What Mormons teach about the birth of a handicapped Child and minorities especially in third world countries
"This privilege of obtaining a mortal body on this earth is seemingly so priceless that those in the spirit world, even though unfaithful or not valient, were undoubtedly permitted to take mortal bodies although under penalty of racial or physical or nationalistic limitations...." (Decisions for Successful Living pp 164-165) TLDP: 497- Harold B. Lee
“There is no truth more plainly taught in the Gospel than that our condition in the next world will depend upon the kind of lives we live here. …Is it not just as reasonable to suppose that the conditions in which we now live have been determined by the kind of lives we lived in the pre-existent world of spirits? That the apostles understood this principle is indicated by their question to the Master when the man who was blind from his birth was healed of his blindness, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’ (John 9:2.) Now perhaps you will have a partial answer to some of your questions as to why, if God is a just Father, that some of his children are born of an enlightened race and in a time when the Gospel is upon the earth, while others are born of a heathen parentage in a benighted, backward country; and still others are born to parents who have the mark of a black skin with which the seed of Cain were cursed and whose descendants were to be denied the rights of the priesthood of God”
(Harold B. Lee, Decisions for Successful Living, pp. 164-165).
Doctrines of Salvation Vol 1 page 61
WHY MEN ARE BORN TO DIFFERENT RACES. We are the children of God. He is our Father and he loves us. He loves all men whether they be white or black. No matter what their color, no matter what the conditions under which they were born and reared, the Lord looks upon all his children in mercy and will do for them just the best that he can
There is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient, more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less.
Is there reason then why the type of birth we receive in this life is not a reflection of our worthiness or lack of it in the pre‑existent life? We must accept the justice of God. He is fair to all. With that in mind, we can account in no other way for the birth of some of the children of God in darkest Africa, or in flood‑ridden China, or among the starving hordes of India, while some of the rest of us are born in the United States? We cannot escape the conclusion that because of performance in our pre‑existence some of us are born as Chinese, some as Japanese, some as Indians, some as Negroes, some as Americans, some as Latter‑day Saints. There are rewards and punishments, fully in harmony with His established policy in dealing with sinners and saints, rewarding all according to their deeds.
Mark E. Petersen, Race Problems as they Affect the Church
