This is a target.
Apart from first-person shooter video games, you’ll most commonly see targets hanging in bars or in the homes of older men who have converted their basements into man-caves where they have their monthly poker games.
You use a target board to play darts.
The main idea behind the game is that each player has a certain number of darts to throw at the board. Every ring is worth a certain number of points. As you get closer to the center, the rings are worth more and more points.
Each player has a turn to throw their darts from a designated spot away from the board.
When all the darts have been thrown and each player’s respective points have been counted, the player with the most points wins the game.
Obviously, the trick to winning at darts is maximize the number of darts that land in the center of the board, since that is where the most points can be gained.
If you hit the dot in the middle of the target, it’s called a bullseye (pronounced bull’s eye.) A bullseye is worth significantly more points than the other rings.
The commandments are kind of like a game of darts.
You’re trying the best you can to get the best score possible. Sometimes we get close to the center and sometimes we don’t even hit the target at all and our dart falls to the ground.
The point is, we have been given a set of commandments and God expects that we’ll try our best to live by those commandments.
If we try our honest-to-God best, Christ’s atonement will make up for ours sins and mistakes.
Fun fact about darts though, if you hit a ring above or below the bullseye, it doesn’t change the number of points you earn from that throw. The entire ring is worth the same number of points.
Different people have different strategies for throwing. Some people know they naturally throw high so they aim low while others who naturally aim low try and aim high.
I believe there are two types of sinners much like there are two types of dart shooters.
You have your under-shooters and your over-shooters.
The Old Testament is filled with under-shooters.
These are people who don’t obey the the commandments.
David was an under-shooter when he slept with Bathsheba. Saul was an under-shooter when he kept some of his enemies cattle after being told not to.
Under-shooters know they shouldn’t drink tea but might have a cup when no one is looking. They may not always fast on Fast Sunday or keep the Sabbath Day holy by hitting up the grocery store from time to time.
I personally am an under-shooter. I’m much more likely to sin by not doing something than I am by over-shooting.
DISCLAIMER, I’m not saying that I drink tea or anything else. (Since I go to BYU, I gotta make sure that it’s understood that I’m not talking about any one sin in particular. I’m just talking in generalities.)
God clearly tells the people in the Old Testament to stop under-shooting. He smites those who steady the ark, he removes Saul from the thrown, he punishes those who build the Gold Calf.
Now let’s talk about over-shooters.
The New Testament, on the other hand, is full of over-shooters.
Over-shooters are people who go above and beyond what they are asked to to by God by placing unnecessary barriers in their lives.
The people in the New Testament went above and beyond what they were asked to do in the Law of Moses, and not in a good way. They only untied/tied knots that could be done with one hand on the Sabbath. If someone died on the Sabbath, you had to wait until the next day to take care of the body.
Modern-day over-shooters are people who require Sunday clothes to be worn at home all day Sunday. They’re people who refuse to wear a non-white dress shirt to church because they think it’s wrong. They’re people who think that the only acceptable music on Sunday is Motab.
I don’t believe God wants us to over-shoot or under-shoot.
He wants us to hit the bullseye and to repent whenever we don’t.
Elder Cook mentioned this topic back in 2003 as a member of the Seventy..
“Today there is a tendency among some of us to ‘look beyond the mark’ rather than to maintain a testimony of gospel basics,” said Elder Cook. “We do this when we substitute the philosophies of men for gospel truths, engage in gospel extremism, seek heroic gestures at the expense of daily consecration, or elevate rules over doctrine. Avoiding these behaviors will help us avoid the theological blindness and stumbling that Jacob described.”
Elder Cook went on to say there is no need to complicate the sacred nature of the Gospel or modernize it more than God has.
“Some in their spiritual immaturity attempt to appear sophisticated and intellectual,” said Elder Cook. “Instead of accepting revelation, they want to dissect it and add dimensions and variations of meaning that distort its beautiful truths. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has pointed out, ‘The Jewish people … rejected the gospel, in part because it lacked adequate intellectual embroidery.’ We look beyond the mark when we refuse to accept simple gospel truths for what they are.”
The whole talk is great and I recommend that everyone go and read it.
It’s important that we recognize when we’re over-shooting and when we’re undershooting and make the correct changes necessary to hit the Gospel mark.
Unless we do this, we’ll always miss the bullseye.
And that’s what Satan wants us to do. He doesn’t care if we over-shoot or if we under-shoot. He just wants us to miss.
So make sure to recognize how you throw and aim a little bit higher or lower depending on where your darts land.