Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the commandments and why we focus on them so much. Some may argue that every second spent talking about family history or tithing or (heaven forbid) food storage is one less second we spend talking about Christ and His Atonement. Thus, they continue, we should rarely talk about commandments. And for that matter, why worry about them at all? Can't we just accept Christ and be a nice person, and that's enough?
As I've thought about why we focus so much on commandments, I've come up with various reasons as to why they're important.
As I've thought about why we focus so much on commandments, I've come up with various reasons as to why they're important.
- "In this there is safety and peace." If you keep the commandments, you are protected in a myriad of ways. Your life will be free of so much filth, addiction, and heartache.
- They change us to become more Christlike. As we try to keep them, we must be continually repenting and striving to be better, relying on the merits of Christ. This process humbles us and transforms us to become more like Him.
- "If ye love me, keep my commandments." What's the point of accepting Christ if you don't do what He says? As He said, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
I feel like that's a pretty convincing list as to why to keep the commandments. But there is a question that I've pondered a bit -- why are there so many to start with? Why does the Church try to invade our lives so much? Isn't it a good thing to not be commanded in all things, as the Lord says in D&C 58:26?
One answer to that has come thanks to my study of covenants in the Old Testament and Book of Mormon. Growing up, I thought the Law of Moses was sort of a punishment for the children of Israel. You can't be good for a month and a half while Moses is up in the mountains? No spare ribs for you!
While there's some truth to that, what I'm beginning to realize is that the Law of Moses was in fact a major blessing for the Israelites. The Old Testament CES Student Manual says in Chapter 15,
"If the dietary code is seen both symbolically and as part of a system of laws that covered all the customary acts of life, it becomes apparent how it served. God was using the diet as a teaching tool. People may forget or neglect prayer, play, work, or worship, but they seldom forget a meal. By voluntarily abstaining from certain foods or by cooking them in a special way, one made a daily, personal commitment to act in one’s faith. At every meal a formal choice was made, generating quiet self-discipline. Strength comes from living such a law, vision from understanding it. Further, the law served to separate the Hebrews from their Canaanite neighbors. Each time they got hungry they were forcibly reminded of personal identity and community bond. Indeed, they belonged to a people set apart."
That is, the Law of Moses was set up so that people kept bumping into it. And the more you bump into a law, the more likely you are to remember the Maker of the law. Even though the Nephites recognized the Law of Moses as a dead law, they still kept it, for as Jacob said, "Behold, [the holy prophets] believed in Christ and worshiped the Father in his name, and also we worship the Father in his name. And for this intent we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him; and for this cause it is sanctified unto us for righteousness, even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son" (Jacob 4:5).
What about us? We don't have the Law of Moses, but we sure have a lot of commandments. There are dress and grooming standards. There's the Word of Wisdom. There's Sabbath day observance, which includes 3 hours of church which can sometimes be boring. There's a tenth of your money gone to fund BYU and missionaries and church buildings, and you have to rearrange your budget accordingly. If some of these commandments are inconvenient, guess what? That's one of the best things about them! If a shirt you're wearing just won't cover you quite enough and you have to pick another, that's a blessing. It's an opportunity for you to remember Christ and the covenants you've made with Him. If there's something you would like to buy at the store on a Sunday, you've bumped into Christ and His commandments again, and you should be grateful for the encounter. If it's been really difficult for you to set up your home or visiting teaching this month, you're being blessed with inconvenience and an opportunity to endure in spite of it. If you find yourself a bit at odds with the prophet, you've run into an opportunity to remember Christ and be humble enough to accept His servants as His mouthpiece today.
This is not to say, of course, that you should start making up arbitrary commandments so you can inconvenience yourself. Jacob has words to say about that, too: "Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble" (Jacob 4:14, emphasis added). But while we shouldn't make up new commandments or read too much into existing ones, we can do better at keeping the ones we've got, especially the open-ended ones such as service, scripture study, and prayer. In these cases, inconvenience is the key to growth.
Three final thoughts. If you are someone for whom the commandments are just plain hard and demanding, consider yourself blessed. As President Holland said in The Inconvenient Messiah, "It is not easy to go without—without physical gratifications or spiritual assurances or material possessions—but sometimes we must since there is no guarantee of convenience written into our Christian covenant." Yet the more difficult the assignment -- an assignment to persist in the gospel despite the assurance or temporal blessings that seem to come to others, the greater the reward that will come to you in the end.
If you are someone who really dreads talks on things that aren't the core doctrines of the gospel, try to look for Christ in them. After all, "The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator" (Alma 30:44). "All things" includes commandments, even the ones about food storage.
And if you're wondering how you can better keep your baptismal covenant to always remember Him, I recommend paying more attention to the covenant to keep His commandments. You'll bump into Him there.
"If the dietary code is seen both symbolically and as part of a system of laws that covered all the customary acts of life, it becomes apparent how it served. God was using the diet as a teaching tool. People may forget or neglect prayer, play, work, or worship, but they seldom forget a meal. By voluntarily abstaining from certain foods or by cooking them in a special way, one made a daily, personal commitment to act in one’s faith. At every meal a formal choice was made, generating quiet self-discipline. Strength comes from living such a law, vision from understanding it. Further, the law served to separate the Hebrews from their Canaanite neighbors. Each time they got hungry they were forcibly reminded of personal identity and community bond. Indeed, they belonged to a people set apart."
That is, the Law of Moses was set up so that people kept bumping into it. And the more you bump into a law, the more likely you are to remember the Maker of the law. Even though the Nephites recognized the Law of Moses as a dead law, they still kept it, for as Jacob said, "Behold, [the holy prophets] believed in Christ and worshiped the Father in his name, and also we worship the Father in his name. And for this intent we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him; and for this cause it is sanctified unto us for righteousness, even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son" (Jacob 4:5).
What about us? We don't have the Law of Moses, but we sure have a lot of commandments. There are dress and grooming standards. There's the Word of Wisdom. There's Sabbath day observance, which includes 3 hours of church which can sometimes be boring. There's a tenth of your money gone to fund BYU and missionaries and church buildings, and you have to rearrange your budget accordingly. If some of these commandments are inconvenient, guess what? That's one of the best things about them! If a shirt you're wearing just won't cover you quite enough and you have to pick another, that's a blessing. It's an opportunity for you to remember Christ and the covenants you've made with Him. If there's something you would like to buy at the store on a Sunday, you've bumped into Christ and His commandments again, and you should be grateful for the encounter. If it's been really difficult for you to set up your home or visiting teaching this month, you're being blessed with inconvenience and an opportunity to endure in spite of it. If you find yourself a bit at odds with the prophet, you've run into an opportunity to remember Christ and be humble enough to accept His servants as His mouthpiece today.
This is not to say, of course, that you should start making up arbitrary commandments so you can inconvenience yourself. Jacob has words to say about that, too: "Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble" (Jacob 4:14, emphasis added). But while we shouldn't make up new commandments or read too much into existing ones, we can do better at keeping the ones we've got, especially the open-ended ones such as service, scripture study, and prayer. In these cases, inconvenience is the key to growth.
Three final thoughts. If you are someone for whom the commandments are just plain hard and demanding, consider yourself blessed. As President Holland said in The Inconvenient Messiah, "It is not easy to go without—without physical gratifications or spiritual assurances or material possessions—but sometimes we must since there is no guarantee of convenience written into our Christian covenant." Yet the more difficult the assignment -- an assignment to persist in the gospel despite the assurance or temporal blessings that seem to come to others, the greater the reward that will come to you in the end.
If you are someone who really dreads talks on things that aren't the core doctrines of the gospel, try to look for Christ in them. After all, "The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator" (Alma 30:44). "All things" includes commandments, even the ones about food storage.
And if you're wondering how you can better keep your baptismal covenant to always remember Him, I recommend paying more attention to the covenant to keep His commandments. You'll bump into Him there.
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