“When the Lord commands, do it!”
There’s this quote from Joseph Smith that I have a hard time with. “I made this my rule: When the Lord commands, do it!” Why do I have a hard time with it? I have a hard time because it’s one sentence and an oversimplification of something that isn’t always easy. Makes me think sarcastically, “Wow, great rule. Why didn’t I think of that?” It sounds like something an athlete would say when asked, “How do you plan on winning” and they say “Play better offense and defense.”
Last week in Sunday School we were reading in Doctrine and Covenants section 3. It’s on the coattails of Joseph Smith losing the first 116 pages of translated text even though God had commanded him not to let them out of his possession. Imagine how hard these verses would have been for Joseph Smith to receive:
“If [a man] sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.
“Behold, you have been entrusted with these things…
“You have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men.”
“You should not have feared man more than God.” (D&C 3:4-7)
Then, to make matters worse, after losing the 116 pages, Joseph Smith begins to translate the 1st Book of Nephi. And what story does the book open with? The golden child of the Book of Mormon, Nephi.
How does Nephi respond to pressure from his peers who want to do something other than what the Lord commanded? He says:
“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7)
I don’t, but I can only imagine this must have been salt in an open wound for Joseph Smith.
BUT, just as I roll my eyes when Joseph Smith says, “When the Lord commands, do it!” I think it’s very touching to think that this experience of Joseph Smith translating the first few parts of the Book of Mormon led him to this passage by the same golden child, Nephi:
“O wretched man that I am! Yeah, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities…Sins do so easily beset me.” (see 2 Nephi 4:17-18)
I think Joseph Smith really connected with Nephi through these verses. “We read to know we’re not alone.” I think this string of events involving the 116 pages is likely what led Joseph Smith to simplify his approach to the gospel, “When the Lord commands, do it!”
Separation
I’m not just talking about canonized commandments, but also those given through personal revelation.
Why does God give us commandments?
Similarly, God gives us commandments to protect ourselves. For example, from the ten commandments, not having other gods, not committing adultery, are some commandments God gives us to protect ourselves. He knows that not keeping these will complicate our lives, though I emphasize they aren’t beyond repentance, which I’ll touch on later.
God also gives us some commandments to preserve the community. Again, from the ten commandments, “Thou shalt not steal,” “covet”, “murder”, and from elsewhere in the Old Testament, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor.” Commandments like this are reaching for Zion.
So, I’ve covered two types of commandments: commandments to protect ourselves, and commandments to nourish our community. But I don’t believe that every commandment could be categorized as given exclusively for one of these reasons: for ourselves, or for the community. I do think there are some commandments that reasonably and occasionally lead us to think, “Why?” I think tithing and Word of Wisdom could fall in this category.
In my experience, this question is most often raised when trying to teach others about commandments like the Word of Wisdom. Obviously, there are aspects to the Word of Wisdom that fit the first category, taking care of ourselves. But there are things we can do without explicitly breaking the Word of Wisdom that aren’t good for us. This could be its own discussion and talk, but for every physical and temporal reason why it benefits you to keep the Word of Wisdom, there are counter arguments that I’ve heard. And people investigating the church always bring up how people drank wine in the Old and New Testament.
So why does God give commandments like this, or maybe another personal commandment about which you’re asking “why”?
Let me refer to the Old Testament, which is easily in my top 5 canonized books of scripture. One of the themes of the Old Testament is that the Lord’s people are different from the rest of the world. He separates them physically by sending them into the wilderness and giving them a land separate from other nations. He gives them commandments and says these commandments are given to separate them culturally from the rest of the world as a reminder that they are different.
In Leviticus, Jehovah is talking about the commandments (not just the ten commandments) and how they separate the children of Israel. He says,
“Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy…And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them” (see Leviticus 20:7-8)
“Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things… Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it…I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people” (see Leviticus 20:22-24, emphasis added).
In fact, if you look up the word “Separation” in the Topical Guide, the first thing it says is to also see “covenants”, “sanctification.”
Also in the Old Testament there are additional commandments given to a group of people called Nazarites. Almost a more disciplined set of commandments including a word of wisdom indicating that they, unlike the rest of Israel, must abstain from wine.
Listen to how it’s introduced with the word “separate”:
“When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord: He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink…until the days…in which he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy.” (See Numbers 6:2-5, emphasis added)
This is similar to things we do in our day, including the Word of Wisdom and other commandments. Consider additional rules that missionaries must follow, or that members that wish to attend the temple must follow. Missionaries wear different clothes and travel far from home and follow different rules as a way to separate themselves from their ordinary life. Temple attendees wear different clothes in the temple and under our top layer of the temple. All this is done to separate ourselves from the rest of the world.
So, in summary, there are three types of commandments: Commandments to protect ourselves, commandments to develop community, and commandments that remind us that we are supposed to be intentionally different from the rest of the world.
Repentance
Since I’m talking about obedience, I also want to talk briefly about repentance and enduring to the end. My obedience is far from perfect. But God is eager to forgive as long as we keep trying.
I’m obsessed with “bookends” in stories. How does a story begin, and how does it end? The proper beginning adds emphasis to the important ending. The bookends to this movie can apply here.
The story begins with the qualifying 100 yard sprint where the main character, Derice, (a hero of mine growing up) tragically trips and falls, not qualifying for the Olympics, not even finishing the race. Determined to finish an Olympic race, he finds an unlikely coach in Irv Blitzer, a former gold medalist who was stripped of his medals because he cheated. He was disobedient. In the second-to-last scene, the night before their final race, Derice asks Coach Blitzer “Why did you do it? Why did you cheat?
Coach Blitzer says, “A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”
Derice asks the follow up question, “How will I know if I’m enough?”
“When you cross that finish line, you’ll know.”
The next day the sledding team is performing their best yet, but has a horrific crash. When Sanca asks, “Derice, you dead?”
Throughout the movie, Derice has been answering “yes” to this hyperbolic question asked after other crashes preventing Derice from finishing practice races. The story began with Derice falling and not even finishing a race, so this time he says. “No…I have to finish the race.” He had been obsessed with winning throughout the movie and now he was just obsessed with knowing for himself that he was enough. He had to cross the finish line just like his coach said. “When you cross that finish line, you’ll know.”
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my race, I have kept the faith.” (See 2 Timothy 4:7-8)
Trust
Let me end with this thought. Some branches of Protestantism around the time of Joseph Smith believed in predestination, meaning that God has already chosen who will and won’t be saved regardless of our actions. We believe in foreordination, which means that God has sent each of us to earth to use our agency to fulfill specific responsibilities, and to endure specific trials.
Consider the foreordination of Jesus Christ. He was chosen in the pre-existence to be our Savior. But we must also realize this means that He was not predestined to be our Savior. Jesus Christ also had agency.
But the implication then is that Jesus Christ could have chosen to not fulfill His divine mission. And it makes sense when you consider that the adversary tempted the Savior. Why tempt someone if there wasn’t a chance that they could give in. In Doctrine and Covenants, Christ affirms this by describing the pain causing him to “tremble” and to “bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit - and would that [He] might not drink the bitter cup.” (See D&C 19:18)
But then, how could God the Eternal Father have promised His children thousands of years before Christ that they would be saved? 2 Nephi 2:6 says:
“Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.” (2 Nephi 2:6)
How could God make that promise 600 years before the Savior was born? It is because Jesus Christ was obedient to the degree that God trusted Him. I think the only thing more valuable than being loved, is being trusted. God loves everyone, but can He trust everyone?
“I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me…I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.”
The only thing more valuable than the love of God is the trust of God.
