January 17, 2007
So, I had more time than usual this Christmas break to sit down and JUST read (books OTHER THAN textbooks!!). I've been reading Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibley and I've come across a lot of thoughts and commentary that couldn't help but make me think about the conversations that I've had as of late about politics, socioeconomics, and religion in general. I thought these were each worth mentioning - just some food for thought.
(p. 163-164) Such considerations [regarding conflicts in our society] admonish me to ask whether all is well in Zion, and I find the answer in myself alone Have I taken the message seriously? No. I have been quite half-hearted about it, and much too easily drawn into what I call the Gentile Dilemma. That is, when I find myself called upon to stand up and be counted, to declare myself on one side or the other, which do I prefer - gin or rum, cigarettes or cigars, tea or coffee, heroin or LSD, the red rose or the white, Shiz or Coriantumr, wicked Nephites or wicked Lamanites, Whigs or Tories, Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Democrat, black power or white power, land pirates or sea pirates, commissars or corporations, capitalism or socialism? The devilish neatness and simplicity of the thing is the easy illusion that I am choosing between good and evil, when in reality two or more evils by their rivalry distract my attention from the real issue...It can be shown that in each of these choices just named, one of hte pair may well be preferable to the other, but that is not the question. There is no point in arguing which other system comes closest to the law of consecration, since I excluded all other systems when I opted for the real thing. The relative merits of various economies is a problem for the gentiles to worry about, a devil's dilemma that does not concern me in the least. For it so happens that I have presently covenanted and promised to observe most strictly certain instructions set forth with great clarity and simplicity in the Doctrine and Covenants. These are designated as the law of consecration, which are absolutely essential for the building up of the kingdom on earth and the ultimate establishment of Zion.
(p. 168) There is plenty to do to satisfy the work ethic without a profit motive, "but the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish" (2 Nephi 26:31).
(p. 170-171). Is the law [of consecration] unrealistic, impractical? It is too much too late for me to worry about that now, for I have already accepted it and repeated my acceptance at least once every month. At a recent conference (October 1978), Elder Mark E. Petersen spoke of the importance of keeping all the covenants we have made - and none is more important, more specific, more sacred than this one. What about Brother So-and-So or Presidend So-and-So? He is free to do as he pleased; I did not covenant with him I knew quite well what I was promising to do and when and where I was to do it, and why - now it is up to me...In 1882, President John Taylor sent out a letter declaring, "If people woudl be governed by correct principles, laying aside covetousness and eschewing chicanery and fraud, dealing honestly and conscientiously with others,...there would be no objection" to their free enterprise - he was appealing to them to do away with covetousness and feigned words, the very things that had put them in control of the economy. But while attempts to implement it [the law of consecration/united order] come and go, the covenant remains, and those who have entered it must live by it or be cursed (D&C 104:3-5), for in this matter God is not to be mocked (D&C 104:6). I am in a perfectly viable position at this moment to observe and keep it, as I have promised, independently of any other party. I do not have ot wait for permission from any other person or group to act.
(p. 236) "What is man," asks Shakespeare, "if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused." And what is it to be used for? Those very popular how-to-get-rich books, which are the guides to the perplexed of the present generation, say we should keep our minds fixed at all times on just one objective; the person who lets his thoughts wander away from anything but business even for a moment does not deserve the wealth he seeks. Such is the high ethic of the youth today. And such an ethic places us not on the level of the beast but below it.
(p. 240-241) Modern revelation has some interesting things to say about idlers: "Let every man be diligent in all things. And the idler shall not have place in the church" (D&C 75:29). An idler in the Lord's book is one who is not working for the building up of the kingdom of God on earth and the establishment of Zion, no matter how hard he may be working to satisfy his own greed. Latter-day Saints prefer to ignore tht distinction as they repeat a favorite maxim of their own invention, that the idler shall not eat the bread or wear the clothing of the laborer. And what an ingenious argument they make of it! The director of a Latter-day Saint Institute was recently astounded when this writer pointed out to him that the ancient teaching that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer has always meant that the idle rich shall not eat the bread of the laboring poor, as they always have. "To serve the classes that are living on them," Brigham Young reports from England, "the poor, the labouring men and women are toiling, working their lives out to earn that which will keep a little life in them [lunch is what they get out of it, and no more]. Is this equality? No! What is going to be done? The Latter-day Saints will never accomplish their mission until this inequality shall cease on the earth." But the institute director was amazed, because he had always been taught that the idle poor should eat the bread of the laboring rich, because it is perfetly obvious that a poor man has not worked as hard as a rich man. With the same lucid logic my Latter-day Saint students tell me that there were no poor in the Zion of Enoch because only the well-to-do were admitted to the city...The moral imperative of the work-ethic is by no means the eternal law we assume it to be, for it rests on a completely artificial and cunningly contrived theory of property.
(p. 248) No one is more completely "of the world" than one who lives by the world's economy, whatever his display of open piety.
(p. 280) A bishop told me this month that people coming to renew their temple recommends when they are asked whether they keep all their covenants frequently answer no, explaining that they do not keep the law of consecration. A General Authority recently told me that the important thing is to observe the law of consecration "spiritually." Yes indeed, say I, and the law of tithing also - how much better to observe it spiritually than in a gross, material way - a great comfort to the rich. And yet the express purpose of both those laws is to test the degree of our attachment to material things, not to provide an exercise in "spiritual" semantics.
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