Currently I'm attending the 12-week seminar on Self Reliance: "Starting and Growing My Business." Already halfway done, it's proven to be a good all around experience -- confirming many principles I already knew, and a few others I needed to learn. Hopefully it will help me grow my already-existing Melkim Publishing and get it off the ground.
Each week we study a specific spiritual principle related to self reliance, and apply it to the temporal needs of growing a business. Other modules use the exact same principles, but apply it to finding a job, balancing the checkbook, or gaining an education. (I highly recommend participating if you get a chance.)
Even though I'm 6 weeks into the program, I'm going to backtrack and start posting here about each of the 12 principles, adding my own thoughts.
This week, the first principle is the fact that self-reliance is itself a spiritual concept.
Dallin H. Oaks, in the Oct. 2003 General Conference ("Repentance and Change") said:
Whatever causes us to be dependent on someone else for decisions or resources we could provide for ourselves weakens us spiritually and retards our growth toward what the gospel plan intends us to be.For example, if I'm able to work a job, but I instead choose to stay at home and depend on my friends, government, and church for sustenance, then I would be a burden on others. On the temporal side, I would be causing others to have less money to spend. And on the spiritual side I could be weakening friendships and relationships, and would be progressing much slower toward the end goal.
The temporal burdens thus translate into spiritual consequences, which resonates with the message in D&C 29:34. "Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual."
When I talked with my family about these concepts, my son brought up a good point. The Church is really big on helping other people. But when we help people, aren't we stepping in and interrupting their opportunities to be self-reliant, and thus helping to hinder their own spiritual progression?
That's such an interesting concept. Those who help others end up increasing their spiritual position, while those who get helped have weakened positions.
A corollary concept would be like a spiritual broken window fallacy. Could I help others obtain salvation by being a bum, myself, and cause others to step in and help me out? Then since I would be helping increase other people's spiritual position, would I, myself, also increase in position?
Or, how about this: does one need to fall in spiritual position in order for another to increase, kind of like a Newton law of opposite reaction?
If all that doesn't make sense, it's only because I'm leaving out one important concept. When the Church helps people out, it provides sustenance while at the same time helping them to become self-reliant. As the old proverb says: "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
When you teach a needy person how to become self reliant, then both parties will increase in spirituality. You help a person learn how to survive on his own, and he learns self confidence as he comes to support himself. Everyone is lifted.
So, go out there. Be self-reliant, and inspire others to be self-reliant, and everyone will be better off.
