A person’s character is a queryable store of information about the thoughts, feelings, and actions of another person. The better you know someone’s character, the more situations in which you can accurately predict what they would do, why they would do it, and how they would feel before, during, and after. If you truly knew the Lord, you would have a confident idea of what he would do in every situation of your life.
God’s commandments help you more accurately estimate how God would think, desire, and act, and delineate differences between how you are and how he is. Commandments reveal how you differ from God while giving you direction on how to close that gap. Your response to God’s commandments demonstrates who you really are2 by providing you with an opportunity to be better.3 God’s commandments reveal desires,4 flaws,5 and strengths that might otherwise remain hidden from you.
When sculpting a large work, artists sometimes first make scale models. Using a crane-mounted plumb line, measurements from the finished work can be scaled to the work in progress, indicating where material must be added or removed in order to yield a high fidelity replica of the scale model.
Do you reconcile your life in every way to what you believe God would do in your place? Before you do anything, ask if that is what Jesus would do in your place.6 If you aren’t sure what he would do, find out. If you don’t have time, think about what would produce the greatest long term outcomes for all without regard for self.7
What aspects of your thoughts, feelings, and actions are different from what they would be if you were God? It is impossible to list all possible modifications,8 but here are a few to get you thinking. Would you be more reliable, humble, courageous, honest, hard-working, or reasonable? Would you be more intense? Would you be less selfish, or short-sighted? Would you be more grateful for the good things and people in your life? Would you be more resilient, less fearful, and more trusting in the midst of challenges? Would you be more amenable to opportunities to improve and those who precipitate them? Would you be more willing to adopt different ideas when given sufficient reasons to? Would you find better reasons for what you believe? Would you live your beliefs more consistently? Would you prioritize what you find to have the greatest worth? Would you minimize what you find to have little to no value? Would you be more patient with a person you currently dismiss? Would you swap out hobbies for something more productive? Would you sleep less, sleep more, go to sleep earlier, or wake up earlier? Would you eat better? Would you enjoy food more? Enjoy food less? Would you work harder? Would you speak up more often? Would you speak up less often?
God’s shaping radically removes what is less than him, but amply adds what is greater than us. Sometimes, large portions of how we feel, act, or think must be removed in order to make room for what God will add.426 Those who refuse to submit to the full removal will have to settle for the best approximation God can make from what remains. Given the grand differences, what he can make from what we provide is paltry compared to what he could give us if we allowed him to make room to receive it.427
Footnotes
- 1. And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. (Luke 19:41-44) O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Matthew 23:3739) ↩
- 2. Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no. (Exodus 16:4) ↩
- 3. The Lord created this earth to “prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abraham 3:25). ↩
- 4. The rich young ruler “went away sorrowful” when Jesus’ commandment to him revealed that he didn’t want to follow God as much as he thought (see Matthew 19:16-22). ↩
- 5. God’s commandments describe a standard that exceeds what others would otherwise be comfortable with: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) ↩
- 6. But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul. (2 Nephi 32:9) ↩
- 7. He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him.... (2 Nephi 26:24) ↩
- 8. And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them. (Mosiah 4:29) ↩