"Thou shalt not speak evil of thy neighbor, nor do him any harm."
Doctrine and Covenants 42:27
We've heard "love thy neighbor" many times. It's already been said... but as with most things, God needs to drive the point home with repetition and some clarification because mostly we haven't been paying proper attention. :)
So, refresher course. First refresher: our neighbors are everyone. So, we shouldn't speak evil of anyone, or do anyone harm. In fact, we should love everyone. We know this. :) Second refresher: even people we don't like. Even ____________ <--- mentally fill in the name of whatever individual or group we've spoken evil of lately.
It is unfortunately easy to speak evil of/complain about people. We jump into mental comparisons without seeing the whole picture. We wonder why this other person hasn't learned a simple lesson that we learned long ago... or why this group of people is choosing things that we would never choose. We don't usually remember at the time that there are other basic lessons that we struggle with, or other choices that we make that others are wise enough to stay away from.
Today, let's remember our neighbors fondly, and not speak evil of any of them. Learning to love each other is one of our biggest lessons in life, and this is a good first step: Do no harm.
What about the mistress of a cheating husband - who knows he was married, until she caused them to divorce and wound the hearts of his children. How do you love her?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying any of it is easy, but probably the same way we love anyone... trying to see things from their perspective, realizing that we make massive mistakes ourselves, that we don't usually mean to blow up our own lives, or others' lives--and also realizing that Christ paid for our sins, and that woman's sins, just like he paid for the sins of the woman taken in adultery in the New Testament. He didn't condemn her, but he told her to "go, and sin no more" (John 8:11). If there is no repentance, and justice to be accounted, it will be. We are promised that. But holding on to anger when there is nothing we can do about it... that just wounds our own souls, and turns us into people we don't want to be. If we can allow God to judge people who have offended us, we'll do better at not being the offenders ourselves. ... And in the end, sometimes we can't change our own hearts to love people we really hate... but if we are willing, God can change our hearts for us. We just have to let him in.
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