22 And
let the bishop search diligently to obtain an agent, and let him be a man who
has got riches in store—a man of God, and of strong faith—
23 That
thereby he may be enabled to discharge every debt; that the storehouse of the
Lord may not be brought into disrepute before the eyes of the people. (D&C
90:22-23)
This sounds as if the
command was to find a rich man who would be willing to use his personal funds
to discharge the debts of the Lord’s storehouse. But there may be something else
going on here.
The storehouse had to get
its goods somehow. It had to buy them from somewhere, and at that time it would
usually be on credit. Suppliers would want to know that they wouldn’t be
defrauded by a new customer. They would look at reputation to know whether to
do business or not.
If a supplier had goods
ordered by “that upstart Mormon church,” about which so much antagonism and
vituperation was bandied, they would feel they were taking a risk. But if the
agent who set up the transaction was a rich man who was also known to have
strong faith, that would be a sort of social proof that would satisfy the
suppliers. Suppliers would say to
themselves, Well, [rich guy] is a part of
that church, so there must be something respectable about it. [Rich guy] trusts
them, so I suppose I can trust them. [Rich guy] will make sure I get paid
because if I don’t, then his reputation and faith is on the line too.”
It might be easy to say that
the storehouse was a bit unstable at that time, and I don’t know much about it,
but what I do see in these verses is that the Lord knew people need social
proof of some things, and He went about to provide it in the form of reputable
people who would act in the church’s interest. The Lord also knew the church’s
storehouse needed a good reputation in financial things, so He provided for
that too.
If we lived in a perfect world with
completely honest people, perhaps reputation and social proof would not be
needed, but since that is not the case, the Lord still works to build trust for
the various institutions of His Kingdom. Each of us is an informal piece of
that. Every member a missionary.
Let’s make sure we live so
as to not bring the church into disrepute among the people.
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