Charity and the Destiny of Man

I've been thinking a lot about charity recently, why the scriptures place so much emphasis on it, and how we can better live it in our lives. The following are some of my thoughts as I've tried to dig at this principle.



In the Book of Mormon, Ether chapter 12 talks about charity:

28 Behold, I will show unto the Gentiles their weakness, and I will show unto them that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me—the fountain of all righteousness.

33 And again, I remember that thou hast said that thou hast loved the world, even unto the laying down of thy life for the world, that thou mightest take it again to prepare a place for the children of men.

34 And now I know that this love which thou hast had for the children of men is charity; wherefore, except men shall have charity they cannot inherit that place which thou hast prepared in the mansions of thy Father.

It makes me think of some of the insights from the Parable of The Good Samaritan:





Here, a Samaritan helps a Jew left for dead on a road between Jericho and Jerusalem. This parable is a wonderful story illustrating the power of our shared humanity. But there's a deeper lesson when we look at the historical context around the Jewish and Samaritan nations at the time of Jesus.

The history between the Samaritans and Jews is fascinatingly tragic, and we can learn a lot about the intent of Christ's parable by understanding that. Some highlights:

• The separation of Samaritans and Jews went back more than 700 years by the time of Christ. These tensions and differences were very much woven into the fabric of each other's race, culture, religion, and even their genes. The conflict can even be attributed back further to the sons of Israel.
• The Jews and Samaritans make conflicting claims of ancestry, priesthood authority, scripture, land rights, and temple worship. There's lots more to read about that here.
• Less than 200 years before Christ, probably still very fresh in the minds of the Jews and Samaritans, Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to establish a universal religion with the penalty for resistance being death. Facing certain genocide, the Samaritans aligned themselves with Antiochus requiring cutting any relationship with the Jews in the south. Naturally feeling betrayed, the Jews viewed the Samaritans as traitors, heathens, and heretics. 
• About 100 years before Christ, the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus waged war on the Samaritan kingdom eventually conquering them, destroying their temple, and treating them as slaves since they weren't considered true worshipers of Jehovah.

Needless to say, these weren't just neighbors who didn't get along, this was a deep, deep, rooted hatred and distain for each other that had attached itself to the very identity many had of what it was to be a Jew or Samaritan at that time. It must have pained Jesus, who was the covenant God of the Old Testament, to see this rift of hate between the children of Israel. So it's important to acknowledge that Christ choosing to make a Samaritan the protagonist of this parable wasn't a random thought, but instead a divine call for those hearing it to see past what society sees as insurmountable or unfathomable differences and conflicts and instead choose to see each other as our fellow man and children of God.

Martin Luther King gave this insight on this parable (ironically and tragically) just 1 day before his assassination in his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech:

I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem... above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're... below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" 

I absolutely love this insight here because it gets at the essence of charity. That charity fundamentally changes our nature and perspective.

The Charter For Compassion is an organization dedicated to the idea of restoring compassion as the root of worship and ethics. Their charter uses the imagery that compassion leads us to dethrone ourselves and place another there:

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

President Monson elaborated on the essence of charity and its need in this world in a General Relief Society broadcast in 2010:

There is a serious need for the charity that gives attention to those who are unnoticed, hope to those who are discouraged, aid to those who are afflicted. True charity is love in action. The need for charity is everywhere.

Needed is the charity which refuses to find satisfaction in hearing or in repeating the reports of misfortunes that come to others, unless by so doing, the unfortunate one may be benefited. The American educator and politician Horace Mann once said, “To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is godlike.”

Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others.

So when God says "except men shall have charity they cannot inherit that place which thou hast prepared in the mansions of thy Father" (Ether chapter 12) He's not saying that to be cute or poetic. And when Christ chose to strike the nerve of hatred between two nations and cultures He wasn't merely trying to be inflammatory. Both Christ and God are warning us that unless we get a handle on this principle of charity we all face together a very negative future.

Makes me think of another quote from Martin Luther King:

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King also gave, what I consider, one of the best sermons on the topic of love in his inspired speech "Loving Your Enemies". Seriously, if you have an hour or two to spare, this sermon will change your entire perspective on the role of love and charity in the destiny of man. Speaking about Christ's command to "love your enemies" he says:

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

So coming back to Ether chapter 12, we can see that the warning that we must have charity is not merely a platitude, but a divine truth on what is ultimately what will determine our eternal destiny individually and the destiny of man here on Earth.