How God Would Change the World

A family conversation recently reminded me of something I heard in General Conference a while back. As it turns out, what I had heard was a quote which was originally given only a few months after I was born.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.
- President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign July 1989

 Almost everyone knows that it's more effective to kill weeds by pulling out their roots than by cutting down the parts that we can see. That's because if the root of the weed remains, it'll grow right back. The same goes with most problems, including societal ones. If we only treat the symptoms of the problem, the problem will remain, but if we can get to the cause of the problem, we can neutralize the problem altogether and thus end its effects.

God knows this, so rather than changing people by the use of external influences, He works directly on their hearts. It's commonly believed that the world is not as it should be. God could miraculously fix the world, but that really wouldn't solve the world's problems because the cause of those problems is us. Human beings have caused many of the world's problems, and I believe that we have the power to fix them, but to do so would require a change of heart, or rather, a change of a lot of hearts.

To effect such a change, society could impose strict moral and environmental laws, hoping that people's minds and hearts would change to accept the new rules, but God doesn't work like that. He would rather change our natures to help us be more loving, more thoughtful, and more righteous, so we would chose to change our behavior ourselves. God is in an interesting position of having all the power in the universe, but not actually wanting to use it. He could literally change our minds for us, but He won't. He could physically fix the world Himself, not He's not going to - not until the end, anyway. This is our Earth, and our hearts. He gave them to us. It's up to us to fix them ourselves. He'll help us, if we let Him, but the responsibility is ours.

In order for us to change our behavior, we have to want to change. In order for our neighborhoods, country, or world to change, the people that live there have to want them to change. It starts on the inside, or in other words, at the roots. If we change ourselves at the center, that change will grow outward from there.