Excuses to Bless Us

Elder Holland spoke in Stake Conference in my stake today, and while he said many blogworthy things, what I most want to blog about right now is something he said, almost in passing, toward the end of his talk. Unfortunately, I didn't copy what he said accurately enough to claim to know his exact words, but the basic idea of the message, as I heard it, was that God doesn't look for excuses to punish us; He looks for excuses to bless us.

That's what the commandments are, in my opinion: Means by which God hopes to bless us. Sometimes, those blessings come as a natural result of keeping the commandments. For example, those who obey the Word of Wisdom are often generally healthier than those who don't, all other things being equal. This isn't because God is blessing the obedient with health and cursing the disobedient with unhealthiness. It's just how the world works. There are natural laws, and things tend to work better when we work within those laws than when we try to work against them. And, because God loves us, He sometimes tells us what those natural laws are long before we could have figured them out on our own. God doesn't want to curse us for defying the natural laws of health; He wants to help us reap the natural benefits of keeping it.

But even then, those are just natural consequences of our actions, coupled with a warning, in the form of a commandment, telling us what consequences our actions might have. I think God goes further than that. I think that He sometimes gives us commandments so He can justify giving us rewards for keeping them. God loves us. He wants us to be blessed and happy. However, He is also a God of justice, so He often gives us opportunities to "earn" the blessings He wants to give us. Those opportunities are usually service opportunities, though that service can take myriad forms. Essentially, if we at least try to do any good for anyone, that gives God an opening to justifiably give us as many blessings as we can handle.

Some people seem to assume the opposite. Some think that the reason God gives us so many commandments is so He can punish us for breaking them. Others think that God isn't quite as vengeful but is still incredibly just. There are countless rules. When we break any of them, justice demands punishment. However, God sacrificed His Only Begotten Son to satisfy the demands of justice. I don't think He's going to be too hard on us after putting His Son through hell to let us off the hook. Of course, we have to abide by God's conditions in order to escape justice in that way, but that's really just another way that God blesses us for obeying Him.

God is not a vengeful person. He strict and tough when He has to be, but I think He would rather be kind and generous. He would love to give us loads of blessings, but He must be wise and just, which means that we need to do a few things to "earn" our blessings. That is, I think, one of the reasons God give us so many commandments: to give Himself excuses to bless us when we keep them.