The Scrooge Test is something I thought up after reading Dicken's Christmas Carol recently. It is a test of whether a person, a business, a religion, or and organization is merely in business or "mankind is your business."

Lots and lots of businesses are in the business of business. I'm not putting that down. If it is obvious and people know that they risk everything in doing business with you and yours then you win points for honesty. Back in the 19th Century according to P. T. Barnum there were many business which were diluting the liquor, adding stuff other than coffee beans to the coffee, and cutting corners and costs dishonestly to the detriment of their customers.

When we as individuals make others our business if we look to Scrooge that is in benefiting the lives of those around us. In the end Scrooge "knew how to keep Christmas" because he appreciated the value of human interactions over financial transactions. I doubt if Scrooge were a real person that he would have made himself a pauper in attempting to secure himself a freedom from the chains he had been making before he was haunted into realizing what is really important in human life.

So, does LDS Inc. pass the (reformed) Scrooge Test?

I think not. They seem to be more interested in helping ghosts than the living people around them. And we all know that the ghosts can only be helped if they can help the living and not the other way round.

Strip away all the offerings of Mormon salvation, work for the dead, and callings involving just doing a perceived duty (like chapel cleaning, forced home teaching etc.) and where does LDS Inc. sit in their making mankind their business? Clean away the celestial cloudiness fogging the forever family's head and how does LDS inc. make improving families their business?

For 10 percent of a Mormon's income gifted to LDS Inc. as charity, how well is LDS Inc. a steward of the injunction against Scrooge to make other living people his business?

Methinks a reformed Scrooge if he were a real person would think that Mormons were fools with their money. He would appreciate the welfare system of LDS Inc. I think but as a business man this would pale in comparison of the opulence of temple building and the commandment of LDS Inc. that tithing is a commandment even for the very destitute.

LDS Inc. obviously helps people but it does so in a way Scrooge's former self would appreciate. In the way of keeping workhouses and prisons full of people who don't buy into the fantasies LDS Inc. offers. Scrooge's former self would work with one of his debtors on his terms and they reflected him being in the business of making money and not mankind his business.

Fuck NO!

LDS Inc. draws close to The Spirit of Christmas with their lips but their heartsell is about as close to it as they come.

Let's go shopping!

Ha ha, I just watched Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol last night. It's better than any church lesson I ever had, and it doesn't have that fake asshole, Jesus, in it. The Cratchits got a turkey. If they were Mormon they'd have gotten tithing settlement, which is an even bigger turkey, I suppose.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2014 02:52PM by donbagley.

donbagley Wrote:
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> If they
> were Mormon they'd have gotten tithing settlement,
> which is an even bigger turkey, I suppose.

If the Cratchits were Mormon! Joseph was in his last year when Dicken's Christmas classic was first published. I would venture to saw many many Cratchits left good Ole' England for America having been convinced to gather with the latter days saints. And they were possibly more misused than old Bob Cratchit!

Don and Elder Berry,

I hope you both get a nice Christmas goose!

That will go well with my Christmas boner.

Turkey can be overcooked by never overrated. Growing up my mother probably still to this day can't cook a turkey right to save herself in the Celestial Kingdom. Well, she can't cook because she has no interest in it but like not magnifying her callings she still beats that dead bird with a heat from Hell and nothing to keep its juices intact.

It is only slightly better than the bird over at The Griswolds.