A Summative Statement on Performatiive Piety

After Isaiah catalogues the performative actions of piety and the Lord's rejection of them, he instructs the children of Israel in the thing the Lord desires. 

Isaiah 1:16-20

16 ¶ Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

It is customary to see "judgement (or the application of Judgment) as a bad thing, always employed to punish the wicked. In verse 17 above, Advice is given to "seek judgement" and to "judge the fatherless", without the implication that someone is in trouble for wrongdoing. In this case, it is a good thinking to seek the judgement from a righteous judge, such as the Lord. This judge will see the rightful need and dispense what is needed to make things right. The righteous seek the judging Lord for just recompense of the circumstances of life, rather than avoiding judgement as with the wicked.

A proper judge sees through pretense and show to look into the heart of those seeking judgement. Those seeking to deceive hate such a judge and those who are good an in need seek out such a judge who understands circumstances and can make things right. It depends on the sort of person seeking judgement to either embrace or eschew the Lord, our righteous judge.

Isaiah 1 - Meaningless Perfomances?

I can't approach Isaiah in the same ways that I worked through the Book of Mormon.  There are not a few scripture snippets that can be expanded upon, but it seems like, at least in this particular chapter (Isaiah chapter 1), it is almost circular reinforcements of a theme.

Although the people were doing the performances required of the Lord in Isaiah's time, the remembrances and symbolism were not effecting the personal devotion and changes the Lord desired in them.  They are becoming hypocrites with a public face of piety and harboring evil in their hearts.

Isaiah 1:4

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

Isaiah 1:10-15

10 ¶ Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?

13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Although we can make a good performance o righteousness in the eyes of others, the Lord sees into our hearts and knows if we are truly devoted to him and his purposes.  

Prosperity Blessings of Putting Marriage then Family ahead of Economic and Professional Concerns

It is a matter of prioritizing obedience to the oldest commandments and associated blessings over short term fears of not having a full cornicopia of society's "essential" marriage ingredients, such as a great job, high pay, or deep maturity. In some ways, many cultures actively discourage marriage with pushing these expected "requirements" that can rarely be met.

I found this view of attitudes going into marriage to be interesting and helpful to re-enshrining "holy" marriage: 

Beyond Hollywood Type Love: Choosing Commitment Over Chemistry

In addition to viewing marriage as a devoted commitment, rather than a impossibly life-long romantic infatuation as so many demand, we often forget God's take on marriage and making it a priority in our lives.

Genesis 2:18 

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Genesis 2:24 

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 

Adam was a very unaccomplished man at this point and yet he is married and commanded to populate the world (eventually and generationally)!  I wonder how Eve viewed the prospects of her husband in the Garden? 

 Matthew 19:3-6

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 

And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—

And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

In my life, I discovered that obedience to God's command to marry and cleave is tied strongly to my blessings of financial prosperity. I am quiet hard to push on many things and I never pursued career or money particularly, but they came anyway, as if God was obligated to bless me this way.

In a practical application of the principles discussed here and in The Shape of Prosperity, any of us can push forward though the reservations, cultural hurdles and social fears that tell young people to put off or avoid productive marriage then family-building. It is my assurance to all that God blesses those that pursue and obey this "first commandment" of marrying and "cleaving". Those who do this will be prospered just as I have been in often miraculous ways.

Get married, the younger and less experienced, the better, Put your trust in the fact that God will prosper your obedience in cleaving and building a family.  Then, the miracles will come.

 

Honoring the First Choices at the Last

It's important to remember that accepting the trials of mortality has, until very recently, been just a fact of life (no obvious pun).  My parents did it, my grandparents and my further ancestors all married and had children (obviously), never giving it much more thought than these institutions are what everyone was expected to do and it was the basic sign of being a respectable adult.

We live in a "modern" time that the age-old expectations or marriage and family have been pushed aside by a growing group of DINKs, singles, NEETs, and so on. Sloughing established standards seem to have become something of a flaunted recreational sport, usually by showing young single women traveling the world's tourist spots or pulling dogs into their liberated and well-heeled "van lives".

Some six-thousand years ago, Adam and Eve set the standard, eschewed the easy man-child Eden, and took the choice to stay together as a married couple and face mortality together and naturally having children. God had a (now mostly forgotten) commandment about marriage to help them along:

Genesis 2:24

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Being "one flesh" would, by nature, produce children and lead to parenting inherited from previous generations. 

Young couples today must face a similar "first parent" choice under peer pressure conditions that test their faith in God and their courage to stand against growing social standards to forgo marriage and childbearing. God's first law of "cleaving" gets thrown under the cultural bus as a matter of course.

None of this is improved by leftist feminism - generating fleets of ugly and undesirable women who joyously reject mother Eve's higher choice. Satanic feminism destroyed the perpetuation of humanity in only about fifty years. 

Isaiah 3:24-26

 24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.

25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.

26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

 The solution is to ignore modern influences and embrace the morals of productive marriage and family-building.  It is a hard thing to put aside the constant clamor that marrying is patriarchal slavery and childbearing and child-rearing in our world is tantamount to a prison sentence and throwing children into pauperism. A generous God will bless our obedience to his "cleaving" commandment and the worst predictions of the future hell for families will be largely overcome with compensatory blessings.

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.