How Do We Love as the Savior Commanded?
Jesus washes Peter’s feet (see John 13).
My favorite day of the year is the winter solstice. Every day for six months a little more light comes into our daily life. Isn’t it interesting that those six months of increasing light contain both Christmas and Easter? How can this compare to the birth and atonement of our Savior?
I want to take you back a month or so when a brother in my ward was called as a counselor to the bishop. He stated in his testimony that he considered someone one of his best friends. He then added that this was also because he knew him from when they both lived in another area. They had spent time together there and here in church but also outside of the church assignments. They had real love toward one another.
[To learn about wards and how the church is organized, read “Wards and Stakes”.]
What does it mean to love?
What does it mean to “love one another as I have loved you”? First I think we need to look at the scripture in its entirety. I have included my notes throughout in brackets.
“A new commandment I give unto you [in other words, ‘Hey listen up this is important, I even went so far as to use the word commandment’], that you love one another [the commandment] as I have loved you [instruction on how to keep that commandment], that ye also love one another [repeating the commandment]” (John 13:34)
I learned a long time ago how to tell what you really love. You really love whatever you spend your time, money, effort, and stress on. If we are to love one another as Christ has loved us, that’s where our time, money, effort, and maybe some stress should be.
It doesn’t have to be all four of those and usually isn’t. I love playing basketball but I don’t stress over it or spend much money on it. I love my wife and I spend a lot of time, money, and effort, and of course some stress, on our relationship. I love my kids, spend lots of time and money on them, work for them to have a good life, and I stress about them all the time.
The Lord has directed us on three of these things:
Time: He has commanded us to love one another and spend time with each other by gathering often.
Money: We are also commanded to pay tithing and a generous fast offering.
Effort: We are also called to serve in different capacities and to “magnify those callings”. Elder Renlund at a regional training said, “God can make the willing able but God will not make the able willing.”
Stress: I don’t believe our Heavenly Father or the Savior wants us to stress about anything. They have set forth a plan for us to be successful at the three other things.
So where should we or what should we be spending our time, money, and effort on? This list could get very cumbersome very quickly. One Sunday our stake president spoke about this very thing. He emphasized having our lives centered on Christ. For many months our bishop exhorted us to have more unity in the ward, to be more unified in Christ. If we were more unified toward each other in our ward would that be an expression of our love for one another? How do we attain a higher or stronger sense of unity?
Unity begins with “YOU”
If the bishop could be bestowed with the ability to teleport instantly to anywhere in the world and he took a Saturday and popped over to the home of each family or individual in the ward for ten minutes each, and continued this throughout the whole ward for fourteen hours, and then on Sunday repeated the process, expressing the Lord’s love for each separately… would he achieve unity in our ward? Not necessarily.
Many endeavors or improvements we attempt usually always begin with “me” or “I.” If I want to feel more love toward me, I need to start loving others. If I want to be more spiritual, I need to start adding spiritual things to my life. Most everything starts with me. However, unity is different, and it may be one of the most accusatorial words in our language. Because unity starts with YOU.
All of the bishop’s efforts to show love and caring, by his own actions toward the ward members or even by the actions of ward council members toward the ward members, would be just one sided, a one-way love highway if you will. Unity will only be successful if we, or you, have a change of heart.
King Benjamin exhorted his people to change and their response was:
“Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2).
The bishop already has made the first move, if you will, through all of his emails and admonitions from the pulpit. Now to fulfill unity in our ward it begins with all the yous left over: it includes all of us.
What if I feel too busy to work on this?
You might think, “What else am I supposed to do? I am so busy now. I don’t have any more time to work on this.” Let’s think back on the time-money-effort-stress idea. Many years ago, Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave a talk titled “Good Better Best.”
“Consider how we use our time in the choices we make in viewing television, playing video games, surfing the Internet, or reading books or magazines. Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best. When the Lord told us to seek learning, He said, “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 88:118; emphasis added).
Elder Oaks goes on with some other illustrations of good, better, and best:
“It is good to belong to our Father in Heaven’s true Church and to keep all of His commandments and fulfill all of our duties. But if this is to qualify as ‘best,’ it should be done with love and without arrogance. We should, as we sing in a great hymn, ‘crown [our] good with brotherhood,’ showing love and concern for all whom our lives affect. To our hundreds of thousands of home teachers and visiting teachers, I suggest that it is good to visit our assigned families; it is better to have a brief visit in which we teach doctrine and principle; and it is best of all to make a difference in the lives of some of those we visit” (Oaks, Dallin H., “Good, Better, Best”)
With the permission of my bishop I translated this for our day and situation:
To the ministering brothers and sisters in our ward, It is good to know who our assigned families are, even to visit them once every three months or so. It is better to visit with them often and know who they are and their family dynamic. It is best to become their friend so you can minister to their needs and wants, and YOU are the first person they call when they are in need of a service, blessing or just a shoulder.
This is putting our effort and time to the test. “But,” you might say, “I don’t have any time or any strength left. I’m tired after working and taking care of my family. I’m just too busy.” If I were Elder Bednar I would talk about the empowering and enabling power of the Priesthood to help us have the time and strength to fulfill all of our Lord’s work here on the earth. We are all busy and tired.
I would like to reference another talk, this one by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, called “Of Things That Matter Most”:
“My dear brothers and sisters, we would do well to slow down a little, proceed at the optimum speed for our circumstances, focus on the significant, lift up our eyes, and truly see the things that matter most.”
What are the things that we think matter most in our lives? Do they follow our Lord’s teachings? Do they follow our stake president’s instruction to be Christ-centered?
Brothers and sisters, diligently doing the things that matter most will lead us to the Savior of the world. That is why “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, … that [we] may know to what source [we] may look for a remission of [our] sins” (2 Nephi 25:26). In the complexity, confusion, and rush of modern living, this is the “more excellent way.
This is the more excellent way. But how can we do this? There is so much to do and so many aspects and so many people in the ward.
The aggregation of marginal gains
In October 2021, Elder Michael Dunn gave a talk titled “One Percent Better”, explaining what Sir Dave Brailsford called “the aggregation of marginal gains” after observing the great successes of British cycling.
“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. […] Rather than being stymied by the churn and dramatic swings between sin and repentance, what if our approach was to narrow our focus—even as we broadened it? Instead of trying to perfect everything, what if we tackled just one thing? For example, what if in your new wide-angle awareness, you discover you have neglected a daily reading of the Book of Mormon? Well, instead of desperately plowing through all 531 pages in one night, what if we committed instead to read just one percent of it—that’s just five pages a day—or another manageable goal for your situation? Could aggregating small but steady marginal gains in our lives finally be the way to victory over even the most pesky of our personal shortcomings? Can this bite-sized approach to tackling our blemishes really work?”
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. This idea is at the core of one of our most famous scriptures:
“For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little” (2 Nephi 28:30).
“Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (Doctrine & Covenants 64:33).
“Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise” (Alma 37:6-7).
Brothers and sisters, we know that the Lord loves us very much. He has proven this by His actions and words while on this earth and still today in our lives through revelation. If we can identify where we spend our time, money, and effort, we can then start to use that power to follow our Lord Jesus Christ’s commandment to love one another as He loved, and loves, us.
Let us evaluate those good things in our lives and modify them for better things and even for the best things, starting with one area or thing at a time and making small, positive changes. Moving forward to create our own “aggregation of marginal gains.” By doing this perhaps we can bring a little more light each day into our and others’ lives and by doing so build our ward, create more unity, and change our hearts as we do good continually.