Love: The Higher Law

Ok, so I’m trying to put something together that has been bouncing around in my mind for awhile and it has to do with love and how it fits into our restored Latter-Day Church. Poets, story writers, songwriters, hippies and all kinds of people have known something about the magic of love for awhile. It seems to be something of a higher law, something that if you have enough of it, despite any other physical law; takes over and makes everything alright.

In the Disney film Beauty and The Beast, the beast was dead and because Bell said “I love you” and she meant it because one of her love tears drops on the beast; the beast is resurrected from the dead. U2 sings about love being a temple, “Love, the higher law”. I won’t bore anyone by more examples of this in popular fiction and literature because there are really too many examples to name. People in a lot of other religions and backgrounds all have the same strong faith in the power of love.

So how about us, the Mormons? What exactly do we think about love? Well, we believe in Jesus Christ, or at least we all claim to. Every Sunday when we take the sacrament, we promise to take upon ourselves his name and actually be him. So, we are supposed to be being like him. On one of Christ’s last night’s he gave his disciples a NEW commandment and it was simply to love one another. A new commandment? To love? How is that new and why would they need to be commanded to do it?

Up until then the Jews had been living the law of Moses which was a lower law that was given. A law that was “an eye for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” meaning that if someone got you, you got to get them back. But now in this new law that Jesus was proposing, if someone gets you, you were supposed to forgive them and love them and if you did that that in the end, God would be easy on you as well.

So, do we live this law? Well, obviously no. I’m mean, everybody toys with the idea but most of us still depend on a justice system. If someone robs your house, you call the cops and hope for the bad guys to get caught so that they can go to jail. Justice. Most of us probably think that it’s impossible to live the higher law of love and so don’t even attempt to try.

My question is can we do it? Is it possible? One scripture that keeps playing over and over in my mind on this subject is in Mosiah 5 after king Benjamin had been talking to his people, that they all shouted that, “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….

And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days…

And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.

And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives.”

What the heck? This does not sound to me like any covenant that I’ve ever made. It’s similar but not the same. This sounds to me like there needs to be some sort of change that comes over you before you can actually live the higher law of love. So how do I get this mighty change of heart like the people of Benjamin had?

I certainly don’t think that it’s something that is just given as a gift, like the gift of the Holy Ghost. It seems like something that has to be sought out, something that you have to pray for.

“we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” now that sounds really nice. Are we praying for this? I am. Still waiting.