oppression

• man learned industry through

69:8.8True, slav­ery was op­pres­sive, but it was in the schools of op­pres­sion that man learned in­dus­try. Even­tu­ally the slaves shared the bless­ings of a higher so­ci­ety which they had so un­will­ingly helped cre­ate. Slav­ery cre­ates an or­ga­ni­za­tion of cul­ture and so­cial achieve­ment but soon in­sid­i­ously at­tacks so­ci­ety in­ter­nally as the gravest of all de­struc­tive so­cial mal­adies.

• only love, brotherhood, can prevent

71:4.17Ide­al­ism can never sur­vive on an evolv­ing planet if the ide­al­ists in each gen­er­a­tion per­mit them­selves to be ex­ter­mi­nated by the baser or­ders of hu­man­ity. And here is the great test of ide­al­ism: Can an ad­vanced so­ci­ety main­tain that mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness which ren­ders it se­cure from all at­tack by its war-lov­ing neigh­bors with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to em­ploy this mil­i­tary strength in of­fen­sive op­er­a­tions against other peo­ples for pur­poses of self­ish gain or na­tional ag­gran­dize­ment? Na­tional sur­vival de­mands pre­pared­ness, and re­li­gious ide­al­ism alone can pre­vent the pros­ti­tu­tion of pre­pared­ness into ag­gres­sion. Only love, broth­er­hood, can pre­vent the strong from op­press­ing the weak.

• Jesus denounced

140:8.21Je­sus had lit­tle to say about the so­cial vices of his day; sel­dom did he make ref­er­ence to moral delin­quency. He was a pos­i­tive teacher of true virtue. He stu­diously avoided the neg­a­tive method of im­part­ing in­struc­tion; he re­fused to ad­ver­tise evil. He was not even a moral re­former. He well knew, and so taught his apos­tles, that the sen­sual urges of man­kind are not sup­pressed by ei­ther re­li­gious re­buke or le­gal pro­hi­bi­tions. His few de­nun­ci­a­tions were largely di­rected against pride, cru­elty, op­pres­sion, and hypocrisy.

• Jesus denounced

147:8.4“‘Then shall your light break forth as the morn­ing while your health springs forth speed­ily. Your righ­teous­ness shall go be­fore you while the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then will you call upon the Lord, and he shall an­swer; you will cry out, and he shall say—Here am I. And all this he will do if you re­frain from op­pres­sion, con­dem­na­tion, and van­ity. The Fa­ther rather de­sires that you draw out your heart to the hun­gry, and that you min­is­ter to the af­flicted souls; then shall your light shine in ob­scu­rity, and even your dark­ness shall be as the noon­day. Then shall the Lord guide you con­tin­u­ally, sat­is­fy­ing your soul and re­new­ing your strength. You shall be­come like a wa­tered gar­den, like a spring whose wa­ters fail not. And they who do these things shall re­store the wasted glo­ries; they shall raise up the foun­da­tions of many gen­er­a­tions; they shall be called the re­builders of bro­ken walls, the re­stor­ers of safe paths in which to dwell.’”

• Jesus denounced

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.

• Jesus denounced

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.