Scouting Values In the Scriptures – Ammon

This is the 4th installment of the “Scouting Values in Scriptures” weekly series. We began with the Book of Mormon and will continue with other scriptures of the Standard Works.

The Book of Mormon is full of people living the standards of the Scout Law. The people in the Book of Mormon weren’t Scouts. But they were building the same things Scouting builds. The same values. Scouting didn’t invent these values. They’re eternal. But they build the same character. The same kind of discipleship.

A Scout Is Helpful: Ammon

When Ammon, the son of a king, volunteered to serve among the Lamanites, he could have done it any number of ways. He could have preached. He could have announced himself as a son of Mosiah and used his status to gain an audience with King Lamoni.

Instead, he asked to be a servant.

King Lamoni offered him his daughter in marriage. Ammon declined and asked to serve among the king’s household instead. And when the king’s flocks were scattered at the waters of Sebus, Ammon didn’t wait to be asked. He gathered the animals. He defended them. He did the work that needed doing without being told.

Mormon explains Ammon’s strategy with quiet precision: “This is what I desire, that I may win the hearts of these people, that I may lead them to God.” (Alma 17:29) And then he served. 

The key principle here is that Ammon volunteered. He didn’t wait for an assignment. He saw what was needed and moved toward it. Every Scout and Scout leader who’s ever shown up to help set up a campsite, who’s quietly fixed a problem before anyone else noticed it, who’s taken on a task that wasn’t any fun because somebody needed to – that Scout is walking in Ammon’s footsteps.

Service that is done for recognition isn’t really the same thing as service. Ammon understood that. He gave 14 years to the Lamanites because he believed in them, not because he wanted anything back.

The Scout Law isn’t something Scouting invented. It’s something Scouting named – because the qualities it describes are as old as scripture. They show up in the Book of Mormon because they show up in human beings who are trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

These qualities can show up in Scout troops today. In young men and women who are being formed, deliberately and carefully, into the kind of people these Book of Mormon figures were.

Join us here next week for the next installment of “Scouting Values in the Scriptures”