Love Thy Neighbour

To my son,

                Today we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because He triumphed over death, we will each rise from the dead in some future day and live forever. At that day if we have tried our best to follow Him and keep His commandments, and repented when we didn’t, we will be able to live together as a family forever. That is my greatest desire for us and why we need to strive now to follow His example. One of the things that He taught when He was on the earth was to love one another. He taught that the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is like unto it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39). That is no easy thing to always do, but we should strive to show love to all those around us. And that doesn’t mean just those who are nice—we should love even those who are mean to us: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). At home may be one of the most difficult places to actually live according to this instruction. As we are together all the time there are naturally arguments and fighting that occurs, but the more we can remember to follow this counsel from the Savior, the happier our home with be. I want to encourage you today to try harder to not act on feelings of anger but rather remember the Savior in those moments and His counsel to love even those who persecute you. When you feel like you want to get revenge on a sibling after they have done something hurtful to you, remember instead the Savior’s instruction: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). In other words, treat others like you want to be treated—instead of only reacting to how they treat you—and I think you’ll find that they soon start treating you like you want. Otherwise, if we always seek “the retaliatory reactions of ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’” then “we would be but blind and toothless” as President Nelson has taught.

                The Savior didn’t just teach these principles but He lived them perfectly as well. We see this especially in the final days of His mortal life. When the wicked people came to capture Him in the night on the Mount of Olives, Peter tried to defend him and “having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear” (John 18:10). But the Savior was willing to submit peacefully, and He did not want to hurt even this man who was there to illegally arrest Him: “And he touched his ear, and healed him” (Luke 22:51). The Savior put His ear back on! As far as I know this was the final miracle that Jesus performed before He was crucified—it was to one who was there as an enemy to Jesus. As He was subsequently taken and illegally tried, mocked and spit upon and reviled, scourged and beaten and humiliated, He never reviled back but showed perfect self-restraint and love to even His perpetrators. As He suffered on the cross He said of the Roman soldiers: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He gave us the perfect example to follow, and I hope that you and I can both try harder to not act upon anger or seek revenge but rather, as the Primary song states, “Try to show kindness in all that [we] do. Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought, for these are the things Jesus taught.” 

Love,

Dad