covenant

Living The Law Of Consecration – Part 4: What is Tithing?

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(Continued from Part 3)

This is a continuation of a series of posts that I started a few years ago.  Of course, it could easily fit within the series very recent posts on the same subject of the law of consecration, including Hugh Nibley quotes from Approaching Zion, “Are we required to live the law of consecration, now?“, and Mormon Channel Episodes On The Law Of Consecration And The United Order.

In this post we will examine this question – “What is tithing?”

This seems to be a pretty basic question, with a Primary answer.  We all know what tithing is, right?  I mean, even the etymology of the word tithe itself, coming from the Old English teoþa or even earlier to the Hebrew tithes in Malachi 3:8 (ma`aser or מַעֲשֵׂר, or an even earlier root `asar or עֶשֶׂר meaning “ten”), means a “tenth” part.  What could be more simple?  This seems to be a commandment that we could easily say we keep or do not keep.  We either give a tenth part of our income annually, or we don’t.  Is there any more to it?

The truth of the matter is that everything we think we know about tithing is most likely wrong.  This could come as a shock to some, but when you get right down to what tithing is, as revealed by the Lord through the prophet Joseph Smith in this dispensation, it is not what we commonly think it is.  Personally, I think this is unfortunate, because we do not know what the Lord revealed and commanded, and if we are thus ignorant, how do we expect to be able to follow His word?  What does the Lord say?  What do our scriptures teach? [Read more…]

Are We Required to Live the Law of Consecration, Now?

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I hear this a lot from members of the Church.  In fact just two days ago, I had someone ask me this very question after reading some of the quotes from Nibley in Approaching Zion:

 “So then are we required to live the law of concecration now?“

To that question I would pose a counter question, that might help us arrive at an appropriate answer.  When God reveals a law to man, is it required of man to live it if he wishes to return to live with God?  When viewed from this perspective, I think the answer can be none other than an unequivocal “Yes!” [Read more…]

Hugh Nibley Quotes from Approaching Zion

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The following quotes are from Hugh Nibley’s Approaching Zion volume, and were compiled by Chad Merrill.  I am grateful that he shared them with me, and gave me permission to share them with you. They are great quotes from that singular book, one of my favorites of all time, and one which I am currently re-reading for the nth time.

In these quotes, Nibley is highly critical of his fellow Latter-day Saints, in our love of wealth and covetousness, lack of living the law of consecration (and our apparent confusion of it), our quibbling over free lunch, lack of faith in the Almighty, and our misunderstanding the purposes of life. “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself” (D&C 105:5). Do we truly believe the Lord? What’s our progress report? Please share your thoughts in the comments.   [Read more…]

Radically different views of Death

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A couple months ago I received an email from someone who stumbled onto TempleStudy.com.  It read in part,

[The Bible] is purely a creation of man to placate the ego’s fear of death and nothing more. All religion was invented to buffer the ego against the fear of death.

That’s certainly one way to think of death.  Another way to think of it is that religion gives meaning to life and death.  Hugh Nibley often quoted a poem by A.E. Housman about man’s preoccupation with death:

. . . men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts. ((Qtd. in Nibley, “Prophets and Glad Tidings,” The World and the Prophets, 259-67,http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/bookschapter.php?bookid=54&chapid=515))

The prominent literary scholar Harold Bloom once said,

What is the essence of religion? … Religion rises inevitably from our apprehension of our own death. To give meaning to meaninglessness is the endless quest of all religion. ((http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/what-is-this-thing-that-men-call-death))

I recently came upon two vastly different modes of thinking about death.  The juxtaposition of these two starkly different views is very interesting.   [Read more…]

Running Champion Bernard Lagat and Nandi Initiation

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U.S. professional running champion, Bernard Lagat

It is fascinating to me all the places that I hear or see or read glimpses of temple theology, the “scattered fragments” of ritual tradition ((Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, xxvii)).  As Nibley found out, and taught extensively, these remnants are found all around us, everywhere.  My wife was listening to the radio on the way to the grocery store last week, and heard part of a program on Classical 89 that related to the Creation song.  She came home and told me about it, and I was immediately interested, and tracked down the transcription.  I’m still studying that, and will write about it soon.  But today, again, I was reading the February 2010 edition of Runner’s World, of all places, and came across references to ritual initiation and rites of passage.  [Read more…]