As a teenager I experienced the period of rebelliousness that many teenagers go through, and it sank deep into my mind. Most troubling to me was the question of liberty; the gospel of Jesus Christ places high priority on the principles of freedom and liberty, and agency itself is perhaps the most sacred thing God has given us. And yet, at the same time, everywhere present are laws and the divine commandments to obey. This seeming contradiction troubled my 16-year old mind greatly. I can still clearly remember the moment when understanding suddenly lighted upon me.
I was driving down University Avenue on a bright, sunny day, amidst plenty of traffic. It was now that I articulated these contradictions to myself, and it was shortly after that I discovered a scripture that would forever change my view:
Romans 6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
Suddenly, as plain as the day, I realized that obedience is as constant as life. We are always obeying something; the only questions are, what, and do we know it? I realized that all the rebellious messages screamed from my music and given lip-service by teenagers were, in actuality, just the cry to become blind puppets of an unknown puppeteer rather than to walk in the light of awareness of what you are doing. There is a deep deception in that – in deluding yourself to think you are free because you are not obeying, when in fact you are just closing your eyes to the laws that you are choosing. Worse still, it is those laws and governors that accept the ignorant that are the ones that most infringe on agency and captivate the victim.
President Spencer Kimball gave a conference talk on blind obedience. As part of his lengthy exposition of the fallacies of blind obedience he included this example and statement:
“Is it blind obedience when one regards the sign ‘High Voltage—Keep Away’ or is it the obedience of faith in the judgment of experts who know the hazard?”
Obeying is, in fact, about seeing that sign.
“Is it then blind obedience when we, with our limited vision, elementary knowledge, selfish desires, ulterior motives, and carnal urges, accept and follow the guidance and obey the commands of our loving Father who begot us, created a world for us, loves us, and has planned a constructive program for us, wholly without ulterior motive, whose greatest joy and glory is to ‘bring to pass the immortality and eternal life’ of all his children?” (In Conference Report, Oct. 1954, pp. 51–53.)
There is such a thing as blind obedience. The irony of this is, the blindly obedient are most often the voices of the world who are making the accusation.