the greater the distance between the giver and the receiver

With the possible exception of wealthy immediate family, the closer someone is to a giver, the more likely they are to be aware of difficulties the giver faces in giving and, therefore, less likely to feel entitled. I know I feel organizations should take care of their own, to the extent possible, and we tend to assume an organization has more resources than people we know personally.

Also, larger distances generally lead to an impression of “programs” or help from many people – and we tend to think programs and large groups of people should provide help, as opposed to individuals being charitable if they give help.

To make it more personal to this group, I have read quite a few posts over the years saying, “The Church should have helped me (in various ways), and I am disillusioned that it didn’t.” Those statements outnumber ones that say the same thing about individuals by a large margin. Even in cases of feeling ignored and/or harmed (and even in cases of an individual, like a bad Bishop), the blame more often has been assigned to the Church, not the individuals doing the ignoring or harming.

I’m farther from God than I have ever been, and I don’t feel entitled, at least not to help from Him. I don’t expect him to answer my prayers at all anymore because of not being a loyal member for a while, and am thoroughly surprised and grateful when He answers me anyway. I actually think i’m more grateful for it than I used to be. I was telling my dh this and he is really close with God and communicates with Him quite often, and he told me that he actually does feel entitled to answers from God. He thinks it’s because he’s been getting answers so easily, so when he can tell God is ignoring him, he gets kind of huffy about it because he’s used to being answered. So to me, it makes more sense that entitlement comes from the frequency of the gift.

If your grandma never brought you presents, you wouldn’t expect them. Or if she only sometimes brought gifts, you would kind of expect them, but not too much. If she always brought you gifts and then one time didn’t bring anything, you’d think you did something wrong, or may even get annoyed that she forgot to bring you something.

I agree with you Dande, and I have had similar experiences. I won’t say that I am farther from God than I have been in the past, but I also think I have been closer at other times in the past. I likewise have found peace by not really expecting anything from God – not that I don’t feel entitled or “worthy” but because I don’t believe God is that kind of giver. I do hope for mercy and grace because I believe that’s what a loving Father/God would do – but I don’t feel entitled to it.

So that’s the question I have in the OP. I get what Renlund is saying – the closer we are to God or Christ, the more we appreciate that which they do give and the more we desire to do good (and I really love the line about the Pharisees). And I do see people who exemplify this. Nevertheless, the prosperity gospel is alive and very well in Mormonism and I see far more people who are apparently close to God/Christ feeling entitled to blessings, feeling “chosen” and “special,” and sure that they are en route to the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom. They’re the ones who I see as feeling entitled to things from the giver, not those who are so much less sure of those things.

Just a note of clarification. Renlund starts off talking about more temporal matters relating to the statement and rather quickly moves along to church welfare. I get that part – the United States has become much more of an entitlement people in my lifetime (and more especially the last quarter of my life). The government (giver) is far from the receivers and they are taught that they are entitled. Even church welfare has evolved in that respect from being encouraged not to take government assistance to seeking government assistance before church assistance is some cases. It’s when he tires to correlate the statement to the spiritual side that he loses me.

ap, I agree with your last sentence completely. It would have been more powerful, if that had been the central message.

DarkJedi wrote:

“Just a note of clarification. Renlund starts off talking about more temporal matters relating to the statement and rather quickly moves along to church welfare. I get that part – the United States has become much more of an entitlement people in my lifetime (and more especially the last quarter of my life). The government (giver) is far from the receivers and they are taught that they are entitled. Even church welfare has evolved in that respect from being encouraged not to take government assistance to seeking government assistance before church assistance is some cases. It’s when he tires to correlate the statement to the spiritual side that he loses me.”

Our religious culture discusses personal giving to the poor as a good thing, but we seldom as individuals give to the poor in a way that the poor can depend on. Our personal giving to the poor is random and sporadic. It is sufficient for someone who had a one-time problem, but not sufficient for someone with chronic needs or disabilities.

Our media discusses the “undeserving poor” and the “welfare scammer” as if those are the norms. They are not. I am grateful that my tax dollars go to support welfare programs. I like knowing that there is a safety net out there to catch the most vulnerable in the population.

Increasing the distance between the giver and the receiver helps the receiver. When we give through an organization or government, the giver is more removed and the giving is not voluntary. It is taxation. The giver population can become more judgemental without having any true idea of the situation of the recipients.

If the conference talk had been about the unrighteous judgements of the giver due to the greater distance, I would’ve liked the talk more.

I certainly hope I didn’t give the impression I am opposed to government welfare. I am not. While there are abuses of the system, they are a very small percentage and when crunching the numbers it turns out that welfare programs are a very small part of overall spending. I agree that distancing the giver and the receiver in public welfare is an advantage for the receiver.

I also agree that we seldom give more directly to the poor, something I would love to do better at. Most of us probably consider fast offerings (which is the real law of the fast, it has nothing to do with prayer and testimony) as having done our part and I’m fine with that. Again, that creates some distance between the giver and the receiver. I have a couple problems with the way fast offerings are distributed, mostly related to leadership roulette – some leaders put themselves in the position of the giver when in reality they are distributors on behalf of other givers. I don’t want to imply that I think I should be able to decide who gets my fast offerings and who doesn’t – but I also don’t think my bishop should have sole discretion.

That said, I still don’t get the spiritual thing and the Laman/Lemuel and Nephi corollary. Part of what I don;t understand is that Renlund seems to be indicating that in the spiritual sense the giver’s judgements aren’t unrighteous and the receivers don’t receive because they’re undeserving. Yesterday’s speaker alluded to that idea in his talk and outright said only followers of Christ are deserving of His mercy. I think I understand that he really didn’t mean it that way (his talk was good overall, very Christ centered and about following Christ) – but I also believe all people receive grace and mercy whether or not they follow Christ. Renlund sort of seems to be saying something similar to yesterday’s speaker – Laman and Lemuel are not deserving of mercy because of their behavior.

Side note: I would not like to have been Nephi’s sibling, either.

Yesterday’s speaker alluded to that idea in his talk and outright said only followers of Christ are deserving of His mercy.

First off let me say that I did not read Elder Renlund’s talk or hear the speaker that you are referring to give his talk based on Elder Renlund’s talk. I can therefor not give an accurate response to the wording that they used or the intent of their wording. However, there is a little couplet that helps me keep mercy and grace in perspective.

Grace is getting something (favor, blessing, benefit) that we do not deserve. Mercy is not getting something (punishment, consequence, spiritual death) that we do deserve.

Therefore, if someone is deserving of mercy then it ceases to be mercy. If the innocent prisoner is set free, it is not mercy but justice that prevails.

I am cautious about blanket statements like Runlon’s that the greater the distance, the more entitlement there is. This may be true in some situations, and not others. And I question if he’s making the decision based on data, or perhaps the anecdotes that have crossed his life path…

This broaches the age old debate about how much of the LDS experience is the result of individual leaders’ choices, and how much is “the church”. Some argue that there is no “church” — it’s the people only, so any deficits are a result of human frailty, not the perfect organization we call the church.

I would argue, however, that it is the church that drives most individual’s behavior — particularly leaders. AS I have said over and over again, its the systems, policies, type of people they tend to promote to positions of influence, structures they put in place for oversight, training they give, where they put their money and time emphasis — that tends to drive leader and member behavior. Management theory and research indicates this is true, And as W. Edwards Deming, the Harvard quality guru said — 80% of the problems are with the system, not the people.

We can point to patterns of behavior that are remarkably consistent among leaders, and this, to me, is the influence of the church as an organization (its policies, culture, leaders it promotes based on consistent types of personal qualities, systems, structure, etcetera). Further, if you see a lot of bad individual decision-making, this is also a reflection on the organization that has not dedicated sufficient resources to training, monitoring and controlling such decisions to ensure the experience is positive for members.

Further, I find the people who think most mistakes are the result of individual anomaly rather than organizational policy are trying to preserve their mental picture of the church as a “perfect” organization — perhaps for the sake of their testimony. To me, it also represents an organization avoiding accountability for its actions. Our church is as guilty of that as any other. Have you seen how difficult it is to for our church to issue a formal apology? I remember how relieved and startled i was when DHO apologized for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. That was the first formal apology I’d heard even though the church has its own substantial sets of skeletons in its closet.

Yet even that apology stopped short of assigning accountability to the leaders, saying only that “members of our church were involved”. There have been long standing mistakes and the church seems to apologize sparingly. Perhaps due to the “never lead astray” myth about leaders that boxes the current leadership into a corner. The Priesthood Ban disavowal is another kind of apology, but they tucked it away in a corner of LDS.org where the average member won’t see it, rather than make it.

Anyway, I do think it’s appropriate to assign accountability to the church for mistakes that represent a pattern, or that are a result of policy, training, culture or other fixtures of organizations. Its the pattern that matters, and to place all mistakes in the church camp, or all mistakes in the individual camp, is a mistake.

For example, if you believe the priesthood ban was a mistake, this is clearly a church error. Leaders believed and taught it was doctrine for years. I saw a letter to a sociologist in Cuba from the FP stating the priesthood ban was doctrine. Brigham Young, the figurehead of the church and a major policy maker promulgated the policy, making it a church error. It was entrenched in our day-to-day operations that blacks could not hold the priesthood. This was clearly a church error.

There have been situations where BP’s or SP members have had adulterous relationships with members — sometimes in their office (a high councilor indicated that this happened in a stake he was in). This is clearly an individual error as the church’s teachings, manuals, and policies consistently indicate chastity is important and discourage fornication and adultery. Such leaders are excommunicated consistent with church policy and procedure…Only to the extent that people in authority knew about the error, and did nothing, means the church is accountable.

Whether entitlement grows as distance increases, I am not so sure. If it is true, it may well be appropriate for individuals in large societies to believe that programs that allow individuals in a certain situation to receive benefits, should be fairly applied to all people.