Does God ask us to choose between Mormonism and Wealth? This is the question Kate Kelly tries to answer in her essay:
Like a camel traveling through a needle’s eye[1]
My parents were fighting traffic between Orem and Provo a few years back when a shiny new BMW Z4 zipped past them. The license plate on the swanky sports car was emblazoned with, “Alma 36:1.” Curious about the cryptic message the owner was conveying to the public, they grabbed their scriptures in the back of the car and looked up the cryptic slogan. It reads, “My son, give ear to my words; for inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God, ye shall prosper in the land.”
When they later mentioned it in passing, I began to sputter with disbelief and horror to have the awful underlying segment of Mormon culture that equates wealth directly to righteousness displayed tangibly in vehicular form. This sick vehicular joke inspired me to look inwardly to search for heinous signs of material pride. It is so easy to see the unacceptable level of material comfort as that place above ours and tidily excuse our own patterns of consumption in the face of someone else’s more outrageous spending. But, examining myself and LDS culture I found innumerable examples, thoughts, and paradigms that fit the bill (pun intended).
