From Soul to Shining Soul

There is a scripture that perfectly combines ambition and humility. Two virtues we usually think are in tension with each other.

For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

-thus 2 Nephi 28:30

Humbly learning bit by bit, always recognizing that you don’t know as much as you could, is not the opposite of ambition. It is the core of ambition. It is the stuff of which divinity is made.

Accounting for the difference in stations, this is morphologically the same as God saying

Worlds without number have I created…. The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.

And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

The original insight was not mine. It was a family conversation. Let me tell you how it came about.

I don’t remember how it started out. Maybe some silliness about Canada. Yeah, that was probably it. We were probably laughing about that Babylon Bee headline, If Elected Trump Promises to Create a Cool New Slur for Canadians.

President Polk

Talk moved on to Nicholas Trist and how he betrayed his instructions from Polk at the end of the Mexican War. He was supposed to have grabbed the northern tier of Mexican states which at the time were very lightly populated and at odds with the central Mexican government.

This is a wide ranging family conversation with people of all ages, so one of the younger ones popped up with some hard won young person wisdom:

>President Polk should have been satisfied with what he had. It’s important to be satisfied.

>Yes and no. One of the greatest insights of the restored gospel is that nothing short of everything is enough. You should want it tall. Giving up on having more is stagnation. It’s just that you have to want it the right way. It turns out that being humble and kind and caring about others and sharing is indispensable to having it all. Satan was willing to have a lesser kingdom just so long as no one else could claim it. If you love America you should always want more of it. That doesn’t mean that there is always going to be a moral or practical way to do it, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting more of it.

More discussion. Someone says the phrase, “from sea to shining sea, to shining sea.” One of the young crowd pops up, sincerely, with a question.

>I am content with our house and our food, I don’t want more, is that a sin?

>Well, no, you’re a mortal, you can’t have improvement in everything.

That’s when the son-in-law brought out the “line upon line” scripture.

>You are mortal, so you can’t and probably shouldn’t want more of everything all at once. But you should want more of something. More light, more knowledge, and especially more and deeper relationships.

There was a quiet pause. What had started out half-silly, half-history had ended up in a more spiritual place than we anticipated.

Then…

>Sooooo, the true manifest destiny was the friends we made along the way?