[Tex]

Originally Posted by Tex

As I was reading Elder Maxwell's excellent One More Strain of Praise this evening, my thoughts were drawn back to this conversation, and this concept in particular. Although Maxwell is well known for his verbosity on the subject of discipleship, this book in particular was his first after his initial bout with leukemia. In my opinion he is much more autobiographical and personal in this instance, having had a much more intimate acquaintance with suffering than before.

In that context, two additional thoughts on this topic came to mind.

Number one: we ought to be careful in making a comparison to men such as Nephi, Abraham, and Joseph Smith (the committers of the alleged misdeeds). These were men who were each either literal or effective heads of their own dispensations. They were each brought forth in eras of great apostasy, and as a result of their prophetic calls built great nations and organizations grounded in the truth. They were men of exceptional character, equal to the challenge of doing an extraordinary work; men on whom the Lord knew he could count; men who would not, as he told a later descendant, "ask that which is contrary to my will." The suggestion that God would issue a command to us equal to the command he gave them is presumptuous indeed. Don't worry about being asked to kill someone. Worry about doing your home teaching, Naaman.

Number two: a cautious word is in order to anyone who insists on delineating the boundaries of his discipleship to the Lord. My anecdotal experience has been that the Lord finds ways to teach his children what he wants them to learn, whether they want to learn it or not. I think of it as a cross between C.S. Lewis's "living house" and President Benson's "God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble." I do not feel, Jonah-like, too anxious to dictate my own course to the Lord, what I will or won't do, or what commandments I will or won't obey. The Missouri river still flows downstream, after all. Kicking against the pricks typically hurts only the kicker.

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