“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:28)

Evidently nearly the whole of the American nation! During these troubled financial times, I perceive a clear lesson in consequences. What’s more, I believe things will only be worse for longer if we don’t let tribulation do her work (see Romans 5:3, and think about the gimme attitude of this generation). I’m not altogether laissez faire about government, but there are many reasons that their assumption of so much of the financial sector would simply be perilous.

For one, that might be considered something of an enabling/facilitating gesture, whereby the same people and habits that got us into this mess may repeat their futile, self-serving measures—only the next time around, our economy will be even more fragile. It’s like the levees around New Orleans; my brother-in-law, an engineer, saw them long before the disaster struck, and he could have told anyone then that they were in terrible condition. Yet the corruption of local government prevented anything from being done, what with the way they divert money. Even so with our national economy; we certainly shouldn’t restore things just the way they were, even if we could. (What went on behind those downed levees was also an interesting glimpse into the depths of depravity in human nature. By the way, you needn’t tell me how many spiritual lessons could derive from strengthening retaining walls and the like.) This is a fine time for the reeducation of our people in fundamental principles of living and, sadly, experience may be the best teacher.

In thinking of homes and teetering fund structures, I’m reminded of a story that helps to illustrate how we got where we are (in many respects). The question isn’t so much who’s footing what bill as to mourn lost opportunities and think seriously about where we went wrong.

A story is told about a young builder who had just gone into business for himself. A wealthy friend of his father came to him and said: “To get you started right, I am going to have you build a house for me. Here are the plans. Don’t skimp on anything. I want the very finest materials used and flawless workmanship. Forget the cost. Just send me the bills.”

The young builder became obsessed with the desire to enrich himself through this generous and unrestricted offer. Instead of employing top-grade labor and buying the finest materials, he shortchanged his benefactor in every way possible. Finally, the last secondhand nail was driven into the last flimsy wall, and the builder handed over the keys and bills, totaling over a hundred thousand dollars, to his father's old friend. That gentleman wrote a check in full for the structure and then handed the keys back to the builder. “The home you have just built, my boy, is my present to you,” he said with a pleasant smile. “May you live in it in great happiness!” (Joseph B. Wirthlin, Finding Peace in Our Lives [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1995], 209-210; also in Ensign, May 1982)

Again, like knowledge, responsibilities must sometimes be acquired slowly. Among other things, this increases our appreciation for it, our deserving of it, and our understanding of each constituent truth.

It is not wisdom that we should have all knowledge at once presented before us; but that we should have a little at a time; then we can comprehend it. (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 268)

Sometimes we must recoil in frustration repeatedly, returning each time determined to learn and to DO what it takes to master something. The Mediator does not deprive us of such growth, but has ordained—indeed, we might say, established—the path which must be followed on fixed principles. I often reflect that this is one of those areas in which mercy simply cannot rob justice, for we must do, and we must do with real effort, if we are ever to become. (Such as a popular story among the Brethren, linked here.)

In the most straightforward spiritual terms:

No thing worth while is obtained in this life without sacrificing, without putting forth effort. The evil one thrusts things upon us but God asks us to reach out and get that which he offers. “Teach self-denial,” says Walter Scott, “and make it pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.” (David O. McKay, CR, Oct. 1929, 12)

Financial publications hint left and right that the American standard of living should have fallen years ago, but has been kept up through grossly inflated measures, including poor extension of credit. Clearly the market is simply assuming its actual values. Perhaps the time has arrived for us to take the pinch, to cinch the belt; I’m personally willing to take the hit so far as I have some assets in the market, in preference to weakening our country monetarily for the next round, which will hit back even harder in collapse. I’d rather lose some money now with our country righted on a natural foundation, than see our currency become totally meaningless down the road. As it is now, we are merely a contender in the global market, not the same force to be reckoned with that we once were. (Have you seen our GDP in historical comparisons lately? If that’s not a warning sign of the beginning of a “fall from grace”...)

I’m thinking of a medieval bishop who had some mixed-up priorities. His was also the fast life, refusing to “settle” for the more mundane existence of peaceful contentment.

. . . this aristocratic young tearaway (he is described as arrogant, headstrong, insolent, greedy, and none too bright) had seen military service with the papal mercenaries against Milan in the war of 1369, with the result that the pope appointed him bishop of Norwich the following year, 1370, at the age of twenty-six. . . . He was sentenced to lose the profits from his expedition and was deprived of the temporalities—that is, the income—of his see. . . . Richard II himself appears to have offered Despenser the prospect of quick re-employment if he would learn his lesson and become an obedient royal servant. . . . For the remaining twenty years of his life he enjoyed himself and his reputation as the martial bishop (episcopus martialis), fortifying his manor houses, hunting Lollards, quarrelling vigorously with his cathedral chapter and the East Anglian towns, and making a collection of metrical romances and prophecies. He was, on the whole, a happy bishop, and when he died, in 1406, he was still repeating his favourite text: “The earth is the Lord’s...”, and I want it. (Michael Wilks, Wyclif: Political Ideas and Practice, ed. Anne Hudson [Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2000], 258, 270)

Yes, the earth is the Lord’s. This calls to mind a subtopic I never got around to mentioning in very pertinent connection with a lesson on Section 76 this Sunday: the law of the harvest. We must remember who is really the Lord of the vineyard (in so many senses we are the crop, and it’s up in the air whether we’re the cream of the crop), and on what terms He employs His servants. The parable of the talents teaches us of His appearance of hardness to the wicked (Matt. 25:24; compare the whole with 1 Nephi 16:1-2), reaping where He has not sowed, and reminds us that in this field of the world—where the harvest is great and the laborers few—we are expected to sow, and yet all that we sow is in the end but a gift from above. Then there’s the matter of reaping, which can be a fearful matter (see Galatians 6:7-9; Mosiah 7:30; D&C 86:5-6, with Jacob 5:65). Alma 9:28, 41:12-15, and 2 Corinthians 9:6 correlate nicely to doctrines on the resurrection, leading to this relevant point (from a highly relevant article), from the October 2003 Ensign:

Faithfulness, even to what we feel are the hard doctrines, is a quality the Savior encouraged in His disciples. However, Jesus also wanted them to understand that pleasing the master was more than just a work ethic. He taught them that it was also a matter of the heart and their relationship with their heavenly Master. . . .

We are indebted to God for our very lives. When we keep His commandments, which is our duty to do, He immediately blesses us. We are therefore continually indebted and unprofitable to Him. Without grace, our valiance alone cannot save us.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has written regarding this parable:

“God’s generosity [or grace] toward us is not to be expressed by the dilution of the demands of duty that He lays upon us. Where much is given, much is expected—not the other way around. Nor is divine generosity to be expressed by a lessening of God’s standards concerning what is to be done. Rather, when much is given and much is done by the disciple, then God’s generosity is overwhelming!

“When we have given and done our all, we will one day receive ‘all that [our] Father hath’ (D&C 84:38). Therein lies God’s generosity. When we do our duty, He is bound—and gladly bound.”

It is high time for us as a nation to inculcate forgotten virtues, to replace the demand of entitlement with the supplication of humility, to remember that we are all beggars before God lest, or even if, He should compel us to be beggars on earth. Strident voices are calling at present for allocated money to be earmarked for distribution to taxpayers. I fail to see much distinction between Wall Street and Main Street...both sought to become the thoroughfare of Easy Street.

I would do nothing to encourage further growth of our welfare state: right now, the only thing that is owed anyone would be explanations and apologies, not more handouts or bailouts. Many need to learn that redistribution of taxed funds is either theft or a paltry substitute for keeping it in their pockets in the first place. Or is it—and I don’t say this as a privileged yuppie—merely the desire for those who pay the least taxes to enrich themselves at others’ expense? For the widow to cast in her mite and then lay claim to the whole pot, as though the blessings are here upon the earth? Those who eagerly insist on their inheritance early (something like the prodigal son) have their reward here in this life, indeed, and a shortage of treasure in heaven (see Matthew 6:20, of course, and D&C 6:33, 59:23).

I wish I weren’t too tired to actually fill in the scriptural framework here. But I must make an end. Some of the saddest, but truest, contemporary commentary:

Wo unto you rich men, that will not give your substance to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls; and this shall be your lamentation in the day of visitation, and of judgment, and of indignation: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!

Wo unto you poor men, whose hearts are not broken, whose spirits are not contrite, and whose bellies are not satisfied, and whose hands are not stayed from laying hold upon other men’s goods, whose eyes are full of greediness, and who will not labor with your own hands!

But blessed are the poor who are pure in heart, whose hearts are broken, and whose spirits are contrite, for they shall see the kingdom of God coming in power and great glory unto their deliverance; for the fatness of the earth shall be theirs.

For behold, the Lord shall come, and his recompense shall be with him, and he shall reward every man, and the poor shall rejoice;

And their generations shall inherit the earth from generation to generation, forever and ever. (D&C 56:16-20)