Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote:
In today’s society, at the mere mention of the words obedience and submissiveness hackles rise and people are put on nervous alert. These virtues are unfashionable because many quickly assume them to be a threat to one’s independence and agency. People promptly furnish examples from secular history to illustrate how obedience to unwise authority and servility to bad leaders have caused much human misery and suffering. It is difficult therefore to get a hearing for what the words obedience and submissiveness really mean—even when the clarifying phrase, “to God,” is attached.
We are well conditioned indeed.
Yet such guardedness would be unseemly for disciples of Christ, who should be “willing to submit,” this being a major quality inherent in saintliness, King Benjamin doubly declared (Mosiah 3:19). Ironically, he who constitutes the greatest real threat to our freedom knows well how to fabricate and put us on guard against false and imagined threats. It is worth noting too that, even at the secular level, so much of society’s functioning depends finally upon our civil obedience to the unenforceable. Whether taking our turns at an intersection with “all way” stop signs, or giving compassionate service to the poor, we do not depend upon enforcing policemen. Obviously, ambivalence about authority has made us moderns unnoticing gulpers when it comes to swallowing a camel while straining at a gnat.
Spiritual submissiveness, a freely given obedience to God’s purposes, is neither docility nor ignorant compliance. “As obedient children (1 Peter 1:14) we are seeking to become more like our Heavenly Father. Yielding to Him, therefore, indicates neither disdain for life nor fatalistic resignation. Instead it is progressive participation in a very demanding discipleship.
This partnership with God, among other things, requires us to develop enough faith to repent and enough submissiveness to make and keep covenants, including temple covenants. Such faithful discipleship, however, would not be possible without prophets and scriptures to provide truths, doctrines, and answers sufficient to produce the strong faith needed. If we were without these firm and sure sources, doubt would prevail and insufficiency of intent would result. The basic human questions about identity and life’s meaning would become unanswered screams of despair.
It is the Restoration scriptures (the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, The Joseph Smith translation of the Bible) which supply answers in such abundance to all the great questions. They bring us the nourishing of the Restoration gospel with its clarifying and reassuring messages from God to all His children. Greater faith and greater submissiveness result from these answers and reassurances. Through them we are helped in many ways that are crucial to our salvation.
We are helped immeasurably to know that God really is a loving, Father God, not a distant cosmic presence. We are helped immeasurably too—whether by experiences, scriptures, temples, or living prophets—by being taught plain and simple truths of the plan of salvation, including those about our true identity and real destiny. ~Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Not My Will, but Thine (Salt Lake City, 1988), 1-3
Continued. . . . ‘As Obedient Children II’.
