I think it's pretty much common knowledge that comparing ourselves with others is rarely a good idea. When we compare ourselves with our siblings, friends or even rivals, we inevitably compare our weaknesses with their strengths, or vice versa. It's not honest, and it's certainly not instructive.

Yet there's something about looking at the past that invites a comparison -- a fact I was reminded of several times last weekend when a friend and I decided to head to Nauvoo for a couple days.

There are a lot of things about our trip through Mormon history that leave me thinking, "I never could have done that." It starts with a five-hour drive across seemingly unending Illinois prairie, during which I get rather bored -- then immediately think about what it would have been like to walk the same route. Perhaps pulling a handcart.

It happens again when I see the rebuilt Nauvoo Temple, an incredible, inspiring structure that impresses me even today, built as it was using modern equipment and machinery. Then I think of the intense manual labor involved in building the original, and I stand in awe.

That feeling only escalates when I walk down Parley Street on a 97-degree day, with a heat index of 115 degrees, and can barely make it from one air-conditioned building to the next without giving up and going back to my hotel.

This trip in particular, I most definitely felt it when we went to Carthage on what happened to be the 165th anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. As we attended a short commemoration service, then sat for a moment in the room where the prophet and his brother were killed, I couldn't help but wonder: Could I have sacrificed so much?

Perhaps more importantly, had I been among the early Saints, could I have continued to believe, to follow, when things always seemed to go so horribly wrong in the end? Would my faith have been sufficient?

And there's where, for once, I think the comparison might actually become instructive.

Our situation today is most definitely different; no longer does it take a great deal of faith to believe that the gospel will "roll forth and fill the whole earth." No longer are we asked to leave our homes and gather together at great personal cost, nor are we actively pursued by gun-toting mobs. I don't know that I'd necessarily say the work is easy now, but what we're working for does seem much clearer.

Instead, we have our own set of challenges, most of which point back to living in a world in which our lifestyle makes us an increasingly peculiar people. It's one thing if that's limited to being the oddball who orders a lemonade when the boss takes his team out for a round of drinks, but it's another when doctrine places you in a position you may not completely understand or instinctively agree with.

The way I see it, the stumbling blocks we face today are complex ones, and while it might be easy to write them off as simply right or wrong, good or evil, that doesn't always work for me. I want to understand why I, as a consequence of my beliefs, end up on any given side of a debate. I want to be able to defend my beliefs not just to others, but to myself. In short, I don't want a passive testimony, I want an active one. That doesn't come instantly, though, and in the meantime, I still have a life to live and choices to make.

So that's when I again think of those pioneers. As beautiful as a moonlit prairie is on a summer night, I don't know how many people could have left their comfortable homes to walk across one without some pretty deeply held convictions to spur them on. I don't suppose it made a great deal of sense to many of the early Saints to be tasked with turning a swamp into a thriving metropolis -- especially on the heels of having been effectively expelled from their last gathering place -- yet they did it.

See, in the end, I think our tasks are the same: to be in the world and function admirably wherever we go; to be willing to sacrifice and obey in thoughtful, useful ways; to not only believe, but to act like we believe. Those pioneers wouldn't have lasted long if they'd seen their religion as something meant only to enrich their lives and make them happy in the moment, and neither will we.

By no means am I saying we need to mindlessly sustain our leaders, as if we'd been brainwashed or were simply too scared to do otherwise; I'm not sure how much good we'd be to anyone if that were the case. No, I'm saying that no matter what stumbling blocks we encounter, we remember that -- via whatever experience or education or process by which our conversion happened -- we decided to become part of something bigger than us, and we decided that "something" was an institution we would trust.

That means we also implicitly decided that the fact that we may not always immediately understand some point of doctrine or the church's position on an issue isn't a reason to throw up our hands and decide the institution must be wrong. Rather, it means we decided that when that happened we would be patient and do whatever we could to understand it better -- to dig in and drain the swamp, so to speak -- and trust that someday it would all make sense.

That's a comparison with which I'm comfortable. All of us who've signed on to this work have essentially the same challenge, whether it's carried out by preaching the gospel, giving birth in the back of a wagon, or standing up for our beliefs in the midst of a hostile crowd: to keep believing, and to keep moving forward.

After all, aren't we all working for the same great cause? And shall we not go on?