If a member is unable to sustain himself, then he is to call upon his own family, and then upon the Church, in that order, and not upon the government at all.
When people are able but unwilling to take care of themselves, we are responsible to employ the dictum of the Lord that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer. (See D&C 42:42.)
There should not be the slightest embarrassment for any member to be assisted by the Church. Provided, that is that he has contributed all that he can. President Romney has emphasized, “To care for people on any other basis is to do them more harm than good.
“The purpose of Church welfare is not to relieve [a Church member] from taking care of himself.”
We have been taught to store a year’s supply of food, clothing, and, if possible, fuel—at home. There has been no attempt to set up storerooms in every chapel. We know that in the crunch our members may not be able to get to the chapel for supplies. Can we not see that the same principle applies to inspiration and revelation, the solving of problems, to counsel, and to guidance? We need to have a source of it stored in every home, not just in the bishop’s office. If we do not do that, we are quite as threatened spiritually as we should be were we to assume that the Church should supply all material needs.
There are some spiritually destructive techniques used in the field of counseling. When you entrust your members to others, do not let them be subject to these things. Solve problems in the Lord’s way. Some counselors want to delve deeper than is emotionally or spiritually healthy. They sometimes want to draw out and analyze and take apart and dissect. While a certain amount of catharsis may be healthy, overmuch of it can be degenerating. It is seldom as easy to put something back together as it is to take it apart. By probing too deeply, or talking endlessly about some problems, we can foolishly cause the very thing we are trying to prevent. You probably know about the parents who said, “Now, children, while we are gone, whatever you do, don’t take the stool and go into the pantry and climb up to the second shelf and move the cracker box and get that sack of beans and put one up your nose, will you?” There is a lesson there.
“The responsibility for each person’s social, emotional, spiritual, physical, or economic well-being rests first upon himself, second upon his family, and third upon the Church if he is a faithful member thereof. No true Latter-day Saint, while physically or emotionally able, will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family’s well-being to someone else.”