Tuesday, October 28, 2008

You can't be a good member of the church and a Socialist?

I know no one reads this blog, but, in the Temple study blog, there was a great post quoting from Ezra Taft Benson saying that socialism was against God's way.
A prophet declares redistribution of wealth is socialism

This started a pretty good debate and a comment was posted that I wanted to respond to, but the comments were closed at the blog entry, so I didn't get to say anything. Well, here goes.

Phillip Garding
Posted October 28, 2008 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
This discussion reminds me of a friend who showed me to G.A. quotes from the early 1900’s about how public schools are bad because we need inspired and righteous teachers. That is all well and good for the members of the church, but what about educating the other 90% of the American children? Voluntary, private charities do great work and we should support them, but they have never and will never have the resources to address the degree of poverty in the world. I have no doubt that the poor in our country are far better off because of controlled government welfare programs than they would be without them.



To that I'd like to say an overwhelming AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

I will admit that when I was in High School, my family partook in a great Sin. A sin called welfare. I can't exactly recount the circumstances, but we weren't doing very well financially. We actually went to the church first, and we received help a couple of times. The Bishop started making my parents feel guilty about it, so they stopped. We went on welfare for a period of time that I can't remember.

Anyway, sorry to force all of you out there to help me out