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As I have struggled with my own philosophy of volunteer members’ relationship with the organizational church, I am reminded of King Benjamin’s Discourse: Quote:21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.
and this one:
Quote:
23 And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.24 And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.
This scripture has been quoted many times over the pulpit to indicate why we should always keep serving. Often it’s attached to things like moving, home teaching, cleaning the chapel or other organizational interests.
How do you draw the line between excessive service, and complying with King Benjamin’s discourse, which many leaders use to imply that nothing we do will ever satisfy the unlimited needs for service in the church?
Interestingly, I’ve never heard that passage applied to moving, Home Teaching, cleaning the chapel, etc. I absolutely would balk at those applications of it. I would draw the line simply based on striving to maintain a balance that works for me – or drawing my own lines based on the dictates of my own conscience. I try to serve to the point of sacrifice in some way, since I think it’s important to give up something of my own to help others just as a core principle, but I also decline to do things all the time that I feel I simply don’t have time to do.
I would also argue that we have the scripture which says not to run faster than we have strength, Wirthlin’s talk about being kind to the weary, and that we shouldn’t force people. However, in LDSthomas’ excellent letter “Mormon Church, we need to talk” on this site, he mentioned he’s uncomfortable asking “what you have done for me lately”. I think it’s the “you can never do enough” message in King Benjamin’s Discourse that leads many of us to silently think the same thing as LDSThomas.
You touch on some of the same issues that I have with how “hasten the work” has been applied. When HtW is talked about it’s almost always in the context of asking for more and more and more. To quote the movie Over the Hedge: For humans, enough is neverenough! I’ve used that teaching to beat myself up for years and years. It crushed my spirit and left me in a perpetual state of unhappiness and depression. I’ll be brutally honest here. I’m
gladI had a faith crisis if nothing more than to finally be able to shed myself of this teaching. If there is a god he probably steered me toward doubt if nothing more than to rescue me. I believe the true intent of those verses is to call people that have been taken over by pride to humility. Unfortunately it had a very negative effect on someone like me that already believed that they were lower than the dust of the earth and could actually use a bit of an ego boost to get to a healthier state of mind.
Ironically I think verse 21 points more toward relying on mercy than it points towards a call to more service. To put it another way: if you gave more and more service, if you engaged in a arms race of service with your brother, you would still be an unprofitable servant… so there
mustbe something else. To me that something else is mercy. nibbler wrote:Ironically I think verse 21 points more toward relying on mercy than it points towards a call to more service. To put it another way: if you gave more and more service, if you engaged in a arms race of service with your brother, you would still be an unprofitable servant… so there must be something else. To me that something else is mercy.
Like!
I know there are some/many that interpret such verses as saying that we should never say no. I do not believe that is the intent of the Gospel.
Nibbler’s response rings true for me. I’ve always thought that King Benjamin’s discourse was guidance to not keep score. Keeping score and holding God in debt to us won’t ever work – it’s not been one of the scripture passages that bothers me. I don’t think the passage means that every minute of the day needs to be devoted to serving God.
Service has got to be my favorite church topic. It’s the answer to most of my life’s problems. No matter what else isn’t working in my life, when I go find somebody who needs me and serve them, my problems diminish. When there’s someone in the Ward that I can’t seem to get along with, I find some way to serve them and my feelings for them change. When I have a hard time feeling the spirit, service helps me hear His voice. All that said, I suck at home teaching. I have just never developed the habit of regular monthly visits. And I struggle to put enough effort into callings that I don’t care much for. I still haven’t done my geneology (“I’ll get to it someday”). I like to choose the ways in which I serve and I like to decide when and how much. When they asked in Elder’s Quorum for volunteers for a Saturday project that would take all day, I decided that I had one hour to give. I showed up, worked for 1 hour, and left, and never felt guilty about it. On the other hand, I have no problem taking vacation days to attend summer camp or girl’s camp for 5 days straight.
I think the Church pushes so hard on teaching the service aspects because they understand how beneficial service is to those who serve. It’s the same reason we teach anything in the Gospel; because we know how much it can bless those who accept it. I have a personal testimony of service so it’s easy for me to answer those calls. I lack a real substantive (visceral as opposed to intellectual) testimony of some other things like geneology or home teaching so I do poorly at those.
Roadrunner wrote:Nibbler’s response rings true for me. I’ve always thought that King Benjamin’s discourse was guidance to not keep score. Keeping score and holding God in debt to us won’t ever work – it’s not been one of the scripture passages that bothers me.
I don’t think the passage means that every minute of the day needs to be devoted to serving God.
Good point, I have never looked at it as keeping score — I saw it more as an indicator of how much effort and sacrifice the Lord expects. Put that into the heart/mind of someone with a deep conscience, tendencies toward overachievment and overcommitment, it’s a recipe for burnout.
I appreciate others’ perspectives on it.
To JD, I like what you said above. As someone who works with volunteers (I wrote a lot about it about a year ago) — what you say above is what I’ve observed about volunteers — they do what they are passionate about. You can’t force service too long or too hard, and some people are predisposed to certain kinds of service — one needs to align the needs of the ward/organization with those people’s individual strengths. That’s why every Ward will likely look a bit different as each works toward the overall mission of the church. The initiatives, the commitment, etcetera is an expression of the strengths and passions of the ward members. It’s an art to attach organizational interests to the passions and strengths of the volunteers.
Yep, if no amount will be enough, the object seems to me to do what you can without harming either yourself or others. It’s finding that type of balance in all things that is the key, imo – since even God “could” do WAY more than they do.
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