taxes and "free will" offerings

"And again Alma commanded that the people of the church should impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he have more abundantly he should impart more abundantly; and of him that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given. And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires towards God…” (Mosiah 18.27-28)

​An opinion piece recently appeared in the Deseret News (of all places!), written by Taylor G. Petrey, and entitled “The Failures of Mormon conservatism.” Many of the thoughts and observations found in the piece closely match my own.[1]

Can I just say, as an aside, how macabrely humorous I found the Deseret News 12 May update found immediately above this piece’s title?
 
“2017 GUN LAWS (Updated)
Avoid Concealed Carry Mistakes and Stay Out of Jail With Your Free Map usconcealedcarry.net”
 
Talk about Madness! I can’t begin to describe all the absurdities I find in this innocent little update.
 
Anyway, back to the opinion piece. There is an editor’s note found below the opinion’s title linking three responses to the original piece. I will not respond to all that was said in either the original piece or the responses. However, I want to make a few observations.

Those who are opposed to having their tax dollars used for welfare and “wealth-redistribution” purposes often claim that the collection of funds for such purposes is “coercive” and does violence to “moral agency.” Often it accompanies some nonsense about Satan’s plan. (I will not go into my own objections to having one red cent of my tax dollars spent to wage bloody war the globe over).

No Mormon, it seems to me, can seriously maintain such a stance without condemning the Church to which they proclaim fealty. If you don’t pay your taxes, you’re going to jail. If you don’t pay your tithing, you’re going to hell.[2]

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know. If a Mormon wishes to remain a “citizen” with full “benefits,” especially those associated with the temple, they must, absolutely must, pay their tithing.” Do not tell me that this is not “coercive.” It is difficult to imagine anything more “pressure packed.”

Is a member of the Church, I wonder, who does not participate in the highest ordinances of the temple… do they… can they really feel that they are a “full citizen” of the kingdom? Can they feel anything other than that they are second class citizens?

Further, if the Mormon does not pay these “temple taxes,” they cannot go to the temple and do the work that will link them to a spouse, a child, a mother, a father, a great-great-great-great-grandfather, etc., etc., etc. Since they cannot be saved without such linkage, they are damned. Now, let’s see, which is more “coercive”?

Pay up or be fined, maybe jailed?
Or
Pay up, or be half a person in this life, and live a lone life apart from loved ones in the next?

“Oh, but wait. Whether I pay my tithing, or not, is up to me. I pay tithing voluntarily. No one forces me.”

We will not ask how “voluntary” it really is with such applied pressures as we mentioned above. But we will ask this, “What is to stop you from paying your taxes voluntarily? What is to stop you from paying taxes with the same sense of freedom that you pay your tithing?”

I, for one, though I despise the warmongering for which my taxes are so often utilized, pay taxes for the same reason I pay my tithing. It is an obligation I owe to my community.

As for me and my house, taxes are, as hard as it will be for some to believe, a “freewill” offering. I pay them because I want to (while continuing to lobby against American militarism). The “coercion” so many find in the paying of taxes is all in their head. If they would repent, they would be a good deal happier.

“Oh, but I agree with the Church’s use of my “temple tax.”

Again, we will not address the waste that attends Church funds. I saw it many, many times as a Church employee. It wasn’t intended. It wasn’t the consequence of dishonesty. It is simply what happens in a huge bureaucracy—the bigger the bureaucracy, the bigger the waste.

Rather, I will address, in the briefest of ways, a principle “disagreement” so many of these disloyal “patriots” have about the use of their taxes. Many complain about their taxes being used for “welfare” and for the purpose of “redistributing wealth.” Such complaints, in addition to swirling around false issues of coercion, often rest upon the judgement that those receiving the assistance—food, housing, healthcare subsidies, etc.—are “unworthy.” Such “unworthies,” it is argued, are the cause of their own difficulties. They manage their lives poorly. “I shouldn’t have to bail them out the trouble into which they have gotten themselves.”

Never mind that a huge percentage of such “unworthies” are innocent children. We will only remind such rascals, again, of something that they should already know.
 
“Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just” (Mosiah 4.17).
 
Need I even go on? Apparently so.
 
“But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God” (Mosiah 4.18).
 
Lobby to deny the use of your taxes to help the poor, if you must. But you must not, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lobby to deny the use of your taxes to help the poor because they have brought it upon themselves, because they are unworthy. This you are not permitted to do. Not ever, ever, ever, ever. Not, at least, if you want any “interest in the kingdom of God.”

My bottom line.

Make paying taxes a freewill offering. Stop trying to hide the narrowness of charity behind the smokescreen of “coercion.”
​
Stop judging the poor with false and arrogant judgement.


[1] You can find a link for it on the Just Reporting page of this site.

[2] There is a common, and false, claim among many that anything short of the celestial kingdom is hell.

"For who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? (1 Corinthians 4.7).