I keep hearing the old canard about socialism=government force. It misses the point of a representative government. I'm adapting something I've posted elsewhere, on the degree to which our involvement in the gospel should be reflected in our politics. What is the point of anything anyway, unless we are a light to the world? Of course it doesn’t mean what the late, great Viv Stanshall said here.
In one of the EQ lessons I taught recently, I used my favourite Martin Buber quote, one that he adapted from the Hasidic master R. Elimelech of Lizhansk. I think it does a remarkable job of explaining what it is to be a light to the world. “R. Eleazar said: “The light that the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day- Adam could see with it from one end of the world to the next. Since the Holy One, blessed be He, looked at the generation of the Deluge and the generation of the Division and saw that their deeds were wicked, He concealed the light from them. And for whom did he conceal it? For the righteous in the future to come.” Hasidim asked: “Where did he conceal it?” They were answered: “In the Torah.” They asked: “If so, will the Tsadikim not find some of the light as they study Torah?” They answered: “They certainly will find some.” They asked: “If so, what will the Tsadikim do when they find some of the concealed light in the Torah?” They answered: “They will reveal it in the way they live.” If we don’t allow God’s light to influence our behaviour, to reveal itself through it, shaping the very way we tackle our lives and communities, studying scriptures is a waste of time. Social quietism is a very poor model LDS to follow. There is another Buber adaptation of a hasidic teaching which complements this one. “When Rabbi Enoch had said the verse of the psalm: “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath He given to the children of men,” he paused and then went on to say:” ‘The heavens are the heavens of the Lord’—you see, they are already of a heavenly character. ‘But the earth hath He given to the children of men’—so that they might make of it something heavenly.”” How can we become a Zion society if we wait for a later date? We ought to be making our communities as heavenly as possible right here, right now. Then we will be ready for Zion. Each person should act on their political conscience, be they socialist, republican, democrat, whatever. Continuing with Buber, in his essay Hebrew Humanism, he pointed out that our external circumstances in a large measure reflect our inner ones. Of course this does not mean that we will always succeed to the extent we want. Be it democracy or be it dictatorship, there will always be failures to one degree or another; but we have to try. We can’t lay back and think there is nothing to change, that Caesar can have what he will. “The concrete transformation of our whole inner life is not sufficient for us. We must strive for nothing less than the concrete transformation of our life as a whole. The process of transforming our inner lives must be expressed in the transformation of our outer life, of the life of the individual as well as that of the community. And the effect must be reciprocal: the change in the external arrangements of our life must be reflected in and renew our inner life time and again.” Biblical Humanism, a similar essay by Buber, is a little dramatic, but gets the point across. “Biblical humanism cannot, as does its Western counterpart, raise the individual above the problems of the moment; it seeks instead to train him to stand fast in them, to prove himself in them. This stormy night, these flashes of lightning flashing down, this threat of destruction- do not escape from them into a world of logos, of perfected form! Stand fast, hear the word in the thunder, obey, respond!”This terrifying world is the world of God. It lays claim upon you. Prove yourself in it like a man of God!” I want my government in my society to reflect my ideals as much as possible. Else, why have a representative government at all? If others disagree, they can vote against it.
