I'm going to thread jack a little, but I sometimes think that we have become the Pharisees in some ways. In Christ's time the law had become so thoroughly developed that there was a law for just about everything. One could count on it to prescribe nearly every aspect of ones life.
Christ spends a lot of time in rebuke of the Pharisees not because they don't fulfill the law, but because they have become so focused on the minutia of the law that they lose sight of the "weightier matters."
Matthew 23:
23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye pay
tithe of mint and
anise and cummin, and have
omitted the weightier
matters of the law,
judgment,
mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a
camel.
He chided them for praying on street corners to be seen. He taught them that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath (even if this was in violation of their law). When asked what the great commandment in the law is, he answered loving God and loving ones neighbor.
Joseph seemed to echo this idea when he talked about teaching correct principles and allowing self governance.
I guess my concern is that the more "laws" we have, particularly with respect to minutia, the more likely we become simply do these and omit the weightier matters: judgment, mercy and faith. What had ought to make us peculiar and set us apart as members of Christ's church? If asked, in my perfect world, it would nice to be able to answer "we are merciful, quick to love and slow to condemn, we cloth the naked and feed the beggar, we constantly seek to good to all men."
I fear that our most distinguishing characteristic (in our behavior not in our doctrine) is still the WOW.
I guess I sometimes feel that the more we are required to do or not do by the law, the more likely we are to feel self satisfied in the fulfillment of the smaller points and fail, as the Pharisees did, to understand that the law is not end but a means. Not a checklist, but a path. The end, the path, is to being like the Savior, which primarily, in my opinion, means loving all as He did and serving and lifting the least among us. Those things that do not point to this end, in my opinion, are not the things that are going to save us and the more of these little things there are for us to think about the more likely we are to believe that they will.
These are my ramblings this morning.
