By Louise R. Shaw

Imagine hearing for the first time that it is wrong to even be angry with someone, when all your life you’d thought it was enough just to not kill.

Imagine hearing for the first time that you shouldn’t look on another in lust, when all along you thought it was only wrong to commit the act of adultery.

Imagine hearing that you should turn the other cheek, when up until that time, you thought it was ok to take an eye for an eye.

Or imagine hearing that you should love your enemy, give someone who sues you for a coat your cloak as well, go two miles with someone who compels you to go one.

It was revolutionary at the time, and it is revolutionary now.

And the people who had the hardest time with it were the ones who considered themselves the most righteous.

It has been more than 2,000 years since Jesus Christ came to teach us and to save us, and it’s not too late to study and live what He taught.

From His birth, He faced rejection.

His mother had to travel when “great with child,” and bring Him into the world in a stable.

His teachings caused growing opposition, despite their innocence. Their goodness.

“Blessed are the merciful … the pure in heart … the peacemakers…” (Matthew 5:7-9)

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44)

He healed. He fed. He blessed.

And when a woman “taken in adultery” (John 8:3) was brought before Him, he asked her accusers to look at themselves in judgment first.

Revolutionary.

What Christ did, what He taught, has changed the world.

Even though no one has been able to achieve His ultimate challenge: “Be ye therefore perfect…” (Matthew 5:48), those people and those nations who are at least somewhat maybe kind of attempting it, you could argue, have made the world a better place.

It is certain that even more of the world would change for the better if we could sincerely embrace those teachings even now: forgiving, helping the distressed, being a light.

It’s not too late.

It’s Christmas, and in between sending cards and decorating rooms and buying gifts and attending parties, we have a chance to consider the life and teachings and gifts of Christ.

In four months, we will celebrate what came next, His atonement and resurrection, the greatest of all gifts.

More than celebrate, let’s consider the higher law He taught, that great challenge to be peacemakers, pure in heart, merciful. And let’s try living it.

And then let’s just see if the world doesn’t, in fact, get better.

First shared through the Davis Journal of Utah, December 2025