I want to highlight the quote by Eyring so we can talk about it.

That is because the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others above our own. That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love.

Now, let’s look at your questions. is there greater sorrow than the untimely loss of a child? Whose selfishness is he saying is the cause of such sorrow?

Eyring is comparing the greatest joys and sorrows. There can be many reasons for sorrow. Many sorrows can be due to selfishness. Brian David Mitchell’s selfishness led him to rape a child. Surely there was great sorrow in the Smart household, though none of the Smarts appeared to have problems with selfishness in relation to Elizabeth’s kidnapping. Deaths due to cancer are not due to selfishness either, unless one selfishly desires tobacco.

To do a bit of parsing, I note that Eyring qualifies his statement with the word primarily. So, not all sorrows result from selfishness, though a great number of sorrows are caused by selfishness. But I agree with you that a child afflicted with leukemia or autism causes families great sorrow, and selfishness has nothing to do with that. I’m sure Elder Eyring would agree.

I don’t know what to do with these types of people, because medically, we are stone age technologically on being able to diagnose and properly treat these people. The mental health system doesn’t seem capable of reforming them, and neither does the criminal justice system. There really is no adequate way to deal with them, and giving them second chances doesn’t seem appropriate.”

MH-

Amen. Addicts are the most frustrating people to know how to deal with because they will lie, cheat and steal from their own families and then expect them to support them, give them a place to live and forgive them over and over. No one I know that has to deal with an addict daily knows what to do about it and it is very challenging. It would be nice to have some answers that is for sure.

I think there are plenty of examples in which selfishness in families causes great sorrow. When couples focus on careers, rather than on their marriages and raising children, they often divorce. These divorces can be categorized as selfishness. Other parents have been known to go to bars, leaving children unattended in cars. These children become foster children due to the selfishness of parents who are so irresponsible. Some parents are only interested in getting high, so they neglect kids. Some women get pregnant to increase their welfare check. Some men don’t pay child support for children they’ve fathered. All of these can be great acts of selfishness, which damage future generations who follow in their parents footsteps. I think this is the kind of selfishness Elder Eyring is talking about. It can be a vicious circle, leaving sad and neglected children to fend for themselves. Michael Oher’s mother is a crack addict. It’s nice that he broke out of the cycle, but I’m sure he still is saddened by the mess of his mother and her selfish addiction.

I don’t know what to do with these types of people, because medically, we are stone age technologically on being able to diagnose and properly treat these people. The mental health system doesn’t seem capable of reforming them, and neither does the criminal justice system. There really is no adequate way to deal with them, and giving them second chances doesn’t seem appropriate.

I’m not a Huckabee fan either, though occasionally I do hear things I like (more often, I hear things I don’t like.) I think he has a point that “because he was a young black kid, he got 108 years”, but there is also a point that because he was probably raised in gangs and embraced a culture of violence, he shouldn’t have been on the street. I think this is a balancing act that is hard to balance. Ed Smart treated Brian David Mitchell much the same way that Sean Tuohy did with Michael Oher. In the former situation, Mitchell kidnaps and rapes his daughter. In the latter, Oher turns his life around, becomes the only one of his former friends who graduates from high school, plays in the NFL, and people celebrate the Tuohy family, while telling Ed Smart he was stupid to try to help a transient. For every success story of Michael Oher and Jean Valjean (Les Miserables), you have stories of this Clemmons cop-killer, and Brian David Mitchell.