January 30, 2022

In Stake Conference today, our Stake President pointed out how in our lives we need to find balance between two values that are often considered polar opposites: Faith and Works, Commandments and Inspiration, Divinity and Humanity, Authority and Agency. He pointed out if society, families, or individuals focus on one value at the expense of the other, they get out of balance and bad things can happen. Each of these truths are best held in balance one with the other.

Brilliant!

It occurred to me that as a Church we are way out of balance when it come to another set of competing values: Building Zion spiritually, and, Building Zion Temporally. I’ll explain. In nearly every instance you hear in General Conference, Stake Conference, or ward talks and lessons on Moses 7, “building Zion” is almost always spoken of as a spiritual effort — we must become “of one heart and one mind”, become “pure-in-heart”, and “righteous”.

In sharp (and quite surprising) contrast, in my research for my book, “Champions for Zion”, as I gathered a thousand-plus quotes from early LDS leaders about “building Zion”, I was quite surprised to learn that they were very much into building the physical, brick-and-mortar Zion society right here in Utah and not so much at all focused on building Zion spiritually in their hearts. 

I can cite hundreds of quotes where they specifically said they were actively building a physical Zion here in Utah, that it was God’s will that they do it, and that it was in fulfillment of prophecy. That they focused solely on the physical side of building Zion, to the exclusion of the spiritual, may likely be a big contributing factor as to why their temporal efforts to build Zion ultimately failed. Within a year of Brigham Young instituting United Orders among all the settlements of the Saints, well over 90% of them failed. The people just weren’t spiritually prepared.

John Taylor succeeded Brigham just as all the United Orders fell apart, but he didn’t give up on building Zion. In fact, President Taylor spoke of building Zion in nearly all 83 of the documented talks he gave. Instead of letting the Saints fall back into Babylonian ways of doing commerce, John Taylor took them back to what they all called a “stepping stone to Zion” — Cooperatives. Taylor established the Zion Central Board of Trade (google it!). That board was tasked with creating cooperatives to generate jobs along with goods and services needed to help their communities be economically self-sufficient (a major goal, as they saw it, in the temporal building of Zion).

What about today?

Seems to me that we’re well-prepared spiritually, and lack any experience whatsoever in building a physical Zion society. We conduct business in the same manner as the rest of Babylon, giving no thought whatsoever to Cooperation — the “stepping stone to Zion”.

Balance. We need balance between the physical and the spiritual preparations for creating and living in a Zion society in the here and now. Why wait?

If you’re still with me, here’s a video exploring what I believe is a realistic and doable method of engaging the “stepping stone to Zion” and preparing temporally to build Zion in the here and now.