Charity an Introspective Look

There are about four or five subcategories to my patriarchal blessing. Everything in that blessing fits into one of them and each of them seems to be literally embedded in my life. the need for charity in particular.

Joseph had charity for his brethren. In a previous post I took the soft handed approach to their behavior, but now I see something else by looking at the other side. Without excusing their actions in the slightest we have a group of fratricidal brothers who are so caught up in their selves that they are promiscuous, violent, envious and cold hearted. They sold their own brother into slavery and lied to their father to cover their hideous crime. There is no excuse for it, they were wicked, wicked men by every definition and I doubt even Hollywood could repaint the picture favorably without omitting crucial facts and evidences.

What is bothering me is the fact that Joseph still forgave them and I am supposed to do likewise to all. He must thought long and hard about it and he had plenty of time to do so in the jail of Pharaoh and his years of servitude both with Potiphar and Pharaoh. When he reencounters them he keeps leaving to cry. That's how we know the whole imprisonment thing wasn't a revenge tactic. He loved them.

Now I know that if my little brother were to go off the deep end and do horrible things I would still love him. If he did them to me or my wife and children I would be angry, but in the end still find tenderness inside me towards him. That's just how family works. It would take completely sinful behavior on his part and my own abandonment of the gospel to ever hate him.

But what of others? There is no pure love for them in my heart. I don't mean that I want to walk around hurting people, but I can't seem to muster up feelings of love for anyone outside of my genealogy. I want so badly to fulfill the Lord's command to love and serve others, but I lack the first part so deeply that I can't climb out of it to do the second.

And here's a real humdinger of a catch-22 for you, I am so in love with the gospel and its teachings that I see the mistakes of myself and others more clearly than ever. They practically flash neon-signs in my head. Seeing sin is hard because I hate it with a similar passion as I love the gospel. I have seen enough of it to know exactly what it can do and usually is doing to people. It tears apart their lives and ruins hope and peace, but to combat it you need more than 12 dozen references to scriptures and general authorities. You need love; which, as discussed earlier, I am lacking.

I wish I had some sort of magical cure-all for this dilemma. Both the love of the scriptures and the need for charity are spoken of in my blessing and it seems that I am missing the key to using them. As the scriptures indicate we have to be given charity. It requires prayer and hope and a divine bestowal from God. And I cannot truly do anything worthwhile without it. My words are as a tinkling cymbal and just white noise without the love that is required to convey them to the hearts of others.

I feel so empty and hopeless in this endeavor. I am inspired more and more to read and learn the scriptures, but with charity I am unable to do anything more than harrow up in my mind the lack I have of it. I hope, I pray that I might be filled with it for I yearn to possess it and desire to actually be of service to my fellow men and not just a walking LDS reference library by the time I die.

Evil Report

So in my studying yesterday I stumbled across a verse I had payed little attention to other than for its usefulness in chronology:

"These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report." (Gen 27:2)

I looked for references and footnotes, but I couldn't locate anything to clear it up. A few verses later I found this entry:

"And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words." (Gen 37:8).

It struck me that at this point in the chapter he had only relayed one dream and as far as other words we are given none. From the text and the personality of Joseph, it would seem that if this is connected with verse two's "evil report" then maybe like Nephi in the Book of Mormon, Joseph was trying to bring his wayward brothers into the path of righteousness. This would explain their anger a little more since it would make very little sense for a group of brethren to get to the point of fratricide over a coat and two dreams.

Linking it to the example of Laman and Lemuel, however, points to a more sure reasoning as to their hatred towards him. They hated him for his righteousness. He was making good choices and Jacob was rewarding and praising him for it. Then he shared his feelings with his brothers and like Laman and Lemuel they became upset and misunderstood what was intended.

This helps me a lot more with my comprehension of the man Joseph and what happened to him that day when he was 17 years old.