The world seems to be a fairly hellish place. More than 3 billion people on earth live on fewer than two dollars a day. Poverty kills 1,250 children every hour. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because of the Iraq War.
How do we deal with these numbing numbers?
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I often go to my faith to find solutions to these profound problems that plague our world. All too often, my fellow church members use their faith to guide their voting habits on just two issues: gay marriage and abortion. To choose a candidate for public office on just these two issues is insulting to the deep doctrines of the LDS faith. There are far more important and deeper issues to find answers for in the standard works than gay marriage and abortion.
Year after year, wealth inequality increases. According to the World Institute for Development Economics, the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in 2000, and the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the total global assets. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 percent of global wealth.
The overriding theme of The Book of Mormon, and the Nephite nation, is that as soon as society becomes overly greedy and inequitable, destruction is not too far off. The prophet Helaman teaches:
“?the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the world that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches, yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another?”
Soon after this happened, millions were killed in wars and famines. If The Book of Mormon and the Bible teach anything, it is that personal and societal greed will destroy the soul and the world.
Thirty thousand children die every day due to the effects of poverty. The Book of Mormon prophet Benjamin taught how we ought to treat the beggar: “For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have??”
LDS doctrine teaches that we need to give to the poor–both personally and as a society. The Book of Mormon teaches that righteous societies have “no poor among us.”
LDS doctrines are also clear on issues of war and peace. When the early saints faced decisions of whether to fight or use peaceful methods, they were told “Renounce war, and proclaim peace.”
As modern prophets have taught, all war is not evil. Certainly, wars to revolt against the British king and to end slavery were moral aspirations. LDS doctrine does not, however, excuse all war. The scriptures do show us that war should be the final solution. Over and over again, we are taught to forgive our enemies rather then fight them. We must all look inside our hearts and ask if the Iraq war is worth the deaths of more than 150,000 innocent Iraqis and more than 3,000 American soldiers.
Utah ought to be the most liberal state in the nation when it comes to economic and social justice issues. It’s time that Utah’s LDS population look beyond abortion and gay marriage and use its faith to guide us in principles of inequality, poverty and war.
