Another View of "Talents"

Lisa came up with a wonderful new view of the Parable of the Talents.

You can look at the Talents of how much annual salary they buy. Lisa estimated that each talent was equivalent to five years of labor. That would make five talents worth 25 years of living and two talents worth 10 years, therefore converting these talents into TIME or a lifetime.

I look at this parable as a tale of life, judgment, and reward.

We all have varying lengths of lifespan. For instance, Jesus lived a short 33 years, Joseph Smith was on earth for only 38.5 years, I'm told. If you were to translate that to a cost of living as above and figure life begins at say 20 years of age, Jesus would be a bit more than a 2 talent person and Joseph was a bit less than a 4 talent person.

God give us our livespans to spend as we wish, which can be translated as above. Given the lifespan we have, what did we do with our time?

In the parable, the servants get their talents, and the Lord goes off to let the servants do what they will. This is just like coming to mortality, where we have our time to spend as we wish. In the story, two servants double their talents (make productive use of their time) and one servant buries his talent (is that like spending your life watching television and little else?).

The Lord returns and demands an accounting of talents from his servants. It is an analogy of death that ends our lifetime and looking at what we spent the years of our lives doing - productive or not. This is the final judgment that I speak so much about.

The Lord looks at the product of the time (measured in talents) that each servant produced in their lifespan. Both the servants that doubled their talents (they had different lifespans so their productivity is resultantly different) are given the same reward - lordship over many things (just like the Lord).

The remaining servant spent his talent (time) unproductively, burying his talents, and the Lord cast him off, a resolution that we should all ponder. If we waste the time that the Lord has bequeathed to us (long or short), the Lord punishes this waste of lifetime that he gifted to the servant.

Our greatest gift from God is the mortal lifespan that we have (or perhaps should have had if we don't shorten it through misuse of our bodies). As we spend our years of mortal life (talents) in service to the Lord, whether we have many years or relatively few, we will be rewarded for our "investment" in pleasing the Lord.

you shall walk in darkness

I am trying to help those "unconditional love" folks. So they don't get into trouble, wandering in the dark and thinking God will ignore disobedience.

Doctrine and Covenants 95:12

12 If you keep not my commandments, the love of the Father shall not continue with you, therefore you shall walk in darkness.

 This is the Lord speaking. If one doesn't keep commandments (this is referring to building a temple in Kirtland Ohio), then God doesn't love you. A small order and ignoring it gets a big response. Imagine how God feels about breaking one of the ten commandments that are not so situational!

Do we really want to "walk in darkness"? 

at the bar of God

Plenty of people ignore the words of prophets and apostles. They don't talk nicely. They say difficult things in the name of Christ, often in opposition to how many proclaim that Jesus love them. 

Moroni 10:27 

27 And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?

I like the picture painted here.  Moroni is at your turn at judgment. If you choose to act like you didn't know what the prophet said or warned about, God himself will indict you. As you think of all the prophets that have issued warnings, that might make the idea of judgment less than appealing to many. 

Don't be that person! Listen and heed to the prophets. 

Moroni 10:30 

30 And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.

"If ye have faith..."

I know that I give some pretty tough words from the prophets in the Book of Mormon, so let me offer a little ray of goodness.

Moroni 10:23 

And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me.

 But, like Moroni, there are warnings further warnings and prophecies:

Moroni 10:24-25 

24 And now I speak unto all the ends of the earth—that if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief.

25 And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth good, he shall work by the power and gifts of God.

We too often just skip over the injunction "if ye have faith" and read on, figuring that we will have joys and wonders and I wonder about the practical "selective blindness" of some folks that can only see the good in the world and in everyone. Everything is a movie where just loving someone magically transforms them from bad people into good people, conveniently forgetting that Jesus himself was nailed to a cross by people who he couldn't change. If Christ's love couldn't redeem, how can any of us manage to do better?

There are bad situations and bad people in this world and no amount of "positive mental attitude" or loving-kindness may not make a difference in those cases. I am not preaching not to make an effort, but don't be too discouraged if it fails.  It certainly failed in the circumstances in which Moroni lived.

We all need to exercise faith that God and Christ will do what can be done in relation to every person. Everyone has choices to make and pay for, like the choice to disbelieve. We can certainly be a part of potential redemption, but not to think that we can somehow do better than the Divine can do.

Repentance may solve your despair

I have never been a fan of the Psychology/Therapy industry that everyone is meant to participate in. Just as much as we are supposed to visit our physicians more often than our religious shepherds. Of course, therapy is basically a secular religion and a therapist is the profiteering contra-spirit-guide/priest to a client's ascent to the navel-staring godhood of channeled mock-serenity.

Obviously, I'm not a fan of the whole idea.

AI tells me that despair is a symptom of depression, the most prevalent condition of humanity. Psychology could be redefined as "depression management" quite easily. Can I save you some time and money in saying that you can often solve most of your depression episodes with one activity: repentance.

Moroni 10:22 

And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair cometh because of iniquity.

So the combination of a lack of hope and iniquity, according to Moroni, leads to despair. My thought is that iniquity is at the root of hopelessness as well. 

How to solve iniquity?  Repentance. 

As we repent, we re-establish hope in the proper source - Jesus Christ and his atonement for our sins. This will lead to the overcoming of despair, the basic "emotion" of our times. 

Confess and Repent to be in the Books

Much of the Book of Moroni within the larger Book of Mormon deals with how ordinances and meetings and church governance were conducted in the time of Moroni around the end of 2nd century America.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is largely patterned in the way Moroni describes therein.

Here is an interesting snippet from the described section:

Moroni 6

7 And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not, and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ.

8 But as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven.

So, you need to repent so that your name is not blotted out of church records. Every time we seek forgiveness and repentance, we get it. 

Revisiting "the Mariner's Log"

 About twenty years ago, I was traveling through Las Vegas, New Mexico for my job at the time and was going through the drive-thru at the local Wendy's restaurant. I don't know what I was really thinking about at the time (it is somewhere in the audio recordings that I have done for many, many years), but what became "God's Plan of Happiness in Ten Simple Symbols" or 03IXI8E0OC was born as a drawing on a Wendy's bag.

Over the years, 03IXI8E0OC was woven into the Navigiary Allegory (better a rumination) and was re-named "the Mariner's Log" to fit into the narrative I was creating in the books I was writing.

Just recently, somebody broke out one of the windows on my truck shell and I quickly slapped some chip-board across the space that used to be the window and sealed it all with some spare white roof coating I had.  It was a big white space that looked like an art canvas, so I thought what I might do to fill the big blank spot on my vehicle.

I am looking to do something vaguely artful on that chip-board based on the Mariner's Log. I have been updating everything (slowly) and it might be interesting to share.

 The webpage at http://quix.us/03IXI8E0OC.html is the "old-school" rendering about the Log that even the oldest web browsers can use.