From his book ‘The Journey of Discipleship. . . . Whom the Lord Loveth’, Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught:
Though the second commandment is “like unto” the first commandment (Matthew 22:9), it nevertheless is still the second. Though we are to love our neighbors we are certainly not to worship them with all our hearts, souls, and minds (Matthew 22:7).
We seldom ponder the first commandment and its implications. Either it is skipped over lightly as a given or it seems too daunting even to ponder. In any case, so often it goes unexamined. Given our usually selfish mindsets, no wonder we do not hurry to get mental realignments. Can we really fully keep the second commandment until the first is acknowledged and significantly kept?
Selfishness is self-worship. In various gradations it is a violation of the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) Such selfishness can smother our chances of keeping the second commandment. The problem is further exacerbated when we “act to please ourselves” or even “seek to set ourselves up “for a light” (Romans 15:1; 2 Nephi 26:29).
The sequence of the first two commandments on which “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40) is important in yet another way. The first commandment determines the metes and bounds of orthodoxy, which, kept, then brings felicity by putting all other commandments and ordering principles in their proper place.
We rightly esteem certain other things as good, but our regard for these should still be subordinated to our love of God. Otherwise we can elevate lesser things—even though good things—into virtual and demanding gods.
Anciently at least, the idols of wood and stone—while objects of sincere devotion—were public and in the open, palpably displaying their inanimate, immobile frailty. Not so transparent, however, are the false gods of our own time; these can achieve an operational primacy that is subtle but very real. For example there are our intense and persistent panderings for the praise of men or worship of riches and power.
Hence, unless we place fundamental things in proper priority, we can be honorable, and we can do good, but still end up being incapacitate to receive “All that [God] hath” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:38).
Deep inside our reluctance to worship God may be a reluctance to face the gap between ourselves and our own possibilities. What are we compared to what we have the power to become is not a measurement gladly pondered or undertaken by us very often. This avoidance is very human, to be sure, but it can reflect a costly form of stubbornness and cause us to look “beyond the mark” of the first commandment (Jacob 4:14). As is the case so often, course corrections are needed. ~Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Whom the Lord Loveth, the Journey of Discipleship (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 69-71
