Seek with the Intent to do Good

And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the aIicted. - Jacob 2:19

You are to meet your basic needs with all your talents, and then acquire more and use them to bless and uplift others. So often, we terminate our acquisition of talents, money, etc., when our own needs are met. Instead, we ought to expand what we have in order to for the unforeseen needs of ourselves prepare and others. A man ought not to discontinue strengthening his testimony when it becomes strong enough to maintain his own activity in the Church. He should ever strengthen it, so that he can use it to help others strengthen their own testimonies. A college student who knows the material well enough to pass the class can continue to master it until he has the ability to teach it to his peers.

In the United Order days, the Saints who were given or had earned more than was needful for their necessities were commanded to give it to the storehouse. In modern times, we are to dedicate everything that we have that is more than is needful to the building up of the kingdom, using our agency to decide how best to do it.

Regarding to whom this applies it is written, “behold, this is what the Lord requires of every man in his stewardship....And behold, none are exempt from this law who belong to the church of the living God.”¹ In the parable of the wise steward the Lord describes,

Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.
But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink and to be drunken;
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. (Luke 12:43-46)

The world sleeps as individuals are drunken with living to themselves, and grind the faces of the poor in oppression to succor them. As means by failing your expand, only your responsibility—not your needs—expand with them.² Your expanding means are a stewardship from the Lord intended for building the kingdom. Oh how we fail to see the importance and deeper meaning of the proverb, “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.”³

One Christmas Eve I had a good Samaritan experience. I decided to leave after work Christmas Eve and make the 16 hour drive to a distant to visit friends. It was city snowing heavily. A few hours into the journey the weather worsened. I decided to continue on rather than turn back. As the night went on, I noticed that fewer cars were braving the country roads. The snowstorm worsened. Around 11pm, out of nowhere, my tires started to skid. I watched helplessly (and in slow-motion as it were) as my truck slid on the road and down a 15 foot ditch. I got out and noted that the snow was higher than the bottom of the cab door. I tried, without avail, to get traction. I realized how far from home I was, and how far I remained from my destination. I knew I had no hope of help from either source. I was thinking about how long it would take to fill the bed with snow for extra weight, using nothing but my bare hands. Just as I started, a man shouted down from the road, asking if I was alright. He asked if I had anyone who was coming to help me. As I responded in the negative, his face showed disappointment. I couldn’t blame him. After all, it was nearly midnight on Christmas Eve.

Just as he gave up, another man pulled up behind him. He jumped out of his SUV with a start, like a fireman at a fire. He surveyed the situation, and in a few seconds had convinced the other man to stay and help. The second man just so happened to have a 20 foot tow strap and a hitch that fit the first man’s large four wheel drive truck. The second man came down the ditch and started digging out the snow under the front of the truck with his bare hands. He slid under the truck and found a way to hook on the tow straps. The other man pulled with his truck, my truck went a few feet, and then the straps snapped on. The second man went on all fours again, cleared out the new snow under the truck, and rehooked the straps. The same result occurred. Finally, after a third time, my truck was pulled to the road. I thanked the men profusely. I knew I would have spent Christmas Eve in a ditch without their help.

After that experience I wondered to myself, why did that man have a towstrap and a towing ball in his car? The answer came later when the man invited me to his home, where I found out that he had been out for hours. He expected that cars would be sliding on the road, and that the strap and hitch would come in handy. He was right. Mine was the last of many vehicles he had towed that night.

Would anyone claim that it was sinful for the man to put a tow strap and a hitch into his vehicle that night? It seems ridiculous to even ask. Yet, if we changed the situation into a monetary one, and asked the question again, some might hesitate to answer. Is it a sin to seek riches, if we seek them for the intent to do good? To answer, let us modify the situation. Say that, instead of bringing the towing implements, the man denied a prompting to do so. Now, change the story to a financial one. Would it be a sin for someone to disregard a righteous⁴ opportunity for financial advancement?

Do you comprehend that you are responsible for the kingdom building you fail to do because of lack of preparation? Consider the story of Esther, a Jewess who conveniently found herself wed to a king at a time when the king was persuaded to issue a proclamation calling for the extermination of the Jews. In a letter, her uncle pled with her to convince the king to rescind his order, saying,

Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews.
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13-14)

We will be held accountable for the good we leave undone, and for the preparation we failed to get. The time may well come when you realize that those foregone opportunities for advancement were for “such a time as this,” yet because you chose not to embrace them, you are left without the capabilities to help.

Whether in financial or other matters, it is not a sin to prepare to build the of God in the best suited to our kingdom way current and potential ability. It is the failure to prepare that is sin. Perhaps if the rich young ruler had failed to accumulate his wealth when he had the chance, the Savior’s rebuke would have instead been, “Go thou, and accumulate all the riches thou canst, that thou may give them to the poor.”⁵

Joseph Smith said,

God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself....He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself. (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 6:310-312).

Had God not already been more intelligent,⁶ how could he develop a means whereby those less intelligent than him could attain a greater intelligence? If you, as Brigham Young said, “wish to frame, fashion, and build after the pattern that God has revealed,”⁷ then you must follow God’s pattern. You cannot consecrate anything which you do not possess. In order to lift others, you must first lift yourself. In making life decisions, you must first consider your own needs, then the needs of your current or future families. Only when you can take care of these stewardships can you worry about others in the world. Your primary responsibilities, however, are not an excuse for ignoring the needs of the masses. Instead, they are yet another reason for preparing wisely for the future.

As Brigham Young said,

Every man and woman that has talent and hides it will be called a slothful servant. Improve day by day upon the capital you have. In proportion as we are capacitated to receive, so it is our duty to do. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 7:7)

Perhaps the day by day improvement brother Brigham suggests will come by simply improving our situation from day to day as best we can. Joseph of Egypt followed such a model to attain a position where he could avect much good—not only for himself and his family, but for several countries! More likely, significant ability to bless others will come in proportion to significant planning and exertion on your part to improve your skills, talents, situations, etc. You should plan early and often for the future, anticipating not only your own needs, but those of future family and even people you have never met.

And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that ever man may gain other talents, yea, even an hundred fold, to be [used to build the Lord’s kingdom]—Every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God. (D&C 82:17-19)

Brigham Young said “Idleness and wastefulness are not according to the rules of heaven. Preserve all you can, that you may have abundance to bless your friends and your enemies.”⁸ Consider how he practiced what he preached. In the journey west, President Young had counseled the parties to bring a certain amount of flour per person. Some did not listen to his advice. President Young, having brought sufficient for his family and some to spare, was able to dispense flour to those who had not heeded his counsel sufficient to keep them alive. Later, in the Salt Lake valley, Heber C. Kimball, through his industry, had raised a bumper crop of wheat. Soon after, a famine made wheat more scarce than money. Brother Kimball could have sold on his surplus wheat at an incredible profit. Instead he kept the wheat and sold it to those in the worst need for the pre-famine price. Had Brigham or Heber only raised what was necessary for their families, others would have died.

It is because our abilities can be the difference between life and death that we should do all we can to accumulate talents, wisdom, spirituality, wealth, or any other improvement we prayerfully feel is suited to our potential that we might then be prepared to distribute it to those who lack what we have gained. Brigham Young applied this principle to knowledge when he said, “Put forth your ability to learn as fast as you can, and gather all the strength of your mind and principle of faith you possibly can, and then distribute your knowledge to the people.”⁹

It is very difficult to obtain a surplus of skills, emotions, morals, or other things in the moment. These must be obtained over time and sometimes at great expense. The most prepared individual is the individual who prepared the most. If we aren’t considering the future, how can we prepare for it? When the time for contributions arrives, the limit of our contributions have already been established by our planning or lack thereof.

Seeking a surplus is safer when we understand the correct attitude we ought to have once we get one. Through hard work, thrift, and good management, Andrew Carnegie went from being a to a net worth of billion in pauper amassing $298 today’s dollars, making him the second richest man in history.¹⁰ His life is a financial example of the thesis of kingdom building. You could say he wrote the book on it. In actuality, he did not write the book on kingdom building—but he did write an essay! Titled “The Gospel of Wealth,” it contains stirring insights which lay out true principles on kingdom building—though Carnegie was not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the essay he explains the duty of the wealthy. His ideas apply not to the but to who have more only financially wealthy, any than their brother in any sense:

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth...to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner, which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. (Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth”)

To follow the man of must Carnegie’s philosophy, surplus consider said surplus as a trust to the community, and must administer it with all his faculties for their benefit. The Lord has empowered that person with those means (whatever they might be) to act in his best judgment to the benefit of the kingdom.

If, by industrious habits and honorable dealings, you obtain thousands or millions, little or much, it is your duty to use all that is put in your possession, as judiciously as you have knowledge, to build up the Kingdom of God on the earth. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 4:29)

If you think about it, by kingdom building in this way, we are living the antithesis of pride. President Benson said that when we are prideful “we are tempted daily to elevate ourselves above others and diminish them.”¹¹ However, when we consecrate ourselves by seeking resources in order to help others, we emulate Christ. “Christ wants to lift us to where He is.”¹² and we want to lift others to where Christ has lifted us. This is the plan of salvation in its entirety, but sometimes we fail to fully apply it to temporal or even spiritual situations. What better way to follow the Savior and fight our inherent tendency to diminish others by actively seeking to lift others, even by structuring our lives to do so? As Brigham Young said,

You see the nobleman seeking the benefit of all around him, trying to bring, we will say, his servants, if you please, his tenants, to knowledge, to like blessings that he enjoys, to dispense his wisdom and talents among them and to make them equal with himself. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 15:19)

In conclusion, let’s consider the parable of the talents. The parable, in essence, is that money in divering amounts is given to each of three servants, according to their abilities. The giver returns, expecting each sum to have been improved upon. His desire is granted in the first servant, who, having received five units of money, has doubled the money. The second servant, who had received two units, has likewise doubled the money. The third servant, who is given one unit, has not made any profit. He is chastened by the giver and his one unit is taken away and given to the servant who had five units.

The Savior concludes the parable by explaining that “unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”¹³ In other words, “to everyone who has improved upon what I gave them, will more be given, and those who have not improved will be relieved of that which they have.”

Let each of us focus on expanding our capabilities to match our potential, all with the intent to do good to others. In doing so, the Lord will bless us to be guided to know how to devote our energy to make the best contribution to his kingdom.