Commandments

You know, it's funny. People always look at the Church and ask me, "Why do you want to be a member of the Mormon Church? There are so many rules you have to follow!" I usually never even think of that until someone points that out to me. As Latter-Day Saints, we do have a lot of rules: the Word of Wisdom, the law of chastity, tithing, and so forth, but I don't really see them as a burden. In fact, they are a blessing, but I'll get to that later.

First thing you should know is that we don't have to keep the commandments; we choose to keep them. Free agency (and I don't mean the baseball kind) is one of God's greatest gifts. We all know how to choose right, and most choices involove a right or a wrong decision. Granted, there are some choices with seeming gray areas, but often there's one choice that's more right than another. If we all "choose the right," we'll be on the Lord's side (to mix a couple hymn names there). If we're tempted to not choose the right, we need to take a step back and evaluate ourselves. Why would we want to not do the right thing? So we choose to do what's right. Why would we want to do the right thing? Some people say, "It just feels good." What those people may or may not know is that the "feel-good" feeling is the Spirit of the Lord. Even those who deny it will still feel it, although there wouldn't be any recognition of such.

Another reason we want to keep the commandments is because we love the Lord. Think about your favorite grade school teacher. How often did you misbehave in his or her class? Not too often, huh? You didn't because you wanted to please your teacher. How about in the class of your least favorite teacher? You probably misbehaved a lot if you're anything like I was. Now, do you love the Lord as much as you did your grade school teacher? I hope you love Him more. You behaved for that teacher, so why not for God? If you misbehave a lot, that's like saying you regard him on the same level as the disliked teacher. By keeping the Lord's commandments, we show Him that we love Him.

Why else are the commandments so cool? Well, let's say you're plopped down in the middle of an unknown sity and you're trying to make it to Grandma's house. You are going to have a really hard time finding it if you don't have some kind of map. Well, the Plan of Salvation is like a road map for each one of us, and the commandments are like streets we need to follow. Yes, some people are able to hit on some of the right roads without the gospel or Plan of Salvation, but it's often in a more round-about way. By not following all the streets, they might not end up exactly where they think they're heading. Non-Latter-Day Saints also don't know anyone they can call to give them directions if they get hopelessly lost. We do, though -- the prophet, President Gordon. B. Hinckley. He is in communication with the Lord and reminds us about our directions at every General Conference. We also have personal revelations and a patriarchal blessing we can follow. By following the directions on our map, we can easily find our way to our destination: the Celestial Kingdom.

Patricia P. Pinegar gave an excellent talk about the commandments at the October 1999 General Conference.

All this material was written by Beth Siler on August 12, 1999. Please do not use without asking permission.
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