We’ve been reflecting on the First Vision this weekend and thought I’d chime in with some quick thoughts about a part of the story I wish we’d tell more.

1. Joseph Smith grew up really poor (and had a huge chip on his shoulder about it through life). His personal experience of poverty is part of what led to the First Vision.

2. In 1816, two days after Joseph’s brother Don Carlos was born, a representative from their Vermont town came by the Smith house to officially “warn them out.” That’s when a town encouraged people to leave because they were too poor to deserve any help.

3. Joseph’s dad left first. People did their best to rip off his mom and the kids afterward and on their trip to meet up with Dad once he got settled. Years later, Joseph still felt that sting.

4. He got to know lots of different churches because he was selling beer at revivals and working as a day laborer for all kinds of people to help his family make ends meet before he was 14.

5. You want to know what people are like? See how they treat the people society doesn’t value much. Joseph didn’t have to get very old to know a lot about what people are like.

6. When Joseph studied the Bible, he knew people didn’t treat each other with the basic decency Jesus or Isaiah or Moses taught.

7. Apostasy wasn’t just an abstract concept to him. It was a social reality.

8. Check out this line from his 1832 First Vision account:

9. He didn’t just blame other people, though. He got that dysfunction runs deep. He was self-aware enough to know that he was also part of the problem:

10. He went to God for forgiveness and for answers. Not just answers about heavens. Answers about “the situation of the world of mankind.”

11. That longing made a difference to God. Check this out from the first revelation given to the Church as a whole:

12. Joseph had a rough ride ahead of him. He spent time in jail more than once in his life, which is maybe something we should think more about.
He developed some serious skepticism about the criminal justice system.

13. Through it all, he never gave up on the idea that we could work concretely toward the kingdom of God here on earth. A Zion, where we all take accountability for ending poverty. Where the whole community is better for all its members.

14. Can we share that vision with him?

15. Or are we content with the forms of godliness, never thirsting for the power thereof?