Why Earth Isn't Heavenly... Yet

A wise man I know from church invited a classroom of members and a few nonmembers to imagine how much better the world would be if everyone was perfectly honest. There would be no lying, cheating, or stealing. There would be no need for specific contracts - a verbal agreement would be binding enough. There would be no need to lock our doors and cars because no one would take anything that didn't belong to them - it wouldn't be honest for them to. There would be many problems that would be completely solved if everyone just followed that one principle of the gospel.

I don't know how many of the world's problems are directly caused by unrighteousness, but in his General Conference talk, Elder Joseph W. Sitati said:

The challenges facing human society today, including immorality, pornography, armed conflict, pollution, substance abuse, and poverty, flourish because many in the world have turned themselves over by choice “to the will of the devil and the flesh”15 rather than to the will of God. “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world.”16

If not most, then at least many of the world's problems are only problems because people choose not to follow Jesus Christ. Much of the violence and suffering in the world could be prevented if we all lived as God intended us to live. I think I've said before that heaven may be so heavenly because so many good people live there. In a similar way, one reason this world is so different from heaven is because so much wickedness happens here.

Granted, there's not much we can do with this knowledge. We can strive to be righteous, and we can encourage other people to be righteous as well, but everyone will still have their agency, and some people will still choose wickedness, either because it's easier, more profitable, more fun, or for whatever other reasons. We can't change the world. Not completely, or at least, not on our own.

Fortunately, we can take heart at the fact that the troubles caused by wickedness won't plague the righteous forever. Eventually, the world will be cleansed of all wickedness, and each of us will live where everyone around them is about as righteous (or as wicked) as we are. Whether that'll be heavenly or not will depend on our own actions, not the actions of others.