Understanding Liberty
Christ’s teachings are the solution to our government problems
Over the past year we have looked at many current governmental problems plaguing the United States. We’ve also looked at various solutions to these problems. This has been my main purpose in writing these articles for Serve Daily, to hopefully educate and get people thinking about things they perhaps had never noticed, and in addition, provide possible solutions to the problems discussed. I am an educator by profession, and one of my goals in life is to be a teacher of correct and truthful principles and help people become aware of things that they might not otherwise see, think of, or understand, and to help them better themselves and the world. To further this goal, I am leaving for Scotland to attend the University of Edinburgh to finish my graduate level education. Thus, this will be my last article for Serve Daily. But, I will be replaced by a worthy writer from Utah’s Libertas Institute.
While I have proposed many possible suggestions to governmental problems and examples of oppression discussed in my articles, I have reserved the best and most powerful suggestion for last. While it may be extremely unpopular in much of the world, even here in the US, it is the only viable solution to the continued government saturation of oppression and tyranny throughout the US. The solution is the continued spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its principles of daily living as seen most purely, I sincerely believe, in the LDS religion.
In order to make a large dent in tyrannical government and to slow the spread of oppression, we must further disseminate Christ’s teachings, study them daily, and apply them regularly to our lives in all our thoughts and actions. Let membership in Christ’s Gospel be a secondary issue; the real importance firstly is to spread the teachings of Christ as taught in the LDS religion. Membership is important, but the principles are for everyone in every time and locality in the world, and let the teaching and adopting of those be the primary concern first and foremost, addressing membership secondarily. Not everyone will feel that membership in the LDS religion is for them at first. But, in the very least, if we adopt and apply to all aspects of our individual lives Christ’s three great moral teachings of the Golden Rule, that we reap what we sow, and that whatsoever judgment and measure one meet out to others will be given and met out to him, governmental tyranny will have a huge stumbling block placed in its evil path forward to world domination. The only way to counter the spread of darkness, coercion, hate, and violence through government is to shine the light of truth, peace, persuasion, and love as much as possible throughout the world.
Christ teaches us to do all things through persuasion, love/charity, and long suffering/patience, and not through unjust use of force of arms or threats of violence, which is what human government often tends to do. (See D&C 121:41-43 and Jacob 1:7-8). This applies to human government as well. If God governs us through persuasion, love, and patience, then who are we, His posterity/creations to use any other means in governing ourselves and our fellowmen? God’s ways of governing mankind are made known plainly to mankind in D&C 134, and has been addressed in more detail in previous articles. But in short, human governments “should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul.” And as we’ve discussed, crime in the eyes of our Creator is the actual, intentional violation of another’s equal rights (e.g. theft, fraud, murder, injury to body and health, etc.).
Man should act thusly in government, using force as little as possible except in just and exigent cases, in times of just, defensive warfare after the manner revealed by God in D&C 98:33-38, and in times of just judicial proceedings that set forth attempts to make restitution to the victims of actual, intentional crimes, after a speedy trial before one peers, having been presumed innocent until found guilty. Even then, such restitutional punishments must be equal to the crime/ harm done, and nothing more. Forced restitution for crimes found to be committed can be just, even by force of arms. However, let us take to heart the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, in his 1844 presidential platform, concerning American government and its unrighteous, oppressive, and illogical penal system:
My cogitations, like Daniel’s, have for a long time troubled me, when I viewed the condition of men throughout the world, and more especially in this boasted realm, where the Declaration of Independence “holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” but at the same time…hundreds of our own kindred for an infraction, or supposed infraction, of some over-wise statute, have to be incarcerated in dungeon gloom, or penitentiaries, while the duellist, the debauchee, and the defaulter for millions, and criminals, take the uppermost rooms at feasts, or, like the bird of passage, find a more congenial clime by flight.
Abolish the cruel customs of prisons (except certain cases), penitentiaries, court-martials for desertion; and let reason and friendship reign over the ruins of ignorance and barbarity; yea, I would, as the universal friend of man, open the prisons, open the eyes, open the ears, and open the hearts of all people, to behold and enjoy freedom-unadulterated freedom…
Other problems that plague every society that could be solved by the adoption of LDS practices are welfare laws and their accompanying government growth, centralization, and unjust, burdensome taxes. The LDS religion has a flourishing welfare program, and is funded with purely voluntary donations. And these donations are made because the LDS members have learned to live life and do all things by persuasion, love, and patience.
If the principles Christ are spread, accepted, and practiced faithfully by more people in the world, there will be less tyrants and incidents of oppression because they will be practicing the ways of divine government the best they can: persuasion, love, and patience. Thus, the importance of continuing to spread the Gospel of Christ and its teachings, and of continuing in patience and love to persuade all men and women to come unto Christ and learn of his and his Father’s ways cannot be understated. I know these principles to be good, true, and worthwhile, and the practice of them by all the societies of the world can only lead to improvement socially, economically, criminally, and governmentally. Let’s voluntarily adopt them in our own lives and in our dealings with others, all the way up to the governmental level. If we do this, we will see many of our current oppressive laws right themselves as they are repealed for their oppressiveness and injustice. God bless you all, my readers.