I the Lord have not forgotten my people

This week has been so horrible for so many families. Innocent people have lost their lives to domestic violence, racism, and anti-Semitism, and others have been threatened with bombs.

It is all horrific, but it is equally mind-boggling. How could anyone think another human being deserved to die?

I think I know one answer. As soon as you are unkind to someone, you start to hate them. You start to warp them in your mind so that they deserved what you gave them. This happens with gossip or turning someone into a punchline. It happens with an entire culture built around dehumanizing black people so that you can justify enslaving them. It happens with immigrants, with LGBT people, with people of a different political affiliation.

And today it happened to Jews.

Anti-Semitism is as old as it is bizarre. That a mere one percent of the world's population can be hated by more than ten percent of the world's population defies logic. These verses in 2 Nephi 29 in the Book of Mormon have always seemed to reflect both wrath and bafflement from God:

4. . . . And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

5 O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.

7 Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?

White supremacy has caused many problems in the United States, but I think it can end in this generation. We need to speak up. We need to cling to truth and insist on teaching it. We need to teach that any kind of hate speech (even the casual kind in our own homes) will poison our own soul and warp our own minds. We need to teach gratitude for people of all races and ethnicities who have contributed so much to making our lives better.

And we need to remember what God has said about all His children:

 33 For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.