Check With the Boss

I recently had a moment to spare and there was a Book of Mormon handy, so I opened it to some random section (something about Amalekiah, I think), but then I thought 'Wouldn't it be just as interesting to read a random passage out of the Bible? Say, the Old Testament?' I mused on the fact that, even though we revere the Bible as the word of God, we don't read it nearly as much as we read the Book of Mormon. So, I opened the book and landed on 1st Kings. I read a few passages about King Solomon, how he was wise enough to ask God for wisdom instead of wealth, so God gave him both wisdom and wealth. There's probably a message there, but that's not the part that really stuck with me.

After reading about Solomon, I flipped ahead a few chapters and found a story about a prophet in 1 Kings 13. It starts with King Jeroboam worshipping idols. He gets cursed and he asks a prophet to ask God to remove the curse. The prophet does, and God does, and the king tells the prophet, "Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward." Good deal, right? But the prophet says,
"If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: For so was it charged me by the word of the Lord, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest."

Basically, "It doesn't matter how big the reward is. God told me not to do that, so I'm not going to do that." So he left.

Later that day, there's a man in the area who hears about what the prophet did and said, so he saddled up his donkey and chased after the prophet. Now I'll quote directly from the Bible. Note that the prophet that we've been talking about is referred to as a "man of God." So the other guy saddled up his donkey...

14 And went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak: and he said unto him, Art thou the man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am.

15 Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread.

16 And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place:

17 For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest.

18 He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.

19 So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water.

Five verses later, the disobedient prophet gets killed by a lion.

So what lessons can we take from this? If God tells you something and a stranger says something else, listen to God. Or how about: It's easy to resist big, obvious temptations, but watch out for the little sneaky ones.

Probably my favorite moral of the story came from my Mom. It told her the tale last night, and what she got out of it was "Check with the Boss." So often, we're faced with decisions which may or may not affect our eternal salvation, and so often, we reason within ourselves and we do whatever seems right. Why don't we check with the Boss? He knows what's right and wrong. He even knows how the concepts of right and wrong apply to our specific situation. A quick prayer like "I'm thinking about doing this. Is that okay?" could save us a major headache (and possibly a laceration) later on.

Are you ready for the kicker? The dude on the donkey wasn't lying. Here's the JST for verse 18:

18 He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water, that I may prove him; and he lied not unto him.

A few words change the whole story.

So here's my thinking: Maybe the man of God did check with the Boss, but he asked the wrong questions. Maybe, having been told that this guy was a prophet and that he'd been asked to invite him to dinner, the man of God prayed, "Seriously? Is this guy really a prophet? Did you really send and angel to tell him to invite me to dinner?" And since both of those things were technically true, God could have answered in the affirmative, without ever mentioning that this was all a test.

If he had asked, "Should I go with him?" the answer would have been "no," and he probably would have accepted that. But because he asked the wrong question, or completely failed to ask, he made the wrong decision and paid the price five verses later.

Does this seem like the kind of mistake that you or I could make? We've been commanded to do such-and-such, or to not do such-and-such, but still, this just seems like the right thing to do. Maybe this is the exception to the rule. Maybe God would be okay with us doing this instead of that, just this once.

Maybe we should ask.

But while I'm talking about this, I'm making the exact same mistake. Part of my commitment of blogging every day is that I'd watch a Conference talk or a Mormon Messages video, or something from the Mormon Channel on Youtube, and I'd share my thoughts on that video in my blog. But then I found this Bible story and I thought it was really interesting and I really wanted to share it, so I thought "Maybe it's okay for me to just share this story and not watch a video this time." I've not watched a video before and I haven't been eaten by a lion yet. Maybe this is okay. Or, okay or not, maybe I should share a quick video anyway. Maybe I should check with the Boss.

I just checked... But I've never really been good at receiving revelation. I just basically said "I'm going to go fetch a video, just to err on the side of caution. If that's not okay with you, go ahead and stop me." Then I felt... weird. I don't know if it was just my imagination or if it was an actual feeling that the video doesn't matter. I'm going to try again and see if I get that feeling again.

I did. No video today. But, just to be safe, I'm going to be extra careful to watch out for lions.