Character supersedes principles and rules precisely because it is held and demonstrated by a living being. While learning God’s rules and principles teaches you about him, you can’t learn God’s character without coming to know him.
Rules, principles, and character each provide a mechanism for coming to know God better. While rules teach you how God behaves in certain situations, and principles teach you why God behaves as he does across all situations, only character teaches you who God is all of the time.
The purpose of God’s commandments is to teach us more about him and persuade us to be the same way.1 His character does this more effectively than any other mechanism.
If God’s character is so much more important than principles and rules, why does God spend so much effort teaching them to us rather than just teaching us his character directly? If all of the commandments trace back to love,2 why did God speak so many words, send so many servants, and even come down to die in order to convey the gospel to us? Why not simply reduce all of this down to “love one another, as I have loved you?” (John 15:12) The answer to these questions is found in the magnitude of the distance between how we are and how God actually is. God’s love is so far above human nature3 that nothing less than what was done and is still being done could be sufficient to begin to understand the depth, breadth, and motive of his love for us. Human nature is so much worse than most admit or care to know. Very, very few people would respond well to God directly teaching his character to them, even if this were possible. The results would be disastrous,4 as the brightness of the light turned away from determines the amount of light lost by doing so.5 If God were to teach his character more directly, so many would rebel against it that they would destroy their ability to draw nearer to him.1136 Instead, he provides a gradient of options for getting to know him, more closely matched to the willingness of each individual. Those that come to know him through the initial means he offers them are given greater demonstrations of how he is as they live up to what he’s already given.
Footnotes
- 1. ...all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of [Christ]. (2 Nephi 11:4) ↩
- 2. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Romans 13:9) ↩
- 3. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9) ↩
- 4. For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation (D&C 82:3) ↩
- 5. And it shall come to pass, if they are not more faithful unto me, it shall be taken away, even that which they have. (D&C 60:3) And he that repents not, from him shall be taken even the light which he has received; for my Spirit shall not always strive with man, saith the Lord of Hosts. (D&C 1:33) 39 And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers (D&C 93:39) ↩