Of Individuals and Societies

In a world of several billion people it can be hard to imagine where the individual finds a place.  When governments and politicians talk of classes and masses each one of us can feel like he or she is left out or, worse, just combined and lost in the mix.

Fortunately in the end we remain individuals in the eyes of God, related in one way or another to each other but separate and individual all the same.  Consider some of the most moving and intimate contacts of God with man.  These were profoundly individual experiences.  God spoke directly with Moses on Mount Sinai.  The laws that He gave to Moses, the Ten Commandments, all govern individual behavior, whether a man or woman’s conduct toward God, or to his or her parents, or to his or her fellow beings.  The Twelve Apostles were each called one by one.  The first word that God the Father spoke to the young Joseph Smith in 1820 was, “Joseph,” just as God had called the young boy, Samuel, by name thousands of years before. 

Even when involved with crowds, the Savior’s attention was readily drawn toward individuals.  The following is but one example of Jesus’ attention to one amidst the pressing multitude, one possessing no particular distinction beyond strong faith in Him and His healing power and her own worth to God:

And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.  And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?  And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.  And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.  And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.  (Luke 8:43-48)

Doubtless among the multitude were others with ailments and afflictions, but only one sought healing, and that one was healed, and Jesus was aware of her.

On another occasion, in the Americas, Jesus Christ following His resurrection visited with another multitude.  This was a multitude of faithful, not a passing multitude preoccupied with many lesser things.  There were sick among them, too, and the Savior healed them all, “every one as they were brought forth unto him.” (3 Nephi 17:9)  I presume that He could have healed them all at once as a group, but each had faith, each sought healing, and He valued each one as meriting His personal attention.

Earlier that same day, in one of the most moving events in the history of the world, Jesus gave the people, twenty-five hundred in number, a personal and irrefutable witness of His death and resurrection.  He said to them,

Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world.

And it came to pass that the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet; and this they did do, going forth one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety and did bear record, that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come. (3 Nephi 11:14, 15)

Those twenty-five hundred personal witnesses are now in force and offered to all the world.

I offer one more example out of many more, this one again from the Old World.  During the Last Supper before the Savior’s atoning sacrifice, Jesus gave important instruction to Peter, the leader of the Twelve:

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.  (Luke 22:31, 32)

Unaccustomed as we are in modern English to the subtleties of the use of “you” and “thou” we might miss some of the meaning in the Savior’s message.  I admit that I only noticed it when I read the passage in Spanish (where the plural vosotros and singular tú are more obvious).  The Lord was warning Simon Peter that Satan wanted to destroy Peter and his fellows (the plural, “you”) but that Jesus had prayed for Peter (thou) and for his faith.  When Peter was fully converted, then it was his personal assignment to strengthen his brethren.  This is all very personal and very individual, albeit within the context of an organization of individuals, the Twelve Apostles.

Of course we are all members of groups and societies, from families on up to nations and beyond.  All groups and societies are composed of individuals, with individual worth, talents, rights, and virtue.   All just societies—God’s societies included and setting the standard—recognize that they are societies of individuals, for the benefit of the individuals who make them up.  All others are despotisms, for the benefit of the individuals who run them, who wish to sift the society’s members as wheat.