I recently heard a speaker conflate the mighty change of heart spoken of in the Book of Mormon with the enthusiasm and re-commitment that often come after hearing a moving talk. He said that it comes and goes as enthusiasm wanes. I appreciate what he was trying to convey, but it was scripturally unsound.
Elder Bednar defines the "mighty change of heart" as follows: "We are instructed to 'come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny [ourselves] of all ungodliness' (Moroni 10:32), to become 'new creature[s]' in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17), to put off 'the natural man' (Mosiah 3:19), and to experience 'a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually' (Mosiah 5:2). Please note that the conversion described in these verses is mighty, not minor—a spiritual rebirth and fundamental change of what we feel and desire, what we think and do, and what we are. Indeed, the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ entails a fundamental and permanent change in our very nature made possible through our reliance upon 'the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah' (2 Nephi 2:8). As we choose to follow the Master, we choose to be changed—to be spiritually reborn." This is a far cry from the emotional momentum that flows and wanes, that surges at the beginning of the new year when we collectively commit to shed those unwanted pounds, or dims when cake and pastries are presented.
What is referred to here is not an ephemeral emotional state like the weather (which are easy to be aware of); it is something you may not even be aware of because the Lord delivers it seamlessly (see 3Ne. 9:20). The change is mighty, yet because the mechanism is invisible, we might miss it if we are not paying attention. Exposure to things that tempted you before, but not after, may bring the change to your attention.
Many vices can potentially infect our souls, but the temptations Jesus experienced in the wilderness, and the writings of Nephi, give us four broad categories: The lusts of the flesh, popularity, power, and wealth. They are all interrelated. Paul condemns the love of money, calling it “the root of all evil.” Why is greed the root?
The lusts of the flesh have natural limits. You can only eat so much, sleep so much, fornicate so much, absorb so much cocaine, drink so much alcohol, etc., before various organs begin to fail. Power is the limited by human stubbornness, and popularity is limited by human distractability, but each depend largely on wealth. Each of the other three can all be purchased with the fourth—money.
While there are limits on the first three, there are no physical limits on the appetite for possessions and wealth, because ownership is a state of mind. Gold, paper money, and the coded electronic pulses between the bank and the cash register have no intrinsic value; they are currency with an arbitrary value attached to them. Recent talk of minting a trillion dollar coin drives this point home. How could a little lump of platinum with a pretty engraving on it be worth the labor of 20,000,000 professionals over the course of a year (at $50,000 a year each!)? It can—in our human imaginations.
If garish imagination can inflate the worth of a polished hunk of metal to include the livelihood of 20,000,000 families for an entire year, our imagination can also instruct us sufficiently to locate where the actual wealth of nations is located. Imagine that you have been given the hypothetical trillion dollar coin. (That’s one million millions.) Then imagine that you are also the last person on earth. What will your trillion dollars buy you? There are no people to cook and serve at your favorite restaurant anymore. Yes, you can pick up new clothes at the nearest department store, but so can the raccoons; there is no one there to prevent it. Custom orders are also no longer available. You can travel the world, provided you find a jet with fuel, and know how to pilot it yourself. You can have all the gold you want—provided you mine it yourself. You might use vending machines to get food that the raccoons cannot reach, though you will have to abandon them after you empty them; there is no one to restock them.
Notice how the value of money depends on the labor of other people. Not only do you need other people to have all the things that a trillion dollars would make pleasant, you also need others who believe that money is worth something before they are willing to work for it. Money commands goods and services, but even the goods ultimately depend on services, on human exertion and skill. Labor and talent and pairs of willing hands are the real wealth of nations. A rich vein of gold (or any other mineral) under a nation’s soil does nothing until someone mines it. Labor is wealth; money is just a mutual agreement about the exchange value of labor for other goods. Its value is purely imaginary and arbitrary.
Our economy is a complex web of agreements with this implicit premise—that money is worth something. It is a good system, because it allows specialization. We do not have to know how to grow our own crops or make our own clothes, provided we can pay farmers and tailors. But the system has flaws. Since private ownership and selfishness are the mainspring of personal motivation in the system, poverty and inequality flourish. Can we imagine a better basis for an economy?
Consecration is the economic culture of heaven. If we are ever exalted, we will receive everything God has. But wait. If I own it, and He owns it, and everyone else owns it, whose is it? It all belongs to everyone, with the caveat that all things are divided up along lines of stewardship, rather than sole ownership (as in our economy). Stewardship is probably determined in counsels, just as the conditions for mortality were determined in the grand premortal counsel. How would such a system apply in this world?
Imagine everything in the world—land, homes, minerals, food, tools, clothes, cars, and everything else people claim ownership of. Now imagine that all the owners have each consecrated all their possessions to the Lord. What has changed? There are still the same number of atoms on the planet. The seasons still come and go; factories still churn out goods. Where is the difference now that everything has been offered to God? It all belongs to Him already, regardless of which mortals lay claim to the stuff; He speaks, and things we call inanimate immediately obey Him (see Hel. 12). We have not really given Him anything; it is all basically where He left it at the creation (though the Voyager space probes have recently drifted out of the solar system; I wonder if they will be dragged back at the Second Coming). So what has changed?
Nothing has changed in this scenario except in the hearts of the people. This is not THE mighty change of heart, but it is a significant shift in fundamental beliefs about things. It is a more accurate view of the world; it acknowledges true ownership. D&C 105:55-56: "Behold, all these properties are mine, or else your faith is vain, and ye are found hypocrites, and the covenants which ye have made unto me are broken; And if the properties are mine, then ye are stewards; otherwise ye are no stewards."
If we do not own things, yet the Lord allows us to use them, what are we? Stewards. It is our job to care for the various gifts God has imparted. Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30) is instructive. Each servant receives talents, and is given free reign to dispose of them as he sees fit. Those who multiply their talents demonstrate that they are fit to manage more of their Lord’s possessions, which He intended to share with them anyway. It was not greed that made Him angry at the servant who buried his talent; it was frustration that he had neglected to become a righteous and wise steward. Joy proffered by the Lord was not proportional to the number of talents accrued; those who multiplied their talents were told to "enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." The Lord was investing in and cultivating leadership talent, not trying to get more gold.
What would be the result if all people everywhere actually consecrated their possessions to God? Many good things would happen—poverty would disappear. The Lord probably would not do a lot of wealth redistribution. The wealthy would voluntarily do their part to stamp out poverty, because they would all recognize God is the actual owner of their vast resources. The poor would not take more than they needed, because they would recognize that to do so would be to steal from God. The spirit of the parable of the talents is, “It’s your stewardship; do something with it” (see D&C 58:27-29).
Various curses decreed by God would be lifted from lands cursed for greed. War would cease instantly; what is war but a bully grabbing for power and possessions? (Hitler, Caesar, Napoleon, all wanted to get wealth and power through violent force; the world is still patrolled by lunatic louts who trample and destroy to get what they want through threat of violence.)
The Lord could make all of these changes happen without human intervention. And He will, when He comes again!
But we, His children, His stewards, are what He is cultivating, so we should expect to find the most important results of the universal application of the law of consecration in the hearts of the people. "Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created. Behold, I gave unto him that he should be an agent unto himself; and I gave unto him commandment, but no temporal commandment gave I unto him, for my commandments are spiritual..." (D&C 29:34-35).
God's laws all have an underlying spiritual purpose, not a temporal one.
The Lord told the Nephites that if they would offer a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and come to Him in faith, He would baptize them with fire and with the Holy Ghost (3Ne. 9:20). How do we offer our hearts? Our hearts are His as soon as nothing we set our hearts on takes precedence over Him. If we, like the rich young ruler, love our possessions more than Him, our hearts are not His. But if we are willing to surrender all our (actually, His) stuff to Him, then our hearts are His, and He has promised to change them. In the theoretical world where everyone consecrated voluntarily, many, if not all people who began to view their possessions as the Lord’s, would experience this mighty change of heart.
Many have noted the impracticality of consecration; it could only work in a society made of people who were not greedy and selfish. In other words, human nature interferes with the full establishment of consecration. What these critics fail to note is that a change of human nature is not only possible, but required of everyone before we can enter heaven (Mosiah 27:24-26). Ironically, this change comes after we surrender everything we are, everything we have, and acknowledge our complete dependence on God for all, even the air we breathe. A convenient donation to the poor box every fast Sunday is a good start, but incomplete. (A previous stake president lamented a family who had hired cleaners to represent them for Saturday morning chapel cleaning. They forfeited their blessings, and denied their employees any blessings by paying them money to do what was meant to be selfless service.)
Zion is the pure in heart—it would have to be, because only a people cleansed of greed by the Spirit would be able to sustain the generosity and selflessness required by the maxim, "they had all their possessions in common." Imagine a community of people who are spiritually reborn, pure in heart. "And there shall be a seal upon the treasury, and all the sacred things shall be delivered into the treasury; and no man among you shall call it his own, or any part of it, for it shall belong to you all with one accord" (D&C 104:62). Not my car, not my house, not my food, not my clothes, not my money. Ours.
