President Uchtdorf’s talk during the most recent conference Priesthood session is, it seems to me, extraordinarily important for understanding how we can truly help the poor. Make no mistake about it: if you are not helping your fellow man and participating in helping the poor, you are on the wrong road. To quote President Uchtdorf: “our spiritual progress is inseparably bound together with the temporal service we give to others.” Pres. Uchtdorf said you will be “in torment” if you don’t help the poor.
But Pres. Uchtdorf makes it clear that there are well-intentioned welfare systems that don’t work, and then there is the “Lord’s way.” The true systems include the following aspects:
- They promote self-reliance (to drive home this point, Pres. Uchtdorf used the words “self-reliance” and “self-help” eleven times in the talk).
- They involve personal activity on the part of the giver. It clearly is not enough to just write a check (and in fact, Pres. Uchtdorf says just writing a check in the wrong way to do it.)
- Personal activity and love for your neighbor will promote unity in the church, drawing people together in a common cause to promote the Lord’s will.
And, most importantly, Pres. Uchtdorf points out the crucial difference between welfare systems that don’t work and the ones that promote the “Lord’s way.”
There are many good people and organizations in the world that are trying to meet the pressing needs of the poor and needy everywhere. We are grateful for this, but the Lord’s way of caring for the needy is different from the world’s way. The Lord has said, “It must needs be done in mine own way.”9 He is not only interested in our immediate needs; He is also concerned about our eternal progression. For this reason, the Lord’s way has always included self-reliance and service to our neighbor in addition to caring for the poor.
What’s this about “eternal progression?” Well, as Pres. Uchtdorf says, we must look to the Savior as our guide. The savior spent 100 percent of his time in service of others. His primary concern was the Atonement, but He also showed us a model for truly caring for the poor. He led by example.
The Savior could, of course, have issued a general worldwide decree: “all poor people will immediately have enough money to live comfortably.” All poor people worldwide could have awakened the next morning to find 100 gold pieces magically appear in their pockets. He also could have issued a worldwide decree that all blind people be given their sight, all deaf people be able to hear, all lepers and lame people be healed. So why didn’t the Savior do this?
Because charity that separates the giver from the person receiving is meaningless. It takes care of immediate needs but does nothing to help the eternal progression of the person giving and the person receiving. From the Lord’s point of view, our immediate suffering is a small part of our eternal existence. The most important thing is what we learn during our mortal journey. If you are given a gift of 100 gold pieces, you learn absolutely nothing.
If, instead, one person gives directly to another person, both learn something of eternal importance. The giver learns that he is trying, in his flawed way, to be a better person, to do what the Savior asks him to do. The person receiving learns that people inspired by the Spirit can help him in a time of need. The person receiving truly appreciates the gift. This appreciation is crucial because it points us to a way to appreciate the greatest gift of all, which is the sacrifice performed for us by the Savior Himself.
The Lord’s way is different than the world’s way. The world wants to “solve” inequality and poverty by forcing people to give and then demonizing them if they earn too much money. This promotes covetousness, a grievous sin. This promotes contention, rather than unity. But, worst of all, this does nothing to solve the long-term problem.
Forcing somebody to give does nothing to help a person learn about the importance of charity as part of his or her personal development. People avoid giving to the government because it becomes a burden. The giver sees absolutely no personal return for giving because the money is taken straight from his paycheck, processed by a bureaucracy, with a huge percentage taken off in overhead. Every “giver” knows only a small percentage actually goes to the poor people involved.
A check from an address in a faraway capital does nothing to help the poor person appreciate the gift. The person receiving charity begins to expect it and see it as an entitlement that he is due because of his status as a victim.
And of course such a system does nothing to promote self-reliance. In reality, it often promotes the opposite response. Once the person receiving the check begins to see it as an “entitlement,” he or she is less likely to become self-reliant. People receiving checks often have a disincentive to becoming self-reliant because they might not receive the check anymore.
The world’s way is as far removed from the Lord’s way as can be. Self-reliance is suppressed rather than promoted. There is no one-on-one personal activity involving the giver and the receiver of charity. And instead of promoting unity, such a system promotes disharmony and contention. And, most importantly, this system does nothing to help the eternal progression of the people involved.
People who have been truly converted to the gospel want to help others (or at least, they try to develop those feelings even though it is often difficult). They want to follow the Lord’s way of helping the poor, the afflicted, the widows and the downtrodden. But people who support the world’s way of helping the poor often spend their time demonizing others who think there is a better way. If you oppose a certain government program because you believe it will be counterproductive you are called selfish, greedy, etc., when the reality is that you are simply pointing out that such policies will not help anybody involved. Such policies often get in the way of the Lord’s way of helping the poor.
Just about everybody reading this right now believes in charity. The issue is: which way should we do it, the Lord’s way, or the world’s way?