Glenn Beck's "Twelve Values": #4 Thrift

Paul Derengowski, ThM

Thrift. We've become a disposable society, everything…If we just understood thrift and life isn't disposable, how would we change our policies on life? How would we change our policies on the Earth? These are things that we could all agree on. Nobody wants the Earth to die. Nobody wants the Earth to be 1,000 degrees. Nobody wants that. Just thrift. Just understand that nothing is disposable, from people to things to the planet to the individual.—Glenn Beck

At face value, Beck is correct in terms of how wasteful society truly is. Americans have been less than "thrifty" with the resources they have been blessed with by Almighty God, whether it in their finances, their food, or their finery. That is, unless one is talking about contributing to God-centered things, then Americans can be either quite thrifty or just downright foolish. They are regularly thrifty in the sense of yielding a pittance to that which is legitimate (i.e., a local Christian church, clothing or food bank), while foolish in forking over billions to that which are illegitimate (i.e., various self-help groups and seminars, a myriad of quasi-Christian cults, charlatans, spiritists, mediums, occult practitioners, medical quacks, psycho-babblers, and people like Glenn Beck).

The problem with thrift, though, is not that demonstrating good stewardship is a bad thing, but that the term itself comes straight out of Mormon vocabulary. In other words, this concept is nothing novel coming from Beck, and is actually a frequently used Mormon concept. A quick search on the LDS-CD Library, concerning the terms "thrift," "thrifty," and "thriftiness" brings up a staggering 569 hits. The term "Deseret," which one encounters both in the Book of Mormon and as one of the publishing arms of the Mormon Church, supposedly represents the "honey bee" (the state emblem for Utah is the beehive, and the state insect is the honey bee) and stands for "thrift, economy, unified hard work, and cooperation among the Saints." The late Mormon president Gordon B. Hinckley once said, "I believe in the principles of thrift" (Church News, 1998 January 31). In fact, the Mormon Church has produced at least two pamphlets stressing the "value of thrift." And these are just a few of the examples.

What magnifies this problem further, though, is the absolute divorce of thrift from an objective standard to give it any meaning. Mormons do not accept the Bible as God's inspired word, that is inerrant, and fully trustworthy and authoritative in all matters of faith and practice, whether in or out of the church. Mormons believe that the Bible is God's word "in so far as it is translated correctly," that it contains numerous errors and contradictions, and have subordinated it below the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine & Covenants, and the pronouncements of the Mormon "prophet" and General Authorities during General Conference. Therefore, in reality, the Bible to a Mormon is really good for nothing more than doorstop.

Yet, if God is its author (1 Pet. 1:20-21; 2 Tim. 3:16), and God cannot err, then His book cannot err; and since Jesus, who is the Word of God, is the "way, the truth, and the life" (Jn. 14:6), and points people to God's Word as the source of truth (Jn. 17:17) and objectivity, then those discounting the Bible have no objective basis in life upon which to hang any of their truth claims. All becomes a matter of opinion. "Has God said?" (Gen. 3:1) is answered in the affirmative all over again, and before long we have a whole society of people falling for the Mormon propaganda delivered through the medium of a radio talking head, like Glenn Beck, under the guise of "We Surround Them," when the slogan ought to be "We Dupe Them." Therefore, this whole "value" of Glenn Beck's is as meaningless and deceitful as all the other "values" he is foisting on people in the name of Americanism, the American way, or American's values. It has nothing to do with reality and godliness, and everything to do with promoting a principle that Mormonism espouses, which is baseless due to its rejection of the Word of God.

NEXT: Glenn Beck on Humility