The Most Important Parts

This morning, I had a Sociology mid-term exam. Most of the questions were "short answer" questions, with the responses being only a few sentences each, but the last two questions were "long answer" questions, where the responses were expected to fill a whole page each. However, I managed my time poorly, and by the time I got to the last question, I had only five minutes left to answer it. Fortunately, it was an easy question, so I was able to quickly whip up a few sentences to answer it, but when my time was up, I left a lot of blank lines under my short "long" answer.

Still, I'm fairly confident that I'll get a decent grade on that question, despite my answer being terribly short. I spoke to the Professor about my answer, basically just apologizing for running out of time, and he told me that, as long as I actually answered the question (which I did), that was the most important part. The long and detailed explanations were just fluff, and they didn't matter anywhere near as much as the confirmation that I had actually learned the material. I'm sure I'll get docked at least a few points for my short answer, but I'm confident that I won't lose too many points on that question because I included the most important parts.

I wonder how strongly God feels the same way. When you get down to it, the Gospel of Jesus Christ only has a few really important parts, mostly love, faith, and repentance, with almost everything else being appendages of those core elements. When God asks us to pay tithing, for example, it's not the tithing itself that God is interested in - it's the confirmation that we love and trust God enough to pay it. As Latter-Day Saints, we tend to fret about the many commandments and suggestions we've received from God through the general authorities, but I wonder how many of those suggestions are just appendages and which ones are the really important parts. I frequently find that I need to simplify my life and focus on the basic elements of the Gospel. I wonder if that's God's way of telling me to cut out the fluff and instead focus on the most important parts.