This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 1999 Conference.
This week I read something funny that President Nelson said to the boys and men in Priesthood Session:
Learn now to show respect and gratitude. Remember that your mother is your mother. She should not need to issue orders. Her wish, her hope, her hint should provide direction that you would honor.
HMMM. I wondered, as I read this, if a single boy followed this counsel? It certainly takes a greater imagination than I possess to imagine my boys following it. Well. We will put that from our minds and go on to President Faust:
Obedience leads to true freedom. The more we obey revealed truth, the more we become liberated.…We are individuals, but we live in families and communities where order provides a system of harmony that hinges on obedience to principles. Just as order gave life and beauty to the earth when it was dark and void, so it does to us. Obedience helps us develop the full potential our Heavenly Father desires for us in becoming celestial beings worthy someday to live in His presence.…The fences which we must stay within are the principles of revealed truth. Obedience to them makes us truly free to reach the potential and the glory which our Heavenly Father has in store for us.
I've been thinking a lot about obedience because of discussions I've had about the new "For Strength of Youth" book. At first glance it seems to focus less on obedience and more on…I don't know, being agents and voluntarily choosing good. But it seems to me there's an underlying bedrock of obedience underneath that. The implication is that even if there aren't as many lists of rules to be obedient to, you still want to be obedient! To what? Well…to what remains. To principles of revealed truth, I suppose, and to whatever further light and knowledge comes to us and the prophets through revelation.
And so I guess these two quotes are related after all, in a way. Because even if that "she should not need to issue orders" line seems preposterous for my teenagers, it actually describes pretty well how I would LIKE to act toward Heavenly Father myself. Wouldn't I love to honor the direction that "his wish, his hope, his hint" gave me?
I'm intrigued by this principle President Faust describes: that obedience helps us develop our full potential in becoming celestial beings. In the context of recent FSOY discussions, I think sometimes the inadvertent subtext is that "old FSOY=bad, rule-bound, list-following, blind obedience" and "new FSOY=flexible, higher law, spirit of the law." But I am interested in the idea that obedience is actually at the heart of the new For Strength of Youth guidelines! It's just…God wants that obedience to be deliberate, and intentional, and joyful. He wants it, as President Faust says, to make us "truly free to reach the potential and the glory which our Heavenly Father has in store for us."
Other posts in this series:
The first law of heaven—by Rozy
No comments