Week 6: 1 Cor. 8-16

     I absolutely loved the most recent lecture about charity. I had a hard time remembering to take notes because I was too absorbed in what Brother Griffin was saying - I didn't want to miss anything.
     We as members of the church often glaze over when it comes to the subject of charity. So many Sunday school lessons start with the instructor asking the question "What is charity?" and we spit out the definition "Charity is the pure love of Christ." But do we really stop to think what those words mean? The pure love of Christ.
'The' denotes that the subject of the sentence is singular, and whatever it is, there's only one of them.
Pure love. D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew C. Skinner, in their book New Testament Apostles Testify of Christ, point out that charity is a selfless concern for others that is not evoked by any love on the part of the other. The fact that this love it totally independent from how the person on the other side of the relationship feels is what makes it completely pure. No matter what the other person does, this love will still exist. It is unconditional. Totally and perfectly pure. Who gave the perfect example of this love? Only one person ever has. Keep reading.
Of Christ. This is something many of us don't comprehend even as we regurgitate the definition often. This love being spoken of is Christ's love. It comes from Christ. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, "The greatest definition of 'the pure love of Christ,' however, is not what we as Christians try but largely fail to demonstrate toward others, but rather what Christ totally succeeded in demonstration toward us." True charity was only demonstrated on earth one time - during the years of his life and ministry. We cannot give true charity because it can only come from Christ. Christ is charity. And at this point in the lesson, Brother Griffin had us read 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 with this alteration: take out every use of 'charity' and replace it with Christ's name.

Christ suffereth long, and is kind; Christ envieth not; Christ vaunteth not himself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave himself unseemingly, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Christ never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

SO AWESOME, RIGHT?!?! I'm not sure what the deal was, but reading that just made me feel like my heart was going to explode. Here, right here, is the most straightforward description of what it means to be Christlike. And it's so, so beautiful.

     Then we get to the part where you go 'Wait, if Christ is the only one who can give his love, then what's the point of all the lessons on it?' We're told to "have" the pure love of Christ toward others. "Be full" of the pure love of Christ. How can we do that with this certain type love that we can't produce on our own? There's a two-step answer. First, we need to live our lives in a way that allows us to receive Christ's love. "Truly, those found possessed of the blessing of [Christ's] love at the last day - the Atonement, the Resurrection, eternal life, eternal promise - surely it shall be well with them," said Jeffrey R. Holland. So there we go. It's something we need to receive first. And of course, every person on the face of the earth has Christ's love, since it's unconditional, but with a righteous life our relationship with him grows more. We can truly say we have a relationship of love from Him and of Him - it's two-way.
     The second step of this is to reflect the love of Christ that we have received. As stated earlier, charity does is not conditional on the way the other person feels. It is dependent only upon our choice to give it. In order to give freely of this love and remain in the mindset that allows it to most fully radiate from us, we follow the recipe given in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. This lecture gave me the opportunity to more deeply absorb what each and every one of the given characteristics of charity meant. I encourage anyone reading this to do the same. By the way, tangent time: as a sidenote, Brother Griffin asked us to keep in mind that at the beginning of this verse, "suffer long" and "kind" are in the same phrase. Maybe it's just a matter of punctuation and phrasing, but maybe it's actually more? It is so important to remain kind even when we are in pain, under stress, or unhappy. The Savior was the perfect example of this, particularly after suffering the Atonement. When Judas arrived with those desiring to kill Christ, the Savior was not angry. In fact, he immediately healed the ear of the man who Peter wounded out of anger. And while I was sitting there in class, I realized something I had never thought of before - Christ has just felt the pain of that wounded man, only minutes before. Literally only minutes. Truly the Savior was the most perfect person to ever walk the Earth. If I can always have such a mindset of instant forgiveness, humility, and pure love, I'll be a happy girl. This lecture helped me seriously evaluate what charity means and how I can further improve both on being as worthy of Christ's love as possible and on reflecting it towards the people I interact with daily, whether personally or generally.