The LDS Church Is Responsible For the Collapsing of Western Civilization

The LDS Church Is Responsible

For the Collapsing of Western Civilization

The LDS church is responsible for the collapsing of western civilization. Since it could be preventing that collapsing process, but is not doing so, therefore it is responsible for the outcome. It was assigned by the scriptures to prevent collapse, but it appears that, to make their lives easier, the church and its leaders have so far refused to carry out that assignment, like the reluctant prophet Jonah. And, perhaps, like the prophet Jonah, it still may not be too late for the church to fulfill that assignment and see the surprisingly good results.

This way of putting the church's duty corresponds somewhat to the "last clear chance" doctrine in tort law. For example, we could apply it if the church were to blame the world for the damage done by its many sins and errors, but then the world could come back with the claim that the church had the last clear chance to stop the world's society from doing so much damage to itself and everyone around it, including church members.

"In the law of torts, the doctrine that excuses or negates the effect of the plaintiff's contributory Negligence and permits him or her to recover, in particular instances, damages regardless of his or her own lack of ordinary care."  http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Last+Clear+Chance

Computation: If we were to estimate that the church has received about $6 billion in contributions each year for 30 years, that would be $180 billion in cash. If we estimate that a similar amount of volunteer work has been contributed, we would then have a resource level of $360 billion over the past 30 years. Other resources would presumably be available if sought for particular purposes. The question then becomes whether the church has made good use of its resources over the past 30-50 years. $400-500 billion sounds like enough to make a notable attitude change within a society, even if it is as large as the United States. In other words, it appears that the church has consumed $0.5 trillion in the last 50 years and has almost nothing lasting to show for it, certainly as it relates to helping to create a Zion-like society.

Instead of vigorously working to reverse all the many bad trends of our society, the church itself has collapsed and degenerated to become nothing more than a regional religion business, a profitable closely-held corporation, a regional mega-church, where the valuable information that makes up the Gospel has been simplified and repackaged and then used to set up an international string of franchised church installations to bring in tithing money. There is no attempt to improve society in general, but only to operate below the local governments' radars.

The grand Christian mission throughout the last 2000 years of the Old Testament, concerning the Israelites escape from Egyptian slavery, and again during the first 2000 years following the life of Christ, including the Reformation, was to bring freedom to the world, with its best representation being demonstrated in the United States with its inspired constitution. In turn, the United States has been the means to spread those freedom concepts throughout the much wider world. However, the LDS church leadership has explicitly chosen not to continue that great tradition and has instead chosen to do essentially nothing to maintain or promote freedom, but has become a free-rider on the availability of Western freedom, as long as it lasts. That opportunistic choice to take no part in freedom promotion is essentially a complete abandonment of its prime directive to promote freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility during this life and hereafter, bringing the very reason for its restoration in our time into question.

It would be too harsh to suggest that the church could have prevented World War I or World War II, but because during World War II or sooner, the church decided to declare itself pacifist and cease to promote freedom in any significant way, it now bears much guilt for the deteriorating state of the United States and the world. It decided to accept as unchangeable, and of no concern of the church, the various tyrannies and unhealthy ambitions found to some degree in every country on the planet.

It has built up a diplomatic corps and tradition, but if it is to continue to fund this very expensive bureaucracy, it ought to be using that diplomatic bureaucracy for a higher purpose than just timidly seeking permission for the church to enter a country and operate there. Yes, it could be useful to do that, but then that bureaucracy ought to go on to work at reinforcing Joseph Smith's proclamation to the leaders of the world about the arrival of the gospel and their responsibilities to accept and promote it for the good of their citizens and of the entire world.

The goal should not be merely to build up a few outposts in the world but to consciously build up a gospel-based civilization worldwide. (The details of such a process, its goals and rules, are discussed in earlier articles.)

All these self-centered choices seem to originate with church lawyers looking for a profit. This is the same disease that infected the Law of Moses bureaucracies at the time of Christ, where the gospel was corrupted for the express purpose of extracting profit from it. The first goal of church leaders today is to set up banking systems to allow transferring money from these new locations to Salt Lake City. Otherwise, these new locations are of no serious interest to the leaders.   

A critical choice was made in 1896. Having successfully survived everything that the world could throw at them, the church leaders' basic options at that point were either to strive to spread the gospel to fix the world, as they were assigned to do, or to warp and limit the gospel and use it to feather their own nest, recognizing and employing its profit-making potential in a world where many people worry about their eternal salvation. They received the Gospel for free and were expected to spread it for free, as a charitable gift, the best gift of all, but instead they decided to claim it as their own, as though they were its original authors and copyright holders, and then to constantly charge extreme rent for its use, whatever the market would bear. (Of course, it may have personally cost them time and money to implement it in their lives, as they freely chose, but the information, authority, and procedures themselves were free.)

Instead of receiving the gospel and its priesthood ordinances for free, as intended, every new member is expected to pay 10% of their income for the rest of their lives to the central church (whose leaders claim to be the "copyright holders") simply for the privilege of using the gospel which was intended to be spread for free. The unpleasant terms of pretenders, usurpers, and fraud come to mind.

Christ paid all the costs himself, and made the gospel and its atoning promise a free gift to all mankind, but the church leaders have decided that nothing so valuable should ever be given away for free, and, with a little trickery, they should be able to turn "free" into a major revenue stream. This is a little bit like the old mafia "protection racket" where the mafia forces payment of extortionist "protection" money else they threaten violence of some sort. Of course, without the mafia threat, people could enjoy their peace without any costs. Here again, the mafia reasons that peace and freedom are too precious to be given away or enjoyed for free, and they might as well be the ones who profit from it.   

In a similar way, the church leaders today seem to reason that the pioneers who went before them paid a huge cost or made a huge investment to receive the gospel and establish it in the American West. Having paid a great cost, their actual or claimed successors and assigns ought to be able to receive interest or rent on that great original investment forever. There is a great danger that if the church truly becomes worldwide and creates a gospel-based civilization, those original sunk costs will be mostly forgotten or taken for granted, and the perceived basis for charging rent thereon will diminish greatly. Therefore, the only way to maintain the interest or rent income on that commandeered original investment is to keep the church and its headquarters small and focused in Utah. That allows a small group of people who have some claim of connection with the original pioneers to continue to receive interest, rent, or royalties on that great original sacrifice and investment in the gospel.

But, of course, these many generations later, the biological and spiritual children of those pioneers make up most of the people in the Mountain West, so that having a small group of headquarters personnel claim to "own" that entire religious heritage and all its continuing value makes the whole set of claims rather strained. If that original investment belongs to everyone, there is no good logic for church headquarters cashing in on it at the expense of everyone else. It is a bit strange for those who inherited this charitable gift, so that it should be free to them, have to continue forever paying 10% of their income to those who improperly claimed to own it as against everyone else. No one should be required to pay endlessly for his own free inheritance. That was intended to be free; do bankers get to charge enormous fees for giving a person their inheritance?

In other words, like Christ, the original pioneers may have intended their efforts and costs to be a free charitable gift to the world, or at least to other members, but the church leaders have decided that they cannot allow those people to have the credit for the charitable gifts they desired to give, and the church leaders have virtually confiscated their charitable gifts and found a way to charge a great deal of money for them forever. In both cases, of Christ and of the pioneers, we are denying their wishes that these gifts they have made remain gifts. Again, this is like a banker who acts as the executor of an estate who actually claims the estate as his own and then sells it to the intended beneficiaries, without bothering to tell them that they are actually entitled to get it for free. Such bankers are fiduciaries, but they have failed in their duties. We say that they have breached their fiduciary duties.

Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:18) sought to create an occupation out of the gospel and its priesthood power and to make money at it. He later learned the truth and repented, but the church leaders today appear to have done neither.