A Follow-up on the "On God and Mammon" post

As a follow-up to the On God and Mammon post, in the last month, news has emerged The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been fined $5 million for "failing to file Forms 13F in Ensign Peak’s name." as well as "filing misstated Forms 13F in the names of LLCs created for the sole purpose of filing Forms 13F" (source to the SEC ruling).

In summary, the First Presidency did not want to disclose the amount of money they had saved and invested from excess tithing funds and contributions. Therefore, they approved the set-up of shell LLC's and requested their paid managers (most likely members of the Church who hold temple recommends) to file misstated 13F forms. At least two of these managers resigned in protest and Ensign Peak, with the endorsement of the First Presidency, found additional managers who would continue the deceptive practice of filing "misstated"13F forms.

The SEC statement details all the events that occurred between 1997 (when Ensign Peak was established) and 2023 when the full breadth of deception by the First Presidency was officially revealed.

The Church's statement on the matter: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-issues-statement-on-sec-settlement.

Besides the extravagant amount of savings and investments for a church claiming to follow Jesus, one other item of note regards the virtue of honesty.

Temple recommend holders are asked the following question: "Do you strive to be honest in all that you do?" (source).

Here is the link to the Church's Gospel Topic entry on Honesty: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/honesty?lang=eng. Feel free to take a few moments to read it, then ponder the following questions, with the given assumptions.

Premise: the Church and its leaders are honest and obey the law (see 12th Article of Faith).

Premise: The Ensign Peak and Church employees are temple recommend holders and submit themselves to the question, "Do you strive to be honest in all that you do?"

Question: Why did the First Presidency, despite being informed (by their employees and advisors) of SEC violations as early as 1998, still insist on using and continuing to use deceptive, dishonest decisions?

The bottom line is: the First Presidency is unethical, even for the low bar the United States government sets. They are, plainly and simply, dishonest.

honesty

in our primary lesson this week, we talked about how road signs and commandments are alike - they both keep us safe; they both guide us to our destination and they both can be reassuring - knowing that we can follow them.

later in the lesson, we discussed how obeying the commandments makes us happy, while disobeying the commandments will make us sad.

in trying to drive this last point, i told a famous family story - one that makes my kids laugh every time they hear the words, "when i was in 4th grade."

i realized i haven't shared this story on the blog yet, so i figured i'd share it today.

when i was in 4th grade, the school parking lot was made of gravel.  it wasn't as big as it is today.  in fact, the parking lot was only as big as the blue shaded box.

well, one day at recess, i was playing on the outside basketball court and i saw this rock from the parking lot.  i picked it up and decided to throw it back into the parking lot.

when i threw it, i bounced off the concrete basketball court and straight into mrs. betts' car head-light (about where the white box is).  my heart sank.

i quickly left the crime scene hoping no one saw it.  but at least one kid saw it and told the teacher on duty.

all this happened on a friday - the day my dad (who was also a teacher in the same school district) picked up his pay check.

when he got home from work that day, he came into my room and began asking me what i did at recess.  i told him everything ... except the part where i threw a rock into mrs. betts' head-light.  well, after all that hiding the truth, i figured he already knew what happened and so i ended up telling the whole truth ... i was in sobs of tears at this point.

my dad then told me i had to earn the money to pay for the repairs ... i spent a lot of the weekend and the following week out in the weed-field next to our house - picking up trash.

on monday, when i went back to school, i had to screw up the courage to tell mrs. betts.  now, mrs. betts was the meanest teacher in the school.  we called her mrs. butts because she smoked and would constantly cough.  when i told her what i did and that i was sorry, she accepted my apology.

it's difficult to tell the whole truth sometimes.  but by hiding the truth and then later telling the whole truth, well, that's even more difficult.  so in the long run, it's best to tell the whole truth.