Today in Doctrines and Covenants, we talked about the Law of Consecration. The discussion was packed with questions and insights. One question arose which we conversed about for forty of the fifty minute class period. The question went something like this: How does one decide how much material goods he can own? And is a person selfish if he owns a boat because he could have used the money to help build the kingdom in other ways? This led to great controversy, and it got me started thinking. It is my belief that we spend too much of our time on materialistic goods and less on building relationships. We treat each other too much like objects and not as children of a God in heaven. We use each other to get gain, and then dispose of the memories. It’s like a child who gets a new toy on Christmas Day. At first he gets excited over the newness of it all. He values its use and makes sure not to get it dirty. Day after day the toy gets used less and less. The child gets bored with it, and eventually he uses the toy in ways it was not intended for; he throws it around as though it were trash. Finally, the toy’s value grows insignificant to the child. He no longer values it and soon throws it away. Do our relationships follow in this same path? I think far too often they do.
We value the worth of a machine more than we do a human being. Steven R. Covey said that we put our equipment in the assets column of our businesses, and people in the expenses. More and more people are being put to work in factories doing simple mundane jobs—jobs that require little to no thinking. But imagine if we reversed these roles. What if we set people in the assets column, and equipment in the expenses? A human mind is capable of accomplishing incomprehensible tasks—tasks in which machines can never imitate. In fact, there is so much to learn about the brain, that modern day sciences can’t keep up with it. So why do we allow material goods to run our world instead of people? Let’s take people out of the factories and test them intellectually. Allow them to think, and imagine, and then create. How powerful could we as a human race become?
Now let’s go back to the initial questions. How does one decide how much material goods he can own? And is a person selfish if he owns a boat because he could have used the money to help build the kingdom in other ways? Well, in a way it doesn’t matter. As children of God, we get to govern ourselves. So use your incredible brain and decide what you think is best for you. Nevertheless, keep in mind, relationships and people are the most important possessions this world has to offer.
