"And
the inhabitants of Zion also shall remember their labors, inasmuch as
they are appointed to labor, . . . for the idler shall be had in
remembrance before the Lord" (D&C 68:30). Note that it is not the
withholding of lunch but the observant eye of the Lord that admonishes
the idler. This refers to all of us as laborers in Zion, and "the
laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they
shall perish" (2 Nephi 26:31). That is the theme here: "Now, I, the
Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are
idlers among them; . . . they also seek not earnestly the riches of
eternity, but their eyes are full of greediness" (D&C 68:31). An
idler in the Lord's book is one who is not working for the building up
of the kingdom of God on earth and the establishment of Zion, no matter
how hard he may be working to satisfy his own greed. Latter-day Saints
prefer to ignore that distinction as they repeat a favorite maxim of
their own invention, that the idler shall not eat the bread or wear the
clothing of the laborer. And what an ingenious argument they make of it!
The director of a Latter-day Saint Institute was recently astounded
when this writer pointed out to him that the ancient teaching that the
idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer has always meant that the
idle rich shall not eat the bread of the laboring poor, as they always
have. "To serve the classes that are living on them," Brigham Young
reports from England, "the poor, the laboring men and women are toiling,
working their lives out to earn that which will keep a little life in
them [lunch is what they get out of it, and no more]. Is this equality?
No! What is going to be done? The Latter-day Saints will never
accomplish their mission until this inequality shall cease on the
earth."28 But the institute director was amazed, because he had always
been taught that the idle poor should not eat the bread of the laboring
rich, because it is perfectly obvious that a poor man has not worked as
hard as a rich man. With the same lucid logic my Latter-day Saint
students tell me that there were no poor in the Zion of Enoch because
only the well-to-do were admitted to the city.
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