One of the pitfalls of "loving those you serve". Doctrine and Covenants 34-37

 We sometimes hear the sentiment expressed that if you want to learn to love someone, serve that person.  And certainly, if you are a person who values the quality of being loving or of being motivated by love, that is often true.

And in most cases, that is helpful.

However, as a leader or teacher, that can create a problem, particularly in a church which values "sustaining" leaders.  If others are participating in and helping you in the church work for which you, as a leader or teacher, are responsible, and you are appreciative, the result might be that they will feel greater love for you, and be more inclined to help in the future.

So what's wrong with that?

I've been reading passages in the Doctrine and Covenants in which various individuals are called to the work of preaching and writing, joining Joseph Smith in the work of spreading the good news of the restored gospel.  Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Edward Partridge, etc. etc. all called to join in the work, alongside the man who had also been called and who was the one who invited and called them.

In a situation like that, in an organization that is young, and fledgling, and has, by it's resultant nature, a primary leader, the good-hearted individuals who join in the work often feel an increase of affection for and commitment to the person who leads the work and works alongside them. That's normal.

And that's the rub.  When we love the leader because we have been assisting/sustaining him or her in the work, it is very easy to see the work more as an extension of our affection for the leader, and, because we are enjoying that brotherly love, we miss the opportunity to understand that experience or create it as service to a real, present, divine Lord.  

And thus, in the magnification of and focus on the 2nd great commandment, we fail to fully experience the 1st.

I wonder if this early church experience, at a time when so much of the calling to the work was done through one man, and at a time when so much of the work involved interacting with that one man and with others who were interacting with that man, didn't create an era where those involved were highly susceptible to the experience of the work being felt as an increase of the 2nd commandment. 

And that's not bad.  Except that the 2nd commandment is the 2nd commandment.  And when my decision to engage in God's work is motivated primarily by the 2nd commandment type love that I have experienced while engaged in that work, then I cheat myself out of increasing my engagement and comprehension of the 1st.  And it is the 1st that is absolutely necessary, especially when, suddenly, you discover that your leader is less than completely loveable.

This process makes me think that I am understanding a little better the "love for Joseph Smith" that was felt by some early members of the church, which they, naturally, tended to pass on to their descendants; vestiges of which are still found in discourse within the church today, and certainly linger in our hymn book.

So I think that one of the biggest challenges a church leader or teacher has is the process of moving the focus of others onto serving, and thereby coming to love, the Lord as they work with you to try to do his work.  And one of the biggest challenges that the rest of us have, is to maintain that focus on who we are really, first and foremost, learning to serve and learning to love.