Hesed

    Last week in my Institute class, we were talking about hesed--a Hebrew word that has a meaning of such depth and nuance that there are fourteen or fifteen different English terms used in the Bible as translations of it, including lovingkindness, great mercy, goodness, and loyalty.

    In a Liahona article titled The Everlasting Covenant from October 2022, President Russel M. Nelson described hesed as "a covenant relationship in which both parties are bound to be loyal and faithful to one another." This is a good description, but I don't think that even this description quite conveys the power and depth behind the word.

    To give a little bit of background about what we were discussing in class, I'm taking an Institute class called "Adulting 1010." Just by the name, it sounds like a class meant to teach a lot of practical skills related to being an adult, such as managing finances, building relationships, or raising children--and it does seem to be going in that direction. But for the first few weeks of class, we spent most of our time discussing the foundational Gospel principles that this class is built on.

    During our very first class, we talked about how deciding that an experience or status (for example, taking your family to New Zealand, having a good career, or becoming a parent) is something we want tends to make it happen at some point in the future. This is partially because, once we've set our hearts on something, we tend to make decisions that will bring that thing about--hence why President Nelson's emphasis on thinking Celestial in October 2023's General Conference was so powerful, because if we set our sights and hearts on reaching the Celestial Kingdom, then our actions will naturally fall in line with that desire.

    I missed our second class, unfortunately, but the primary principle in our third class was that of prayer, and how prayer is a process of bringing our will in line with God's will. By doing this, our prayers can be answered, because what we want is what God is going to give us. Another interesting thing we learned during that class is that, due to the way God perceives time (which is to say that He doesn't, at least not like we do), when He gives us a promise, it is as though He has already given it to us. Therefore, when I reread my patriarchal blessing, I can treat the promises in that blessing as though I already have them, because even if I don't see them yet, so long as I remain faithful, I will see them come to pass.

    In last week's class, we reached hesed.

    The fascinating thing about this word is that it's not just the English language that is incapable of rendering it properly in words--Western culture is such that the concept of hesed is very foreign to us.

    In a Middle Eastern culture, hesed means a responsibility to take care of your kin. Even if two brothers hated each other's guts and wanted to kill one another, if a third party stepped in to take one brother's side, that person would find themselves up against both brothers. In Western terms, it's a situation where "I can bully my brother, but no one else can bully my brother."

    Another anecdote my teacher shared in class was about a man in Dubai who wanted to build the tallest tower in the world. He had four hundred million dollars to work with, but it wasn't enough to finish the tower--he needed another hundred million. One of his cousins heard about the problem and gave the man a hundred million dollars, with no expectation of recompense, in order to spare the man--and by extension, the entire family--from embarrassment.

    Where this becomes really powerful is when you start thinking about the Atonement. We are imperfect mortals, and as such we make mistakes and sin. Any amount of sin excludes us from being able to enter the Kingdom of God, because no unclean thing can enter there. In essence, we're trying to build a tower, but we have no money to do it.

    Jesus Christ is like the cousin who gives us the ability to build our tower, only in our case, He's not making up the difference of what we lack--He covers the whole cost. Because of the Atonement, our failures don't end us. So long as we keep trying to stay on the covenant path and hold up our end of hesed, this covenant loyalty and love, He makes up the difference.

    The point we came to by the end of class is that the amount of effort we put in to keeping our covenants determines the amount of effort God can put in to helping us in return. If I put in 10% of what I have and who I am, God puts in 10% of what He has and who He is. And because God is so much bigger and more powerful than I am, that 10% of my effort leads to blessings orders of magnitude larger than the amount I was able to put in. Imagine, then, the results I would get if I could pour in 100% of who I am and give it all to God, and in so doing get 100% of His aid in return--where could I go? Where might I end up? What might my life look like?

    In other words, if we want to fulfill our dreams, we need to build a life plan and decide what we want, bring our wills in line with God's will and adjust our plan accordingly, and then live within our covenants with all we are and everything we have, and God will make sure it happens.

    I still don't think I fully understand hesed. Lingually, English is totally inadequate to describe it properly and convey all its meaning. Culturally, the West doesn't really get this kind of lifestyle--because for Middle Eastern countries and all of Israel's ancestral brethren (no matter how estranged), this kind of loyalty and commitment is just part of the way they live.

    So I don't fully understand it. But I understand it better than I used to, and that's enough for me to know that a life of hesed, both between me and God and in all my other relationships, is something I want.