Where the two cents is

Hopefully you missed my post of my 1.5 cents.  I was ranting on and on and not getting my point across very well about wanting to help others and being sure others helped themselves..basically  disagreeing with the government's idea of helping others in our country.

I happened upon a talk that lays my thoughts and some Prophets of God fairly well...this is from President Romney from a while back quoting President Clark who warned us even longer ago.   Just wanting to help others is not enough. We have to want to the right way, the Lord's way....

I've edited for length and highlighted my faves:


Before doing so, however, I desire to say a word or two about agency.
Free agency means the freedom and power to choose and act. Next to life itself, it is man’s most precious inheritance.
Free agency was operative in the spirit world. The gospel plan, as there proposed and adopted, provided that men should enjoy agency in mortality. Satan, with a third of the hosts of heaven, fought it there and lost, but they did not give up their opposition to the principle.
In the Garden of Eden, God endowed Adam and his posterity with free agency. Satan and his followers have, from then until now, sought directly and in every conceivable indirect manner to substitute the principle of force for the principle of free agency.
In the book of First Samuel, we have an instructive example of the results of making wrong decisions. In the first chapter we are told that Israel objected to being governed by judges. They wanted a king. The prophet told them that a king would make them servants. But they hearkened not, and persisted in demanding a king. This grieved Samuel, and the Lord said to him, “Hearken unto the voice of the people … for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.” (1 Sam. 8:7.)
Israel thus surrendered the form of free government God had given them. They got their king all right, and a few decades later they were taken captive into slavery. Slavery entered into by one’s own choice is no less slavery than that imposed upon him by external force.
Jesus, by the exercise of his agency, rose to be the second member of the Godhead. Lucifer, by the exercise of his agency, sank to Hades.
I suggest we consider what has happened to our agency with respect to contributing to the means used by the bureaucracy in administering government welfare services.
In order to obtain these means, one head of state is quoted as saying, “We’re going to take all the money we think is unnecessarily being spent and take it from the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have nots’ that need it so much.” (Congressional Record, 1964, p. 6142—Remarks of the President to a Group of Leaders of Organizations of Senior Citizens in the Fish Room, Mar. 24, 1964.)
The difference between having the means with which to administer welfare assistance taken from us and voluntarily contributing it out of our love of God and fellowman is the difference between freedom and slavery.

Now as to the principle of love. In the operation of our Church Welfare Services, such love is to be the motivating power which moves us to give our time, money, and services.
“Let us love one another,” wrote John the Beloved, “for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. …
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” (1 Jn. 4:7–9, 11.)
“Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 Jn. 3:17; italics added.)
“If thou lovest me,” said Jesus, “… thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support. …
“And inasmuch as ye impart of your substance unto the poor, ye will do it unto me.” (D&C 42:29–31.)
When Jesus was asked, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Matthew says that he answered:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
“This is the first and great commandment.
“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22:36–40.)
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all three report this incident. Luke, however, further informs us that the lawyer who put the question said further, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29.)
And Jesus responded with his Good Samaritan parable:

Two of the three principles upon which the Church Welfare Services must function—agency and love of neighbor—are admirably taught in this parable.
When we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, might, and strength, we will love our brothers as ourselves, and we will voluntarily, in the exercise of our free agency, impart of our substance for their support.

Now about work. Work is just as important to the success of our welfare services as are the first and second great commandments and the preservation of our free agency.

We must ever keep in mind that the First Presidency, in announcing the welfare program in the October 1936 conference, said:
“Our primary purpose was to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership.” (Conference Report, Oct. 1936, p. 3; italics added.)
A year before this statement was made, on October 7, 1935, President Clark, in a special priesthood meeting held in this tabernacle, referring to government gratuities, said:
“The dispensing of these great quantities of gratuities has produced in the minds of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people in the United States a love for idleness, a feeling that the world owes them a living. It has made a breeding ground for some of the most destructive political doctrines that have ever found any hold in this country of ours, and I think it may lead us into serious political trouble.
“I fear,” he continued, “we need not be surprised if some blood shall run before we of this nation finally find ourselves.”

In his conference address of April 1938, President Clark said this:
“I honor and respect old age. I would not see it suffer from want, not from disease that can be helped. It is entitled to every care, to every act of kindness, to every loving caress which a grateful community and a devoted family can give. “I have every sympathy with age. I know the difficulties which age has in fitting into modern, economic life. …
“Some plan must be devised that shall make certain that no aged person shall be cold or go hungry or unclad. But the prime responsibility for supporting an aged parent rests upon his family, not upon society. Ours is not a socialistic or communistic state, where the people are mere vassals to be driven about as animals from one corral to another. We are freemen. So still with us the family has its place and its responsibilities and duties, which are God-given. The family which refuses to keep its own is not meeting its duties. When an aged parent has no family or when the family is itself without means, then society must, as a matter of merest humanity, come to the rescue. This is perfectly clear.

“But it is a far cry from this wise principle to saying that every person reaching a fixed age shall thereafter be kept by the state in idleness. Society owes to no man a life of idleness, no matter what his age. I have never seen one line in Holy Writ that calls for, or even sanctions this. In the past no free society has been able to support great groups in idleness and live free.” (CR, Apr. 1938, pp. 106–7.)
And I’ll say to you that no society in the future will ever be able to do so.

And in a private letter five years later, President Clark wrote:
“You must remember that back and behind this whole propaganda of ‘pensions’, gratuities, and doles to which we are now being subjected, is the idea of setting up in America, a socialistic or communistic state, in which the family would disappear, religion would be prescribed and controlled by the state, and we should all become mere creatures of the state, ruled over by ambitious and designing men.”
What has happened during the third of a century since this statement was made testifies to President Clark’s prophetic insight.

Prayer in schools has been dealt a fatal blow. The integrity of the family is being undermined. Unemployment compensation, Medicaid, aid to families with dependent children (AFDC), food stamps, and hundreds of other transfer-payment programs for veterans, widows or widowers, and children are today all supported, totally or in part, by federal and state/local tax revenue.
Little is said or done in these programs about the obligation of parents to care for their own or of recipients to work for what they receive.
The Lord, in the revelations given during the Restoration, and the presidents of the Church since then, have unequivocally and repeatedly declared that our welfare services are to be founded on love and on work.
The Lord said in the revelation recorded in section 42 of the Doctrine and Covenants, specified by the Prophet Joseph as being the law of the Church:
“Thou shalt not be idle; for he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer.” (D&C 42:42.)
Later He said:
“And the inhabitants of Zion also shall remember their labors, inasmuch as they are appointed to labor, in all faithfulness; for the idler shall be had in remembrance before the Lord.
“Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased,” he continued, “with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are idlers among them; and their children are also growing up in wickedness; they also seek not earnestly the riches of eternity, but their eyes are full of greediness.
“These things ought not to be, and must be done away from among them.” (D&C 68:30–32.)

“My faith does not lead me,” President Young continued, “to think the Lord will provide us with roast pigs, bread already buttered, etc.; he will give us the ability to raise the grain, to obtain the fruits of the earth, to make habitations, to procure a few boards to make a box, and when harvest comes, giving us the grain, it is for us to preserve it—to save the wheat until we have one, two, five, or seven years’ provisions on hand, until there is enough of the staff of life saved by the people to bread themselves and those who will come here seeking for safety. … [The fulfillment of that prophecy is yet in the future.]
“Ye Latter-day Saints, learn to sustain yourselves. …
“Implied faith and confidence in God is for you and me to do everything we can to sustain and preserve ourselves. …
“You have learned a good deal, it is true; but learn more; learn to sustain yourselves; lay up grain and flour, and save it against a day of scarcity. …
“Instead of searching after what the Lord is going to do for us, let us inquire what we can do for ourselves.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, Deseret Book, 1966 ed., pp. 291–93.)
“To be Latter-day Saints men and women must be thinkers and workers,” said President Joseph F. Smith. “They must be men and women who weigh matters in their minds; men and women who consider carefully their course of life and the principles that they have espoused.” (Gospel Doctrine, Deseret Book, 1939 ed., p. 114.)
President Grant declared:
“I am a firm believer that work does not kill anyone. …
“I have never seen the day when I was not willing to do the meanest work … rather than be idle. …
“Men should have a pride in doing their full share and never want to be paid for that which they have not earned. …
“I assert with confidence that the law of success, here and hereafter, is to have a humble and a prayerful heart, and to work, work, WORK. …

A statement which focuses upon and gives real meaning to what we have been talking about here is the following “Editorial on Labor,” written and published by John Taylor in Nauvoo, October 15, 1844. I just found this recently, and I think it’s a marvelous statement. This was way back there just after the Prophet had been martyred. It reads:
“Labor is the manufacturer of wealth. It was ordained of God, as the medium to be used by man to obtain his living [italics added]: hence it is the universal condition of this great bond to live. …
“God never meant to bemean his creation, especially his own image, because they had to labor:—no; never; God himself according to the good old book labored on this world, six days; and when Adam was animated from clay to life, by his spirit’s making use of him for a dwelling, we read that God put him into the garden to dress it:—Therefore, in connection with the samples of all holy men, we are bound to honor the laboring man: and despise the idler. …
“
Now, my brothers and sisters, the handwriting is on the wall; “the interpretation thereof [is] sure.” (Dan. 2:45.) 

Both history and prophecy—and I may add, common sense—bear witness to the fact that no civilization can long endure which follows the course charted by bemused manipulators and now being implemented as government welfare programs all around the world.
Babylon shall be destroyed, and great shall be the fall thereof. (See D&C 1:16.)
But do not be discouraged. Zion will not go down with her, because Zion shall be built on the principles of love of God and fellowman, work, and earnest labor, as God has directed.
Remember that Enoch’s Zion was built in a day when wickedness was as rampant as it is among us today. Among those who rejected the word of God in that day “there were wars and bloodshed”; they were ripening in that iniquity which brought the flood. “But the Lord came and dwelt with his people, and they dwelt in righteousness. … because they were of one heart and one mind, … and there was no poor among them.” (Moses 7:16, 18.)
As we prepare for the building of Zion, we must not and we shall not abandon the basic principles upon which our Church Welfare Services are founded: love—love of God and neighbor—and work, or labor.
We shall persevere by helping people to help themselves until “the curse of idleness [is] done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self respect [are] once more established amongst our people.”
This is my witness, which I bear to you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

And me again...Even the best of people with the best of intentions in using the welfare program call fall into the pattern of idleness. The lord's way is not to use force to have us do anything, even help our fellowman. Why? I'm thinking He knows more than us and knows it won't work.  In the end it is not helping others, it is enslaving them.