![\"SF](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/11\/533px-A_Pond_with_reflection_in_Golden_Gate_Park.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Christmas is coming in just thirty-six days! \u00a0Sure, we still have Thanksgiving Day before us \u2014 in the United States, anyway \u2014 but Thanksgiving is a pretty modest affair. \u00a0Obviously, it hasn\u2019t yet been adequately commercialized. \u00a0There\u2019s only so much one can do to monetize bread stuffing and cranberries and pumpkin pies, and, well, turkeys continue to demonstrate their stupidity by failing to unionize. \u00a0Anyway, where such delights were once fairly rare, required a lot of hard work and long hours in the kitchen, and celebrated a successful harvest, we moderns eat problematically well most days of the year. \u00a0Most of us (in the United States) are scarcely lacking sufficient calories or access to desserts. \u00a0Which makes a Thanksgiving meal relatively less special. \u00a0Here, though, is some good advice and useful information for the holiday season:<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Francisco Authorities Remind Everyone To Get Their Christmas Shoplifting Done Early\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cCostco Introduces Even Larger \u2018Mormon Family\u2019 Size\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Whenever the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> releases a report about its humanitarian efforts or issues a press release regarding, say, its donations to a hospital or a food bank or its efforts at disaster relief, some critic somewhere inevitably scolds the Church for its supposed boastfulness, citing this passage from the Sermon on the Mount:<\/p>\n Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.<\/span><\/p>\n Therefore when thou doest (\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u1fc7\u03c2) thine alms, do not sound (\u03c3\u03b1\u03bb\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u1fc3\u03c2) \u00a0a trumpet before thee (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5), as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.<\/span><\/p>\n But when thou (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5) doest alms, let not thy (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5) left hand know what thy (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5) right hand doeth:<\/span><\/p>\n That thine (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5) alms may be in secret: and thy (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5) Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee (\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9) openly. \u00a0(Matthew 6:1-4)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It should not be overlooked, however, that the same New Testament Gospel of Matthew also contains this passage, which it attributes to the same Jesus as part of the same Sermon on the Mount:<\/p>\n Let your (\u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd) light so shine before men, that they may see your (\u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd) good works, and glorify your (\u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd)\u00a0Father which is in heaven. \u00a0(Matthew 5:16)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s significant, in my view, that the repeated personal pronoun your<\/em> in Matthew 5:16 is plural, not singular . \u00a0By contrast, the relevant verbs\u00a0and pronouns (\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 and \u03c3\u03bf\u03b9) in Matthew 6:2-4 are in the second person singular. \u00a0Even the King James English of Matthew 6:1-4 indicates a shift from the plural ye<\/em> and your<\/em> to the singular thou<\/em> and thine<\/em>, marking a clear difference between collective and individual. \u00a0A distinction made in Islamic jurisprudence may be useful here: Muslim jurists have traditionally distinguished between individual obligations, which are incumbent upon each and every Muslim (fard al-\u2018ayn<\/em>; \u0641\u0631\u0636 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u064a\u0646) and obligations that rest upon the community as a whole but not necessarily upon any given Muslim individual (fard al-kifaya<\/em>; \u0641\u0631\u0636 \u0627\u0644\u0643\u0641\u0627\u064a\u0629). \u00a0In my reading of the counsel given by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, modesty with regard to one\u2019s charitable efforts and donations is a fard al-\u2018ayn<\/em>, an individual obligation, but isn\u2019t<\/em> a collective<\/em> obligation or fard al-kifaya\u00a0<\/em>that is incumbent upon the Church as a whole.<\/p>\n Consistent with the above, it seems clear to me that the two passages, Matthew 6:1-4 and Matthew 5:16, are referring to two distinct things. \u00a0The first warns us against showing off with the intent to gratify our personal vanity. \u00a02 Nephi 26:29 is relevant to such a project, saying of the Lord that<\/p>\n He commandeth that there shall be no priestcrafts; for, behold, priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints \u2014 like the Catholic Church and the Methodist Church and, for what it\u2019s worth, like the Sierra Club, the International Red Cross, the Audubon Society, and the American Cancer Society \u2014 has<\/em> no personal vanity, for the simple reason that it isn\u2019t a person<\/em>. \u00a0Donors to the Church receive no ego-stroking for their tithes, which are given privately (even rather secretively), and they gain no individual praise or credit for any humanitarian acts performed by the Church. \u00a0Apart from my bishop and our ward\u2019s financial clerk, nobody besides my wife knows whether I pay or don\u2019t<\/em> pay fast offerings or contribute to the Church\u2019s humanitarian funds. \u00a0There is, thus, no spiritual danger for me, personally \u2014 \u00a0no temptation to vanity or pride \u2014 in the Church\u2019s grants to rural clinics, its disaster relief efforts, its provision of food and clean water to needy people, or its contributions to neonatal resuscitation in the Third World.<\/p>\n On the other hand, it\u2019s helpful and (I can speak from my own experience here) it\u2019s inspiring to Latter-day Saints to learn of the good things that their church is doing and that are being funded by their offerings. \u00a0In that regard, such accounts are rather like a report to shareholders. \u00a0(Ironically, the critics who denounce the Church for making its humanitarian efforts public are often the same people who demand more transparency from it.) \u00a0And, since the Church is regularly maligned as driven solely by greed and as being indifferent to the plight of the poor and the needy, it is a service to the truth to make the actual facts public.<\/p>\n For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. \u00a0(Doctrine and Covenants 123:12)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As opposed to the quest for personal glory and the desire for a personal reputation for sanctity and charity, I believe that it is the duty and obligation of the Church to let its light so shine before men, that they may see its good works, glorify our Father which is in heaven, and desire to join themselves with it.<\/p>\n And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord<\/span>\u2018s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.<\/span><\/p>\n And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord<\/span>, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord<\/span> from Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 6:2-4)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Finally, here are a few items that I\u2019ve retrieved from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122:<\/p>\n And here are a couple of links that I found adjacent<\/em> to the Hitchens File<\/em>. \u00a0Surely, Utah\u2019s dominant religious faith has played a historical role in forming the state\u2019s culture and continues to do so. \u00a0Which is why sophisticates and the cognoscenti<\/em> know my adopted home state as \u201cUtard,\u201d the center of the \u201cMor(m)on\u201d or \u201cMorgbot\u201d religious world, and recognize it as something of a theocratic Hell on Earth:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Christmas is coming in just thirty-six days! \u00a0Sure, we still have Thanksgiving Day before us \u2014 in the United States, anyway \u2014 but Thanksgiving is a pretty modest affair. \u00a0Obviously, it hasn\u2019t yet been adequately commercialized. \u00a0There\u2019s only so much one can do to monetize bread stuffing and cranberries and pumpkin pies, and, well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":28169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39413,2637,6444,2905,788,782],"class_list":["post-113687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alms","tag-charity","tag-humanitarian","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon","tag-utah"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>\n
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