"Be Ye Kind One to Another": Part 7

"Objection!  Moral Relativism, Your Honor"

As you've been following this Series (especially Part 6), you might have thought, "But Tim!  Aren't you advocating for moral relativism, where everybody does what they think is right?  That's awful!  We need to focus on God's absolute, universal, unchanging, eternal standards!"

​I hear you.  I agree with you.  But first we need to agree on what, exactly, are God's "absolute, universal, unchanging and eternal standards."

(Parenthetically, isn't it weird that 99 times out of 100 when someone invokes God's unchanging standards, they're talking about sex and marriage?  Yup.  We've all been conscripted into Satan's culture wars; how he must laugh when we make our private-parts the crowning example of God's immutable, eternal laws.  I mean, no one glorifies genitalia like the Latter-day Saints, making the new and everlasting covenant a means for endless procreation in heaven where we get to populate worlds without number in celestial ecstasy, whilst the sorry chaps in the Telestial Kingdom are resurrected as anatomically-smooth Ken dolls, per Joseph Fielding Smith.)

Anyway, where were we?  Moral relativism!  Do we really think if everyone "followed the Spirit" it would lead to people being deceived and going off the deep end?  I guess it's a question of trust.  Do we trust other people to exercise a little discretion and discernment of their own? 

Well, the hall monitors and lunch ladies are worried.  They're worried if we lived according to the gifts of the Spirit (instead of under a bureaucratic priesthood) we'd create a devil's playground of disorder and disobedience.  Hell in a pink handbasket.

But I think all the fear-mongering shows a lack of faith ―  not in the members, but in the Lord, believing the Church would crash and burn without leadership's firm, paternalistic hands at the wheel. 

Then comes, like a bat-out-of-Damascus, the apostle Paul exhorting us to be united in our love of the Lord and each other, AND (here's the good part) to stick out our tongues at our schoolmasters (Galatians 3:24-25).  Recess is in session!

Anyway, remember what I said in Part 5:

"Make no mistake: I am not a relativist.  I believe there are universal commandments that must be kept; they are absolute.  In other words, there are no exceptions.  Not even Jesus!  (See 2 Nephi 31:5).  This tells us something important (considering the fact we are all so different); it tells us that universal commandments are exceedingly uncommon and rare as hens' teeth."

So how many are there?  How many iron-clad, true-blue, universal requirements of salvation do we find in the gospel, that apply to ALL the adult men and women who have reached the age of accountability who have ever lived, throughout all eternity?  Are there a thousand?  A hundred?  A dozen?

Ummm.  There's 4.

My Methodology

​Am I exaggerating?  No, but having been raised with a long laundry list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots," I understand why this may come as a shock.  

A good place for us to start searching for these global, universal omni-requirements is the scriptures. 

Lucky for us, we can refine our search using key-phrases and search terms to find out what the Lord has deemed essential for "all men" (and of course, women). 

Let's start with these phrases:

   - "All people"
   - "All men" 
   - "All nations"
   - "Every man"
   - "Ends of the earth"

We're looking for things that have generational reach, that span across dispensations.  We want to discover the heighth and breadth of God's word that encompasses the entirety of His family, from Abel to Zebulun; from Alpha to Omega.

Well, after reading the search results, I was pleasantly surprised.  I discovered that, by a wide margin, far and away the winner is:  "Repent."  So simple.

1.  Repent.

For illustrative purposes, let me quote a few verses that make abundantly clear why Repentance tops our list:

   a.  "I bear record that the Father commandeth ALL MEN, EVERYWHERE, to repent and believe in me" (3 Nephi 11:32).

   b.  "And surely EVERY MAN must repent or suffer, for I, God, am endless" (D&C 19:4).

   c.  "And [the sons of God] were preachers of righteousness, and spake and prophesied, and called upon ALL MEN, EVERYWHERE, to repent; and faith was taught unto the children of men" (Moses 6:23).

   d.  "He sendeth an invitation unto ALL MEN, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you" (Alma 5:33).

Okay, we get the idea.  Are there others?  Well, the next thing we find is closely related to repentance, and is baptism.

2.  Baptism

​It's interesting how God's universal laws rip right through the veil.  They pierce the living and the dead, as if our present mortality made no difference.  Even the dead must be baptized (see D&C 128).

It makes sense, though, because Jehovah is the "Eternal Judge of both quick and dead" (Moroni 10:34).  The same principles are going to apply to everybody.

   a.  "Therefore, repent ALL YE ENDS OF THE EARTH, and come unto me, and believe in my gospel, and be baptized in my name" (Ether 4:18).

   b.  "Go ye therefore, and teach ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28:19).

   c.  "Now this is the commandment: Repent, ALL YE ENDS OF THE EARTH, and come unto me and be baptized in my name" (3 Nephi 27:20).

Even the Son of God was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, so we can take this one to the bank, whether Zion's or Sheol's.

3.  Love One Another

Okay, we've repented and are baptized.  Anything else?  What now?

"Oh, hi Nephi!  Looks like you already answered this for us."

   a.  "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of ALL MEN" (2 Nephi 31:20).

   b.  "And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward ALL MEN" (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

   c.  "Let thy love be for them as for thyself; and let thy love abound unto ALL MEN" (D&C 112:11).

The apostle Paul spent a lot of time describing what love looks like.  He taught us to:

   - Be patient towards all men (1 Thess. 5:14)

   - Be gentle towards all men (2 Tim 2:24)

   - Show meekness towards all men (Titus 3:2)

   - Be peaceable towards all men (Romans 12:18)

Love sums up everything else, doesn't it?

   For all the law is fulfilled
   in one word, even in this;
   Thou shalt love
   thy neighbour as thyself.

(Galatians 5:14)

So that's it.  We're done!  Really.

   (1) Repent
   (2) Be baptized
   (3) Love God and each other

Anything else I can think of (like being 'born again' and not tattling on Suzie and forgiving Bob and making my bed with all the frilly pillows my wife likes) are all encompassed in these three things.

Perhaps this is why the Lord said:

   Say nothing but repentance
   unto this generation.

(D&C 6:9)

When we start to get specific and tell others to not give backrubs in the front room lest it lead to third base, we've drifted into "tenets" (D&C 19:31) and are missing the mark.

There's no complicated formula; no list; you can cut down the hedge: we just repent and love.  Rinse and repeat.  Isn't the Lord's yoke easy?

My favorite summary of this concept is from the Book of Moses, and is contained in a single, spine-tingling verse:

   And unto thy brethren have I said,
   and also given commandment,
   that they should
   (1) love one another, and that
   (2) they should choose me,
   their Father; but behold,
   they are without affection,
   and they hate their own blood.

(Moses 7:33)

"Wait, Tim!" someone says.  "You said there were four universal commandments; you've only given us three."

True, true.  There's a last category that is special.

Interlude

Before we get to the fourth item, I want to pause and go back to the haunted house analogy.

One of the ways we get in trouble is to view certain things as intrinsically, objectively wrong.  For everyone.

Hearing this probably goes against the grain, because our whole lives we've been told such-and-such is bad ("thou shalt not kill"). 

But careful: if there's any exception to the rule, then the rule is not universal and immutable.

Nephi killed.  Soldiers kill.  The warden at the prison flips the switch to the electric chair. 

Or abortion.  Are there exceptions, such as when the life of the mother is at risk?

Or keeping the Sabbath.  Ox in the mire, much?

My point is that if something has an exception, then it cannot be objectively, universally wrong.  Don't misunderstand: the thing could still be wrong for a particular person or people, or under certain circumstances.  How do we know? 

Well, that's what the Holy Ghost is for:

   I say unto you that if
   ye will enter in by the way,
   and receive the Holy Ghost,
   it will show unto you all things
   what ye should do.
   Behold, this is the doctrine of Christ.

(2 Nephi 32:5-6)

(For a man who prided himself on plainness, I think Nephi struck the gold standard with that statement.)
​
So I am opposed to horizontal obedience, where we mere mortals tell each other what to do, or what is right or wrong (think: face cards).  Why?  Because when we're busy enforcing our morals on each other we're too busy to purely love each other.

instead, Paul advocated for vertical obedience, where we are all subject to the dictates of our own conscience and to the Spirit of God, individualized and tailored to each person.

This is the same thing as Nephi just taught, but here's how Paul said it:

   Stand fast therefore in the liberty
   wherewith Christ hath made us free,
   and be not entangled again
   with the yoke of bondage.

   For brethren, ye have been called
   unto liberty;
   only use not liberty for an occasion
   to the flesh, but by love
   serve one another.

   This I say then, Walk in the Spirit,
   and ye shall not fulfil the lust
   of the flesh.

   But if ye be led of the Spirit,
   ye are not under the law.

(Galatians 5:1, 13, 16, 18)

Maybe now, at last, we can begin to understand what Paul meant when he said the most astonishing thing I have ever heard from the lips of an apostle:

   All things are lawful unto me,
   but all things are not expedient:
   all things are lawful for me,
   but I will not be brought under
   the power of any.

(1 Corinthians 6:12)

All things are lawful?  How can he say that?  What does that mean?

4.  Zion

During my scripture study, as I searched for universal commandments, I found a number of verses that defied easy-categorization. 

​But soon a pattern or theme begin to emerge.  There appeared a thread of universal language about Zion and the New Jerusalem.

I was surprised, actually, because Zion is such a defined-point-in-time thing; we've got Enoch's Zion; Melchizedek's; and the forthcoming latter-day Zion.

So why is there so much ink spilled on the topic, when the majority of people will never partake of the promises of Zion?  Or will they?

For example, here are some of them:

   a.  "The voice of the Lord unto ALL PEOPLE: Go ye forth unto the land of Zion . . . . Yea, let the cry go forth among ALL PEOPLE: Awake and arise and go forth to meet the Bridegroom" (D&C 133:9-10).

   b.  "And lift up an ensign of peace, and make a proclamation of peace unto the ENDS OF THE EARTH" (D&C 105:39). (We've got a Family Proclamation; when are we getting a Peace Proclamation?)

   c.  "A chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that ALL MEN should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof; And that it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven" (Ether 13:2-3).

   d.  "And there was a strict command throughout all the churches . . . that there should be an equality among ALL MEN" (Mosiah 27:3).

Conclusion

I am going to conclude that the first 3 universal commandments can be kept individually; no matter who or where or what we are, whether in a cave or studying at NYU or climbing to the top of Everest ― the Lord has faith that everyone can do (1) to (3).

But the fourth?  Ah, there's the rub.  It appears to require group effort (and is perhaps the best evidence of whether we have kept 1 thru 3).

   (1) Repent
   (2) Be baptized
   (3) Love God and one another
   (4) Be a Zion people