been given to love everyone, and yet is it okay that we should say, “that’s too hard, it’s impossible, I can’t do it”? I can’t bring myself to feel that is acceptable to Christ. I know that it’s possible to love everyone, for Christ does. So I just have to keep going back on my knees and asking for help to learn how.
I know people, too, who truly love everyone with a love unfeigned. You can just feel their love. It’s not contingent or conditional. Far from feeling insulted by this, I feel exalted by it. And I realize that I, too, can have the overflowing joy that always attends those people.
Two things I found that help. One is the principle that anyone to whom you consistently render loving service, over time your heart will come to feel love for them. I think that may be how missionaries begin sincerely to love those they serve. Certainly parents’ love for their children is strengthened in just this way. To feel love for someone, render them loving service. This always works.
The second thing is to take Christ’s perspective, and the best analogy I’ve found for this is think of the feeling a parent has seeing his or her children be harsh or cruel to one another. It’s heartbreaking to watch. The same is true for me with my animals. When they fight and contend I feel exceedingly sad and wish they could love each other with something like the love I have for each of them. Every time this happens, I think of Christ looking at all of us in the same way. Any time we contend or feel anger or distaste or contempt one for another it must truly break his heart, for he loves each of us so very much, and has suffered so much for our sakes. When I remember that, and how he gave us his commandment, that we should love one another as he loves us, I feel chastened, and for a moment I get a glimpse of how things should be between all of us always.
Re: the end of #31
I recall a scene from the sci-fi novle A Canticle for Leibowitz
In it a scientist is debating a monk. The scientist believes that post nuclear holocaust humansare a degenerate slave race that served the higher beings who were killed off by the bombs. As proof, he points out some seemingly mindless lower class drudge who is clearly suffering from syphilis while working at a menial task. The scientist says he sees this and cannot believe that this man is part of the true heritage of humanity. He then asks the monk what he sees, and the monk replies “The image of Christ.”
Not sure if that applies, but to me it seems to bear on the discussion.
I like Don’s 1-100 scale idea (#6) though I prefer to think of it as “levels of vibration” without numerical limits. Like “a light that has power to light other lights,” to borrow Elder Packer’s favorite analogy (though used here in a more meta-physical sense!), we resonate/glow as the vibration finally hits us, and we in turn radiate out the same pitch/light/feeling.
“We love him, because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19.
I also like manaen’s comment (#28): that love is less about ability, more about willingness. We gradually learn not to concern ourselves with the “worthiness” of the object of our love but instead simply emanate love outward as wide as we can, to whomever might be around us, because Loving has become the essense of our being. It’s easy, of course, in the beginning stages of this process, to love those that we already like. But imagine the beacons our souls can become when we learn to love those who are most un-lovable to us! And that light grows “brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” (D&C 50:24).
31.
Tatiana, your last paragraph captures what I’m coming to believe will be the Celestial Kingdom. Not only will we be blessed by living in Heavenly Father’s presence, but the sociality of *everyone* that resides there will bless us every moment because that kind of love will be natural to everyone there.
33.
Jim, thx for combining the idea of growing love with a passage I’d always considered only in the context of growing intelligence.
In light of that passage, now that I’m beginning to enjoy the idea of being able to serve anyone, another level is beginning to appear: at-one-ness. In cases of service, there is an inherent superior that has the surplus to give and an inherent inferior that has the deficiency to be filled. Of course, Christian charity moves us to serve humbly, gladly whenever we can (see King Mosiah’s speech). However, Christ, while working out the atonement in Gethsemane, prayed that we all would be one as he and the Father are one. This goes much deeper than handing bread and cheese to beggars or mourning with those that mourn, etc. It takes us from caring about or emanating love (“loving at”) somebody to merging hearts. This would create a whole new bouyancy in the souls of the downtrodden. I’m trying to understand what would be oneness with each person that I meet and how I can develop it. It’s a new door for me and I’m just beginning to work out what’s on the other side.