# Generosity

Explore how generosity intersects with Mormon theology and transhumanist vision—discover the transformative power of giving in shaping humanity’s future.

Generosity is the readiness to give freely and beyond what is owed, and its Latin ancestor *generosus* described a person "well-born" or "noble," true to the *genus*, the birth or stock, from which he came. The Hebrew adjective *nadiv* likewise means both "noble" and "generous," and the King James translators rendered it now as "prince," now as "liberal." Isaiah foresaw a day when "the vile person shall be no more called liberal," a word the Latter-day Saint edition notes is "noble" in Hebrew, and added that "the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand" (Isaiah 32:5, 8). Generosity is often treated as a virtue of the comfortable, given out of what is left over. In both languages it is the conduct by which a noble family is known.

## Willing Hearts and the Tabernacle

[Image: Moses asked for the tabernacle materials from “whosoever is of a willing heart” (Exodus 35:5), and the people ultimately had to be restrained from bringing more (Exodus 36:5-6).]

The root behind *nadiv* names the freewill offering, and Israel built its sanctuary from such offerings until Moses had to stop them.

*Nadiv* belongs with the verb *nadab*, "to offer willingly," and the noun *nedavah*, the "freewill offering" brought without command. Moses asked for the tabernacle's materials from "whosoever is of a willing heart" (Exodus 35:5), and the people brought gifts each morning until the craftsmen reported that "the people bring much more than enough for the service of the work," and in the end "the people were restrained from bringing" (Exodus 36:5-6). Jewish and Christian commentators have noticed that the finished tabernacle echoes the finished creation: Moses looked upon all the work and blessed the workers, as God looked on all he had made and blessed it. On that pattern each willing offering took a small part in the work of creation. The Gospels carry the resemblance from the camp into the family.

## Children of the Father

[Image: In Matthew 5:44–45, Jesus teaches that loving enemies and doing good marks God’s children because God makes his sun rise and sends rain on “the just and on the unjust.”]

Jesus makes the Father's own giving the mark of his children, and Restoration scripture places human nobility before birth.

Jesus asks his hearers to love their enemies and "do good to them that hate you," and gives the reason: "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:44-45). The claim is genealogical. Children are recognized by resemblance, and the resemblance Jesus names is a giving that does not first sort its recipients. In the Book of Abraham, the patriarch saw among the premortal intelligences "many of the noble and great ones," whom God would make his "rulers," and learned that he was one of them, "chosen before thou wast born" (Abraham 3:22-23). The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation, which calls disciples to become "compassionate creators as exemplified and invited by Jesus," reads the family likeness as something to be practiced and extended.

## Plenty and Equality

[Image: Paul’s collection is meant to create equality “as with the manna,” where “he that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack” (2 Corinthians 8:14-15).]

Paul asked his churches for a generosity that does not wait for surplus, aimed at an equality modeled on the manna.

Carl Youngblood, who leads the Mormon Transhumanist Association, has remarked that "society tends to be as generous as it can afford to be," and cheap solar power, precision fermentation, and automated manufacturing promise to make much more affordable. Paul's churches complicate the expectation. The Macedonians gave while poor: "their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality" (2 Corinthians 8:2). Paul's word for liberality, *haplotēs*, means singleness, a thing without folds, a gift with no second motive tucked inside. The collection aimed "by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want," as with the manna: "He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack" (2 Corinthians 8:14-15). Hoarded manna bred worms, and hoarded plenty can be enclosed by whoever owns the means of making it. The Macedonians show that the will to share has to be present before abundance arrives.

## Generosity by Calculation

Effective altruism brought rigor to giving, and its most public failure shows what that rigor can leave out.

The movement weighs gifts by evidence of the good they do, and its Giving What We Can pledge, begun at Oxford in 2009, asks members to give at least a tenth of their income, a figure Latter-day Saints will recognize. Its counsel to earn in order to give, however, set the young Sam Bankman-Fried on a path to great wealth, and in 2023 he was convicted of defrauding the customers of his exchange, FTX. Months before the collapse, Holden Karnofsky had warned fellow effective altruists that "maximizing X conceptually means putting everything else aside for X." Giving financed by fraud has the doubleness that Paul's *haplotēs* excludes.

*Generosus* praised a person for being true to the stock from which he came. The Sermon on the Mount and Abraham's vision make that stock divine, so that generosity at its fullest is the conduct by which God's children are known: giving to the just and the unjust, from a willing heart, toward an equality in which no one gathers over. Mormon transhumanists expect technology to multiply what can be given, and on this reading the family likeness has to be enlarged along with the means.

*See also*: [Charity](/topical-guide/charity), [Compassion](/topical-guide/compassion), [Give/Gift](/topical-guide/givegift), [Mercy](/topical-guide/mercy), [Moore’s Law](/topical-guide/moores-law), [Poor](/topical-guide/poor), [Post-Scarcity Economy](/topical-guide/post-scarcity-economy), [Poverty](/topical-guide/poverty), [Prosperity](/topical-guide/prosperity), [Relief](/topical-guide/relief), [Responsibility](/topical-guide/responsibility)