In the church there is a well-known and beloved children’s hymn that sums up the Gospel perfectly:
I'm trying to be like Jesus, I'm following in His ways. I'm trying to love as He did In all that I do and say. At times I am tempted To make a wrong choice, But I try to listen As the still small voice whispers: "Love one another as Jesus loves you. Try to show kindness in all that you do. Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought, For these are the things Jesus taught." I'm trying to love my neighbor. I'm learning to serve my friends. I watch for that day of gladness When Jesus will come again.
Is that not the essential core truth of the Gospel? We should be like Christ. We should show love to others and have kindness in everything that we do. We should love our neighbors and serve one another. Indeed and thought the sole model for our lives should be Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. With Him as our model we can always tell what is good and what is bad. As Moroni explains in Moroni 7:
12 Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually.
13 But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God.
14 Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil.
The qualities of what is good and bad are laid out plainly by Moroni. That which invites us and entices us to do good, love God, and serve Him comes from God. That which is of the Devil encourages us to sin, to rebel against God, and to do evil continually. Notice how goodness is linked with God, His service, and love of Him and His ways. This isn’t accidental. Goodness is intrinsically linked with God. It is good because it comes from God and goodness can be determined by how it in turn to love and serve Him.
If this is true, if goodness is linked to God, if goodness is about doing what is right in loving and serving God, then what can we say about politics other than it is of the Devil? I know that this may seem extreme to some, but bear with me. Let me make my case before you come to your conclusions. I don’t think it is hard at all to demonstrate the way in which politics is rooted not in Christ, but in Satan, because of the effect politics has on human society. On the individual level, local level, national level, and global level all politics does is encourage hatred, violence, sin, and destruction.
The Individual Level
All told, in the last few years, I’ve lost no few than three friends that I’ve known since high school, four if you count an friendly acquaintance. Every single one of them over opinions I’ve held and beliefs I’ve had since before they ever met me. My views on homosexuality, gender identity, alcohol, government regulation, or the power of free markets haven’t changed in the near two decades any of them have known me. Never before have any of these stances ever made my a “bigot,” “enemy,” or “hateful troll” before, yet now that is apparently the case. Ironically, I’ve been dismissed as both a “Trump supporter” and a “Progressive Socialist moron,” often in the same day. People I’ve known for along time and who should know me better mock and dismiss me, not because I’m uneducated on a topic -something some of them have even readily admitted. Rather it is because I disagree with them. I remember two friends simply dropped all communication with me over a discussion about “Net Neutrality” where we disagreed about the role and effects of government intervention on the Internet.
What causes this divisiveness? Why would people who have always disagreed but found within one another something of value and joy suddenly cut off all contact with that person? Because in recent years, political rhetoric has become more and more hardened. Polarization has increased dramatically with more and more people looking at those who disagree with them as opponents that need to be broken in order for them to obtain their goals. This is because our political beliefs have in recent years become more and more part of our core identities, defining who we are and therefore rendering those who disagree with us as an Other that threatens who we are and society as we know it. As a result we don’t see people anymore with whom we are disagreeing, we see objective enemies in the way that need to be removed. As Dr. Marc Hetherington, Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina explained it:
We develop these caricatures of the other side. They’re just not like us and, not only are they not like us in politics, they don’t drive the right car, they don’t drink the right coffee, they don’t drink the right beer, they don’t eat the right food. It’s like a bad relationship. We just don’t have anything in common with each other anymore.
At the same time, the way that we seek out people who think like us- and the Internet makes it increasingly easier to surround ourselves only with people who agree with us- the more extreme we become in our convictions and the more we are disposed to see those who disagree with us as evil/insane/etc. Harvard professor Cass R. Sunstein calls this “group polarization” and describes it this way:
My principal purpose in this Article is to investigate a striking but thus far almost entirely neglected empirical regularity – that of group polarization – and to relate this phenomenon to a number of issues in law and political theory. In brief, group polarization arises when members of a deliberating group move toward a more extreme point in whatever direction is indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendency. “[L]ike polarized molecules, group members become even more aligned in the direction they were already tending.” Group polarization is the conventional consequence of group deliberation.
This is what I have been experiencing with my lost friends. In the past few decades they have all been migrating towards political enclaves -such as California or Texas- where their political identity is dominant. They have come more and more to see those who disagree with them as threats and treated them as such, including people such as myself whom they’ve known for years. They’ve stopped seeing the individual in front of them and instead treat all people who have any seeming similarity of opinion as part of the great amorphous monstrous enemy out to destroy everything they think is right or just. I can not tell you how many discussions I’ve had on a wide variety of topics and people which went no where because the person I was talking with was more invested in arguing with the Mythical Conservatives or Imaginary Progressive that lived only in the speaker’s head. The result of politics has been to create a society rife with contention where those who are the most engaged in the process are the most distrustful and most hateful. And, as Saints, what do we know about the source of contention? Jesus Christ Himself answers this:
For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.
Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.
Contention is not of God, but of the Devil. The Father of Contention is Satan himself. It is his way and his will that contention is increased in society to turn people against one another, to increase anger, distrust, and hatred among people. And we have seen that politics creates contention and breeds hatred. Further, while contention in politics may be getting perceptibly worse, it is not new and has been present in American history from the start. So if politics encourages contention, if it invites and entices people to anger and hatred, if it invites people to legitimize sinful actions and rebel against God’s commandments by making such actions part of a political ideology that becomes part of a person’s core identity and encouraging legal punishment for those who disagree, if it breeds animus and contempt among family and friends, then what can we conclude but that politics encourages sin and is of the Devil?
The Local Level
I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to write this section. Just look at the George Floyd protests. They’re all about how local politics have incentivized the brutal beating and killing of people in the community by those seen as its protectors. Go look at the people protesting the lockdown mandates. They’re all about people demanding the liberty to live their lives as something other than prisoners under house arrest. Look at the way the state has set out to destroy your life if you don’t wear a face mask. Go read the just about any article concerning this and peruse the comments while there. The political divide and the hatred it engenders is alive and well and it is hardly an American problem.
So I think it should be obvious how politics divides local communities. Police brutality and theft disguised as “civil asset forfeiture,” lockdowns that have destroyed lives, crushed dreams, and are threatening hundreds of millions with poverty and starvation, and politicians which have determined to attack, imprison, extort, and destroy people who don’t wear a face mask instead of doing the obvious good and effective thing and seeking to promote proper medical education- all these things and so much more. I haven’t even touched on such topics as the racist purposes of the minimum wage or redlining, whose legacies have bred only greater poverty, hatred, and division that can be seen in cities today.
Politics at the local level has not brought us closer together as communities. Politics at the local level has not brought more wealth, education, or peace to the people under its boot. Instead, all political action has caused is unending hatred, violence, suffering, anger, and death. Try and tell Eric Garner, George Floyd, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, or Kelly Thomas, the thousands like them, and the tens of thousands family and friends of theirs who have impotently suffered injustice and loss that local politics isn’t deadly, isn’t violent, and doesn’t cause unmitigated pain. I wish you could. But you can’t. Because those five, and many more like them, were all brutally and maliciously murdered by the militarized arm of the local government- the police. There is no doubt this, and the system that doesn’t just allow it to happen but incentivizes, makes it possible, is evil.
As Christ teaches in Matthew 7:20, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” Well, just look at their fruit.
Pain. Suffering. Violence. Contention. Murder. Are these the works of God, the fruits of God’s ways? Certainly not. Local politics, as all politics, is of the Devil and the infernalistic fruit of politics is bitter indeed.
The National and Global Levels
This is another one of those sections that feels like it should be obvious to anyone who spends but a few moments considering the nature of how political action works that the whole system isn’t only flawed but that it is evil. National and global politics thrive on hatred, division, anger, contention, and violence and encourage all those in the general public in order to control them.
Simply look at human history. When people are left alone to solve their problems they develop complex networks of trade that establish peaceful relationships between them and everyone around them, even between them and people living thousands of miles away. This is because everyone realizes that peaceful relationships are superior and more beneficial than violent relationships. But the moment governments get involved and start controlling the interactions of people across political boundaries, as soon as formal political organizations are established, everyone everywhere suddenly becomes a threat. Wars erupt over the most meaningless events and bloodshed, slaughter, and death run rampant. Why? Does the destruction of your “enemy” bring you prosperity or safety? Of course not. It destroys everything they had and all they might have traded with you, costs you uncountable treasure in your own resources, and worst of all, leads to the extermination of human lives. Who knows how many Netwons, Einsteins, or da Vincis have been ground into a bloody pulp beneath the tread of a soldier’s jackboot (or sandal.) If the outcome of your system is this, then your system is evil:
Immigration is the same. The idea that you could beat, cage, or kill another person for merely crossing an imaginary line should be repulsive to everyone who hears it. It certainly was to the American Founding Fathers. The is why the US Constitution does not authorize the Federal government to regulate immigration in any manner. It has no power to restrict who can and cannot immigrate to the country nor when or how. Nor is it authorized to violate the rights of people based on their national origin. Therefore any attempt by the federal government to do either is illegal. And anyone encouraging the government to do so is promoting it to act in an illegal manner proving themselves criminals masquerading as being concerned with the law. Thomas Jefferson clearly explained this as early as 1799 in the Kentucky Resolutions:
“Resolved, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the act of the Congress of the United States, passed on the — day of July, 1798, intituled “An Act concerning aliens,” which assumes powers over alien friends, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force.
…Resolved, That the imprisonment of a person under the protection of the laws of this commonwealth, on his failure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out of the United States, as is undertaken by said act intituled “An Act concerning aliens” is contrary to the Constitution, one amendment to which has provided that “no person shalt be deprived of liberty without due progress of law”; and that another having provided that “in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to public trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense;” the same act, undertaking to authorize the President to remove a person out of the United States, who is under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, without accusation, without jury, without public trial, without confrontation of the witnesses against him, without heating witnesses in his favor, without defense, without counsel, is contrary to the provision also of the Constitution, is therefore not law, but utterly void, and of no force: that transferring the power of judging any person, who is under the protection of the laws from the courts, to the President of the United States, as is undertaken by the same act concerning aliens, is against the article of the Constitution which provides that “the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in courts, the judges of which shall hold their offices during good behavior”; and that the said act is void for that reason also. And it is further to be noted, that this transfer of judiciary power is to that magistrate of the general government who already possesses all the Executive, and a negative on all Legislative powers.”
Yet the American government persists in Trump using military violence to imprison immigrants crossing the border in giant prison complexes that are essentially concentration camps for political prisoners. The system that encourages us to see another human being as our enemy simply because they’re born on the other side of a national boundary such that we feel justified in beating them, caging them, killing them, hunting them like animals and seizing all their wealth, destroying their families through deportation, and asserting control through terror and violence is undoubtedly founded upon contention, anger, and hatred- in other words, is undoubtedly built on the foundation of Hell.
This is to say nothing of the way that the US has unleashed military force against civilians recently, the ways in which the system of taxation forces us to fund that to which we are opposed, which in turn generates hatred for those we feel are compelling us and those who we perceive to benefit from this theft, or the myriad other ways partisan politics invents and exacerbates problems in society in order to profit politically from the anger and hatred created. Can anyone look at the long, failed history of the State, of political action and government power -from the unending wars and uncountable numbers brutally slain to the way that it incites hatred and division among people and nations for political gain- and not see the work of Satan? This program of ruling through blood and horror upon the Earth -of taking and maintaining power through violence and terror- is deeply Satanic in nature and has been from the days of Adam and Eve.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Reigning through blood and horror has been Satan’s program from the start. If we want something better then we have to stop playing by his rules. We have to give up the delusion that somehow, if be we apply the right amount of violence -of beatings and killings, of extortions and robberies- that we will somehow create Utopia. We have to give up the natural ways of the Natural Man which tell us that the only solution to violence is even more violence, that the only way to ensure peace is to desolate our enemies, level their civilization, turn their nations into deserts, “totally obliterate them,” or “bomb them back into the Stone Age.” And it is an Enemy to God.
As Saints of the Most High God, as a people whose very designation means holy, we must choose a different path. Our clear goal is not to obey the US Constitution [insert any other nation’s law], the Will of the People, or any other such foolish justification politicians employ. Our goal is and must ever be Zion. Everything else is a meaningless, purposeless diversion from the path, and almost always a distraction by Satan in the form of one kind of power or another, usually utilizing honeyed lies that tell us our violence, our imposition, our rule is so much better because our intentions are better than all others. It is all Satanic hogwash. God has already decreed His will that all nations will be broken, shattered -consumed- by His judgments and be brought completely to an end. (D&C 87:6) Our obsession with them and their telestial glory is ultimately meaningless. Zion alone is all that matters.
The Prophet Moses, describing the City of Enoch, gave us the simplest and truest definition of Zion:
And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.
Zion is a place where people are of one heart and one mind. We have to understand that governments function by setting parts of society against one another. They create contention by extorting monies from one group to give to another, create division by giving some groups privileges others do not have, and then when those extorted protest their monies being used in ways they would never do so themselves and when those oppressed demand liberty the government maintains power by presenting itself as the essential organization to correct the problems it created. It creates a War of All Against All as all groups of people strive for the power of the state to use it to ensure that their will, their beliefs, and their ideas are forced upon the public through the violent legal power of the government. Naturally this leads to opposition by those who disagree who in turn seek the same power to the same ends for themselves. Governments maintain power not by uniting peoples of different cultures, languages, and races but by using political influence and power to create even greater divisions amongst those peoples and to profit from the division and hatred it causes. Politics therefore is not just failing to create Zion but it actively works to oppose the work of Zion, to prevent it from coming into existence, a goal that surely is at the heart of Satan’s work.
If you want to create Zion you have to stop living in Babylon. We cannot build Zion while constantly undermining it by propping up and supporting its enemy, the Enemy. Fortunately, the Lord God has shown us the way to build Zion, the society where all people are of one heart and one mind and there are no poor among them. The Apostle Paul described that Christian path to Zion thusly in Romans 12:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will
… Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
…Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Paul teaches us that we cannot build Zion following the pattern of the world. When people persecute us- beat us, rob us, hate us, treat us poorly, even kill us- our first, second, third, fourth, or even last response cannot be to return that hatred, that mistreatment, that violence, that bloodshed. Our response must be to bless them and be a blessing to them. We must live at peace with all people. We trust God to repay any evil done to us and do not seek to return it ourselves. If we find our enemy hungry, we give him and his family our food. If we find our enemy thirsty, we must give him and his family our drink. If we find our enemy naked, we must give him and his family our clothes. We do not allow evil to overcome us by getting us to act as it does, rather we actively overcome evil with good by returning every evil act done to us with a righteous one based on charity, the pure love of Christ. The worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God, worth the sacrifice of the blood, tears, body, and soul suffering of the Son of God Himself. If our Savior shed His blood and His sweat and His tears in order to save mankind, can we, who call ourselves His disciples and expect to help Him do His works, expect to do any less? This is the ultimate meaning of Paul’s statement when he says that we must offer our very bodies themselves up as living sacrifices to God.
In doing so we cannot participate in any system that exists by causing contention, division, and hatred, that thrives off of persecuting your enemy, justifies itself as the means by which you can seek vengeance against another for their wrongs, and which maintains itself through violence, extortion, and theft. If we are to build Zion we must come out of Babylon the Whore and leave off her ways and abandon her false prophets and her great dragon for the the ways of Christ and submission to Him as the Lamb of God. We must abandon the ways of the world -and all its politics- for Jesus Christ and His ways. We must leave off Satan’s ways and in the words of the hymn, “try to be like Jesus.” Nothing less will do. With us it must be as it was with the Saints of old– “WE SAY IT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD OR NOTHING.”