Built on Inconsistencies--City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City.

So the city creek mall has just opened up, and the Trib has a video of the First Presidency and some other black suits cutting a ribbon and shouting in unison, "Let's go shopping!". A lot of people are saying that it seems blatantly hypocritical that a Church based on the teachings of Jesus Christ is building shopping malls for high-end clothing and jewelery retailers. The Tree of Life vision from the Book of Mormon condemns the rich-and-proud in their spacious building. While all of us exmo's are reduced to repeating how dumbfounded we are that no one in the Church is making any connections, it seems to be the same dumfoundedness that accompanies consideration of any of the other inconsistencies in the Church. So, to no one's benefit, I enumerate some of the inconsistencies I see:

1. Ascetic teachings of Christ: Matt. 19:21; but then again, Christ did say spending money for his anointing was better than giving it to the poor, so maybe a mall is ok?

2. Book of Mormon on the fine apparel of the proud and great and the great and spacious building: Alma 4:6 ; 1 Ne. 8:33.

3. Brigham Young on the riches of the saints:

"The worst fear that I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty, and all manner of persecution, and be true. But my greatest fear for them is that they cannot stand wealth; and yet they have to be tried with riches, for they will become the richest people on this earth" (Brigham Young, reported in James S. Brown, Life of a Pioneer [1900], 122-23).

4. Closed on Sundays: I don't really understand this at all. The mall is going to sell clothes you can't wear with garments, coffee, and alcohol (all things that would prevent you from going to the temple), but they won't operate on Sunday.

5. The use of tithing funds: Apostles do not hesitate to remind BYU students that they are benefiting from the widows mite:

Elder Holland said, “There is no money in the Church except what our members offer.” To students in particular, Elder Holland stated, “What you get, you get because of the contributions of people all over the world who will never get a temple or a university in their community.”

Maybe confusion is arising from the definition of tithing that the Brethren use. If you define tithing as money in the bank account of the LDS Church used for clearly not-for-profit operations, then how could they have used tithing to build the mall? Any money donated by members in Guatemala is relabeled as non-tithing as soon as it is used in a for-profit venture by definition!

Of course, very few LDS people think twice about any of this.