Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 6–11; Moses 8 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 13, 2026
Was the Flood an Act of Mercy?
by Autumn Dickson
Noah’s ark is one of the most classic bible stories. Even when you’re not Christian, many people are aware of the story and what it means. I read these verses in the last post for this week, and I’m going to read them again with a new angle.
Genesis 7:19-20, 23
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
The Lord destroyed everything. Oftentimes, this is rightfully seen as an act of justice. According to the Come Follow Me manual, the flood was also an act of mercy. I love that justice and mercy often come together, and I want to expand upon that.
Here is a quote from the Come Follow Me manual. Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “corruption had reached an agency-destroying point that spirits could not, in justice, be sent here.” During Noah’s time, the world had become so dark and devastating that bringing new children into the world would have been wrong.
When you study child abuse and neglect, this makes complete sense. There comes a point when you are so traumatized that trauma is all you can offer others. And if there are no healthy adults to save the children, then society will just get darker and darker until it destroys itself anyway.
Perhaps God destroyed the evil, but they would have destroyed themselves anyway. Because of His decisions, He was also able to save many of the spirits that would have gone down and been destroyed alongside the rest.
Now this was an extremely large scale event, but that’s what makes it such an easy example to observe. Here is another scriptural example on a slightly smaller scale.
In The Book of Mormon, Nephi is teaching his brothers and trying to get them to repent, but they hate the things of God. Here is a verse that shows some of Nephi’s pleadings.
1 Nephi 17:45 Ye are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words; wherefore, he has spoken unto you like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were to divide asunder.
The Lord had to be severe to reach them. We see this over and over and over again throughout scripture. Paul the apostle, Alma the Younger, the Israelites all throughout the Old Testament. You will see this theme all throughout Come Follow Me this year. The Lord is willing to do what’s necessary in order to reach us, but there is an important, adjacent understanding that goes hand in hand with this.
Jeffrey R. Holland taught, “Justice is not the work of an offended tyrant. It is the loving labor of a Father who is trying to get His children safely home.”
I LOVE this quote. He is not an offended tyrant. God is a loving Father, and He is wise enough to know how to reach His children. He’s not trying to punish us into submission. He’s trying to get through to us.
In 1 Peter, we learn that Christ went and preached to those in prison, specifically to the disobedient from the times of Noah. I wonder if they were finally ready to listen. I wonder if the flood and spirit prison reached them so that they were ready to live their life in a manner that brought happiness. I wonder if they are friends with Noah now. If they have repented, then I know this. They are grateful for the Lord and His wisdom in raining down justice and reaching them.
All of God’s decisions are based on love for His children, the seemingly severe and the softly spoken answer. He chooses the option that will most powerfully reach us. We’ve seen this on a large scale like with Noah and the flood, we’ve seen it on a smaller scale with Laman and Lemual. What does it mean for your own life?
We have to be careful not to take this principle beyond its proper bounds. The principle is this: God will use tragedy to reach us if it’s necessary because He loves us. The principle is not this: If you’re experiencing something tragic, it is because God is using tragedy to punish you or because you really need to repent. Tragedy does not equate to wickedness, but it can be a tool that God uses sometimes. It just depends.
I testify that all of God’s decisions are based on love. I testify that suffering in mortal life is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. I testify that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. I testify that God is wise enough to do what it takes to reach us, and I testify that He sent His Son to wash us, heal us, and suffer with us so that He could succor us when we’re prepared to accept that loving kindness. I testify that God uses justice to be merciful in our lives.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 6–11; Moses 8 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Feb 10, 2026
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 6–11; Moses 8 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 10, 2026
A Flood and a Fresh Start
by Autumn Dickson
This week we read about a couple of classic Bible stories, one of which is Noah and the ark. Let’s read a couple of verses.
Noah was led to build and ark, and then he went into the ark with his sons. God shut them up in the ark, and then this happened.
Genesis 7:19-20, 23
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
The earth was completely covered with water, and everything was destroyed except for Noah, his family, and the animals who went with them.
The Guide to the Scriptures teaches us that, “During Noah’s time the earth was completely covered with water. This was the baptism of the earth and symbolized a cleansing.”
There is so much symbolism here, but I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of this symbolism. When we are baptized or take the sacrament, our sins are washed away and we start over.
The earth was filled with violence and corruption. Every imagination and thought of the people was evil continually.
That is a lot of cleansing. I have a feeling that you have not yet reached this point in your life. I have a feeling that if you’re reading Come Follow Me posts, your imaginations and thoughts aren’t evil continually. Maybe you’ve got some flaws that you can’t kick, but I’m guessing that if you’re inviting good into your life, you can’t possibly be thinking about evil continually.
And if God can wash away all of that evil at the time of Noah, He can wash away your sins too. He can make the baptism as “big” as it needs to be. He can “flood the earth” so to speak if that’s what it takes to wash away the sins that you do have. And that little tiny piece of you that is trying to do well and good will be preserved and provided with an opportunity to start over.
Every Sunday when you take up that little piece of bread and that little cup of water, you are remembering how the Lord paid for your sins. There was a tremendous amount of suffering, both in the flood and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Honestly, it’s crazy to think that there was more pain in that one night in the Garden of Gethsemane than there was during the flood.
But it is done. The suffering already happened. The price was already paid. It was a gift.
The gift offered is not automatic salvation. When Noah and his family were preserved, it wasn’t automatic salvation. They weren’t going to immediately experience joy just because all of that evil was all swept away. They still needed to build something after the water was gone. What would they build in the blank slate that the Lord gave them?
The gift is that the Lord is going to provide you an opportunity to build your life again without being weighed down by past sins. And you get to use that gift all the time, every time you repent.
We go to church on Sunday, we take the sacrament, we wash away all of the evil, and the Lord leaves the good. He doesn’t wipe away all of our flaws. Noah and his family weren’t perfect. He just wipes away all of the residue of sin, and from there, we begin to build again.
What are we going to bring into our new world? What will we bring into our new selves? As you look at the landscape of your life, it has been washed clean again. What will you create? What will you turn your life into?
Because it is about building. This is a story of grace, and it is a story of what we create with what we were given. Hopefully, we take the blank slate and choose to build up incredible things that bless us and bless those around us. We are given frameworks and blueprints that we can use to build our lives. It is not enough to want something beautiful built; the Lord gives us the beautiful opportunity to do the work alongside Him.
And as time moves on, hopefully we don’t need an entire flood every time we choose to take the sacrament. Hopefully the cleansings get smaller and smaller as we become more and more Christlike.
You may still grieve. I don’t think Noah and his family walked away from this experience lightly. I think they walked away with a lot of sorrow for what happened alongside the gratitude for being saved. Like Noah, washing away your sins won’t erase the memory of it. Even though it may bring grief, it’s a gift. It’s a gift because it can prevent you from walking down the path towards an earthwide flood again. It will bring depth to your gratitude. We don’t want to forget what happened, not really, despite the pain it may bring.
I testify that the Lord can wash away what you have. I testify that there are so many parallels with the flood and our own lives that can teach us about what the Lord did and what He offers. I testify that He did not automatically give us salvation; He gave us a blank slate so that we could build something worth having, so that we could enjoy eternity like He does. I testify that He will keep washing as long as it takes, as long as we need to build what He has in mind for us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 7 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 06, 2026
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
by Autumn Dickson
In Moses 7, Enoch watched some of the most devastating events in human history. He watched the earth be traumatized. He watched violence and the consequent justice of God. There was death and abundant evil. I’m not sure I want to see the vision that Enoch saw.
And as Enoch watched these traumatic events, he also observed this.
Moses 7:28 And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?
The God of heaven looked at what was occurring on the earth and wept. At one point in Enoch’s journey, he even “refused” to be comforted, and yet, God wasn’t angry with Enoch’s deep depression. There are things that will feel dark and unbearable even as we approach being like our Heavenly Father. In fact, there are things that will feel dark and unbearable simply because we are becoming more Christlike.
When Enoch asked Him why He could cry, the Lord responded with this.
Moses 7:32-33
32 The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;
33 And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;
The Lord is saying, “I chose this. I helped create this plan. I created all of this, gave knowledge to them, and I gave them their agency. I asked them to love each other, but they hate each other instead.”
The Jews in the Holocaust were the children of God, but so were the Nazis. Those who perished in the attacks on 9/11 were the children of God, but so were those who attacked. Abel was the son of God, and so was Cain. The children of God included the Israelites, the oldest sons of the Egyptians, and the slave drivers.
Regardless of wickedness, God loves and mourns His children. Regardless of what His children chose to become and regardless of the justice that He will choose to rain down, God knew His children when they were young and innocent. He loved them and cared for them.
He had to face what it meant to put the Plan of Salvation into motion. He had to face the victims who perished and those who continue on suffering. He has to face His children who are perpetrators and mourn the fact that they refuse to come be a part of the family. Despite all that they did, He has to face what it means to separate them from the rest of the family in order to preserve any semblance of peace and happiness within the rest of the family.
He shoulders that burden, and despite being from all eternity to all eternity, it weighs on Him. Despite His omnipotent strength, the weight that He carries is heavy. Can something be heavy when you’re perfectly strong? Apparently.
Is it okay to be upset even when you know the happy ending? Apparently.
Let’s take it a step further. Is it righteous to be upset even when you know the happy ending?
I think sometimes I picture God as colder than He really is. I picture Him without all of His emotions because for some reason, I have come to associate omnipotence with being above that kind of thing. What if the opposite is true?
As Enoch became more like God, as God taught him immense things in this vision, “his heart swelled as wide as eternity.”
Perhaps eternity (and therefore this life) is not about becoming so powerful and knowledgeable that the suffering doesn’t affect you. Perhaps looking forward with an eye of faith is not about saving yourself from deep and hard feelings.
Deep feelings are a part of eternity, deep feelings that are both happy and sad. If we are trying to become like God, then deep feelings will be a part of it. And if Enoch is to be believed, our feelings only grow deeper as we learn and experience more.
Even as I write this, I keep trying to take this principle further, but the Lord is stopping me. Perhaps that is the principle He is trying to teach me; that is the principle He is emphasizing today.
Deep feelings, and not just the happy ones, are part of an eternal existence. How does that change how you approach life? How does it change how you approach your difficult times? I testify that God’s eternity is full. I testify that part of that eternity is difficulty and grief because the happiness and joy would be hollow without it. I testify that we can lift up our hearts and be glad despite the other half of our eternity being heavy to bear. They come together. We do not need to fear that depth. I testify that because of Jesus Christ, we can feel hope alongside that difficulty.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 7 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Feb 03, 2026
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 7 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 02, 2026
Why We Build Arks When We are Saved By Grace
by Autumn Dickson
Moses 7 is powerful. There is so much. I have so many thoughts, but let’s keep it to a few. One of those thoughts came to me while reading this verse.
Moses 7:43 Wherefore Enoch saw that Noah built an ark; and that the Lord smiled upon it, and held it in his own hand; but upon the residue of the wicked the floods came and swallowed them up.
Noah and his family were surrounded by wickedness and danger. They built an ark, and the Lord protected them. The rest of the people were wiped out by the flood.
I want to draw your attention to two details. Noah built an ark, and the Lord held it in His hand. There is a type in this. Let’s talk about one of my favorite subjects: grace and works. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is frequently attacked for not being Christian because we believe that we will be judged by our works and desires and not just by whether we believe in the right Jesus. Other Christians believe that it’s just about accepting the Savior, not following Him. They believe that you don’t have to do anything. Some believe that if you try to do anything, you’re only taking away from His glory (or so I’ve been told by some of my friends; I recognize that there are nuanced beliefs within the Christian faith in general). I know others believe that it’s all about belief and works simply follow belief, but the works are just not necessary.
It is extremely important to note that Latter-day Saints believe 100% in grace. We believe that works are necessary, but works don’t save us. Christ saves us. Works are necessary, but they perform a different function, not saving
As I read the bible, over and over and over and over and over I get the message that the Lord does require works even if it’s not ultimately the works that do the saving. There are places in the bible that more directly teach this concept, namely in the letters of Paul, but there is also story after story after story that teaches this principle. Noah and the ark is just one of these stories. Noah and the ark can teach us about how Christ does the saving, and it teaches us about why the Lord requires works and will judge us by our works.
What do we learn from Noah’s story? How does Noah’s story teach us about grace and works? Let’s talk about it.
First of all, let’s look at it before Noah even builds the ark. The Lord saved Noah and his family because they were righteous. There is a type in this. Noah and his family weren’t perfect, but they were righteous. And even though they loved God, it didn’t save them. It just meant that God saved them. Would God have saved them if they hadn’t built the ark? My personal opinion is no. Why would He command Noah to build an ark if He didn’t actually care whether Noah built it?
Let’s look more specifically at Noah and the ark and not everyone who died in the flood. Our verse teaches us that the Lord held Noah’s ark in His hand. That’s the grace right there. The Lord protected Noah. The Lord saved Noah. The verse could have said, “Noah obeyed God and built the ark, and it saved him.” But that’s not what it said because that’s not what Latter-day Saints believe. In fact, it doesn’t even specifically say that God looked upon Noah, smiled at him, and saved him. It very specifically says that God looked at “it,” as in, the ark. God looked at the works of Noah. The works didn’t save Noah, but God looked at the works, judged them as good and smiled at them, and saved Noah.
If God is the one who saved Noah, then why did He have him build an ark? Why perform works?
That’s the million dollar question for Latter-day Saints. We believe that we are saved by grace, 100%. So why build an ark? Why do we believe in doing our best and performing works if the ark doesn’t do the saving?
It’s because God has to judge. He has to judge who will destroy heaven and who will be able to appreciate heaven and preserve it. He could have saved all the wicked by smiling at them and holding them in his hand, but the wicked would have destroyed heaven. They would have made it as miserable as they were making the earth with their violence and idolatry. They wouldn’t have been able to enjoy heaven because of their choices, because of their works. Beyond that, they would have ruined heaven.
Our works don’t save us, but God judges us by our works and saves us accordingly. That’s what Noah’s story is teaching us. The works don’t save us; they just allow us to appreciate heaven and preserve it. They determine whether God steps in with the atonement of Jesus Christ, saves us, and brings us back into our heavenly home.
So do Latter-day Saints believe that we are saved by works? No. We believe we are judged by them, but we believe that Christ does the saving with His atonement.
I think parents of addicts understand this more than most. If you have a child who is extremely addicted to dangerous drugs, you don’t keep bringing them back into your home just because they love you. They would destroy your home and any heavenly feelings that reside there. Even if you have the power to keep taking care of everything despite their addiction, I would hope that you wouldn’t bring them back in to destroy everything (unless God says differently, listen to Him for specifics). If you do choose to bring them back in, then it’s not home anymore. It’s not heaven so no one really got saved anyway.
So you make a judgment call. You pray your guts out for the child. You love the child, but you separate the child because of their works. You judge their works and preserve the home. If they repent and truly change, then they get to come back home. Not because of their works. Quitting drugs doesn’t pay for the house; it just makes it so that you trust them enough to bring them home.
I think it’s important to also note that not everyone’s ark looks the same. That’s one of the beautiful things about the atonement of Jesus Christ. It removed the absolute justice that kept us from heaven. It enabled Christ to be the judge and save who He decides to save. Some of us will build an ark. Some of us will look at the barren desert before us and be lucky to build a canoe, but you know what? The Lord judges perfectly. He looks at your entire situation and what you have, and He judges perfectly.
I testify that the Lord saves us with His grace. I testify that your ark is not enough to save you. I testify that even though your ark can’t save you, it builds you and God judges you by your circumstances and your ark and determines whether you’re going to contribute to our heavenly home. I testify that the relationship of works and grace is taught all throughout the bible.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 5; Moses 6 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 30, 2026
The Power of a Spiritual Record
by Autumn Dickson
I’ve given this message before, and I’ll probably give this message again someday. This message has been repeated so frequently throughout scripture so I figure it’s not the end of the world if I repeat it too. It is something that has been taught by modern day prophets. It has changed my life profoundly.
If someone were just beginning their family, what advice would you give them? What would you focus on? If you could give them advice that they were supposed to read over and over and over throughout their lives, what would you emphasize? If you were trying to teach a group of people how to build a society, which principles do you think would be some of the most valuable to learn?
Over the past couple weeks, we have been reading about the beginning of one of God’s projects. It includes the building of a world. It includes the building of God’s family, and the building of a new society upon the earth. There was a father and mother and a whole lineage of people. I have so many questions about how some of these things came to pass. How did they build their society? How did it change? Did they even consider the idea that they were setting up the foundation of a society?
I’m not sure.
But out of every message that the Lord could have sent us, one of the messages that He gave us was this.
Moses 6:5 And a book of remembrance was kept, in the which was recorded, in the language of Adam, for it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration;
A book of remembrance was kept. It was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration. Was this one of the pieces of advice you would have chosen to give to this new society you were directing? Because it was one of the pieces of advice that God thought was important.
Do you call upon God? If you do, here is the bible teaching us that you’ve been called upon to write by the spirit of inspiration.
Please stay with me for a moment if you don’t feel like you’re ready for this message. If you hate writing and reading, if it’s not something that you particularly enjoy, stick with me. A book of remembrance doesn’t have to look like what you’re picturing.
I almost feel bad sharing this message because writing is something that comes naturally to me. Even if I wouldn’t classify myself as overly talented, I love writing. I’ve written regularly in a journal since I was 14 years old (and boy do I wish I could burn those journals).
My journals were not always written according to inspiration. For a lot of my life, my journals were where I angrily wrote about my angel parents that I didn’t appreciate, about boys, about friendships at a time in my life when I didn’t know how to be a good friend. It wasn’t until later that my journals became filled with true, uplifting purpose.
Writing in a journal has blessed my life. I have gone back to read what I used to care about. I have been able to observe the growth I had and watch how the Lord guided my life, page by page. It’s actually pretty fun. Not to mention, I record all the absolutely ridiculous things my children say and that is one of the best blessings of my life.
But the commandment we find in this verse is not necessarily what you think. It’s not about writing what you did every day or even every month; I love writing, and I think that would bore me to death. My life isn’t exciting enough for that.
We need to rethink what it means to keep a journal. When God gives a commandment, it’s to draw us closer to Him so let’s look at our book of remembrance through that lens. And as a matter of fact, let’s look at another phrase from the verse that we read from Moses.
Write by the spirit of inspiration. If that sounds intimidating, let me try and ease your worries. Let’s look at what it means to receive inspiration.
Inspiration is when God gives you thoughts and feelings to propel you in a specific direction. He gives it to you.
When someone gives something to you, are you the one who is supposed to be stressing about how the gift makes its way into your lap? No! That’s not your job. You just have to make yourself available to receive it.
Hence the writing. Make yourself available and trust the Lord to give you what you need. He knows how to give.
I have one practical piece of advice for starting your book of remembrance. It’s just one piece of advice to start things out so that God could push you in the correct direction that will fit your personality and circumstances.
Open a journal when you’re praying, open a note on your phone, or open your computer to type. Just open it and make it available once a day for one week. When you’re praying. That’s my tip.
You don’t have to write your prayers like I do. I just do that because it helps me focus when the last seven years of my life have been interrupted approximately every three minutes. Don’t do it before bed; I never write my prayers before bed because I’m not in the proper mindset to write by inspiration. I’m too tired. The Spirit can whisper through a lot of things but apparently not my exhaustion (or maybe I’m just bad at listening through my exhaustion?). It doesn’t have to be a long prayer. It doesn’t have to be an impressive prayer. Open it, and simply start talking. He may not say anything immediately because He usually only talks when He needs to. You may start to feel like you should pick up your pen. Trust the feeling and do it. Even if you don’t know what you’re going to write, just start and open yourself up and He will speak.
It’s remarkable. You will feel so close to God.
Just as the verse taught, if you have called upon the name of God, you have been called to write by inspiration. He wants to talk to you too.
I testify that God loves you and knows how to give you inspiration. I testify that it’s not your job to figure out how to receive a gift; it’s just your job to try and make yourself available to receive it. I testify that writing by the inspiration of God will change your life as it has changed mine.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 5; Moses 6 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Jan 28, 2026
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 5; Moses 6 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 26, 2026
Revelation, Submission, Sacrifice
by Autumn Dickson
For this week, we get to read more about Adam and Eve and their posterity. While reading about this posterity, we find a really beautiful summary of how to live. It is so simple and yet so profound.
Moses 6:3 And God revealed himself unto Seth, and he rebelled not, but offered an acceptable sacrifice, like unto his brother Abel. And to him also was born a son, and he called his name Enos.
I want to take it one phrase at a time. God revealed Himself to Seth. Seth didn’t rebel. Seth offered an acceptable sacrifice like his brother did. Though this is about the personal life of Seth, there is a pattern that all of us can follow.
First, God revealed Himself.
It is not enough to try and interpret the bible perfectly. You can’t. It’s not possible for man to interpret it correctly even if it had been translated perfectly. God has to reveal Himself and the truth concerning why we are here and how we get back. You can’t go to school and have other people teach you about God because they have studied a ton. No matter how hard you think or how long you ponder, it is insufficient unless God chooses to reveal Himself.
He does this through a variety of ways. He reveals Himself through His prophets. He teaches us as we’re reading the bible. He teaches us as we listen to other people, but we have to remember that He is the one who gives us the information.
Then comes the next part. We decide what to do with it. Seth rebelled not.
Honestly, it reminds me of something that I read about the Tower of Babel. One of the reasons that God was so frustrated with the people in relation to the Tower of Babel was because He had told them how to reach Him. These people were descendants of Noah’s sons after the flood. Noah walked with God, and so it’s easy to assume that these descendants had been given a knowledge of how to form a relationship with God.
We do not know exactly what this looked like. We know that after Moses, there were more extensive ordinances contained in the Law of Moses that helped the people reach for God. In our day, we likewise make covenants and perform ordinances in order to reach Him and develop a relationship with Him.
I’m not sure what it looked like in Noah’s day, but these people had a prophet and it was likely that they had oral traditions to lead them along.
Unfortunately, they rebelled. They didn’t want to reach God in that way. They wanted to do it how they wanted to do it, and they ended up with chaos and confusion.
Through modern-day prophets, God has revealed how we can draw closer to Him. These avenues are not exclusive; they’re available to everyone who wants them. Some have had incredible experiences with the gospel but have chosen to only accept some avenues of closeness. Some believe they don’t need these extra things in order to draw closer to Christ rather than gratefully receiving any options He gives us to think of Him and follow Him.
I think of Cain and Abel. Cain was mad that God didn’t accept his crops even though God had asked him for a lamb originally. Cain only wanted to give what Cain wanted to give. And when God didn’t accept it, he was angry. Interestingly enough, God didn’t ask for a lamb for fun. It was very specific and meant to help Cain understand Christ. Cain missed the memo.
If you’ve had good experiences with the gospel, I can promise that accepting all of the gospel will only bring more goodness. Don’t rebel against it. Give it a chance, soften your own heart and see if God doesn’t bless you.
Then there is the last portion of this pattern that we’ll talk about today.
Seth offered an acceptable sacrifice like his brother. I love this part. We can offer acceptable sacrifices like our Brother.
There is much to be said of sacrifice, but I want to focus on one specific principle here.
The Lord asks for specific sacrifices. There are general ways that we draw closer to Christ through ordinances and covenants, but there will also be very personalized sacrifices that the Lord asks us to make. Christ had a very tailored sacrifice to give. It was perfectly picked just for Him.
There are very tailored sacrifices we will be asked to make. They are tailored in two ways: how we can give and how they can bless us.
Some of them are because God gave us gifts and expects us to use them to bless others. In ancient times, the oldest brothers received an extra portion in order to take care of the mother and sisters. Each of us have received some kind of specific extra portion, spiritual gifts that are not given to everyone. We are expected to take care of those who don’t have what we have. It is completely fair for Heavenly Father to ask us to give when He has given us more precisely for that purpose.
We have also been given a responsibility to make specific sacrifices because of how they will bless us. They will mold us to be more like the Savior in the exact ways that we need. Just like the lamb wasn’t random, our sacrifices don’t need to feel random. They can refine us.
I got pregnant 3 months after having a baby. My fifth child was born when my oldest was just six years old. I despise being pregnant. I’m grateful for it. My children are my greatest blessing, but I can’t begin to describe just how much I lose myself when I’m pregnant. Conner was out on the east coast every other week for work. I was overwhelmed and sick. My body was destroyed, and I still had a tiny baby that needed me so much. I had three other kids who also needed me, and I still felt the Lord telling me that I needed to keep sharing my testimony of Christ.
There were a million lessons learned through this specific trial given to me. The Lord needed me to change in specific ways in order to step into the life I wanted for myself and my family. I let go and let my kids step up in ways that were powerful for them, a beautiful blessing that I would have never voluntarily given over. I miraculously finished my work and still got a desperately needed nap almost every day. Both of these specific lessons have set me up in exactly what I want for my life. Most importantly, I learned that God really is on my side.
When I first found out I was pregnant again, I felt utterly betrayed. Believe it or not, we had taken some pretty intense measures to prevent pregnancy. This wasn’t a mistake on our part. It was a definitive choice for the Lord. I had told Him that I wanted to wait a bit. There have been numerous times in my life that the Lord has chosen different for me than I chose for myself. I grumbled and fought it just like anyone else. Getting pregnant again and losing myself for 18 months instead of 9 months felt like more than I could bear. For the first time, I felt truly betrayed by God. I felt like He had completely ignored everything I had wanted for myself. I felt like He had ignored what I needed, that He didn’t care what I needed. He was going to choose what He was going to choose. I knew logically that wasn’t the case. I had experiences with God and knew He loved me, and maybe that’s why it had been so painful. I had trusted Him, and this felt too far.
It took some time, but I learned the tailored lesson He sent me. I turned my heart around and accepted the sacrifice that had been asked of me and just like with any sacrifice, it was for me. He was trying to bless me, and He did. I thought I trusted Him before. It multiplied after this last baby. The Lord tailors our sacrifices for us, and in the end, we make them acceptable by putting our heart into it.
I testify that the patterns of the Lord are simple. I testify that He can guide our individual details in the midst of those grand patterns. I testify of a Lord who made an ultimate sacrifice and set an example for how we can draw closer to God. I testify that the scriptures can teach us of these patterns, and if we choose to accept them, He blesses us more than we can imagine.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 3–4; Moses 4–5 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 23, 2026
The Power of Giving God the Glory
by Autumn Dickson
We are learning all about how man came to be on the earth. The Lord is setting the stage for us to understand the context in which we were placed on the earth. Part of that context is understanding the Fall and everything associated with it. Here are a couple of verses that help us understand what we’re trying to emulate in the midst of this fallen world.
Moses 4:1-2
1 And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
2 But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.
The Lord is telling Moses, “You were just tempted by this Satan guy, and you commanded him to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. Before the world was created, Satan wanted to redeem everyone, take away their agency, and keep all the glory. Christ came prepared to do My will and offered the glory back to Me.”
As a church, we talk a lot about following the will of the Father; this is a frequent discussion. We have also discussed how Satan wanted to take all the glory, and how Christ rightly placed the glory with the Father. Much of this life is a lesson in those two aspects: bending our will to match our Heavenly Father’s will as well as recognizing that the glory belongs to Him.
I want to focus on that second lesson: recognizing that the glory belongs to Him.
Glory is an interesting one because everyone likes to get credit for how they contribute. Christ gets credit for His role in the Father’s plan even if Christ is offering all of the glory back to His Father. Our prophet is just a man trying to follow the Lord, and yet, we honor him for the sacrifices he makes in order for us to hear the will of the Lord. I honor my parents for the continuous, ongoing sacrifices they make to bring me closer to Christ.
Hopefully, there is credit given when someone makes a sacrifice for you to draw closer to your heavenly home. This is a righteous principle.
And yet, Christ told the Father, “…the glory be Thine forever.” I think everyone knew Christ would be honored for what He did, and it is righteous to honor Him for what He did. He could have stopped at, “Thy will be done,” and left it at that. We all knew He deserved to be worshipped for what He was sacrificing, but He chose to keep speaking. He ended it with, “The glory be Thine forever.”
I’m sure Christ was aware that He would be loved and worshipped for it, but Christ was also aware of an important, adjacent principle. Seeking glory sucks the happiness out of life, and the entire reason He made the sacrifice was on behalf of our happiness. Setting the example for us to willingly hand over the glory whenever we follow the will of the Father was setting us up for success; it was setting us up to find happiness and joy more readily.
This wasn’t humble brag. It wasn’t lip service. Christ wasn’t saying, “I’ll go make this sacrifice and tell everyone that the glory is Thine because everybody knows I’m going to be worshipped for it anyway.” No. In His heart, Christ was saying, “If no one ever knew what I did, I would still choose to do it. If no one ever had an inkling of the sacrifice I was going to make, I would choose it if it means they can be happy.”
I’m sure when the prophet steps up, he knows that there are those who will respect him for his position. He knows that there will be honor for it. We don’t have to pretend there is not. It is righteous to love those who teach you about Christ. However, it can’t be about seeking honor or glory.
If you choose to step up and help with the Lord’s work, and if you do it with the right heart, you end up feeling grateful. You feel floored that the Lord let you come along anyway. Despite mistakes, lack of wisdom, and natural-man-tendencies, He let you be a part of it. When you’re participating in His work with the right heart, you’re filled with gratitude.
If you do not currently feel that way but want to feel that way, there is hope. If you find yourself with creeping feelings of vanity, if you find that you enjoy the praise of others a little too much, if you find this burning secret desire to make your sacrifices known, AND if you simultaneously don’t want those feelings, fear not. I’ve been there, and they don’t have to tear you up.
I battle those feelings often enough. I have always found guilty pleasure in people thinking I’m wonderful and smart and wise. Because of that weakness, I tried running anything that would tempt me. I didn’t want to experience that spike of happiness when someone told me that I was amazing. I didn’t want to be crushed when someone corrected me. I didn’t want my pride, and so I didn’t want to face my pride. I wanted to bury it.
And sometimes, the right choice is to bury it. Sometimes it’s better to run in the opposite direction.
However, I have learned that sometimes the right choice is to face it and keep practicing day after day after day after day after day.
When it comes to serving in the Lord’s kingdom and not seeking personal glory, there really isn’t another way. We are all asked to serve in one form or another. It is a responsibility to serve, which means you have to face the idea that someone is going to thank you for your service, and you’re going to have to face the weakness that isn’t gone yet.
So what do you do? Let’s discuss a general principle and then a couple of more practical tips.
General principle: You practice day after day after day after day after until you become. We battle our desires for glory until our desires no longer automatically jump towards glory. You school them. You become someone who knows better. That’s really what life is. You come down here and continually fight sin and weakness and consciously take hold of the direction of your growth. This is the overarching principle.
Here are some practical tips to help you fight that weakness when you’re presented with it:
It is easier to fill your life with good than it is to push out bad. Replace your pride with something that is more lasting, more important, more filled with joy. When I’m struggling to fight off desires for glory and it’s interfering in my ability to build the kingdom, I pray for a couple of things.
To see things clearly. I pray to help me see things as they really are. If I can see reality, then I don’t have to fight off feelings that I’m amazing and doing it all on my own. He helps me see the truth of how He’s holding me up. Beware of this one in high pressure environments; He is willing to teach you and let you flop on your own.
Gratitude. Rather than praying for gratitude (though that’s an option too), I just start being grateful within a prayer. When I start having those intrusive thoughts that say, “You’re the best. You help everyone. You’re so amazing. Everyone is lucky to have you,” I replace them with, “You are so lucky that Heavenly Father is taking you along for the ride. You are so blessed to be around these people who are carrying things you don’t understand. You are fortunate to be able to learn from them and be with them.” Oftentimes, when I start praying and focusing on gratitude, my feelings follow and the desire for glory gets silenced. It can’t stand up to that.
Charity. I mentioned earlier that Christ probably knew being honored was a part of making the sacrifice. It would be almost silly to pretend that’s not the case. Rather, the key here is that Christ wasn’t seeking glory. He would have done it without the glory because He just loved us so much. When I’m feeling prideful or wanting glory, I pray for charity to replace it. Loving others and wanting what’s best for them fills you. Trying to get enough validation and appreciation is like trying to fill a cup that has no bottom. Filling yourself with love for others pushes that cup aside completely and you find yourself overfilling.
I testify that our Savior is the ultimate example. He is the ultimate example in laying aside His own will, but He’s also the ultimate example in being so filled with love that glory seems silly. It’s not about the glory. He wants our love for sure; that brings Him joy. He knows how to live an eternal life that allows happiness rather than emptiness, and He set the example of filling yourself with love rather than glory in order to find that happiness.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 3–4; Moses 4–5 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Jan 21, 2026
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 3–4; Moses 4–5 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 20, 2026
From Sin to Stepping Stone
by Autumn Dickson
This week we get to read about how Adam and Eve made their way out of the garden and into the world that we know today. There are principles here that can change how you see your own efforts to follow Christ. Some of the principles we read about this week have the power to bring you out of perfectionism and into true salvation because they are not the same thing.
Background on the verse we’re about to read: Moses is learning about Satan because Satan had recently come to him to tempt him. The Lord starts to teach Moses about the man who was trying to get Moses to worship him, specifically about Satan’s role in the beginning of the Plan of Salvation.
Moses 4:6 And Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world.
Satan wanted to tempt Eve in order to destroy the world. He wanted to destroy the plan of God because he was mad. Despite his original pleadings to come down and save everyone and bring them all home, now Satan threw away his supposed love for us and merely sought to destroy what God was planning. He was a fraud; he never loved us. He just wanted glory and honor.
There is beautiful irony here. Satan would have destroyed God’s plan if he had left Adam and Eve alone, but he knew not the mind of God. He didn’t know that tempting Eve and convincing her to sin was part of the plan.
One more time. He didn’t know that tempting Eve and convincing her to sin was part of the plan.
I want to switch up the verse just a little bit. I’m going to put in my name. You put in your’s.
Moses 4:6 And Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Autumn, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world.
Satan tempts me because even though he already lost his chance to destroy the plan with Adam and Eve and then again with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he wants to destroy the effects of the plan in my life.
There is beautiful irony here. Sin was part of the plan, and not just as some unfortunate byproduct of a fallen world. It was one of the most powerful tools utilized to save Adam and Eve. Let me explain myself.
Let’s pretend for a moment that Satan predicted the mind of God and left Adam and Eve alone. We would have remained in the exact state where we were. Adam and Eve would have remained innocent in the garden, and we would have stayed in our heavenly home with God. God’s plan would have been thwarted. No sin would have occurred, but no true happiness would have occurred either.
Sin was part of the plan, and not just as some byproduct of a fallen world. Sinning teaches us powerful lessons.
Now we have to be careful with this principle and have the right attitude towards it. I don’t teach this principle so that someone feels like they can go try cocaine in order to learn that it’s bad. That’s ridiculous. I’m not even teaching that it’s okay to lie or cheat so that you can learn your lessons. I’m not teaching that it’s okay to go sin as long as your purpose is an education.
I am trying to break apart the ridiculous arguments of perfectionism.
We came here to grow and become. Our purpose in life should not be to stand frozen and still so that we don’t do anything wrong. Our methods should not include berating ourselves into perfection. We were meant to come down here and return to live with God, prepared to live His life and participate in His work. How do we get from Point A to Point B?
There are a lot of ways we acquire that growth. One of those ways is sinning. I have learned so much from reflecting on the times that I screwed up. This doesn’t give us license to go out and sin on purpose for the supposed goal of learning because that doesn’t get you to Point B. If you’re using “learning” as an excuse to sin, you’re not returning to God, prepared to live His life and participate in His work.
Rather, this gives you license to look at your sins the way Adam and Eve came to look at their sins. Here is another verse from this week.
Adam and Eve sinned. They disobeyed God and were driven out of the garden. They toiled, suffered, had children, and offered sacrifices to God. One day, an angel came to them and taught them about Christ. The angel told them that they could be redeemed after they sinned and return to live with God again.
Moses 5:10-11
10 And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.
11 And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.
They rejoiced. Because of his transgression, Adam’s eyes were opened. He got to experience joy because he had transgressed and he still had an opportunity to return to live with God whom he knew personally and loved. Eve rejoiced that she learned the difference between good and evil as well as the joy of Christ paying for them to come home.
We don’t look at a choice ahead of us and disobey God in the name of learning good from evil. However, we do have permission to look back at our transgressions through the lens of a testimony of Christ. We rejoice that He took our sins and turned them into powerful stepping stones that brought us closer to Christ.
Honestly, it makes me think of the Come Back podcast. Some of the stories we hear about on that podcast are so incredibly powerful. People learned from their mistakes and found rejoicing in Christ. We can find that too. We don’t have to let our sins weigh us down unto death. We can rejoice in Christ’s ability to save us from our sins and utilize our sins to help us become prepared to live God’s life and participate in His work.
When we beat ourselves up with perfectionism over our mistakes, it’s only because we don’t yet know the mind of God.
Satan wants you to believe that your sins and transgressions are the end of the story, that he’s destroyed you. He has since learned that his desire to thwart God’s plan ironically fell apart because of his own participation in that plan, but if he can keep you from understanding that, then he can win a couple of battles even if he can’t win the war.
He doesn’t want you to know the mind of God which is offering you joy, peace, and salvation. Thwart Satan. Let go of everything that keeps you from the feelings associated with salvation, namely shame and guilt that has been blown out of proportion and continues to hold you down. Rejoice! Gain a testimony of Christ like Adam and Eve did.
I testify that God didn’t fear Adam and Eve’s transgressions. He knew it would happen. He planned on it. It needed to happen. I testify that God isn’t afraid of your sins; why would He be? They’re already paid for and taken care of. Sometimes the only thing holding us back from salvation is our own inability to know the mind of God and let go of the sins that were already paid for. I testify of Christ’s saving power, and I testify that gaining a true testimony of that power can light up your life like you’ve never experienced.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Jan 16, 2026
Jennifer is joined in this episode by Ben Spackman to talk about Genesis chapters 1 and 2.
Ben Spackman is a historian and scholar whose work spans Semitic languages, biblical studies, the history of science, and the history of Christianity—particularly the Reformation and modern American religion. He completed doctoral coursework in Comparative Semitics at the University of Chicago before earning his Ph.D. in American Religious History from Claremont Graduate University.
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 16, 2026
Not Meant to Be Alone
by Autumn Dickson
The world is so confused. The more I learn about the gospel and the more I observe the world, the more I’m amazed at how lost the world is. The world is constantly seeking happiness, but it still seems so elusive.
I testify that there is joy to be found, and it is found in following the patterns of the Lord.
Moses 3:18 And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten, that it was not good that the man should be alone; wherefore, I will make an help meet for him.
And the Lord created Eve for Adam. They were married for eternity. They went through the “dating” stage where everything was perfect, and they also crossed over into the mortal, fallen world where they had a lot to learn and figure out. They had to toil and sacrifice together. They worshipped together.
This is one of the ultimate patterns of the Lord.
The ideal is marriage. It is not good for man or woman to be alone. That is the truth. God declared it Himself in the beginning. We were not meant to be alone.
Let’s talk about a couple of ways that our world is fallen and tries to take this away from us.
We live in a fallen world, full of hurt and selfishness and abuse and apathy and neglect. Somewhere inside, we know that we were meant to have true joy and so in a confused attempt to achieve this joy, we walk away from difficult and painful things. We shy away and assert that we’re happier on our own.
And honestly, that is probably true in specific circumstances. Perhaps a person who has been abused for years in a scary marriage has finally found peace in the quiet that has been left behind after that marriage has fallen apart. Perhaps this person has found themselves again and likes who they are. Of course they are happier than they were in a toxic relationship.
But ultimate joy is found in following the pattern of the Lord and no matter what you’ve been through, the Lord stands ready to walk that hard path back towards healing and peace so that you’re prepared to find joy on the other end.
We live in a fallen world where many find themselves without a partner through no fault of their own. We live in a fallen world where many long for this pattern but it hasn’t come to them yet.
Just because the Lord has an ideal and you haven’t received that blessing yet does not immediately equate with being unloved or being unworthy. It does not mean that your life has to be void of joy or meaning. When I say that marriage is the ideal, I’m not simultaneously testifying that being alone means worthless. It’s not worthless. The Lord can take any journey on any path and turn it into powerful, meaningful, joy-filled growth opportunities.
We teach that marriage is ideal, not because we want to rub salt in the wounds of those who find that truth painful but because we want to testify of what the Lord wants them to have.
He wants you to find what Adam and Eve found. He wants you to find what it means to labor alongside an eternal partner. He wants you to find what He has found with your Heavenly Mother. That blessing is there. He can see it.
We live in a fallen world where the ideal is far away from many. Even if you’re not abused, there are many who worship without a spouse who has stepped away. There are many who long for an eternal sealing, a full bench during sacrament meeting, someone to engage in the deepest parts of life with. There are many who have been victims of infidelity, and there are many who are the ones who engaged in the infidelity and also feel far away from the ideal.
I testify that the truth is this: It is not good for man or woman to be alone.
I also testify of another truth. Christ can take you exactly where you’re at, no matter how far away you feel from the ideal. I testify that Christ knows how you feel. I testify that He stands ready to walk the path before you with you.
In The Book of Mormon, we learn about the strait and narrow path to walk towards the love of God. It is not “straight.” It is “strait,” meaning “narrow.” I understand that this partially refers to the covenant path, but I also believe there is another layer of meaning.
When we picture the traditional life in church, we see finishing high school, going to college, serving a mission, coming home, getting married, finishing college, and having kids (sometimes with varying order). That’s the path. It’s straight. We can see it. We know how it’s supposedly meant to happen.
But God set us up for a fallen world, and that means that there isn’t a “straight” path. There are only “strait” paths. There is a path for you to walk, and along that path, there are pieces of salvation that you will be picking up. A spouse, selflessness, compassion, knowledge. God can see your strait path, and Christ stands ready to walk it with you. The ideal is available to you even if it’s not the path you would have chosen for yourself. Trust me; the path that God chooses is so much better even if it feels painful right now.
I testify that the ideal is to not be alone. The world will tell you that you’re better off alone or that you don’t need a relationship, and they’re right but only to an extent. You can be happy on your own. However, the ideal, the most amount of joy available, comes from being in a relationship centered on Christ. God declared this truth, Himself. Sometimes this truth feels unbearably painful because it feels withheld or tangled up with trauma, but it is still the truth. Luckily, I can simultaneously testify that if we cling to the Savior, He can help us find that ideal and He can help us be able to find joy in the strait path that eventually leads to the ideal. You can find joy now in less than ideal circumstances if you include Christ, and you will also eventually find the ultimate joy if you continue to hold to Christ.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 12, 2026
Creation: What I Learned Watching My Husband Build a House
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we read about the Creation story. I don’t have a specific verse to share, but I have an overarching idea that I want you to contemplate while reading the Creation story. There are many principles that we can talk about; we could talk about the power of God or His creative abilities. However, there is one principle I want to focus on because I feel like I’m watching a mini-version of it right before my eyes. These scriptures are rather poignant for me right now.
My husband, Conner, is currently working alongside others to build a house for our family. He has worked so hard on it; he has been actively involved in every step of the process including the construction itself, and he has the chemical burns from the wet concrete to prove it.
It has been an exhausting process for him; there have been extra challenges to face that I won’t go into detail over, but I wish I could describe the depth for which he fought for us to have this. There have been many times that I have watched his tenacity with fascination and curiosity because it’s so different from my eager willingness to walk away and give up. I legitimately don’t understand how he can be so obstinate and relentless to have made this come together for our family. There have been endless nights of research, gray hairs, even legitimate nightmares over the challenges that we (but mostly, he) faced in trying to make it all come together.
There were a lot of times when I felt like, “Enough is enough. Let’s cut our losses. We’re happy enough where we are.” But not Conner. He wouldn’t let it go.
Conner had more than one motivating factor that kept him going when I’m convinced that 99% of people would have given up. When he was a young boy, his family moved to Sharon, Vermont. It’s a tiny town where Joseph Smith Sr. met Lucy Mack. We went back to visit this town a couple of years ago, and they were still using the same General Store that had been used in Joseph Smith’s time. You could see through the floorboards. Conner’s family lived on an obscure piece of land, and it was heaven for Conner. He spent all day every day outside, playing in the stream and running through the woods even when the snow was as tall as him. He loved it. He was so proud to take me back and show me.
Conner is building us a house on a bit of land where our kids can experience the happiness that he experienced. I’m convinced that’s his motivating factor. That was what caused him to continue on despite obstacles that would have chased away anyone else.
I have watched my husband labor (and honest, labor seems like a euphemism for what he’s done) on behalf of my family. I have watched him go through the wringer because he wants his kids to have what he had.
And yes, one of the parallels of THE Creation story and our mini-creation story is the fact that there was sacrifice involved. However, I want to draw your attention to another detail.
You are so loved. Christ worked so hard to make this come together for us, and He gave an unfathomable sacrifice all because He. Loved. You.
I look forward to the day that my kids can walk into what my husband built. I look forward to sitting on our porch and watching them play, get dirty, wash off, and do chores alongside us in order to grow.
I hope that one day, I can convey the price their father paid for them to have what they have. I don’t want them to become depressed over the price or feel like they can’t go out and learn for fear of ruining everything. I don’t want them to sit and mope and lament that they didn’t deserve all the work their father put into it.
Of course they don’t deserve it! Of course they didn’t earn it! It wasn’t meant to be earned. It was a gift. I hope they are filled with tremendous gratitude that only sweetens the gift that we want them to enjoy. I hope they take advantage of the gift. I hope they run their little hearts out, following our rules for safety. I hope the gift helps them grow so that they can be as good as their father.
I currently try to teach my children about the gifts that their Savior gave them. I don’t want them to become depressed over the price that He willingly paid. I don’t want them to be terrified of going out to learn for fear of making mistakes. I don’t want them to sit and mope and lament that they didn’t deserve it.
Of course we don’t deserve it. Of course we didn’t earn it. It wasn’t meant to be earned. It was a gift. I hope we are filled with tremendous gratitude that sweetens the gift that our Savior wants us to enjoy. I hope we take advantage of the gift. I hope we wear ourselves out utilizing His gift, following His rules for safety and also trying to grow to become as good as Him.
I hope my kids look at their father one day and realize what it cost him to build this. I KNOW that my husband will look back at them and feel like he got a gift back just because he had the pleasure of watching them grow and receiving their love in return.
I hope that we look at Christ and realize what it cost Him to build this. I KNOW that Christ will look back at us and feel like He got a gift back just because He had the pleasure of watching us grow and receiving our love in return.
I testify that our Savior gave us many gifts. I testify that He sacrificed and built us a home. I testify that it cost Him more than we can understand. I also testify that He did it because He wanted to. He really just wanted the pleasure of watching us find what He has. He wanted the pleasure of us loving Him for it. He just wants us all to be happy together.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 1; Abraham 3 – Jennifer Roach Lees
Jan 11, 2026
Jennifer and guest Sarah Allen discuss the books of Moses and Abraham.
Sarah Allen is a Senior Researcher with FAIR, a former member of Scripture Central’s research team, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She is also the co-host of FAIR’s “Me, My Shelf, & I” podcast. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 1; Abraham 3 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 08, 2026
God Will Pause to Save You
by Autumn Dickson
I got a little lost as I was reading in Abraham at 6:00 am after staying up too late reading a book. Abraham had received a vision that showed him the workmanship of the Lord’s hands. He discerned a whole lot, and then the Lord started explaining some deeper things to him. I was pretty tired, and my mind drifted until I came across this verse.
Abraham 3:20 The Lord thy God sent his angel to deliver thee from the hands of the priest of Elkenah.
Everything was feeling a tad confusing to my tired mind until I read that verse. Interestingly enough, as I backed up and read previous verses and when I continued reading forward, verse 20 felt like an interruption. The Lord is speaking of intelligences, including His own. He is speaking of how He dwelt in the midst of them and so on and so forth. The chapter is showing His absolute majesty.
But He pauses and recalls how He saved Abraham’s mortal life from a priest who was trying to sacrifice him.
It felt like one of the most relevant interruptions I had ever read. It felt perfectly inserted into a sermon of how Christ rules over all of His creations.
Christ is powerful and wise and loving. He is the Creator and King. He has many important works that He is juggling, but He pauses long enough to save you.
Saving you from a mere mortal trial is nothing and everything to Him. It is nothing in relation to His power, and it is everything in relation to His love.
I want to share a story about how the Lord saved my family. Honestly, I’m not even sure the extent to which it has saved my family yet, but I feel strongly that one day I will understand just what the Lord did for us in moving us across the country. Despite all the other works that the Lord was juggling, I watched Him masterfully manipulate detail after detail after detail to put Conner on track for his life’s work. I will share some details, but I don’t even think I’m fully aware of all the details and timelines that the Lord set in motion to take care of us. I probably don’t remember all of the details, but I will tell you of a few.
Conner had told me for years that we would never leave Utah, but there had always been a nagging feeling in my heart that we would leave. I had prayed about it, and the Lord kept telling me not to worry about it. The time would come when it came, so I left it alone. Though it was likely one of the more traumatic eras of my husband’s life, I felt the Lord’s hand hovering over us the entire time.
Moving to Virginia the first time around was wild. My husband’s job had been taken away from him through a series of lies told by another person. Looking back, I am 99% certain my husband would have never left. It had to be taken away from him in order to propel him in the correct direction for his life. I praise the Lord for taking it away. That’s detail number one.
Conner was meant to end up out in Virginia, and so the Lord sent a friend to ask for his help. That was detail number two. The only reason I was able to get Conner out of our house and into the car was because it was a friend who had asked him to come.
We lived in a hotel for three months with three kids before moving to an apartment of a friend who had moved out west. We stayed in that apartment for two months before we received a big enough miracle that even my husband couldn’t ignore (he still wanted to go back to Utah).
We were staying in that apartment and the contract was running out soon. We could renew it, but the price would go up to more than we could really afford (especially since the job we had moved out for wasn’t working out as we hoped). I was at church one day when that lady I ministered to asked me if we had found a place to stay yet. I answered no.
Now let me tell you this portion of the timeline backwards. Monday, the very next day, was when we really decided that this job was not working out with our friend. I know Conner, and I know that the moment we realized it wasn’t working out, we were headed back to Utah. It was much cheaper to go back, and we had just spent inordinate amounts of money to go and stay in Virginia and it just wasn’t doable anymore especially since we were leaving the job. I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if we had packed up that day and drove back immediately.
However, the night before this final decision about the job was made, we received a message from a lady who had been sitting next to my ministering assignment when my ministering assignment had asked me if we had somewhere to live. This lady was a stranger at the time, and I’m going to name her Jill so that we can follow the story more easily. It turns out that Jill and her family had just bought a house even though they were headed overseas for ten months. She had a friend who was supposed to live in her house while they were gone, but that fell through.
So Jill looked me up since they needed someone to come and stay in their house. As it turns out, we were related distantly through marriage. After asking some questions to our mutual relatives, she messaged us the night before we would have made the decision to head back to Utah. She sent us messages about the house and immediately, Conner and I realized we wouldn’t be able to afford it. We asked how much she would charge us, and it was miraculously lower than what we would spend living in Utah. That was the very first time that Conner was like, “Maybe we are supposed to be in Virginia.”
We moved in almost immediately. Conner was led to a couple of other jobs that were so healthy for him and have enabled us to be exactly where we need. When we needed to come back to Utah temporarily, we found a flight pass that enabled Conner to go back and forth across the country for $25.
Detail after detail after detail after detail has lined up perfectly for us to be exactly where we need. I have no idea how He set things in motion a long time ago to set these things up for us.
But I do know this. In the midst of all His incredible works, He paused long enough to save my family. I know that it was both nothing and everything to Him; it was nothing in relation to His power, and it was everything in relation to His love.
I was not saved from a priest who was trying to kill me like Abraham was. I don’t know how many of us will face situations like that. However, the Lord can save us. Whatever you’re going through, it’s nothing in relation to His power, and it was everything in relation to His love. I promise you that whatever you’re facing, you are safe. When placed in the context of eternity, you are safe and everything will turn out better than you can imagine. He has handled much larger things than this, and they were likewise easy for Him to handle.
I testify of the power of our Lord. I testify of the love of our Lord. I testify that whatever you’re going through is just a blip on the spectrum of eternity. Reading Moses and Abraham gives us a glimpse into the eternal and can help us recognize that what we’re going through doesn’t have to take us down completely. I testify that it’s okay for things to be hard, but I also testify that nothing can defeat us if we keep close to the Lord.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Me, My Shelf, & I – How to read the Bible and love it
Jan 06, 2026
Jennifer Roach and Sarah Allen host this discussion. Guests are Allen Hansen, Ben Spackman, and David Harper.
Note: After this was recorded, the Church gave new guidance on additional Bible translations besides the KJV, which allows their use in Church settings and personal study.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moses 1; Abraham 3 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 05, 2026
In Similitude; Becoming Full of Grace and Truth
by Autumn Dickson
Before we jump straight into the Old Testament and the Creation story, we have an opportunity to read in Moses and Abraham. There are many truths that were restored through these works, and there are many truths we already know that are echoed. In Moses this week, we read about a vision that Moses was given on the top of a high mountain where Heavenly Father was speaking to him. Here is a verse from that vision.
Moses 1:6 And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.
There are a couple of phrases in here that are powerful, especially when put together. Let’s start with this one: “…and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth…” The Savior holds grace and truth within Him; He is full of it. Let’s talk about both individually.
Under Topics and Questions on the church website, we read this: “Grace is a gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ. The word grace, as used in the scriptures, refers primarily to enabling power and spiritual healing offered through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ.”
Christ is full of the enabling power and spiritual healing, and He offers it in mercy and love. There are a couple of other truths that we learn in that same topic page. Overcoming physical and spiritual death are part of the grace that He offers. He helps us do things we would not be able to do on our own. He strengthens us. He helps us return to live with God. He helps us every day.
The Savior is also full of truth. He knows things as they are. There are two different perspectives with which we can look at this idea of Christ being full of truth. One, we know that He is currently full of truth. He knows all things. He is omnipotent. When He tells us to do something, He knows what He is talking about. However, there is also another perspective. Christ may have all knowledge now, but it didn’t start out that way when He started His mortal journey on earth. On earth, He came as a baby and forgot everything. He had to learn truth through the power of the Spirit as He grew. He did not know everything on earth. Otherwise, He could not have remained on earth (Moses 1:5). So we know that Christ didn’t know everything while He was here, but He knew all of the most important truths and lived perfectly according to those truths.
There is another phrase in the first verse that we read that I want to utilize to add another layer here. “…Moses, my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten…” To be in the similitude of someone is to resemble them, not so much in looks, but in how one chooses to live one’s life. Moses was like Christ, even if he was not perfectly like Christ. Moses was likewise full of grace and truth.
When we are baptized, we promise to take the Savior’s name upon and become like Him. Essentially, we promised to be in a similitude of the Only Begotten. When people look at us, they should see something that roughly resembles the Savior. We can also be full of grace and truth. We may be full of grace and truth in a different way than Christ, but we can be full of it too.
Let’s go back through our paragraphs about how Christ is full of grace and how He is full of truth, and let’s look at the parallels in our own lives.
1. We can be full of grace.
We can offer the enabling power and spiritual healing with mercy and love. No, we cannot offer it in the same way that Christ can, but we can help with it. When you sin and harm your spirit, another person can’t go in and fix it. However, another person can take you to the doctor.
As I was growing up, I had a shame problem. I took guilt beyond its helpful, proper boundaries and tried to beat myself into submission in the gospel. Not a great way to approach the gospel.
I remember being on my mission, and my companion and I came in later than we were supposed to. We didn’t set out to be disobedient, but we did make that mistake and it could have been prevented with a bit more effort on our part. I remember telling my companion that I didn’t feel guilty and that I felt bad about not feeling guilty. With no hesitation she simply responded, “Maybe Heavenly Father knows you don’t need to feel guilty in order to do better.” And she was definitely right. Coming in late happened once on my mission. Making me feel guilty wasn’t going to change that. It wouldn’t have served me. It was such a simple, nonchalant thing for her to say, but it changed my life.
I had experienced a lot of self-inflicted spiritual damage in the name of trying to force myself to do better. Attacking myself and berating myself over mistakes didn’t draw me closer to Christ or help me be better. Ironically, it did the opposite. My companion did not spiritually heal me. She is not the one who could take away those feelings or pay the price for them. Rather, she took me to the doctor. The grace she offered me was not her own, but she was still full of it.
Overcoming physical death is a little different. We’re not sure how resurrection looks or how that comes to pass. Do we get to help with that process through the power of Jesus Christ in the same way that we help with ordinances like baptism? Even if we don’t, we can still point others towards Christ and hope for the resurrection. Overcoming spiritual death is similar to offering healing; it is a part of healing. It’s not our power, but we can take people to the doctor. His power can be offered through us.
We can help others do things they would not be able to do on their own. We can strengthen others. We can help others return to live with God. We can help others every day.
2. We can be full of truth.
Eventually, we are going to progress to the extent that we know all things. That will take a long time. Until then, we can know all of the most important truths. We can be so full of truth that we live our lives differently than we would otherwise. My dad used to frequently echo the truth taught by Boyd K. Packer that doctrine changes behavior faster than a study of behavior changes behavior.
When we see and know things as they are, we change accordingly and we feel differently. “As they are” is a really key phrase here. I’ve learned to see things as they are a lot more clearly since I became a mother. Let me give some examples.
My third child, KJ, is obsessed with our youngest baby. She is constantly running over to Vivian and rolling her over so she can hold her down and cuddle her. Vivian is less than impressed now that she can walk. I swear I sound like a broken record all day, “KJ, let her go. KJ, let her go.” There was one time that KJ did it where Vivian got hurt. Vivian’s leg got stuck at a bad angle while KJ was trying to roll her over, and Vivian started crying pretty hard.
KJ felt so bad she could hardly stand it. She ran and hid on the stairs. After making sure Vivian was okay, I called KJ over to me. KJ couldn’t even look at me. She was trying to swallow back tears, and her chin kept trembling. It was rather cute on her four year old face. I remember feeling that way before when I accidentally hurt my dog when I was younger. I could hardly bear to even look at my dog the whole day because it hurt so bad.
As I sat and thought about how that felt, the Spirit taught me something, and I was able to teach it to KJ. I told KJ, “The bad feeling is actually a good sign. It means you’re a good person because you would never want to hurt Vivian. If you weren’t feeling bad, then that would be a bad sign. Feeling bad just means you love her so much.” I guess the Spirit testified of that truth to her, and she brightened immediately and ran after Vivian again.
Being full of truth is more than being able to recite that God judges us by our hearts. It’s understanding how God’s judgment works and being able to thwart Satan when he tries to mix us up. It is understanding the knowledge. It is applying the knowledge to any given situation and acting accordingly.
If we want to be full of the truth like the Savior, it’s more than just reciting what the Savior said. It’s understanding what He said and seeing things as they really are.
I testify that the Savior is full of grace and truth, and I testify that one of His purposes is to help us become so as well. This is done line upon line, with each practice taking us closer and closer. It’s about taking our hearts with us into those actions, rather than going through the motions of the gospel. I likewise testify that the Savior is trying to fill us with grace and truth because He loves us and knows it will make us happier.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Introduction to the Old Testament – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 01, 2026
How to Fall in Love With the Old Testament This Year
by Autumn Dickson
This week is an introduction to the Old Testament rather than any specific group of scripture. With my last post for this scripture block, I testified of the value of studying the Old Testament. With this post, I want to talk about a couple of things we can do to maximize what we take out of it.
The first way is to let go of the need to read everything listed for the week. When I was in seminary in high school, we were encouraged to read the book of scripture that we were studying for that year. I am Type A, and so I read it all in order. There was a whole lot that was unhelpful to me at that period in time, and I walked away from the Old Testament with reinforced ideas that it was difficult.
You don’t have to push yourself to read everything for the week. Scripture study is not about finishing an assignment; it’s about drawing closer to God. Reading each and every line in high school didn’t draw me closer to God; it just gave my intense personality the satisfaction of saying I was able to complete the whole thing.
Instead of reading everything through, consider finding one story to study throughout the week, and then observe that story through multiple resources and angles. Summarize it so you understand what’s going on; you can actually also ask AI for a summary of the chapters from an LDS perspective. Make sure you understand where it is in the timeline as a whole. Ask AI about culturally significant points, Israeli history, and symbols to study. This is helpful because even though AI isn’t perfect, it can give you something to follow along so you’re not completely lost in the thick of it. It’s a game changer.
On top of using AI, utilize other Christian resources. We may not have everything in common, but Christians know their bible. I frequently utilize websites from other churches, including other translations of the bible, to help me understand what is going on in what I’m reading. Even if the King James version of the bible is the closest translation, other translations can help me understand what the King James version is trying to say. None of these translations are perfect, but that doesn’t mean they can’t add layers of understanding.
Another tip. Learn about the characters, and then ask yourself what they might have been feeling. Learn about the world they were born into and ask yourself how you might have been if you were born into the same world. Learn who they are and what makes them like or unlike Christ. Find modern day examples of their choices and learn how Christ might react in our day.
Which is my next practical tip. This one is found in the Come Follow Me manual, but I wanted to share my personal experience with it. Find Christ. Try to find Christ in a way that you haven’t seen before. Find Christ in the people and symbols. Find Christ for them. If they didn’t turn to Christ, ponder how things might have been different if they had chosen Him. Then take a minute to observe your own life and whether you’re rejecting Him in the same ways that they did. Ask yourself the question, “What decisions did Christ make in relation to His people? Why did He make that decision? How does it show His love? What is He trying to teach them?”
Whenever I’ve gotten stuck trying to pull something out of a scripture block, it is helpful to look for Christ. I’ve learned that there is always something there.
My last practical tip is simple. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to ignore the words completely and let the Spirit speak.
This is not an example with the scriptures, but it is an example with the word of God.
As I’m working on this, the October General Conference has just been completed. I didn’t have many questions written down. I didn’t try setting up my entire house so that my kids would be distracted and occupied so I could focus (that hasn’t worked in the past). At one point during the conference, I sent a picture of four kids climbing on my lap. I didn’t even know my lap was big enough to have four kids sitting on it, let alone climbing. I sent the caption, “If you ask me what I got out of conference, the answer is nothing.” And honestly, conference ended up being exactly what I thought it would be. I was always putting out small fires like giant bloody noses from my two year old or messes from our new puppy.
My goal for this past conference was low. I just wanted it on in my house, even if it was just background noise. I’ve learned that if I strive for more than that, I usually just end up angry with my kids for being kids. So rather, I wanted it on so it could invite the Spirit and if the Lord really needed to tell me something, then the Spirit would be there.
As I found myself watching my two year old in the bathtub (the bloody nose really was gnarly), I found peace with my computer sitting up on the counter playing conference on YouTube. I learned that even if I couldn’t sit at Christ’s feet like Mary, I could still feel the Spirit when my family needed me to be Martha.
You were not created for the scriptures. The scriptures were created for you. Utilize them for you. You don’t have to beat yourself over the head for imperfection. I testify of scripture study, but I also testify that studying can look like the scriptures playing in the background of whatever fire you’re putting out. It can look like carrying one of the people in your heart while you’re going throughout your day. It can look like completely missing the words of what you’re reading or listening to and simply leaning on Christ when you take a few moments to catch your breath. I testify of studying the scriptures in the exact way that they bring you closer to Christ. Don’t put pressure on yourself to make it look like someone else’s study. Let Christ show you how to draw closer to Him by utilizing the Old Testament this year.
I testify that the Old Testament is worth it, and I testify that it’s possible to get something out of the Old Testament. I testify that we live in a world where scripture study doesn’t have to look traditional; it just has to bring you closer to Christ. I testify that you can read words on a page and have the Spirit tell you something completely different. I always testify that Christ wants to draw closer to you, and I testify that He can do so through the Old Testament if you simply let Him know you’re willing to let it happen.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Introduction to the Old Testament – Jennifer Roach Lees
Dec 31, 2025
Why does the Old Testament still matter? What translations are good? Should I get a study Bible? These questions and more are discussed in this week’s episode.
Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Introduction to the Old Testament – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 29, 2025
A Nagging Feeling; A Gift
by Autumn Dickson
Welcome to the Old Testament. I remember the first year I prepared to teach from the Old Testament back in 2022, and I remember being quite overwhelmed with the idea of it. The Old Testament is a very foreign way of writing; it holds a lot of cultural context that can make it difficult. As I worked to prepare messages that year, I found that I wasn’t totally wrong in my apprehension. The Old Testament was hard, and it took me much longer to find messages in there and to understand the messages.
But I also grew to love the Old Testament that year. I testify that it is worth studying, and it’s worth the extra effort. Oftentimes the things that require the most of us are the very things that draw us closer to Christ and therefore, become our favorite things.
Which is actually what I want to share today.
I remember sitting in a church class and hearing someone say something along the lines of, “We need to stop making people feel bad if they don’t study everyday. Some of us just can’t, and God still loves us.” I thought that was an interesting observation to make for a couple of reasons.
The first reason I found it interesting was because I hadn’t heard a single comment that was remotely condemning towards those who hadn’t been studying everyday. If someone was feeling guilty about not studying, it wasn’t coming directly from the other people who were commenting. Was it coming from the Holy Ghost or from social pressure? I’m not sure. However, let’s focus more on my second reason for finding this comment interesting. That reason is going to take the rest of my message.
The Lord very strongly asked me to start creating content for the Come Follow Me program. It started with a blog; I felt much more comfortable with this because I could hide behind my writing and not put my face up there. I still didn’t want to do the blog because it sounded like it would take a ton of effort, but it sounded more doable than other forms of sharing content. The Lord is tricky that way sometimes because after I got the hang of a blog, He told me to expand my efforts to YouTube. Then a podcast. Instagram. Facebook. TikTok. I fought Him every step of the way if we’re being totally honest.
There are a couple of reasons I fought Him. The first reason was that I didn’t want to be more visible. I had spent a good portion of my life trying to make myself more visible to feel better about myself, and it had only ever burned me. There came a point when I started doing the exact opposite. The second reason is more applicable to what I want to talk about. It was going to be so much work.
And it was. Oh my, this has all been so much work. Each step of the way has required a huge learning curve. Creating a website was overwhelming, and there were many angry tears. I almost gave up completely the first time I ever filmed a video and if it hadn’t been for my husband forcing me back into the room to try again, I might have given up. Every step of the way, my soul fought with Him over adding just a bit more. I argued that I already didn’t have time to do what I was doing. I argued that it was already requiring so much of me to put myself out there. I argued that I was already sacrificing a lot for this.
But He persisted and has won up to this point.
The effort extended beyond just a learning curve for technology. Trying to share a message about Jesus Christ every single week has been…stretching. I can’t tell you how often I’ve felt that I had nothing left to share. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had writers block and stared at the screen for a collective number of hours with nothing to show for it. I’ve been led down research rabbit holes that sometimes amounted to something, and other times, it all came to an anticlimactic stop.
I’m a stay-at-home mom who started creating content in 2020. I will hit my 6 year mark this year. To say that I have studied the scriptures is an understatement because my qualifications for this were non-existent beyond what my parents had lovingly taught me at home. I had to study, harder than I ever studied in school, to allow the Lord to help me create.
I testify that it was so much work, and can’t testify enough of how this work has changed me. Behind the role of mother and wife, creating this content week after week after week has completely transformed me. It has changed me more than my mission changed me. I am completely new.
So should my friend feel bad about not reading the scriptures? Many people would say, “No! Don’t make them feel bad! It’s better to just teach them the happy effects of scripture study to inspire them.” And you know what? Maybe they’re right. I think oftentimes, it is most effective to try and inspire someone into doing the right thing to make their life better.
On the flip side, the only reason I started this journey was because I could no longer enjoy my TV show or book while my kids were napping. Every time I sat down to watch and take my break, I felt that nagging feeling that I needed to be investing my time in what God wanted me to do. To be 100% honest, I felt bad for ignoring Him. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t following what He had asked me to do is the very thing that got me started on one of the most life-changing things I’ve ever experienced. The bad feeling was exactly what I needed.
So was my friend feeling the Holy Ghost or the pressures of the society around her? I don’t know.
But I do know this. Acting on that guilty feeling and prioritizing study (because heaven knows the Old Testament requires study) is life-changing. It is hard, but all the best things are. Don’t miss out. Someday you’ll be given the opportunity to see what you missed out on, and I’m almost positive that’s half the reason for the gnashing of teeth on the other side. We will be so mad at ourselves for missing out.
Studying in order to create content each week has been so hard. So hard. So painfully hard. Weeks on end of feeling like I was trying to move the Great Wall of China with just my hands.
But studying is worth it. I can testify of that principle more than I can testify of a lot of principles.
You don’t have to be perfect. There were so many imperfect days, but even the imperfect days contributed to changing me. Commit to yourself that this year is the year that you’ll engage in scripture study. The Old Testament has to be studied.
When the day comes that you’re willing to engage in the commandment to study the word of God everyday, you will get to the point where you will wish you had started earlier. Oh how I wish I had developed the hope I have now while I was still in high school. It would have saved me in so many ways.
I testify that scripture study is worth it. I testify that the Old Testament has a lot to give if you’re willing to give. God stands ready to speak to you and change your life. He stands ready to let the hope of Christ completely transform how you feel about everything important in your life. Let the Spirit tell you that you need to give more of yourself because that is the Spirit telling you how to elevate your life to a whole new level. Listen.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Christmas – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 26, 2025
Jesus’ Lineage; Our Lineage
by Autumn Dickson
I opened up the New Testament this week to study the birth of Christ. I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I’m going to take you to part of it with me. My rabbit hole took me all over the place, but I’m going to try and simplify it into some basic ideas. It’s going to be very technical at first and there are some nice enough implications, but then I want to more broadly apply it to the rest of us.
The thing that really got me started down this rabbit hole is the fact that the very first verses we read in the New Testament are the lineage of Joseph. Funny enough, I had never noticed it consciously before because I usually just skip over that part. As I thought about it a bit further, I realized that it was odd. Why are we sharing Joseph’s lineage when Jesus isn’t of that lineage? Wouldn’t it be more effective and helpful to share Mary’s lineage (Yes, I know that wasn’t the tradition then; it just seems like it would make more sense considering the fact that she’s his biological mother).
I then learned that many biblical scholars believe that we do have Christ’s lineage through Mary. In Luke’s account, we receive another account of lineage. This listed lineage lists Joseph, but scholars believe that it’s Mary’s line anyway. It just mentioned Joseph because of social norms. There are some other theories surrounding Luke’s account of lineage, but the most widespread theory is that it really is Mary’s line. We’re going to go with that theory for all intents and purposes in this particular post.
Why is lineage important? Well, it’s important for a few reasons. We’ll talk about its significance in the life of Christ, and then we’ll talk about its significance in our own lives.
It had been prophesied that Christ would come off of the Davidic line. Beyond that, He wasn’t going to be just some random descendant but heir to the throne (if the Romans hadn’t been in charge at the time). Christ’s lineage through Mary and Joseph was really important for this particular prophecy.
Christ comes off of the Davidic line biologically through Mary. This biological portion of being from the Davidic line is important for obvious reasons. However, Joseph’s line is important too. Through Joseph, Christ is able to be known as an heir to the throne of David because that kind of thing always legally passed through males.
I spent some time learning about Jewish customs and laws surrounding adoption, and I’ll give you a couple of short facts. There wasn’t much of a legal proceeding with official records and paperwork when it came to adoption. Rather, if a man stepped up to the role of father in a child’s life, that child was legally adopted. If the father treated the child as his own, then the child held claim to everything that the other children held claim to. Inheritances, the family name, all of it. This was actually really important in a society where it mattered who your family was. Christ was of the Davidic line in all the ways that mattered.
And this is absolutely amazing. It’s cool to think about how God orchestrated every single detail to come together for Christ to fulfill prophecy. It’s amazing. Even with His human side coming through His mother, He was still legally adopted and considered an heir through Joseph’s line.
But I actually want to take this further to allusions surrounding our own heritage, inheritances, and legality in terms of God’s family.
Like Christ, there are two parts that play into our inheritance. Biologically (not sure if that’s the right word but we’re going to run with it because I don’t have a better word), we are spirit sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Because of our divine parentage, we were always meant to inherit a throne. It’s within our “blood,” so to speak.
But there’s another portion of this.
Through divine authority known as the priesthood, we are “legally” adopted into the family of God. There are three parts to this next thing I was to talk about. Christ could have stepped into His kingship if the Jews had been RIGHTEOUS enough to hold on to their kingdom. Joseph SACRIFICED and LEGALLY ADOPTED Christ and because of that, Christ would have been able to step into His kingship. If Israel had been righteous, Christ would have been king.
If we are RIGHTEOUS and lay claim upon Christ’s power to LEGALLY ADOPT us into the House of Israel, the because of Christ’s SACRIFICE, we are to be divine heirs.
As another detail in inheritance that is rich in meaning, primogeniture (firstborn son’s claim to the throne over other children) was overwhelmingly common but not the absolute rule. Through wickedness or directly through the decisions of God, the older could be deemed unfit to inherit such power.
Heavenly Father truly is the Master. All of the details are laid out so beautifully. There are a million parallels in the gospel that add layer upon rich layer to our understanding.
I testify that God is in the details. The more I learn about the gospel, the more I am filled with a sense of awe at all of His orchestration. I testify that we come from a divine family, and I testify that Christ made a sacrifice and gave us the power we needed to adopt us into His family as well. All of these combine to an astounding truth; we have been set up to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, to inherit a divine throne. There is so much we were born into. God has so much in store for us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Christmas – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 22, 2025
The Cost of Christmas
by Autumn Dickson
Christ is the center figure in history. He was the promised Messiah who saved and changed the world. He brings light into the world. He created the world.
But a long time ago, He was just a baby that was born in a small town to a couple who had just begun their life together. Despite all that it cost them, they welcomed Christ into this world.
This week is Christmas, and as such, we focus on Christ. I would also like to draw our attention to those who welcomed Him into the world. I want to talk about Mary and Joseph who welcomed Him into their family and watched over Him when He was vulnerable. Maybe we can learn what it truly means to invite Christ into our lives.
Inviting Christ into their home was not easy. Right from the beginning, the couple faced difficulty and potential ridicule. Mary could have been in a lot of danger for being pregnant without being married, and Joseph, her betrothed, was likely very confused when she came to tell him about what was happening.
Instead of being able to rest and bring him into the world at home, Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem. It was a small town six miles away from Jerusalem, and it was packed because people had travelled there as part of the census.
He was potentially born in a stable, and most people know that story. Other biblical scholars suggest that the birth story may have played out differently. From a different translation, it is possible that Christ was born amongst the animals on the first floor of a family home that Mary and Joseph were staying at. Regardless, it wasn’t a comfortable birth, and I can’t imagine that she was comfortable while travelling right before giving birth.
I had the tremendously unique experience of going to Bethlehem and Jerusalem while pregnant. I testify that it’s not comfortable, and I had a car and an air-conditioned room to sleep in.
Shortly after the birth, Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt to protect their Son. Instead of going home, they spent anywhere from several months to two years in Egypt amongst people who were very different from the Jews. They were separated from family and friends with very little ability to communicate with them. Joseph wasn’t practicing his work where he had been previously, and Mary was on her own as a first time mother in an unprecedented situation of raising the Son of God.
The Bible gives us very little after that. There were the wise men. Christ grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Christ turns water to wine for Mary at a wedding. Somewhere along the line, Mary lost Joseph despite Christ’s power.
And then, of course, Mary also had to lose her Son. We don’t know how much she knew about what was happening on that cross. She had pondered in her heart, and the angel had warned her that her heart would be pierced with sorrow as a result of bringing Christ into the world, but did she understand what was going on? Or, like the apostles, was she confused at what happened? Did she feel dreadfully alone with Joseph gone and now her oldest Son as well?
When we speak of inviting Christ into our lives, we often speak of rejoicing and peace and miracles. These are very real factors that Mary and Joseph both experienced as part of having the Messiah be born into their home. I have found immense amounts of joy since I have accepted Christ as my Savior and leaned into His promises. They are real and true.
There is also difficulty that comes with inviting Christ into our lives. There was very real difficulty that came into the life of Mary and Joseph as a direct result of welcoming Christ into their home. There will be difficulty in your life that comes as a direct result of inviting Christ into your heart and home. It will be different from the kind of difficulty experienced by Mary and Joseph, but it will be difficult nonetheless.
It can be difficult to invite Christ into your home when it brings uncertainty, rocks the boat, or brings potential whispers and judgment. It can be difficult when we’re asked to jump into the dark and trust when we’re called to go somewhere, and we don’t know how it will work out. It can be difficult when the responsibilities we’ve been given take us away from our families. It can be difficult when the powerful God that you love doesn’t give you a miracle to save your family member. It can feel lonely and even devastating.
There comes a point where you get to decide if it’s worth inviting Him in.
If an angel appeared to you and warned you about the sorrow that would pierce your heart as a result of inviting Christ into your life, how would you respond?
He follows us into our darkest moments. Will we follow Him when things get dark? Will we follow Him when the bread stops? Will we follow Him when we don’t feel that gigantic hug from behind when we’re praying and asking for help? Will we follow Him when we have to face our own cross? Will we resent Him if He doesn’t answer how we want Him to answer us? Will we curse His name when He takes away instead of giving?
Would we invite Him into our hearts and homes again, knowing what we know?
Why would you invite Him in again?
I love to testify of how Christ shows up for us. I want to take this moment to testify of a grand opportunity to show up and give our loyalty to Him no matter where He chooses to take us. It can be difficult to follow Christ when it feels like He asks too much. It can be difficult to follow Christ when He requires not just our obedience and time, but our whole souls.
I testify that He is worth our loyalty. He has earned our undying loyalty, and we will never truly be let down if we’re willing to give it to Him. I testify that offering our whole souls, just as He offered His own, is liberating and beautiful. He will never let us down even when we have to follow Him through difficulty and darkness. We can hold to Him and His promises.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – The Family: A Proclamation to the World – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 18, 2025
Happiness in Marriage
by Autumn Dickson
This week is all about The Family Proclamation. Here is the topic I want to cover.
Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to talk about happiness in marriage specifically, but the principles I speak about can be applied more broadly to any relationship you’re going to be a part of.
Marriages are falling apart in our day. Satan is coming after the family in a multi-pronged attack, but destroying marriages is just one part of how he chooses to do this. Social media loves showing off images of bright and shiny couples, individuals who seem so much happier alone, and advice about how your spouse should be acting towards you.
We’re taught that we deserve to be happy and if we’re not happy, we should leave. We’re taught that if a spouse can’t meet our needs, we can’t be happy. We’re taught that it’s better for the kids if we’re happy. And yet, despite all of this teaching, the world can’t seem to get it together and be happy.
Oh the irony.
I love my marriage. I’m so grateful to have Conner, and there are a lot of reasons for that. One of those reasons is not because Conner or I have been perfect. It’s not because we agree on everything, or even agree on everything that’s really important. It’s not because we’ve never been mean to each other or because we’ve never had to navigate days at a time where we can’t really figure out how to get past something. It’s not because Conner is so intuitive at reading me or because I never complain.
We are two different people with different baggage, different perspectives, different personalities, different ways of handling things. We are two people who experience times of drowning stress, resentment, uncertainty, and traumas.
It can be easy to look at happy couples and assume that they have it easy, but that’s not true. It’s not true for anyone. There are relationships that hold more difficulty than others which is why I encourage everyone to seek the help of the Lord in knowing what to do. However, if you’ve married a generally decent person who doesn’t scream at you, belittle you, act violently towards you, financially abuse you, then there is hope for happiness.
And your best chance for happiness lies in following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Christ didn’t focus on communication styles or on making sure you have everything in common ahead of entering a relationship. He didn’t focus on love languages or living together ahead of time to see if you’re compatible or any of the other stuff that the world tries pushing so hard. He doesn’t even focus on making sure the other person knows how to take care of you in a relationship. He didn’t focus on changing the other person so that you could be happy.
The foremost characteristic of Christ’s life was love, love for God and then love for others. Everything He did, the miracles and leading and teaching and forgiving and gratitude and serving all boiled down to that great love. If we want to be happy, we have to love the other person more fully.
In order to find this happiness, you have to have a correct understanding of what that love looks like. Otherwise, you run the risk of building up more resentment rather than finding happiness. Love does not mean you’re a doormat. It doesn’t mean you never say anything or complain. It doesn’t mean that you smile and stay silent when you’re hurting.
Love is not an outward action. It is an inward feeling that inspires different kinds of outward actions.
Sometimes love does mean looking at the back of a person and choosing to smile even when they’re doing something annoying again. Sometimes it does mean mercy and forgiveness and letting go when none of it was your fault. Sometimes it means accepting them exactly as they are and finding it within yourself to feel affectionate anyway.
Other times, the most loving thing you can do is speak up. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is tell someone they’re wrong. The beautiful thing about it coming from a place of love is that the Spirit can help you know how to handle the situation in the best way available. Chastisement also hits differently when you can feel that the other person is actually more worried about you rather than worried about how you’re making their life harder.
Think of it in this way. When Conner comes to correct me sometimes (which we do often enough for each other), I get up in arms sometimes. My gut reaction is to insist that he doesn’t understand what I’m going through, and criticism isn’t helpful. Luckily, I have a husband who gets this, and he often continues the conversation calmly. He also dives in and tells how it would be better for me if I chose to make different decisions. It’s extremely effective.
He once told me that I needed to be more consistent in my discipline with one of our kids. I was so mad. It is so difficult to keep up sometimes, and it’s hard to figure out the balance between disciplining your kids and letting it go because you’re desperate or because you don’t want them to feel like terrible kids. But he continued on calmly. He told me that I was actually making my own life harder by letting things go, that it would only take a couple of days of consistency and my kids would know I was serious. He was totally right but beyond that, he also did it with sincere love for me, and that made all the difference.
Correcting me was a form of love; it was Christlike. Not to mention, it landed differently because it was about love for me. He wasn’t correcting me because I was making his life more difficult. He was correcting me because he really wanted me to live better.
I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a hard point to reach. It is hard to love someone when you don’t feel loved. It’s hard to love someone when you feel like you’re the only one who has been stepping up. It’s hard to love someone when you’re drowning in your own stress. It calls upon some of your deepest willpower and self-observation.
I’m not talking about reaching down and hollowing yourself out and giving the last pieces of yourself. I’m not talking about resigning yourself to misery because you have to love them rather than begging them to change. I’m talking about letting go of your need to change them in order for you to find happiness. I’m talking about actively working on yourself, not to stop complaining or to stop nitpicking, but to actively and consciously choose to love them in the hardest moments.
If you want to be happy in family life, you have to follow the teachings of Christ. One of the foremost characteristics of Christ, the characteristic that motivated everything else, was a sincere and deep love of everyone. Including those who wouldn’t change or didn’t deserve it.
If you want to be happy, love freely. Happiness doesn’t come from being loved perfectly; it comes from loving more perfectly. That is the truth. You have to change yourself to love the other person more freely.
This goes for any kind of relationship. This doesn’t mean you need to stay in every relationship, but loving the other person will help you heal faster even if that person was awful. It’s counterintuitive but true. Truly loving someone frees you and heals you and brings happiness.
Perhaps it seems too simple for your problem. Maybe you’re insisting that I don’t know your spouse and how hard it is.
You’re right. I don’t. But I do know the power of changing to be like Christ. I do know that He was the most brilliant Man to ever walk the earth. I know that He knows what He was talking about. In any situation in your marriage (or any other relationship), trying to adopt love into your heart in the way that Christ loved will make the difference.
I testify that happiness in any kind of relationship comes when we act like Christ. We find happiness. I testify that even if you can’t find happiness directly in your relationship, there is a powerful happiness available in drawing closer to Christ. There is a powerful happiness that comes when you find it within yourself to love the other person and lean on Christ and His deep love when you need it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – The Family: A Proclamation to the World – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 15, 2025
The True Definition of “Preside”
by Autumn Dickson
The Family Proclamation turned 30 this year. It is a document that teaches about God’s plan for families. Though many believe it to be outdated, I testify of its ongoing relevance. Its principles hold truth that can protect and save. If everyone went home and tried to follow the principles within this document, society would evolve overnight.
As I approach some of these principles in this post, it’s important to note that The Family Proclamation is the ideal. None of us are going to reach the ideal on this side of the veil, but we still teach the ideal. Sometimes teaching the ideal has the undesirable side effect of making us feel discouraged. We cannot afford to let that take hold in our lives. Satan would love to take the ideal and twist it so that it crushes us, and we get to decide whether we let those feelings into our lives or whether we hold on to the hope that is Jesus Christ.
So, like the Family Proclamation, I want to try and teach the ideal. Your circumstances may not allow the ideal. How you grew up may not have even afforded you a glimpse of the ideal, but consciously choose how you’re going to look at this ideal. You can look at it and wonder if God doesn’t love you because you don’t have that ideal, you can feel hopeless about ever reaching that ideal, OR you can tell Satan to back off. God teaches the ideal so you can strive for it, but God also teaches the ideal because He’s trying to give you a glimpse of His promises to you. He is saying, “This is what I want for you because I love you. This is what you were always meant to have. This IS what you will have if you hold on.”
So let’s talk about one of these truths with that understanding.
One of the truths that is often mocked and twisted is regarding fathers.
By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.
There is a lot that we could dissect in that one sentence, but I’m going to pull out one of the first phrases.
Fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness.
“Preside” is the troublesome word in the eyes of the world. According to the dictionary, the word “preside” means to be in a position of authority so when we use this word, we often picture a home where the father gets the final say on any decision. Even when a husband loves his wife and listens to her honest opinion, it doesn’t feel good to think that the man still gets the final say, and that’s it. Is that really the end of the story? Even when he loves and listens to his wife, there are still moments where her perspectives go unheard because apparently it’s divinely appointed. Then, there’s the pressure that gets placed on the man for this kind of responsibility. No longer does he have a true partner to share life with. He carries it all because it ultimately falls on him.
There have been a lot of things in the gospel and church that haven’t always felt perfect or right when I’ve originally learned about them. I’ve learned that if I trust God and keep going, I’ve been led to answers from Him. It has been no different with this particular principle.
If you keep reading in The Family Proclamation, you come across this line as well.
In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.
This is our first hint that maybe we don’t fully understand what we’re reading. How can two people be equal partners if one person always gets the final say unless it’s specifically “given” to the other partner? So which part am I reading wrong? Which part don’t I understand? Is it the “equal” part or the “presiding” part?
As I’ve pondered this particular question, I had a thought come to my mind.
If I truly want to have the family that the Lord wants me to have, I have to ignore the world’s meaning of the word “preside” and embrace what the Lord means by the word “preside.”
This isn’t just me trying to skirt my way around a difficult issue. It’s not me doing mental gymnastics to try and make sense of it. Look at the Lord. The Lord presides differently than the rest of the world. He is the ultimate presiding officer and yet, we didn’t see Him going around and making demands. We didn’t see Him silencing good people and ignoring the opinions of others. He certainly wasn’t disregarding the women in His life in the name of presiding officer.
One of the foremost characteristics of Christ’s life was His desire to serve. He devoted His life to securing what was best for everyone around Him. He was the ultimate presiding officer, and He was also the ultimate servant. Perhaps in the eyes of the Lord, presiding means the first person to step up and serve everyone around them. Presiding meant making decisions sometimes, but it also meant encouraging others to step up and lead. Presiding meant washing feet; it meant laying down His life, not putting His life above all others.
Presiding, according to the Lord’s interpretation, also means lifting everyone. The ultimate purpose of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are to bring about our immortality and eternal life. They want to lift us to where They are. It’s not about controlling us and forcing us to do what they think is best. It’s about meeting us where we’re at and trying to lift us so that we can be as good and wise and loving and happy as They are.
I hold no issue with this definition of my husband presiding in my home.
I testify that the gospel holds up on closer inspection. Things that may seem troublesome or off can stand up to the light when we look at it with Christ. I testify that Heavenly Father has a plan for our families. I testify that His plan is based on serving each other and lifting each other, not ruling over each other.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – The Articles of Faith and Official Declarations 1 and 2 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 11, 2025
If God is so Powerful, Why Didn’t He Just Stop Their Enemies?
by Autumn Dickson
I want to share something from the Official Declaration 1, the declaration that ended the practice of polygamy in the latter-days. This post isn’t specifically about polygamy, but the principle I want to teach is being taught through the polygamy example.
The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question, and He also told me that if they would listen to what I said to them and answer the question put to them, by the Spirit and power of God, they would all answer alike, and they would all believe alike with regard to this matter.
He then proceeds to ask the people what would be better: to comply with the law of the land and cease the practice of polygamy or continue to practice polygamy and lose the priesthood organization and temples and be forced to stop polygamy anyway?
I’ve heard people express the idea that the church supposedly believes in revelation but fold the second they receive outside pressure. I’ve heard it conveyed that it was so convenient for the Lord to stop the practice of polygamy when things got too difficult for the people to live it. Even as a teenager, I believed in the church but remember thinking, “Isn’t there a third option? Can’t the Lord enable them to continue practicing polygamy without losing all of the men and the temples?”
Though polygamy is unique in many ways, there is not really any new argument against God. These specific questions boil down to a question that is as old as religion, “If your God is truly so powerful, why doesn’t He enable you?”
The answer to that specific question varies because the circumstances of mankind vary, but I’ll do my best to teach the overarching principles by referring to this specific example of polygamy.
According to President Woodruff, the Saints were facing some pretty dire circumstances. He had a vision of everything that the Saints would lose if they continued the practice of polygamy. To put it shortly, they would lose everything that mattered. I don’t think Satan was worried about stopping polygamy as he was about utilizing polygamy to stop the work in general. If the Saints continued on, this would surely stop the work. They would lose temples and the men; if they lost these, apostasy would reign and Satan would have won (especially since the Lord has promised that we will not fall into a Great Apostasy again).
When we face dire circumstances, the Lord can react in a number of ways and He makes wise decisions based on what will bring about His purposes.
The Lord’s potential reaction #1:
Sometimes He asks us to continue on through difficulty and lose everything. I think of Abinadi. Abinadi was asked to continue preaching despite the fact that it put his life in danger. Abinadi died. Sometimes the Lord asks for the ultimate sacrifice. He could have asked the Saints to make the ultimate sacrifice, but He didn’t.
The Lord’s potential reaction #2:
The Lord can tell His people to keep going and then remove the difficulty. There are a million examples of this, the most obvious being Moses parting the Red Sea.
When it came to polygamy, the Lord could have responded in this way. He could have “parted the sea” and removed the difficulty. The Lord could have enabled His Saints to continue practicing polygamy. He could have wiped out the entire earth other than the Saints if that’s what it took, but He didn’t.
The Lord’s potential reaction #3:
Sometimes the Lord tells us to stop. I think of Alma and his people. They were threatened with death if they prayed, and so they only prayed in their hearts. The Lord could have commanded them to keep praying, but it wasn’t their time and so He didn’t. Technically they kept praying, but there are other instances. For example, there was Zion’s camp. An “army” of members left Kirtland to go win back Missouri for the Saints, but the Lord told them to turn around after they got there. I did a whole video on why the Lord might have chosen after this manner. There was also the time when the Lord excused His people from building the temple in Zion for a time.
Sometimes the Lord does tell us we can stop. People love to act like this is because our God isn’t real or that He isn’t powerful. The answer is neither.
Sometimes the Lord tells us to stop because He is wise.
Despite the fact that the Lord could ask His Saints to sacrifice everything and despite the fact that the Lord could have removed the obstacles they were facing, He chose not to. I emphasize the point that we do not always know why the Lord makes specific choices unless He tells us directly, but let’s think for a bit about why the Lord would have made this decision.
Despite the fact that the Lord reigns over all and despite the fact that He is tremendously powerful, sometimes He chooses to act in a certain way with mankind because of His purposes. The “limitations” are not true limitations; they are self-imposed limitations that enable Him to push His purposes along.
His purpose is to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man and because of His chosen purpose, He often works within the constraints of mankind so He doesn’t ruin His own plan. Let’s look at this principle in the context of polygamy.
The Lord’s potential reaction #1:
The Lord could have asked them to continue on in difficulty and sacrifice. They would have lost the temples and priesthood organization that kept His restored church on the earth. That doesn’t really fit His purposes so He’s not going to choose this option.
The Lord’s potential reaction #2:
The Lord could have asked them to continue on and then removed the difficulty for them. This answers the question that I’ve heard posed more than once in my life. Believe it or not, this would have also frustrated His purposes. He COULD have destroyed everyone except the Saints, but that doesn’t contribute to His purposes. He COULD have sent down miracles to stop the rest of America from being able to infiltrate Utah and take the temples and arrest the men, but it would have taken some large-scale miracles in order to keep the work moving forward.
In the history of the world, the Lord has performed some incredible large-scale miracles. We read about these miracles, and we rejoice in them.
However, the Lord does not often choose to work after this manner. He just doesn’t. Why? Because faith is an essential ingredient in His plan. I have studied the purpose of faith over and over and over. You can’t bring about the Plan of Redemption if you wipe out the principle of faith, and large-scale miracles run the risk of doing just that.
The Lord could perform large-scale miracle after large-scale miracle and fix everything, but He doesn’t. Why? Because removing faith from the mortal experience has far dire consequences than anything we could potentially face on earth.
So the Lord COULD have chosen potential reaction #1 or #2, but He didn’t because they don’t contribute to His purposes.
The Lord’s potential reaction #3:
He stops it.
And honestly, this makes sense. Temple work and the priesthood organization were more important. Faith was more important.
I believe that polygamy was a policy laid down by God. I do. I also believe that polygamy doesn’t make logistical sense on a grand scale so it was the wisest choice the Lord could have made.
There are a million arguments made against the church. One of them is the idea of, “If your God is so powerful, why doesn’t He enable you to xyz?”
I testify that God is real and powerful, and I testify that He is in this work. I also testify that God is wise and because He is wise, He has self-imposed limitations in order to bring about His purposes. He could easily interfere with evil on a daily basis, but He knows the cost would be too high. I testify that the Lord is wise enough to make the decisions necessary to bring about our eternal life.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – The Articles of Faith and Official Declarations 1 and 2 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 08, 2025
When Things Feel Unfair, Remember This About Christ’s Atonement
by Autumn Dickson
In the past, I have shied away from talking about the Official Declarations, not because I don’t believe what’s in them, but because I feel that there are an immense number of people who can speak on those subjects with more knowledge, wisdom, and personal experience than I can. That being said, I do my best to simply share what the Lord wants me to share, and if I get some of the details wrong, the principles that I teach are true and I figure the Lord forgives me and is proud of me for making the attempt.
This week, we read about polygamy and race and the priesthood. For many, these are not easy topics. This post is not to try and convince anyone that the Church is true. Rather, I hope that this post can comfort those who still believe that this church holds the fullness of the gospel but simultaneously feel pain when reading these declarations.
As I was studying for this post, I came across a talk that we’ll discuss more about later, but I wanted to start with this quote from President Eyring’s April 2009 General Conference address titled “Adversity.” President Eyring is speaking of trials and difficulty when he says, “The anger comes at least in part from a feeling that what is happening is unfair…When they vanish, a feeling of injustice can come.”
I think some people can relate to these feelings of unfairness and injustice when speaking about the declarations. If you’ve received a testimony of the gospel and you know the Lord has led you here, sometimes this makes it more painful, not less. Instead of being able to say, “God would never allow something so unfair,” you find yourself with the feeling of, “God you’re telling me to come here, but this was so unfair. Don’t you love me? How could you do this if you really love me?”
Though you may be feeling these questions in a very specific context, these questions are not new or unique. You are not the only one to ask them. As part of our mortal experience, each of us reaches some experience where we ask those same questions. Is God truly fair? Does He really love us? Why does He allow such suffering? I have answered those questions many times in the past, but today, I don’t want to answer those questions. Rather, I want to share something that the Spirit whispered to me recently.
This is not an Article of Faith or excerpt from the Official Declarations, but I hope it soothes some of what people may feel when they struggle with the declarations. I want to share something from The Book of Mormon; Alma is speaking to the people of Gideon about the Savior.
Alma 7:11-12
11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.
We read these verses at church this past week, and I had a thought occur to me. Perhaps I’m rather late in noticing this nuance, but that’s okay. It struck me rather hard.
Christ suffered for our sins. He paid for them. He died and was resurrected. This enabled us to return to live with our Heavenly Father. It saved us.
But Christ also suffered for our infirmities. I always knew that this particular suffering happened with the atonement. He suffered for our pains and sicknesses just like He suffered for our sins, but that’s two different ideas; isn’t it?
Did Christ have to suffer for our infirmities as part of the atonement? Was that absolutely necessary in order to help us return to live with God? Or did He just do it because He loves us and wants to be there for us? Did He really need to do that? Or did He simply want to? Could He have skipped that whole bit altogether and just brought us home at the end of the mortal experience? After looking into these questions a bit more, I found the talk from President Eyring that I referenced earlier.
President Eyring’s ideas are based on this phrase in the same chapter of Alma.
Alma 7:13
Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh…
In response to the passage in Alma 7, President Eyring teaches, “He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience.”
He chose to suffer with you. He could have said, “Hey I know it feels unfair and unjust. I know it hurts, but we have to do this. Suffering, even unfairness, is so important to the plan, so important for your well-being and growth and glory. You need this. I’m sorry it’s unfair, but you have to go through this.” And He does say those things (not in so many words, but He says it).
And despite the fact that He already paid for your sins and despite all that it cost Him, He also says this, “I know exactly how you feel. Exactly how you feel. I have felt it too. I am here.”
There are reasons for unfairness. There are ways to turn these painful moments into powerhouse experiences that glorify you. There are answers.
But beyond that, there is an ultimate unfairness that was entered into voluntarily because of a deep love. Christ could have received revelation about how to comfort you. He had already paid the ultimate price, but that wasn’t enough for Him. He wanted to take the journey with you. He wanted to feel it personally and walk with you, and when necessary, carry you. He wanted to. Because He loves you.
He will make it up to you. He will one day answer all of your questions, but until then, rejoice that you are so beloved.
I testify that Christ loves us. He loves us enough to pay the ultimate price for us to come down here, grow, and return home despite our mistakes. But beyond that, He loves us enough to go through what we go through in order to succor us through the entire experience. He is the very definition of above and beyond and it is because of how much He loves you, how much joy He draws from being your greatest Friend.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 137–138 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 04, 2025
Nine Years: Why God Lets Good People Wait for Answers
by Autumn Dickson
This is a message for anyone who feels that they have found God and love Him, but also carry around a doctrine or policy that doesn’t make sense to them; this is for anyone who is having a difficult time reconciling the idea of a loving God (with whom they’ve had good experiences) with doctrines that don’t seem loving to them.
For this week, we are studying Section 137 and 138. It’s important to understand that Section 137 is not in chronological order. It was placed next to Section 138 because doctrinally, they fit together really well. It’s actually really important to understand that Section 137 is out of chronological order for a number of reasons. In order to understand what I want to talk about today, let’s talk about the chronological order of a few more things.
When Joseph was young, he struggled with which church to join. His mother was Methodist, and his father aligned more closely with the ideas of a unitarian. His father didn’t believe that God would send someone to hell because they hadn’t been baptized into a particular church. Joseph received the First Vision and over time, he learned more and more of what it meant to have the restored church of Jesus Christ.
Alvin died in 1823, a few years after the First Vision, before the authority to baptize had been restored. I wonder if Joseph was leaning towards his father’s views that Alvin wouldn’t go to hell just because he hadn’t been baptized. After all, Joseph was taught that the true church was not upon the earth. Maybe Alvin wasn’t in hell.
In 1829, Joseph received the authority to baptize. Joseph learned that baptism was essential, and it hadn’t been done with the right authority for a long time.
Think, for just a moment, about what this means to Joseph. He rejoiced in the restored church. In fact, he was overwhelmed with joy after baptizing his father.
But I also want you to think about the perspectives that Joseph was operating under at this period in time. He knew that authority to baptize was essential. He knew that his brother wasn’t baptized at all, let alone by any needed authority. For a long time, I believe that Joseph still thought Alvin had gone to hell.
It wasn’t until 1832 that Joseph learned there were different kingdoms in heaven. Can you imagine the relief that Joseph felt knowing that Alvin wasn’t burning up in eternal flame? But can you also imagine the pain that Joseph still felt when he believed he had still lost Alvin? There were some conflicting emotions there; Alvin wasn’t in hell, but were they still going to be separated?
Joseph received a vision of Alvin in the Celestial Kingdom in 1836. Here is part of that vision.
Doctrine and Covenants 137:5-6
5 I saw Father Adam and Abraham; and my father and my mother; my brother Alvin, that has long since slept;
6 And marveled how it was that he had obtained an inheritance in that kingdom, seeing that he had departed this life before the Lord had set his hand to gather Israel the second time, and had not been baptized for the remission of sins.
Joseph marveled to see Alvin in the Celestial Kingdom; he was surprised. This is part of the reason for my assumptions. For three years (not including the time before the priesthood was restored), Joseph believed Alvin was still burning up in hell. For four years, Joseph carried around the wound from his beliefs that he would be separated from Alvin.
There is an important implication from this timeline.
Joseph loved God. More than most, Joseph knew that God was real and that there was truth and that you had to be baptized and that there was specific authority. He knew this. Joseph had good experiences with God, but Joseph also carried around this painful wound that something felt tragically unfair.
Despite his knowledge of God, I wonder if Joseph ever still struggled with questions. How could a loving God do this? How could required baptism and authority be congruent with a fair God who loves all of His children? How could God have let Alvin die before the church was restored? What about all the other people who suddenly don’t qualify because the authority wasn’t on the earth?
And perhaps the question most of us have related to at one point or another in our lifetime, “If God is truly so loving, how is this His perfect plan?”
It doesn’t make sense. Joseph knew that God is perfect and just and fair and loving, but for a long time, Joseph was also operating under the assumption that God was going to let those who were unbaptized just suffer. How did Joseph reconcile this? Did he ever reconcile this or did he just hold on anyway?
Do you carry around anything that doesn’t seem congruent with a God who is perfect and just and fair and loving? Have you also had experiences with God and you have felt that He loves you and is leading you along here? Are you having a difficult time reconciling these two facts: that God is good but He also allows “xyz?”
I promise you two things. There is an answer, and there is also Christ’s atonement. Joseph was a prophet who received plenty of revelation, but God chose not to give that particular revelation for a while. Despite Joseph’s close relationship with God and despite his near constant influx of restored information, it took nine years for Joseph to learn that Alvin wasn’t going to be punished for dying before Joseph received the proper authority to baptize.
Take a page out of Joseph’s book. We don’t know everything yet. Is it really so implausible that God knows what He’s doing, that He has a plan that will take care of everything that you’re worried about? This isn’t said to negate any pain that you’re feeling trying to deal with this. Rather, it’s meant to give you hope in the midst of it. There is an answer and beyond that, there is the atonement of Jesus Christ. I don’t know why Joseph had to wait 9 years to learn about Alvin. You would think that Christ could have slipped that in at some point, but Joseph waited.
And Joseph was blessed. God is perfect and is handling everything beautifully. Beyond just a perfect answer, Christ suffered deeply so that He can carry us through the pain while we wait for those answers.
There are answers. If you hold on and rely upon the atonement of Jesus Christ and all of His adjacent promises, you will find answers and you will find joy. Not to mention, everything you’re experienced shall be for your good. The difficulty you’re wading through will transform you into exactly what you were meant to become.
I testify that God has a perfect plan. I testify that He truly is loving and perfect and fair and just. I testify that He is good and is handling everything beautifully. You don’t have to carry this. He’s got this. I also testify that beyond having a perfect plan, Christ paid for the plan and suffered what you suffer so He can run to you and comfort you.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 137–138 – Mike Parker
Dec 02, 2025
Joseph Smith’s Vision of the Celestial Kingdom; Joseph F. Smith’s Vision of the Spirit World (D&C 137–138)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Joseph F. Smith, “Status of Children in the Resurrection,” Improvement Era 21, no. 7 (May 1918): 567–74. In this address given in the Salt Lake Temple—given only eight months before his vision that is now section 138—President Smith taught about the status of the spirits of children who die and how they will be resurrected.
Mary Jane Woodger, “From Obscurity to Scripture: Joseph F. Smith’s Vision of the Redemption of the Dead,” in You Shall Have My Word: Exploring the Text of the Doctrine and Covenants, ed. Scott C. Esplin, Richard O. Cowan, and Rachel Cope (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University / Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 234–54.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 137–138 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 01, 2025
The Spirit World is Already Here
by Autumn Dickson
We have the opportunity to read two revelations this week. Despite the different times in which they were given, the two revelations were placed together in the Doctrine and Covenants, and they hold more power in that manner. The first recorded vision was received by Joseph Smith, and the second recorded vision was given to Joseph F. Smith. I want to share a couple of verses from the section given to Joseph F. Smith regarding the spirit world.
Doctrine and Covenants 138:22-24
22 Where these (the wicked, unrepentant, rebellious) were, darkness reigned, but among the righteous there was peace;
23 And the saints rejoiced in their redemption, and bowed the knee and acknowledged the Son of God as their Redeemer and Deliverer from death and the chains of hell.
24 Their countenances shone, and the radiance from the presence of the Lord rested upon them, and they sang praises unto his holy name.
These verses talk about the spirit world on the other side of the veil. It gives us a glimpse into what life holds depending on how you chose to live your life and how those choices affected who you became. Taking the time to imagine what it will be like is powerful, especially when you’ve lost someone you love.
But rather than read it from the perspective of the spirit world, I want you to read it again as if it’s speaking about where we dwell now. Despite its insight into the spirit world, it can also be a very accurate description of the mortal life we’re living in.
In the fallen mortality where we dwell, there are people who want nothing to do with the Savior and His gospel. There are many who want the exact opposite of what He stands for and believe the Savior to be oppressive. In those specific places and hearts, darkness reigns. God doesn’t necessarily send darkness or make their world terrible; it’s what they’ve invited into their lives.
Important tangent here. This gets slightly tricky because I don’t believe all non-Christians are dark people. Rather, I believe that at any given moment, we are inviting or shunning darkness. There are a lot of people who accept so much of Christ’s gospel even if they do not yet accept Him personally. They have invited portions of light into their lives by living their lives in a Christlike manner. So not immediately accepting Christ doesn’t mean you live in utter darkness and allow it to reign over you. I do believe they’re missing out on light, but that doesn’t mean I assume they are voluntarily inviting darkness to rule their lives.
Let’s keep going on with reading the description of the spirit world and mortality..
So there are people who don’t want Christ and voluntarily shun Him. They want the darkness. They like it. They don’t see any reason to change.
In other places, sometimes very nearby, there are Saints who are living in the same space but find themselves rejoicing in their redemption. They love the Savior and trust Him. They acknowledge Him and worship Him.
Then, of course, there is a whole spectrum between these groups of people. Even on that spectrum, we’re finding ourselves moving back and forth depending on what we’re inviting and focusing on.
Despite the fact that we can find people all along that spectrum, I want to bring your attention to one other grouping: there are Saints who are trying to live the gospel but still have not found the reason to rejoice. They don’t always feel hope or peace. They don’t feel the radiance of the Lord shining down on them.
We believe in Christ and the gospel, but have we found salvation?
We read this in Alma.
Alma 34:31
Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.
Immediately. Not just in the spirit world. Immediately. If you truly find Christ, the plan of redemption is brought immediately. Today can be the day of your salvation if you repent and don’t harden your heart.
Immediately, you can find yourself in the same state as those dwelling in spirit paradise. You can rejoice in the Redeemer who freed you from hell and any aspects of it that you may still be clinging to. The radiance of the presence of the Lord can shine upon you.
If you do not yet feel these aspects of salvation, I have a small warning for you. Dying and going to the other side does not immediately bring about those feelings. Dying has very little to do with it. Experiencing spiritual paradise stems from your relationship with Christ. Dying happens somewhere along the way for good reason, but experiencing salvation doesn’t necessarily wait for death. It’s just waiting for you.
When was the last time you let yourself rejoice in Christ? When was the last time you chose to trust Him so deeply that it swallowed up your pain and carried it for a while? When was the last time you chose gratitude for His promises even if you couldn’t choose gratitude for what was directly going on in your life?
Spiritual paradise is a choice, not just a destination on the other side. What happens there is just a continuation of what happens here. You don’t change on the other side unless you go through the same process of changing that you have to experience on this side.
I love the verse from Alma 34 because it doesn’t say, “Follow the Law of Moses perfectly and then you will experience salvation immediately.” It says, “Repent and soften your heart and then you will experience salvation immediately.” Change! Soften! Trust! He loves you and is mighty to save. When you find it within yourself to say, “I’m going to try putting weight on these promises,” you’ll find solid ground. Even if everything comes to disaster in mortality, there is solid ground in Christ.
I testify that trusting Christ and taking Him at His word was one of the most joyful decisions I ever made. Though I obviously fluctuate in that trust as I move about life, continually spending time with Him every day has made that trust more consistent. Spending time with Him every day has forced me to remember His promises. As I’ve moved about my daily life and run into new challenges and all of the pitfalls of mortality, I have found rejoicing alongside my pain. It didn’t come from living the gospel more perfectly; it came from trusting Him more perfectly.
I testify that spirit paradise or allowing darkness to reign are choices we make on a daily basis; they’re not just destinations in the spirit world. I testify that the day of your salvation, the day you find rejoicing in Christ, can be today, and you don’t even have to die in order to find it. You just have to trust.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 135–136 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 27, 2025
An Underrated Section: How to Become Zion…and Heaven
by Autumn Dickson
With Joseph and Hyrum martyred, Brigham Young was now the prophet. After the Saints were expelled from Nauvoo, Brigham was in charge of finding them a permanent home in the mountains of the west. Though the westward movement of the Saints was among the most impressive immigrations of Americans, it did not start out that way.
The Saints were starving and freezing along the trail. Muddy quagmires kept the Saints from reaching their goal to plant crops ahead of everyone coming. Brigham described feeling like he was dragging around a 25 ton weight. He felt like he had a large family with no way of taking care of them. At Winter Quarters in Nebraska, he turned to the Lord for guidance.
The Lord told Brigham how to organize the company, but He taught Brigham much more important things that would turn the tide for the Saints’ ability to make it to their destination.
Here is the verse that introduces the important concept that turned things around.
Doctrine and Covenants 136:2
Let all the people of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them, be organized into companies, with a covenant and promise to keep all the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God.
The Saints were to be organized into companies that would stick together, and they entered into those companies by making covenants to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord.
There were two major principles at work here that changed the game.
Principle one. When people normally made their way across towards the west (Saints and non-Saints alike), it was done very loosely with every man vying for his own family. They often travelled together for safety, but companies broke apart and came together with different members more than once. That is the first principle: Brigham Young organized them into companies with leadership at different levels, and each company was expected to stick together throughout the entire journey. If one made it, they were all going to make it.
The second principle was to focus on spirituality again. Not only were they to focus on the eternal nature of their work, but they were to focus on the fact that they believed in the same God who helped many groups of people travel to new destinations, the God of Israel.
This becomes even more significant when you recognize what the Lord was preparing Brigham for.
In 1877, Brigham Young organized the priesthood structure of the church. After travelling around Utah, he found that there were many people scattered and not enrolled in wards. There were overlapping authorities where spiritual jurisdictions were confusing, and it was unclear who would have the responsibility of showing their stewardship to the Lord. There were bishops who had never been ordained, and this was setting the stage for people to become more vulnerable as they were travelling the covenant path.
The Saints had now grown large enough that they needed to be organized or two things would happen: losing people and losing the doctrine that had been restored with such difficulty.
So that’s what Brigham did. Under the direction of the apostles, Saints scattered across Utah were better organized into stakes and wards. Bishops were set apart. Every member found themselves in a ward with a leader who would watch over them. Priesthood roles were clarified so that everyone understood what they were in charge of. This would lessen the gaps in which people could fall through with no one to watch over them, and it would also serve to help the Lord speak to His entire church when He revealed something rather than sending word out and hoping everyone was able to receive it.
It’s hard to overstate the unglamorous importance of what Brigham did.
Let’s tie it back to what we talked about in the beginning, and let’s talk about it from the perspective of an imaginary Saint who could have lived it
A widow is trying to get her kids across the plains to gather with the Saints. Her oldest child is 10 years old and he helps, but he is still only 10. She started out with one company as she began her journey across the plains only to have fallen behind and found herself in a new company. As she tries to nurse her sick baby back to health, they fall behind again as the 10 year old can only get the wagon going so far. She finds herself in a new company once again. At this point, she is simply hoping that she gets to their destination before she reaches the end of the line of companies.
Organizing the Saints into companies that cared for each other changed the game. No one got left behind. This is powerful for the widow, but it’s also powerful for the ones who are watching out for the widow. It’s powerful for the entire company who works together, mourns together, lifts one another. If you can cry with someone, you are very likely to rejoice with each other as well. Everything changes when you’re not alone.
The widow cries as she holds her baby and a 16 year old from another family has stepped up to drive her wagon along. Her 10 year old looks up at the 16 year old with something akin to hero-worship. This is the beginning of hope. The widow finds renewed faith in her ability to make it, and the 16 year old is changed too.
This doesn’t even mention the fact that all of this hope and change invites the Lord to rain down manna on the heads of the Saints.
Now let’s fast forward. The Saints are in the valley, and it is now 1877. There is a young family whose father has broken his leg in a wagon accident. Mother and teenage daughter are doing everything they can to keep the farm and home running, but it’s not going well. What will winter look like if they can’t finish the work?
But then a man shows up and knocks on their door. He sees the ragged family and introduces himself as their bishop. Over the course of the next few weeks, there are rotations of brethren coming in to harvest the family’s crop. There are young women who come in and help mother prepare the crop to last through the winter.
This is all good and beautiful and inspiring, but I want to fast-forward again.
We are accustomed to living in wards and stakes with leadership that enables lightning fast communication from our beloved prophet to each member. If there is a change wanted by the Lord, it is implemented overnight if that’s what He wants. We are organized, and we enter into a covenant in order to become part of the organization.
It changes the game when this kind of organization is used effectively. It didn’t do much good if the companies that were travelling the plains stayed in the same geographical area but still found themselves laboring alone.
When was the last time you looked around your ward and saw a family? When was the last time you made a valiant attempt to make it a ward family? When was the last time you ministered to make sure no one was lost out on the plains, physically or spiritually? When it comes to the Lord’s work, it’s not just about the widow who is being served. It’s about how we change when we forget our own problems, and we all work together towards common purposes.
Picture the vast difference between the beginning of the Saints journey towards Utah and the end of it. That’s the difference we will find in our own lives if we recognize what the Lord has given us in His organization of the church.
I testify that wards and stakes and leadership and priesthood organization are gifts from the Lord. I don’t believe we recognize the full power of what we’ve been given. I worry that we won’t recognize the full power until we’re ready to bring everyone along the covenant path together. Zion is available everywhere; we do not have to wait. The Lord wants us to experience those blessings today, but He can’t force us to find them. He can simply offer the opportunity and wait for us to step into those blessings. I testify that He loves us and gave us organizations to protect us and lift us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 135–136 – Mike Parker
Nov 25, 2025
Martyrdom of Joseph & Hyrum Smith; Brigham Young led the Saints west (D&C 135–136)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Dallin H. Oaks, “The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor,” Utah Law Review 9, no. 4 (Winter 1965): 862–903. Oaks argued that the Nauvoo city council’s action to destroy the Expositor press was legal within the understanding of the law in Joseph’s time. (This article was published twenty years before he became an apostle.)
D. Michael Quinn, “The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844,” BYU Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 1976): 187–233. Quinn argued that Joseph did not leave clear directions on who should succeed him and this spurred a crisis that was resolved only when the majority of the Saints threw their support behind Brigham Young and the Twelve.
Ronald K. Esplin, “Joseph, Brigham and the Twelve: A Succession of Continuity,” BYU Studies 21, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 301–41. Esplin countered Quinn’s article by arguing that the path of succession was clear from Joseph’s statements and the canonized revelations.
Russel R. Rich, “Nineteenth-Century Break-offs,” Ensign, September 1979, 68–71. Rich described some of the schismatic groups that broke away from the restored Church during the Prophet Joseph’s life and after his death.
R. Jean Addams, “Aftermath of the Martyrdom: Aspirants to the Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 62 (2024): 335–402. Addams examines the individuals who claimed the mantle of the Joseph Smith, their motives, and the churches or organizations they founded in the decade following the death of the Prophet.
Road to Carthage: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast is an eight-part documentary miniseries that explores the history of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844. The episodes focus on the historical events that led to the assassination of the Prophet and his brother by a mob, as well as the aftermath of that tragic event. Series host Spencer W. McBride interviewed historians and Church leaders for this podcast.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 135–136 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 24, 2025
You Don’t Have to be Ready, Just Willing
by Autumn Dickson
Joseph Smith was 38 years old when he was murdered in Carthage Jail. He received the First Vision at age 14. He began translating The Book of Mormon at age 21, and he completed it at age 24. The Church was also organized when he was 24. The Kirtland temple was built, the Nauvoo temple began, temple ordinances were restored, the work of salvation for the dead was set in motion, numerous revelations were received, and missionaries were sent abroad.
He had the vision at age 14, and he was taught annually by Moroni, but his true ministry began at the age of 21 as he started translating The Book of Mormon. His ministry was 17 years.
Here is a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants that was written in the announcement of his death.
Doctrine and Covenants 135:3
Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents; has sent the fulness of the everlasting gospel, which it contained, to the four quarters of the earth; has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, and many other wise documents and instructions for the benefit of the children of men; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints, founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain. He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!
Could anyone else do what Joseph did?
I don’t know.
I believe that the Lord can enable anyone to do anything if they’re willing, but were any of us willing? I really don’t know. I believe so, but I don’t know. I think of great men like the apostles who stood with Christ during his ministry. I think of Old Testament prophets and New Testament missionaries. I think of the stripling warriors who learned from their own mothers and followed in obedience. I think of pillars of faith in latter-day church history. I think of other men who were placed in different roles who were willing to do what God has assigned them to do, men like Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond that, I think there are a great number of quiet individuals who went about doing the Lord’s will in their own lives even though it brought about no acclaim. I know plenty of women who are likewise incredible if that was the organization that the Lord had chosen.
But He chose Joseph.
I’m not sure why God places us in the roles that He does. I’m sure there are many reasons for His decisions, but I’m not sure what they are. He probably doesn’t explain Himself because the reasons are situational. For example, He had specific roles that needed to be filled, and perhaps there were multiple people who could have filled those roles, but He also looked at us as individuals. What were the lessons we needed to learn in order to become what He wanted us to become?
If we want to learn what the Lord wants us to learn and if we want to bless the world in the most powerful way available to us, there are a couple of characteristics of Joseph’s that we can develop.
The number one characteristic that came to my mind today is the willingness to follow His will no matter where it takes us. I believe that all the other attributes we could possibly develop in order to be prepared to fulfill our roles here on earth can all contribute to this one significant characteristic: we follow Heavenly Father and what He wants for us. If we can stand before God, (or better yet, kneel), and tell Him, “I’m not sure what you want me to do. I don’t know what I need to learn in order to do it. I don’t know who I need to become in order to do it, and I’m sure there will be many times that I feel that I can’t do it. And yet, I want Thou to show me the way and make me who I need to be. Lead me. I will follow.”
You don’t have to be ready for your various roles yet. I repeat, you don’t have to be ready. You just have to be willing. He can take care of the rest. The only thing you can truly give Him is your willingness to follow Him and do what He asks. He is capable of speaking to you in a way that you can understand and helping you know what you need to know. He can help you develop the specific testimonies you’re going to need to carry you through. He can mold you. Sure, you’ll make mistakes, but that’s why we start today. We give Him time to work with us so we have had time to practice what we need to be.
I was thinking of some grand moment in which you could promise God to follow Him, and yet, many of us already made that promise a long time ago at 8 years old. Some of us made that promise when we were a bit older, and maybe some of us have yet to make that promise. Perhaps we have already made the promise, but we are only just now feeling prepared to truly hand over our will.
Lucky for us, we have this thing called the sacrament where we renew those promises every single week. How powerful could we become if we simply whispered to the Lord (and to ourselves) each week that we were willing to follow wherever, willing to learn what was necessary, willing to become what God wanted for us?
When I think of Joseph’s willingness, I don’t think it was just one decision. I think it was a million decisions. When he would look at the vast amount of work he needed to do, he would turn to the Lord for guidance about what to prioritize. Then he would have faith that the Lord would enable him to do what was absolutely necessary. There was so much that needed to happen to restore Christ’s church upon the earth; there is only so much he could accomplish with the time he was given on earth. So it wasn’t about accomplishing everything; it was about just doing what God had for him each day.
I love and honor Joseph Smith for his willingness to jump in and devote his time and life to what God wanted, whether that was building an impressive temple or living in squalor for four months in a prison.
Most of all, I love and honor Joseph because he set the foundation a long time ago for me to find Christ.
Joseph did more, save Jesus only, to save mankind. I think it’s important to note that Jesus was the one who did the most.
And wasn’t this His defining characteristic? He was willing to do what the Father sent Him here to do. His ministry was only four years, He spent some of that time playing with children or taking quiet time to Himself. You would think that having only four years available to change the world would make someone rush a bit more, but that’s not what the Father needed. Christ simply did what the Father wanted and because of that, His four year ministry changed everything.
I testify that each of us have roles in the work of salvation. I testify that the Lord is capable of helping you fulfill that role if you simply tell Him that you’re willing and ask Him to lead you along. I testify that you don’t have to be capable or incredible, just willing. I testify that He is more than capable, loves you, and wants to include you.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 133–134 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 17, 2025
Leaving Babylon, Building Zion
by Autumn Dickson
At one point in time, the call to gather Zion was a physical one. The Lord commanded those who were getting baptized to come and gather with the rest of the Saints. That commandment changed to a spiritual one as the needs of the Saints likewise changed. It will one day change again as we are commanded to gather in one physical place to await the coming of the Savior.
But for now, we gather Zion spiritually. We leave Babylon, and we create Zion by changing the state of our hearts rather than the state in which we dwell.
The Lord repeats the sentiment that we should gather to Zion multiple times throughout Doctrine and Covenants 133, but here is one of those repetitions.
Doctrine and Covenants 133:4-5
4 Wherefore, prepare ye, prepare ye, O my people; sanctify yourselves; gather ye together, O ye people of my church, upon the land of Zion, all you that have not been commanded to tarry.
5 Go ye out from Babylon. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.
Prepare and sanctify. Gather together upon the land of Zion. Leave Babylon and be clean.
There is a quote in the Institute Manual that gives us some extra insight into Babylon.
“The antithesis and antagonist of Zion is Babylon. The city of Babylon was originally Babel, of Tower of Babel fame, and later became the capital of the Babylonian empire.”
The Institute Manual goes on to describe how Babylon worshipped evil with perversions and decadence. There are a lot of things we could cover in those two topics, and yet, my very first thought was this: the people at the Tower of Babel were cursed by the Lord to all speak different languages so that they couldn’t understand each other.
Zion is meant to be a place of unity where everyone understands each other, takes care of each other, loves each other despite our differences. I think sometimes people picture a place where everyone is going to think the same and have the same perspectives but not so. Zion will be a place of peacemakers and bridge builders.
At the time of writing this, the United States has just experienced a politically motivated assassination. Though most of the rhetoric I’ve seen condemns the violence, there is still plenty of vitriol between people of differing political parties. There is an immense amount of division. There are a lot of unproductive conversations taking place, and it seems very difficult to understand one another. Almost as if we’re speaking different languages.
Babylon is the opposite of Zion, and one of the key characteristics of Zion is unity. Note that the key characteristic isn’t eerily similar tastes and perspectives; it is unity.
When we read The Book of Mormon, we are constantly reading about how two nations were enemies despite the fact that they were brothers. They all came off of the same family. They couldn’t find it within themselves to love each other.
I’m convinced that Satan isn’t walking the earth parading as one political party or the other in any nation. He utilizes political parties to his own destructive ends in a myriad of ways, and one of those destructive ends includes creating nations of “us” and “them.”
The true enemy here is division. That is one of Satan’s favorite tools. He makes us believe we’re the good guys and the others are the bad guys. The true solution is unity despite differences.
The Savior isn’t waiting for the world to become wicked enough for Him to come again; He is waiting for the world to become righteous enough. President Nelson could announce tomorrow that we need to gather in Missouri, and we could all do that. We could create the buildings and homes and businesses, but if we do not spiritually create Zion, it’s going to be a while before Christ shows up.
Are we ready to build Zion in all of the ways that matter?
If you were called to go to Zion tomorrow, would you be able to love your neighbor if they felt differently about healthcare, approaching LGBTQ issues, world affairs, government systems, and how to combat poverty?
I guess a better question is this, “Do you currently love your neighbor who looks at all of these issues with a different perspective?” And I’m not talking about “trying to change all of their perspectives to your own because you love them” kind of love. I’m talking about being able to look at another person with respect and dignity, to look at another person and assume that they’re trying to make the world a better place. I’m talking about building Zion right where you are with any neighbor you’ve been given.
President Nelson has asked us to build bridges. Building bridges doesn’t mean making everyone move from one body of land to another body of land. It means creating a space where people can come from different places and meet together.
The Lord has asked us to leave Babylon and come to Zion. We have not yet been called to that physically, but we have been asked to build Zion spiritually. This includes living righteously in terms of worldliness and chastity, but it also means that we speak in a way that we can understand each other. We seek to understand each other. We seek to be unified.
I testify that the Lord asks for unity because He knows it’ll bless us. He’s not worried about everyone having the perfect perspectives just yet. Someday, we will all gain the knowledge we need to see the world clearly. Until then, the most happiness we can possibly garner will come from being unified despite our differences. It will come from watching out for each other and loving each other. Our different perspectives will enlighten each other and help us draw closer to the truth until the day when we will understand everything. I testify that the Lord asks for unity because He knows what it will do for us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 132 – Mike Parker
Nov 14, 2025
Eternal marriage & plural marriage (D&C 132; Official Declaration 1)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Gospel Topics Essays on plural marriage. These articles, published by the Church with the help of Latter-day Saint scholars, review the history and practice of plural marriage in nineteenth century:
Joseph Smith’s Polygamy is the website for Brian and Laura Hales’ book series on Joseph Smith and the establishment and practice of plural marriage in Nauvoo. The Hales are the most thorough and reliable scholars working on this subject. Works in the series include Brian’s three-volume scholarly examination of Joseph’s practice of plural marriage and Brian and Laura’s brief, one-volume book that summarizes his work for a lay audience.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 129–132 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 13, 2025
The Second Coming: Is the World Righteous Enough?
by Autumn Dickson
In the readings for this week, Joseph Smith helps us glimpse into eternity so we can see a portion of what it looks like. Understanding what eternity looks like can help us more fully take advantage of what the Lord has given us with this mortal experience. He covers a variety of topics. Here is one of the things that Joseph Smith taught.
Doctrine and Covenants 130:14-15
14 I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following:
15 Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.
Before I went to bed last night, I had a very clear thought pop into my head. I knew it was revelation, and so I rolled over and wrote it in my phone quickly before rolling back over and falling asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t remember what the Lord had whispered to me until I opened my phone to reread it. It said this.
“The Lord is not waiting for the world to become wicked enough in order to come again. He is waiting for us to be righteous enough. We seem to be waiting on the world to grow wicked enough rather than ardently focusing on becoming righteous enough.”
The scriptures often speak about how the world will grow more and more wicked and scary in the last days, and yet, I don’t think that’s a product of the Lord’s minimum level of wickedness before He’s willing to come. I think it’s merely a prophecy about the state of the world when we finally become prepared to receive Him.
The Second Coming is not a waiting game for us. The Lord is waiting, but we should not be. We should be building.
I studied Elementary Education in college, and one of the courses you take is how to design assessments for your students. When you’re trying to build a foundation of knowledge for your students, it’s important to understand where they’re at. If you skip steps in the foundation, there will be shakiness as you continue to build. If you keep trying to pour the same layer, you’re going to be wasting time. It is essential to understand where your students are at so you can take them where they need to go.
I actually loved this class for a lot of reasons and one of those reasons included the fact that my idea of what assessment truly looked like was immensely expanded. When we think of assessing our student’s knowledge, we often picture traditional multiple-choice questions. This class taught me that the most powerful way of assessing a student’s knowledge and skill was to design an assessment that put them as closely as possible to a real-life scenario.
Isn’t that what we’re trying to prepare them for as teachers? We’re trying to prepare them for life. Maybe they can use a formula that you repeated over and over and over, but if they run into a problem in real life, will they know to use that formula and how to plug the right information into that formula?
That is the ideal kind of assessment. If your goal is to prepare your student to function in real life, then designing an assessment that is close to real life is your best shot at understanding whether you succeeded and how far you have to go.
So what is God’s goal? To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
Immortality? Check. Thank you resurrection of Christ.
Eternal life? Well, let’s read a verse from this week’s reading.
Doctrine and Covenants 130:2 And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.
Society will be similar to what we experience here except there will also be glory. It’s almost like God took the same class that I did.
This life is our assessment. Eternal life is the goal.
There are a lot of directions I could take this idea. I could talk about the importance of relationships. I could talk about how we seek righteousness and change, but ultimately, glory is added later by the power of Jesus Christ. So many directions, but I’m going to choose to pursue what the Lord whispered to me last night.
We often picture this life as an individual assessment, and ultimately, it will be an individual assessment. How those around you act will not influence your judgment other than context. The Lord will be looking at you, what you produced with what you were given, and whether you’re prepared to live how He lives.
So yes, this life is an individual assessment. However, there are other parts of this assessment that we should be aware of.
I want you to picture the idea that we’re all part of a group project. Our goal? To make a society that is righteous enough to welcome the Savior back to earth, to create Zion.
This is so powerful because that’s what we’ll be doing on the other side. Heaven is where you go to be amongst others who actively choose to love and serve and give. That’s Heavenly Father’s goal. Perhaps He is waiting for us to create that here as our group project.
Down here, it’s a little bit different. We are surrounded by people who have different perspectives even within the church. Down here, we are all plagued by mistakes and flaws and blindness. If our goal is to eventually live in heaven where these won’t be a problem, why didn’t the Lord create a mortality that was more closely aligned with heaven?
Because we will still need to be prepared to work with and love future generations that still have lessons to learn.
We have to start truly loving our neighbor. This isn’t about being polite but secretly just tolerating. This isn’t about being nice and smiling at someone we disagree with but wishing they would just go away. This is about changing deeply within our core to love and offer dignity to everyone around us.
And so we practice and build it here. We show the Lord that we are prepared to survive and thrive in our next life. Most importantly, we become the kind of people who are prepared to survive and thrive in our next life. And as we build Zion, as we build heaven (or as closely as we can considering we dwell in a fallen world), we create a society in which the Savior can come again.
I testify that the Lord is waiting, and we should not be. I testify that creating Zion around you will be one of the most important and rewarding projects you step into. I testify that as we strive to be prepared to live in our next life, the Lord will take care of the rest (cleansing and adding glory). I’m grateful that changing and becoming are the tasks that were delegated to me. I’m grateful that despite my flaws, the Lord felt I was worth investing in. I’m grateful that He paid and paved the way for me.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 129–131 – Mike Parker
Nov 11, 2025
Doctrinal Developments in Nauvoo
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 193–208. Joseph’s 7 April 1844 sermon, delivered at the funeral of his friend, Elder King Follett, is arguably the most important of his published discourses. In it, Joseph explained his understanding of the nature of God, including the doctrine that God the Father is an exalted Man who once had a mortal existence. Four different individuals took notes during Joseph’s sermon. Their accounts were synthesized into a single text in 1855 by Church scribe Jonathan Grimshaw; Grimshaw’s version was published by B. H. Roberts in his seven-volume History of the Church (6:302–17) and in many other Church publications. Stan Larson’s 1978 amalgamated text attempted to remove Grimshaw’s textual emendations and provide proper weight and balance to the various accounts.
On 16 June 1844, only eleven days before his death, Joseph gave his “Sermon in the Grove” that expanded on the nature of God and other ideas he had presented in the King Follett Discourse. The most complete account of his sermon was made by Thomas Bullock; you can read his handwritten notes on the website of the Joseph Smith Papers or a parallel comparison of his and two other accounts on the archived website of the Book of Abraham Project.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 129–132 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 10, 2025
Is Exaltation Blasphemous or Worship?
by Autumn Dickson
In case it was ever in question, we believe in exaltation. As I worked on this post, I felt like I was addressing a non-member even though it’s usually members who look up Come Follow Me posts. In the end, I decided to keep it that way. Even if non-members don’t look up this content, we can learn how to potentially respond to those who question our beliefs.
So let’s talk about exaltation.
Exaltation is one of the topics that is covered in our readings this week, but what does that really mean? What does it mean to inherit exaltation? Let’s look at what the Lord says.
Doctrine and Covenants 132:20 Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.
The Lord defines (to an extent) what it means to be exalted. He describes His righteous children as capable of becoming gods (note the “g” and not the “G”) because they have no end. They shall be from everlasting to everlasting, but they also “continue.” They become above all things, and all things are subject to them. They have all power and angels are subject to them.
In other sections in Doctrine and Covenants, exaltation is described as “made equal with the Lamb of God” and “receive of the Father’s fulness.”
There are also references to this idea in the bible. Romans 8 teaches that we are children of God, and because of that, we can be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. We can all be glorified together. In Revelation 3, the Lord talks about how He will allow us to sit on His throne with Him. In Psalm 82:6, it describes us, as His children, as gods with a little “g” just as it does in Doctrine and Covenants.
There are a few reasons that people believe this doctrine is blasphemous. I actually believe that exaltation is the antithesis of blasphemy, and I want to explain why. First, I’ll explain it from the perspective of God looking down. Then, I want to turn our perspective from the child looking up.
First, let’s talk about blasphemy from the perspective of God.
I can only think of two reasons why exaltation would not be real. The first possible reason is that God is incapable of doing so. Maybe He can’t lift us up that high. Maybe He can only lift us as high as heaven but no further.
When I’ve had conversations with friends over this, I always hear them say, “Oh no. I’m way down here, and God is just so high. I can’t ever be on His level.”
Well duh. We also can’t earn heaven because it’s just so high, and we’re down here. And yet, He toiled and sacrificed and paid the price to lift us above where we are. Why can He only lift us so high? I think He lifts us to where He is despite our lack of earning it.
I don’t think exaltation is blasphemous. I think it’s blasphemous to suggest that God is incapable of lifting us to where He is.
I think most Christians would agree with that statement. God can do anything. He already sent His Son to die for us so that we could be lifted higher than we were, so the only other reason is that He chooses not to do so.
Can anyone think of a reason why God would not want to lift us to His level?
Let’s view this from a parent-child relationship, the parent-child relationship that God set up here on earth. On purpose. Intentionally.
Why would a parent keep their child down below them?
Usually, the answer is narcissism.
Narcissism often springs from deep insecurity, and it often translates as a person trying to keep themselves above everyone else. They want everyone to essentially worship them because they’re trying to fill that scary, deep void of insecurity. I know a few parents who are narcissistic. I know parents who have purposely tried to keep their kids down so that they could feel better about themselves. They have days where they’re lifting the child and then bragging to friends about it because it makes them look good, but they also have days where they’re undermining the child because they can’t bear the idea that the child will become independent and powerful and joyful and not need them. They do what they can to keep the child on a lower level because their ego can’t handle it. Sometimes this looks like constant criticism, mocking, or belittling. Sometimes it includes more nefarious plots, but it all boils down to this idea that they want the child on a lower level.
I know non-narcissistic parents who are the exact opposite. They look at their child and want that child to grow and become more than they ever did. They know that the child could potentially become very powerful, and they want that for the child.
I believe that’s how God loves us. I believe that He saw our potential and invested in it. I believe He loves me more than I love my kids, and I want my kids to be so much better than I was. We can’t be better than God because He is perfect, but if He loves me so much more, than why would He want anything less for me?
I don’t think exaltation is blasphemous. I think suggesting that God wants to keep us down is blasphemous.
Maybe someone else can come up with a logical reason as to why our growth is capped, but I can’t think of any reason that would not be blasphemous in and of itself.
Now let’s view this from the perspective of the child.
Another line of reasoning that I run into with the doctrine of exaltation is the idea that putting us on the same level as God diminishes Him somehow. Once again, only a narcissist sees it that way. God saving me and glorifying me and lifting me does not diminish Him.
IT DOES THE OPPOSITE.
Blasphemy is often associated with the idea that the human is mocking God.
I’m not mocking God with exaltation; I love Him more because of exaltation.
Swinging back around to the narcissistic parents and the non-narcissistic parents. Think about the children who grow up in those kinds of homes.
Which child adores their parents more? Which child loves and honors and follows their parents more? Which child is more likely to worship their parent?
The child who lives in the home with parents who love them and want to lift them as high as they are capable of reaching. I ADORE God because of exaltation. I don’t earn it. I worship Him for making sacrifice after sacrifice to make it possible. I worship Him for offering something that is priceless beyond my imagination. I worship Him for offering it when I don’t deserve it.
You don’t have to agree with the doctrine of exaltation. Perhaps you have a logical reason as to why the Lord would cap that growth. Perhaps you don’t, and that’s okay too. Heaven knows I don’t have logical reasons for everything that I believe in (though I’m trying awfully hard to get there). What I’m merely trying to suggest in this post is that our belief in exaltation doesn’t automatically equate to blasphemy.
I testify of a God who adores us. I testify that He is capable of lifting us and that He desires to do so. I testify that lifting me is possible because of the sacrifice of His Son, and I testify that lifting me doesn’t diminish His glory. It adds to it because it makes me worship Him all the more. I am grateful God calls me His child and set up parental relationships on earth so that I could observe that pattern and learn from it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 125–128 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 07, 2025
Redoubling Works or Effort: A Lesson on Faith in God’s Timing
by Autumn Dickson
There is a verse in this week’s readings that always jumps out to me. It came at a time when I was praying about what I needed to do. I had started my blog, and then a while later, I found out that I was pregnant. I prayed about taking a break during the pregnancy and postpartum periods before working on everything again. I prayed, confident that the Lord would be fine with me taking a step back and then continuing on again.
Boy, was I wrong.
I prayed, flipped open my scriptures at random, and read this:
Doctrine and Covenants 127:4 And again, verily thus saith the Lord: Let the work of my temple, and all the works which I have appointed unto you, be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward, saith the Lord of Hosts…
I wasn’t doing temple work, but I knew what work the Lord was referring to. At that moment, I also knew that the Lord expected me to start creating posts for multiple weeks in order to give myself a break after having a baby. I had to redouble my efforts.
This verse has always stuck out to me for that reason. I’ll never forget the shock I felt when I read that. I had been so sure I would be able to just step away for a little bit and come back. Nope.
And though this verse has always stuck out to me and reminded me of this time and season, a couple of other things stuck out to me as I read it this time. For anyone who feels overwhelmed with the sheer volume of expectations in the church, this is a powerful verse in understanding what the Lord truly wants.
Let your diligence, perseverance, patience, and works be redoubled. Diligence and perseverance are both wonderful principles in helping to build the kingdom on earth. When I think about the Lord asking me to redouble my diligence and perseverance, those feel pretty normal. However, it was actually the other two words that struck me this week: patience and works.
So first: patience.
When the Lord gives us a work to do, do we often consider our need for patience with the project? We think about how the Lord often requires sacrifice, but does that sometimes include our best efforts for patience? Sometimes holding still feels like it requires more sacrifice than the Lord enabling us to finish everything at once with one huge, herculean effort.
I’m a herculean effort kind of girl. I want to get everything done at once, and I have a very difficult time enjoying myself when there are tasks that I could be completing. This was all fine and dandy when I received a syllabus in college and literally wrote all of my term papers in the first month of school so I could enjoy the semester. This has not translated well into motherhood and has been a consistent lesson the Lord has tried to impress upon me.
I struggle with the patience of His timeline because I’m willing to kill myself to get it done now so I don’t have to do anything tomorrow. Instead, He lets me sit in anxiety throughout today and still have to do it tomorrow. Why? Why does He make us wait to get it done if we have the time and desire to do it today?
I talk often about how the Lord requires our best efforts because anything less would leave us unprepared for what He wants to give us. Our best efforts include the acquired attribute of patience. The Lord puts us on a timeline because if we want to be able to do the work that He does, patience is absolutely essential. We have to acquire the patience needed to wait for the right moment to move.
So why does the Lord let me sit in my anxiety instead of giving me what I need to complete my tasks today? It’s because He needs me to acquire this valuable attribute: patience. I have to learn to be comfortable waiting, and I won’t ever learn it if He gives me what I want and helps me finish it all the first day. He keeps giving me opportunities to sit and wait and learn to be okay.
Second: works. Let your works be redoubled. This might feel opposite to what we were just discussing. Some of the time, I believe this implies the idea that we literally need to double the number of actions we’re utilizing to draw closer to Him. There are times in my life when redoubling my actions would have been helpful. However, I read this differently today. The wording of this verse is so particular, and the Lord is nothing if not careful in His words.
Let…your works be redoubled.
As in, allow your works to double. Sometimes, it’s not about doubling our actions so much as getting out of our own way and allowing the Lord to magnify our efforts.
There have been times in my life where I’ve needed to increase the amount of my efforts, and there have been times when I’ve needed to decrease the amount of my outward efforts and increase my faith.
I used to prepare these Come Follow Me posts the week before I needed to post them. I’m farther ahead now, but that was not the case for a very long time. I would write and prep everything throughout the week, film on Thursday, and then I would edit and upload on Fridays for the posts to go live Sunday at 12:00 am.
The Lord had been telling me to slow down for a long time, and I was adamant in my refusal to listen. I insisted that if I slowed down, everything would fall apart. After a long time of refusing to do this voluntarily, the Lord took away any other option. For a couple of months, I found myself beating my head against a wall in trying to prepare content. I felt so strongly that the Lord wanted me to do this, and yet, He wasn’t giving me anything. I tried redoubling my efforts, denying myself any naps or downtime in the evenings. I would sit in front of my computer for hours, trying to get anything written down, but it was to no avail.
Then, each Friday, the Lord would help me write a post, prep it, film it, and edit it all in one Friday afternoon while my kids napped. I finally got the memo that this pattern would continue until I chilled out and let it go. And so I did. Every day, I would sit down and put my heart into it for 20 minutes. If nothing was forthcoming, I would step away and accomplish something else or go take a nap. After doing this repeatedly, the Lord stopped pushing everything to Fridays and let me start getting things done throughout the week again. I started getting inspired on other days instead of Friday afternoons.
The Lord could do His own work. I just had to let Him do it according to His own terms. Redoubling my patience helped, and then I needed to let the work be redoubled.
Sometimes the lesson the Lord is trying to teach us has nothing to do with the idea that we’re not giving enough. Sometimes the lesson is that He wants more of our trust, trust in His timeline and trust in His ability to do His own work. Redouble your faith that He can make a mountain of miracles out of the molehill of effort that you can currently provide. He’s got this. He just wanted you to be a part of it so that you could grow.
I testify that there are appropriate times to put in more effort than we’ve been doing. I testify that there are also appropriate times to increase our faith instead. I testify that at any given moment, He is asking for what is going to truly prepare us to step into our divine destinies. He is asking for what is going to give us the most fulfilled, free, satisfactory life that can be provided in mortality. I also testify that it won’t be the fulfillment, freedom, and satisfaction that the world tries to peddle, but a deeper, more abiding kind.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 125–128 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 04, 2025
Deep Water: Lessons from Joseph Smith and a Croatian Free Diver
by Autumn Dickson
Context for this week: Joseph Smith and his companions were freed from prison by sympathizing guards during a transfer. Though they returned to their families, persecution rendered it necessary for Joseph to go into hiding. Some of what we read this week came through letters that Joseph had dictated with the will of the Lord.
In Section 127, there is a verse written by Joseph Smith that speaks of his ability to handle stressful situations. After repeatedly being placed in difficult circumstances, his ability to handle it grew tremendously.
Doctrine and Covenants 127:2 And as for the perils which I am called to pass through, they seem but a small thing to me…deep water is what I am wont to swim in. It all has become a second nature to me; and I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation; for to this day has the God of my fathers delivered me out of them all, and will deliver me from henceforth; for behold, and lo, I shall triumph over all my enemies, for the Lord God hath spoken it.
Deep water is what I am wont to swim in.
I feel like coming across this message was rather timely for me. At the time that I’m writing this post, I just read about a Croatian freediver named Vitomir Maričić. Maričić just set the world record for holding your breath, a whopping 29 minutes and 3 seconds. He beat the last world record by almost five minutes.
I researched what Maričić had to do in order to become this incredible freediver who could handle this kind of extreme duress. He obviously engaged in cardiovascular training, but it was not sufficient for this kind of world record. He also engaged in specifically training his diaphragm to take much slower, longer breaths. He stretched and performed breathing exercises in order to increase lung capacity. He worked with carbon dioxide tables in which he would hold his breath for a set amount of time and gradually decrease his rest intervals; for example, he would hold his breath for two minutes at a time while taking breaks that gradually shortened in between each two-minute period. He did the opposite with oxygen tables where the rest intervals were fixed, and the amount of time he would hold his breath would increase. He would walk while holding his breath to put extra stress on the body to acclimate. He literally worked to condition his spleen to release an increased number of oxygen-rich red blood cells.
He also worked mentally. At a certain point in holding your breath, your diaphragm starts to contract as a defense mechanism for the lack of oxygen. At about 20 minutes, Maričić felt these contractions but held the mental resolve to continue.
In order to prepare for the dive, he breathed pure oxygen for ten minutes. This can also cause problems, and he had to consciously work on building up his endurance for pure oxygen.
One of the main principles Maričić took advantage of was progressive overload where you continuously increase the stress you’re under to increase the amount of pressure you can handle. He did this under proper safety protocols and teams who could take care of him if something went dramatically wrong.
Deep water is what I am wont to swim in. Deep water is what Joseph Smith was accustomed to swimming in. It is one of our goals of mortality: to learn how to swim in deep water.
Why does it matter if we can swim in deep water?
Because that’s where Heavenly Father lives His life, in the deep end. He is fully engaged, completely immersed, surrounded by difficult circumstances that He doesn’t shy away from. Because of His willingness to enter into this state, He finds its opposite side of the coin: deep joy, contentment, and satisfaction in an eternal existence that has the potential to hold a lot of emptiness.
If we want to find that same kind of existence, an existence where we find meaning and purpose and joy in a never-ending lifetime, we have to be prepared to swim in deep water. You can’t get involved in loving imperfect others without consequent pain, but you can’t completely avoid relationships if you want joy. They come together.
Somehow, we have to develop the kind of fortitude where we can find joy while buried in deep water. Eternal life is not actually about waiting to get pulled out of the water; it’s about finding the resilience to be okay in the thick of it.
That’s difficult to find when the Lord allows us to perpetually stay in the shallow end.
There have been times in my life where I have found myself in the deep end, and I did not improve in my ability to find peace or joy. There have been times when I have simply panicked the entire time. Yet, there are other times when I have been able to school myself into being okay while being placed in a situation that’s uncomfortable.
Just like with Maričić, there are many methods that we can utilize to purposefully maximize our training rather than floundering and screaming the whole time and missing the entire point of the exercise. Let’s talk about one method today.
I taught swimming lessons growing up, and I’m not too shabby at it. As I taught my oldest daughter to swim, I would take her out into the deep end while holding her. I would count to 3 and dip her all the way under the water. I wasn’t holding her under. We were literally just dipping under and out. I made her do it 3 times every time we swam (which was nearly every day), and then she could be done and do whatever she wanted in the shallow end.
For the first week, she screamed bloody murder at me every time. I think I made the lifeguards rather uncomfortable. I definitely made the other patrons uncomfortable. But I knew that my daughter could do this, and I also knew that she would be a very happy person once she learned that going under the water wasn’t going to kill her.
The true turning point in this practice was when I asked a friend to take a video of her going underwater. She still screamed, but then I showed her the video. I made a big deal about the fact that she was so cool for being able to do that. I showed her what she was capable of.
She literally never screamed again. She didn’t love it immediately, but she didn’t scream anymore.
And then she did grow into what I knew she could be. She did grow into someone who had more opportunities for joy. I can’t keep the girl above the water anymore. Her siblings have followed right in after her, and no one is stressed or screaming about it except for me trying to keep an eye on three of my five young children, trying to determine who has been underwater too long.
One of the methods for taking full advantage of mortality is realizing who we are meant to be like. When you can catch a glimpse of what you’re meant to be, it makes the water worth it. And when something is worth it, it changes the game. It changes you. It is much harder to handle training and coaching when you don’t realize that there is a purpose in it.
I testify that you can swim in deep water. I testify that it’s worth training. I also testify that like Maričić, you have an extremely talented team that knows the progressive overload you need and can handle. There are angels standing around you to guide you. And, of course, you have the ultimate Lifeguard. The only thing that matters in that water is that you grow. He doesn’t care if you make mistakes. In the end, it won’t matter what happened to you because He can heal it. You just have to grow, and He will be there to fix everything.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 124 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 31, 2025
Choosing Faith Through Failure: God’s Timetable for Zion
by Autumn Dickson
Because of an extermination order, the Saints were driven out of Missouri and into Nauvoo. In Doctrine and Covenants 124, the Lord excuses His people from building the temple in Missouri after they had been driven out.
Doctrine and Covenants 124:49 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing that work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept of their offerings.
The Saints were driven out and persecuted. They had been commanded to build Zion, and they had been commanded to build a temple, and it didn’t happen. The Lord explains Himself by saying that if people work really hard to do what they were commanded and they are stopped by enemies, He accepts their offering and doesn’t require it anymore.
Some might see this as rather convenient for Joseph when his prophecy didn’t work out, but what do you see?
What we choose to see is important because perspective is a choice. There are so many ways to look at any given scenario. Do we choose faith?
We can choose to look at what happened in Missouri, and say, “The Lord must not be in this. He commanded something, and it didn’t work out.” Didn’t Nephi say that if the Lord commands something, He will make it happen? Don’t we teach that all of the time?
Absolutely, we teach that. I reaffirm that. I also reaffirm that what the Lord declares can take a long time to come to pass. Let’s look at a couple of other scenarios.
First, there is the mortal ministry of Christ. Many of the Jews rejected Christ because they were looking for a different kind of savior. They wanted someone to come and throw the yoke of the Romans off their backs. They interpreted the scriptures incorrectly and because of that, they missed out on some of the greatest miracles that ever took place. They didn’t see. Their perspective was wrong.
Second, there is the death of Christ. The apostles were quite forlorn after Christ was crucified, and they were all immensely surprised to find Him alive again. One of them refused to believe that Christ had risen again until he personally saw Christ. Do we abandon our faith when things don’t look how we thought they were supposed to look?
Let’s look at some other examples.
One of the Old Testament stories that strikes me as important is that of Daniel and his friends. Babylon besieged and conquered the kingdom of Judah. As part of the conquest, they took the sons of Jewish nobility and put them into the Babylonian court to train and assimilate them. Daniel and his friends refused the food from the king’s table because it had not been prepared according to the Law of Moses. Daniel and his friends believed it would be a sin to eat it.
Think about that for a moment. Biblical scholars believe that these boys ranged from age 14-18. Their home had just been conquered. They had lost against a wicked, secular kingdom. It would have been easy for Daniel to think, “Is God really on our side? Do I really want to make the Babylonian king mad? He beat us. Why would I believe that we have the true God? Why would I keep following the religious laws of my defeated nation when it puts my friends and me in danger?”
But that is not the perspective that Daniel chose. Despite evidence that pointed to the contrary, David chose to believe. Despite religious beliefs that the Jews were chosen by an all-powerful God and still getting conquered, David chose to believe. Despite the fact that conquering nations paid homage to their gods in response to winning wars, David did not see His God as less powerful. He kept obeying.
Perspective is a choice.
Some may see a God who abandoned His people or was never there. Some may see the effects of a frenzied mind. Some may see a fallen prophet or a charlatan.
I see a God who is actually rather unconcerned with a location. Everyone is so caught up in wanting to know where Zion is or move there immediately, and Heavenly Father is like, “Okay. I see the future. I know where it is, but you’re missing the most important part…” I see a God who knows what mortality is actually for, and He delivers on His promises of growth and deliverance. I see a God who makes and keeps promises but also doesn’t have a pocket watch because time is only measured unto man. Sure, the Saints were driven out, and they didn’t build a temple. It took Nephi a couple of tries to get the plates. Let’s do this on God’s timetable, not our’s. We will build Zion, and we will build a temple there. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to. It doesn’t prove anything.
I testify of a Lord who was very aware of His Saints. I testify that He was powerful enough to win Zion over immediately and kick out all of their enemies, but I also testify that He has reasons for what He does. I testify that He has a plan and a timetable, and I testify that it is the best that we could ask for. I testify that trusting Him and choosing a perspective of faith brings blessings and hope and peace.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 124–128 – Mike Parker
Oct 30, 2025
Establishment of Nauvoo; Baptism for the Dead & the Endowment
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
T. Edgar Lyon, “Doctrinal Development of the Church During the Nauvoo Sojourn, 1839–1846,” BYU Studies 15, no. 4 (Summer 1975): 435–46. Lyon gives a brief overview of the new doctrines and interpretations Joseph Smith introduced in Nauvoo concerning the Godhead, the priesthood, the temple, and salvation.
Minutes of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, 17 March 1842. The Relief Society’s minutes record the counsel given by the Prophet Joseph Smith and by Society President Emma Smith on the date of its founding and the discussion over its name and goals.
FAIR has information on the Kinderhook Plates with links to several other resources.
The Nauvoo Temple: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast is an eight-part documentary miniseries that explores the history and legacy of the temple that Latter-day Saints constructed in Nauvoo, Illinois, in the 1840s. The episodes consider what the Nauvoo Temple meant to the men and women who constructed it and the role in played in their religious devotion and worship. Series host Spencer W. McBride interviewed historians and Church leaders for this podcast.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Classic FAIR – Why Did Joseph Smith Practice Polygamy? – Brian Hales, 2010
Oct 30, 2025
“Controversies in Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: New Evidences and New Observations Indicate Fawn Brodie Should Have Done More Research” by Brian C. Hales at the 2010 FAIR Conference
Why did Joseph Smith practice plural marriage? There are three different places we could go for answers.
We can go to the naturalists—like Fawn Brodie—and the cynics, which are kind of in the same group. We can go to Latter-day Saint apologists, who gave us their own set of reasons. And then we can go to Joseph Smith himself. I’d like to look at these three sources.
The first source is the naturalist—and what I mean by that is somebody who is sure God’s not involved. Okay? It’s all natural processes—hormones, libido, job one—and sex. That’s what’s driving polygamy. That’s their answer.
And Fawn Brodie kind of codified this idea in her 1945 biography, which unfortunately is still probably the most influential book ever written on Joseph Smith. Brodie totally botched the treatment of his sexuality in polygamy. She didn’t even want to get it right—that’s my frustration.
The purest naturalistic view is found in George D. Smith’s 2008 novel, which he called “Nauvoo Polygamy: … but we called it celestial marriage.” I doubt there will ever be a purer naturalistic view written of Joseph the man.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 124 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 29, 2025
An Unchanging God, Individualized Grace
by Autumn Dickson
In August of 1840, Joseph Smith delivered a sermon that introduced the concept of baptisms for the dead. People rejoiced and began being baptized for their kindred dead shortly thereafter. The Mississippi River was often the choice of setting for these sacred ordinances.
In January of 1841, Joseph Smith received Doctrine and Covenants 124 along with this instruction.
Doctrine and Covenants 124:31 But I command you, all ye my saints, to build a house unto me; and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me; and during this time your baptisms shall be acceptable unto me.
The Lord commanded the Saints to build a temple again, and He told them that He would give them sufficient time to do so. Until then, He would accept their baptisms for the dead that occurred in the river.
We’ve talked about the fact that the Lord tailors His commandments for His people. For example, He made the Word of Wisdom advice before He ever made it a commandment or requirement for the temple. In this case, He allowed the Saints to give their best effort in preparing the temple but allowed them to still offer salvation to their loved ones in the meantime. The willingness exhibited by the Lord to work with us is always a gift.
And yet, in other examples, He seems unrelenting in what He demands of His Saints. For example, some of the trials the Saints went through leading up to Nauvoo are difficult to read about, let alone endure. He required a beautiful, massive temple from people who were poverty-stricken and inexperienced. He sent fathers out on missions while their families struggled at home.
At times, He stands ready to accept their best efforts. At other times, they are chastised for not fulfilling commandments to the letter. Some may see this as variability in personality. Some may see an arbitrary God who demands or allows depending on His mood.
I see a God who eternally loves us and makes decisions based on His purposes for us: to turn us into little versions of Him so that we can enjoy what He enjoys.
This is why He can simultaneously overthrow moneychangers in a temple but speak gently to an adulterer. It’s why He can strike Uzziah but forgive a Canaanite prostitute named Rahab. These decisions aren’t based on His ever-changing moods. They’re based on individuals who actually need wildly different things. And even within those individuals, their needs are going to vary from day to day.
There is a philosophy adopted by humans that we need to treat all of our children the same. I understand that consistency is vital to a child, but maybe we’re being consistent in the wrong things. I have tried to approach parenting a little differently. Rather than being consistent across the board with each child, trying to remember how I handled any given situation so that I can do the same thing for a sibling, I am consistent in my love for each child.
And because I am consistent in my love for each child, my reactions and decisions are going to vary by child.
At any given moment, does my child need me to meet them where they’re at or hold to a high standard? What is going to help them progress depending on how they slept, whether they’re hungry, whether they’re stressed from sitting at school all day? Do they need connection and mercy or connection and discipline? Which will help them see reality more accurately and help them acquire correct attitudes towards that reality?
I am not Heavenly Mother (or Father) and so unfortunately (or fortunately) for my children, sometimes my decisions ARE based off of my mood and limited capacities for wisdom and patience as much as I try to center them on each individual child.
But not so with the Lord.
He stands ready with infinite wisdom and patience in guiding us along. If He seems impatient or demanding, perhaps it is us who need to reframe our perspective. He is not annoyed with us; He isn’t ready to wash His hands of us (even when we wash our hands of Him). Rather, He is making individualized decisions about what to require and how to meet us where we’re at. He is parenting and coaching and coaxing in the most divine way possible.
If He seems cross or unrelenting, it is likely because He knows that pushing us to a higher standard is what we need. It’s going to require more of our souls. It’s going to push us to the point where we need Him; or more accurately, it will push us to the point where we recognize how much we need Him.
If He is gentle and accepting, it is likely because that is the approach that is going to help us progress faster in that moment.
The Saints had just experienced some intense devastation. They had been harmed cruelly. They had sacrificed so much. That sacrifice and difficulty wasn’t necessarily over, but Nauvoo became a period of rest for the Saints. The Lord knows what He’s doing. He knows that difficulty is why we came here; He knows the divine purpose of opposition. And yet, He’s also wise enough to know that we’re not ready for constant opposition. Moments of quiet and peace can balance all of that out and help bring out the best in us.
So here we see the Lord meeting His Saints where they’re at. He rejoices in the excitement of their hearts to perform this work. He loves their eagerness to provide saving ordinances for their kindred dead. That doesn’t mean He let go of the standard; baptisms for the dead belong to the temple. But He was also willing to give them stepping stones towards that standard.
He is not a changing Lord, making decisions based on whether He slept good last night or whether He’s hungry. He is a perfect Lord who knows whether His Saints need a stepping stone or chastisement.
I testify of a Lord who loves us and makes decisions based on each individual. I testify that even in the most tragic circumstances, He is there ready to carry us and give us the hope we need to be resilient. I testify of a Lord who loves us enough to whip us into shape or meet us where we’re at, depending on what is going to help us progress into our best selves. He is infinitely good, wise, and patient, but He is not afraid to push us. I love Him, and I’m grateful for how He has pushed me.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 121–123 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 23, 2025
There is Love in the Lack that God Gives
by Autumn Dickson
In my last message, I shared some of the words of Joseph Smith when he spoke to the Lord. Those words have been canonized as part of Section 121. For this message, I want to share something similar from the same time period though it’s not canonized. Like the prayer of Joseph Smith, I hope that these words can become our words.
Emma Smith was amongst the Saints who were driven out of Missouri at gunpoint. She left behind what she owned and took her children into a frozen wilderness. Not only did she leave behind her possessions, but she was leaving behind her husband who was stuck inside of Liberty Jail. She wrote about this in a letter to her husband, but here is the portion that I hope to emulate in my own life.
Was it not for conscious innocence, and the direct interposition of divine mercy, I am very sure I never should have been able to have endured the scenes of suffering that I have passed through … ; but I still live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven that I should for your sake.
What Emma went through would not be described as divine mercy by most, and yet, she found the hand of the Lord. She saw the Lord and His goodness and mercy (just as Joseph did), and because of what she saw in faith, she was “yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven…”
That is a powerful point to reach. To look at the Lord in any situation and say, I will take whatever You choose to hand out, good or bad. To accept your cross, pick it up, and start following with a childlike trust that He has your best interest at heart.
There are many little lessons that lead us to this point. There are many trust-falls that lead to the kind of relationship where you’re willing to accept what the Lord sends your way. There are a lot of principles and truths that we can internalize in order to reach this powerful point in our relationship with God.
Let’s talk about one truth that we can internalize that will shift how we look at our lives.
As I sat in Relief Society this weekend, the Spirit whispered to me, “There is love in the lack that God gives to you.”
We love to testify of tender mercies and divine “coincidences.” We rejoice when someone knocks on our door at the right time. We celebrate the moments when everything comes together for our good. In so many instances, these are the circumstances that build the foundation of our trust in God. It is because of these small moments that we look up and say, “I know He loves me and takes care of me.”
What if we could recognize the hand of God in everything?
Whenever Conner and I struggled to make things come together, my mom loved to tell me that the Lord would take care of us. She’s absolutely right and yet one time, I responded with, “Like He took care of the Willie and Martin handcart companies?” I was being facetious rather than bitter, but there’s still a lesson there.
The Lord did take care of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, and I’m not just talking about the moment they were rescued or the moment they stepped through the veil into spirit paradise.
It is easy to associate comfort, intervention, and safety with the Lord’s love; it is powerful to associate discomfort, silence, and perceived danger with the Lord’s love. We needed and wanted mortality with all of its pitfalls. And yet, when the Lord delivers on His promise of growth, we suddenly start to question whether He’s even there. There is no other way for Him to deliver on that promise!
Imagine for a moment that He sent us down here and didn’t allow bad things to happen, or maybe He just didn’t let super bad things happen. Being annoyed doesn’t call upon the depths of our soul. It doesn’t prepare us to step into His shoes and perform the work that He performs. Sure, the Lord lives in heaven and experiences all of those positively associated emotions, but He also has to stand back and watch the tragedies unfold on earth. If we can’t hang, we don’t get to step into His shoes.
He is giving us exactly what He asked for. He is giving us depth of life. The depth of your sorrow can unlock the height of your joy. They are inseparable sides of the same coin.
Life changes when we see the Lord’s hand in the tragedy and not just in the rescue. It changes even more when we see His hand in the tragedy before we reach the happy ending. When your spouse loses their job, when you’re lonely, when your family member or friend gets sick, when you lose your favorite pet, when you lose your health. How would these experiences change if you knew that the Lord had His hand in it and that He had your best interest at heart? What if He could show you the ending? And by the ending, I mean, what if He could show you how powerful you become as a result of the tragedy? What if He showed you the end result, your glory, as well as what He went through to make sure you wouldn’t walk the path alone?
Would it change your fear? Would it change your bitterness or devastation?
How would your life change if you saw His love immediately as tragedy strikes? How would your life change if you could see His love in the lack that He gives to you?”
It enabled Emma to carry more than most. The perspective of “His love in the tragedy” carried her.
That doesn’t mean that Emma never suffered again. Her faith didn’t immunize her against mental, emotional, and physical suffering. In her letter to her husband, she also references deep pain. Our trust in God’s love, whether in the rescuing or the tragedy, doesn’t take away the suffering. Life isn’t about escaping pain; eternal life isn’t about escaping pain.
Which is why I ask again: How would your experience change if you knew He had a hand in it and that He had your best interest at heart?
How do you describe the change that comes from knowing heaven is right on the other side of the veil? I’ve shared this analogy before, and I share it again.
It’s like being homeless, hungry, and exposed to the elements but knowing that everything you could possibly dream of awaits you in a couple of days. It doesn’t erase what you’re immediately feeling. You still feel the hunger, the weather, the lack of a bed. And yet, it does change how you feel about what you’re experiencing.
I testify that every decision the Lord is making to manipulate the details around you is in your favor even when it doesn’t feel like it. I testify that there is love in the lack that He chooses to give just as there was love in the suffering that ultimately rescues us. I testify that trusting Him through everything changes you for the better, and it brings the hope He promises.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 121–123 – Mike Parker
Oct 21, 2025
The “Mormon War” of 1838; Joseph Smith’s letter from Liberty Jail
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
FAIR has an article on The Danites with links to several other resources.
R. Scott Lloyd, “Hawn’s Mill Massacre: ‘New Insights and Interpretations’,” Church News, 9 November 2013. Recent research indicates that the name of the Mormon settlement was spelled Hawn’s Mill, rather than Haun’s, and that the Saints there were not aware of Joseph Smith’s counsel to move closer to Far West to avoid violence.
Transcript and photograph of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’ “Extermination Order,” Missouri Executive Order 44, issued 27 October 1838.
Emma Smith’s letter to Joseph Smith, Jr. in Liberty Jail, 7 March 1839. In her letter, Emma updated her incarcerated husband on her status and the the welfare of their children: “Was it not for conscious innocence, and the direct interposition of divine mercy, I am very sure I never should have been able to have endured the scenes of suffering that I have passed through…but I still live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven, that I should for your sake.”
Sections 121, 122, and 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants are extracts from a letter written by Joseph Smith and other Church leaders from Liberty Jail on 20 and (c.) 22 March 1839. Images of the original letter, along with an uncorrected transcript, are available on the Joseph Smith Papers website: Part 1 (20 March 1839); Part 2 (ca. 22 March 1839).
Kent P. Jackson and Robert D. Hunt, “Reprove, Betimes, and Sharpness in the Vocabulary of Joseph Smith,” The Religious Educator 6, no. 2 (2005): 97–104. Jackson and Hunt explain what these words meant in 1839 and the context in which they were used in D&C 121:43.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 121–123 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 20, 2025
Three Truths to Transform Your Prayers
by Autumn Dickson
Context.
Joseph stayed in a frigid prison with some of his companions for four months. It was one of the coldest winters on record in Missouri. They didn’t have sufficient clothing to keep them warm; the food was scarce and rotten. On at least four occasions, the food was poisoned. They couldn’t stand up straight because the prison was too short. There was no trial because of insufficient evidence, and witnesses were intimidated from testifying on behalf of Joseph and his companions.
This suffering was compounded by what was happening to their loved ones. They were separated from family and friends who were also suffering tremendously. Joseph’s band of followers had been expelled from Missouri through an extermination order and found themselves camped on the side of a river in winter time. As the men froze in the horrible prison, their people froze on the banks of a river. Joseph and his friends listened to their captors tell stories of the assault and murder of their friends and family back in Missouri, specifically the recounting of Haun’s Mill.
Dark times.
I have experienced some level of darkness and even if mine is comparatively lesser to Joseph and the Saints, I still believe that what we read in these sections can uplift us, carry us, and help us see more clearly. There are three principles that we’re going to talk about in relation to prayer that have the power to bring light back into our life.
Doctrine and Covenants 121 is a revelation that occurred during this time period, and it is unique in the sense that it is one of very few sections that include words spoken by man and not just the voice of the Lord. I want to talk about the specific verses coming from Joseph’s own voice. Though it was Joseph speaking and not the Lord, we can learn something profound.
If you want a good example of how to pray in faith, look no further than Joseph in Liberty Jail. Instead of reading consecutive verses, I’m going to read phrases from different verses to emphasize my point. Here are some of the words we read from Joseph.
Doctrine and Covenants 121:1-6
O God, where art thou? How long shall thy…pure eye, behold the wrongs of thy people…? O Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven, earth, and seas, and of all things that in them are…Remember thy suffering saints, O our God; and thy servants will rejoice in thy name forever.
Are we able to rejoice in the Lord under all circumstances? Even in the midst of tragedy, do we acknowledge His presence, purity, and power? In the midst of despair, are we able to still recognize ourselves as His?
Let’s talk about three ways Joseph shows his faith.
First, Joseph acknowledges Him. Perhaps we have not received manifestations to the extent that Joseph did, but we have had manifestations. Though the Lord wasn’t providing solutions or softening hearts or providing ways of escape, Joseph reached for the Lord.
Second, he acknowledges the perfect characteristics of God. Despite the less than perfect circumstances, despite the seemingly juxtaposed concepts of God’s goodness and God’s willingness to allow the current despair, Joseph calls His Lord good.
Third, Joseph acknowledges the sacred relationship between him and his God. It’s easy to be tempted to believe that God is angry or disappointed with us when things get sticky. If I had been in Joseph’s circumstances, I surely would have felt like I had done something wrong. I would have assumed that if I had been better or wiser or more righteous, I could have circumvented this terrible halt in the Lord’s plans. Not Joseph. More than once, Joseph describes the Saints with adjectives that imply ownership. Joseph and the other Saints belong to Christ. At least within this prayer, Joseph doesn’t waver in that.
Joseph’s prayer is filled with faith. It is fascinating to me how each of these three principles of faith are almost like stepping stones in our progression of faith that eventually becomes powerful enough to move mountains. As we apply that faith in prayer, we find the salvation we’re looking for. Here are the three principles of faith put into concise terms.
1) I believe that God is there.
2) I believe that God is good and powerful.
3) I belive that I am God’s child, and He loves me.
After it became a habit to write my prayers, I found myself inadvertently going through these three principles when I found myself in trouble. I didn’t even realize I was doing it (thank you Spirit) until the Lord guided me to write this. As I acknowledge the pattern this Lord has helped me establish, I realize that it has changed the course of my prayers, and therefore, my life.
If you are in a place of darkness, there is a lot of benefit in taking your troubles to the Lord. I’m sure there were plenty of times when Joseph talked to the Lord about all the things that he and the Saints were experiencing. I have found a lot of goodness in this strategy, and I employ it often.
And yet, some of my most powerful prayers have not come when I’ve poured out my heart about what’s going on and pleaded for some specific form of deliverance. My most powerful prayers are those drenched in those three principles of faith: I believe God is there, I believe He is good and powerful, and I believe that I am a child of God and He loves me.
When I take the time to acknowledge those three beliefs (in the same way that Joseph did), I find myself healing and comforted before I’ve ever gotten direction or deliverance. My problems and danger feel much smaller, the rewards greater. It makes everything I’m going through more manageable because I have remembered to compare it against some of the most powerful facts in existence. My problems don’t stand a chance against that.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that Joseph wasn’t immediately delivered from his prison after showing faith. Faith can move mountains, but the most important thing that faith can do is change us in the face of those mountains. Being changed at the end of this mortal experience is infinitely more important than being delivered from a jail cell. There’s no comparison.
I testify of God. I testify that He is there, that He is powerful and good, and I testify that He loves you because you are His child. I testify that those facts are true, and yet, they don’t hold much power in our life if we don’t believe them. God cannot prove Himself, His goodness, His power, or His love any more than He already is. We have to be the ones who change if we want to find those pieces of salvation He keeps handing out.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 115–120 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 16, 2025
Rejoicing During Failing
by Autumn Dickson
We are in an interesting section of church history here. This portion of history is often very difficult for some people because it calls Joseph’s prophetic calling into question…again. While the Saints were living in Kirtland, Ohio, Joseph encouraged the Saints to invest in the Kirtland Safety Society. The Kirtland Safety Society was meant to be a bank, but the state of Ohio rejected the Saints charter to form one. Instead, they utilized a loophole and made it a joint-stock company. You don’t really have to understand economics or legalities to understand that it failed. Many people lost a lot, and when we consider the fact that there are many people who don’t have a lot already, it can be easy to wonder how Joseph got it so wrong.
Why didn’t the Lord help the Saints with this? Or, at the very least, why didn’t the Lord warn Joseph against forming the Kirtland Safety Society? People listened to him because he’s the prophet, and they got burned. In fact, this is one of the reasons many Saints (including members of the twelve apostles) apostasized.
Interestingly enough, very shortly after the Saints fled Kirtland, Joseph was praying about the church’s difficult financial situation. Here is one of the verses in the revelations he received.
Doctrine and Covenants 119:1, 4
1 Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion,
4 And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.
So the Kirtland Safety Society failed, and then Joseph received a revelation that the Saints needed to give more. Again.
If this is the Lord’s church, why isn’t He enabling them to do what they need to do? LIke build Zion? Or build temples? If He has all of these expensive things that He desires of His Saints, why does He keep taking away? Or, at the very least, why is He allowing it all to be taken away?
I’ve got a theory.
My theory calls upon a story found in the New Testament, specifically in John 6. Christ feeds the 5,000 with a couple loaves of bread and fish. In modern times, we revere this beautiful miracle and use it to teach all sorts of lessons, but the story gets even more interesting. The people did not take all of the spiritual lessons that we often pull from it. Instead, they try to force Christ to be their king. He departs, and they find Him again, presumably to look for more free bread. I presume this because they don’t really like it when He refuses to make more bread. Many disciples leave and walk no more with Him.
Despite the gigantic miracle that did take place, we find a bunch of murmuring people who start to get mad at Christ. The second that Christ takes away the free bread, the people essentially start saying, “Who is this guy? He is just the son of Joseph and Mary.”
The parallels with the people who apostasized during this period in church history is astounding. Anyway.
Christ had to take away the bread in order to provide an opportunity for people to follow after Him for spiritual reasons. Otherwise, they would have followed Him for eternity continually receiving the bread but never actually finding the joy that was meant to be theirs. They never would have found it. They were too distracted by bread.
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. We rejoice in Him when He gives, and we rejoice in Him when He takes away. Otherwise, it’s not really the kind of faith that brings salvation. If we want salvation from our faith, it has to be a specific kind of faith. Let me show you the differences.
It cannot be faith that says, “I trust that God can give me everything I want.”
It has to be faith that says, “I trust God no matter where He takes me.” It is only this kind of faith that moves the mountains within us. It is only this faith that brings salvation in the truest sense.
Let’s bring this back to the Kirtland Safety Society. It would have been very easy for Heavenly Father to build up the city and the bank and the temple all by Himself. He built the earth; I’m pretty sure construction is not the problem here. I’m sure He could have enabled the Kirtland Safety Society to succeed wonderfully. But He didn’t, and it shook the faith of many. This is not the first time that Christ has “taken away,” and it’s not the first time that people abandoned ship because of it. It’s not the first time that people turned their backs on all of the other miracles that were performed. It’s not the first time people were too distracted by earthly problems to miss the eternal, spiritual lessons that had far more significance.
Let’s take this a step farther. The Lord took away, and then He called upon the people to give even more after they had just fled their homes in Kirtland.
In our day, I have seen many people call for an end to tithing, at least for the poor. For a church that is worth a lot of money, it really makes them upset that it would require the sacrifice of the widow who only has a mite to give. I understand where they’re coming from. Imagine a billionaire asking the poor for donations. It would spark outrage.
But, like the disciples of old who walked no more with Christ, they are missing the entire point.
Christ is the ultimate billionaire. Trillionaire. Yeah, it goes beyond that but I don’t know the label for someone who has infinite funds. He could end world hunger and physical suffering. He could stop all of it, but then we would be so distracted that we would never learn the weightier matters.
I don’t care what you say; bread can’t bring true happiness. Bread will one day be a part of our eternal reward. If you live righteously, all of your needs will be provided for. I’m pretty sure that even if you live wickedly, all of your needs get provided for in the other kingdoms. However, none of that will amount to the joy and peace and salvation that is meant to be yours if you do not learn the weightier matters.
Our God is wise and knows that taking away is essential to learning the weightier matters. He takes away, and He asks for sacrifice because only complete and utter faith in Him will bring salvation and all of its associated positive emotions. Christ doesn’t need your tithing. You need your tithing.
In Doctrine and Covenants 119:6, the Lord says that if His people do not follow the law of tithing, “…it shall not be a land of Zion unto (them).” I want to give an analogy to take this further.
Let’s say I build a house for my kids. It has absolutely everything they need, and I give it to them for free. It’s a gift. However, I can’t force my kids to enjoy the house. I can’t force them to live together in harmony and work together and love each other. I can’t force the house to be heavenly. They have to do that with their actions and more importantly, their attitudes. It doesn’t matter how much I gift them heaven if they’re not living in a heavenly manner so that it brings all the joy that the gift was meant to bring.
In that sense, I am offering them a gift of “Zion” in which they can have everything they need and where they can experience all the joy that comes with living in harmony and love with others. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I cannot truly force Zion’s joy upon them. I can tell them how to experience it by forgiving and loving and taking care of what they’ve been given, but if they choose to ignore my laws, then it will not be Zion to them. It doesn’t matter how much I provide and offer the gift. It will not be Zion to them if they are not living Zion-like lives.
If my children continue to ignore my laws to the extent that they’re miserable, then perhaps the most merciful and loving thing I can do is to kick them out of the house so that they can learn to appreciate what they were given. Perhaps that sounds dismissive, unmerciful, or uncaring, but it also holds a grain of truth. We can’t experience Zion unless we are changed to appreciate it. No matter how long you stay in the land of Zion, you will be miserable until you are changed.
Sometimes the only way to change is when He takes it away or when He asks us to sacrifice it. Maybe you don’t believe me, but believe Christ. He knew He had to take away the bread FOR THE BENEFIT of His disciples so long ago. They chose to leave anyway, but they would have refused the eternal blessings anyway because they would have been distracted by a piece of bread.
I testify that following the Lord no matter where He leads is the most incredible journey you can take. I testify that if you want joy, you trust the Lord. I testify that you need tithing, not the Lord. I testify that the weightier matters will bring you more than a piece of bread.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 115–120 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 13, 2025
When You Covet What You Have
by Autumn Dickson
The Saints began to flee Kirtland in January 1838 because of religious persecution and mounting debts. A majority of them went to Far West, Missouri. When July came around, Newel K. Whitney and William Marks were still in Kirtland. They had originally been left behind to settle affairs, but they had remained there longer than necessary because they were attached to their property and didn’t want to liquidate it too quickly.
Honestly, no judgment. It would be hard to flee. It would be hard to just close the door on something you had worked so hard for. It would be hard to turn off the lights for the last time and know you would likely never see the place again. It’s difficult to close a chapter even when you have confidence in a well-laid plan for the next chapter, which Whitney and Marks didn’t necessarily have.
And yet, here is what the Lord counseled them.
Doctrine and Covenants 117:4 Let them repent of all their sins, and of all their covetous desires, before me, saith the Lord; for what is property unto me? saith the Lord.
According to the “Guide to the Scriptures,” part of the definition for “covet,” is to “have an excessive desire towards.” Our desires for our own things can be excessive. We are not always accustomed to speaking of coveting something that already belongs to us. Usually when we speak about coveting, we’re talking about wanting something that someone else has. And yet, the Lord is speaking to these men about their own property. You can covet your own property.
I think it’s important that the definition includes the word “excessive.” We do not need to banish any desire we have for things. We can want a house, good food, clothing, and objects that make our life nicer or easier. We just need to keep our desires from becoming excessive.
I believe that excessively desiring our own property can look like a couple of different things. I want to talk about two different scenarios of coveting your own property as well as ways that we can overcome that coveting.
I’ve watched people be perfectly content with what they have until after they started earning more and having more. I’ve watched them start to covet what they already have only after they were given more. This is a legitimate pattern. Despite the fact that we usually speak of coveting something that someone else has, I’ve found that the most common form of coveting is when you have an excessive desire for your own stuff. We see it all the time in The Book of Mormon with the pride cycle. The people start out humble and poor and taking care of each other. It’s only after they start having nice things that they truly get caught up in the things of the world.
So how do we keep ourselves grounded? How do we not get caught up in owning things in this scenario?
It can feel tricky since the Lord doesn’t begrudge us laboring to increase what we have. There isn’t anything wrong with an appropriate desire for things. Those desires just can’t be excessive. How do we keep our desires balanced?
I’m sure there are plenty of ways that we can keep our desires for our own things at appropriate levels: humility, gratitude, giving, recognition of stewardship. However, I want to talk about one specific way we can keep ourselves from coveting our own property when we find ourselves with more than what’s normal.
We keep ourselves grounded by accurately placing our desires alongside our desire for eternal things. When we have an accurate view of eternity and what that entails, it becomes much easier to see the actual worth of our property. So what is this accurate view of eternity?
The accurate view is that the Lord is building a mansion for you. You are meant to be a king or queen. It is your divine birthright to walk on streets of gold and have everything you need. It is also part of your birthright to grow into a glorious being capable of eternal happiness. Walking on streets of gold can only bring so much happiness. When you find yourself in the eternities, you’re not going to be able to derive any little bursts of happiness from having more than those around you because they will also be walking on gold. When you’re in the eternities, walking on gold will be nice to the extent that you have what you need. However, you will very quickly start to realize that there is only so much joy you can derive from gold. The accurate view of eternity is that you will have all you need and want; however, if you don’t also have the weightier matters, you’re going to be miserable and empty.
So we keep ourselves grounded by balancing our desires for our own stuff with our desires for what truly brings happiness. When you’re feeling a little miserable or empty, it can be tempting to want to go buy something to fill that little void. Rather, if we can remember to invest in relationships and serving and turning outwards when we’re seeking happiness, we’re going to find it. You cannot find deep, lasting happiness in stuff in this life or the next. It is only when your stuff is a part of something more important and enduring, that you can derive all the joy and peace that was meant to be your’s.
There is another way that we can covet our own property, and I think this particular scenario is closer to what William Marks and Newel K. Whitney were experiencing.
We have observed a pattern of how becoming richer can actually make you more susceptible to coveting your own property. Despite this being a regular pattern, I believe it’s just as possible to covet your own things when you don’t have as much. Perhaps you’re not looking around and yearning for what everyone else has, but perhaps you’re plagued by fear of losing what little you do have.
And isn’t that the very definition of sin? Wickedness never was happiness. Being plagued by fear of losing what you have is not happiness which is why it can also be classified as sin. We have already established that getting richer doesn’t inoculate you from coveting your own property. The only way we can truly rid ourselves of the weight of envying our own property is by changing our hearts.
The only way to experience true happiness, and not Satan’s counterfeit, is by changing our hearts to trust Him and desire righteousness.
You don’t have to wait until you have more stuff to find the peace you’re looking for. You don’t have to wait until your pantry is full to trust that the Lord is taking care of you. In fact, you may not find peace or trust even after you have everything you wished for.
We are seeking joy and peace. That doesn’t come from our stuff. It cannot come from our stuff! Property is incapable of providing it. Joy and peace only come from following the pattern of living laid down by our Savior. Just as the Lord instructs in Doctrine and Covenants 117, we have to repent of our covetous desires. We have to change our heart to desire the best things and to trust Him enough to find peace in a world that is filled with turmoil.
I testify of a Lord who loves us. I testify that it is not difficult for Him to give you everything you could possibly desire and want. Property is nothing to Him because there is no end to His property. He’s trying to teach us that. We don’t want to be afraid of what we won’t have tomorrow but that doesn’t come from having enough. Even if you become the richest person in the world, you can still lose everything. There is no security but in the Lord. I testify that if you want joy and peace, you have to follow after the Lord.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 111–114 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 10, 2025
Mistakes Were Part of the Plan
by Autumn Dickson
The church is running into some issues. They have incurred heavy debts, and leaders are growing increasingly worried. There was a member, Brother Burgess, who spoke of a widow who had left behind a lot of money hiding in her cellar. Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery travelled to Salem, Massachusetts to attempt to find this treasure. It was never found.
It’s important to note that this account was written 53 years later by a former church member. We may not have every detail correct, but here is a verse from that stay in Salem that may be referring to this experience.
Doctrine and Covenants 111:1 I, the Lord your God, am not displeased with your coming this journey, notwithstanding your follies.
The Lord isn’t mad that they went to Salem despite their follies. A folly is an error in judgment, a mistake. The Lord is not afraid of us making mistakes. He warns against sin making us unhappy, but an error in judgment does not need to tear us down. Joseph and his companions had sought means to relieve the debts of the church. How could the Lord be upset with that? They were proactive and sought to do all within their power to fix the problems they were facing.
This is actually really important to understand; it’s very important to internalize. The Lord isn’t angry when we make mistakes.
We came to earth so that we could eventually become like Jesus Christ. We did not come to earth to never make mistakes.
It may sound like the same thing sometimes, but it’s not.
I’m going to ask some questions now that I’m desperately hoping do not come off sounding sacrilegious. There are many definitions of some of the words I’m about to use, and I’m asking questions so we can better understand the scriptures.
What do the scriptures mean when they say that Christ is perfect? Did it mean that He never fell down when He was learning to walk? Did it mean that He never found Himself with setbacks on a journey because of unforeseen circumstances? Or did it mean that He handled unforeseen circumstances with absolute faith? Is that partially why people in Nazareth rejected Him? Is it because they had seen Him grow up and make mistakes (not sin! mistakes!)?
This is the gospel according to Autumn, but I’m not sure that’s what the scriptures meant when they described Christ as perfect. I believe He faced a lot of the same trials we did in mortality. He had the same veil placed over his eyes and had to learn who He was. He faced situations where He didn’t know the outcome or the most effective decision, and maybe He didn’t even know the perfect thing to say. We know that scriptures taught that the Savior increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. How can you increase beyond the traditional definition of perfection?
When the scriptures say that Christ was perfect, I believe it means that He never sinned. Sin is not the same thing as a mistake. I believe that when He faced two roads that He could travel, He didn’t always know which one to take. Instead, He moved forward with faith and listened to see if His Father would correct Him. I believe that when He faced setbacks, He never faltered in that faith and devotion. I believe that when He faced people who had experienced tremendous grief, He wasn’t necessarily given perfect words (because I believe there are situations in which there are no perfect words) but His words were filled with power because of His perfect love.
When the scriptures ask us to be perfect, I believe the scriptures are asking us to become devoted to the Savior. We become so devoted that our hearts become perfectly filled with faith in the Savior and perfectly turned outwards towards others. Does that mean we will never face a situation where we don’t immediately know what we’re supposed to do? No. Does that mean we’ll never face obstacles because we’re simply going to know everything to say ahead of time? Does it mean that we’re going to be proactive in making decisions that we completely circumvent every setback as we’re going about the work of the Lord?
I don’t think so. I could be wrong for sure. But I believe perfection, as described by the scriptures, is a state of heart in which we are wholly turned towards the Lord and then towards others. I don’t think it extends to omnipotence until the next life.
If we become paralyzed with fear of mistakes, we prevent ourselves from acquiring growth. Growth is essential to the entire purpose of the Plan of Salvation. So there you go. We didn’t come to earth to avoid mistakes. We came to earth to become like Jesus Christ.
And honestly, I believe this extends towards sin. This is the part where we obviously differ from Christ. We’re going to sin and make mistakes. And though the Lord was talking about the debts the church had incurred in Kirtland, the Lord loves to have layers of meaning in His words. Here is another verse from the same section.
Doctrine and Covenants 111:5 Concern not yourselves about your debts, for I will give you power to pay them.
Christ is not concerned with our debts. He already paid them. He knows the price because it was paid a long time ago. He isn’t concerned. He had enough to cover it.
He is wholly focused on your growth.
If Heavenly Father was wholly focused on avoiding sin, He never would have sent us here to earth at all because it was impossible to come to earth without sinning and making mistakes.
This doesn’t mean that we run around excusing ourselves and doing whatever we want because Christ paid the debt and Heavenly Father is wholly focused on our growth. He is not concerned when we have flaws we’re trying to overcome, and He is not concerned with our follies. He is concerned when we’re refusing to grow and receive the joy that comes with following after Him.
If you are actively repenting, if you are trying to orient your heart towards the Savior, if you are trying to turn your heart outward towards your fellow man, then rejoice. The Savior isn’t mad at your mistakes. Rejoice; don’t be concerned about your debts. They are taken care of.
I testify of a Savior who is perfect. I testify that He was wholly devoted to His Father and rejoiced in His Father because of His faith. I testify that He rejoices in your repentance and growth to the extent that He is not angry, nor concerned. I testify that He loves you perfectly even though He knows you exactly as you are; you don’t have to be afraid of your flaws or lack of wisdom about how to handle every circumstance in your life because He already knows and He loves you anyway.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 111–112, 114–115, 117–120 – Mike Parker
Oct 09, 2025
End of the Kirtland period; revelations in Missouri, 1838
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
BMC Team, “Why Was Martin Harris Cut Off from the Church?”, Book of Mormon Central, 1 June 2021. This brief article explains why Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, was excommunicated from the Church in late 1837 during a period of mass apostasy.
Stephen C. Harper, “The Tithing of My People,” Church History: Revelations in Context, last modified 13 January 2016. Harper, a historian for the Church History Department, explains how the Saints in Missouri understood how to calculate “one-tenth of all their interest annually” as tithing. (D&C 119:4)
Dennis B. Horne, “Reexamining Lorenzo Snow’s 1899 Tithing Revelation,” Mormon Historical Studies – Fall 2013, Vol. 14, No. 2. President Lorenzo Snow did not prophesy an end to the southern Utah drought at the time he received his famous tithing revelation in St. George in 1899 (as portrayed in the church-produced movie “The Windows of Heaven”). The tithing manifestation was indeed true and real, but President Snow’s son LeRoi C. later created an accompanying fiction of a prophecy that if the locals paid their full tithing it would yet rain that very season and save their livestock and crops. President Snow uttered no such prophecy and there was no end to the drought for two years.
Elder Boyd K. Packer, “The Least of These,” General Conference, October 2004. “I remember my servant Oliver Granger; behold, verily I say unto him that his name shall be had in sacred remembrance from generation to generation, forever and ever, saith the Lord.” (D&C 117:12)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 111–114 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 07, 2025
The Power of Conversion: Healing Through Christ
by Autumn Dickson
Thomas B. Marsh was frustrated with Joseph Smith for calling two of the apostles on missions without consulting him. He received a revelation that helped him repent and gave him spiritual counsel. Within the counsel he receives, there are two phrases that are found next to each other which take on profound meaning when you observe them together.
Doctrine and Covenants 112:13 And after their temptations, and much tribulation, behold, I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts, and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them.
The Lord is talking to Marsh about the apostles. The Lord told Marsh to correct them and be an example to them before sharing this verse where He promises to reach out to them. The phrases that are interesting when placed together are, “…they shall be converted, and I will heal them.”
There are a couple of definitions of the word convert that are relevant. The first one is, “change in form, character, or function.” The second definition is to, “change one’s religious faith or other beliefs.” Let’s talk about both definitions and how they lead to healing. I’m actually going to talk about the second definition first.
To change one’s religious faith or other beliefs. This is an interesting one. We’re obviously not talking about converting to a different religion, but even within our own church, we need to be evolving our own beliefs as we learn more about the gospel. Let me give an example. It’s a long one, but sharing all of the details helps me teach the principle.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve actually had multiple friends come to me with marital problems and I shared a piece of advice that I had received. Love your spouse when you don’t feel loved. Interestingly enough, this is good advice no matter what kind of marriage you find yourself in. Even more interestingly, this is good advice for any relationship you’re in.
I can imagine that this might cause some outrage, especially for people who have escaped abusive relationships, but let me explain further.
God loves us infinitely more than anyone else. His love leads Him to act mercifully, to make sacrifices on our behalf, to continually turn towards us even when we’ve rejected Him. God’s love has also led Him to reject us, to put up boundaries, to separate us from Himself and others.
Love is a feeling, not a specific action.
When I originally shared this advice with my friends, some of them struggled with it. They felt that they had already sacrificed enough, and they weren’t seeing enough sacrifice on the part of their spouses. AND THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT I’M TRYING TO TEACH.
They struggled with the advice because they had inaccurate ideas of what love means and what it looks like. When I explained to them that my definition of love was a feeling that could lead to several different appropriate actions, that softened the blow a bit.
When we talk about converting in relation to the gospel, we’re talking about changing aspects of our faith and beliefs. I’m not talking about getting baptized in a different church; I’m talking about true, internal change within our hearts as we receive new perspectives and interpretations of doctrine. The more we convert, the more we heal. Let’s look at our example of love again.
I also gave this piece of advice to a friend whose significant other broke up with them in a hurtful way. I told my friend to love her, truly love her enough that you wanted what was best for her. I told him that if he wanted to heal from getting hurt in this manner, his best strategy was to love her. Love didn’t mean following her around. He had to change his belief of what love was and looked like, and if he chose to allow a more accurate definition of love to take hold in his heart, he was going to find healing.
As we convert closer and closer to the gospel, we are going to naturally find healing. Even as members of Christ’s church on the earth, we still have some inaccurate ideas surrounding gospel principles that we’re going to weed out as we grow older.
When we learn that forgiveness can look like complete mercy and letting go of past grievances as well as loving someone from a healthy distance, we can find healing.
When we learn that serving can bring about resentment if we’re not throwing our heart into the mix, we can soften our own hearts and find healing.
When we learn that humility doesn’t mean squashing ourselves and the spiritual gifts we’ve been given, we start to step into our divine destinies, and we find healing.
There are so many different aspects of faith that need to evolve as we learn more about the gospel. Following gospel principles inaccurately can make things more difficult, but if we convert our faith as we learn a more accurate perspective on these same principles, we will find the healing that Christ has talked about.
The first definition that I mentioned was to “change in form, character, or function.” I’m not going to elaborate too much on this because it’s simply another way of saying what has already been said. We change. Not only do we change our functions (i.e. the outward actions of the gospel), but we change in character. If you can utilize the actions to actually change your character, you find the salvation that Christ promised.
I testify that following Christ accurately is what brings about the true blessings of the gospel. I testify that we do need to convert as we learn more and more and more about what Christ meant when He gave certain commandments. I also testify that when we allow our faith to convert and transform, we will find the healing that He promised us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 109-110 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 03, 2025
Building the Kingdom in Diapers and Day Jobs
by Autumn Dickson
The Saints have built the Kirtland temple. This week we read about the dedication event, including the revealed prayer from the Lord, and we read about the Lord restoring priesthood keys within the temple. Here is one of the verses from the prayer that was revealed to Joseph Smith.
Doctrine and Covenants 109:9 That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hand unto the Most High–
This verse is talking about temple worship. When you come into the temple, your heart should be turned towards the Lord. When you leave the temple, that state of heart should follow you into the world. During temple worship, all of your salutations (or, in other words, your interpersonal communications) should reflect the Lord and His holiness.
There is a lot of power in focusing on Christ in the temple. Temple worship reflects the antiquity of the gospel, and it can feel very different than how we normally worship. When we use every part of the temple to reflect on Christ and look at every symbol through a lens of Christ, the worship experience becomes more meaningful.
However, I want to take this beyond the walls of the temple.
When I was a teenager, I remember attending EFY camps, fireside, Sunday youth classes, and all sorts of youth activities. Oftentimes, we would be invited to spend more time with the Savior. Being the perfectionist that I was, I often took this goal beyond what my leaders had likely intended. I would make goals about reading my scriptures, praying, and doing other spiritual activities that went beyond the bounds of what was balanced or even appropriate.
As an adult, I recall the Spirit whispering a very important truth to me. Spending time with the Savior is not just about going and doing traditionally spiritual things; it’s also about inviting the Savior into the rest of your life. Our incomings, outgoings, and salutations can be in the name of the Lord regardless of whether they are directly about the Lord.
Rather than constantly immersing myself in scripture study, I can take my learning to a new level as I bring Christ into the rest of my life. This has many outcomes, but let’s talk about a couple of them.
The first effect is that it transforms my life.
I can listen to secular music, read my favorite romance novels, go out to dinner with my husband, and hang out with my girl friends with the Savior as my companion. I remember driving to go buy a dress for a Christmas party. The sun was shining, and my Apple Playlist was giving me all of the best songs. The Spirit whispered to me that I should remember Christ, and I did. I thanked Him for moments like that, and it made it all the sweeter. I knew He was happy for me and that He was enjoying my happiness and gratitude.
Eternal life isn’t all work. I don’t know what the Savior does for fun, but I believe that fun is an important part of a healthy and balanced spiritual life. The Savior wants to be included in those moments too.
As a stay-at-home mom, my life can also get a bit repetitive meeting the needs of my kids. Helping the kids with their tasks that I’m trying to teach, making bottles, changing diapers, wiping the counter, picking up things so that I don’t trip over it, and refereeing can take its toll sometimes. The daily tasks can feel so mundane sometimes until you place them in the context of eternity. But then I bring the Savior into it. Eternity isn’t about learning some huge new lesson every few weeks. It’s not about giant, transformational experiences. It’s about daily habits that make us who we are.
When I invite the Savior to walk with me in my experience, it reminds me that I’m building discipleship into the rapidly developing brains of my children. Showing up for them over and over and over and over and over sets the stage for them to understand their Savior. He gives power and purpose to the mundane parts of my life. And though I speak of my personal experience as a stay-at-home mom, these principles extend beyond that. You can find power and purpose in the mundane parts of your life.
So we’re working on letting our incomings, outgoings, and salutations be in the name of the Lord. The first effect is that it transforms our lives. It makes sweet moments sweeter. It fills the mundane parts of life with purpose. And I didn’t talk about it, but it also soothes the hard moments.
The second effect is that it makes your work more powerful.
When you do something in the name of the Lord, it adds power. Acting in His name means that we are standing in for Him as if He were here. We are His representative. We are doing what He would do in our situation. Christ left His carpentry job to be a full-time missionary for 3 years, but that’s not our mission. He made premortal promises, and He fulfilled them. We also made premortal promises, but ours are not the same as His.
You don’t abandon your day job. You transform your day job. It’s “Bring the Savior to work day.” This has a couple of outcomes.
It quickens your ability to do your job. I watch my husband receive revelation all the time in his engineering designs. I pray all the time for his inspiration. The Saints were building the Kirtland temple, and I’m sure they learned a lot of spiritual lessons. They also developed some major construction skills. Maybe that doesn’t seem like an important skill until you realize that the Lord is preparing us to create like He did. Invite Him to join you, and do all things in His name. It can add purpose, and it can make you more capable.
When you do your day job in the name of the Lord, you also find ways to build the kingdom in creative ways. Sometimes we think building the kingdom means we go to church and do our calling, but building the kingdom can happen everywhere around you. Can you imagine how quickly our ability to build the kingdom would collapse if all the farmers left their jobs to be full-time missionaries? Jobs that are not traditionally thought of as spiritual can be done in the name of the Lord, and they can help build the kingdom.
Let all your salutations, incomings, and outgoings be done in the name of the Lord. That doesn’t mean you immediately need to preach to your coworker. It can also mean finding purpose, power, and fulfillment in the work that you are a part of. It doesn’t mean abandoning your day job to knock doors; it means bringing the Savior with you everywhere you go.
I testify that doing so transforms your life and your work. The Savior is the best companion on this unofficial mission we’ve been called to do. He knows the importance of daily tasks and can help us remember how our small contributions matter. He knows how to have fun. He finds great joy in your joy. He can expand your capacities and help you creatively utilize them for good.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 109-110 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 29, 2025
Your Body as a Temple: Surprising Lessons from the Kirtland Temple
by Autumn Dickson
We have been asked to liken the scriptures unto ourselves. Oftentimes, I look at this from the perspective of studying the people who lived at the time of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. As I study the events surrounding the revelations, I am able to learn so much more about what the Lord is trying to teach. I am able to relate, if not in situation than in feeling, to these Saints and the Lord’s words answer me just as it answered them.
Though I often go through this process in relation to people, there is another way to liken the scriptures to us this week.
The Lord declares that our body is a temple. When He declares this, He implies many things. Our bodies are tabernacles through which we experience mortal life and the (hopefully) resulting spiritual growth. Our bodies can house the Spirit. We treat our bodies as a gift from the Lord.
What can we learn from Section 110 that teaches us even more about our bodies that were given to us by the Lord? I want to pull out a couple of phrases and ideas.
The first idea is that the Kirtland temple was unique amongst temples in this dispensation.
Traditionally, a temple in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a place where we go to receive further instruction and power by entering into covenants with the Lord. Interestingly enough, temples looked very different before the Lord came to fulfill His mortal ministry. Even in this dispensation, we have the Kirtland Temple. Within the Kirtland Temple, there was no baptismal font or rooms for sealings. There was no endowment. It looked like a church. There was a place for the congregants to sit, worship, learn, and sing. There was a pulpit.
This uniqueness holds many implications for our own bodies. The first implication I can think of is the progression of the gospel, or the idea of a living church. We believe that the church does change. The doctrine doesn’t change, but we grow closer and closer and closer to the truth. The Kirtland Temple was not completely ready to start performing additional ordinances en masse. Neither were the people ready en masse to receive that ordinance. It was a step in the right direction as the Lord continued to give further light and knowledge. We grow and progress and sacrifice and learn before we also receive further ordinances.
There were also three keys that were restored in the Kirtland temple. Moses came and gave the keys of the gathering of Israel. Elias came with the gospel of Abraham, and Elijah came to restore the sealing power. A grand majority of us will never hold those keys, male and female alike. However, those keys unlocked power for everyone there. One of those purposes of the Kirtland Temple was to create a place and a people who were prepared to receive these keys, and it worked. The Saints sacrificed and toiled, and it prepared their hearts to utilize the power that was unlocked from those keys.
And so we work and sacrifice and prepare ourselves to receive the power of those keys to the same extent that the Saints felt the power of those keys. Priesthood keys unlock power. The Lord wants these restored keys to unlock power in each of our lives. He wants us to experience the power of the Gathering of Israel. He wants us to understand what it means to be part of the family of Abraham. He wants us to be sealed together as part of His eternal family.
There are more phrases and implications, but I want to discuss one more verse.
Doctrine and Covenants 110:7 For behold, I have accepted this house, and my name shall be here; and I will manifest myself to my people in mercy in this house.
In verse 7, the Lord accepts His house and places His name upon it. He also promises to manifest Himself there. We looked to eventually be accepted of the Lord as we build and refine ourselves. We carry His name upon us. And then there is also the matter of the manifestation of the Lord.
The Lord visited the Kirtland temple as a fulfilment of the promise He made that He would enter into His house if the Saints would allow no unclean thing to enter therein. I believe the Lord is willing to reveal as much as we are willing to bear, including the manifestation of Himself, and so we utilize His atonement to be cleansed and we work on ourselves to be prepared to hold that responsibility.
I believe this has another implication. The Lord will manifest Himself to His people. Sometimes a manifestation of the Lord is not always the act of standing in His presence. Honestly, looking at a sunset is a manifestation of Him if we’re looking through spiritual eyes. I believe that we can manifest the Savior to others. He can visit His people through us as we work to lift where we stand. When I strengthen my husband, kiss my children, and love my friends, they are receiving miniscule doses of the Savior. We can be walking temples that house the Spirit and bring the Savior closer to everyone on this earth.
I testify that there are many reasons that the Lord described our bodies as temples. I testify that one of those reasons is because we can parallel temples in many regards. We can look to temples to better understand what the Lord has in store for us. We can look to temples to better understand what the Lord expects of us. I testify that He can sanctify our sacrifices and efforts and make us clean as we work to become a type of the House of the Lord.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 106-108 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 25, 2025
Priesthood Privilege
by Autumn Dickson
Disclaimer. I want to talk about the priesthood this week, but the more I dive into it, the more I realize that I know hardly anything about it. There is so much; it’s rather overwhelming. I have done my research. I have tried very hard to understand, but it’s also important to note that I’m imperfect. If I have made any mistakes about principles surrounding the priesthood or even policies, I apologize. Please feel free to correct; I’d much rather learn truth in comparison to standing in ignorance.
Another disclaimer. Elder Neil L. Anderson teaches, “There is an important principle that governs the doctrine of the Church. The doctrine is taught by all 15 members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. It is not hidden in an obscure paragraph of one talk. True principles are taught frequently and by many.”
There are quotes that I’m sharing today that are doctrine, taught over and over through inspired church leaders. I also want to declare that I am sharing personal interpretations, as well as ideas that have not been taught frequently or been canonized. Why do I share them if they are not official doctrine?
I share them for a lot of reasons. They inspire questions, revelation, and for me, they inspire wonder. How much do we not know yet? It’s mind boggling and beautiful. I don’t think there’s anything objectively wrong with exploring doctrine and learning and wondering and asking questions and forming theories as long as we keep a healthy understanding that the Lord reveals official doctrine through a prophet to the whole church.
So without further ado.
Section 107 helps to explain the idea of different aspects of the priesthood. One of the clarifications we receive about the priesthood is as follows:
Doctrine and Covenants 107:18, 5 (why yes, I’m sharing them out of order)
18 The power and authority of the higher, or Melchizedek Priesthood, is to hold the keys of all the spiritual blessings of the church-
5 All other authorities or offices in the church are appendages to this priesthood (Melchizedek Priesthood).
Before I continue on, I want to give a quick tangent here that will help me clarify what I’m talking about as I go through my post. The Melchizedek Priesthood is the power we’ve been given on earth from God. It holds all the spiritual blessings of the church. There are many powers we have not been given in the church. God’s power extends far beyond what we currently have the ability to utilize. In other words, there is Melchizedek Priesthood and then there is priesthood.
But for this post, I may use Melchizedek Priesthood and the general term “priesthood” interchangeably. This is not because they are synonymous; it is because it’s much shorter to just say priesthood. So, when I use the word Melchizedek Priesthood or just the general term priesthood, I am referring to the power that is currently given to the church to bring about the salvation of mankind on the earth.
Phew. Lot’s of groundwork today. Back to the verses.
The Melchizedek Priesthood is the power and authority of God given to us today; all of the other permissions and powers we structurally recognize in the church have grown out of that one priesthood. If you continue reading on in Section 107, we learn that even the Aaronic priesthood is an appendage to the Melchizedek Priesthood. The Melchizedek Priesthood stands independent of all these other offices and authorities.
In the institute manual, we read a quote by Joseph Fielding Smith that teaches this.
“There is no office growing out of this priesthood that is or can be greater than the priesthood itself. It is from the priesthood that the office derives its authority and power. No office gives authority to the priesthood. No office adds to the power of the priesthood. But all offices in the Church derive their power, their virtue, their authority from the priesthood.”
This is actually a critical understanding. The Melchizedek Priesthood is the power and authority of God. Here is another quote from Joseph F. Smith; “Priesthood is the power of God, delegated to man (as in mankind, humanity), to act in the earth for the salvation of the human family.” That’s it. It’s the power of God given so that we can help people return home to Him. We often limit the Melchizedek Priesthood to the specific offices of Elder, High Priest, Patriarch, Seventy, and Apostle. Those are offices within the Melchizedek Priesthood, but if the verse we read earlier is correct, then those offices are literally just appendages. The Melchizedek Priesthood is actually so much more.
All of the other stuff we read in relation to the priesthood (performing ordinances, men getting ordained to the priesthood, etc.) are actually just appendages. They utilize priesthood, but they are not THE priesthood.
Here is my perspective on what that actually means. Once again, gospel according to Autumn.
The Melchizedek Power is just a fancy way of saying that God is supplying the power behind our actions in order to bring His children home. This is doctrine. So much of what we interpret as the Melchizedek Power is actually just policy.
For example, when a boy turns 12, he gets ordained as a deacon. When he is 14, he becomes a teacher. When he is 16, he becomes a priest (This is why it was able to change! Boys went from passing the sacrament when they turn 12 to passing the sacrament at the beginning of the year in which they turn 12). This list goes on and on. All of this structure is actually just policy that is meant to help us along. It is a structure that the Lord has put into place. Think of it like a calling. The actual priesthood acts independently of the calling. You don’t need callings for the Melchizedek Priesthood to exist. Rather, the Lord organizes everything so that it’s easier to come back home to Him. The priesthood structure that was given by the Lord (from deacon to prophet) were all put in place to help us, but are they necessary?
That’s an extremely complicated question. It’s like asking whether a prophet is necessary. In an ideal world where we were all tremendously righteous, no, a prophet would not be necessary. We could all be prophets unto ourselves. Unfortunately, most of us need more of a support system than pure intelligence coming into our minds through the power of the Spirit. In that manner, YES, we need a prophet.
It’s the same with the priesthood organization. If we were all righteous enough, I wonder if we would still be operating on the patriarchal form of priesthood in Abraham’s day where the dad was the presiding officer and took care of his family. There wasn’t a more complicated structure than that.
The point I’m trying to make boils down to this: the Melchizedek Priesthood is the power of God, and it extends far beyond the priesthood structure that God put into place. The structure is helpful, and because of that, it’s necessary. However, the priesthood structure is not the priesthood.
So I’ve made my point. Why the heck does it matter?
BECAUSE IT PUSHES US TO LIVE UP TO OUR PRIESTHOOD PRIVILEGES.
Example.
I was reading a message delivered by Wendy Ulrich, a member of the Relief Society Advisory Council Member. She said this.
“…when women give birth within the new and everlasting covenant, they are in essence performing for themselves for their child that sealing function that cannot otherwise be done except by a sealer in the temple.”
Um. What?!
I love being a mother. I appreciate pregnancy (as much as I hate being pregnant), childbirth, all of it. I have a deep reverence for the female body I’ve been given, and I am in awe that God has trusted me with this divine calling that embodies all the most important aspects of my Heavenly Mother.
In a world that increasingly diminishes and detests motherhood, I declare that I am utilizing the most powerful force in existence: the Melchizedek Priesthood. The childbirth process that I participate in seals my child in the new and everlasting covenant by the power of God, by His Melchizedek Priesthood.
Let’s extend this further. Let me bring two ideas together.
Idea 1. I’m repeating a quote from earlier. Joseph F. Smith said, “Priesthood is the power of God, delegated to man (as in mankind, humanity), to act in the earth for the salvation of the human family.”
Idea 2. Childbirth somehow creates a soul. We know that a woman’s body creates a physical vessel, a body. But somewhere in that process, a spirit is placed into that body.
Creating physical vessels for the spirit children of our Heavenly Parents is absolutely essential for the salvation of the human family. Does that mean pregnancy and childbirth (independent of the sealing power) are also acting by the Melchizedek Priesthood?
Honestly, I’m not sure. There are so many things that have not been revealed to us. We don’t know when the spirit enters the body. We don’t know how that process occurs. But this I do know. When a man baptizes his child, it is said that he is acting with the priesthood to further their salvation even though it’s not really the man’s power. He is merely the vessel in which God is furthering the salvation of that child. Is it really so different from bringing a child into the world? I didn’t design this body to do this miraculous process. I don’t even have to think about it. Like a man who baptizes his child, I am merely the vessel in which this sacred process is occurring.
Once again, I don’t know for sure. All of that was just a long-winded way of saying something I do know.
The Melchizedek Priesthood is available for all of us to utilize. The very power that shaped the universe is the same power that God extends to you regardless of whether you’re a deacon, bishop, prophet, or mother. It’s not about being a leader in a priesthood structure. It’s about serving. And as we serve in the way that Christ served, we change the world.
I testify that God’s power is available to all who are willing to follow Him and try to serve His children. I testify that women can hold as much power as any man. I testify that the power God is willing to extend to any person is proportionate to how willing we are to follow the Lord. That is the only qualifier for how much priesthood power we are capable of wielding.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 106-108 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 22, 2025
What are Priesthood Keys?
by Autumn Dickson
The Lord restored the priesthood to mankind some time ago, and yet, He did not reveal the structure in which He wanted everything to be organized. There were many who had received callings and knew their responsibilities, but putting it together in a structural whole would serve to provide organization so that the Lord’s house could be a house of order.
One of the organizational tools for the Lord’s priesthood is that of keys.
Doctrine and Covenants 107:8-9
8 The Melchizedek Priesthood holds the right of presidency, and has power and authority over all the offices in the church in all ages of the world, to administer in spiritual things.
9 The Presidency of the High Priesthood, after the order of Melchizedek, have a right to officiate in all the offices in the church.
These verses are talking about rights. Verse 8 explains that the Melchizedek Priesthood holds the right of presidency, and the Presidency of the High Priesthood (or in our day, the First Presidency) has a right to officiate in any capacity in the church.
Here is a quote that connects the idea of rights to keys. Joseph Fielding Smith taught, “While all men hold the priesthood who are ordained to any office, yet there are special, or directing, authorities, bestowed upon those who are called to preside. These authorities are called keys.”
I’m going to zoom out a bit so that we can attempt to understand different aspects of the priesthood and organize it all.
First, we have the priesthood. The priesthood, in its simplest definition, is the power of God. It is the power by which He created. It is the power by which rules.
Second, there is the Melchizedek Priesthood. As stated in my previous video from this week, the Melchizedek Priesthood stands independent of any office or calling. In its simplest definition, it is the power of God that is given to man to further the work of salvation on the earth. In other words, it’s a portion of the priesthood power that is held by our Heavenly Father. He only gave us a portion of the power that we needed for this life.
Third, there is the Aaronic Priesthood. This is actually not a separate priesthood from the Melchizedek Priesthood. It is an appendage of the Melchizedek Priesthood. It was another way of organizing the priesthood and delegating responsibilities.
Fourth, there are priesthood ordinations and offices. When men come of age, they are ordained to the priesthood and progress through priesthood offices. Different priesthood offices delegate different priesthood responsibilities. Quick tangent. Only men are ordained to the priesthood, but women can utilize the priesthood without being ordained. The Lord has still not answered why He has chosen this path or whether it’s doctrine or policy. There are plenty of theories, but the Lord has not chosen to explain it.
And the last thing I want to talk about today: priesthood keys. Priesthood keys take priesthood offices just a tiny step further. Priesthood keys are the right to govern. You can hold a priesthood office without holding any keys. You can hold the office of Elder or High Priest but not have any keys with which to direct the work. You simply have responsibilities to function underneath those keys. The church website teaches us which offices and leaders hold keys.
Members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles hold all the keys necessary for governing the Church. Only the President of the Church has the right to exercise all of those keys. He delegates these keys to others who preside in the Church—temple presidents, mission presidents, stake presidents, district presidents, bishops, branch presidents, and quorum presidents, including deacons and teachers quorum presidents.
Oftentimes these keys are to overlook specific responsibilities and geographical jurisdictions. They eventually trace back to the prophet, and ultimately, to the Savior, Himself.
When I think of keys, I think of unlocking rooms. Let’s pretend that God’s various works (including those not directly associated with the earth) are a giant castle. Different rooms hold different responsibilities and powers that the Lord governs.
The Lord has given a grouping of rooms to the President of the Church on earth, or the prophet. When the Lord gave the prophet the keys, a couple of things happened. He gave the prophet a stewardship. The prophet is now in charge of making sure that what occurs in those rooms are in alignment with what the Lord would have occurring in those rooms.
But as the church grew bigger, it became very difficult for one prophet to oversee so many rooms and consequent responsibilities so he started delegating keys. The prophet can still access any of these rooms and perform responsibilities associated with those rooms, but he often chooses, delegates, and allows other leaders to perform their responsibilities without too much interference.
A mission president is over a room of missionaries found within a geographical area. If a mission president is called over the Salt Lake City North mission, he has no jurisdiction over any other missionaries than the one in his mission. He also doesn’t hold authority over the members. His specific room is for the missionaries.
The same idea goes to temple presidents, stake presidents, bishops, and quorum leaders. Eventually these men get released from their callings and they hand their keys back to be given to a new leader.
As I said previously, the person who holds the key for a specific room is in charge of making sure that everything that occurs in that room aligns with the Lord. Are ordinances being performed correctly? Is the doctrine kept pure from apostasy? Keeping a massive, worldwide church on track is no easy task. Keys help to make sure that the Lord’s church is the same everywhere.
It is also important to note that you don’t need keys to help push the work further along. Though a leader is chosen to hold the keys, all of us have access to God’s priesthood power to make a difference. We can’t get caught up in the idea of leadership. Christ’s example of leadership should give us a real taste of what it means to govern. You don’t have to be a leader to access power or even change the world.
Interestingly enough, I don’t know if priesthood keys are doctrine or policy. If anyone does know, please feel free to comment. I don’t know if keys exist independently or if the Lord created the priesthood organizational system, and the keys were part of the system that He created. I don’t know if keys were just meant to help create a house of order or if they belong to the category of doctrine in which they don’t really get changed.
This post definitely was definitely more informational than some of my other posts, but being able to zoom out and understand some of the basic organizations of God’s priesthood has also helped me better understand my own priesthood responsibilities. It helps me understand the access I have to priesthood power, not just in the form of receiving blessings but also the power I am capable of wielding to further the work of salvation.
There is beauty in the fact that the Lord knows what He’s doing. There is beauty in knowing that there is truth, and I can trust that truth to remain pure no matter where I go and attend church services. The Lord has achieved an incredible amount of unity and continuity in a worldwide church that many world leaders only dream of.
As we come closer and closer to a knowledge of Christ’s character, we receive more and more salvation. We experience more happiness. That’s why the keys are so essential. It keeps our knowledge of Christ accurate and enables us to remain close to Him through the ordinances that He put forth.
I am grateful for a Lord who is wise enough to set up His church as He did. I’m grateful that despite all the imperfections of mankind, He has done a phenomenal job of keeping His truths and ordinances pure so that we can draw as close to Him as possible. I testify that the priesthood is ultimately His to delegate, and that He offers His power to anyone who is worthy and willing. I also testify that He set up a priesthood organization in which He delegated certain responsibilities to push us to become better and keep things as close to the truth as humanly possible.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 102-105 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 18, 2025
Prevail Against Mine Enemies
by Autumn Dickson
The Saints were driven from their homes and living as refugees in Clay County, Missouri. Joseph Smith and other church leaders received letters with news regarding what had happened. Besides the letters, Joseph also received a revelation from the Lord with this declaration:
Doctrine and Covenants 103:6 Behold they shall, for I have decreed it, begin to prevail against mine enemies from this very hour.
The Lord declares that the Saints will begin to succeed over His enemies immediately. This likely brought great hope to those who were worried about the redemption of what was meant to be Zion. As Joseph and other leaders gathered Zion’s camp to go and win back the Saints’ lands, I’m sure they were full of faith that the Lord would help them restore the Saints back to their homes.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Zion’s camp was disbanded. The Saints lived in Clay County and then Caldwell County before being ultimately expelled approximately five years later. They never made it back to their homes in Jackson County where Zion was supposed to be.
Some would argue that they did not succeed against their enemies. Then again, perhaps they were succeeding against the Lord’s enemies. And who is truly the Lord’s enemy? Satan.
It brings to mind different stories from the scriptures.
The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the brass plates. It took multiple tries before Nephi succeeded against Laban, but what did Nephi learn as he “failed” first? The growth that Nephi received must have been a true victory for the Lord.
The Lord commanded Moses to go and save the Israelites. Plague after plague seemed to fail in softening Pharaoh’s heart. What did the Israelites learn in the meantime as things actually grew progressively harder for them at first? What did they learn as they looked back upon the fact that things were difficult before they were free?
And then of course, the most important battle that ever occurred.
Christ suffered in Gethsemane, and no mortal man watched. He was taken by soldiers, tortured, and then killed. Not exactly a resounding victory to anyone objectively looking from the outside. He rose three days later, and yet, that was only part of the victory. The victory was found in His resurrection, but the victory was also found within His pain and death.
Interestingly enough, the Jews were looking for a Savior to free them from the Romans, and so they completely missed the mark of what would be the most important victory in their unending lives.
What does victory look like to the Lord? His ways are not our ways, and so we can assume that the Saints were likely mistaken when He declared that they would prevail over their enemies and they got excited that they would be restored to their homes in Jackson County.
Some of my most important victories have occurred in what would objectively be seen as losing a battle by the world.
There was a time when my husband’s chosen career path was being taken away from him by lies. I remember watching it all unfolding, and I remember retiring to my room and praying. I told the Lord I knew how powerful He was. We were scrambling to find alternate solutions to keep things on track, but nothing was looking super promising. I pleaded with the Lord to stop the man who was lying and to stop the men who were acting because of those lies. I told the Lord that I knew He was more powerful and could open a door that we didn’t know about and stop everything in its tracks. I knew it would be easy for Him to save us.
I also distinctly remember the Spirit whispering that I should stop praying for that. At that moment, I knew we would “lose.”
Of course, those moments of loss marked the beginning of much more important victories in our lives. The Lord has been merciful in helping me see that our loss led to my husband being placed on a path that would ultimately lead him towards fulfilling the promises he made before he came here. That loss made him grow. It made me grow. Despite all worldly signs pointing to the opposite, I count it as a great victory.
As those Saints struggled along the banks of the river, as they fought persecution for years to come, as they found themselves ultimately driven out, and as they were pushed thousands of miles west, they were finding a victory much more important than land. Within these darkest moments, the Lord was winning His most important victories.
I testify of a Lord who knows what He is talking about and fulfills all His words. I testify that Zion will be redeemed one day, and that the Saints will return there. I also testify that the Lord was beginning His victory against His enemies in the moment He declared so. I testify that He is mighty to save, and I testify that He utilizes our dark moments as part of that victory.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 102-105 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 16, 2025
Did the Lord Fail?
by Autumn Dickson
To give a bit of content for what we’re reading about this week, the Saints have been driven from their homes in Missouri, and Joseph Smith received a revelation that talked about gathering a group of Saints to go and win back their homes. After marching towards Jackson County, the camp was actually disbanded.
Doctrine and Covenants 105:13 Therefore it is expedient in me that mine elders should wait for a little season, for the redemption of Zion.
The Lord called off what the Saints believed to be the original purpose of the Zion’s camp: redeeming the Saints’ lands in Missouri. Here is a bit of what the Lord said about His true purpose.
Doctrine and Covenants 105:19 …and it is expedient in me that they should be brought thus far for a trial of their faith.
There are two ways that the Saints could have their faith built during this experience. The first way is how to stick around when the going gets tough.
Being a part of Zion’s Camp was not an easy thing. It was hot and muggy. Food and water could be scarce. There was disease, and members of Zion’s camp even died of cholera on this expedition that did not provide the results that many Saints looked for.
One of the characteristics the Lord is trying to instill and test us in is the idea that we will follow Him. Truly follow Him, not just rewards.
In the New Testament, many followers left when they realized that He wasn’t going to keep miraculously giving out bread. Interestingly enough, the bread was a distraction from the most important, life-changing aspects of following Christ. They couldn’t see the miracle of who Christ was because they were too distracted by their want of bread. Never mind that Christ had performed an incredible miracle and dispersed an immense amount of food. The people in the New Testament were too distracted by the fact that their bread stopped to remember that He had done something powerful in their lives. They were too distraught by the lack of bread to stick around and wonder if there was something more powerful at work.
The Lord doesn’t want obedient dogs. He didn’t keep giving out bread just to keep people coming back. He wants the loyalty and love of His people through anything. He doesn’t want to give us a treat every time we show up. He wants us to truly follow Him through thick and thin. He wants us to trust Him when the treat doesn’t immediately appear. He wants us to choose to love Him and follow Him through difficulty just as He followed us through difficulty. The only way that He can instill and test this aspect of faith is to allow us to face incredible obstacles and choose Him.
Trials can try the faith. When you’re trying to fulfill the Lord’s commands and there are obstacles, it can lead you to wonder whether you’re truly fulfilling the Lord’s commands. Understanding the purpose of mortal life can help us understand the irreplaceable effect of trials. The Lord needed to try us or we would never be able to grow into what we needed to become. Trials are not just a punishment; trials are also to help the righteous grow. We cannot afford to see them as proof that the Lord is not with us otherwise it completely prevents us from accessing a level of growth that is completely necessary.
But this experience wasn’t just about trials. There was a second way that this experience could make or break the faith of the Saints.
This faith-shaking experience was not just about a difficult trip; it was about the fact that the trip seemed unsuccessful. This could easily call Joseph’s prophetic call into question, and it did. This experience caused many to wonder, and yet, it did the exact opposite for others. In the Come Follow Me manual we read, “Faithful members of Zion’s Camp, many of whom later became leaders of the Church, testified that the experience deepened their faith in God’s power, in Joseph Smith’s divine call, and in Zion—not just Zion the place but Zion the people of God.”
It deepened their faith in God’s power and Joseph Smith’s divine calling as prophet. From the world’s perspective, this is ridiculous. Why would you believe more in the God that is being preached to you when He couldn’t deliver on His promises? Why would you believe more in Joseph’s calling at the end of this? The idea that the Lord was trying to create a Zion-like people may feel like a thinly-veiled excuse for bailing after the governor rescinded his promise to send a militia to aid the Saints. Why on earth should we believe and continue to follow?
Exploring this concept is important because there are plenty of aspects in the church that don’t make sense from a worldly perspective. There are revelations that seem like sad excuses. For example, the Lord rescinded His command for polygamy when the United States threatened to take away everything that was beloved by the church and Saints. If the Lord is so powerful and if He is truly leading His Saints along through a prophet, why did He bail on Zion’s Camp? Why did He continue to enforce polygamy until the going got too tough?
When it comes to the gospel, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make things make sense from a worldly perspective. Faith precedes understanding. It is impossible to convince someone of Joseph’s prophetic call. If you try to explain that the Lord was trying to build a Zion-people rather than being concerned about the land, they will laugh in your face.
When it comes to the gospel, your testimony cannot form from the idea that it has to make sense before you choose to believe. Sooner or later, you are going to come across something that doesn’t come together in your mind. You are going to come across principles, policies, or history that feel like they create cognitive dissonance in your mind.
It would seem like the Lord would try to avoid these faith-shaking experiences altogether. He’s trying to build our faith. Why would He allow it to be shaken after this manner?
Interestingly enough, the only way to build a truly strong faith is to let it be shaken. Faith is not knowing everything. Faith is choosing to trust when we don’t know.
The Lord wants to take our testimony from, “I know the Lord leads His church today because He made this miracle happen,” to, “I know the Lord leads His church today, and I will follow Him through hell if He calls me to do so.” When we can unlock that second level of faith, we become powerful disciples. We find a new level of salvation when we find that trust and relinquish our need to control and understand everything.
How do we make that jump in faith? How did the members of the Zion’s Camp come out of this experience with stronger faith rather than weaker faith?
I’m sure there are many answers, but I can only truly share my own.
I talk to God, and He answers. For me, that is the single largest portion of my testimony.
I have had experiences where I have looked back in awe at how the Lord made everything come together for me. I was amazed when I saw how He manipulated details from the years before to help everything stitch together and help me come out on top. Those are faith-building experiences. They helped me grow in my faith.
But they no longer define my faith. I am immensely grateful for those experiences. I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am to look back and see how the Lord saved me because He has indeed saved me. I am grateful, but they do not define my faith.
My faith has shifted. I talk to Him on a regular basis, and He answers, and I will not deny it. When things don’t go as planned, when I feel confused, when something new comes along that makes me wonder if I’m on the right track, I talk to Him and He answers. Regardless of whether He chooses to give me a new perspective or help me understand something, I have talked with Him enough that I trust Him. He is my Friend. He has shown me His power enough, and I will follow Him.
I have had enough experiences with Him to hold on, and I am happier since I have let go and chosen to trust Him through anything. I testify that when you choose to keep at it and continue to follow this path that has been presented to you, you will find the same results. In fact, you will be grateful that He allowed you the experience of questioning and finding Him again and again.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 98-101 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 12, 2025
To Become Like Him
by Autumn Dickson
We read about many stories in the scriptures where someone is a type of Christ. We seek to be a type of Christ. We seek to pattern our lives after Him. There is a verse in Doctrine and Covenants that puts forth a similar idea.
Doctrine and Covenants 101:4 Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son.
In the story of Abraham and Isaac, Isaac is a type of Christ who was willing to follow his father’s will. And though we often speak of people being a type of Christ, it’s interesting to me how Abraham was able to be a type of Heavenly Father. He was willing to sacrifice his son if that’s what was required.
The Saints in Missouri at this time were driven out of their homes and were camped out on the river in the cold. Approximately 200 of their homes had been burned down, and many had lost all. They had not been asked to sacrifice their son, but they had been asked to sacrifice something they had longed for – a safe home.
Why would the Lord ask His people to sacrifice these things? Why would He ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Why would He allow the Saints to be tried in this manner? As the Saints continue to flee persecution in this time period, many will lose more than homes.
Why does the Lord take away so much and ask us to love Him anyway?
Let’s explore it.
We are meant to be more than a type of Christ. We are meant to be more than a type of Heavenly Father. We are meant to become like Them. We are meant to inherit what They have. We are meant to inherit Their characteristics, who They are.
Our Heavenly Parents cannot allow us to inherit all that They have without us being prepared to act responsibly.
The Lord allowed the Saints to be expelled from Missouri because they were not spiritually prepared to build up Zion, and they would not become spiritually prepared by remaining there. Zion would have been forever lost if the Lord allowed anyone to live there just as heaven would be lost if He was not willing to make the necessary judgment calls. In order to preserve Zion, in order to preserve heaven, the Savior had to be willing to make the difficult decision.
Why does He ask us to sacrifice so much? Because we have to be like Him; we have to be prepared to make difficult decisions. We have to be tried to the extent that we are willing to sacrifice as Abraham was willing to sacrifice. If we are not prepared to live like Him and if He chose to allow us to inherit all that He has anyway, we would destroy heaven when we couldn’t make the difficult decisions that He has to make. When we have to watch our own children experiencing mortality, will we be strong enough to allow them to struggle and strive in order to become all they’re capable of becoming? Will we love them enough to let them suffer if it is the only means by which they can eventually reach a full happiness? If not, the Lord has to be willing to withhold some of His blessings in the next life. He has to be willing to sacrifice all that He had in mind for us if we are not prepared to receive it.
Despite His willingness to make those decisions, make no mistake; it was difficult for the Lord to watch His Saints on the bank of that river. It hurts Him to watch us suffer.
Doctrine and Covenants 101:9 Verily I say unto you, notwithstanding their sins, my bowels are filled with compassion towards them. I will not utterly cast them off; and in the day of wrath I will remember my mercy.
He loves us. He, more than anyone, loves us. And this is precisely why He requires so much sacrifice of us.
Going back to the original verse in this post, we read that the Saints have to be chastened and tried even as Abraham. The word “chasten” means to correct or to discipline. We’ve heard that definition many times. I was interested to learn that “chasten” also means to “have a restraining or moderating effect on.” It implies the idea of subduing intense feelings. This definition makes a lot of sense when I think of Heavenly Father having to sacrifice His Beloved Son. He had to subdue His intense love for His Son on behalf of the rest of us; there was no other way. And then He also needed to not hate the rest of mankind for requiring such a sacrifice.
That’s what we have to become. We have to be willing to sacrifice and continue to love those around us because that’s what our Heavenly Father is. That’s what our Savior is. It is the only kind of Being that can truly live an eternally joyful life.
To recap, our Heavenly Father loves us dearly. We are His children. He was willing to sacrifice His Son on our behalf, and He was willing to love the rest of mankind that required that sacrifice. It was the only way He could save us. He was willing to watch His Saints sit on the river banks in the dead of winter for their own behalf. It was the only way He could save us. He had to subdue His intense feelings of love in order to help us reach the greatest good. More accurately, He had to subdue the intense desire to shield us because He loves us.
If we want to receive all that He has, we have to hold those same characteristics. The only way we can gain those kinds of characteristics is in real-life practice. And so the Lord allows us to be chastened and tried even as Abraham, and we get to see whether we’re willing to endure chastening and still love Him afterwards. We cannot learn the importance of these lessons unless we live them.
I testify of a Lord and Savior who loves us so much that He is willing to subdue His strong inclinations to protect us in order to help us become all that we are capable of becoming. I testify that all that we suffer can one day contribute to the glory He intends to give. I testify that loving Him for what He gives and loving Him for what He chooses to take away can bring the greatest peace, happiness, and joy.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 98–99, 102, 106, 108, 134 – Mike Parker
Sep 10, 2025
The Lord’s people & secular governments
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
In March 1907, the First Presidency issued a proclamation affirming that the Church is politically neutral, and that the state should not control the church, neither should the church control the state: “An Address: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the World,”, Improvement Era 10, no. 5 (May 1907): 492–93.
Today’s First Presidency has continued to reaffirm this policy; see “Political Neutrality,” Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship,” Ensign, June 1976, 3–6. President Kimball’s First Presidency message, criticizing militarism among Latter-day Saints, was published one month before the commemoration of the United States bicentennial.
Rodney Stark, “The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History,” PBS Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, April 1998. Stark, a world-renowned sociologist of religion, argues that what made early Christianity unique—and one reason why it prospered and became a world religion—was because it “taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues—that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful.”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 98-101 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 08, 2025
In Peace and Trouble
by Autumn Dickson
The Saints in Missouri were experiencing tremendous persecution at this time. The leaders of the mob wanted the Saints to promise that they would leave Missouri by spring, and they wanted the Saints to promise it within 15 minutes of demanding that they do so. The situation was tricky. The Lord had commanded them to build up Zion, but the opportunity to do so was being taken forcefully out of their hands.
How would you have responded? You’ve been commanded to build up Zion, but you’re still finding yourself under the influence of evil men. The Lord is all-powerful and able to defend you against all your enemies, but He’s been pretty quiet.
When the leaders didn’t immediately promise that they would leave, the violence escalated. Property was destroyed. People were attacked. The leaders finally relented and promised to leave.
I’m not sure how many of us have been threatened with bodily harm if we do not relent following the commandments, but the Lord often allows obstacles to arise to oppose us as we try to follow His commandments. So what do you do?
The Lord recommends this course of action.
Doctrine and Covenants 98:1-2
1 Verily I say unto you my friends, fear not, let your hearts be comforted; yea, rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks;
2 Waiting patiently on the Lord, for your prayers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and are recorded with this seal and testament—the Lord hath sworn and decreed that they shall be granted.
Fear not. Be comforted. Rejoice. Give thanks. Wait on the Lord.
Let’s talk about the first three together. Fear not; be comforted; rejoice.
Whenever I’ve felt commanded by the Lord to do something and it’s not working out, my main fear has become that I’m not doing enough to follow through on the Lord’s commands. I think of Nephi. If the Lord commands it, then it’s going to happen. So am I not being faithful enough? I worry that the Lord is upset with me or that I’m not being good enough.
Since then, I have learned that if I am putting forth an honest effort, I don’t need to be afraid of the Lord being angry. Nephi didn’t obtain the brass plates the first time despite his tremendous faith. The Lord wasn’t punishing him; He wasn’t upset with Nephi. Sometimes, the Lord simply doesn’t allow us to succeed the first time despite His ability to help us succeed the first time. It’s not because our faith is insufficient to bring the miracle immediately; it’s because true faith is acquired and shown when we keep at it after it didn’t work out the first time.
We do not have to be afraid that the Lord isn’t powerful enough to follow through. We do not have to be afraid we’re innately insufficient to fulfill what He has asked. We do not have to be afraid when it doesn’t work out how we were expecting. We do not have to be afraid that the Lord is angry with us because it doesn’t feel like it’s immediately coming together.
We can choose to trust the Lord so completely that we feel comforted and rejoice in His yet-to-be-fulfilled promises. If He promised it, it’s happening even if it takes a little while.
So fear not. Be comforted. Rejoice.
His next piece of advice is to give thanks. Interestingly enough, giving thanks is one practical way to help ourselves get to the point where we can set aside our fears, allow ourselves to be comforted, and rejoice. “Giving thanks” isn’t an “end;” it’s a journey that takes us to our desired end: peace and joy in Christ. We thank Him for the times He has shown up before. We thank Him that nothing in this life can take away our happy ending. We thank Him that despite our own imperfections, He is mighty to save. As we reflect and find gratitude for Him and His choices, we find that comfort and joy.
And as we rejoice, we show up diligently doing our best and wait on Him to come and do His own work on His own timetable. Waiting on Him is His last piece of advice.
If you were a leader in Missouri at this time, the right course of action is to wait on the Lord. We read about stories in the scriptures where the Lord fights all the battles for His people. We read about stories where the Lord commands His people to flee. We read about stories where He allows them to be attacked regardless of whether they were being righteous because sometimes He simply allows His children to be tried.
We might not be sure which scenario the Lord is going for, and so we wait on Him to answer and do the best we can in the meantime because He doesn’t always answer immediately even when the situation feels dire. We choose to trust the Lord in times of plenty and in times of scarcity. We rejoice in His wisdom in what He allows to come to pass, and we wait for all He’s promised.
I testify of a Lord who is all-powerful to save, but I also testify of a Lord who doesn’t step in to stop every tragedy. I testify of a Lord who has a plan even if He doesn’t reveal it immediately. I testify of a Lord who we can trust in, and I testify that if we trust in Him, we will find comfort and peace even when the situation is trying to pummel us with the opposite. We can set aside our fears, allow ourselves to be comforted, give thanks for however He chooses to let things play out, and we wait.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 94-97 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 06, 2025
Unclean
by Autumn Dickson
The Lord is giving instructions about things He wants built in Kirtland, Ohio. The verses I’m about to share describe a building that was meant to be a meeting place for the First Presidency to carry out their work, but it was never built. The Lord gave some pretty specific instructions for its construction; these instructions were both spiritual and temporal. Here are some of His spiritual instructions for the building.
Doctrine and Covenants 94:8-9
8 And ye shall not suffer any unclean thing to come in unto it; and my glory shall be there, and my presence shall be there.
9 But if there shall come into it any unclean thing, my glory shall not be there; and my presence shall not come into it.
The Lord is very clear here. In fact, He is doubly clear. If it is kept clean, He will be there. If it is not, He won’t be.
We live in a world that despises being called unclean. It flip flops between playing a victim and being enraged that we would dare to label it. We are the bad ones for using the word unclean. And yet, here is the Lord, Himself, using it. He’s not necessarily pronouncing eternal judgment, but neither is He afraid to call it what it is. There is power in being able to label something as unclean as long as we don’t let Satan push us to use it in a damaging way.
When the Lord describes something as unclean, it’s for two reasons that boil down to one reason. The two reasons are: He is trying to keep you safe, and He wants to make you the best person you can be. Both of those reasons boil down to one: He loves you.
Let’s look at this idea of uncleanliness through the lens of those two motivations of the Lord: keeping you safe and helping you be the best you can be.
The first lens is keeping you safe. One of the examples that the world truly hates is the Law of Chastity. I view teaching the Law of Chastity in the same way I teach my kids about safety regarding the street.
I teach my kids how to utilize a street correctly. I teach them when it’s safe to cross the street. I teach them to look around and make a judgment call about whether it’s safe to cross the street. I teach them that crossing the street is an important part of life (okay, I don’t really teach that but I plan on teaching the Law of Chastity equivalent). I teach them all the important aspects of crossing the street, and I teach them that there are appropriate times to cross the street.
But you better believe that I’m also teaching them about how incredibly dangerous it can be to cross the street if you do it unwisely.
I don’t hesitate to tell my kids that they can get hit by a car. I don’t hesitate to tell my kids that even if they’re big enough to look across the street, their baby sister is not. I am unafraid of teaching my kids the consequences of ignoring danger. Everyone can understand this when it comes to crossing the street. For some reason, the world has a difficult time understanding this in terms of the Law of Chastity.
You can teach a child that intimacy is good in the right circumstances, and you can teach them that their divine identities rejoice in the righteous use of sexuality. In fact, you should teach them this. There doesn’t need to be any shame. Interestingly enough, you can simultaneously teach them that using it inappropriately can cause a lot of harm. You can teach them that breaking the Law of Chastity is unclean. Or, in other gospel words, it can bring a mess into their lives that the Savior can heal and put back together after a lot of work.
The Lord uses the label unclean so that we know to stay away from it. It’s to keep us safe.
But uncleanliness isn’t just about the Law of Chastity. There are many thoughts, feelings, and actions that can be unclean.
We can also view the term “unclean” by looking at it through the lens of the Lord trying to make us a better person.
When I first read this verse, I had a slightly inaccurate picture come to my imagination. I pictured the Savior wanting to walk into the building that was meant to be kept clean before realizing that there was someone or something inside of it that was unclean. I pictured Him not turning His back in a rage, but in frustration that He couldn’t come in because His glory would burn whatever was unclean. Obviously, there are some serious logistical flaws with that imagination, but it also holds a tiny portion of truth.
Our Heavenly Father and Savior will not allow uncleanliness into their kingdom because it would be devoured in the fire in which they dwell.
Oftentimes, Satan tries to use this concept to influence us to despair and give up, but what if we flip that on its head?
Instead, we can realize that the whole point of coming here was to become like our Heavenly Father and Savior. We came here to internalize the fact that we are meant to be glorious; our countenances are meant to grow into the countenance of our Savior. We are meant to become so incredible that our countenances are like lightning, that we dwell in that same burning fire that He does. All of the things that the Savior deems “unclean” are actually beneath us. Like our Savior, we don’t deign to utilize things that cause harm.
And when we are imperfect (because we’re not like the Savior yet), He cleanses us. That was always the plan.
The term “unclean” was utilized to warn us that something could harm us and make a mess in our lives (such as in the street example); it was also utilized to warn us that something was beneath what we were meant to become.
Satan likes to twist it. Satan is the one trying to tie the term “unclean” to your identity when you make mistakes, and then he likes to point at the Church and blame them for making you despair. Satan is the one who likes to bring a mess into your lives and whisper to you that the only reason you feel unhappy is because the Church shames you.
When used correctly, “unclean” is a warning from a loving Savior. It was never meant to describe your identity! Why on earth would the Savior go through what He went through if He believed you were just innately unclean? Satan is the one who whispers it when in actuality, the opposite is true. “Unclean” was meant to help you keep your divine identity and make you realize that you deserve so much more.
I testify of a Savior who loves us enough to warn us. I testify that the word “unclean” can seem so harsh, but it can also be descriptive and teach us something valuable, namely the fact that the Savior can cleanse us and make us whole. I truly testify of that; we can rejoice because the Savior can cleanse us and make us whole. Because of Him, we can eventually reach the point where we internalize that all of that unhappiness is beneath us and no longer allow it to bring us down.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 2, 94–97, 109–110 – Mike Parker
Sep 05, 2025
The Kirtland Temple
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
“The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by The First Presidency and The Twelve,” Improvement Era 19, no. 10 (August 1916): 934–42. This official declaration firmly rooted the identification of Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, with Jesus Christ. Prior to this, the name-title Jehovah was used by Latter-day Saints to indicate either the Father or the Son (as seen in section 109).
These two articles explore the identity of the figure of Elias who appeared in the Kirtland Temple on 3 April 1836 (D&C 110:12): Kevin Barney, “Who was the Elias of D&C 110?,” By Common Consent, 2 March 2006; Samuel Brown, “The Prophet Elias Puzzle,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 1–17.
Trever Anderson, “Doctrine and Covenants Section 110: From Vision to Canonization,” master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, July 2010. Anderson explores how the account of the appearances of Christ, Moses, Elias, and Elijah was recorded, taught, and eventually canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 94-97 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 04, 2025
Building the Temple
by Autumn Dickson
One of the most impressive accomplishments made by the early Saints of this dispensation was to build the Kirtland temple. Many Saints didn’t have much to begin with, and many of them abandoned what they had in order to gather in Kirtland, Ohio. Brigham Young recorded that some of the workers didn’t have shoes.
But the temple was a requirement of the Lord, and He strongly reiterated His command to build one.
Doctrine and Covenants 97:10 Verily I say unto you, that it is my will that a house should be built unto me in the land of Zion, like unto the pattern which I have given you.
The Lord wanted His house built, and He wanted it according to His own plans.
In the book Saints, we learn that, “Lucy Mack Smith remembered a council meeting in which it was decided that a frame building would be too expensive; a log house was proposed instead. Joseph Smith reminded them ‘that they were not making a house for themselves or any other man but a house for God.’ He said, “And shall we, brethren, build a house for Our God of logs? No, brethren, I have a better plan than that. I have the plan of the house of the Lord given by himself.”
Sometimes the Lord gives us a task, and we want to use logs. It’s practical to use logs. It’s cheaper. You can do basically the same thing with logs. If you use logs, then you can use other resources for other important tasks. And yet, sometimes the Lord asks for stone anyway.
Why does the Lord require stone? Judging from what we know about Him, I wouldn’t say it’s because He’s got an ego and refuses to take less. It’s not because He wants us to spend as much as we can on Him. Honestly, it’s not really about Him.
My mother always taught me that serving someone helps you love them. The world often thinks that love stems from someone treating you right and saying all the perfect things, but it’s not true. That can help the process, but real, lasting love comes when you choose to serve someone else before yourself. We see this process occur constantly with mothers and children.
When the Saints left Kirtland, they were devastated to lose their temple so quickly after dedicating it. Some might argue that it was cruel for the Lord to ask for those sacrifices when He knew that they would be driven out shortly after. Some might question Joseph’s connection to heaven; how come he didn’t know they would lose the temple? Why would he waste so many resources when they could have saved and built a temple in a more permanent home?
But it’s not really about the building!
Imagine for a moment that the Lord told the Saints that they could build a log cabin instead of the mighty temple that they built. I understand that I’m making assumptions here, but I’m also making assumptions off of normal human nature. If the Saints had built their temple from logs, I imagine the Saints looking back in devastation over their homes rather than the temple as they were driven out. I’m sure many Saints mourned their homes AND the stone temple, but if the temple had been constructed of logs, I imagine very few of them would have missed it in the same manner.
Why do I make these assumptions?
Because we see it all the time in our day. I am grateful for the temple, but I don’t think I appreciate it on the same level as someone who has saved and worked and waited for the opportunity to travel hundreds of miles in order to go and take out their endowment and be sealed to their families. It is actually more difficult for me to prepare my heart for the temple in comparison to someone who has had to work so hard for it. Ironic, right?
The Saints mourned the temple they had worked so hard for because the Saints loved the temple and what it gave them. The Saints appreciated what they were given there because they dedicated so much to it. It was difficult to leave it behind, but that’s precisely the type of heart the Lord was looking to nurture. Though they mourned that magnificent building they had sacrificed for, the Lord rejoiced over how their hearts had turned towards what He was offering them. He rejoiced that requiring stone gave them the opportunity to give over their hearts bit by bit. It enabled the process by which they could more fully appreciate the ordinances therein.
The Lord wants us to love Him more than anything else. He wants us to love Him more than anything earthly and sometimes developing that kind of love requires an opportunity for us to choose Him over earthly things. What do we really prioritize? What do we really value? You can’t truly know until it’s asked of you. And if it frustrates you that the Lord would ask you to sacrifice, then you probably love what you’re sacrificing more than you love the Lord. Hence, He asks us to sacrifice. He wants our hearts.
The Lord can endow us with power in a log cabin, but preparing our hearts to love and receive and honor requires more. He can’t force us to love Him. He has to give us opportunities to build that love and then hope we take advantage of it.
I testify of a loving and wise Heavenly Father. I testify that He does ask for sacrifice, not because He can’t provide enough resources and make the process easy but because it’s difficult to hand over our hearts when we don’t have to lose anything for it. He gave us agency, and He refuses to take it away. So instead of taking away our agency and forcing us to “love” Him, He provides us with opportunities to decide whether we’re going to choose Him.
I testify that choosing Him is worth it. I’ve never had to sacrifice much to attend the temple, but I have had to sacrifice things I love to put Him first. It has been worth it every time. Even when those sacrifices didn’t seem to amount to anything, they pushed my heart towards the Lord and that’s the most important thing. I’m so grateful He gives me opportunities to choose Him and love Him. I rejoice in it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
FAIR Conference Podcast #84 – Ahmad S. Corbitt, “Prophets of the Past, Faithfulness in the Present”
Sep 03, 2025
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2024 conference. If you would like to watch all the presentations from our 2025 conference held last month, you can still purchase the video streaming.
This audio podcast version has been made available for convenient listening. If you would like to watch or read the full presentation, it is available here.
Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt was sustained as a General Authority Seventy in April 2023. A former mission president, public affairs director, and trial attorney, he holds a law degree from Rutgers. Currently, he serves the Church with extensive experience in leadership, communication, and global outreach.
Classic FAIR – “What I Learned about Life, the Church, and the Cosmos from Hugh Nibley” – Boyd Petersen, 2005
Aug 29, 2025
“What I Learned about Life, the Church, and the Cosmos from Hugh Nibley” by Boyd Petersen at the 2005 FAIR Conference
February 24, 2005 was one of those beautiful false-spring days when we all leave our coats at home and venture out in shirt sleeves, despite the fact that we all know that winter will have one final gasp before yielding to spring. The snow had all melted from the valley floor, but the mountains were covered with a brilliant white snow pack that contrasted sharply against the deep blue sky. The temperatures were making their first climb into the seventies, and everyone wanted to be outside. My students and I were all restless as I plodded through another lecture on formatting research papers. Between classes, I stopped by my office to check my e-mail when I got a call from my wife. “He’s gone,” she practically whispered. I immediately knew. Hugh Nibley was no longer with us. We believe that, like the rest of us, Hugh had simply longed to be outside, to leave the hospital bed that had been his home for almost two years and enjoy the beautiful day.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 93 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 28, 2025
Glory of God
by Autumn Dickson
Section 93 is full of truth that revolves around how eternity works. It speaks of light, knowledge, and application. It speaks of our eternal nature. Here is one important, eternal principle.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:36 The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.
Here is a quote from Joseph Smith that is enlightening. He taught:
God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin…
When I was on my mission, I taught a lot of Chinese students who had come to the United States for an education. Many of these students had backgrounds in Buddhism, and I learned a bit about their beliefs as I worked with them. Forgive me if I get a bit of their beliefs wrong, but I’m going to try and describe a bit of their understanding.
Buddhists believe that suffering is something that occurs because of our nature here on earth. They believe that suffering can be ended, and that you overcome suffering by letting go of attachments and cravings for things that are not permanent (we would probably say eternal). Eventually you reach a state called enlightenment where I would repeat what Joseph Smith described. You receive truth, approach perfection, your views become clearer, and your enjoyments grow deeper until you overcome all the evils that are holding you back.
I grew to love many of their perspectives and found that they held a lot of truth. The gospel according to Autumn believes that they once received truth but apostasized just like many of the Western religions; they just went in the opposite directions. Where many Western religions left behind the idea of personal progress in exchange for faith-only based salvation, Buddhism went to the other side of the spectrum. You grow and grow and receive more and more joy, but they lost the incredible aspects of Christ and His grace. There is truth there, just not all of it.
And though they lost that essential portion of salvation, I believe that they hold perspectives that can add to our understanding of the truth.
Part of salvation is receiving light, growing, overcoming natural tendencies and cravings, and eventually arriving at a state where you can enjoy all the eternities have to offer. I know of many people who have walked further in their path of enlightenment, and they truly enjoy much.
Section 93 speaks of truth, and one of the truths that can add to our understanding of this section is that wickedness never was happiness. There is innate suffering with clinging to things that are not eternal. When we can school our thoughts, desires, and loves to cling to the things of eternity, we let go of the wickedness that binds our soul to unhappiness.
Christ can cleanse us and keep us in the Celestial Kingdom all He wants. However, if we continue to cling to unhappiness we cannot partake in the fullness of salvation because salvation is the epitome of deepest joy. How can you experience the deepest joy if you still love unhappiness?
So we work and overcome and walk towards enlightenment, or more accurately, towards exaltation where we are in a state where we can actually receive a fullness of joy. All the while, Christ keeps us continually clean until that beautiful day that He no longer has to. We rejoice and worship Him for making our journey mean something, for paying the price so that all the suffering we caused others can be made up, for paying the price so that we can be cleansed and cleansed so we can stand in the presence of our beloved Father. We rejoice and get to enjoy being around Him.
The Institute Manual shares a quote from President Joseph F. Smith. He teaches, “…Intelligence is the glory of God; and no man can be saved in ignorance.”
You can’t be saved in ignorance because salvation is not just about cleanliness and innocence. You can’t be saved in ignorance because you can’t fully enjoy all there is to enjoy without intelligence, and salvation is the epitome of joy.
We believe in receiving light and truth. We believe in overcoming the natural man so that we no longer cling to unhappiness. We believe in Christ’s atonement that saves. We believe in a fullness of joy, a fullness of salvation.
I testify of a Savior who has so much more to give. I testify that He yearns to give it as soon as we are ready to receive it. I testify that His salvation includes His cleansing and healing; I also testify that His salvation includes His knowledge and power and glory that we can progress towards.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 93 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 25, 2025
A Type of Christ
by Autumn Dickson
Doctrine and Covenants 93 teaches us about the character of God and our Savior who came to the earth. Here is just a little of what is taught to us.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:12 And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace;
There is a quote in the Institute Manual that provides some more clarification.
President Lorenzo Snow taught:
When Jesus lay in the manger, a helpless infant, He knew not that He was the Son of God, and that formerly He created the earth. When the edict of Herod was issued, He knew nothing of it; He had not power to save Himself; and [Joseph and Mary] had to take Him and [flee] into Egypt to preserve Him from the effects of that edict. … He grew up to manhood, and during His progress it was revealed unto Him who He was, and for what purpose He was in the world. The glory and power He possessed before He came into the world was made known unto Him.
When we place this side by side with a quote from the Come Follow Me manual, we learn an important truth.
We learn from Joseph Smith that, “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.”
We came here to become like Christ. Ideally, people would be able to look back at our lives and see a type of Christ. There are so many things that we could talk about in the scripture and quotes I just shared. We could talk about what perfection actually looks like. Christ has always been perfect, and He still had to grow and learn who He was. We could talk about who our Savior wants us to become and what He wants to share with us. Many people believe exaltation is blasphemous; I say that I worship God all the more because He wants to give me so much more than I deserve. There is so much we could talk about.
I want to talk about the fact that Christ had to learn who He was. He grew from grace to grace. In the manger, He was as unaware as the rest of us and had to progress. Part of that progression included learning about why He came to earth. I want to talk about the fact that understanding this portion of His character can help us understand ourselves. This is yet another way that we can mimic Christ.
You have to learn who you are. You came here to learn and grow and become, but you were also given responsibilities. They are not as magnificent as the Savior, but they do typify Him. They are still important.
There are many whose gut reaction is to say, “Oh no…I’m not important. I’m not anything special. I was not special before I came here. I’m not good enough to contribute.”
Imagine the power that Satan would have gained if he could have convinced Christ that humility meant giving up His identity. Imagine, for a moment, the power that Satan does hold because He has convinced us that humility means allowing him to tell us that we have nothing to contribute.
It is a powerful day when you’re able to cast off the idea that you have to make yourself small. It is a powerful day when you decide that through the power of Christ, you can do anything He needs you to do. It is a powerful day when you learn that accomplishing grand and important things does not always look grand and important. It is a powerful day when you simply accept what the Lord wants you to do without allowing Satan to whisper that you’re incapable or that your role isn’t particularly paramount.
When I think of my most important calling, I think of being a mother. I am a mother to my own children, but I have been a mother to many before that and I will mother many who come after. Being a mother is part of accepting my divine identity to nurture God’s children and help them know who they are.
It is not glamorous or loud. The world will often laugh at it or outright scorn it.
But I am powerful. I know who I am even if the world rejects me like they rejected Christ. No, I do not innately hold the power that He held, but I have all the power I need because He carries me and enables me. I can do all things through Christ. “All things” does not necessarily mean that I will move a mountain. Likely, it means that I will do something far more important. It means that I will powerfully love those around me.
Christ came here without any idea of who He really was. He did not know He was a God at first. He did not know that He could wipe out Herod or the Romans or the evil Jews if necessary. And when He did learn it, He did something more powerful. He loved and made Himself a servant. And by doing so, He stepped into His identity and changed the world. We can be a type of Christ and follow after Him.
I testify that Christ wants you to be His joint heir. That doesn’t mean simply receiving a mansion. It means so much more. He wants US to become so much more, and that blessing is readily available to us regardless of where we were born or how much we were born with. Even the least of us can be incredibly powerful with nothing but our faith in Christ. He can make us mighty to save with His power. We can let Him lead us to our roles in life, and we can trust that those roles can change the world as He did. We can also remember that changing the world as He did will look like Him, quietly serving and lifting where we stand.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 89-92 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 21, 2025
The Destroying Angel
by Autumn Dickson
There is a reference to an Old Testament record found in Doctrine and Covenants 89, and it can give us insight about the power of the Word of Wisdom in our day.
Doctrine and Covenants 89:21 And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen.
When Moses was working to free the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, the last plague involved a destroying angel that would enter into the houses of man and kill the firstborn son. The Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb, paint its blood on the doorposts, and remain home on the night of the Passover. If they did this, the destroying angel would not enter into their homes to hurt their child.
I noticed two parallels between the story of Moses freeing the Israelites and the Word of Wisdom in our day. Let’s talk about them.
When the Israelites were instructed to put blood on their doorposts, it was only to protect their oldest son. The destroying angel wasn’t coming for everyone; it was just coming for one of them. Even if the Word of Wisdom only protected one of your children, would you teach it? Would you apply it? Perhaps many of us could have lived without the Word of Wisdom and ultimately escaped nasty habits, compromising circumstances, and situations where you weren’t able to adequately protect yourself. However, I have enough friends who have been negatively impacted by alcohol alone (not even including drugs) to know that making a blanket commandment to avoid it is wise on the part of the Lord. I have no idea if I would have been the one destroyed if I had partaken in these substances, but I’m grateful I didn’t have to find out the hard way. I’m grateful that it provided protection to many of my loved ones.
Another parallel.
Sometimes I wonder what killed the firstborn son. Sometimes I wonder if the blood on the doorpost did something scientifically to protect the family. Does the Lord know something we don’t about how blood on a door might protect against a certain disease? Or, did the Lord simply choose something symbolic and performed a miracle so that it would not touch the Israelites?
Regardless of whether this was some kind scientific application, I hope I would have been wise enough to follow Moses and receive that blessing.
It’s easy to see how alcohol, tobacco, and drugs should be avoided. Even if you don’t think it’s a big deal, I feel like most people recognize that alcohol, tobacco, and drugs can be dangerous. Coffee is less dangerous, but it’s still easy to recognize how it affects our bodies and that it can be addictive. Tea is interesting. Numerous sources teach the benefits of tea. You can develop a caffeine addiction with tea, but even that is possible to avoid. So what’s the deal with tea?
The Lord taught Joseph Smith how dangerous tobacco was decades before scientific research followed. It wasn’t until the 1950’s or 1960’s that solid medical studies were being published about the potential harmful effects. The Lord warned His Saints to avoid it and protect themselves. This was really interesting since there were even doctors who promoted tobacco as a health cure through the 19th century. What I’m trying to express is the idea that the Lord knew the dangers of tobacco long before the health community did.
Is this also the case with tea? Is there a scientific reason that the Lord has banned tea? Is there something about tea that we do not yet know? Or, is it truly just a sign of obedience?
In the end, does it matter?
Whether it’s scientific or arbitrary on the part of the Lord, we have been given a specific promise that the destroying angel will pass over us. Really, it comes down to whether we believe in a modern-day prophet just as it came down to whether the Israelites believed in Moses as a prophet. Will we choose to place the blood on our doors despite all of the logical reasons to avoid doing so? Do we believe in a prophet?
I testify of a Lord who makes and keeps promises. I testify that the Word of Wisdom is not the first time the Lord has utilized a covenant to protect the health of His people. I testify that following a prophet, even when it doesn’t seem to outwardly make sense, will provide protection whether that’s through natural consequences or from pure obedience and blessings directly given by the Lord.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
FAIR Conference Podcast #83 – Daniel C. Peterson, “Brigham Young and Slavery”
Aug 20, 2025
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2025 conference held earlier this month. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
This audio podcast version has been edited to make it easier for listening. If you would like to watch the full presentation, it is available here.
Daniel C. Peterson is the president of the Interpreter Foundation, which publishes the online periodical Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, produces books, convenes conferences, and sponsors a weekly radio program: https://interpreterfoundation.org. He and his wife were the executive producers of the 2021 theatrical film Witnesses and have served in the same capacity for its 2022 docudrama sequel, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.
A native of southern California who earned his doctorate at UCLA after study at BYU, in Jerusalem, and in Cairo, he retired on 1 July 2021 as a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University, where he had taught since 1985.
Formerly director of research and chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), now BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, he is also a former president of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology and is currently a member of the board of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy.
Dr. Peterson served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission (1972-1974), and, for approximately eight years, on the Gospel Doctrine writing committee for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also presided for a time as the bishop of a singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University.
He is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they have three sons and three granddaughters.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 89 – Mike Parker
Aug 19, 2025
The Word of Wisdom (D&C section 89)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 89-92 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 19, 2025
For the Weakest Saint
by Autumn Dickson
The Word of Wisdom is a gift. Some view this advice as ridiculous and unnecessary. Honestly, it reminds me of when my son thinks it’s ridiculous and unnecessary for him to wear shoes and a helmet when he rides his dirt bike. Sure, he may ride his dirt bike and never get seriously injured. Maybe it even feels better to ride his dirt bike without a helmet, but it is worth protecting yourself.
As I read the Word of Wisdom this week, this verse stuck out to me.
Doctrine and Covenants 89:3 Given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints.
The Word of Wisdom, our health law given from God, was “adapted to the capacity of the weakest of all saints.” If the Lord adapted it, it means that He “made something suitable for a new purpose.” The Lord modified the Word of Wisdom so that the weakest saints would be capable of following it. The Lord did this in a couple of ways.
The first interpretation was the fact that the Word of Wisdom did not originally come as a commandment. In 1833, it was given to the Saints as some strong advice, as a revelation filled with wisdom. In 1882, the Lord told John Taylor that the Word of Wisdom was to be formally recognized as a commandment. In 1919, Heber J. Grant made it a requirement for the temple recommend. The Lord could have come out and made it a commandment immediately, but there were many people who were addicted to these substances. So the Lord adapted the law for His vulnerable saints. He changed it to start out as advice so that the people could become prepared to live it before it would condemn them.
Though this section is about the Word of Wisdom, this idea of adaptation from the Lord has numerous implications. One of those implications is the fact that the Lord is willing to meet us where we’re at and work with us until we’re where He wants us to be. He knows we’re imperfect and weak. He adapts on a societal level such as when He installed the Law of Moses to give the Israelites a step up towards His higher law. He also adapts on an individual level where He chooses to look at the bigger picture, unafraid of our mistakes along the way.
I had a dear friend who was overcoming a serious, serious pornography addiction. Addiction is definitely a spectrum, and he was thoroughly enmeshed. He didn’t have much support at home and had started extremely young. If I remember correctly, he found himself entrapped in pornography even before the age of accountability. In many ways, he was on his own to overcome it. And without support, especially as a young kid, overcoming it was going to be difficult (to put it lightly).
He had some wonderful youth leaders who took him in. One of those leaders was inspired by God to help him change his goals in relation to pornography. Because he was so deeply addicted, she recommended taking baby steps. Instead of trying to cut everything out and move on, she recommended starting with smaller goals that would eventually build to that ultimate goal.
His first goal was to make it an hour without looking at some version of pornography. That goal would build to 24 hours. Eventually he would make it to a week, a month, a year. She didn’t worry about what he would pull up at the end of that hour when he had reached his small goal. Rather, she gave him baby steps to work towards that law.
As we speak of adapting, I worry that this could sometimes get taken out of context and used as justification. Adaptation and justification are not the same thing. The entire point of adaptation on the part of the Lord is to help us step towards exaltation. The Law of Moses was definitely a step down from the law Christ wanted to give the Israelites, and yet, it was a step in the correct direction. This is not about justifying our sins or changing the law because we think we’re too weak. It’s about setting ourselves up for eventual success in following the Lord.
The Lord did not give the Word of Wisdom as a full-on commandment in the beginning because He needed to adapt it for those who were already addicted.
There is also a second interpretation of adaptation that I find important. I want to teach this second perspective by jumping back to that original analogy I used with my son and his helmet.
We have a rule in our home that you wear your helmet when you go out on the dirt bike. Imagine if our house rule was actually, “You don’t have to wear a helmet if you’re really strong and talented. Only the weakest family members need to wear a helmet.” There are a few problems that could arise.
First of all, none of my kids would classify themselves as weak riders, not even the four year old. I might as well not bring up the helmets at all. Secondly, even the strongest riders can make mistakes. No matter how strong and talented you are, a blow to the head can cause serious and permanent damage.
The Lord created the Word of Wisdom to protect the weakest of Saints, but He asked all of us to live it because He’s wise enough to know that none of us would classify ourselves as weak. We all think we would be strong enough to use dangerous substances wisely, and there would be significantly more problems. I’m not just talking about addiction. I’m also talking about the kinds of problems that arise within families when inhibitions have been dampened and lines are crossed.
This concept also extends to the idea of the strongest members running into issues. Even if you’re spiritually strong and only utilize substances at certain times, you are still leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable to others with bad intentions. Even the strongest can take a “blow to the head” when they are not adequately mentally present to protect themselves.
The Lord knows that experiences with substances do not always lead to destroyed lives, but the Lord is also wise enough to know that it causes enough pain and destruction to just avoid it altogether. He adapted these principles for the weakest of saints, but these principles protect all of us.
I testify of a Lord who is wise enough and cares enough to get involved and help us stay away from compromising and dangerous situations. I testify of a Lord who wants us to be safe and even though He desires a world where the most vulnerable are protected, I testify that He’s smart enough to know that’s not the world we live in yet. For now, we need these rules to keep us safe and help us protect ourselves more fully. Some see the Word of Wisdom as a desire to control. I see a wise and loving Father who is just trying to help His children live life more fully and healthy. I’m grateful for His protections and sage advice.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 88 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 15, 2025
Accepting Christ’s Gift
by Autumn Dickson
I love when the scriptures give us more insights into how the relationship between the atonement of Jesus Christ and our works come together. I think it’s a relationship that needs to be studied thoroughly if we are to understand how to enjoy Celestial Glory. For while we believe in worthiness and the necessity of following after Christ, we also believe that we were given a gift. Here is a verse that can add another layer to our understanding of the relationship between grace and works.
Doctrine and Covenants 88:33 For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.
Christ gives us a gift, but we have to utilize the gift. That is one way of describing the relationship between grace and works. Gifts are free. There are no strings attached. There are many who argue that we, as Latter-day Saints, do not believe in grace because we believe in the necessity of worthiness. I do not believe that grace and works are mutually exclusive, and this verse helps to describe it.
When someone gives you a gift at Christmas and you open it and utilize it, does that suddenly mean the gift wasn’t free because you had to work to use it? I’ve been accused of not being a Christian because if we believe in the necessity of works then I don’t truly believe that His gift is free. Believing in the concept of worthiness does not negate the fact that Christ gave His gift. If Christ had been unsuccessful in atoning, and I had still worked towards worthiness, I still wouldn’t have made it to the Celestial Kingdom. No one would. Christ gave a gift of atonement.
As for worthiness, this verse also describes it beautifully. When someone places a gift in your lap, you can be grateful and love that person for putting it in your lap. But who is going to be more grateful to the giver: the person who just stares at the beautifully wrapped gift or the person who opens it and utilizes it?
The gift is free, but salvation has multiple parts because heaven has multiple parts. You enjoy heaven because you’re perfectly clean, near the Savior, and you’re enjoying a heavenly society where love abounds.
The cleanliness (and therefore, the ability to be near God and the Savior) comes from Christ. You cannot stand in the presence of God without that cleanliness or you’ll get eaten alive by the fire that He dwells within. This is where the gift of Christ’s atonement comes into play. He just cleans us. Even if we worked and practiced, our works do not cleanse us. It is free.
But salvation is more than cleanliness. Even if Christ is continually cleaning you (because you don’t believe in worthiness; you didn’t have to change or shed natural man tendencies), you won’t experience salvation even if you’re standing in the location of heaven. You have to be perfectly clean (thank you gift of Christ’s atonement), but salvation is also about enjoying eternity. If you want to enjoy eternity, the works part is necessary.
There is innate unhappiness that comes with wickedness. Wickedness never was happiness. So even if Christ cleanses you continually so that you are capable of standing in heaven, you still won’t be able to enjoy heaven because you are still actively pursuing wickedness that brings in innate unhappiness. You didn’t even really touch your gift. You didn’t open it. It was free. It’s sitting in your lap, but it brought you no joy because you didn’t even use it.
There is another aspect of this verse that I think is really important for Latter-day Saints who overemphasize works. While we believe in worthiness, I believe that Christ is much more willing to save than we think He is. He worked so very hard, harder than we can comprehend, to place that gift in our laps. Fewer things bring Him more satisfaction than when we rejoice and trust in that gift.
He does not want us to be leery of that gift. He doesn’t want us to look at His gift and think, “Mmmm I just don’t know if He really wants me to have this.” HE DOES. Use it. Rejoice in it. Trust it. It was a gift. Rejoice in the fact that He has the power to cleanse over and over and over. Rejoice in the fact that if you’re willing to follow Him, He can work with that.
I’m not perfect. I am so not perfect. But I have found salvation. I have opened the gift and got excited about it. I wave it around for everyone to see. Look what Christ gave me. He gave it to me. I didn’t earn it. I’m getting better at using it. He is teaching me to use it, and that’s going to be enough.
I testify of a Savior who loves you and wants you to rejoice in His perfection. I testify that if you’re willing to follow Him, if you’re trying to do as He asks even if you fail repeatedly, He has the power to pull you along anyway. He can cleanse you until you’ve completely changed and figured it out. He can keep you clean, and you can enjoy the happiness that innately comes with striving to love God and love others. You can rejoice in your salvation.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Classic FAIR – I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church – Davis Bitton, 2004
Aug 15, 2025
“I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church” by Davis Bitton at the 2004 FAIR Conference
I don’t have a testimony of the history of the Church. That is why I can be a historian and also a believing Latter-day Saint. I will expand on this idea, but first let me address some related questions.
Do all well-informed historians become anti-Mormons?
The critics would have you believe that they are disinterested pursuers of the truth. There they were, minding their own business, going about their conscientious study of Church history and–shock and dismay!–they came across this, whatever this is, that blew them away. As hurtful as it is for them, they can no longer believe in the Church and, out of love for you, they now want to help you see the light of day.
Let’s get one thing clear: There is nothing in Church history that leads inevitably to the conclusion that the Church is false. There is nothing that requires the conclusion that Joseph Smith was a fraud. How can I say this with such confidence? For the simple reason that the historians who know most about our Church history have been and are faithful, committed members of the Church. Or, to restate the situation more precisely, there are faithful Latter-day Saint historians who know as much about this subject as any anti-Mormon or as anyone who writes on the subject from an outside perspective. With few exceptions, they know much, much more. They have not been blown away. They have not gnashed their teeth and abandoned their faith. To repeat, they have found nothing that forces the extreme conclusion our enemies like to promote.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants sections 88, 93 – Mike Parker
Aug 14, 2025
“The Olive Leaf”; the divine natures of God and man (D&C sections 88, 93)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Kenneth W. Godfrey, “The History of Intelligence in Latter-day Saint Thought,” in The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God, ed. H. Donl Peterson and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1989), 213–36.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
In 1997, I logged in to America Online Mormonism message board 1 expecting to find friends. Instead, I found critics. I was quickly surprised by the sheer volume of vitriol and criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Common claims included:
You can’t add to the Bible (referencing, of course, the Book of Revelation)
You preach a different gospel (quoting from Galatians),
You believe Jesus is the brother of Satan (I’m not sure where that comes from in the scriptures, but it was there)
You’re getting your own planets; and
Mormon women will be eternally pregnant.
Even baptism was weaponized, declaring that it was a work that can’t save you.
These arguments, of course, were unfair, misrepresentative, or flat out wrong. And yet, this year, some seminary students in my ward in Redding, California, reported hearing these same arguments at school.
Scott Gordon serves as President of FAIR (Faithful Answers, Informed Response) which can be found online at www.fairlatterdaysaints.org. FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping members deal with issues raised by critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has an MBA and a BA from Brigham Young University. He is currently an instructor of business at Shasta College in Redding, California and teaches business classes online at BYUI. Scott has held many positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including serving as a bishop, ward mission leader, seminary teacher, and member of the elder’s quorum presidency. He is married, has five children and 14 grandchildren.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 88 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 12, 2025
Receiving Joy
by Autumn Dickson
There are eternal truths in this world that spill over in the world to come. Whether we fight against those truths determines what we’re going to enjoy. The Lord said this:
Doctrine and Covenants 88:32 And they who remain shall also be quickened; nevertheless, they shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received.
This verse is actually speaking about Outer Darkness and the sons of perdition, but I feel like there is doctrine here that spreads itself across all kingdoms. Judgment day is about being placed somewhere that we can enjoy as much happiness as our choices allow.
The Lord will place us somewhere good and safe and whole where we can receive as much joy as possible. The Lord paid for our sins so that we could enjoy all that the Father has. This was a free gift that He gave, but He will not force joy upon us. We still have to live after the manner of joy. The Lord wants us to enjoy bright, whole, healthy families. He wants us to enjoy a perfect society where everyone cares for each other. He wants us to know what it feels like to be perfectly wise, kind, and good. Therein lies joy.
Interestingly enough, He offers it now, not just for the next life. So many aspects of heaven are available to us here. There may be some aspects that are out of reach at this small moment in your never-ending life, but the Savior has promised that all aspects of joy are going to be available to us if we desire them in the next life.
This is one of my favorite doctrines. At first glance, it might not seem to make sense. Why would anyone choose anything less than the most glorious kingdom? Why would anyone refuse any manner of joy that the Lord is trying to offer? And yet, receiving joy is more than walking into the celestial kingdom. Receiving joy is more than plugging into some eternal happiness drug.
A willingness to receive joy is a willingness to follow the Savior.
Though this principle applies to a million different gospel principles (forgiveness, repentance, pursuing education), I’m going to talk about one gospel principle specifically.
I had a friend who worked at a hospital. A bunch of the nurses were talking, and one of them announced she was pregnant. An older nurse responded with something along the lines of, “Oh my goodness! I’m so excited for you. You never know love until you become a mother.” Another nurse became offended by this. She had chosen to not have children, and it made her upset that someone would suggest that she didn’t love as deeply.
Let’s talk about this idea because there are different facets, and I think it’s important to be specific about what I’m discussing here. I wholly recognize that there are men and women who are deeply mourning the fact that they do not have children. I do not place these individuals in the same category of not being able to love as deeply. After all, the verse we read earlier talks about being willing to receive joy. If you are deeply mourning the fact that you have not yet been blessed with children, then you are obviously willing to receive joy. Not to mention, if you’re mourning that missing opportunity, you sometimes have an even deeper appreciation of parenthood and consequent love. You already love deeply if you are open to the opportunity for spirits to join your home.
I think the case is different when you have chosen to remain childfree. When you have chosen to remain childfree, it’s usually for selfish reasons. I’m not saying that you’re a terrible person, but I would argue that most people who choose not to engage in parenthood are doing it because they don’t want to sacrifice what they enjoy. Ironically, they do not realize that there is more joy available to them in losing oneself and sacrificing everything to love someone else. There is inherent joy in not just in children but in the selflessness that it requires of you.
I don’t think there is a single other product or service that receives more five star reviews than parenting. Even as we all stand to lament the juxtaposition of never-ending chaos with never-ending mind-numbing work, parenting is joy incarnate. Parenting in all of its forms (beyond just traditional ideas of biologically birthing someone) is joy incarnate.
And this is the case with so many gospel principles. Forgiving others is freeing. Repentance brings you closer to the Savior. Pursuing education opens up your perspectives and enriches your life. God has given laws and principles. He teaches us. He tells us how to receive joy, but He will not force that joy upon us. Receiving joy is more than walking up to the Lord and asking for the Celestial Kingdom. If you are refusing aspects of joy, then walking into the Celestial Kingdom isn’t going to suddenly make that joy burst upon you. You have to be celestial.
A willingness to receive joy is a willingness to follow the Savior. I testify of a Savior who has shown us the way. He walked the difficult path because He loved us and because it was the most joyful path despite everything it put Him through. I testify that He paid for us to have this experience so that we might learn what He has learned and live how He lives. I testify that following Him brings difficulty, but that difficulty helps contribute to the deepest joys available to God’s children.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 87, 90, 100–101, 103, 105 – Mike Parker
Aug 09, 2025
Prophecy of war; expulsion from Independence; Zion’s Camp (D&C sections 87, 90, 100–101, 103, 105)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Elder Graham W. Doxey, “Missouri Myths,” Ensign, April 1979, pp. 64–66. Brother Doxey, who had been president of the Missouri Independence Mission (1973–1976), explored some of the “urban legends” about Missouri that persist among Latter-day Saints.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 85-87 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 06, 2025
Holy Places and Tares
by Autumn Dickson
I want to talk about two different themes from the sections assigned this week, standing in holy places and the parable of the wheat and tares. I’m not sure whether the Lord purposefully put these two themes right next to each other, but now it’s caught my attention and won’t leave me alone. Here are just a couple of excerpts from the Lord regarding these themes.
In the parable of the wheat and tares, the Lord says this.
Doctrine and Covenants 86:6 But the Lord saith unto them, pluck not up the tares while the blade is yet tender (for verily your faith is weak), lest you destroy the wheat also.
In the parable of the wheat and tares, the wheat are the righteous and the tares are the wicked. Many biblical scholars believe that the tares are darnell, a plant that looks incredibly similar to wheat until it’s fully grown. Only at the last day are they divided, after what they truly are comes to fruition.
Then the Lord prophesies of immense war through Joseph Smith before teaching us this:
Doctrine and Covenants 87:8 Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.
In Section 86, we learn that we will be surrounded by the wicked and the righteous until the day of the Lord.
In Section 87, He tells His Saints that they should stand in holy places until the day of the Lord.
Even though the Lord allows us to grow amongst wickedness, He asks us to stand where it’s holy.
How do we stand in holy places when much of the world around us isn’t holy? We cannot forever stand on temple grounds. We cannot stay in the chapel indefinitely. Even if we can turn our homes into sacred spaces, I don’t think it’s advisable to never leave your home.
In the guide to the scriptures, we learn that “Holiness indicates purity of a person’s heart and intent.”
THIS IS SO DANG COOL TO ME. It’s cool because wheat and tares look incredibly similar. You can’t really tell them apart in a field until they are fully ripe. And though wheat and tares look similar, what they truly are is hidden internally. Holiness is something that happens internally. When a place is holy, it’s because the things that are happening within that place are turned towards the Lord.
We can make ourselves a holy place. The space that we inhabit, the air that we breathe, can be a holy place if we are pure in heart and intent. We can stand in holy places by making ourselves holy.
How do we make ourselves holy? How do we purify our hearts and intent?
Get this. We weed out any of our personal tare tendencies.
Tare and wheat look similar. Sometimes we have traits that look Christlike but aren’t. Sometimes we do things that look Christlike but are not truly so.
For example, sometimes we serve and find resentment. Sometimes we go out and try to correct someone from a pedestal we’ve put ourselves upon. Sometimes we think we’re so wonderful for tolerating someone to their face, but find ourselves relieved when they’re gone because we haven’t taken the time to truly develop love for them. Christ felt true love. He didn’t tolerate people and then secretly rejoice when they left. And yet sometimes we think we’re being Christlike because we’re nice on the outside. We’re nice, but we’re not actually being Christlike. We’re not wheat. We are being tares, and we have to work to weed those tendencies out of ourselves.
As we extend ourselves to being truly Christlike, we become wheat. As we practice truly seeing others and loving them in our heart, we purify ourselves and become holy.
The Lord placed us in an environment that has plenty of tares. And though He placed us in an unholy environment, He asks us to stand in holy places. There are many ways to stand in holy places, but one of the best ways is to take holiness with us. We take holiness with us by weeding out the parts of ourselves that are not truly Christlike even if it mimics Christlike behavior.
I testify that as we shed those parts of ourselves that look like love but are not based in love, we will become a blessing to others and to ourselves. I’m an introvert. Being around people is often tiring for me. There have been plenty of times that I’ve been a tare, and I’ve just endured people until I could get some peace. However, as I truly engage and connect with others, I have found that those encounters are worth it even if I’m tired after. I’ve learned that the Lord is extremely willing to help us shed those tendencies. I testify that He stands ready to help purify us so that we can experience life as He does.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 85-87 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 05, 2025
Steadying the Ark
by Autumn Dickson
There is a reference to an Old Testament story found in the sections for this week. Let’s talk about the background and then read the verse.
In 2 Samuel, the Israelites are bringing the ark of the covenant back into Israel after an enemy nation had captured and released it. An oxen shook the ark of the covenant while they were crossing a river, and Uzzah touched it and tried to steady it even though no one was allowed to touch the ark. He was struck dead immediately next to the ark of the covenant.
Here is the verse in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Doctrine and Covenants 85:8 While that man, who was called of God and appointed, that putteth forth his hand to steady the ark of God, shall fall by the shaft of death, like as a tree that is smitten by the vivid shaft of lightning.
Around the time this verse was given, Edward Partridge and Joseph were disagreeing. Partridge thought the quality of land in Missouri was poor and didn’t want to buy it, and it took a while for him to reconcile with Joseph over the matter. This warning would have been to Partridge had he not repented. In 1834, Oliver Cowdery recorded that Joseph clarified that this verse didn’t apply to any individual. It was a warning to anyone.
So what is the warning?
Just like with any scripture story, there are a few different lessons. Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught that trying to direct God’s work without authority can bring spiritual death. We learn that good intentions aren’t sufficient to protect us. It teaches us that approaching God with a lack of immense reverence is dangerous. The ark of the covenant was a representation of God, and only the high priest (as a type of Christ) could approach that ark and only after a series of cleansing rituals.
This can be a tender spot for some who are struggling in the church. Our belief in a prophet who is led by God can create a sense of all or nothing when attempting to follow the church. And while I desperately hope for everyone to continue working out their salvation within the church, this is a legitimate warning. When we try to change things without authority or try to steady the ark when we think it’s out of balance, it really can bring spiritual death.
I have a friend who has left the church over the past few years. As I’ve had conversations with him about it, I have repeatedly heard the phrase, “I just don’t think God would do something like that.” This sentiment was repeated over and over. I often found myself internally asking, “Well, have you asked Him if He would do something like that?”
With the way the church is set up, it really boils down to whether it’s true or not. It’s hard to find a way around that sticking point. Either the prophet is led by God or he isn’t. Sure, we all receive personal revelation and the Lord can guide us about specific principles and policies in our lives. But, we also believe that the Lord only gives revelation to the prophet if He is trying to direct His church. Just like in the New Testament, the Lord didn’t teach every individual that the Law of Moses was completed and done away. He sent that revelation to Peter, the head of the church, and then people got to decide whether they would follow.
Just like with most people in the church, I have found myself struggling with doctrine, policy, and history. While I was growing up, I would often choose to ignore it and just keep going. As I got older, I decided I didn’t really want to do that anymore. If I couldn’t face these doubts head on and work it out with God, then I didn’t want to be a part of this. If these issues couldn’t stand up in the light, then why am I working so hard to follow the church?
When we are trying to figure out whether the prophet and church are led by God, we have to be ready to follow. That is one of the major keys here. If you want Him to answer you about the truthfulness, you have to be ready to lay aside your own thoughts and opinions in favor of His greater knowledge and wisdom. You have to be prepared to say, “I don’t understand, but I will trust that God does and I will follow Him until I do.” You have to be prepared to follow regardless of whether He tells you why He is working in a specific manner.
And so I often approach my struggles in this manner.
I work it out in my head first. When I run across something that I struggle with, I try to approach it head on. I try not to hide from that discomfort. I try to write everything I understand about God and eternal realities. I try to place what I don’t understand into the context of those eternal realities. Sometimes that has been enough to soothe the disquiet. Other times, I just feel more and more troubled.
This is when it’s time to go directly to the Lord.
I lay it all out for the Lord. I tell Him everything. I tell Him why I think it’s wrong or skewed or incorrect or faulty. I try to get to the root issue of what I’m really struggling with, and I take it all to Him.
And then I tell the Lord that I don’t know as much as He does. I tell Him that even if I don’t understand, I tell Him that I will choose to follow Him in faith and rejoicing. Sometimes He will help me understand, and sometimes He just tells me to keep following. Either way, I know that He’s got this. Maybe the time has not come for Him to change things. Maybe He will never change things because there are aspects that I do not understand with my limited knowledge. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But there are two aspects that are not a “maybe.” God knows all, and He loves His children. I feel this in my bones. So if He says that I’m on the right track and if He tells me that this is where I need to be, I feel safe enough to do so. I have gotten to know God, and though I don’t understand all of His decisions, I understand His love and omnipotence and I am not afraid. I am excited for Him to show me all that He sees when He deems that it’s the right timing.
So when I feel that the ark is off balance, I have learned to steady myself rather than the ark. I have learned to let the Lord do His own work, and I’ve learned that the ark will be just fine. If I follow, I’ll make it across the river and home someday.
You don’t have to follow blindly. You don’t have to hide from scary doubts. You can work them out in your mind and do your best to understand them. But you can also get to know God. You can deeply internalize His love and omnipotence, and then you can go to Him. You can tell Him that you’re willing to follow where He leads because you have come to trust Him deeply. You can be willing to let go of what you don’t understand because you trust that He understands.
Everyone is going to have to work this out in their own lives. You have to receive that answer for yourself. Is the prophet truly being led by God? This can feel like a difficult answer when it seems like it conflicts with some deep part of you, but the conflict only exists because we do not see all that He sees. I can testify of His God’s love and omnipotence. I can testify that He isn’t betraying you or setting you aside. I can testify that He sacrificed everything so that no hurt would go unhealed. I also testify that He leads His prophet and church today.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 84 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 02, 2025
Renewal
by Autumn Dickson
There is a promise found in Section 84. And though it is specifically in relation to priesthood ordinations, I believe the promises we find there can apply to all of us. Here it is.
Doctrine and Covenants 84:33 For whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods of which I have spoken, and the magnifying their calling, are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies.
There’s a lot of good stuff here. Sanctification by the Spirit is a huge part of receiving and magnifying a calling. Some might even say it’s the entire purpose of receiving and magnifying a calling. However, the specific portion I want to speak about is the “renewing of their bodies.” I find this to be a very unique promise that coincides with something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
Namely, the widow of Zarephath found in 1 Kings in the Old Testament. It is one of my absolute favorite scripture stories of all time which is probably why I’ve spoken about it on more than one occasion. The gist of the story is this.
There is a great famine in the land, and the widow of Zarephath only has enough food for one more meal with her son before they starve. The prophet Elijah is led to her door, and he promises her that her food will never run out if she feeds him first and then feeds herself and her son.
I think about that widow a lot. She didn’t have much to lose since they were already facing starvation. I think about how she chose to give out of what she didn’t really have. I think about how she must have felt when she looked at her son and made the decision to feed Elijah.
I also think about what happened after she fed Elijah. What happened right after? What happened the next day? What did this miracle look like?
Did she wake up to a full barrel? Or in the days that followed, was her barrel always full? Would it get replenished the second she took from it?
Or perhaps the miracle looked different. Maybe she opened that barrel the next morning, and it was full. Perhaps she emptied that barrel all the way to the bottom over time and when she arose the morning after emptying it, she found that barrel filled again.
Or maybe it looked even different than that. Maybe there was always just enough for the next meal. I think this option would have felt the scariest. Did it feel scary to open the lid every day and find an almost-empty barrel? Did she still feel adrift and worried? Or did she see the miracle and recognize that whether the barrel was completely filled up or not, it would never be empty?
This is a story that teaches a great many things. One of the things that it teaches is renewal.
When it comes to priesthood ordination or any kind of service you choose to do in the name of the Lord, there will be enough in the barrel. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, there can enough energy, time, resources, and love when you are magnifying your calling in His name. You can be renewed to do what needs to be done, what the Lord wants you to do.That doesn’t mean He will enable you to do everything, but there will be enough in the barrel for what He needs you to do. He will renew you for what you need done.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – D&C sections 84, 107; Official Declaration 2 – Mike Parker
Aug 01, 2025
The priesthood & its quorums (D&C sections 84, 107; Official Declaration 2)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Elder L. Aldin Porter, “A History of the Latter-day Seventy,” Ensign, August 2000, 15–20. Elder Porter reviews the organization and growth of the modern office of the Seventy.
“Race and the Priesthood,” Gospel Topics Essays. This scholarly article on the Church’s website explores the origins of the ban on ordaining men of African descent to the priesthood.
Edward L. Kimball, “Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood,” BYU Studies 47, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 4–78. Edward L. Kimball discusses the chain of events that led his father, President Spencer W. Kimball, to seek revelation regarding changing the Church’s ban on ordaining black men to the priesthood. The article describes how President Kimball went about obtaining the revelation, how the revelation was spiritually confirmed to other leaders, and members’ reactions when the change was announced.
Lester E. Bush Jr., “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 11–68. This seminal article—which appeared before the 1978 revelation that reversed the Church’s ban on ordaining men of African descent to the priesthood—examines when the policy began and developed, and what scriptures were employed to explain it.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie, “All Are Alike unto God,” address in the Second Annual CES Symposium, 18 August 1978. Elder McConkie’s address came just two months after the 1978 revelation that extended the priesthood to men of African descent.
The Priesthood Restored: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast is a six-part miniseries that explores the events and circumstances that played a role in the restoration of the priesthood. Series host Spencer W. McBride interviewed historians and Church leaders for this podcast.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 84 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 31, 2025
A Legitimate Question
by Autumn Dickson
When I was growing up, I remember being worried about receiving revelation. How could I differentiate between His voice and my own internal voice? I know I wasn’t the only one who asked this question and as I’ve become an adult and occasional leader over the youth, I have heard that same question frequently.
I am not perfect at it, but I have learned to recognize a distinct feeling in my head when the Lord is trying to say something to me. When I start to receive that subtle, distinct feeling, I turn to my journal, start to write, and the Lord will often teach me something.
Elder Bednar once taught that it doesn’t matter whether it’s coming from the Lord or not. If something good pops into your head, you should follow it regardless of whether it’s an official prompting. I agree with him. If a thought pops into your head about serving someone or doing something uplifting, it doesn’t really matter whether the Lord is asking you to do it. Do it anyway.
But there are some cases when it is necessary to be able to discern between your own voice and the Lord’s.
For example, when Joseph Smith asked the Saints to pack up and leave their comfortable homes in New York for the rugged frontier in Ohio, it was probably pretty important that Joseph knew whether it was a commandment from the Lord or whether it was just something that popped into his head. I’m sure Joseph Smith could discern the Lord’s voice. I’m merely pointing out a situation in which it was pretty important to have that ability to discern.
There is a verse found in Section 84 that reminds me of one of the most powerful admonitions I have heard from President Nelson. The admonition is to hear Him. The verse is as follows.
Doctrine and Covenants 84:52 And whoso receiveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me.
The definition of “acquainted” is to “make someone aware or familiar.” Are you aware of the Lord’s voice? Is it familiar to you?
How do we become aware of His voice? How do we become familiar with it? How do we become acquainted with how the Lord speaks to us?
Develop an awareness
There is a difference between an awareness that He is speaking to you and a familiarity of His voice. Developing an awareness that He is speaking to you is a matter of developing faith. It’s a matter of purposefully choosing to believe that He wants to talk to you. If you don’t believe the Lord would ever deign to talk to you, then you’re cutting off your ability to hear. You have to develop faith that He has something to say or you’re not going to listen and become aware.
Sometimes this faith is most easy to develop when you are seeking His voice on behalf of someone else. A grand majority of the revelation I receive from the Lord is when I’m seeking it on behalf of someone else. I’m studying a question that was posed to me. I’m studying it for my blog. I’m seeking answers for how to help my family or friends. The Lord has often spoken to me for my personal life, but it is usually in conjunction with the fact that I’m seeking it on behalf of someone I love. When I am seeking revelation to serve someone, it puts me in an uplifting mindset where I’m more sensitive to the Spirit, and it also helps my faith that the Lord would choose to speak to me. Maybe the Lord doesn’t have anything to say to me, but I know He’s going to be willing to help me help someone else.
So first develop an awareness of His voice. Believe that He is willing to speak to us. You have to believe that He is willing to speak if you’re ever going to become familiar with His voice. Once you believe that He’s willing to speak, awareness of His voice is a matter of checking in consistently.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 81–83 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 21, 2025
Much is Required
by Autumn Dickson
Rather than talking about a specific verse from this week, I want to talk a bit more about context so that the verses we read are more powerful. Hearing the Lord speak about gospel principles is wonderful, but sometimes understanding the stories behind the principles He chooses to talk about make a big difference because it makes it more relatable. So let’s talk a bit about what’s happening in the lives of the people who the Lord is speaking to.
It is no secret that Emma and Joseph suffered much in their personal lives during the restoration of the Lord’s church. They buried several children, many of whom did not live past babyhood. For a moment, I want you to think about this timeline that is shared in the Institute Manual.
March 15 – Section 81 was given.
March 24 – Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were taken by a mob and tarred and feathered.
March 29 – One of the adopted twins of Joseph and Emma died from measles.
April 1-24 – Joseph and other leaders travel to Missouri.
April 26 – Section 82 was given.
April 30 – Section 83 was given.
Joseph is tarred and feathered. Five days later his son dies. Two days later he leaves to go to Missouri. Emma is left behind after a traumatic couple of days.
The fact that Joseph preached to the Saints the day after being tarred and feathered, and the fact that he still followed the Lord’s command to go to Missouri after all of this is a sermon in itself. The fact that Emma stuck around is a sermon as well.
This is a strange analogy, but it’s the only way to explain what I’m picturing.
I picture this earth life as some kind of virtual reality game that we’re trying to conquer. We put on our helmets, and we’re put into this very intense training arena where we actually have very little control. Everyone can choose their own path. You are given a team, but some teams are effective and other teams are not. You receive little missions to accomplish, but there are so many obstacles. Sometimes those missions feel worthwhile, and sometimes you look back and think, “What was the point of all that effort?” The arena can be dangerous, disheartening, discouraging, devastating.
It feels so real, and that was the point; the Lord wanted to train you. It was meant to be real because anything less than a completely immersive experience would hinder your progression.
And this immersive experience is rough. You are actually quite limited in how missions go, and you are also quite limited in saving your team. Sometimes it feels like you’re pushing against this giant unmoving wall. Sometimes it feels like you’re losing more ground and more people than you’re gaining.
But in the end, it really is only a virtual reality game. Though it doesn’t feel like it, you are actually completely safe. Someday, when it’s time to take off the helmet, you’re going to look around and see that you were never truly in danger. You’re going to laugh at yourself for some of the things you’re stressed over. You’re going to rejoice that some of the things that were drowning you weren’t “real.” This was all just an intensive training experience that the Lord paid for. The Lord isn’t cruel. He didn’t look the other way when it seemed like the missions He gave were impossible. He didn’t send you on wild goose chases for nothing. He wasn’t permanently taking away things that uplifted you. He wasn’t just manipulating everyone like game pieces for His own glory or fun.
He was manipulating everything, but He was manipulating everything in order to try and train His children to become as powerful as possible.
Without the Savior’s atonement, this virtual reality experience would have trapped us and the stakes would have been impossible. You may have learned, but it would have all come to naught. It is the Savior’s atonement that enabled Him to make this training experience mean something, and our success literally boils down to whether we love Him and are trying. You can’t lose if you lean in and garner the experience He meant for you to have.
The devastation that Joseph and Emma experienced was real. What you’re feeling in your life is real. I’m not trying to make light of difficult situations or minimize what you’re going through. What I’m trying to do is place your pain in the context of eternity so that it doesn’t drown you. You can grieve and experience hope at the same time. You can lean into the immersive experience and trust the Lord’s plan, resources, and abilities. You can recognize that you didn’t step into this virtual reality to actually complete anything or save anyone. You didn’t step into this arena to feel safe or have the Lord take care of you. You don’t need the Lord to take care of everything in order to prove His love. Rather, the real and difficult immersive experience and readily available happy ending is the proof of His love.
You came because you wanted that growth that the Lord wanted you to have, and He is delivering it. Lean into the growth and accept the price you have to pay in order to gain that growth. Simultaneously recognize that the price you pay for that growth is paid back by the atonement of Jesus Christ. You lose nothing and gain everything because of a Savior whose purpose is rooted in love.
In the beginning before I described my analogy, I said that sometimes the Lord waits to ask us to do something when we’re drowning. Joseph could have very easily been drowning. He could have resented the Lord for what was asked of him in his deepest grief. And yet, the Lord didn’t ask it of Joseph because He’s cruel. It’s because when we’re drowning, it pushes us to more readily lean into Him where we find true safety. Sometimes we get to the point where we have no choice but to trust in Him. If we can remain in a state where we’re looking to Him and leaning on Him, this virtual reality experience will be at its most effective. It won’t wear us down or destroy us. We will know that everything that happens is a sign of His love as He coaches us through specific experiences to garner the characteristics we need to live like Him.
We have a Savior who loves us. Everything He and the Father arranged in this plan are signs of that love.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 81–83 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 17, 2025
A Recycled Revelation
by Autumn Dickson
This week I’m talking a lot about context rather than any specific verses which is not usually my norm. However, I think that delving into the context of these sections is really important and can make the scriptures feel more rich. Just as we learn from the stories in our other books of scripture, we can learn more about the revelations from the Lord by studying when they were given. So here is some context for what we read this week.
Section 81 was originally given to a man named Jesse Gause who was called to serve as Joseph Smith’s counselor in the forerunner of what would eventually evolve into the First Presidency. When Gause was excommunicated, he was replaced by Frederick G. Williams. Gause’s name was also replaced by Williams’ name in the revelation that was given.
I wonder if it slightly bothered Frederick G. Williams when he didn’t get his own revelation upon being called. Please note that I’m not saying it should bother him; I just wonder if it did.
Imagine being in a ward where the bishop gets called and then moves six months later. A new bishop comes in, and the stake president is just like, “Here. We recorded the blessing for the last bishop. We’ll set you apart, but this blessing is just going to be yours now.”
Imagine going in to receive your patriarchal blessing and the patriarch recycles an old blessing he gave and inserts your name in it. Would you feel a little shafted? These are supposed to be individualized, right?
Now, I’m not sure that it bothered Williams at all. Maybe he didn’t think twice about it, but it can’t hurt to explore the concept and dig deeper.
Joseph Smith was receiving a lot of revelation during this time period. He probably could have easily received something just for Williams, but he didn’t. Have you ever felt skipped over at church? Have you ever felt like everyone else was receiving something special but you weren’t? Maybe it was a calling or a special experience. It could have been anything.
I have. I used to feel that way all the time. I remember having experiences where parents told me about how special the patriarchal blessings of their kids were. They talked about how it felt so powerful and singular, and I remember feeling very un-special.
I’m going to tell you a little secret that changed my life. When we seek to be set apart from others, to be singular, to receive something that no one else has received, we usually end up having the opposite experience. Trying to be more than others is an insatiable desire; you can temporarily please it but you can’t quench it. Maybe we don’t think we’re trying to be more; I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time, but I was. There was a comparison, and you can’t win with comparisons. No matter how things play out, you lose.
In my own life, those deep and unrelenting desires to be special were coming from a place of insecurity about my Heavenly Father’s love for me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t just trying to feel loved. I wanted to be more loved, probably in some mistaken belief that it would drive away the insecurity.
Luckily, the Lord is smarter than giving me what I want sometimes.
He could have given me something special. He could have given me some experience that no one else got to have to make sure that I knew that He knew me and that I was important to Him. He could have looked at me and worried about the insecurities and worried about the fact that I didn’t have a testimony of His love.
But He didn’t want to do that for a couple of good reasons. He didn’t communicate that I was more special because I’m not more special. It would be silly to tell me an untruth. He also didn’t give some overt, flamboyant sign of His love because it would have actually just fed the insecurity. You would think that I’d be able to take these huge signs of love and accept them. But in my experience, it simply doesn’t work. Think about it from a mortal perspective. You can make huge overtures of your love to someone, but until they’re ready to believe it, the signs you choose to give don’t change their insecurity.
Rather, He continued to feed me a healthy, quiet kind of love and left me to accept it. He never caved when I felt unloved, insecure, and assumed He was so angry with me. He just kept feeding me that unrelenting, reverent love and waited for me to finally accept it.
Drawing this back to Frederick G. Williams, I would have felt distraught over getting a recycled blessing that had originally been given to someone else. At the time that I was still seeking that unhealthy form of love, I would have let that circumstance speak to me, and it would have said, “You don’t really matter. You don’t even get your own blessing.”
I’ve learned a few things since my angsty teen years. The Lord does love me. I’m so important to Him even if that’s illogical. Nowadays, if I were to receive a recycled blessing, I would be able to quietly read it in gratitude. That gratitude would have enabled me to see the quiet, personalized messages He was sending. The recycled blessing would have been as personalized as I allowed. The help of the Spirit, love from our Heavenly Father, and my own belief in that love would have given me what I was seeking – a reassurance of His love for me.
The most interesting part about this experience is the fact that once I let go of comparison, once I let go of desperately seeking some inarguable sign that I was valuable, I was able to start seeing the small tokens of His love. If I had received a “recycled” blessing and chosen to let go of any whispers of insecurity, the experience of receiving this revelation would have been a sacred and treasured experience. Letting go of the need to have my own, I would have been able to read this blessing in a state of mind where the Spirit could whisper the personalized messages I needed to do my work to serve others.
Isn’t that ironic? Once I let go of trying to receive some ostentatious sign that I was special, I was able to see and receive those smaller, special messages that were meant for me at a specific time period in my life. And once I began appreciating and accepting those small, special messages, I have become convinced that I’m special to my Heavenly Father.
I testify that the Lord loves you. He recycles the same values, words, and lessons that He teaches everybody because He loves all of us. You’re not going to receive anything “new,” but I promise that you can receive something better, something that fills you up more.The need for something singular can be sinister. It can prevent you from receiving the healthy kind of love that sticks with you and fills in all of the cracks. I testify that the Savior loves you with a deep and abiding love and that His love is enough to fill you up, even if it’s not more than the love He gives to others.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Introduction to the Session “Faith and Growth of the LDS Church in the DR Congo” – Dan Peterson
That’s fun to do this, because if you’re an academic, if you’re a professor, you talk for a living. So, you’re glib; you don’t have to know anything about what you’re talking about, but you can sound really convincing.
So that’s what I’m going to try to do here. I’ve been asked to chair this session, I guess because I’m the president of the Interpreter Foundation, and this project is really fascinating. The project that they’re going to be talking about is under the auspices of the Interpreter Foundation, so I’ll let them do that talking. Then we’ll see how this goes.
But I thought I would first introduce Jeff Bradshaw, who will then introduce Junior Bonza, and then we’ll get the ball rolling.
Junior Banza was born and raised in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. In October 1979, his parents joined the Church in Geneva, Switzerland, but they returned to the DR Congo soon afterward. Junior was baptized in June 1986 right after the Church was officially recognized there. As a young man, he began his full-time mission in the DR Congo Kinshasa mission and finished in Johannesburg, South Africa. Junior and his family live in West Jordan, Utah, where he works in the financial industry. He and his wife Annie are the parents of two daughters and a son. Department in efforts to encourage outreach and historical engagement.
Jeff Bradshaw is a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation and a Church service missionary for the Church History Department. See www.TempleThemes.net for his Church-related publications. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, began to research and recount the stories of Church history in Africa during their first mission to the DR Congo in 2016. They have four children and sixteen grandchildren. Professionally, Jeff is a senior research scientist for the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw).
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 78, 80–83, 85, 92, 104 – Mike Parker
Jul 15, 2025
The office of high priest; the United Firm (D&C sections 78, 80–83, 85, 92, 104)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 77–80 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 14, 2025
Be of Good Cheer
by Autumn Dickson
The Doctrine and Covenants are interesting as a book of scripture. They are different from other books of scripture. So many of the scriptures that we read are stories from which we can draw lessons or sermons given by the people in those stories. The Doctrine and Covenants is simply the voice of the Lord as He directs His restored gospel. He reveals things a bit at a time as the people are prepared to receive. And though He is revealing much, He is not revealing everything.
Doctrine and Covenants 78:18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.
The first phrase found in this scripture, “ye cannot bear all things now,” reminds me of the promise that the Lord gave through Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith taught that the Lord is willing to make all things known even unto the “least” Saint as soon as that person is prepared to “bear them.” A grand majority of us are not prepared to bear all that the Lord wants to offer. We aren’t ready. We’re not strong enough or prepared enough or faithful enough or obedient enough. The list goes on and on. We are not yet ready to bear all things.
And yet, the very next phrase reads, “…be of good cheer, for I will lead you along…”
There are many ways to interpret this verse so that it speaks to us personally, but I will share what I am “hearing” today when I read this message from the Lord.
“You are not yet good enough, but rejoice anyway because I’m going to lead you there. The kingdom and blessings and riches of eternity are yours.”
He isn’t saying, “Hey, once you finally pay for your own sins, you can rejoice.” He isn’t saying, “Hey, once you finally get over those flaws, you’re going to have the riches of eternity.” He is saying, “Hey, you’re not ready yet, but rejoice RIGHT NOW anyway.”
The idea that we are not yet good enough makes it so easy to get bogged down and depressed. Even when we have a testimony of the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can still find ourselves wondering whether we can make it. It is easy to feel the weight of our own sins and flaws. Even when we’re trying our very best, those mistakes can come back and yell in our faces. Sometimes, it’s even worse when we’re trying our best because our best isn’t “good enough.” Other times, we feel like we’re even falling short of our very best. We know better, and yet, our same flaws keep running around to pull us down.
And yet, here is the Lord, telling us that we can rejoice. He doesn’t say dance around it. He tells us, “You’re not ready yet.” Interestingly enough, we all believe that part. We know we’re not ready yet. And yet, when He also tells us to be of good cheer, we seem to bypass that part. When He tells us that the riches of eternity are our’s, we seem to skim over that part and focus on how we’re not prepared to receive everything yet.
We don’t give ourselves permission to rejoice. We do not yet believe that the riches of eternity are our’s. I think it’s critical that we note the Lord’s specific wording here. He didn’t say, “If you keep following this path, the riches will by your’s.” He says, “The riches ARE your’s.” And yet, we don’t feel like rejoicing or being of good cheer. The weight of our sins is too heavy and tethers us down.
Yesterday, in Relief Society, a woman named Sydnee shared a beautiful comment in Relief Society and gave me permission to share what she was expressing. It’s not exact by any means, but the message is similar. She taught me this:
Are we really allowed to let go of being sad over our mistakes? Are we really allowed to set those flaws aside and not hold on to them? Yes. I cannot yet rejoice in myself, but I don’t have to carry those sins around. I can rejoice in Christ and the fact that He’s perfect.
And if you don’t believe my friend, believe the Savior. He knows you’re not ready to bear all things yet. He knows you’re not ready to be exalted, or maybe you’re not even ready for the Celestial Kingdom. None of us deserve the Celestial Kingdom, but that’s the entire point of the gospel. Because He paid for our sins, He’s giving it to us anyway.
You don’t have to be perfect in order to receive the riches of eternity. You don’t have to have a knowledge of the universe to receive the riches of eternity. The Lord was not speaking in a future tense. He told the Saints that the riches of eternity ARE already theirs. They weren’t perfect either.
Here is another verse where the Lord teaches us the exact same thing.
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Set aside every weight and sin which besets you. I used to interpret this verse as saying, “Set that weight and sin aside. Don’t do it anymore. You’re so easily tempted,” but that isn’t what the verse is saying. The definition of “beset” is “to trouble.” Lay aside all of your sins and flaws that are troubling you. Set them down. The Lord already carried them. You have permission to set them down. You don’t have to carry them so that they keep you in line.
Rather, carry the perfection of Christ. Carry His sacrifice. The joy that springs forth from that sacrifice is much lighter, and that is what He wants you to carry around. The love that inspired that sacrifice will “keep you in line” much better than any shame you might be hauling with you. It will inspire you to rise above the things that are holding you back and propel you towards the preparation that’s needed to follow after Him.
You are not ready. You are flawed, and you sin. You will continue to sin, and those flaws are going to be around for a while. But be of good cheer. Find good cheer in Him, His perfection, His ability to save you anyway. You are not perfect, but the kingdom and blessings and riches of eternity ARE your’s. Find joy in that. Rest in it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 76 – Mike Parker
Jul 12, 2025
The Vision of the three degrees of glory (D&C section 76)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Philo Dibble, “Recollections of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” Juvenile Instructor 27, no. 10 (15 May 1892): 303–04. Dibble recalled his firsthand experience being in the room when Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon experienced the Vision now canonized as section 76.
Joseph Smith, “A Vision,” Times and Seasons 4, no. 6 (1 February 1843): 81–85. William W. Phelps wrote a letter in poetic verse to the Prophet Joseph about the celestial kingdom, and Joseph responded with a poetic form of section 76.
Elder Russell M. Nelson, “Perfection Pending,” General Conference, October 1995. Then-Elder Nelson offered a suggestion on the meaning of the word telestial.
Kevin Barney, “The Etymology of ‘Telestial’,” By Common Consent, 27 January 2010. Barney takes a scholarly approach to the origin of the word telestial.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Classic FAIR – Ancient Names in the Book of Abraham – John Tvedtnes, 2005
Jul 09, 2025
“Authentic Ancient Names and Words in the Book of Abraham and Related Kirtland Egyptian Papers” by John Tvedtnes at the 2005 FAIR Conference
Over the last century a number of scholars have looked at names and other transliterated words in the Book of Abraham and in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in an attempt to determine their authenticity. In some cases it can be demonstrated that the name is actually attested in Ancient Near Eastern documents. For unattested names it is sometimes possible to postulate an etymology based on known words in Egyptian and other ancient languages in use in the time of Abraham.
While I can claim credit for some of the work contained in my presentation today, it is appropriate to acknowledge that I’ve drawn upon research by various others such as Hugh Nibley, A. Richards Durham, Robert F. Smith, John Gee and John M. Lundquist. Indeed one of the most thorough researchers of the Book of Abraham onomasticon is Robert F. Smith most of whose contribution is embodied in a series of unpublished manuscripts that he shared with me during the 1960s and ‘70s. I’ve mentioned some of his research in previous publications. I must acknowledge however that I’ve added my own contributions and I’m the only one who can really be faulted for any mistakes here.
One of the primary sources of the names used in this study is of course the Book of Abraham as published in our Pearl of Great Price. These names have been carefully compared with the forms as found in the four extant handwritten manuscripts of the Book of Abraham, one of which you see on the left here, that’s held in the LDS Church Archives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 77–80 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 08, 2025
Equal in Earthly Things
by Autumn Dickson
In Doctrine and Covenants 78, the Lord is establishing a practical system to help the Saints live the Law of Consecration. Here is some of what the Lord said regarding the Law of Consecration.
Doctrine and Covenants 78:4-6
4 For a permanent and everlasting establishment and order unto my church, to advance the cause, which ye have espoused, to the salvation of man, and to the glory of your Father who is in heaven;
5 That you may be equal in the bonds of heavenly things, yea, and earthly things also, for the obtaining of heavenly things.
6 For if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things;
The Institute Manual explains what it means to be “equal in earthly things;” being equal is not about having the same. It’s about having “equal claim on resources” according to what they need. The Lord explains that the Law of Consecration advances the cause of the salvation of man.
When you originally study the Law of Consecration, it is easy to see how it would benefit the poor and further the cause of salvation. It’s really hard to study the gospel when you don’t have the necessities of life. It’s hard to feel peace when you’re worried about feeding your kids or where you’re going to sleep. Having your needs met at a basic level allows you to step out of that state of anxiety and into a place where you can more readily accept heavenly things.
When we continue studying the Law of Consecration, it also becomes easy to see how this law isn’t just about the poor. It’s also about bringing salvation to those who are doing the giving.
The Lord has no ego. He wants to lift each of us up to where He is. He is driven by love for us. He isn’t worried about remaining over us and controlling us. He isn’t constantly plagued by the desire to have more. He isn’t trying to separate Himself from others by having more.
If we want to enjoy the kingdom He has created, we have to be like Him.
Doctrine and Covenants 78:7 For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you.
I’m going to repeat what I said right before this verse. If we want to enjoy the kingdom He has created, we have to be like Him. We have to prepare, or in other words, we have to become like Him. And according to verse 7, we prepare ourselves by doing what He commands.
Let’s make this a little more concrete in regard to the Law of Consecration.
One of the aspects of heaven many of us are desperately seeking is a feeling of safety. We want to know that everything will be okay tomorrow. We want to know that we will have everything we need. We want to know that we are safe in the hands of the Lord.
Interestingly enough, we don’t have to wait until heaven to receive that feeling of safety. The Lord has already made promises about taking care of us here. He has already promised that we will have what we truly need. The true problem lies in the fact that we do not yet fully trust Him. I speak from personal experience.
We are taught that we will continue to be the same people on the other side. So what does that look like in the context of what we’re talking about?
It looks like the fact that I am holding myself back from enjoying the blessings that have already been offered to me here on earth. Is it possible that I may continue to hold myself back from enjoying the blessings offered to me on the other side? Will I continue to worry? The Lord has already promised me safety; He has already promised to take care of me. If I cannot trust that promise here, what makes me believe that I will suddenly be able to enjoy that promise on the other side? I interfere with my ability to enjoy the Celestial Kingdom and all of its blessings when I do not change to trust the Lord.
This also goes for any ego that arises as a result of having many things on earth. Always being worried about having more, being worried about whether people notice that you have more, garnering your joy from the idea that you have more than the next guy will hold you back from the enjoyment that the Lord wants to offer. There is innate beauty and happiness found in serving others who need help, in recognizing that the stuff we have here is for everyone, and there is innate beauty and happiness in being free from that ego.
The Law of Consecration (as well as our covenants in the temple) were given to us to further the cause of salvation; it was given so that we could be more prepared to enjoy the blessings of the Lord.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 76 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 05, 2025
Hear Him
by Autumn Dickson
In Section 76, we receive an immense amount of information that had been lost over time. If you grew up with the Plan of Salvation, it may not feel that way but this was all very new. Though it was hard for some Saints to accept it at the time, we rejoice in this doctrine that the Lord restored. I am so grateful to know it.
And though we received this immense amount of information from the Lord, we also read this at the end of the vision.
Doctrine and Covenants 76
115 Which he commanded us we should not write while we were yet in the Spirit, and are not lawful for man to utter;
116 Neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him;
117 To whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves;
118 That through the power and manifestation of the Spirit, while in the flesh, they may be able to bear his presence in the world of glory.
We did not receive everything that Joseph and Sidney received in this vision. It reminds me of 2 Nephi 32:7. The Spirit stops Nephi from saying more.
The Lord wants to give more. He has more to give. Our eventual goal is to be reunited with Him, and that goal doesn’t have to wait until the next life. There are a myriad of quotes and scriptures that seemingly plead with us to actively seek Him so that He can give more than we’ve received. The scriptures can only give so much. There are things we have to receive directly from the Lord through the Spirit, and the Lord wants us to receive it as soon as we are able.
When I was younger, I remember very distinctly praying for a vision. I did it periodically as I was growing up. I wanted the Lord to just give me a dream or something. Some of my intentions were pure. I did want to be with the Lord again, but there was also some pride involved. Regardless of my intentions and spiritual readiness, I would pray very sincerely for this type of revelation. I figured if the Lord wanted to give more, I wanted to receive it. Luckily, He is wise enough to do what’s best for us and not just give us everything we ask for.
I have stopped asking for visions because I have learned that the Lord doesn’t often work that way. Doctrine and Covenants 76 holds a record of one of the most significant restorations of truth in the early church, possibly in the whole history of the latter-day church. It is significant to consciously recognize how Joseph and Sidney received this vision.
Doctrine and Covenants 76:15, 18-19
15 For while we were doing the work of translation, which the Lord had appointed unto us, we came to the twenty-ninth verse of the fifth chapter of John…
18 Now this caused us to marvel, for it was given unto us of the Spirit.
19 And while we meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about.
Joseph and Sidney did not ask for a vision. They just asked for clarification regarding scripture. This is truly significant because it gives us a path to follow. The Lord has so much to give you, but it has to be built. You have to be prepared. He doesn’t just hand it out as soon as you recognize the fact that He has more and wants to give it to you. It requires seeking and study and learning His voice and character. It requires work. Otherwise, we get to remain in the dark.
These verses that we just read, specifically 18-19, can give us a clue about how to start building and preparing for what the Lord wishes to give. The verse in John caused them to marvel because it was given to them by the Spirit. I recognize this pattern now. When I’m seeking what the Lord wants me to share in my weekly messages, the Spirit “gives” me something. I’m reading and a phrase jumps out to me. The feeling is extremely subtle, but if I pause and start to write about it, it expands and expands and expands and I receive so much more than I would have otherwise.
I have noticed that it has expanded beyond just the scriptures. I can be having a conversation or walking by some people and overhear a phrase, and that subtle feeling comes over me again. It’s as if the Lord stamps it softly into my head and if I take the time to pause, or if I hold onto it until I have time to think about it, the Lord often gives more.
President Nelson has asked us to learn how to “Hear Him.” I echo President Nelson’s request. Learn to hear Him. Seek Him. He has more to give. It does not start out with visions, and receiving everything He wants to give starts with preparation. So prepare. It’s worth it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 76 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 04, 2025
A Glorious God
by Autumn Dickson
For those of us who grew up with the concept of the Plan of Salvation and its many kingdoms, the vision recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 76 is nothing new. Because of our familiarity with it, I think it can be easy to miss the majesty and goodness that is God. One of the things I love about the doctrine we received in this section is that it upholds the idea that God is good and perfect and just. As Latter-day Saints, we don’t just claim that God is a perfect judge. He actually is a Perfect Judge.
The traditional beliefs surrounding what is recorded in the bible about heaven and hell make no sense upon closer examination. I have had friends who have believed I was going to hell. They very specifically iterated that Conner and I were good people, but they still retained their beliefs that God would throw us into an eternally burning pit. I pondered this for a very long time.
There are many interpretations of heaven and hell and judgment, but the most common I’ve come across is the idea that if you believe in Christ (the right Christ because apparently we don’t believe in the right one), you will be saved. If you don’t believe in the right Christ, you will be thrust into an eternal fire. For many, it doesn’t matter how evil you lived your life. If you believe in Christ, you’re good to go.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you were saved on Judgment Day. In fact, God even asked you to come and help carry out His judgment because your belief was sufficient. One day, He sends over a man for you to toss out of heaven. This man was a good man who loved his family, freely gave to all of his neighbors around him, and deeply sacrificed on behalf of his belief in God. But he was not Christian. It is now your job to toss this uplifting man into a literal fire pit, and that man gets to stay there forever.
Would you do it? How would you feel about God afterwards? Would you look at Him and call Him perfect because He calls Himself perfect?
As Latter-day Saints, we believe in heaven and hell but have different interpretations of it. There are many different kingdoms in heaven so as to make room for all the children of God to fit perfectly and comfortably. The bible declares that God is good and perfect and just, and I believe that. If I had never heard of God and someone came and taught me the truths found in Doctrine and Covenants 76, I would not need someone to declare to me that God was good and perfect and just. His plan declares it for Him.
There are so many ways that this doctrine plays out in individual lives, but I suppose that’s the point. This doctrine allows Christ to judge perfectly rather than trying to fit the whole spectrum of humanity into something as stark as heaven and hell. Let’s observe how this might play out in one circumstance so that we can better understand how beautiful this truth is.
Let’s say that you don’t believe in God and don’t want to worship Him. Even if you got to the spirit world on the other side and people tried to preach to you, let’s say that you still refused to worship God. Heavenly Father would send you somewhere safe and warm because you are still His child. He would send you to a place that has everything you need, and you would be surrounded by people who feel similar to you. As a mother, this kind of judgment makes perfect sense to me.
But there is still judgment, and though you would be “saved” in a place where you’re safe and warm, you would still experience some level of hell because you refused to worship God. The aspect of hell that you would experience is opportunity cost. I believe in a God who is worth worshipping. I picture an adult child who reflects on their life and sees all of the opportunities given to them by a loving mother. I picture an adult child who can see the heartache and sacrifice experienced by this loving mother, and I picture that adult child feeling such a deep attitude of awe and gratitude that it’s akin to worship.
I have a relationship with my Heavenly Father. I have seen the sacrifices He, and His Beloved Son, have made on my behalf. I have personally felt how the Lord is turned completely towards my eternal joy, and I worship Him for that. I experience heaven when I experience that awe and gratitude. Being around Someone who loves me like He does is an incomparable feeling that I have only glimpsed. You would experience hell to the extent that you miss out on experiencing the greatness that is God.
We believe that God is a perfect judge (not just because He says so but because He really is perfect). We believe that He loves His children and will place them where they will have all they need and will experience as much happiness as their choices allow.
And so with Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon and so many, many other Saints, I declare these words as well.
Doctrine and Covenants 76:1-3
1 Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, and rejoice ye inhabitants thereof, for the Lord is God, and beside him there is no Savior.
2 Great is his wisdom, marvelous are his ways, and the extent of his doings none can find out.
3 His purposes fail not, neither are there any who can stay his hand.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 71–75 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 30, 2025
Purpose Drives Revelation
by Autumn Dickson
Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon paused work on the translation of the bible and were called to go and preach the gospel in order to dispel some of the hatred and persecution being heaped up against the church. After a conference held with the elders, Joseph and Sidney were called once again to work on the translation of the bible.
Doctrine and Covenants 73:3 Now, verily I say unto you my servants, Joseph Smith, Jun., and Sidney Rigdon, saith the Lord, it is expedient to translate again;
Here is a quote in the institute manual that can give us insight into how this verse can apply in our own lives.
The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible had ‘a significant influence on the Church in the way it shaped the content of the Doctrine and Covenants. More than half of the current Doctrine and Covenants consists of revelations received during the three-year period in which Joseph Smith labored over the Bible translation. Many revelations were received as direct answers to questions Joseph was inspired to ask as his understanding of the gospel expanded during the effort to restore plain and precious parts of the Bible.
Joseph was commanded to work through the bible, and as he did, he was able to receive revelation because of his intentional study. We see an example of this directly after in Section 74 where Joseph receives revelation regarding 1 Corinthians 7. He received a variety of revelations, not just the portions that were corrected and expanded upon in the bible. This is actually really interesting to me because we have never fully canonized the Joseph Smith translation. We believe it is divinely guided and it’s been included in our scriptures as a study aid, but it’s not canonized.
Joseph spent a lot of time on this translation for it to never be canonized. We receive a lot of insight from the Joseph Smith Translation, and yet, maybe one of the major purposes of this translation wasn’t about the translation. It was about how the translation prompted intentional study, heartfelt pleading, and specific questions. It changed Joseph, and it shaped much of our understanding of the restored gospel because of the revelations Joseph received while working on it.
I noted similar experiences as a missionary. Every day, we would have dedicated time to study the gospel. As I chose to study on behalf of those I had been called to teach, my understanding of the gospel would improve and I would also receive revelation for my personal life. We had been called to do a specific work in the gospel and as we worked on that, revelation flooded in regarding many things – not just the specific work. I know other missionaries had very similar experiences.
As life moved on, I felt very called to work on a blog. Once again, the revelation started coming, but the revelation expanded beyond just the work I felt called to do. There were days when I would start writing a message I felt prompted to share, and I would end up in my journal writing and writing and writing about experiences in my family and things that the Lord wanted me to know and do in my personal life. I would get to the end of the time I could dedicate to studying and though I hadn’t made any progress on a post, I had received very special communications on behalf of my family. I really don’t think I would have received even a small portion of what I’ve received if it had not been for the fact that I was trying to prepare weekly messages.
And that’s why we receive callings and responsibilities in the church. Having a calling hones our focus and draws our mind in the direction of the Lord so that we’re prepared to receive. It also pushes us in a direction where we deeply need the Lord because we feel inadequate. This is not just about official callings! Being part of a family, being a friend, or even working to better mankind in your professional life can teach you about the gospel if you include the Lord. I watch my husband receive revelation on a daily basis as he works to create things as an engineer. And though it may not seem “churchy,” he is still learning about his Heavenly Father who is also an engineer.
What purpose has the Lord given you in order to more fully teach you His gospel? What responsibilities have you been given in which you can include the Lord to expand the amount of revelation you can receive for your life and family?
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 71, 73–75, 77, 86, 91, 113 – Mike Parker
Jun 27, 2025
Joseph Smith’s “new translation” of the Bible (D&C sections 71, 73–75, 77, 86, 91, 113)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Kent P. Jackson and Peter M. Jasinski. “The Process of Inspired Translation: Two Passages Translated Twice in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.” BYU Studies 42, no. 2 (2003): 35–64. This article demonstrates how Joseph Smith translated the same passage from the New Testament twice, and got different results each time. (This is evidence that the Joseph Smith Translation is not a restoration of a lost, ancient original text, at least in all of its parts.)
Nicholas J. Frederick. “Section 77 and Book of Revelation Scholarship.” Religious Educator 22, no. 2 (2021): 46–71. Section 77 contains Joseph Smith’s inspired answers to questions posed to him about the symbols in the book of Revelation. Frederick compares Joseph’s interpretations to those in commentaries on the book of Revelation published between 1817 and 2014.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 71–75 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 26, 2025
Bishops and Consecration
by Autumn Dickson
Hello friends! Just a quick PSA. My normal format up to this point has been to post one message a week. The Lord has pointed me in a different direction, and I will now be sharing two shorter messages posted throughout the week. Thanks for sticking with me as I work to figure out my new posting schedule!
In Section 72, the Lord is calling a bishop (Newel K. Whitney) to serve in Ohio because the other bishop (Edward Partridge) is in Missouri. At that time, the Saints were living the law of consecration in which they offered up their land to the church; they also offered up their excess when they had it. One of the roles of the bishop was to handle the logistics of the law of consecration. The bishop would determine what was needed by a family, and then he would deed that property back over to that family. The idea was that the church would be able to organize what everyone needed and make sure life necessities were being taken care of, but the land would still belong to the individual families. In essence, they could do what they wanted with it, and they were responsible for doing all they could to take care of it. Here is part of what the Lord says about it.
Doctrine and Covenants 72:2-3
2 For verily thus saith the Lord, it is expedient in me for a bishop to be appointed unto you, or of you, unto the church in this part of the Lord’s vineyard.
3 And verily in this thing ye have done wisely, for it is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity.
The Lord wanted a bishop called so that the people had an opportunity to show responsibility for what the Lord had given them. These men, Newel K. Whitney and Edward Partridge, were called to be representatives of the Lord, and we can learn about our Savior from the roles that they were given. These bishops would meet with the Saints and essentially ask two questions, “What do you need?” and, “What can you give?” Both questions are important, and both questions are posed to us by the Savior.
At this time, we do not deed our property over to the church and receive what we need in return. However, we do covenant to live the law of consecration in the temple. In essence, we are covenanting to dedicate all that we have and are to the Savior and His kingdom on the earth. What do you need? What can you give?
The law of consecration doesn’t necessarily mean giving everything away. Sometimes it also means working to build what you have so that it is sufficient. When we’re trying to answer these two questions, two internalizations can help. One: everything we have belongs to the Lord and He can help us know the best way to utilize what we have and two, the Lord doesn’t just ask what we can give. He also asks what we need. And unlike Edward Partridge and Newel K. Whitney, who were often drawing on empty wells to try and take care of the Saints, our Savior can easily give us what we truly need in order to do what He wants us to do. He is wise in what He chooses to give.
And like Edward Partridge and Newel K. Whitney, the Savior lives the law of consecration with us. He loves us so much that few other things occupy His mind. He devotes all of His time, energy, and resources to us. And I suppose that’s the point. We’re trying to become like Him. There is power in devoting all that you have and all that you are to others. There is power in loving others that much. There is power in letting go of “owning” things. There is power and security in a community that truly gives and leans on each other.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Classic FAIR – Defending the Faith – David L. Paulsen, 2004
Jun 25, 2025
“The God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph Smith: Defending the Faith” by David L. Paulsen at the 2004 FAIR Conference
Scott asked me if I would share with you some of my work defending our LDS understanding of God and to that end I have prepared a bibliography. There’s two sets of materials being passed out, one is a packet. There is a copy of the bibliography in that packet and then there’s two individual sheets and you should either get the packet or the pair of two separate sheets and you’ll find the bibliography in one of them. I’ve also copied a few reprints of articles.
As time permits, I want to look at two or three of these articles but before I launch into a consideration of those, I’d like to provide just a little personal background if you will indulge me that will perhaps explain how I developed a passion for apologetics and also put apologetics in a proper perspective.
Growing up in Ephraim in Sanpete County I was acquainted, and then only casually, with four non-Mormons–two of whom subsequently converted. There must’ve been some in my community who openly challenged Mormon beliefs, but somehow I never encountered them. My first exposure to such challenges occurred after my sophomore year of college when I began my tour of active duty with the United States Army Reserve.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 67–70 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 19, 2025
A Testimony of the Revelations
by Autumn Dickson
Joseph Smith and various elders gathered this week to decide whether they would publish the revelations that Joseph had thus far received. Many of the elders were prepared to write their testimonies to be published right alongside the revelations, but others were hesitant. Joseph was not always eloquent, and he was not incredibly educated. Several of the elders did not yet believe that the revelations had come from the Lord.
In Section 67, the Lord issues a challenge. He tells the men to select the “least” of the revelations and then to take their wisest man and have him try to write a revelation like it. William McLellin, a school teacher, took up the challenge. According to the institute manual, this is how things played out.
Joseph Smith described the outcome of William’s attempt to write a revelation: ‘[William] E. McLellin … endeavored to write a [revelation] like unto one of the least of the Lord’s, but failed; it was an awful responsibility to write in the name of the Lord. The elders, and all present, that witnessed this vain attempt of a man to imitate the language of Jesus Christ, renewed their faith in the fulness of the gospel and in the truth of the commandments and revelations which the Lord had given to the church through my instrumentality; and the elders signified a willingness to bear testimony of their truth to all the world
Since we’re talking about how the Lord’s words are more powerful than man’s (even when it is filtered through a man), let’s look directly at some of His words. I want to talk about three different principles found throughout the chapter.
To gain a testimony
Here is how the Lord starts out the revelation in response to this situation we’ve been discussing.
Doctrine and Covenants 67:1 Behold and hearken, O ye elders of my church, who have assembled yourselves together, whose prayers I have heard, and whose hearts I know, and whose desires have come up before me.
Does the Lord sound angry with these elders because of their unbelief? I don’t think so. He’s literally telling them, “I’ve heard your prayers, and I know your hearts and desires.” The hearts of these elders are apparently soft enough that they don’t need rebuking. Rather, the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and perfect knowledge of us, knew that these elders simply lacked the testimony they needed as of yet.
It could have been easy for Joseph to get offended that these men felt his words were insufficient, but this wasn’t coming from Joseph. It was coming from the Lord, and the Lord knew His children enough to know that they simply needed more opportunities to practice faith and see Him in this work.
And so He set them up to gain a testimony of the revelations received by Joseph Smith.
The Lord does rebuke His children sometimes, but that is usually the result of hard hearts. If the Lord is calling someone out and forcefully calling for repentance, it is usually because a softer approach will be ineffective. For this particular chapter, I picture the Lord being very matter-of-fact about it.
So what do we learn from the Lord’s relaxed tone?
We learn that we don’t necessarily have to be afraid or ashamed if we have doubts. We don’t have to worry or put immense pressure on ourselves to “already know” or “just have faith already.” Rather, we can work to make (or keep) our hearts soft and give the Lord an opportunity to lead us along and show us. He knows our hearts, and He knows if you’re sincerely trying to find Him. He can work with that. It reminds me of the father in the New Testament who asked the Lord to “help Thou mine unbelief.” The Lord can give us eyes to see reality, and He can give us reasons to trust Him. We merely need to seek Him out and be willing to experiment upon His words, just like these men experimented.
Missing out
Here is another tidbit from the Lord.
Doctrine and Covenants 67:5 Your eyes have been upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and his language you have known, and his imperfections you have known; and you have sought in your hearts knowledge that you might express beyond his language; this you also know.
There is at least one general principle here that we can pull out and apply it many different ways. It is this: when we hyperfocus on the mistakes and supposed flaws of others, we miss out on so much goodness. When we scoff or mock, we’re voluntarily skipping over blessings.
This actually makes me think of Christ’s mortal ministry. Christ’s words and actions were obviously perfect, but I’m not sure they were perfect in the sense of how we sometimes picture the meaning of that word. He was a traveler. He was likely dirty from walking everywhere. He didn’t wear priestly robes or hold any worldly authority or education except in carpentry. Think of what the Pharisees and Sadducees missed out on because they couldn’t see past what they perceived as beneath them.
Think of what these elders might have missed out on had they continued on that path where they perceived the revelations of God as beneath them.
What are we perceiving as beneath us? What are we missing out on? The list could be endless: sacrament talks, good people, wisdom from parents.
Set aside our fears
In verse 3, the Lord tells His elders that they tried hard to believe that they would receive a blessing, but fear prevented them from actually receiving it. He also said this.
Doctrine and Covenants 67:10 And again, verily I say unto you that it is your privilege, and a promise I give unto you that have been ordained unto this ministry, that inasmuch as you strip yourselves from jealousies and fears, and humble yourselves before me, for ye are not sufficiently humble, the veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual.
There are a lot of things that we could talk about in this verse. How might jealousy have played into the elders not being able to recognize the revelations for what they were? There are so many phrases we could pull out and talk about, but I want to talk about stripping yourself of fear instead.
One of the steps for preparing to “see” the Lord is to remove fear.
I always try to put the Lord into the context of parenting because that is when I best understand Him. In this instance, it reminds me of when my son comes down and tells me that he’s too scared to go to bed. There are times when it’s appropriate for me to go up and comfort him, but usually he just gets scared again the second I leave the room. I have often found myself saying, “There is no way that I can make you any safer than you are now.” I assure him of all the reasons he is safe. We’re downstairs, dad has adequate means of self-defense, and we’ve got a dog that has protected my family before. Unfortunately, sometimes my son doesn’t believe in that safety. It’s a process to learn that kind of trust, but as we actively engage in choosing that trust, we’re going to find enough peace to rest.
The Lord is even more capable of protecting us than I am of protecting my son.
After over four years of trying to settle out on the east coast, things have finally lined up and we’re moving forward on a house. We did a lot of research in order to decide if this is what we wanted. We put in a lot of time to make sure this was a good move for our family. We prayed about it, and we felt good about the house, or at the very least, we didn’t feel bad about the house. When we were moving through this process, I felt like this is where we had been led after four years of searching.
But it’s easy to backslide and get scared again. I was so scared that we had chosen wrong or that the Lord had washed His hands of us and left us to fail. Logically, I know that the Lord doesn’t work that way, but that’s what my fear was saying. My husband is an entrepreneur which means that things can go really well, but they can also go really wrong. The risks of life suddenly seemed tremendously overwhelming. What if I had missed His warnings? What if we expected more than the Lord was willing to give at this time?
I’ve prayed for reassurances so many times, and the Lord has often answered. But even after the Lord answered, the fear remained or came back again. I was scared that I misunderstood Him or that I was seeing revelation where it wasn’t.
The Lord isn’t going to force me to lay down my fears. He is not going to constantly whisper in my ear that we’re going to be fine because that’s not what is best for me. He wants me to choose to trust Him. If I want to feel better and find rest, I have to choose to believe that the Lord is making my family as safe as we need to be.
The Lord promises His elders that if they can strip themselves of fear (alongside a few other things), the veil will be rent and they shall see Him.
As I hush my fears, as I remind myself of all the times He’s never abandoned me, I start to “see” Him again. This past week, the fears did come up and try to overwhelm me and there were moments when those fears were successful. But as I consciously remembered my experiences with the Lord and who I’ve come to know Him as, it was as if I put on spiritual glasses. Not only was I able to remember old experiences, but I started to have new ones. He started to whisper insights that helped me believe I was on the right track. I could “see” Him again.
I testify of a Lord who is willing to help us have the experiences we need to build trust in Him. If we keep our hearts soft and seek to trust Him and His prophets, He will give us what we need to know that we’re on the right track. If we push back against our fears, we will be able to see Him in our lives.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Nine years ago, I had the opportunity to start attending meetings at the United Nations. After the very first time going, I knew that it was going to be a hinge point in my life; and that I would never be able to unsee just how calculated the efforts were to undermine and fight against God’s plan in many areas of society. I knew that I would have to get to a point in my life where it became a well-used habit to be able to view the culture and trends of the world with a gospel lens.
So each time, after coming home from the United Nations, I would discuss things with friends and family about my experience. I shared with them some of the things that we needed to watch for and that we would start seeing in society. And some of the people really took things to heart and believed what we were seeing, and others didn’t.
Mandy Davis grew up in Alberta, Canada. She graduated from Utah State University with a Communications degree. While there, she met her husband and they now reside in Cache Valley with their 3 children. Mandy has had the opportunity to attend meetings at the United Nations both in the United States and abroad. Her experiences at the United Nations deepened her resolve to defend the family at a time when it was becoming unpopular to do so. Her Instagram account, @ChristianOverCulture helps encourage people to view trends in society through a gospel lens. She teaches how to put Christ over the culture of the world and practice intentional discipleship.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 64–66 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 12, 2025
The Greater Sin
by Autumn Dickson
The Lord talks a little bit about forgiveness this week. Section 64 was given at a time when tempers were running hot and Zion felt far away. What did the Lord have to say about forgiveness?
Doctrine and Covenants 64:9 Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.
I remember being young and thinking that didn’t make sense. I didn’t understand how the Lord could condemn a victim for holding on to their anger against someone who hurt them. As I’ve learned more and more about the gospel, I’ve received a different perspective. That’s not what the Lord is doing at all. It was merely me misunderstanding the Lord. Let’s talk about it.
Different kinds of sin
My definition and understanding of sin has evolved. It’s probably important to highlight that this is how I define the concept of sin personally. I likely don’t have it all correct, but we’re working towards perfect knowledge still, right?
Sin is sin. It is bad. We should try to avoid it as much as possible. Let it be known; I absolutely believe that the Lord cannot look upon sin with any degree of allowance. It would thwart the Plan of Salvation, His perfection, and it would stunt our growth dramatically.
But I used to take the concept of sin and tag on extra implications that weren’t necessarily true. I used to connect sin with an inherent badness on the part of the sinner. When there was condemnation, it was the Lord doling out punishments because we had been bad.
After becoming a parent, I have learned that it’s not necessarily that black and white. Making mistakes does not mean you’re bad, and the Savior is coaching us towards exaltation. Sometimes He utilizes consequences but not because He’s looking to make us suffer. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Consequences teach us so we don’t have to suffer any longer.
And then sometimes He doesn’t dole out consequences at all. Sometimes our choices come with inherent repercussions. He seeks to pull us out of those choices, but another form of condemnation is when we refuse Him and stay right where we’re at. I repeat. Another form of condemnation is when we refuse to accept His healing and grace. We condemn ourselves.
In my mind, sin has expanded beyond just a definition of “badness” to “anything that takes us farther away from the Lord.” This expanded understanding has many implications that have shifted how I look at the gospel.
One of the implications applies to the verse we just read. There are times when the Lord condemns; we see that most especially when someone is hard-hearted. When you read the New Testament, the Lord would condemn the Pharisees because softer forms of teaching were ineffective.
But sometimes condemnation isn’t coming directly from Him. When you read that verse more carefully, it doesn’t say that the Lord condemned the person who refused to forgive. It says that they stand condemned before the Lord. Sometimes, we stand before the Lord condemning ourselves because we refuse the salvation He is offering.
My personal interpretation of this verse is that the person refuses peace (and therefore, salvation) by refusing to forgive those who hurt them.
Putting it into context
I’m going to use a real-world example, and then I’m going to expand upon it.
I read a book about trauma a couple of years ago, and there is a story that has stuck with me. It spoke about a girl who had been locked in the closet from the time she was very little. When I studied the effects of abuse, I was surprised to learn that neglect from a very young age leaves deeper scars than actual abuse. This little girl was essentially feral when she was finally found and taken out of the custody of the parents. She was placed somewhere safe and spent far more time in a wholesome environment than she did locked inside that closet.
Unfortunately, the first three years of our lives often make the biggest impressions because our brains are developing so rapidly. When neglect and abuse happen in the first three years, it gets built into the brain as a blueprint for how someone looks at life. It can be changed, but because the growth of our brains slows down significantly, it takes far more time to undo the damage than it did to make the damage.
This girl grew up, became an adult, and went on to abuse another child. From a person who grew up healthy, it would be easy to wonder, “You know what it’s like to be hurt! Why would you do that to someone else?” But when you study the brain, you recognize a perfect storm. This adult girl was essentially unable to grow up. Her body matured, but her brain did not. She didn’t have the inhibitions of an adult. She didn’t develop empathy (because that develops in your second or third year). And when she wanted to be romantically involved, she was completely unable to relate to adults. She could only relate to a child.
She never really had a chance. And even as I speak about her struggles, we don’t allow cycles of abuse to continue. We work to protect potential victims. We do the logical thing and stop her from hurting others. However, it’s possible to protect victims, stop the abuse, and have compassion for the girl who suffered in ways that most of us don’t understand.
Here is the part where I expand upon this story with hypotheticals. The Lord is the perfect judge so we’ll ultimately leave this up to Him, but I’m going to postulate so that we can explore the forgiveness principle we were talking about before.
Fast forward to the next life. This girl has been healed by the Savior. She is no longer constrained to a brain that is broken and undeveloped because of what happened to her. Her spirit is free to be good and wholesome, and let’s say that’s exactly who she is.
How would you judge her? If she were your child and you loved her, would you banish her away from you? I hope not.
Now let’s look at the child who was abused by this broken woman. Let’s say this child grows up and passes away. He gets to the other side and sees her enjoying the presence of the Lord and being welcomed by good people around her. Let’s say this child is enraged by this.
How would you judge him? I would hope you wouldn’t judge him harshly. He has also been through some horrific things. But would you throw her out because he demanded it? I would also hope not.
I hope that we would be pleading with this young man to trust that the Lord knows everything perfectly, and she is safe to be around. I would hope that we would be pleading with him to come and join us and be healed and enjoy everything that the Lord meant for us to enjoy.
If he refuses to forgive and join in on the “heaven,” then yes, he is standing condemned before the Lord. He is condemning (or, in other words, consigning) himself to hell by clinging to pain and anger. He refuses to accept the healing and the celestial possibilities. He refuses the happiness that’s standing in front of him. He holds the “greater” sin because he is refusing to let go of hell. He is separating himself from the Savior and those in His company, and that’s the definition of hell.
We have to change how we interpret sin and condemnation and damnation. Sometimes the Lord does step in and mete out judgment as needed. Sometimes it’s just us condemning ourselves by refusing the path of healing, peace, and goodness.
For those struggling to forgive
I want to take a moment to talk about forgiveness and what it looks like. Forgiveness is a process that occurs in the heart. Because it’s an internal process, the outward manifestation can look different. Sometimes forgiveness looks like welcoming someone back into your life, and sometimes forgiveness looks like stepping away from someone for the rest of your life. Look at Nephi. He was commanded by the Lord to leave his brothers behind, and they did not reconnect in this life. Forgiveness does not always look the same on the outside, and it doesn’t mean that you have to invite a dangerous person back into your life.
But let’s examine forgiveness in the heart for a moment.
Doctrine and Covenants 64:11 And ye ought to say in your hearts–let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds.
God will judge, and He will judge perfectly.
Forgiving doesn’t mean the other person gets off easily. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re enabling them to go on hurting others. That’s not what forgiveness is about. God sees all, and He will judge accordingly. He’s not going to let someone come into heaven and destroy it with manipulation or harm. I think sometimes we’re afraid to forgive because we’re afraid of getting hurt. Fortunately, we have a loving Heavenly Father who separates people according to the goodness they offer those around them. If He has forgiven someone, it’s because they’re prepared to be different.
Going back to our previous example, I’m going to postulate again. In this specific imaginary scenario, I believe that the girl (the one who Heavenly Father judged was safe and worthy) will be so grateful for her healed mind. I believe that despite what she went through, she will also feel horrified by how her actions harmed another person. I believe that so much of what we experience in the next life is coming to terms with what happened to us and what we did to others in our mortal life.
You can let go and trust God to handle it perfectly. You can trust that you’re safe and will be healed. That is a process, and you don’t need to harangue yourself if it takes a while, but working towards it will free you. Forgiveness has everything to do with you and finding peace again. If you want to heal from damage caused by another person, you have to dig down deep and find love for that person. You have to sincerely want them to heal and make better choices and stop harming others. That is where you’re going to find the freedom and peace the Lord means for you to have.
I testify of a loving Savior who will protect and heal the innocent. I testify of a Father in Heaven who is a perfect judge. I testify that He teaches us principles that are meant to bless us, and I testify that forgiveness is one of those principles.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Classic FAIR – DNA and The Book of Mormon – Ryan Parr, 2005
Jun 11, 2025
“DNA and The Book of Mormon” by Ryan Parr at the 2005 FAIR Conference
I would like to thank the organizers of the conference for being invited to talk about two really great subjects and that is the Book of Mormon and DNA which, when you look at its structure and its design, is no less of a divine inspired molecule!
We live in a very exciting age. Now, by the time you finish watching CNN you may not think that, but there is a lot of good that is going on in the world today and actually we call- so this is sort of a public service announcement on DNA—you’ll often hear the word “genome” and genome refers to the entire complement of genes that each one of us has and for humans that’s between 30-80,000 genes and this is really going to be the basis of an economic revolution in countries that will take note. In fact Bill Gates has said that if he had the opportunity to do it over again he would be in biotechnology because with the early days of this type of research, it was pre-1995 (they call the ancient days), and now since we’ve actually looked at and deciphered the entire human genome there are many things that we think we can now do. We can use DNA as a biosensor to detect what we’re thinking; all types of diseases; cancers that now we treat after their clinical manifestations; long before there are clinical manifestations; so we really stand on a cusp and a threshold of a revolution much like the antibiotic revolution of the last century.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 63–69 – Mike Parker
Jun 05, 2025
The Church in Ohio, August–November 1831 (D&C sections 63–69)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Kirtland, City of Revelation: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast is an eight-part documentary miniseries that explores the way men and women flocked to Kirtland in the 1830s to hear the voice of God through the prophet Joseph Smith. The episodes consider Kirtland as a site of abundant revelation and the place where church leaders organized much of the church. The episodes also illuminate how Joseph Smith was intent on teaching church members in Kirtland how to hear the voice of God themselves. Series host Spencer W. McBride interviewed historians and Church leaders for this podcast.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
How do we help our young people avoid deception, or keep them from “stumb[ling] exceedingly”? We keep the “plain and precious” parts of the gospel front and center in their lives.
Brent Andrewsen practices at a regional law firm with offices throughout the Intermountain West. He is the chairman of Sutherland Institute Board of Directors, an independent research and educational institution and think tank, whose mission is to advance civility, sound ideas, and principled public policy supporting faith, family and free enterprise. Brent serves as the chairman of Skyline Research Institute and is the former chairman of the Board of Directors at Kirton McConkie. He has an AV Preeminent peer rating from Martindale-Hubbell and is recognized as one of Utah’s Legal Elite for estate planning, a Mountain States Super Lawyer for estate planning and non-profits, and a Best Lawyer for trusts/estates and non-profits/charities. He was also honored by Utah Business magazine as a 40 Under 40 Rising Star. Brent earned his B.A. in political science from BYU and a J.D. cum laude from the Washington & Lee University Law School.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 60–63 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 03, 2025
Faith and Signs
by Autumn Dickson
Ezra Booth was a Methodist preacher who joined the church after witnessing Joseph Smith heal Alice Johnson’s arm. He later left the church and published material that was particularly antagonistic. Despite witnessing a miracle, Ezra didn’t hold on to his faith.
We see this time and time and time again throughout the scriptures. Signs are insufficient conversion tools. I’ve spoken about signs before, but I want to talk about it on a more individual level today. Let’s cover the basics and then bring it into our personal lives. Here is some of what the Lord has to say about seeking signs.
Doctrine and Covenants 63:7, 9
7 And he that seeketh signs shall see signs, but not unto salvation.
9 But, behold, faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe.
Let’s break these down just a bit.
Verse 7. He that looks for signs will receive them, but it won’t bring salvation. In my mind, the Lord is saying, “The signs are already there, and I’ll send you signs, but it won’t do you any good because you don’t believe.” The same people will look at the complexity of the earth and see completely different origins. There are signs, but they’re not going to change you or bring you the full extent of happiness if you don’t believe there is a Creator behind it.
Verse 9. You don’t receive faith from signs. You see the signs when you have faith. Faith is a conscious choice that you make of your own accord, and then you start to see. Here is a quote from one of my all-time favorite BYU speeches given by Lawrence E. Corbridge.
“I don’t know if pigs will ever sprout wings and fly, but if they do, flying pigs will never be nearly as amazing as the ordinary pig in the first place.”
If you have faith, the pig is the miracle. Everything the Lord has already given us is a miracle and a “sign.”
Faith comes first.
Now, many of us have already made the conscious choice to believe in the restored gospel. We go to church every week and we attend the temple and pray and follow the commandments. We profess that we believe, so what do these verses mean for us? Let’s look at a few different ways that they could apply to someone who already believes in God.
Revelation
Interestingly enough, there’s another verse from this week that can get tied into the message I’m trying to cover today.
A revelation was given on the banks of the Missouri river. The Lord said a few things in this revelation, but one of the things that He taught these elders was that they could choose to travel how they wanted.
Doctrine and Covenants 62:8 These things remain with you to do according to judgment and the directions of the Spirit.
Revelation can feel tricky, but it’s an enormously powerful tool that is life-changing. I had the fortunate experience of being raised in a home where I was taught to seek revelation, but unfortunately, I occasionally took it to the extreme. I had such a hard time moving forward unless the Lord had told me to do so. I did seek signs for everything, and you can imagine that might cause problems.
Sometimes I would “find” signs that I believed He had sent when it was actually in my own mind. I had a hard time accepting the idea that He was choosing to be silent so that I could make decisions for myself. Other times, I would come to the conclusion that He was mad at me or that I wasn’t being good enough to receive revelation. Other times, I would just panic and stay confused rather than making a decision that sounded good to me.
I often found signs, but they were not unto salvation.
The Lord wants you to make decisions because you’re training to be like Him. He’s not trying to keep you from making mistakes; He is trying to help you gain the wisdom you’ll need to do what He does. There is no other way to do that except for making your own decisions sometimes.
Sometimes we’re worried about jumping in. We’re either scared that we’ll make a mistake, take a route He doesn’t want us to follow, or we’ll somehow shoot ourselves in the foot. In reality, the Lord wants us to have faith. He wants us to trust Him to speak as necessary, course-correct when it matters, and rescue us when we paint ourselves into a corner.
As we move forward with faith in His ability to save, the signs follow! If we take the time to look back prayerfully, we’ll find that He was leading us along the whole time.
Maybe we’re not asking for signs before we’re willing to believe in God, but I do believe that sometimes we ask for signs before we’re willing to believe in Him enough that we can move forward with rejoicing. If we choose to have faith, the signs will follow after.
Feeling love or forgiveness
Here is another potential example of seeking signs because we don’t quite believe in the Savior enough.
I know far too many people who don’t quite feel the love of their Savior. Logically, they can kinda get behind it because it comes along with having a testimony of the restoration. Unfortunately, despite this general testimony of the gospel, it’s still hard for them to dive in and bask in that love and acceptance towards their own person.
This extends to other feelings such as forgiveness. When we’ve made a mistake or when we’re falling prey to a particular flaw, it can be difficult to accept that the Lord has moved on. We want a sign that we really are forgiven. We want some indisputable evidence that we’re okay, and He’s not mad anymore.
Interestingly enough, even when He does give little signs of His forgiveness, we often don’t accept the signs and we cling to those mistakes and flaws.
Trusting that the Savior loves you and forgives you is a conscious act of faith, and the faith comes first! When you have truly chosen that faith, then you have finally reached the point where you’re able to accept the signs.
This circumstance doesn’t translate perfectly, but I want to utilize it anyway because I feel like it makes it more concrete.
Conner and I have been married for eight years. That’s not long, relatively speaking, but I have learned a few lessons along the way. One of those lessons is to trust Conner and his love for me. When we argue, I have learned to find peace in the fact that I know things are going to be just fine. Arguing doesn’t mean we’re going to get divorced. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to be stuck in an unhappy marriage forever. Conner has showed up for me time and time again, and it has taught me that we’re going to come back from whatever we’ve fallen into. I don’t spiral anymore when things aren’t perfect in our marriage.
Conner’s love for me was there anyway. There are plenty of ways that he shows up for me and gives me signs of his love. However, I don’t find peace and “salvation” in that love if I don’t have faith and consequently find all the signs of his love.
Like I said, it doesn’t translate perfectly, but you get the idea. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you even more than Conner loves me. The love is there. All the signs are there, but you can’t see them (or in the very least, you can’t trust them) without faith. Faith has to come first. You have to choose to look at your situation and believe that He loves you. You have to believe that He loves you enough to send challenges but also a Savior to pull you through it. As you choose to look at each situation as a manifestation of His love, I promise that the signs follow. You’ll see them everywhere once you start to choose faith in His love and willingness to forgive.
I testify of a Savior who loves. I testify that He is constantly showing His love. I testify that He is constantly reaching out with that love, but you have to turn on your end of the receiver. Believe and the signs will follow. That extends towards revelation as well. As you trust in Him, you’ll be able to move forward and make decisions. As you keep moving forward, you’ll be able to look back and see the signs that He’s been guiding you all along.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Classic FAIR – The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions – Blake Ostler, 2005
May 28, 2025
“The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions” by Blake T. Ostler at the 2005 FAIR Conference
I’d like to begin my presentation (there should have been an outline that was handed out that you have in front of you). But I want to begin a bit off outline. I was amused- I was reading this morning that we have (and Chris Buttars is a good friend of mine) and he’s wondering whether he should introduce intelligent design into Utah schools. And I was thinking intelligent design? Chris is a Mormon and he probably doesn’t even realize what he would be teaching isn’t Mormon cosmology.
And I was reading another article—as a matter of fact just last night—about how the Big Bang proved this story of Genesis and I was thinking, apparently the people who read- who know all about the Big Bang have never read Genesis. (Laughter)
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 58–59 – Autumn Dickson
May 27, 2025
Align With Him
by Autumn Dickson
Trials. There is always something more to say about trials, and that’s what I want to talk about this week. I specifically want to talk about one aspect of trials and how we can sometimes make things harder on ourselves.
Some of the Saints have made it to Missouri this week, and they are disappointed about what they arrived to find. They were looking for Zion and were surprised to find that it had not been built yet. They had just travelled hundreds of miles away from their comfortable homes in New York. Their original destination had been changed when they were kicked off of what was supposed to be their home. As they arrived in Missouri, they didn’t find homes. They found that their journey was just beginning.
The Lord gave Section 58 as a response, and here is one of the things the Lord says.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:3 Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.
As the Saints originally looked around at the undeveloped land, they were probably met with some aches and pains as they remembered what they had back in New York. All they likely saw was a bunch of work they had yet to do. I imagine them receiving these words from the Lord, and I imagine them trying to look at the land with new eyes. They probably tried picturing an industrious, protective community where they could raise their families and build the church. Though they missed their homes, they likely found great comfort in the hope that the Lord had significant plans.
Interestingly enough, they would not live to see the end result of the Lord’s plans for Missouri. We have not yet lived to His plans for Missouri, and so this might seem a bit confusing. They went to build Zion, but it kinda seems like Zion never happened for them. Let’s explore that idea and then apply it to our own lives.
What was the Lord talking about?
I want to bring your attention to the first verse of Section 58 so we can get a better feel for what the Lord is truly talking about.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:1 Hearken, O ye elders of my church, and give ear to my word, and learn of me what I will concerning you, and also concerning this land unto which I have sent you.
The people had the land sitting in front of them, and that was in the forefront of their minds. They had just travelled and travelled and travelled in order to arrive at this specific land, so that’s what they were listening for. They were asking themselves, “What would the Lord have us do with the land?” However, look at what the Lord said first. He said, “Listen to what I want concerning YOU, and then we can talk about the land I sent you to.”
Zion is so much more than some land in Missouri. While the Saints were preoccupied with the land, the Lord was preoccupied with His people. It’s always about His people. The Lord designated the physical place of Zion to be in Missouri but acquiring a “Zion people” is the much harder and far more important work of the Lord. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Missouri if you can’t be kind and compassionate and loving to your neighbor. If you are not a Zion-like person, Zion will never exist even if you’re in the right location.
Yes, the Lord speaks about the physical land of Missouri, but try to look at the section with new eyes. Read the section from the Lord’s perspective of trying to build Zion within His people first rather than trying to build cabins, farms, and shops. Utilize this perspective as we look at this next verse in which the Lord describes His purpose for sending His Saints to Missouri specifically.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:7 And also that you might be honored in laying the foundation, and in bearing record of the land upon which the Zion of God shall stand;
There is a lot we can talk about, but I want to draw attention to one particular phrase, “…that you might be honored in laying the foundation…”
He sent them to Missouri so that they could be honored in laying the foundation of Zion. Maybe they weren’t able to lay the foundation of the temple while they were in Missouri, but they laid a much greater foundation for the rest of us; they did some of the hardest groundwork to prepare for Zion. I don’t think any of us can fully comprehend just how blessed we are to build upon the moral and social foundations that were set down by those who came before us. They did start to build Zion, and they did it in a much more important way than tilling the land and building cabins and infrastructure.
Building you
So how does that translate to us?
My first thought is that we can learn about the differences between the Lord’s focus and what human minds tend to gravitate towards. I suppose I could be wrong, but I would imagine that when the Saints received this revelation, they were gung-ho about physically building up Independence, Missouri. In actuality, the Lord was looking to build His people. And when I say build, I mean that He was going to let them go through really hard things.
We all have to go through trials. They were an absolutely necessary, completely irreplaceable portion of the Plan of Salvation. But interestingly enough, we make those trials much harder when our goals are different from the Lord’s goals.
When you have it in your mind that the Lord wants you to build a cabin, you’re going to get very confused, disheartened, and disillusioned when the cabin doesn’t turn out (or turn up) at all. The Lord doesn’t care about the cabin; He wants to build you. The Lord can rearrange the elements, soften hearts, and add zeros to a bank account. What He refuses to do is take away your agency. Because of this personally imposed stipulation, it is much more difficult for Him to build you. And if He just lets you build the cabin with no obstacles, then it becomes impossible for your character to get built.
So when you run into issues and trials, He isn’t trying to impede your service. He hasn’t abandoned you. He isn’t hiding or uninvolved. It’s not a sign that this isn’t His work or that you’re destined to be a failure. He is doing exactly what He set out to do; He is building you. When you realize that you are His priority, the seeming obstacles pushing back against your goals become stepping stones towards your exaltation.
Because of the trials
Recap thus far. The Lord wanted to build Zion. The people thought He meant that they needed to build infrastructure in Independence, Missouri. That is an eventual goal of His, but more importantly, He wanted to build a Zion-people. You can’t actually build Zion when the people aren’t ready. Any disappointment on the part of the Saints likely stemmed from their inaccurate assumptions about the Lord’s purposes.
As I was reading through this, I thought of my husband. And since he doesn’t read or listen to my stuff, I’m going to talk about him.
My husband is an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur can come with a lot of awesome perks, but there are also plenty of downsides. He has met plenty of people who have told him that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. He has gotten plenty of negative reviews on what he’s trying to accomplish. He has hit obstacle after obstacle after obstacle.
And after a while, those things add up and start to affect him. He has expressed the sentiment that he feels like a failure, and he has expressed it hundreds of times.
We’ve always had what we needed even when things got rocky, but the combined weight of negative opinions tends to pull his focus away from the ways he’s been absolutely successful.
When he says, “I’m a failure,” it’s because he is looking in the mirror and saying, “I haven’t reached the goals I had for this point in my life. I’m not providing the kind of life that I wanted for my family, etc., etc.”
When I look at our life together, I’ve seen anything but failure. However, let’s imagine for a second that he has failed as an entrepreneur. It sucks. It’s not fun. It hurts when you have goals that don’t come together in the way that you want them to, and that disappointment can come back to bite you frequently.
Do you know what helps that specific kind of trial? Realigning your goals with the goals of the Lord. He’s not specifically looking for successful businessmen, perfect homemakers, or anything else you could possibly have a goal about. He’s looking to build you into someone who can build heaven.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:3 Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.
All of those obstacles that my husband has faced combined with all of the times that he has stood back up counts for something. And it counts for something incredibly important. Even if we were to lose everything, the effort he has put into his goals aren’t wasted. Rather, if he can switch his mindset to align with the Lord’s, my husband will find plenty of successful moments.
And interestingly enough, if Conner had never met some of those business “failures” he would have never been able to find those spiritual successes.
I testify that you can’t lose when you’re aligned with the Lord. Every mistake, failure, flaw, and obstacle can transform into the desperately needed stepping stones towards exaltation when you take advantage of the atonement of Jesus Christ. That doesn’t mean there won’t be disappointment, but even disappointment turns into glory when you stay close to the Lord. I testify that we do not yet have eyes to see everything that the Lord wants to create within us, but I do know that it’s better than we can imagine.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
There has been much said about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. However, there are 27 other types of Hebrew poetry, which make a much stronger argument for it’s ancient authenticity. These poetic forms appear in specific genres (sermons and narratives) and are absent in others (proclamations and letters). This is exactly the pattern we would expect and shows an intentionality to the poetry that hasn’t been discussed elsewhere.
Carl J. Cranney received a PhD in systematic theology at the Catholic University of America, where he specialized in theological anthropology and moral theology. He earned his MAR in philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School and his BA in philosophy from Brigham Young University. His academic interests include interfaith dialogue, comparative theology, and the varied Christian approaches to the theology of marriage and family. As a stay-at-home dad, he tries to squeeze in co-hosting duties for the “Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree” podcast and teaching for BYU Pathway in his limited spare time. He lives in Springville, UT, with his wife Susan and their four children.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Classic FAIR – Faith and Cognitive Dissonance – Wendy Ulrich, 2005
May 21, 2025
“‘Believest thou…?’: Faith, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Psychology of Religious Experience” by Wendy Ulrich at the 2005 FAIR Conference
It’s an old and frequent spiritual question, and it shows up in many forms. It is the question Jesus asks the disciples who hear his troubling and offending discourse on being someone whose flesh must be eaten and whose blood drunk by those who would have eternal life. The discourse confuses many, who turn back and follow him no more, and then, to those who remain Jesus asks the question, “Will ye also go away?” To the man who seeks out Jesus to heal his deeply troubled son, the question is implied, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” To Nephi, approached by an angel after he is carried away to the top of a high mountain, the question is more direct: “Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?” And to the brother of Jared, who asks to see the premortal Jesus after hearing his voice and seeing his hand, the question is perhaps most clearly stated, “Believest thou the words which I shall speak?”
Believest thou? I am increasingly impressed by the implications of this simple question, and by how often it is at the heart of my mortal dilemmas. Do I believe God’s commandments and teachings, or do I find other explanations of reality more credible for getting what I want or keeping me safe? Do I trust him to tell me the truth, even when it includes improbable and invisible things? Do I trust him to have the love, the will, and the power to save me despite the ways I am not worthy? Do I trust him to keep his promises? Do I believe?
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 57–62 – Mike Parker
May 20, 2025
Joseph Smith’s first visit to Missouri; Zion & the temple (D&C sections 57–62)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Aaron L. West, “Questions and Answers about the Temple Lot in Independence, Missouri,” Church History, 14 March 2019. West answers common questions about the temple lot dedicated by Joseph Smith, including who the present owners are of various portions of that parcel of land.
Examine the two City of Zion plats prepared by early Church leaders on the Joseph Smith Papers website:
Plat of the City of Zion (June 1833). The first plat, drawn by Frederick G. Williams (with north pointing to the left) has marginal notes surrounding the diagram on all four sides.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 51–57 – Autumn Dickson
May 20, 2025
It’s About You
by Autumn Dickson
I have found an interesting parenting dilemma lately. And though this is a personal situation, I believe it teaches an important principle that we find in the scriptures for this week.
Evelyn and Warner (my two oldest children) could not be more different. Evelyn has literally described herself as an “inside girl” on more than one occasion, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see Warner all summer as he lived outside. Evelyn will read and draw and organize her room for fun. It has taken all the patience I currently possess to teach Warner how to keep his room in working order. Evelyn is intense and detail-oriented. Warner goes with the flow, and I’m not sure he knows what a detail is.
It comes as no surprise that they play differently. Evelyn wants to draw and color with her friends. Even when she plays pretend, she creates labels and tapes them to my walls so that everyone knows what each location is for. Warner just wants to wrestle and fight bad guys.
Now when Warner is with his little buddy who lives a couple houses down, he will “pick a fight” and they’ll roll all over the ground, and that’s their definition of fun. When Warner’s little buddy is not available to play, Warner will often try to play with Evelyn. You can imagine the consequences when Warner tries to pick a fight with Evelyn. It doesn’t often result in rolling around on the ground; it usually just results in screaming.
It’s hard to know how to balance this sometimes because I know that Warner needs to learn to read a room and not push boundaries, but I also know that he’s little and he’s not trying to hurt anyone. He’s trying to play. I don’t want him to think he’s bad or that he needs to change what he likes to do. So I talk to Warner about how things are only playing if everyone is having fun and how he needs to stop when someone is unhappy. I think that’s an important lesson for him to learn so that he can be a functional, well-adjusted adult.
But I also usually talk to Evelyn too even though she’s not “in trouble” for not wanting to play a certain way. I try to take the opportunity to teach her how to be happy.
Namely, I try to teach her how to judge the situation for what it truly is and how to make a wise decision that can make her happy despite what’s occurring around her. I explain to her that she doesn’t have to participate in that kind of play if she doesn’t want to, but I also explain to her that Warner isn’t trying to bug her. He is simply trying to have fun, and that’s how he does it with his friends.
She hates it when I talk to her after they fight in these particular situations. She feels like she’s being punished when Warner is the antagonist. She wants me to come in and fix everything and then leave her be. Logically, this makes sense at first glance. She wasn’t going after Warner or breaking his carefully crafted pillow forts; Warner was the one causing the “problem.” I definitely don’t want her to feel like she’s in trouble.
But I do want her to be as happy as humanly possible. Which means I’m going to give her the opportunity to rise above a “Law of Moses” attitude. It may take years to grasp this because she’s so young, but we’re going to start teaching it now anyway.
Now let’s look at the Saints this week before bringing it back.
Disappointment and heartache of the Saints
The Saints ran into a difficult situation this week. Leman Copely was a convert to the church. He had a huge farm and offered to allow other Saints to move onto his land as they left New York to move to Ohio. These Saints made a HUGE sacrifice in leaving their prosperous farms to follow the prophet to Ohio. When they arrive, Leman Copely changes his mind and kicks them all out.
When Joseph inquires of the Lord about the situation, he receives this counsel.
Doctrine and Covenants 54:8 And thus you shall take your journey into the regions westward, unto the land of Missouri, unto the borders of the Lamanites.
So the Saints travelled over 250 miles to get to Ohio only to find out there wasn’t anything there for them. They were then asked to travel an additional 800 miles to get to Missouri. I don’t know the exact mileage for either relocation because I looked up the driving miles on Google maps, but you get the basic idea.
There are a lot of lessons that can be pulled from this story. The Saints could have easily wondered whether Joseph was truly a prophet for an all-knowing God and why he couldn’t have seen this coming. Why weren’t they counseled to move to Missouri in the first place? If this is really what the Lord wanted them to do, why wasn’t He facilitating it? Had the Lord been wrong? Was Joseph mistaken? Was Joseph actually a prophet?
There are a lot of good answers for that question, and I could spend an entire post just on the answer to those questions. However, I actually want to take this in a different direction. We are going to operate off the assumption that the Lord knew what He was doing, and that He had been guiding Joseph and His Saints all along despite the hiccups and reroutes.
So why? What gives? Why would the Lord choose this path over circumventing the entire issue and sending them to Missouri in the first place?
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons. Perhaps Ohio was easier to swallow than Missouri, and it got some of His reluctant children out the door to head west. Perhaps the Lord needed to give Leman a chance to choose for himself; you can’t truly choose when you were never really given an option.
But one of His reasons, and arguably one of the most important reasons, was because the Lord loved His Saints. Let’s talk about His decision to deal with the Saints after this manner is PROOF of His love, rather than a disregard for their well-being or a penchant for unfairness.
The trial of betrayal
We could talk about this from the perspective of trials in general, but I want to talk about it specifically within the context of being betrayed and then still “getting the short end of the stick.”
Leman betrayed the Saints, but the Lord still loves Leman. The Lord worked with (and is likely still working with) Leman to push him the direction where he is going to be happiest.
And though it doesn’t necessarily look like it, I believe the Lord is doing the same with His Saints. He is pushing them in the direction that provides ample opportunity for them to learn to be as joyful as possible.
It would be easy for the Saints to ask, “Why Lord? We didn’t do anything wrong. Why do we have to move? Leman is the one who should get punished.” And honestly, maybe they’re not totally wrong. But this isn’t about Leman. The Lord is looking at them completely separately from Leman and asking Himself, “What is going to be best for them?”
Can I just pull out the poignant detail that the Lord asked His Saints to move to Zion? Very shortly after this verse, we read about how the Lord revealed the location of Zion to be in Missouri.
What is Zion? It’s a place of unity, love, and good will towards each other. It’s a place where everyone takes care of each other and all things are common. I picture the Lord saying, “I need you to rise above this situation and find love and forgiveness and good will. I need you to learn from this situation about how it feels to have someone turn their back on you when you’re in need.”
What’s more? The Lord wasn’t asking them to find forgiveness and good will for Leman’s sake. I said it once, and I’ll say it again. This isn’t about Leman. This is about the Saints. Finding forgiveness and good will and compassion and love are all things that are going to contribute to the happiness of the Saints.
And even more than finding joy and peace in the midst of what had occurred, it’s also going to prepare them for their futures living with (and like) their Heavenly Father. Heavenly Father gets betrayed millions of times every day; you don’t see it ruining His eternity. If we want to live like Him and enjoy what He enjoys, we have to be like Him. We have to be prepared to act like Him until we become like Him. Part of the process includes being filled with so much love and compassion that having someone turn their back on you doesn’t affect you the same way. You’re so focused on others and what they need, the betrayals don’t land the same way. That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt. I believe that the Lord does hurt when we betray Him, but more importantly, He just chooses to live His life on a whole other level.
And He gives us opportunities to choose to do the same.
When the Lord asks you to forgive someone who has betrayed you, it has nothing to do with the betrayer and everything to do with His love for you. When He asks you to “go to Zion” and find that love and compassion and forgiveness, it’s because He wants more for you than you can currently imagine. He wants you to live as He does because He knows how great it is to live life in that manner.
Let’s bring it back to Evelyn for just a moment. Warner is the antagonist in this example, and I will handle Warner with love and I will handle Warner in the way that he needs. I will also choose to try and get Evelyn to rise above, be compassionate, and free herself from that kind of disappointment and pain. I don’t do it so that Warner can get a free pass. I do it because I love Evelyn.
So yes, the Lord could have prevented the whole problem with Leman, but He would have robbed His Saints of the opportunity to be happier. Isn’t that ironic and beautiful? Opposition truly is necessary to joy.
I testify of a Lord who is going to make His decisions completely based on the individual He is working with. Every decision He makes that affects your life is FOR you, not in spite of you. Even when the Lord chooses to bring trials or even just allows trials, He doesn’t necessarily see punishment. It is completely derived from His desire to give you an opportunity to rise above and find deeper joy.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 49–50 – Autumn Dickson
May 12, 2025
Avoiding Confusion
by Autumn Dickson
Leman Copely was a convert to the church who wanted the gospel preached to his former congregants – the Shakers. The Shakers held some beliefs that were different from our’s. Here is some of what the Lord said regarding that:
Doctrine and Covenants 49:1-4
1 Hearken unto my word, my servants Sidney, and Parley, and Leman; for behold, verily I say unto you, that I give unto you a commandment that you shall go and preach my gospel which ye have received, even as ye have received it, unto the Shakers.
2 Behold, I say unto you, that they desire to know the truth in part, but not all, for they are not right before me and must needs repent.
3 Wherefore, I send you, my servants Sidney and Parley, to preach the gospel unto them.
4 And my servant Leman shall be ordained unto this work, that he may reason with them, not according to that which he has received of them, but according to that which shall be taught him by you my servants; and by so doing I will bless him, otherwise he shall not prosper.
The Lord calls Sidney, Parley, and Leman to go preach the gospel as they have received it. The Shakers want the truth in part, but they don’t want the whole truth. Sidney and Parley have been called, and so has Leman. However, it’s important to note that Leman has been called to teach the Shakers according to what he has received from the restored gospel and not what he has received from the Shakers.
I’m not 100% sure what the Lord was saying when He told Leman to teach the Shakers from the perspective of a believer of the restored gospel, but it definitely stuck out to me. When I write these posts, sometimes I get immensely wrapped up in defending the gospel to those who have left. Those are the people that I’m thinking of, and I try to approach the gospel by looking through their lens. I think there is merit to this. It’s definitely helped me to examine my beliefs more closely, but I believe that there are some topics that simply can’t operate from that direction. Some topics have to be taught unapologetically and while it may not reach the audience that I believe needs it most, there is no other way to truly teach it. Sometimes, you have to teach the truth and people are simply going to have to choose whether they believe it.
Part of the truth
From my perspective this week, this is one of those topics. The Shakers only wanted part of the truth. There are two perspectives I want to cover specifically about this idea of “part of the truth.”
First perspective. I once came across a post on social media. It was either posted right before General Conference or right after. The lady recommended listening to conference and taking the parts that spoke to you. If there was something that hurt you or caused problems in your mind, she recommended leaving those parts and simply holding to the parts you could connect to.
As you can imagine, there were wildly different reactions to this post. Some were thanking her profusely for making them feel heard. Others were condemning her and quoting General Authorities about not cherry-picking the gospel.
I found myself somewhere in the middle. I believe in the entirety of the gospel. The more I study it, the more I find myself saying, “Dang…God knew what He was doing. This is so perfect, and I’m so grateful that He continues to work with us. All of this makes so much sense.” I believe that eventually, we will have to accept the entirety of the gospel in order to receive the entirety of happiness that is available.
On the same note, I rather have people accept as much of the truth (since from my perspective, this IS the truth) as possible. Perhaps they can’t bring themselves to hold to everything taught over the pulpit. Though I believe that accepting the entirety of the gospel is eventually going to be required of all of us in order to be prepared for exaltation, I also believe that it’s better to listen to conference and take as much as you can in comparison to not listening at all.
So that’s my first perspective. The gospel is true. The Savior leads this church and eventually, all of His choices are going to make sense. In order for us to find our way and become the kind of people He wants us to become, we will eventually need to accept every portion of the gospel.
But in the meantime, I rather you accept at least part of the truth if you’re not ready to accept all of it.
Accepting all of the gospel
But here’s my unapologetic part and the second perspective I want to teach today.
When Christ declares that these people only wanted part of the truth, I don’t picture Him condemning them. I don’t believe the Lord was trying to tell the Saints that the Shakers were bad people. I believe that the Lord was trying to tell them that accepting only part of the truth brings only part of the blessings.
When we’re operating on false beliefs, we’re going to make more mistakes, get hurt, or miss out.
This is an absolutely ridiculous example, but it teaches the gist of what I’m trying to say.
If you are super convinced that gravity isn’t real, then you might make some poor choices. You’re not a morally bad person for not believing in gravity, and having a good heart and righteous intent can go a long way. But you can still get hurt if you decide to try and live your life as if there is no gravity.
Let’s look at it from a religious perspective.
The Shakers believed in celibacy over marriage. I believe that marriage, intimacy, and having children have brought me closer to God than anything else. I have learned more about the character of God. I have learned more about joy. I have experienced small glimpses of heaven as I sit in bed with my five kids and hold an extremely chaotic Come Follow Me lesson before church on Sundays.
The Shakers were missing out. In fact, I believe they were missing out on some of the most beautiful parts of life. I’m sure they were very good people, but operating as if there is no gravity can cause problems. It can prevent you from receiving blessings that might otherwise be yours.
Modern-day equivalents
I think there are a couple of different ways that this can manifest in our day, and I want to talk about two.
This wasn’t the modern-day equivalent I was thinking of when I first began this post, but the Spirit had other ideas. The modern-day equivalent that I feel led to talk about is when we try to downplay eternal truths in the name of sensitivity.
I originally shied away from using the particular belief of marriage and celibacy as an example because I know there are a lot of members who ache for what I have. I have family and friends who have yearned for happy marriages and children and so hearing that they’re missing out on these blessings can be painful. I don’t believe it’s immoral to step back for a minute and focus on other parts of the gospel when the disappointment of unfulfilled blessings feels too great. I believe there are times when the rest of us can be more sensitive; there are ways that we can make sure that we’re that everyone feels included even if they’re not married.
But I also believe that we wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors by ignoring or downplaying this powerful, eternal truth. Marriage and parenthood are incredible blessings, and everyone who is righteous will receive that crowning blessing eventually. It may feel painful sometimes to hear about it too much, but it would be even more painful to reject those beliefs because you have yet to see their fulfillment. It would bring even more pain and sorrow to not teach this eternal truth: marriage and parenthood are divine. The Shakers were missing out.
Embrace your God-given desires for companionship and children, and simultaneously embrace the promises of the Savior to fulfill those desires. There is so much goodness coming.
The second modern-day equivalent actually seems like the opposite of what I just taught, but it’s actually just an extension of what I just taught.
If you’re watching Come Follow Me videos, chances are, you believe in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. So how does this apply to you?
What truths are you not accepting? What partial truths or traditions are you clinging to? This can manifest in a million different ways.
Sometimes we’re taught the truth but still cling to our original interpretations of the truth. For example, I used to cling desperately to the idea that God was mad at me whenever I made a mistake. I’m not sure if this was self-sabotage or a weird motivational factor I tried to cling to, but either way, it was holding me back from some of the most incredible blessings I’ve ever experienced, namely the grace of Jesus Christ.
What partial truths do you refuse to give up and what do these partial truths take away from you?
I testify of a Savior who disperses truth as many places as He can. If you’re not ready to accept Him as a Savior, He is going to try and teach you about the character of God as much as possible. If you’re not ready to accept the reality of God, He is going to try and teach you Christlike principles about loving your neighbor and choosing gratitude as much as you allow Him. I testify of a Savior who is actively pushing truth in any form that we are willing to accept because He wants us to experience as much heaven as is available in our day. I also testify that clinging to and operating on partial truths, whether inside the church or out, can lead to more pain than is necessary and less happiness than is available.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Jonathan A. Stapley and Kristine Wright, “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 1–85. Stapley and Wright examine the history of anointing and laying on of hands of the sick by early Latter-day Saint women.
On the sanctity of animal life:
On 26 May 1834, Joseph Smith taught about the sanctity of animal life during the Zion’s Camp march: “[After] we crossed the Embarros River…in pitching my tent we found three Massasaugers or Prairie Rattle Snakes which the brethren were about to kill, but I said [‘]let them alone, don’t hurt them, how will the serpent ever lose its venom, while the servants of God possess the same disposition, and continue to make war upon them[;] men must become harmless before the brute creation, and when men lose their vicious dispositions and cease to destroy the animal race, the lion and the lamb can dwell together, and the sucking child play with the serpent with safety.[’] … I exhorted the brethren not to kill a serpent, bird, or any animal of any kind, during our journey unless it— were necessary to preserve ourselves from hunger.“ (Manuscript History, vol. A‑1, 8 [addenda].)
President Joseph F. Smith, “The Destruction of Animal Life,” Juvenile Instructor 48, no. 5 (May 1913): 308–09. President Smith warned the Saints against being “athirst for the shedding of animal blood” simply for sport or pleasure.
President Spencer W. Kimball repeated Joseph F. Smith’s counsel in his October 1978 General Conference address, “Fundamental Principles To Ponder And Live.” He expressed his view that “it is not only wicked to destroy [innocent birds and wildlife], it is a shame.”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 46–48 – Autumn Dickson
May 05, 2025
Avoiding Confusion
by Autumn Dickson
The Lord continues to clarify and restore His church. This week, He helps to clarify what their meetings should look like and who gets to come. There were some Saints who started acting strangely during these meetings because they believed they were being acted upon by the Holy Ghost. The Lord taught what it truly looks like when the Spirit is working through you.
Here is part of His clarification:
Doctrine and Covenants 46:7 But ye are commanded in all things to ask of God, who giveth liberally; and that which the Spirit testifies unto you even so I would that ye should do in all holiness of heart, walking uprightly before me, considering the end of your salvation, doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving, that ye may not be seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men; for some are of men, and others of devils.
I want to rearrange the order of this verse a little bit to clarify what I want to teach. The Lord wants us to avoid being seduced by evil spirits, doctrines of devils, and commandments of men. That is His goal when He is speaking to His people in this verse. What is His advice (or more accurately commandments) for how to avoid these unfortunate ends? He gives us a few pieces of wisdom.
Follow Him in holiness of heart, walking uprightly before Him, considering the end of your salvation, and doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving. These are some of the ways that we can avoid confusion in the latter days.
Confusion
Before I jump into each phrase, I want to expand the idea of “confusion” that I’m talking about today.
When I first think of the concept of “confusion” in regards to the gospel, I usually have a knee jerk reaction to believe that we’re referring to who has the truth surrounding God and His characteristics and gospel. This is definitely a portion of confusion, but Satan extends it far beyond that.
Yes, he wants to confuse us as to who has the truth, but he also wants to confuse us in any way that he possibly can. He loves to confuse us by twisting gospel principles.
For example, it is so easy to get caught up in being right and others being wrong. Satan loves to cause discord and turn people against each other. Perhaps conflict isn’t your first thought when we’re talking about confusion, but it’s a very powerful tactic of Satan and the rest of the world. Confusing us to the extent that we see enemies all around can also be very effective for Satan.
Feeling connected to one another is a powerful part of salvation. Needing each other, taking care of each other, assuming the best of each other, and melding our different experiences into powerful progress are all necessary pieces to the salvation puzzle. Satan loves to confuse us and pull us away from those specific types of salvation.
He loves to make us believe that we’re correct and everyone else is wrong. He loves to make us believe that others have evil intentions, and we have to step up and be heroes. He loves making us believe that we need to fight against others when in actuality, a grand majority of us are trying to push mankind forward even if we have different ways of going about it. He wants us to see other people as the enemy.
By making us believe we’re enemies, Satan is taking away opportunities for us to feel the pieces of heaven that are available to us here on earth.
So that’s my expanded definition of confusion. It’s not just about who has the truth. It’s about all the ways that Satan can confuse us. What advice do we receive from the Lord about how to avoid confusion? Let’s jump into those phrases now.
Holiness of heart
The first phrase is “holiness of heart.”
Holiness is to be set apart. If I’m going to make something holy, I take it apart from its environment that is likely corrupt or even just mundane. I do this so that it can be more readily utilized by the Lord. For example, the temple is holy. It’s made from similar materials as other buildings on the earth, but it’s not like other places on earth. It was set aside from corrupt and mundane things, and we make it holy by reserving it for the Lord’s use.
Another example. The sacrament is holy. It’s just regular bread and water, but it’s not regular bread and water in the sense that we have set it apart for a higher purpose. It’s not about filling out stomachs and rehydrating. It’s more important. We separated it from other food so that it can help us to think of Christ.
How do we make our hearts holy? How do we set our hearts apart from the world? I have just a few thoughts. Our hearts are physically like other hearts in the world, but our hearts cannot look like the hearts of the rest of the world. They have to be different. Our hearts have to be separated from earthly influences so that we are in a space where the Lord can more readily speak to us and utilize us. This means purposefully drowning out the noise that comes in from any other source and tuning ourselves to just speak with Him.
Much of the process of making something holy occurs within our mind and focus. We don’t use a special type of bread for the sacrament. We make it special by giving it a different purpose within our minds. We consciously make a decision to set something apart for the Lord’s use, and we wait to see what the Lord wants to do with it. It is no different with our hearts. If we want our hearts to be holy, we consciously separate our love from corrupt and mundane influences and wait to see what the Lord wants to do with it.
Walking uprightly before Him
When I first looked at this phrase, all I could think of was keeping the commandments. I think that’s definitely part of it, and the commandments are absolutely placed there to help us avoid confusion. I want to take it a step further though.
When you do something “uprightly,” you do it in an “honest, responsible, and moral way.” Believe it or not, you can keep the commandments in a way that is not upright and oftentimes, doing it with a wrong heart can cause more problems and more confusion.
You can serve your spouse, and it can bring more resentment. You can wear your garments and be angry about it the whole time. You can pay your tithing and be annoyed.
This isn’t meant to shame anyone because shame brings its own share of problems, and heaven knows I have been guilty of following the commandments with a bitter heart. I don’t bring this up so that we can harangue ourselves. Rather, I bring it up because if we can consciously change how we approach the commandments (i.e. following the commandments in an uprightly manner), we can find very specific blessings.
One of those blessings is what we’ve been talking about: avoiding being seduced by evil spirits and the commandments of men.
Let’s look at that first example more closely. Before I share this example, I think it’s really important to note that Conner is a good husband who works really hard to take care of our family. He’s loyal and playful and responsible, and his deepest happiness comes from being with us.
And yet, despite being married to a very good man, sometimes I get resentful towards Conner. When I want him to do something I think he should be doing or when I want him to stop doing something, I can take it personally and turn it into a bigger problem. And then, when I continue to serve him in the ways that I normally do, it can make the resentment build and build.
During one of my resentful moments, I came across a very Christlike piece of advice on instagram. A lady shared her experience of learning to love her husband even when she didn’t feel loved. Her example reminded me that I wasn’t serving my husband in an upright manner. I was serving him but not in the way that the Lord would have me serve, and so it wasn’t bringing any joy into my life. In fact, it was doing the opposite.
I had been so caught up in my resentment (despite following the commandment to serve) that I felt justified. I was convinced that I couldn’t be vulnerable or forgive or allow myself to be happy until my perceived wrongs were made up. I had gotten confused.
Unsurprisingly, I was also miserable.
As I came across this advice to love more freely (and as I chose to do my best to act on that advice), I felt that confusion melt away. Satan had been lying to me. The world was wrong in its assumption that there is power in bitterness.
That is just one example, but I’ve found it to be true over and over and over. When I give my heart right alongside my service (when I walk uprightly before the Lord), Satan and the commandments of men have less power over me and I find more joy.
Considering the end of your salvation
There are two ways I’m interpreting this phrase in my head. When we consider the “end” of our salvation, it could be referring to the means by which we receive salvation (Christ) or what the “end” of salvation looks like. Both are really great ways to help us avoid confusion and hold on, but I want to focus on the first interpretation I mentioned. If we want to avoid confusion, we should take time to consciously consider how Christ brought about that salvation.
I want to bring up another form of confusion that causes a lot of problems. Perhaps this is just my personal experience, but I feel like people (myself included) have gotten so incredibly caught up in wanting to be seen and heard. We want our sacrifices to be noted. We want to be recognized and validated. We are desperate to make sure that we’ve gotten as much as the next person.
But that’s not how Christ lived His life. He didn’t seek recognition and validation. He gave up everything, and He did it alone. He wasn’t angry when the disciples fell asleep during that ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t resent them.
Even now, when He commands us to remember Him, it’s not about Him. He wants us to remember Him and worship Him because He knows what it will do for us, not because He has some ego that needs to be fed.
Satan likes to confuse us. He loves to whisper that we deserve better, and honestly, maybe we do. But if we turn our minds towards Christ and how He lived His life, we can find a better way.
When we choose to focus outward in the same way that He performed His sacrifice, we will find joy regardless of whether the world is fair or unfair. And then, when we get to the other side, it will all be as it should be. Satan would love for you to focus on what you don’t have and what you think the others are doing wrong rather than adopting the focus that Christ had.
All things with prayer and thanksgiving
One of my daughters is particularly stubborn. Being stubborn comes with its own gifts and trials that she’s going to have to learn how to balance.
There have been many times that she has approached me, already mad and ready to pick a fight, over something she feels was mishandled. This can range anywhere from my choice of disciplining her brother to enforcing a rule that she’s unimpressed with. Picking a fight is putting it kindly. There are times when she feels quite fiercely about what she’s approaching me with.
When she approaches me, opinions set in stone and frustration mounting, it can be very difficult to explain myself to her. I don’t always mind explaining my parenting choices, but it’s very hard for her to understand my explanations when she has preconceived notions and anger. That anger often arises out of her opinion that I’m shortchanging her rather than her remembrance of how I’ve centered my life around her in so many ways.
It becomes nearly impossible for her to hear me, and when I don’t have the opportunity to get my point across, she stays confused about why I chose my specific route.
The phrase we’re talking about right now is to do all things with prayer and thanksgiving. This may be one phrase, but prayer and thanksgiving function slightly differently in their ability to help us avoid confusion.
First, there is prayer. True prayer means that we’re communing with the Lord. We are seeking to align our will with His. We are open to His responses. I don’t think I have to delve too far into this in order to highlight why this might be helpful when we’re trying to avoid confusion.
Second, there is thanksgiving. Having your eyes opened to all the ways that the Lord has already shown up for you enables you to trust His answer. When you approach Him in thanksgiving for everything He has done for you, oftentimes, you will find the answer you’re looking for in the midst of what He’s already given. As my daughter grows and comes to trust my intentions more and more, it will become easier and easier for her to understand my parenting choices. She will see that I’m giving her opportunities to become her best self rather than trying to undermine her or unfairly push back against her. Having a thankful heart for all the Lord has done for us helps us approach Him in a manner where we’re ready to see the truth and shed our confusion.
The Lord wants to help us understand. He wants to guide us along His path. He wants us to avoid confusion. It can be very easy to get caught up in Satan’s lies or the commandments of men when we’re trying to take the infinite decisions of God and fit them into tiny boxes where they don’t belong. Fortunately, the Lord has also given us specific ways of how to avoid this confusion.
I testify of a Lord who is worth listening to. His words aren’t arbitrary or minced. His wisdom far surpasses Satan or those on the earth who are limited in their understanding. He cares, and He wants to teach us so that we can rise above what anyone else can offer.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 45 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 30, 2025
Our Advocate
by Autumn Dickson
I feel like there are many ways to illustrate the atonement of Jesus Christ in order to add layers to our understanding. I don’t think one verse, one way of explaining it, one parable can do it justice. It’s so universal and so individual at the same time. Applying it and having it change us can be so nuanced. Studying layer upon layer can give us a more full picture of the Savior’s powerful sacrifice.
This section holds one of my favorite verses, and it teaches us another layer about His atonement. I’ve actually shared this verse before in a different Easter message in a different year, but I taught it from a completely different angle so I’m going to use it again.
A sacred learning experience
I just want to note that this is the gospel according to Autumn. I don’t know that my description is how things are going to go, but I do believe there are principles here that are most definitely true. My description is merely meant to teach those principles, not to try and preach exactly what Judgment Day looks like.
I want you to picture that it’s your turn to go in and be judged by your Heavenly Father and Savior. You’re nervous. You don’t really feel like reliving some of the worst decisions of your life, but there’s no turning back now. You did what you did, and now you get to watch it.
As you enter the room, you’re blown away by the warmth there. You take your seat waiting for the video montage to start so that They can start weighing your good deeds against your sins, your opportunities against your disadvantages.
You watch your video-montage-life, and then the Savior stands to be your advocate. You are blown away when the Savior doesn’t actually say much about what your life looked like. Instead, He says this…
Doctrine and Covenants 45:4-5
4 …Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified;
5 Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life.
The Savior was speaking to His church in this verse. He literally tells His Saints, “Listen to me, your Advocate before the Father. This is what I’m going to tell your Heavenly Father. I’m going to ask Him to look at My perfection and My sacrifice so that you can be saved.” I believe that we are all going to be judged on who we’ve become, truly I do. I also think we are going to experience something very powerful on Judgment Day.
The Lord loves to teach us and because progression will still exist on the other side, I believe that Judgment Day is going to double as a learning opportunity. I believe that we’re going to feel humbled as we listen to the Savior asking the Father to spare us because of what the Savior did for us, not because we worked really hard to keep the commandments and change. In that day, we are going to learn that we truly are saved by grace.
I imagine us walking out in tears, completely surprised that Judgment Day wasn’t painful. It will be beautiful and sacred and humbling to realize that our choices and personal change do matter, but that they would be rendered useless had our older Brother chosen against sacrificing Himself on our behalf. I imagine being filled with a reverent, deep-seated awe that renders us speechless.
Souls not saved
That is not the only thing the Savior teaches in this section though. Right before He describes His role as the advocate, He also teaches this particular principle:
Doctrine and Covenants 45:2 And again I say, hearken unto my voice, lest death shall overtake you; in an hour when ye think not the summer shall be past, and the harvest ended, and your souls not saved.
The Savior pleads with us to listen to His voice in case Judgment Day comes at an unexpected time, and we find our souls not saved. This begs the question, “What does it mean to be saved?”
In my personal interpretation of the gospel, we are experiencing varying levels of salvation and damnation at any given time in our lives. We are inviting heaven or hell. We are feeling close to the Savior, full of love for others, free from the constraints of men, and safety in vulnerability before the Lord. Or, we are feeling far away from our loving Brother, clinging to a selfish focus and desperate need to make ourselves happy, carrying the weight of the fickleness of mankind, and fearing that the floor is going to fall out from beneath us.
Being saved is gradually inviting more and more heaven into your life by taking advantage of tools given to us by the Savior. For example, being saved is not about taking the sacrament and dying before you have an opportunity to sin again. Being saved is about taking the sacrament and allowing yourself a moment of peace to remember the Savior and His great love in sacrificing Himself for you. Continually reflecting on that love and building a relationship and confidence in Him invites salvation because loving Him is salvation. It also pushes you to look outward and love others, another aspect of salvation.
That’s why we’re taught that you can’t just repent right before you die. We’re taught that you’ll be the same person on the other side that you are on this side. Salvation doesn’t just come when you say sorry. Salvation is something you grow into.
The Savior also reminded His people about the parable of the ten virgins in Section 45. You can’t borrow oil, and oil doesn’t magically appear when you need it. The “oil” is something you have to gather ahead of time so that you’re ready to be a part of the Celestial Kingdom when the Savior utilizes His atonement to bring you there for good.
In short…
In short, we gradually become more like our Savior, experiencing life as He does, experiencing “salvation” as He does. The atonement of Jesus Christ is there, all throughout our life. It is a power that helps us change and grow. The love behind the sacrifice inspires us to want to do better. It gives us the hope we need to keep trying. And then, when it’s our time to be judged, the Savior’s atonement facilitates us walking into the Celestial Kingdom where we can enjoy that salvation forever. The Savior’s atonement means that our change and effort matter.
If the Savior had been unsuccessful in His sacrifice, I wonder if there would have still been some merit in following the laws of Christ. I think it’s worth reflecting on because it can help us understand what we would have faced without His triumph, and I believe that can bring a lot of gratitude. Would forgiveness still help a person to rise above pain? Would turning outwards towards others still bring happiness? Would gratitude, humility, and seeking knowledge still bring some level of worth? The Savior enjoys salvation because He follows these laws perfectly so even if the Savior had failed, I wonder if following them (to whatever extent we’re capable of) would still bring some portion of happiness.
I don’t know how things would have turned out if the Savior had failed. I don’t know how much happiness would have still been available to us or if we would have all eventually given up and dissolved into dissolution and despair. We wouldn’t get our bodies back which, according to the scriptures, is described as a sort of prison. I don’t remember how it feels to be a spirit, but I believe that there was a legitimate reason we were excited to get a body and a legitimate reason that the Savior went through what He did in order to guarantee a resurrection.
We wouldn’t get to return to Them. Anyone who has missed anyone can understand this to a degree. Someday, that veil won’t be over our eyes anymore. We will remember where we came from and Who sent us, and the ache of never returning to Them will stick with us.
People may never heal from the mistakes we’ve made. We may never heal from the wrongs committed against us.
We would be relegated to a place that’s probably a lot like earth. It’s filled with some good, but it’s also filled with people who turn against each other. There are always people who want to hurt each other and hate each other. When things on earth feel heavy, I cling to the idea that the Savior is going to make up for it all. How would I change without that hope?
I don’t know exactly how the world would look without the triumph of the Savior over sin and death. I do know what the Spirit feels like, and I know that the feelings of the Spirit are meant to give us a tiny glimpse into what it feels like on the other side. I know that forgiveness has freed me. I know that one day, misunderstandings will clear, minds and hearts will heal, and we will be placed in an existence that is full of everything we could possibly ask for. I know that because of the Savior, we will have the opportunity to enjoy that existence in its fullness; I am grateful that the Savior chose to perform the atonement so that we could return to Him.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 29, 43, 45, 116, 133 – Mike Parker
Apr 26, 2025
The second coming of Jesus Christ (D&C sections 29, 43, 45, 116, 133)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
In his October 1992 General Conference address, “To Be Learned Is Good If…,” Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve warned against those within the Church who preach of an impending gathering of the saints due to some catastrophe. Such people persist in the Church today, and many recent, popular books continue to teach these types of false messages.
“There are some among us now who have not been regularly ordained by the heads of the Church and who tell of impending political and economic chaos, the end of the world—something of the ‘sky is falling, chicken licken’ of the fables. They are misleading members to gather to colonies or cults.
“Those deceivers say that the Brethren do not know what is going on in the world or that the Brethren approve of their teaching but do not wish to speak of it over the pulpit. Neither is true. The Brethren, by virtue of traveling constantly everywhere on earth, certainly know what is going on, and by virtue of prophetic insight are able to read the signs of the times.
“Do not be deceived by them—those deceivers. If there is to be any gathering, it will be announced by those who have been regularly ordained and who are known to the Church to have authority.”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 41–42, 44, 48, 51, 70, 72, 79 – Mike Parker
Apr 24, 2025
The law of consecration; the office of bishop (D&C sections 41–42, 44, 48, 51, 70, 72, 79)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
In October 1962 General Conference, then-Elder Spencer W. Kimball spoke out against marital infidelity, using portions of section 42 to explain the importance of “total allegiance and total fidelity” that husbands and wives should have for each other. Read his remarks in Conference Report (October 1962): 55–60.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 41–44 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 22, 2025
As Seemeth Him Good
by Autumn Dickson
Sidney Rigdon has become an increasingly significant character in the formation of the young church, and this week we get to read a revelation that was directed towards him. Sidney was originally trained as a tanner, but he left that profession to preach because he dearly loved the word of God. He worked with the Baptists for some time before splitting with them over disagreements. He moved to Ohio with his family and was elected preacher over a congregation there. Sidney Rigdon dearly wanted a restoration of Christ’s church; he recognized that the church he was looking for wasn’t on the earth at the time, but he faithfully tried to pattern his congregation after what he learned about in the New Testament.
Oliver Cowdery, on his way to preach to the Native Americans, stopped for a short period in Ohio and preached to Sidney and his congregation. Many, including Sidney, were converted.
As I read about Sidney, I can see how he really wanted to do exactly what the Lord wanted him to do. He wanted to know what the Lord would have him do spiritually. When Oliver found him, he had been trying to live with all things common between his congregation just as the New Testament Saints had done. Now that he found the restored church, he likely wanted to know how he should fully embrace it.
Sidney was also facing some uncertainties as a result of his conversion to the restored gospel; he had been all set up to live in a home that was being built for him as the preacher over the congregation in Mentor, Ohio. After converting to the church, that home was no longer available to him. His baptism had quite literally left his family homeless.
Both of these circumstances, a desire to follow spiritual truth and facing uncertainty, are great reasons to seek revelation. There is a verse in Section 41 directed towards Sidney that seems to suggest that Sidney sought out the will of the Lord. Perhaps he sought it out directly through Joseph, or perhaps he had been seeking it out himself and the Lord answered through Joseph because the Lord knew Sidney’s heart.
Either way, this is what the Lord had to say:
Doctrine and Covenants 41:8 And again, it is meet that my servant Sidney Rigdon should live as seemeth him good, inasmuch as he keepeth my commandments.
I’m not sure how Sidney felt upon receiving this small tidbit, but let’s try to liken it to ourselves.
Facing uncertainty
I want to cover the second portion of his reasoning first. Sidney was facing homelessness and uncertainty.
These are often the times that inspire a desire for revelation. When the world is scary and we’re feeling powerless, it incites a need for a higher power. Sometimes, we just need a message from the Lord that we’re going to be okay. Sometimes, we’re looking for more. Perhaps we’re asking the Lord to give us a more substantial answer about what we’re supposed to be doing. We want actionable items to follow that we know will lead us towards a better and safer situation.
When Sidney came seeking revelation, his family was in a precarious situation and the Lord answered, “Live how you want as long as you follow my commandments.”
I don’t know how Sidney reacted to this tidbit. Maybe he was so excited to simply be in a church that was receiving revelation through a prophet. Maybe he was excited to be trusted by the Lord. Maybe he was excited to get started building the kind of life he wanted rather than being given a specific path.
I’m not totally sure. However, I do know that many of us (or at least those who are vocal at church on Sundays) often want the Lord to give us a clear path. We just want to be told what to do. I’ve learned that the Lord likes us to move forward and make decisions of our own accord and build the kind of life we really want, and He will open the right doors and course-correct as necessary. And yet, if I had received that answer, I think I would have been bummed.
I would have reacted differently at different time periods in my life. At one point, I would have wondered if He was mad at me or if I was too sinful to receive a real answer. At other points, I might have been like, “Hey! I followed You and now I’m going to be homeless and this is all You have for me?!”
Even now, I know that the Lord purposefully chooses to have me build my own life BECAUSE He loves me and trusts me and believes in me. And yet, I still get a bit disappointed that He doesn’t want to give me more than that. I get disappointed because it means that there is work to do on my part; it would be tremendously easier if He would just tell us what to do.
But (I guess) thank goodness He’s not willing to do that. We’re looking at a specific home on the east coast right now, and it’s so scary and we don’t know if it’s right. However, I get to look back on this multi-year process and remember the lessons He’s taught me. I get to decide right now whether I trust Him to lead me along, to bail us out when we’re trying to follow Him and things don’t pan out how we thought, and to manipulate the opening and closing of doors. It’s easy to say that I trust Him to do this. I say that all the time in these posts, and I believe it too. And yet, when we’re in a big decision like this, I get to find out whether I really do trust Him. I get to make continuous, tiny decisions to trust when I feel anxiety or discouragement. It can be an agitating process, but it’s given me opportunities to strengthen those spiritual muscles.
I really am grateful for it even if I tease. It changes me to have these experiences where I stand on the edge of obscurity and find out whether I’m willing to step into trusting the Lord. I don’t necessarily like it, but I love the result. It feels good to trust the Lord.
And I suppose that’s one of my main points here. Every Christlike attribute has to be balanced. It would have been easy for Sidney to want more,but we need to trust what the Lord chooses to give. I believe the way to balance a desire for revelation is to trust the Lord and whatever He chooses to give at any specific time. We do what we can to prepare ourselves to receive. We keep our hearts open. Then we are grateful that He chooses to follow His own will in regards to what He chooses to share. We trust that He is doing so in wisdom, and we trust that He won’t let us truly fail.
A desire to follow the path
The first portion of Sidney’s reasoning to seek revelation was because he wanted to be spiritually led.
A desire to be spiritually led is obviously a trait we should be seeking to develop, but it also has to be balanced and the answer is the same for when we’re seeking revelation about our temporal circumstances. Seeking revelation is balanced with trust.
For a long time, I struggled at the temple. I remember a quote (that for some reason I can’t currently find) given by a General Authority who said that they learn something new every time they go to the temple. I struggled because I didn’t feel that way. I was trying really, really hard to be prepared and open myself up to learn something. I did my best to stay awake and focus. I tried staying in the Celestial Room longer. I tried pondering. I did everything I mentally could to try and learn something new, and I simply wasn’t getting anything.
I often left the temple feeling discouraged and wondering what I had done wrong that I hadn’t learned anything new.
When this General Authority gave this quote, I don’t believe they were necessarily trying to tell us that we should learn something new every time we go. They were simply bearing testimony that going to the temple helped them learn. However, I took it to the extreme, and it left me discouraged.
Christlike attributes have to be balanced, and luckily, I have a wise sister who told me to relax. She said she didn’t usually go to the temple to receive revelation; she simply went to serve. As I looked at my own life, I realized how I had turned my own bedroom into a bit of a temple as I sought out very reverent time to seek revelation on a daily basis. The Lord is given plenty of opportunities to talk to me, and He often does.
Going to the temple became a relief. I was able to think about the person I was serving instead, and I now feel excitement for them and gratitude that I can go without all of the pressure. I could go to the temple and trust the Lord to speak to me as needed.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe the temple is a great place to learn especially when the rest of the world is chaotic and ugly. Stepping into a beautiful and reverent place can help us mentally go into a place where we can receive revelation. There is a reason the Lord gives us temples to seek Him out. What I am trying to teach is that we don’t need to put any added pressure on ourselves to try and hear Him when He’s not talking. Balance your desire for revelation with a trust that He will speak and be heard when He’s good and ready.
Do we need to try and hear Him? Absolutely. We just need to be doing it without the pressure. Seeking revelation can be balanced with trusting the Lord and what He chooses to give us at any given time and where He chooses to give it.
The Lord did not give Sidney much to go off of, but it’s not because He had more important things to do. It’s not because Sidney had earned His cold shoulder or because Sidney necessarily needed to work harder in that given moment (though that is sometimes the case). The Lord chose to give Sidney what He gave because the Lord loved Sidney and knew what was best for Sidney.
I testify that every decision the Lord makes in our lives is in our favor. I testify that we can joyfully seek after the Christlike attributes and spiritual skills because the Lord stands ready to help us in the right amount at the right times. We can seek revelation and be grateful for His voice, and we can be grateful for when He’s silent. They can both be signs of His love.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 37–40 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 15, 2025
An Act of Faith
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we run into a big announcement for the Saints.
Doctrine and Covenants 37:3-4
3 And again, a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio, against the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them.
4 Behold, here is wisdom, and let every man choose for himself until I come. Even so. Amen.
The Lord asks His Saints, many of whom are gathered in New York, to pack up and move to Ohio.
I think it’s hard to fathom what a big deal this is. Joseph is a very young man, and he’s imperfect. Even if you believe he’s the prophet, it can be difficult to wonder whether this is truly a commandment from the Lord. In fact, John Whitmer recorded that some people believed Joseph had made it up in order to take advantage of them. Imagine packing up as much as you can, potentially not being able to sell your home, and moving to a place where you’re going to have to build a house and hopefully be able to grow food for your family (because there certainly wasn’t any welfare yet).
This was a really big deal. It was an immense test of faith. These people were being asked to dive headfirst into a body of water that they hadn’t been given many opportunities to test out. The church was so new that there had been relatively few opportunities to exercise your faith up to this point, and going to Ohio was going to take a herculean amount of faith.
Faith experiences
There are different kinds of experiences associated with faith in mortality. I want to look at the experiences of David from the Old Testament in order to differentiate between two specific directions through which we experience faith. By exploring the different ways we can choose to exercise faith, I believe that we can more consciously grow our faith.
In the Old Testament, the Israelites are facing a very scary army. Goliath steps forward as an individual on behalf of this very scary army, and he wants to battle an Israelite. Unfortunately, none of the Israelites want to challenge him. David, a teenage shepherd who came to bring lunch to his brothers, has come forward to King Saul, and he wants to go against Goliath. Saul responds to David with, “You’re really young, and this guy has been a soldier for a really long time.” This is how David responds.
1 Samuel 17:34-35
34 And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock:
35 And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.
In lay terms, David tells Saul that he’s a shepherd who protected his father’s sheep against a lion and a bear. David has fought great battles and been protected by the Lord, and he believes it would be no different in this situation.
In reality, facing the bear and facing Goliath require different approaches to faith.
A low-risk faith
In verse 34, we learn that the lion and bear came to David, and he fought them. I think it’s really key to understand that in this situation, the trouble came to David. He didn’t go out asking for it. He fell into a situation and pleaded with the Lord to save him.
Has difficulty ever come upon you and your need for the Lord was made very apparent and you pleaded for deliverance? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where all of a sudden you were paying really close attention to your prayers and the Lord? The foremost modern day equivalent that I can think of is getting some sickness like cancer.
When I describe this as a “low-risk” faith, I’m not trying to say that bears, lions, and cancers aren’t serious. What I’m trying to say is that in situations like this, it never hurts to try and reach out to a higher power. Having a deep, steady faith can bring you an immense amount of peace in a situation like this. However, there’s not a lot on the line if whatever higher power you believe in doesn’t answer. You’re not going to be any worse off than you were before.
I call this a low-risk faith. Surely you’re showing faith by turning to the Lord, but it’s not requiring much of you because you have nothing to lose in turning to Him. David didn’t ask for the lion and bear to come, but he pleaded with the Lord when they did show up.
A high-risk faith
The situation with Goliath was totally different. David could have gone home and some other Israelite would have been sent in his place to fight Goliath. Stepping up to fight a seasoned soldier of your own accord is different from being forced into a scary situation with wild animals. If Goliath had shown up at David’s doorstep spoiling for a fight with David (and David only) then showing faith and pleading for help would have been low-risk. It wouldn’t have left David worse off to look to a higher power. The level of faith it required to step forward of his own accord was far more immense. People can go their whole lives, pleading with the Lord when it’s low-risk, but never actually stepping forward in an act of higher faith that brings higher rewards.
When David stepped forward to fight Goliath, without anything compelling him to do so, his faith was speaking volumes. His faith was saying, “I know that it was the Lord who delivered me from the lion and bear and not just dumb luck or my immense skill with a slingshot. I know that the Israelites are the Lord’s people and that the Lord wants to protect them. I know that the Lord wants me to step forward to fight him, or at the very least, I know that the Lord will protect me if I choose to do so when no one else will.”
Joseph Smith taught that true faith requires a knowledge of God’s character, and I believe that teaching is so evident here.
It would have been easy for David to wonder if the Lord really wanted to protect His people or whether David was going to end up as collateral damage in a war that the Israelites were meant to lose. It would have been easy to wonder if the Lord was busy doing something else. It would have been easy to wonder if the Lord truly wanted David to do this thing or if David was doing something stupid by stepping up.
But David knew the character of the Lord, and he stepped forward in faith of his own accord.
Let’s pull it back into the situation of the Saints. The difference would be equivalent to one of the Saints losing their home and trusting the Lord to help them find something new in comparison to voluntarily leaving behind a good thing for the unknown because the prophet told you to. The potential for doubts is staggering. Is Joseph really a prophet? Did Joseph get the revelation wrong and only Joseph is supposed to go to Ohio or do they really all need to go? Does God really care about them and will He truly take care of them?
There are going to be situations in your life where darkness comes upon you and you reach out to the Lord for help. These kinds of faith-situations are really important. These kinds of situations help you build your faith as you choose to see the Lord’s hand stepping in to help. These kinds of situations also call upon you to believe that the Lord still loves you and is going to make things okay, even if it’s not in the direction that you want it to be.
On the flip side, there will be situations where the Lord is going to ask you to step into the dark. Maybe others have had different experiences, but for me, these can feel scarier. Even when I truly believe that the Lord loves me, I wonder whether I’m hearing Him correctly or whether I’m just putting myself into a bad situation for funsies.
When I chose to get married, I wasn’t sure the path was going to bring me happiness and I felt like the Lord was rather quiet on the subject when I wanted undeniable confirmation that I was making a choice that would bring me joy. When we moved to Virginia, it was easy to wonder whether we had left something really good behind in favor of living in a hotel for three months with three kids. Had the Lord asked us to do it or was it all made up in my mind? When I chose to do this blog because I thought He was asking me to, it was easy to wonder whether this is really what He wanted or whether I was simply investing immense amounts of time into something that the Lord hadn’t actually asked for.
We have different lessons to learn here on earth that call for different kinds of faith. Sometimes the Lord quietly presents us with opportunities to step forward into the dark, trusting that He will be there, and when we choose to jump, the rewards are immense. David defeated a mighty soldier, saved the Israelites, and set himself up to become king. That’s no small thing.
They say that higher risks can reap greater rewards. There have been plenty of times in my life where I felt like I was taking great risks in trusting the Lord, but I have learned that with the Lord, it’s not really a high risk. I’ve learned that even when I’m mistaken in my understanding of what He wants me to do, He’s not going to respond with, “Whoops. That sucks for you. That wasn’t what I was asking.” He loves me. I may find myself in greater difficulty, but I will never truly lose if I’m actively trying to follow Him. He knows my heart. He knows I want to do what He wants me to do, and that’s enough for Him.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Easter – Autumn Dickson
Apr 13, 2025
They Fell Back
by Autumn Dickson
This week is all about Christ and His atonement. The Come Follow Me manual recommends studying Luke 22 to reflect on the sacrifice that the Savior made in the Garden of Gethsemane. Instead, I want to read the same experience except I want to share it from the book of John.
The soldiers approach the Christ and His group following the experience in the Garden of Gethsemane.
John 18:4-6
4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?
5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.
6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.
I could have this wrong because it doesn’t explicitly state the reasoning, but here is what I’m picturing.
These soldiers come forward looking for Christ and spoiling for a fight. They’ve got their weapons and torches since it’s late, and they come upon the group of disciples and ask for Jesus of Nazareth. Christ steps into the light of the torches and replies, “I am He.” The soldiers fall back.
I know there are different interpretations of how this scene played out, but this is how I’ve always imagined it: I picture the soldiers falling back because of what they saw when Christ stepped into the light. Christ had just spent a portion of time bleeding from every pore as He suffered the sins and pains of the world. In all honesty, it’s likely a ghastly sight, and it catches them off guard.
Even if I’m wrong about how I imagine it, I believe there are some parallels that can teach us something significant here. Regardless of how the details went down, the principles I want to talk about are absolutely true.
Spoiling for a fight
I can remember a time in my life where I overheard someone talking quite negatively about my husband in my home. I was upstairs folding laundry when I realized I needed something from downstairs. I started walking down the hallway and paused when I heard them talking. One person was complaining about Conner, and the other one was trying to placate them and simultaneously shush them since the situation could prove to be awkward were I to come around the corner.
Needless to say, I didn’t quite make it around the corner, but I did overhear.
I was seeing red for a couple of reasons. This person had consistently been critical of Conner, and this person had also put Conner into the situation that they were currently complaining about. I’m not normally a confrontational person (mostly because I’m a wuss if we’re being honest), but I had already had plenty of scathing mental conversations with this person over the way Conner had been treated. I was so over it. I was about to let them have it, along with all the other baggage I had accumulated regarding the relationship we had with this person.
But I took a step back, breathed deeply, and furiously (but quietly) stomped back to my room.
I angrily paced back and forth for a while. I debated whether I was going to go down and call them out on it. I tried going back to work in my room but found myself pacing again. How dare they? I had kept my mouth shut for a long time, and I felt that they needed to hear just how toxic they were being.
Don’t get me wrong; I 100% believe there are appropriate times to call someone out and correct them. Sometimes correction is one of the highest forms of love. However, I wasn’t being particularly Christlike in how I wanted to approach that correction. If you’re going to correct someone, I believe it needs to come from a place of concern for their well-being rather than your own. I wanted this person to feel bad, and not because I wanted them to repent and live life in a more happy manner.
Luckily, I dropped to my knees and said a prayer. To this day, I don’t know what pushed me to pray at this moment, but I’m glad it happened.
I told the Lord how angry I was, at the current situation as well as all the previous situations where I felt Conner had been treated and perceived unfairly. I asked the Lord to help me see reality and to feel the truth of the situation I was looking at.
Boy, did He deliver.
The Lord responded with two things. I got a mini-montage before my mind’s eye of all the ways I had acted precisely like this person who had so offended me, and I got a whopping spiritual smackdown as I realized how similar I was to this person I was so mad at.
More importantly, I also saw how the Lord had taken care of it. The Lord loved this person. They were generally a good person; there was just a lot of bad blood built up. The Lord paid for it all, and when we get to the other side, we would all be able to see each other clearly. We would all clearly be able to see how the Lord had sent us down here to learn (sometimes the hard way) and then paid with a check signed in His blood.
Needless to say, the wind got drop-kicked out of my sails.
There are lots of details there, but let’s focus on three very important details.
I had approached spoiling for a fight. I had seen the results of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I was forcefully taken aback by the reality of Christ’s sacrifice.
The soldiers had approached spoiling for a fight. They saw the physical manifestation of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice in the Garden of Gethsemane. They were quite literally taken aback by what they saw.
How can the atonement of Christ change you?
I read a book (Price of Privilege by Jessica Dota) that was an allegory for the Savior. In the book, the main character finds herself in a terrifying, deadly marriage in the Regency Era. This was partially because of her own foolish choices, but it was also because she was a powerless victim in a world where women had no power. One of the main characters, Isaac, fights to free her from the marriage, and when it fails, he offers a poisonous drink to her murderous husband. Unfortunately, the only way to make him confident enough to drink the poison was if Isaac drinks with him. The poison kills her husband, but it also kills Isaac.
In one of the key moments at the end, we find her being kind to her cruel and cold father, not because he deserves it but because she loves Isaac for freeing her and Isaac had always encouraged her to be kind to her father. Isaac had quite literally saved her life; he gave her an opportunity to be happy in her life. How could she say no to his small requests in return?
Like the soldiers at the end of the account of the Garden of Gethsemane, I have a feeling that seeing (or even simply experiencing) the atonement of Jesus Christ would change how we feel about the betrayals we’ve experienced. Hyperfocusing on the damage you have received often disables your ability to recognize the goodness that is still available to you, perpetuating the consequences you have suffered innocently.
Looking to the Savior, seeing what He is offering and experiencing what He sacrificed (at least to an extent) is enough to take the fight right out of you.
Forgiveness is a process. I fully realize that healing from some betrayals takes immense amounts of time. This isn’t meant to rush that process or summon guilt for the innocent party. It’s meant to point you in the direction of ultimate healing, the Savior. If you keep your focus on the Savior and if you allow yourself to experience His grace, you’ll be taken aback at how your need for revenge or even personal justice dissipates. When you know the Savior, you trust Him and you feel safe enough to pass the circumstances to Him.
I testify that the Savior is mighty to save. I testify that He can offer everything that is owed to you. I testify that if you could remember Him and the experiences you’ve shared, you would naturally feel safe enough to let Him free you, bless you, and handle the justice of the perpetrator. That is the effect of experiencing His atonement.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 35–40, 47 – Mike Parker
Apr 07, 2025
Sidney Rigdon; the gathering; the office of Church Historian (D&C sections 35–40, 47)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
David W. Grua, “Joseph Smith and the 1834 D. P. Hurlbut Case,” BYU Studies 44, no. 1 (2005): 33–54. Grua examines the notorious ex-Mormon apostate Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, his attempt to destroy the early Church, and the legal case brought against him for threatening to kill Joseph Smith.
Matthew Roper, “The Mythical ‘Manuscript Found’,” FARMS Review 17, no. 2 (2005): 7–140. Roper reviews (and decimates) modern attempts to tie the origins of the Book of Mormon to Sidney Rigdon.
Church leaders and scholars are so confident that there is no connection between Solomon Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found” and the Book of Mormon that they’ve reprinted the Spaulding manuscript numerous times. In the 1990s, Brigham Young University printed Spaulding’s book in its entirety: Kent P. Jackson, ed., Manuscript Found: The Complete Original “Spaulding Manuscript” (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1996).
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 30-36 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 04, 2025
Left to Inquire
by Autumn Dickson
David Whitmer, one of the three witnesses of The Book of Mormon, is chastened in one of the sections that we read for this week. He had listened to Hiram Page who had been receiving false revelations, and the Lord spoke with him regarding this. His response can be helpful because we have all been in David’s shoes to one extent or another.
Doctrine and Covenants 30:2-3
2 But your mind has been on the things of the earth more than on the things of me, your Maker, and the ministry whereunto you have been called; and you have not given heed unto my Spirit, and to those who were set over you, but have been persuaded by those whom I have not commanded.
3 Wherefore, you are left to inquire for yourself at my hand, and ponder upon the things which you have received.
Though many of us aren’t currently tempted to fall prey to the false revelations given by Hiram Page, we do often find ourselves in situations that are similar enough to David. I want to go through some experiences that I’ve had that are similar to David, and I want to tell you about this experience by exploring phrases taught in these verses. Though I’m giving a specific, personal example, the principles are what matter and they can be widely applied to many different circumstances.
One modern equivalent
Lehi’s dream has been on my mind recently. There are many interpretations of the great and spacious building, the foremost being pride. I’ve been pondering an additional interpretation. Let’s look at details surrounding Lehi’s dream so that we can explore parallels. The building resided above the earth, in the air, suggesting that it’s not a physical place on the earth. There were a ton of people in the building, and they were well-dressed and mocking and pointing their fingers at those who were partaking of the love of God. Those who paid attention to the mocking became ashamed and fell away, and those who “heeded them not” continued partaking of the love of God.
I’ve been thinking about what a great metaphor the great and spacious building is for social media. Social media is not a physical place. Though the social media culture has partially changed, we still find a majority of people dressed in their best, showcasing the most glamorous parts of their lives. We obviously find plenty of mocking and pointing of fingers. I’ve also noticed that social media can sometimes bring my mind down to an earthly level as well as persuading me to listen to those who aren’t called by the Lord.
And therein lies my experience that can leave me in a similar position to David. Because I post LDS content, the algorithm for my instagram often sends me into LDS accounts as well as anti-LDS accounts. Sometimes I don’t even have to be exploring instagram to find the anti-material. It finds me as people comment on the posts that I make. There were two phrases the Lord used to describe David that also apply to me when I find myself paying heed to the negative on social media.
Whenever I find myself paying too much attention to social media (specifically the negative), I find myself relating quite closely to David.
your mind has been on the things of the earth more than on the things of me
you have not given heed unto my Spirit, and to those who were set over you, but have been persuaded by those whom I have not commanded
Heaven knows social media can be a terrible influence on me. It pushes me to focus on things of little consequence, and I have very consciously observed my overall life-satisfaction dipping. Social media also takes eternal realities and tries forcing them into earthly perspectives where they don’t belong. I also find plenty of people who haven’t been commanded by the Lord, and it gets confusing.
So what do we do when we have found ourselves in a similar situation to David? Let’s look at the rest of the Lord’s response.
Left to inquire
The Lord warns David of some of the patterns that David has fallen into, and then the Lord responds to it.
Wherefore, you are left to inquire for yourself at my hand, and ponder upon the things which you have received.
When viewed from an earthly perspective, this response can seem dismissive or potentially even angry. After becoming a parent, I have learned that it’s anything but.
This is an extremely simplistic example, but I’m going to share it anyway. My son hates wearing shoes. This doesn’t tend to be a problem in the summer as his feet grow accustomed to burning hot concrete, but he can’t seem to get his bare feet accustomed to snow *insert sarcastic surprise.* He has a little friend who lives one house down from us, and we usually let the kids run wild between the two houses. I’ve told him to put shoes on, but I don’t force him to. He usually does okay running back and forth in the winter because it doesn’t snow often. However, one day he decided to run to his friend’s house with no shoes on even though the ground was covered in snow. I was upstairs tending to some other kids when I heard screaming outside. I ran downstairs, opened the door, and he was painfully walking back to our house (friend wasn’t home) through the snow with bare feet. I threw on my own shoes, picked him up, and brought him inside.
I have told Warner to put shoes on, and he has had a lot of experiences where he’s ignored me and regretted it and listened and found favorable outcomes. He’s also had experience with snow. He has received information. I could try to force his hand by getting a deadbolt on the front door, but that would take away from other conscious parenting choices I’ve made to let the kid play outside when he wants to.
So I leave him with the information I’ve given him, and he can think about it and come and ask me if he has questions. Sometimes that means a tough lesson, but that lesson is pretty powerful.
It’s not a perfectly parallel analogy, but I do think enough of the details line up.
Heavenly Father has told us to not pay heed to the mocking and finger-pointing. In this particular section, He admonishes David for getting caught up in the world and listening to those He hasn’t called.
Unfortunately, social media is less simplistic than snow. Social media and snow both have their pros, cons, and wise utilization, but unfortunately, social media also has a confusion factor. When we get caught up in social media, we often find ourselves asking, well who has really been commanded by the Lord? Who has the truth?
I’ve had experiences with social media. Not all of them are bad, but there have been times when doubt and confusion have felt overwhelming. And so as the Lord suggests, I ponder. As I ponder and try to include the Lord, my mind is lifted above the earthly things and I remember that my experiences with the Lord have been every bit as real as the fear I’ve experienced coming across things that don’t make sense. As I keep pondering, sometimes the Lord lifts my vision and shifts my perspective to where things make sense. Other times, He doesn’t. But that doesn’t make any of the other experiences I’ve had with Him unreal. Having a limited understanding or coming across accounts of history that can’t be unequivocally resolved does not invalidate the experiences you’ve had with the Lord.
And if you don’t know whether you’ve had an experience with the Lord, then there’s no reason you can’t seek out that relationship now.
I testify that the Lord works through His prophets. I testify that this is a system He has utilized to work with His children throughout the history of the earth. I believe this because I have been able to speak with my Heavenly Father and receive answers from Him through the words of modern day prophets. Those experiences are tremendously real and valid; those experiences are the reason I stay.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Me, My Shelf, & I – How Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals understand the Bible differently
Apr 03, 2025
In this special episode, Sarah Allen, Jennifer Roach Lees, and Zachary Wright host a panel discussion on the topic “How Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals understand the Bible differently.”
Panel participants:
Stephen Smoot: https://www.plonialmonimormon.com/
Dr. Ben Spackman: https://benspackman.com/
Travis Anderson: @missionarydiscussions1286
References in this episode:
JSH 1:12–13
Dr. Christian Smith, “pervasive interpretive pluralism”. (The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Dr. Christian Smith)
Dr. James Kugel: https://www.jameskugel.com/ (The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History by Dr. James Kugel)
Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Latter-day Saint Approaches by Joshua M. Sears (chapter from They Shall Grow Together: The Bible in the Book of Mormon by Dr. Charles Swift and Dr. Nicholas J. Frederick, Editors)
Relational Grace: The Reciprocal and Binding Covenant of Charis by Dr. Brent J. Schmidt https://brentschmidt.org
Relational Faith: The Transformation and Restoration of Pistis as Knowledge, Trust, Confidence, and Covenantal Faithfulness by Dr. Brent J. Schmidt https://brentschmidt.org
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 29-34 – Mike Parker
Mar 31, 2025
The doctrine of agency; the Lamanite Mission (D&C sections 29–34)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (Chicago: Law, King & Law, 1888). Read Parley’s account of his early life, conversion to the restored gospel, and service as a missionary and apostle.
Native Americans and the Lamanites Latter-day Saint leaders have expressed a variety of opinions regarding whether or not all Amerindians are literal descendants of Lehi. Population genetics indicate that Lehi can likely be counted among the ancestors of all native Americans—a position that the Church has reinforced by changing the 1981 Book of Mormon introduction from “principal ancestors” to “among the ancestors.”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 29 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 30, 2025
I Am In Your Midst
by Autumn Dickson
There is a lot of doctrine covered in Doctrine and Covenants 29. I absolutely love it. It ranges from the Millennium to agency and all over the board. There are so many things that caught my attention that are meaningful to me but alas, let’s talk about just one of the principles. Before I jump into the verse, I want to give some background to explain why it caught my attention.
I remember going to this HUGE regional youth conference as a senior in high school. It included a big cultural celebration, and we rented out a big stadium to perform in. There was dancing and singing. It was all a ton of fun.
I also remember a little rumor going around about the prophet coming because it was such a huge conference, and I remember lots of people whispering excitedly about it. I’m not sure if the prophet had ever planned on coming or if someone had just gotten a little ahead of themselves and it got spread around as a rumor. If I am remembering correctly, I feel like it was a real possibility; I feel like we were waiting to get word on whether he would actually be able to make it, but I could be wrong. It’s been over a decade since that time and I’ve had five kids so pardon my memory. I do remember that people started praying for him to show up, and I remember whispering excitedly about how cool it would be if he did.
I also remember the moment we learned that he wasn’t going to be coming and the general feeling of disappointment that followed.
Now, I had the unique opportunity of welcoming the youth to the conference and giving the opening prayer for the conference, and I was told about this unique opportunity right before actually doing the welcoming. I didn’t know what to say, but I did know that everyone was feeling pretty disappointed that President Monson wasn’t going to make it. Luckily, the Spirit stepped in and helped me know what to say; I also learned something pretty significant from this little experience.
I acknowledged the disappointment that we all felt over the prophet not being able to come, and then the Spirit helped me testify that even though he couldn’t make it, the Savior would be there to watch us perform and be with us. The following verse reminded me of this experience.
Doctrine and Covenants 29:5 Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst, and am your advocate with the Father; and it is his good will to give you the kingdom.
Doctrine and Covenants 29 was given in the company of six other elders. It wasn’t some huge conference, but the Savior told these men that He was in their midst. The Savior claims to be with His saints frequently throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. Do we believe that or do we mentally skip over phrases like that because they feel trite? When He claims to be in our midst, what does that mean to us?
Excitement over the prophet
I want to momentarily jump back to the excitement that all of us felt over the prospect of the prophet visiting our gigantic youth conference.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to meet the prophet and wanting to be around him. There is a reason we love our prophet. In so many ways, it’s not really about President Hinckley or Monson or Nelson. It’s about what they represent. They represent the fact that the heavens are opened again, the priesthood power to perform binding ordinances are on the earth, and the Lord is directing His church. We love our prophet because of the symbol that he is to our faith.
We get excited about General Conference and the revelation we’re going to receive. When my companion and I walked out of the MTC cafeteria, we saw Elder Holland and literally froze in our tracks. He shook our hands before rushing on to get to his next appointment, and we were so excited about it. If I saw President Nelson tomorrow, I would be super excited even as an adult.
And yet, when the Savior claims to be in the presence of His Saints, what does that mean to us?
I think the main reason it’s easier to get excited about shaking the hand of a prophet vs. picturing the Savior near us is the difficulty level. It requires far more effort to get to the point where you truly believe He is with you. And once you reach that point, it still takes effort to feel Him and hear Him and engage yourself in speaking to Him.
But oh my goodness…it’s so worth it.
The primary answers
So how do we bring Him into our midst? How do we trust Him when He says that He is already there? How do we start to take advantage of the fact that the Savior really is here with us?
Honestly, I think the most powerful tools we have are the basic tools He gave us. We do the primary answers of praying, reading your scriptures, and going to church.
We often talk about how it can be hard to make sure you’re reading your scriptures and praying. We talk about how it’s hard to develop those habits, and I’ve heard it expressed that we should stop putting so much pressure on people who are already feeling a ton of pressure to accomplish everything. I agree that pressure is often unhelpful, but I don’t think I agree with the sentiment that we should stop striving for daily habits. They are simply too valuable.
Sometimes I shy away from pushing those habits because I know that those kinds of things are easy for me. I’m good at habits. I love reading and writing. I grew up in a family where those habits were emphasized. One of my biggest time consumers other than my kids (i.e. blog, podcast, YouTube) is literally pushing me to seek Him out on a daily basis. It occasionally feels insensitive for me to advocate for it when it’s not as easy for other people.
But I can’t not testify of these things. They hold too much power. I know exactly what you get when you invite the Savior into your midst regularly with scripture study and prayer.
Because it’s not going to be enough to just do them. Eventually, we have to get to the point where we’re doing it in a manner that effectively fulfills our purpose – being with the Savior. It’s not about reading for long enough or praying for long enough; it’s about whether you truly communed with Him.
Communing with Him can be even harder than crossing these small things off of a checklist. It’s harder to spiritually strive for those things. It’s harder to constantly re-engage when it feels like the whole world is trying to distract you from it. It’s harder to keep spiritually engaging when you feel like you’re not getting much in return, but if you do the primary answers while neglecting their purpose, then you’re much less likely to find the rewards and you will most definitely find yourself prioritizing them less and less.
He can tell us that He’s in our midst all He wants. He can sit with us while we take the sacrament. He can place His hand on our shoulder in our darkest moments. He can enjoy the simple moments in life right alongside us, but it won’t matter if we don’t believe it.
Utilizing the primary answers to practice communing with Him enables us to believe Him when He says He’s in our midst. And when you believe that you have the Savior with you, it changes everything.
I remember a time on my mission when things felt incredibly heavy. My companion was in the shower so I had some very rare alone time. I sat in the dark living room of our apartment, prayed, and I felt Him with me. He didn’t try to “fix” things. I didn’t get any answers. He wasn’t telling me to have more faith. He mourned with me.
I think about getting caught up in the daily stresses of my life. I wonder about where my family is going to end up, how to protect my kids from the scary influences in the world, the list goes on and on and on. But (almost) every day, I sit down and I type out a prayer and when I do it right, I remember how the Savior and His promises touch everything I write down. I’m worried about where we’re going to end up? When I picture Him with me, it’s much easier to remember that it doesn’t really matter. I have a beautiful, perfect, eternal home where I can stay forever. I’m worried about my kids? He can guide me to protect them and heal them. He can remind me to be grateful when they’re challenged because it’s so healthy to be challenged. He knows where they’re at and how to help them.
Investing in primary answers, to the extent that you open your eyes to how the Savior is in your midst, will remove so many mental obstacles from your path. It will lift you. It will help you feel legitimately grateful for where you’re at in life. It will help you feel secure when the world is scary. It will empower you to accomplish so much more. Truly investing in primary answers with purpose brings the Savior into your midst, and that changes everything.
I testify of a Savior who wants to be with you. He wants to lift you. He wants you to feel powerful enough to overcome obstacles. He wants to help you believe in yourself when the obstacle feels too big. I testify of a Savior who gave us very simple tools to open our eyes so that we can see Him with us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 25, 27–28 – Mike Parker
Mar 21, 2025
Emma Hale Smith; the sacrament; authority in the Church (D&C sections 25, 27–28)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
In early 1879, Emma was interviewed by her son, Joseph Smith III, who asked her questions about the Prophet Joseph, the translation of the Book of Mormon, and other events in the restoration of the gospel. Her responses were published as “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” The Saints’ Herald 26, no. 19 (1 October 1879): 289–90. Although Emma denied that the Prophet Joseph ever practiced plural marriage (which he, in fact, did), her eyewitness testimony is otherwise invaluable and inspiring.
Background on Emma’s second husband, Lewis Bidamon, may be found in Valeen Tippetts Avery and Linda King Newell, “Lewis C. Bidamon, Stepchild of Mormondom,” BYU Studies 19, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 375–88.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 27–28 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 19, 2025
God Chose a Prophet
by Autumn Dickson
We are currently still in the very early days of the church where the Lord is revealing line upon line. Satan is actively working against God’s plan, and he often tries to mimic God to lead people astray. He loves to tell half-truths that seem logical upon first examination.
One of the historical accounts we can read about this week includes supposed revelations that were being received by Hiram Page. Hiram claimed to be receiving revelation for the church on various topics, and many saints believed him.
This was not the first time that priesthood organization needed to be clarified. Oliver Cowdery had once commanded Joseph to change some wording in a revelation because he believed it was in error. I find it especially interesting that when Joseph was seeking revelation on how to handle the issues with Hiram Page, the Lord responded by sending Oliver to Hiram to work it out.
Here is how the Lord clarified His priesthood organization in regards to Hiram Page.
Doctrine and Covenants 28:2 But, behold, verily, verily, I say unto thee, no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., for he receiveth them even as Moses.
In other words, the Lord very purposefully works through His prophet to guide His church. Only one man can receive revelation for the entire church at any given time. A bishop can receive revelation for the entire ward. A stake president can receive revelation for the entire stake. A Relief Society president can receive revelation for the women in her ward. Youth leaders, temple presidents, mission presidents, fathers, and mothers all have spiritual jurisdictions.
A lot of people struggle with the idea of one prophet receiving revelation for the entire church, and I’m sure the reasons for this struggle are numerous. However, I believe there are a couple of main ones we can talk about. And though we are covering specific reasons, I believe the principles can be applied to various circumstances and struggles.
Power and manipulation
I think one of the reasons that people struggle with this idea of a prophet is because they’ve seen positions of authority get abused throughout history. It happens politically. It happens in the home. It happens in religious organizations. It even happens in our own church often enough. I’m not specifically talking about the prophet, just leadership in general. We are imperfect people, and we’ve all abused our power to one extent or another.
Viewing it from a perspective of someone who is struggling to believe in a prophet adds additional insight. They see a man who has the power to make any decisions he wants with few consequences. This isn’t a democracy or republic. There is little room for redress when there are perceived wrongs because we believe that the prophet is receiving revelation from the Lord, and so disagreeing with the prophet feels complicated.
I think it’s important to view it from the standpoint of someone who believes differently than you, but I also believe it’s vital to view it from the standpoint of belief as well. There are a couple of principles that can be supremely comforting when you really, truly, deeply believe that the Savior chose to work through a prophet.
Principle One: The Lord had to choose a system of governance
Principle one. The Lord has to work within the framework of an imperfect world. If the world was perfect, systems of governance wouldn’t matter as much. In fact, if the world was perfect and we were all perfect, we wouldn’t need leaders at all. But alas, the Lord just has us and so He has to make decisions about how He’s going to handle that.
The Lord’s purpose was to create a system that would allow His gospel to more fully thrive. He needed the doctrine to stay pure because an accurate knowledge of the character of God and a framework for how to get back to Him is crucial. He needed to be able to send the gospel to all corners of the earth and make sure that the same truth was being taught everywhere.
He chose a prophet and a church with which to do it. Once again, some people struggle with it because there is ample opportunity for spiritual abuse. But let’s explore His alternative option.
Imagine, just for a moment, what things would look like if anyone could receive revelation for the entire church at any time. Imagine what it would look like if anyone could come up to you and tell you that they received revelation that you should do something specific. That sounds infinitely more terrifying in my mind. There may be opportunities for spiritual abuse with one leader, but there are far more opportunities for abuse when anyone can come along and hurt anyone by claiming divine revelation. One mean-spirited person could cause far more heartache in countless lives in comparison to imperfect but well-meaning men. There would be infinitely more opportunities for manipulation and religious abuse.
The Lord was wise in His choice of a prophet as a system of governance, but it doesn’t stop there! The Lord didn’t just say, “Well, all we have is imperfection so good luck!” There are more principles.
Principle Two: Promises
The Lord has given promises regarding His prophet. The foremost promise is that He won’t allow the prophet to lead the church astray. This can be minimally comforting when you think about the fact that this promise came from one of the men who had the power to lead the church astray, but once again, let’s put this in a lens of belief.
You can receive revelation. You can’t receive revelation for anyone; you have a spiritual jurisdiction as well. But you can receive revelation!
Pray about it! Pray and ask the Lord if He called a prophet, and then actually give Him a chance to answer by showing a little faith. Tell the Lord to help you find the answer, to change you so that you’re prepared to receive it. Once you have the assurance that He has called a prophet, it changes how you look at everything else.
When we receive a testimony of that promise (He won’t let the prophet lead the church astray), we can look at things through a lens of faith and that is incredibly powerful. It won’t make sense to the rest of the world that doesn’t hold that same testimony, but that doesn’t really matter. You’ll know the truth, and you’ll know you can trust the Lord, His choices, and His timing.
When things come along that don’t make sense, you don’t have to question everything you believe. You can ask the Lord. You can say to yourself, “I know God is good. I know He loves me. I know – insert testimony here-. I don’t know how it all fits together, but I trust that He does.”
Principle three: The Atonement of Jesus Christ
Now, prophets are imperfect men. That means there has been hurt. That means they don’t do everything perfectly.
How does that make sense? If they make mistakes, how can they not lead the church astray? How can both things be true?
Honestly, I think people take that promise too intensely. That promise doesn’t mean that a prophet will never make a mistake. It means that the Lord can course-correct. He can teach and lead and guide. This is a living church, and the restoration is ongoing. It means we’re headed in the right direction even if we don’t have it all figured out yet.
If that doesn’t sound good enough, then look at your own life.
You’re imperfect, but there is a lot of power in walking towards the right direction. The Lord isn’t trying to make you perfect yet. If His main purpose was to have you perfectly avoid sin, then He wouldn’t send trials or anything that could derail you. Rather, His purpose is your growth which means He’s not as concerned about errors and missteps as some of us are. He just wants to push us in the right direction and gain the growth and wisdom we need. If we keep heading in the right direction, eventually the missteps and errors stop anyway.
I believe it’s the same idea but on a grand scale in the church and the prophet.
Unfortunately, some missteps can cause pain and confusion. The Lord needed to allow us to be imperfect for so many good reasons, but He didn’t say, “Sorry. They’re imperfect. Tough luck.” That’s why God sent more than a prophet. He sent His Son.
Every injustice you suffer will be made up. Every injustice you watch someone else suffer will be made up. It will be more than made up because a Savior chose to come to earth and suffer and die for us. He’s got this. It’s going to work out.
But none of this really matters unless you believe it. It can be the truth, but it won’t bless you unless you know it’s the truth. So ask the Lord.
I’m grateful for a Savior who chooses to be involved in our affairs on the earth. I’m grateful for a Savior who has shown me time and again that I matter to Him, who has shown me that I can trust Him until I reach the point where I’m ready to receive all truth.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 23–26 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 14, 2025
Require Not Miracles
by Autumn Dickson
The Doctrine and Covenants differs from other books of scripture in the sense that the Lord is often responding to individual people. This can lead to some of the sections seeming disjointed as the Lord covers multiple feelings and circumstances that any given individual may be experiencing. In other books of scriptures, we get stories or sermons that were all meant to go together. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord is simply talking to the people receiving the revelation (most often through the prophet Joseph Smith), and it’s like a letter. He’s going to respond to many different circumstances.
In Doctrine and Covenants 24, the Lord is talking to various men about earthly responsibilities and testifying of the gospel. Here is one of the things the Lord decides to include as He is talking to His children.
Doctrine and Covenants 24:13-14
13 Require not miracles, except I shall command you, except casting out devils, healing the sick, and against poisonous serpents, and against deadly poisons;
14 And these things ye shall not do, except it be required of you by them who desire it, that the scriptures might be fulfilled; for ye shall do according to that which is written.
I want to tie a couple phrases together in order to more directly teach what I want to talk about today.
“Require not miracles except I shall command you….except it be required of you by them who desire it…”
So if the Lord is directly speaking to His children, what can we imply from what He chose to say in these particular verses? I can’t know for sure, but I imagine that some of these new members had wanted to perform miracles like the ones they read about in the bible. They believed that they had just found the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t that mean the same miracles should follow? Perhaps some attempted these miracles, or perhaps it was just something that had been pondered. Either way, the Lord teaches them that they shouldn’t just go around trying to perform miracles. They can perform those miracles if they’ve been commanded by the Lord or if it has been sought by those who need the miracle.
This is an interesting concept when you combine it with the fact that the Lord didn’t go about broadcasting His miraculous abilities. He often solicited the healed to stay quiet about what had occurred. Perhaps there were appropriate times in which He offered to intervene, but if I’m not mistaken, all the very direct miracles that we read about in the New Testament were brought about because someone came to the Lord to ask Him for the miracle.
Why does the Lord work after this manner and why does He ask His disciples to work this way? They are commanded to perform miracles when commanded by God or when asked by the people who need it. Performing a miracle because God asked you to do it is fairly straightforward, and so I want to focus on the fact that the Lord asked them to only perform miracles when they’ve been asked.
Though I’m sure there are many reasons, there is one main reason that I’d like to cover today.
Alma and preaching the gospel
This idea of running around and advertising miracles reminds me of another passage of scripture in The Book of Mormon. I want to talk about this passage, and then I want to bring it back around to the idea of advertising and performing miracles everywhere.
In Alma 29, Alma is wishing that he could preach the gospel to every corner of the earth. He wishes he could be an angel and shake the earth with his testimony regarding the Savior. His desire was to preach across the world in a way that enabled everyone to hear it. I remember thinking that this was a pretty good wish. To me, it seems like a good reflection on his heart.
But, later on in the chapter, Alma says he is sinning in his wish. Why?
Sin is anything that’s going to bring us further from eternal life. Even when we have good intentions and pure hearts, there are certain things that can take eternal life away from us. Alma is correct in trusting the Lord with the calling the Lord chooses to give him in life. Even with good hearts and intentions, obedience and trust in the Lord is essential. There are appropriate times to solicit the Lord for more responsibilities, blessings, or other things, but it’s important to trust what He chooses to give.
Now let’s take that a step further and explore Alma’s desire to preach the gospel. Why might this take people farther away from eternal life rather than closer? When we really ponder Alma’s desire a little further, we can see the wisdom of the Lord in not expanding Alma’s calling to earth-shattering, angelic missionary that reaches across the earth.
Simply put, eternal life doesn’t really work like that.
If Alma were to receive his wish, it would have foiled the Plan of Salvation. The gospel may have been preached to every creature, and many might have even accepted it. But WHY would they have chosen to accept it? Because the WHY is key. Choosing to follow the tenants of the gospel is not the same as reaping the rewards of the gospel. I would know. I chose to follow the gospel for a long time before actually reaping the rewards.
The true reward of living the gospel is eternal life, and what is eternal life? What is it really? Eternal life is living like God. It’s choosing to be good because you have changed to be innately good. God doesn’t choose to be righteous and perfect because He wants to avoid some eternal punishment. He chooses to be righteous and perfect because He is love.
If the gospel was suddenly preached on a miraculous, earth-shattering loudspeaker, it would very quickly transfer a large portion of people into the category of, “I’m following the gospel because I want to avoid hell.” It would rob them of the opportunity to work through belief, to work on drawing closer to the Lord continually, on turning to Him when you’re worried about being deceived. As we take advantage of questions and worries by turning to the Lord, we reap the benefits of a divine relationship with Him. Those benefits (change, love, trust) are what eternal life feel like.
Avoiding hell is not eternal life. Avoiding hell can only bring so much happiness. If we want to experience the happiness and joy that God has in store, we have to go beyond just trying to avoid hell.
So we’ve explored it. The Lord is incredibly wise when He doesn’t throw away the belief stage, and Alma was wise when he trusted that the Lord knew what He was doing.
Taking it back to miracles
Let’s bring it back to the original command to perform miracles when asked by the person who needs the miracle.
Wanting to go around and perform miracles everywhere likely sprang from a good place. That desire to heal and prevent disaster came from a good heart, but what did we learn from Alma’s example? Even with good hearts and good intentions, there are things that can still take us away from eternal life. It’s important to trust the Lord.
The Lord is wise, and He knows that it’s often important for someone to ask for a miracle before receiving it. Why is it wise to require this?
Simply put, eternal life doesn’t really work like that.
The Lord’s purpose is to help us grow to be like Him. He wants us to change so that we can reap the rewards that He reaps. He wants us to feel what He feels.
If His disciples were to go around performing miracles right and left, what would be the result?
One result is the same result that we explored with Alma wanting to preach the gospel over a loudspeaker. It removes that aspect of faith and belief that drive us towards developing that relationship with Christ and finding the rewards therein. It removes the growth that comes with having to repeatedly turn towards Him.
Another result is that sometimes the Lord chooses not to remove obstacles. Removing every obstacle would completely foil the Plan of Salvation. We came down here to grow. How would that be possible without obstacles?
And the last reason I’d like to cover here is the fact that there is something so powerful in having to ask first. When we look at it from an earthly perspective, requiring someone to ask for what they need before you’re willing to give it seems petty and ridiculous. However, we know the Lord isn’t petty and ridiculous. We know that everything He does is for us, so why does He choose to do it that way?
I think it’s important to note that He doesn’t always do it this way. He often provides miracles and takes care of us without our knowledge. Someday, when we get to the other side, we’re going to realize just how much He interfered on our behalf.
However, sometimes He does require us to ask. So why? Why does He do that?
Part of His goal of helping us reach eternal life is to nurture a relationship with us. When He requires us to ask, He is more fully guaranteeing our ability to recognize His hand in our life. Recognizing Him is pretty crucial to developing a relationship with Him. If our needs were simply just getting fulfilled right and left before we even consciously recognized the need, we would likely never even realize He was behind it.
On an earthly level with my own children, I find it extremely important to teach my children that their clean laundry doesn’t miraculously show up. The food doesn’t just find itself cooked. The money doesn’t just show up in the bank account. They don’t drive themselves to their various activities. I want them to recognize that my husband and I show up for them. And yes, because we’re imperfect people with issues, part of that is because we want validation. But the other part (the part that reflects our Heavenly Parents) is because we know that recognition and gratitude on their part will actually be a blessing in and of itself.
Recognizing that they have parents who show up, feeling gratitude for those parents, and developing that relationship with parents is going to enrich their lives tremendously.
God can’t show up and teach us that directly because once again, it would rob us of that faith and belief factor that’s so crucial to the Plan of Salvation. So rather, He often requires us to ask first so that we can start to recognize that He’s the one answering. There is wisdom in His commandment to wait for someone to ask before giving a miracle.
I believe in a wise and powerful Savior. I believe that everything He does is for us. All of His motivation boils down to His love for us. I believe that it is important to explore things we don’t understand in the gospel through the lens of that love if we want to understand why He does what He does. He is trying to give us so much more than we can comprehend.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 20–24, 26 – Mike Parker
Mar 09, 2025
The establishment of the Church of Christ (D&C sections 20–24, 26)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 20–22 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 07, 2025
Nuances of Baptism
by Autumn Dickson
Let’s talk about historical context again quickly so that we can have a reference for what we read this week. Chronologically, Section 21 came before Section 20. Section 21 came on the day the church was organized, and it talks a lot about how Joseph was called as a prophet and the importance of listening to the prophets. Section 20 came in between the day that the church was organized and its first conference held in June. Section 20 had a lot of administrative tasks explained as well as core doctrines that are found in The Book of Mormon. Section 22 came last as people were wondering whether they needed to get rebaptized.
There is actually quite a bit given to us on the subject of baptism this week. One section describes the mode and manner of baptism, and another section describes the need to be baptized with proper authority. Let’s talk about some of the things we can learn about baptism from the revelations we’re covering this week.
He follows us
The first detail I want to talk about comes as the Lord describes how we are to be baptized.
Doctrine and Covenants 20:72-74
72 Baptism is to be administered in the following manner unto all those who repent—
73 The person who is called of God and has authority from Jesus Christ to baptize, shall go down into the water with the person who has presented himself or herself for baptism, and shall say, calling him or her by name: Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
74 Then shall he immerse him or her in the water, and come forth again out of the water.
We know that baptism holds a lot of symbolism. We’re dressed in white. We go down into the water and come back out, symbolizing the death of our old life and becoming new again. It also symbolizes Christ dying and being resurrected. There was one piece of symbolism that I did not previously recognize that was pointed out quite clearly in the previous verses.
The person who is called of God and has authority from Jesus Christ to baptize, shall go down into the water with the person who has presented himself or herself for baptism…
In order to understand the symbolism, we have to understand the “characters” participating in the baptism. We are representing ourselves (or those who have passed on and cannot do the work themselves), but we are not the only one present in our baptism. There is also a priesthood holder that follows us in.
This priesthood holder is authorized by Jesus Christ to use His authority to bind us to the Savior so that the Savior can legally (in an eternal sense) bind us to Him in a manner that produces salvation. One might even argue that the priesthood holder is a representation of Christ, Himself.
Christ follows us into the water as we choose to make a covenant with Him, as we walk towards the death of our old life. If we were to picture the Savior, with the wounds of His sacrifice still on His resurrected body, walking into the water with us, how would our baptism feel different? It may be a priesthood holder actually standing in the water, but the only reason the priesthood holder is there is because he is holding Christ’s authority to baptize. It’s really Christ who is utilizing power to bind us to Him in a covenant that saves us. The priesthood holder is nothing more than a vessel.
There are a couple of ways this might change how we feel about our baptism.
The first one that comes to my mind is that He is teaching us what the rest of our lives are going to look like because we chose to enter into a covenant relationship with Him. Following us into the water and binding us to Him according to our willingness is a foreshadowing of what our lives can look like. If we keep our willingness to follow Him and allow Him near us, we don’t have to do anything alone anymore.
Christ’s approach to our growth and development is two-pronged. It is wise in the sense that He allows us to suffer, struggle, and figure it out. This is really difficult for many people to swallow, especially when you consider the depths of injustice and despair in the world. But that’s why the second prong of His approach is so important.
The Savior is not asking us to do anything that He has not done Himself. He was already perfect, and so He didn’t need these experiences to figure out how to live happily in an eternal setting. With His sacrifice, He chose to step into that water to feel it firsthand. And then He chooses to be with us as we struggle through those same experiences in our own life.
I am quite adamant in my parenting approach to let my kids struggle through things. I think it’s so critical to their growth. It’s absolutely essential to their becoming a well-adjusted adult. Sometimes this makes my kids feel unsupported and unloved, but that’s far from the case. I do it because I love them.
This is the same with the Savior. He sent us here because He loves us. Our struggle is evidence of His love, not the other way around. But He takes it beyond wisdom. His approach is not, “Go get in those baptismal waters and put yourself under and come back up.” His approach is, “I will follow you where you have to go to get where you need to be.” He follows us into the water and brings us closer to Him. He is willing to follow us the rest of our lives through every “water” we have to walk through.
We have to believe that He’s walking with us and mourning with us, or His sacrifice won’t have much effect. Even though He follows us, it won’t bring much comfort unless we believe it and allow that belief to fill us with the relief He is offering.
Dead works
The next detail about baptism that I want to talk about is found in Section 22. The Saints had not yet grasped the idea of proper authority and so the idea of getting rebaptized confused them. This is how the Lord explained it.
Doctrine and Covenants 22:2 Wherefore, although a man should be baptized an hundred times it availeth him nothing, for you cannot enter in at the strait gate by the law of Moses, neither by your dead works.
I understand the need for proper authority, but this verse originally confused me. In my mind, the Lord was telling His people to not trust in dead works. The Israelites used to believe that following the Law of Moses would save them. They didn’t realize that the Law of Moses was supposed to bring them closer to the Savior who would save them. This also makes sense to me.
The part that confused me was the fact that baptism can be considered one of our “works.” He commanded the Israelites to keep the Law of Moses, and He commanded us to be baptized by proper authority. The difference (and the detail I want to expound on) is that one work is “dead” and one work is not.
Performing the work of baptism is different from other commandments (not all commandments, but some of them). It is an essential ordinance. The Savior is the one who saves us, but it is baptism that pulls us into a covenant relationship with Him so that He can save us. This is also why the Lord commands us to perform vicarious ordinances for those who weren’t baptized. Everybody needs to have the work done.
We don’t go out and mow a neighbor’s lawn vicariously for someone else. We don’t follow the Word of Wisdom or pay tithing on behalf of those who didn’t do it in their own lives. There are commandments that are given to us to bring us closer to the Savior so He can save us. Going out and mowing a lawn can help us understand sacrifice and charity. Following the Word of Wisdom can help us have healthy bodies and keep our minds clear and free. Paying tithing allows us to learn how to trust in the Lord. All of these things help us get closer to Christ who will save us, but they are dead in and of themselves.
Baptism obviously brings us closer to the Lord and helps us understand Him, but baptism does more than that. It binds us to Him using His own power and authority. Regular men on earth do not have the power to seal in heaven. They can baptize you with their religious degree or their certifications from their churches, but power given from regular old human to regular old human is not sufficient to bind in heaven. Only the Savior can give that kind of power.
In this manner, when we die, that baptism has the ability to follow us into heaven where the Savior still holds power. It keeps us bound to Him on both sides of the veil because the Savior holds enough power to accomplish that, and He lends that power to us. It’s still His power.
Baptism (and other covenant-entering ordinances) are essential. They are literally binding us to the Savior. That’s why the Lord treats that commandment differently than other dead, Law-of-Moses type commandments.
This also enlightens us as to why we should never tear down baptisms that are done without proper authority. I once heard a missionary describe someone’s baptism into another church as an abomination. It went over well (*sarcasm*).
The Lord did describe these works as dead because they were done without proper authority. However, He also described the Law of Moses (the one that He specifically gave to His people) as dead. He’s not saying that it’s worthless. He gave the Law of Moses so that the Israelites could draw closer to Him and become ready to receive Him. Baptism into other Christian churches holds that same ability. They can (and often do) bring people closer to Christ and help them become ready to receive Him more fully. There’s no reason to ever tear down someone’s decision to try and draw closer to Christ.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who set up a perfect Plan of Salvation. I testify that His words are so consistent. I have often run into ideas, stories, and words that I did not originally understand. There have been times when I have found myself confused about details or things that didn’t seem congruent with what I understood of a loving Heavenly Father. I have also learned that as I choose to be patient, new understanding comes to my mind and clarifies what I didn’t yet know. The more I study the gospel, in all of its rich details, the more I understand the character of my Heavenly Father and Savior.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 19 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 02, 2025
Truths About Eternal Punishment
by Autumn Dickson
My message this week is given through a couple of verses in Section 19, but it’s also given through a couple of quotes that are found in the institute manual. These quotes expand our understanding of the verses found in this week’s section.
The Savior has said a lot of things throughout the scriptures and to His prophets. Only when we take them all in holistically do we find the true nature of His character and gospel. Here is one instance in which He chooses to clarify some of His other words that were given to imperfect vessels for different purposes. He is describing hell and damnation.
Doctrine and Covenants 19:6-7, 10-12
6 Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.
7 Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.
10 For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore—
11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.
12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment.
It seems to indicate here that God isn’t planning on banishing anyone to hell forever. When He says eternal or endless, He is merely naming Himself as the deliverer of these punishments. In verse seven, it sounds like He’s explaining His use of passionate language; He wants it to work in our hearts. In this same section, He warns Martin that the pain of not repenting will be exquisite. He wants us to avoid that and so He uses inflammatory language to work in our hearts. However, this is an instance where He is clarifying what He means. “Endless” might not mean exactly what we think.
Here is the related quote in the institute manual; it’s long but worthwhile.
Elder James E. Talmage taught, “To hell there is an exit as well as an entrance. Hell is no place to which a vindictive judge sends prisoners to suffer and to be punished principally for his glory; but it is a place prepared for the teaching, the disciplining of those who failed to learn here upon the earth what they should have learned. True, we read of everlasting punishment, unending suffering, eternal damnation. That is a direful expression; but in his mercy the Lord has made plain what those words mean. ‘Eternal punishment,’ he says, is God’s punishment, for he is eternal; and that condition or state or possibility will ever exist for the sinner who deserves and really needs such condemnation; but this does not mean that the individual sufferer or sinner is to be eternally and everlastingly made to endure and suffer. No man will be kept in hell longer than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better.”
I love this quote. It makes perfect sense to me, and it fits in perfectly with the character of the God that I know and worship. Punishment that never ends (even after it has changed the sinner) seems incongruent to me. I feel like everything God uses is to help us progress and hell is no different. It’s not really about punishing us because we disobeyed Him and He’s offended. He is trying to teach us, and sometimes we’re stubborn and will only learn the hard way.
I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here and say that there are definitely quotes given by general authorities out there that would negate this idea, the idea that there is progression after Judgment Day. The truth about progression after this life isn’t entirely clear because the Lord hasn’t chosen to make it completely clear. However, I want to talk about the gospel for a while under this kind of context, vague as it may be. I’m not perfect. I won’t express my thoughts perfectly, and heaven knows I’ve probably got some of my understanding wrong. Luckily, the Spirit is there to help us discern truth and learn. I believe that exploring these principles, even before we have a perfect knowledge, can be useful as long as we remember we haven’t been given definitives.
Let’s talk about progression
I think sometimes we picture progression towards salvation as this linear path. We start at the baptismal gate, and then the path includes ordinances, covenants, and keeping the commandments. Then, at the end of it all, Heavenly Father pats us on the head and bestows salvation. There is merit to this rendering of the path of salvation.
I have recently started to look at it a little differently. Rather than picturing a linear path, I have begun picturing all the aspects of salvation in a circle. Here is the picture in my mind:
A couple things to note. All of the sections represent an aspect of salvation; this is obviously not a comprehensive list. It’s more just to give you an idea of what I’m picturing. The sections are colored to different degrees because at different points in our lives, we are building these kinds of salvation in our lives. At any given point, we are experiencing varying degrees of salvation and damnation, heaven and hell. Note that some of the sections aren’t colored at all because there are some aspects of salvation that we will only experience on the other side. If you look at the sections, you’ll note that these are all characteristics of the Savior. He is obviously experiencing full salvation.
In my mind, repentance has expanded beyond paying for what you did wrong. Anytime we progress within any of these sections, we are repenting. Repenting is about overcoming sin, not just saying sorry but also about reaching a sense of peace within yourself. It’s about healing so that we can feel okay in difficult circumstances like the Savior feels. It’s about learning to be happy in the realities that exist around you. If you think about it, the realities that exist around our Savior and Heavenly Father are not completely different from our’s. They know what it is to be mocked, ignored, and hated. They know what it means to be patient when someone doesn’t deserve it. They know what it is to find joy in fulfilling relationships. They have mastered this whole reality thing, and They know how to glean every possible ounce of joy from it. They’re not trying to teach us that someday all of those circumstances are going to disappear. They’re trying to change us so that we can be happy in the midst of these realities.
This model makes sense for different reasons than the linear path makes sense. For one, it has helped me understand why some people feel happier after they leave the church. You can be in the church and not find freedom from sin or fulfilling relationships; we see this happen all the time. Satan loves to skew the gospel so that we’re working hard but not reaping the benefits. When someone leaves the church, maybe they shed the weight of the guilt they weren’t supposed to be carrying anyway. In this specific aspect (namely freedom from sin), they have become more like the Savior and so they’re going to experience that particular benefit. Yes, I believe we have a responsibility to keep to our covenants, and I believe that covenants are crucial to our eternal lives. Please don’t misunderstand me. What I’m trying to express is that it’s very possible to live our covenants wrong, to live them in a manner where we’re denying ourselves salvation.
So let’s talk about true progress and finding true salvation.
Finding true salvation (finding the true blessings of the gospel) comes from our hearts changing. That’s why the Lord judges us by our hearts. It is only as our hearts change that we can find these feelings that are available in eternity. As we live honestly, we find peace. As we trust and accept the Savior, we taste freedom. The list goes on and on when you explore these different aspects of salvation.
Elder Oaks taught it this way, “Many Bible and modern scriptures speak of a final judgment at which all persons will be rewarded according to their deeds or works or the desires of their hearts. But other scriptures enlarge upon this by referring to our being judged by the condition we have achieved… The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts––what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts––what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.”
The commandments
So if the final test is who we’ve become, where do the commandments truly fit?
The commandments are the vehicles by which we grow in these sections. For example, we’re commanded to forgive. There are a lot of people who think that they feel better if they hold a grudge and that they have a right to hold a grudge. Maybe they do have a right. However, the grudge is only hurting them. Coddling that hurt and nourishing that anger only takes away from their own peace and salvation. The Savior doesn’t even have to “punish” us when we refuse to forgive. We’re punishing ourselves. It is the same for each of the commandments. They are tools that we utilize to grow in the feeling of salvation. Hopefully, we eventually realize that we’re experiencing crappy consequences from nursing grudges and we wake up and change. The commandments are vehicles for change. If they’re not allowing you to change and find salvation in greater measure, then you’re living them the way that Satan would have you live them.
We can also utilize the tools incorrectly. For example, you can hold the commandments over your head and beat yourself up with them. This greatly diminishes your feelings of freedom from sin, and it therefore diminishes the level of heaven that you’re experiencing.
Don’t use your tools incorrectly; don’t use them as Satan would have you use them. You’ll build the wrong project entirely, and you won’t find salvation. Rather, focus on developing your relationship with Christ (that was an important section I should have included) and use the commandments to pull you into the peace that He experiences. One of the commandments includes trusting Him and His ability to save. Make sure you’re utilizing that tool as well.
Back into the context of eternal punishment
Let’s talk about this perspective of progression in the context of what we were discussing from Section 19.
Have you ever met someone who didn’t know how to be happy? Maybe they kept getting married and divorced over and over again because they didn’t know that real love looks like choosing the same person through difficulty and boredom. They oftentimes found themselves confused as to why they couldn’t find real love and why it always seems to fizzle out. As another example, maybe it’s a person that just kept pushing others in damaging ways because they believed that eventually everyone abandons them; maybe they didn’t realize that it was their damaging choices that led to these abandonments.
These are varying hells. These are all aspects of hell that people have to work through in order to find heaven within themselves. These are big examples of hell, but there are smaller examples too.
Heavenly Father allows the consequences, the eternal punishment, His punishment, so that we stop acting in ways that bring hell into our lives. When we shed some of those damaging behaviors, we naturally find a little more salvation in our lives.
Let’s explore a different example, this time in the context of the next life. You know that doctrine about ministering angels? If you don’t choose to be sealed, then you’re going to end up being a ministering angel to someone who did choose to get sealed. At first glance, this sounds like some bizarre form of unending slavery. This is incongruent with the God that I know.
Rather, I believe it looks a little more like this: If you choose not to be sealed (and vehemently stand by that choice) then you get assigned a family. You’re not a slave. You don’t have to help. However, as “time” moves on throughout eternity, you realize you’re completely without purpose. There is no reason to live forever. It’s monotonous and downright awful. Slowly, you take advantage of the opportunity to serve a family. You start to learn that happiness in eternity requires losing yourself in the service of other spirits who are starting their journey of progression.
Some would describe this role of ministering servant as a form of damnation. I would agree with this assessment. You’re damned (stopped up) from experiencing a full measure of joy because you chose against a sealing that offered purpose in an endless existence. You’re trying to hold onto this false view that happiness means focusing on yourself and not adding extra “burdens” like posterity. Hopefully, you wake up one morning in the midst of your eternity and realize, “Hey, I feel a lot happier and more fulfilled when I go and help take care of others.” Hopefully, you shed the sinful notion and step more fully into salvation.
It could be easy to view this title of ministering servant as a punishment in the form of slavery. It could be easy to believe that God was mad that you didn’t choose what He wanted so He made you a servant. In truth, He offered you an opportunity to learn salvation.
And if we take those verses in Section 19 and that Talmage quote at face value, then maybe you get to progress beyond this as soon as you figure it out. Maybe there is an exit to this damnation, to this hell.
There are so many ways that this principle can be expressed. Heavenly Father utilizes the consequences we impose on ourselves to teach us. Hopefully (and I believe there is), there is an exit to these damnations and eternal consequences as soon as our eyes open to reality and we adjust our lives accordingly.
I’m not 100% sure what eternity looks like. I do know a couple of things though. I know that the God that I worship is fair and continually turned towards saving His children. I know that we are already in the midst of eternity. You don’t die, get to the other side, and all of a sudden, Voila! Eternity! You’re already living in eternity. You’re already choosing varying degrees of damnation and salvation. I testify of a Heavenly Father who teaches us what eternity looks like, and I testify that He knows what He’s doing. It’s wise to follow Him. And then, of course, I testify of a Savior who paid for the whole experience.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 18 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 24, 2025
Christ Will Lead You
by Autumn Dickson
As we prepare for this week, understanding the context for what we’re reading can help us understand what the Lord is saying and why He is saying it. It becomes a conversation with God rather than commandments and doctrines loosely tied together without much rhyme or reason. It also helps us connect to those who were receiving these revelations so that we can receive those same messages more effectively.
One of the background pieces for this week is the fact that Joseph and his associates are looking to officially create the church. A prophet has been called, and the Lord has revealed more of His word, but there is no organization to help keep doctrines correct and believers supported. A church creates a home to carry the gospel, and Joseph and Oliver wanted to do it correctly. The Lord encouraged them to study The Book of Mormon and what it taught about having a church.
The portion of this section that I want to focus on today revolves more closely around a few specific verses that have helped me in my relationship with Jesus Christ. It starts with some of the words He shared with Oliver specifically.
Doctrine and Covenants 18:2-3
2 Behold, I have manifested unto you, by my Spirit in many instances, that the things which you have written are true; wherefore you know that they are true.
3 And if you know that they are true, behold, I give unto you a commandment, that you rely upon the things which are written;
Here, the Lord is tenderly reminding Oliver that he has been given knowledge of the truth through the Spirit. He is encouraging Oliver to trust that.
As I’ve been pondering some of these early supporters, specifically Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, I’ve been thinking about just how difficult it would have been to lean into the restoration. Joseph’s story was quite miraculous, and it already had plenty of opposition. I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to place my weight on it or to even give it a chance to be true. I likely would have scoffed if someone told me they had plates but couldn’t show them to anyone.
Apparently, that was the case for many of the early believers as well. There are many times where the Lord encourages Oliver and specifically tells him that he has received revelation. As I read these sentiments from the Lord, I see that Oliver was exercising faith and getting involved, but that it was also likely difficult for him when he wondered if he was being deceived. I’m sure these moments of extra encouragement from the Lord were helpful.
I think of Martin. I feel like there were a couple of times in Martin’s history where he seems to be saying, “Okay. This is it. I know now. I know it’s true.” For example, I think of how Martin was given the privilege of seeing the plates. He cried out, “Tis enough! Tis enough! Mine eyes have beheld! Mine eyes have beheld!” This is completely my own opinion, but I feel like Martin was looking for this ultimate moment where he would no longer have to fight off doubts. He wanted to have this experience that he couldn’t question, almost as if he didn’t want to have to exercise faith anymore. I don’t blame him. I don’t think he was necessarily opposed to faith; he just wanted to feel secure that he’s moving in the right direction (especially since it was so new and small and different).
I think each of us know how these men feel.
I don’t know that I would have called Oliver and Martin faithless for needing encouragement or wanting security in their belief. Rather, I would describe them as people who wanted to avoid being deceived. This is actually a wonderful trait to have. We should all seek to avoid deception, but it’s a fine line to walk. We’re trying to allow enough room for faith that the Lord can help it grow, but we’re trying to avoid being led down paths that will take us away from Him. But the very basis of faith means we don’t know if we’re on the right path. We don’t want to open ourselves up if we’re on the wrong path, but we also don’t want to close ourselves off if we did happen to pick the right one. As you can see, it can feel messy.
The Lord is in a tricky position here. He has to require faith. Faith is the only avenue by which He is able to help us grow into exaltation. Acting by faith was necessary, but the Lord knew that the other side of this coin meant that there would be some fear and missteps. Sure, perhaps your path feels good, but is it truly the only true and right path?
Tricky, tricky.
Context of the church
This paradox is even more interesting in the context of the church where we’re taught that we have the correct path. In many other denominations, it’s much more acceptable to sway between preachers and differing interpretations of the bible. If you decide to be Methodist after growing up in a non-denominational home, you likely won’t get as much kickback from home. You also probably won’t feel a ton of fear that you’re moving in the wrong direction because a portion of your beliefs rests in the fact that you’re saved so long as you believe in Christ.
The stakes rise in a church that claims to be Christ’s true church on the earth. This can create more fear which is hugely counterproductive to faith, and that fear often gets multiplied when outside pressure argues that you’re no longer following the true Christ.
So how do we cope?
How do we face the mounting pressure with faith? How do we reconcile unknowns when the church is teaching us that we need to follow the correct truth but we have to coexist with the fact that faith is required? How do we seek to follow the correct truth and be content with faith at the same time?
I’ll give you my favorite answer. Develop a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Let’s go back to what we were talking about in the beginning. Oliver and Joseph were trying to form a church. They had already been given a lot of doctrine, and a prophet had been called, but the Lord wanted to organize a church. Why? The church was always meant to support the gospel; it’s not the gospel. Don’t get me wrong; the church is very important. However, it is the gospel and proper authority that are necessary for salvation.
Perhaps separating the two may seem nuanced and silly, but Satan loves to distract us from the gospel by using the church. He wants us so caught up in the commandments that we forget the commandments were meant to bring us to Christ and his gospel. Christ gets cut from the equation, and we end up dissatisfied and fearful.
We wonder if we’re in the right church. We wonder if all of the extra stuff we follow is necessary or superfluous. We wonder if we’re on the right path. This is actually just another manifestation of hyperfocusing on the church rather than allowing the church to bring us to Christ.
Let’s step away from the church aspect of it and look specifically at Christ. Let’s temporarily step away from the question of whether we’re in the right church and on the right path.
Who is Christ? He is the source of our salvation. That doesn’t just mean He lets us into heaven. It means that drawing closer to Christ naturally brings us into a state of salvation. We experience aspects of salvation regardless of whether we’ve been freed from mortal constraints yet. Perhaps our church is His church on the earth, but let’s not explore that specific concept too closely as of yet.
What else do we know of Christ? We know He is perfectly fair and loving. We know that He seeks our salvation. We know He is immensely powerful, that He knows us so well, and that wants to help us come home.
If we truly believe these things about Christ, the fear dissipates. If you get to know Christ as He is, you know that He can lead you along. You feel that He won’t abandon you for missteps. You can feel that He is not the type of Being to cast you off in impatience. He stands ready to walk you through nuanced lessons that clarify truths about Him. As you draw closer to Him, you feel salvation more and more in your life.
Now let’s bring in this portion about church.
Everything we find in church was simply meant to facilitate that relationship. The Word of Wisdom keeps us free from potential addictions that make it really, really hard to hear Him. Going to the temple, taking the sacrament, all of these things were meant to point us to Christ where we find freedom from hell and its associated aspects of fear.
We wonder and worry whether we’re in the right place. We stress about our salvation. These feelings often come from focusing on church as our salvation rather than as a facilitator of a relationship with Jesus Christ who is the true author of salvation.
You find heaven with Jesus Christ because He is heavenly to be around. If He was truly the type of Being to cast off spirits into eternal fiery pits because they were born into circumstances that kept them from the truth, then I’m not so sure I would feel heaven around Him. I’d probably just be afraid of Him. Which is ironic. Because fear is associated with hell.
Back to our previous context…
Let’s put it back into the context of Oliver and Martin. They were afraid of being deceived. Awesome. We don’t want to be deceived. But place that fear in the context of Christ. If those men had understood and trusted in the Lord as He is, they would have known that God doesn’t just say He is loving. He doesn’t just profess to be fair and to seek our salvation. He actually does so. They didn’t have to be scared if their hearts were truly seeking Him without guile; He has the power and desire to lead us.
If they had truly misstepped by following Joseph, they merely needed to cling to Him and He would have led them along where they were supposed to go.
I believe in a Savior who actually saves. I believe that He seeks us out and leads us along. I believe that as we seek Him back, He can usher us in the right direction and we don’t have to live in fear of missteps.
I also believe that as we cling to Christ, we are drawn towards this church. If we are utilizing the church to get closer to Christ and to feel Him, we will find Him.
The Book of Mormon has brought me closer to Christ. My temple covenants have brought me closer to Christ. Priesthood blessings, listening to prophets, and all sorts of church-specific things have brought me closer to Christ. And it is in Christ that I have found Someone who knows me perfectly. He knows how I want to do the right thing and follow Him. He knows my desire to be obedient to what He wants, and I know He doesn’t want to cast me off when I don’t have everything right. Rather, I trust Him to keep leading me. If He is as perfect and fair and loving as He says He is, He’s not going to abandon me. I seek Him, and He will lead me. Thus far, I have felt that I’m headed in the right path and I trust Him to help me continue on towards Him.
I personally testify that this is Christ’s church. As I have leaned closer to Christ, I have felt drawn closer to the covenants I’ve made here. I have come to deeply appreciate all the support systems He has given me to remain close to Him. I have found answers that make sense, and I have found assurance when I don’t understand. I have found so many aspects of salvation today; I don’t have to wait to experience that goodness.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 4, 11–12, 14–16, 18–19 – Mike Parker
Feb 18, 2025
Joseph Smith’s early revelations to family & friends; restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood
(D&C sections 4, 11–12, 14–16, 18–19)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
There has much scholarly debate on the date of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood. The traditional view is that it took place in late May or early June 1829, within a few weeks after the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood. A handful of scholars argue for a later date, however—some time in the summer of 1830.
For an examination of the historical evidence, see Brian Q. Cannon and BYU Studies Staff, “Priesthood Restoration Documents,” BYU Studies 35, no. 4 (1995): 166–73.
In support of the later view, see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 162–63. Ben Park sums up the argument for the later date in “Dating the Melchizedek Priesthood Restoration,” The Juvenile Instructor, 4 August 2008.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 12–17; Joseph Smith—History 1:66–75 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 17, 2025
An Uncomfortable Offering
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we learn about some of the men and women who supported Joseph in the early days of the restoration. He was supported through friendship as well as monetarily as he worked to complete the translation of The Book of Mormon. We also learn about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood. John the Baptist came to Joseph and Oliver and conferred that authority upon them.
Plenty could be written about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, but there was actually another part of this event that I wanted to speak about. Though I am far from qualified in historical perspectives and details (especially pertaining to ancient Israel), I do believe that there is insight that I can give.
Here is the one verse that describes the restoration of this preparatory priesthood.
Doctrine and Covenants 13:1 Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.
The portion that I would like to try and give insight on is the last phrase, “until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” This verse, accompanied by many quotes in the Doctrine and Covenants institute manual, teach that there will be a literal animal sacrifice at some point in our dispensation. It will be performed when the sons of Levi can do so in righteousness. The sons of Levi were priesthood holders in ancient Israel, and so we can understand that this is talking about modern day priesthood holders. Will they be specifically from the tribe of Levi? Maybe. The manual simply states that they will be priesthood holders.
There will be some who cry that the Law of Moses was done away, and they are absolutely correct. It was done away. However, animal sacrifice existed before the Law of Moses and so there’s no reason to assume that it was permanently done away with the rest of the rights and rituals included in the Law of Moses. One quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith stated that this sacrifice would be done in the beginning of the Millennium when Christ is already on the earth.
Even when we take into consideration the logical arguments for the restoration of all things, this is simply not one of our friendlier doctrines. It’s not necessarily one of the things that we like to expound upon and focus on. It’s uncomfortable.
And therein lies my exact insight. Let’s explore.
Uncomfortable
As I was reading about this sacrifice from the sons of Levi, I remember trying to think of how I would explain something like that to a friend or even to my children. I don’t know how to describe the necessity of animal sacrifice when I’m not even sure why it’s totally necessary.
I tried picturing what that sacrifice might look like, and once again, all I could feel was extreme discomfort. Society has definitely evolved away from this kind of death. People used to raise their own meat and personally slaughter their dinners. If they didn’t personally raise the meat, they hunted wild game and still personally slaughtered their dinners.
We have begun to feel that we’re more sophisticated because we get to eat the meat without watching the animal die. It offends our more sensitive natures because we’re just not used to it anymore. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think there is anything wrong with sensitivity towards death. However, I wonder what we have lost when we’re so far separated from the process that we don’t appreciate what occurred to put that meat on our table.
I promise this isn’t a discourse on being vegetarian, and I do have a point. This is an uncomfortable doctrine for us, in a different way than it was uncomfortable to ancient Israelites.
The point of animal sacrifice was to teach the Israelites about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But why does an innocent animal need to suffer so we can learn a lesson?
And then it hit me. How much more poignant could we get?
An innocent, perfect Man sacrificed Himself so that we could come to earth to learn the lessons we needed to learn in order to live an eternal life. We rejoice in this doctrine. We’re grateful for it. It is our central doctrine that the Savior offered Himself up so that we could be saved.
It’s easy to reflect on the gratitude; it’s much more difficult to grasp the sacrifice.
The ancient Israelites were probably not as sensitized to animal death as we are, and so the lessons probably felt a little different. They understood that meat on their table meant death. We’re far removed and so we don’t often think about it, but perhaps that just drives the lesson home even more.
Animal sacrifice feels uncomfortable, even wrong. Isn’t there some other way we can learn about the atonement of Jesus Christ? Now take these direct feelings and apply them to the sacrifice of the Savior. Expand this poignant lesson to exactly where it’s supposed to be: our Redeemer. I wonder what kind of emotions would be evoked if we could see a vision of the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross before our eyes. It would certainly be uncomfortable since most of our modern societies have moved away from brutal torture methods. I wonder if it would also evoke emotions such as, “This is wrong. He is good. Why are we letting this happen? Surely there is another way!”
It is not enough to logically understand the atonement of Jesus Christ. If we want to feel the depth of the love He holds for us, if we want to experience gratitude to the level it deserves, if we want His sacrifice to change us, we have to experience the atonement emotionally. I’m not saying we go out and sacrifice an animal to let the lesson hit home. I’m just going to leave those particulars to the Lord when He gets here.
But as much as we love the atonement of Jesus Christ and all that it brought us, do we also understand the depth of darkness that accompanied it? Do we feel gratitude because we understand on some kind of level, just what He had to innocently go through in order to save us and give us an opportunity to come here and learn? In some ways, you might argue that the atonement of Jesus Christ isn’t even one of our friendlier doctrines. There was so much love associated with it, and I believe it is absolutely right to celebrate that love and the victory. I believe it’s also important to recognize what that victory cost.
Abraham and Isaac
It makes me think of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was commanded by the Lord to offer up Isaac, his only son, as a sacrifice. I always hated this story in the Old Testament. What kind of God would command His child to sacrifice their posterity? It seemed so jarring and so incongruous with who I believed God to be.
It wasn’t until I studied this story during Come Follow Me that I noted something I had never seen before. Abraham was commanded by the Lord to offer up his son as a sacrifice, but the Lord never intended on actually accepting the sacrifice. It was never part of the plan for Isaac to actually be sacrificed.
Some would argue that it was cruel of God to put Abraham through such an ordeal. I can’t imagine the agony. I think about one of my kids dying, and I can’t breathe. I don’t know if I would have had the strength to follow that commandment even if it did directly come from God (and that’s just plain honesty on my part). I would probably assume I had gone completely mental and checked myself into a hospital.
But once again, Isaac wasn’t ever actually going to be sacrificed. I wonder if Abraham just kept repeating to himself that Isaac would be resurrected one day, and they would be reunited. I wonder if that brought him any comfort because I don’t think it would have brought me any comfort. Though it was harrowing, absolutely excruciating to have experienced the trek up that mountain, understanding what was at the end of it, I wonder if anyone understands the atonement on the level that Abraham understands.
When the angel came and stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, I picture Abraham falling over himself to hug Isaac, sobbing into his neck. I picture the tears of joy that his son was mercifully spared. And later, when things got quieter and Abraham had some time to ponder, I picture more tears as Abraham finally understood just what it meant that Heavenly Father had sent His innocent Son to be sacrificed for the sins of the world. I picture the depth of gratitude Abraham must have felt that while he didn’t have to sacrifice his own son, Heavenly Father had chosen to send Jesus for our sake.
Maybe Heavenly Father kept reminding Himself that Jesus would be resurrected and returned to Him. I wonder if that helped, or I wonder if the nature of a parental relationship denies the ability to skip the pain in favor of the ending. Heavenly Father didn’t turn away from the brutality that was necessary in order to save us. The least we can do is appreciate that on some level.
I testify that rejoicing and gratitude and worship are all wonderful things that the Lord encourages. I testify that our salvation was worth it to the Savior. I also testify of uncomfortable doctrines that were necessary. I testify that saving us required a sacrifice, a sacrifice that we are hard-pressed to comprehend because of the elevated and sanitized societies in which we now live. That’s not to knock the progress we’ve made as humanity away from public executions by crosses, but it is to help us understand that the atonement of Jesus Christ carries a depth of pain that matches the depth of joy that has been offered to us. Appreciating that on some level (because heaven knows we can’t yet fully understand and appreciate it) goes a long way in pushing us towards the Savior for what He did, and that is a worthwhile endeavor to find that appreciation.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
The Cause for Christ Episode 3: Faith, Psychology, and the Power of Worldviews with Jeffrey Thayne
Feb 15, 2025
In this episode, Ryan welcomes Jeffrey Thayne for an insightful discussion on worldviews and their profound influence on discipleship and beliefs. They explore the role of psychology in both conversion and deconversion, the powerful impact of media on our perspectives and psychological intuitions, and the fascinating dynamics of fast vs. slow thinking. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation on the intersection of cognitive psychology and the gospel.
Dr. Jeffrey Thayne graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology. He completed his doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. He spends time mentoring students at Brigham Young University-Idaho and writing about the intersection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and culture.
Ryan Sorensen is a native of Cache Valley, Utah. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at BYU-Idaho and is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Abilene Christian University, with plans to become a chaplain after graduation. Ryan previously hosted a podcast called The Whom Shall We Go? Podcast. In his spare time, he enjoys being involved in interfaith work, reading about Latter-day Saint theology and history, training for triathlons, and spending time with friends and family.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 10–11 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 10, 2025
Hyrum’s Influence
by Autumn Dickson
When I was younger, I wanted to be a famous singer. This desire followed me into college where I temporarily dropped out of school to pursue a music career. I wanted it so badly. I remember wanting it so much that it would hurt to listen to music on the radio.
I ended up getting really sick, and I left Provo behind. I lived with my parents for about a week before moving in with my sister and her family for six months. Most of my connections were back in Utah, but I kept clinging to that desire. I was doing everything I could to keep my dream going from far away.
I remember sitting on my sister’s bed and talking to her about it. She was trying to talk me out of remaining in the music industry because she knew the dangers that existed there. It wasn’t until later that my eyes finally opened to everything I was being exposed to during that period of my life, and so I didn’t see anything wrong with my pursuing a music career. I didn’t feel like there was anything innately wrong with my desires, and I didn’t plan on letting go of my testimony either. I felt that I could be an example to a lot more people with a microphone in my hand.
My sister responded with a very valid point that Jesus had gone about his gospel very differently. He preached to crowds, but He didn’t seek huge crowds and stadiums. He often ministered one by one.
This principle has expanded in a great many directions for me, but let’s take a quick look at Hyrum before diving further into this principle.
Hyrum
Hyrum sought out Joseph so that he could learn the will of the Lord concerning himself. There were a few things that the Lord counseled him on, but here is one such thing the Lord told him.
Doctrine and Covenants 11:8 Verily, verily, I say unto you, even as you desire of me so it shall be done unto you; and, if you desire, you shall be the means of doing much good in this generation.
Hyrum did desire to do good, and Hyrum did do good.
Now a grand majority of us know who Hyrum Smith was. We know he was the brother to the prophet and that he was a martyr right alongside his brother in Carthage Jail. However, how much do we really know about Hyrum? What “important” callings did he hold? Where did he serve missions and how many people did he baptize? Who was he married to and how many children did he have? How many stories do we have of times when Hyrum supported his brother in the very heavy mantle of dispensation head? In what ways did Hyrum directly contribute to the restoration of the gospel?
I’m sure there are plenty of people who could answer these questions and give us very clear pictures of how Hyrum contributed to the restoration of the gospel in our dispensation. However, I would argue that there are also plenty of people who don’t know much about his specific contribution, myself included. When you extend that beyond members of the church, I would venture to guess that a huge majority of people on the earth know nothing about Hyrum Smith. Many people have likely heard of Joseph Smith, but no one knows about Hyrum despite the role that he played in restoring Christ’s church on the earth.
We logically know that we can do “much good” without getting any recognition, and yet, has that knowledge sunk into our hearts? Do we believe that we can have a profound influence in God’s kingdom in these latter days? What does a profound influence look like in your mind? At what point would you look in the mirror and think, “There it is. I have made a difference”? Do you only picture general authorities, temple presidents, mission presidents, and social media influencers?
There are two truths I want to share. One, you are capable of doing much good, just like Hyrum. And two, it is highly likely that your indelible mark will be obscure, but no less important for it.
You are capable
When someone tries to tell you that you can change the world, perhaps you laugh and think, “I could never speak to huge crowds, and I’ll never hold a ‘big’ calling.”
If we want to step up and step into the roles that God has prepared for us, we need to redefine the characteristics of having a profound influence and we need that new definition to sink into our hearts to the extent that it changes how we act on a daily basis. When we understand what “profound influence” looks like, we feel differently about ourselves and it changes the actions we prioritize.
When we shed erroneous ideas that our influence has to look a certain way in order to be “world-changing,” we open the door for Heavenly Father to utilize us in His powerful way. When we have faith in Him to the extent that we believe He can magnify our abilities, we step out of our own way. We allow Him to be powerful through us.
Heavenly Father’s plan was meant to be built on the shoulders of millions; He set it up that way on purpose. The biggest successes in Heavenly Father’s plan are souls that want to go home to Him, and the biggest influence in that specific kind of success happens on a very individual basis.
I’m not looking to make this political, but I believe it illustrates a very physical aspect of my point. I recently learned about how one of the American presidents tried to make college more affordable by utilizing government funds to help students go to school so that they could become successful. The colleges simply responded by raising their rates. I remember thinking and thinking and thinking. When it comes to big systems, I feel like there is always some unintended reaction that nullifies the good that could have come from the original action. I was sincerely trying to figure out a way to empower those who needed a leg up without bringing these unintended consequences. It occurred to me that the Lord never meant for everyone to simply be taken care of by some huge system. He wanted us involved on personal levels, not only giving financial assistance where needed but also providing the immensely necessary support to empower themselves.
This is not a commentary on what we should do on a government level because there are plenty of nuances to consider. It is a commentary on the fact that I believe Heavenly Father meant for all of us to be involved in the lifting on a personal level. He wanted each and every individual to make a difference. This was the most powerful way to actually make a difference, and it would change us.
He wants you to be involved. He wants you to believe that you can make a difference no matter what you look like, how good you are at speaking, and how talented you are at proclaiming your testimony. He wants you to believe that you can utilize you as you are, to utilize the unique gifts that He gave to you to make an enduring mark on the world.
It comes quietly…
Because He wants everyone to be involved on an individual basis, it makes sense that most of the marks that we leave will not likely be recorded in history books. This has a couple implications. If you find yourself questioning your ability to really change anything for good, then you can take comfort in the fact that your quiet, daily discipleship is likely already making the difference the Lord wants you to make. If you find yourself wanting to make a “big” difference, then you probably need to redefine “big.”
Think about it. Even if you have been foreordained to hold some of the “louder” roles, a lot of the actions that led these famous characters to those historic roles came quietly.
Paul wrote letters in a prison. Abinadi died without knowing how his words would hold any effect or that his story would be recorded and passed on through generations, and I would be willing to bet that some of Hyrum’s most influential contributions to the restored gospel came in the form of his quiet and simple belief in his brother’s calling. The weight that Joseph carried was heavy, and Hyrum’s support helped to carry it. It enabled Joseph to carry it. It enabled the gospel to be restored.
And let’s not forget that the single most important event in the history of the earth happened with one Man in a garden. His friends fell asleep, and He was alone.
Even if you can trace your testimony back to one incredible insight given by a speaker in General Conference, a study of neuroscience teaches us that our brain is built slowly through repeated experiences. Even if it took one conscious comment in Conference, your brain was being prepared far before that. The gospel spreads person to person, and it is retained as we interact and have positive individual experiences with good friends, family, and especially the Savior.
More than likely, the incredibly important influence you will have on the world will come in the form of a link in a chain. It may not sound like the most romantic way to change the world, but it is no less significant. My great, great grandmother taught her children the gospel. I don’t know all of my great, great grandmothers’ names, but I know that because they chose to teach the gospel to their children, I have the gospel in my life. Because they chose to teach their children and not break that link, it made its way to me. The testimony and lessons from my great, great grandmother’s life have found their legacy within my own life. Her influence (though I do not know it directly) has done more to help my conversion to the gospel than any “famous” gospel influences. Because she loved and taught her children, my grandmother did the same. Then my mother. And now me.
What you give gets passed on, even if your name isn’t passed along with it.
I testify that Heavenly Father wanted each of us to take a role in His work. He wanted us to experience the happiness that He experiences as He works with us. He wanted us to feel the joy of working individual by individual, and He wanted us to observe the effectiveness of His plan for everyone to be involved with helping everyone. None of us need to feel more or less important. The only one keeping you from completing a work that is incalculable in nature is you. I testify that He can help you accomplish your great work in surprisingly small and quiet ways. Perhaps we are not aware of the influence that Hyrum had in this vital gospel dispensation, but the Lord is and that is the measure that matters.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
The Cause for Christ Episode 2: Scrupulosity (moral and religious OCD) with Dr. Debra McClendon
Feb 07, 2025
In this episode, Ryan sits down with Debra McClendon to discuss religious OCD, also known as Scrupulosity. Debra shares valuable advice for those navigating Scrupulosity while striving to stay faithful within the church. They explore what approaches tend to be effective, what often falls short, and dive into topics like consecration, burnout, and finding balance. If you or someone you know struggles with Scrupulosity, anxiety, or toxic perfectionism, we hope this conversation offers insight and support.
Debra Theobald McClendon, PhD is a licensed psychologist in the state of Utah and has interjurisdictional authorization to work with clients in most U.S. states. She specializes in treating those with scrupulosity, a religious and moral subtype of OCD. She is the owner of The OCD & Scrupulosity Clinic (ocdscrupulosityclinic.com) and is a member of the International OCD Foundation. She has been interviewed on podcasts, published articles, and published the book: “Freedom from Scrupulosity: Reclaiming Your Religious Experience from Anxiety and OCD.”
Ryan Sorensen is a native of Cache Valley, Utah. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at BYU-Idaho and is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Abilene Christian University, with plans to become a chaplain after graduation. Ryan previously hosted a podcast called The Whom Shall We Go? Podcast. In his spare time, he enjoys being involved in interfaith work, reading about Latter-day Saint theology and history, training for triathlons, and spending time with friends and family.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 6–9, 13 – Mike Parker
Feb 04, 2025
Oliver Cowdery became Joseph Smith’s scribe; restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood
(D&C sections 6–9, 13)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Elder Boyd K. Packer, “The Candle of the Lord,” Ensign, January 1983, 51–56. Elder Packer shared his insights into how the Holy Spirit communicates with us.
Jeffrey G. Cannon, “Oliver Cowdery’s Gift,” Church History: Revelations in Context. Cannon, a member of the Joseph Smith Papers team, examines the meaning of the “gift” the Lord spoke of in the earliest revelations to Oliver Cowdery (section 6, section 8).
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 6–9 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 04, 2025
In Every Thought
by Autumn Dickson
The Lord is speaking to Joseph and Oliver in the sections that we read for this week. There is a lot of fantastic material about how the Lord sets us up to try something new, knowing we’ll fail, but also knowing that we have to begin in order to learn. There are principles of revelation and how the Lord utilizes our desires to build up His kingdom.
One of the principles that the Lord speaks about is pretty straightforward.
Doctrine and Covenants 6:36
36 Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.
Let’s talk about these phrases.
Look unto me in every thought
“Look unto me in every thought,” is a rather lofty goal. I can hardly keep my focus when I’m praying, let alone when I’m trying to do anything else in my life. Perhaps there will come a day when the Savior takes up a grand majority of my thoughts, but I want to propose another interpretation of this phrase.
Perhaps the Lord did mean that He wanted us to have Him at the forefront of our minds constantly, but perhaps He also meant it more along the lines of, “View your thoughts within the reality that I’ve created.” Every thought isn’t necessarily going to be directly about the Savior, but we can take any thought and put it in the context of the Savior. Let’s look at just one example.
Lately, my family has been trying to find somewhere to live back on the east coast. There are a million moving parts, and we’ve found some places that we love. However, every time we start to move forward in a specific direction, the door gets closed. There was one house that we loved. It had been on the market for over a year. The second we started to take action to put in an offer, it was snatched up. This has happened repeatedly.
It’s gotten discouraging, and I have found myself inadvertently disengaging from the process. We’ve been in limbo, between houses and apartments for over three years now. I think what I crave most is some kind of plan. Luckily, I write my prayers every day and I figured it would probably be good to talk to Him directly about it rather than trying to squash any rising hopes or trying to talk myself out of discouragement. Instead of trying to force myself into faith, I decided to turn to Him so He could give me a different perspective. I wanted to be able to see the situation more clearly, and I knew He could talk me through the discouragement and get me to that point.
And He did. As I prayed and told Him about my discouragement, I felt the whispered perspective, “Do you really want Me to ignore My plan and just give you something now?” It almost felt as if He was telling me that He was willing to grant my desires even though they were contrary to His own. It completely flipped over everything in my mind. I don’t want my plan. I want what’s best for my family which is why I want His plan. I want Him to close the wrong doors and choose His timing. I don’t need to be discouraged because He’s setting things up for us. Why on earth would I choose anything else? Why am I discouraged when He has helped me know that He’s leading us right to where we’re supposed to be?
I took my original thoughts (discouragement, desire for permanency) and I looked at them through the lens of Christ; this made my thoughts feel very different. Gratitude replaced discouragement. Excitement replaced weariness. The Lord is guiding us. Instead of hurting over some of the places we had really wanted, I felt so grateful that He took it away from us because I was reminded that He has a plan. I want His plan.
This is not just true of situations that feel discouraging. If there is a thought that won’t leave you alone, that drags you down and holds you in place, put that thought in the context of Christ. If it’s difficult to see a clear picture, then pray about it. You don’t even have to figure out the Christlike perspective on your own; He did it for me! All I did was turn to Him, tell Him how I felt, and listened so that I could hear His response. He rearranged my perspective. He helped me look to Him in the thoughts that were pressing in on my mind.
And this goes for any thought. Thoughts of weaknesses and failures. Thoughts of blessings that were taken away. Thoughts of being treated unfairly. We can take our very real feelings and thoughts to the Lord, and He can help us see it through Him and His promises. As we see things the way He sees them, we change because we start operating off of clearer perspectives.
Let’s review that process again
I want to take the experience I had with framing my thoughts through the Savior, and I want to take the general principles so we can apply it in our own individual situations.
Looking unto Him in every thought and having it change you is not something you do on your own. Or, at the very least, it doesn’t have to be something you do on your own. When I went to Heavenly Father with my concerns over moving, I told Him everything I was worried about. HE reframed my thoughts in His image.
Concrete example time!
Sometimes my four year old gets into tiffs with his little four year old best friend. They usually do pretty dang good for four year olds, but every once in a while, they get worked up about something and it devolves pretty quickly. It’s funny because they often both go home (we live a house apart), they last no longer than an hour, and then they’re back to being buddies.
This is not my expectation in the slightest for my four year old, but imagine for a second that he had the maturity to pause before the tiff escalated. Imagine that he was able to reign in his exhaustion from playing in the sun all day and he was able to take a step back from all of his big feelings, and he suggested to his buddy, “Hey let’s go talk to my mom about this. She can help us.” That’s not going to happen, but imagine how much easier it would be for him.
I like to think I’m more mature than a four year old, but if we’re going to scale this, then I’m probably still spiritually around four years old when we’re comparing me to our Heavenly Father (why yes, that’s a completely arbitrary age that I threw out). My situations have often felt far more dire than the arguments I observe between my son and his best friend, but then again, my son seems to feel that their arguments are pretty dire. I can only imagine that my Heavenly Father sees the things that are troubling me and views them with more wisdom and more compassion when compared to how I view my son’s best friend issues.
My son is not capable of this yet, but I would imagine that he would feel a lot better about his arguments if he remembered how often I told him that I loved him. I would imagine that he would feel a lot happier and safer if he could remember to take a step back and ask me for help navigating the situation. I believe that things would run pretty smoothly if he trusted my love and wisdom enough that he turned to me in those precarious moments. Unfortunately, he’s young and often just reacts to what’s in front of him. That’s okay. That’s often how we learn, but let’s take this to what we were speaking about before.
Our situations may feel dire. They may feel like the end of the world. They may feel like it’s going to last forever. We may just simply react to whatever is put in front of us. But imagine how different things might feel if we turned to the Lord and let Him help us navigate things instead.
If Warner took a step back and thought, “How would my mom handle this situation?” I would be flabbergasted to say the least. If he actually successfully imagined how I would handle the situation, I would be even more blown away. But here’s the cool thing in our scenario. We don’t have to guess how our Heavenly Father would react! We can ask Him, and He can reframe our thoughts for us with His wisdom!
Sometimes we think faith says, “I can get over this. This isn’t a big deal. I just have to get it together and trust Him.” Maybe faith does look like that sometimes. But often enough, I have found that my more effective faith says, “I can turn to Him, and He can help me reframe my worries.” I don’t just tell myself He’s going to handle it; I allow myself to trust Him enough to handle it (or at least to walk me through it).
The next phrases in that same verse say, “Doubt not, fear not.” Perhaps those were two new commandments, and perhaps they were simply extensions of the first commandment. When we look to Him in our thoughts, when we remember His love and His promises and when we remember that He wants to support us, our doubts and fears naturally go away. It’s not something we force. We invest our energy into developing the relationship with Him so that we can trust and believe in Him, and then the negative takes care of itself.
I testify of a Heavenly Father and Savior who love us. I testify that Christ wants us to remember Him. He wants us to remember Him, not because He gets a kick out of being worshiped, but because He knows that our trust in Him has the power to change our perspectives on everything. He knows that remembering Him and all He sacrificed for us will bring us peace and joy, and that brings Him peace and joy.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 3, 5, 10, 17 – Mike Parker
Jan 28, 2025
Translation of the Book of Mormon; the Three Witnesses
(D&C sections 3, 5, 10, 17)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
A complete list of all the witnesses who saw or handled the gold plates or saw or participated in the translation process is available in Royal Skousen, “The Witnesses of the Book of Mormon,” The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Seven: The Transmission of the Text, Vol. 3 of The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2021).
Robert F. Smith, Gordon C. Thomasson, and John W. Welch, “What Did Charles Anthon Really Say?”, in Reexploring the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book / Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 73–75.
“Book of Mormon Translation,” Gospel Topics Essays. This article published by the Church explores how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and what physical instruments he used in the translation process.
Richard E. Turley Jr., Robin S. Jensen, and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Joseph the Seer,” Ensign (October 2015): 45–55. Turley (who was Assistant Church Historian and Recorder) and Church historians Jensen and Ashurst-McGee examine what the historical record reveals about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 3–5 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 27, 2025
Joseph’s Repentance
by Autumn Dickson
This week we find Joseph in an early difficult lesson. Martin Harris had faced mounting pressure from his family to abandon Joseph, and Martin wanted to show the early manuscript to his family to gain support. Joseph asked the Lord multiple times despite receiving no’s, and the Lord finally told him to do what he wanted. Martin took the manuscript and lost it. Joseph was devastated and experienced a season of repentance.
There are some very poignant details that can teach us very direct lessons about the atonement of Jesus Christ and how it works in our lives. It also includes details that teach us about repentance and progression.
Nothing need be lost
First detail. It teaches us about the atonement.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that nothing was really lost.
Doctrine and Covenants 3:1 The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught.
In this verse, the Lord was teaching Joseph that nothing was truly in danger. A long time ago, the Lord had prepared the way so that nothing truly needed was lost. Nephi had repeated some of Lehi’s information because the Lord knew that Lehi’s information would be the portion of manuscript that was lost.
What’s the implication here?
In my mind, I believe the Lord is trying to tell us that if we utilize His atonement, nothing really needs to be lost. In one example, if you’re excommunicated and rebaptized, your record shows your original baptism date and not the date of the second time you were baptized. This is exactly what the atonement of Jesus Christ is about.
When you make a mistake (even a mistake big enough to require excommunication) and combine it with true repentance, Christ’s atonement does something really special. It doesn’t just cleanse you. It takes the sin and turns it on its head. Look at Joseph’s story.
He lost the manuscript. What was the end result after true repentance? He was still the prophet that restored the gospel. We still have The Book of Mormon with all of the crucial details we needed previously. Joseph was cleansed and left with only the lesson he needed in order to be prepared to live with Heavenly Father again. The only lingering “consequence” was that Joseph learned better, grew stronger and wiser, and was protected from bigger consequences in the future.
This is the essence of the atonement of Jesus Christ. It cleanses us, but it also leaves us with the best of the best. That was the entire point of the Plan of Salvation. We could come down here and learn all the necessary lessons, gain all the necessary strength, develop all of the Christlike attributes, and Christ’s atonement would ultimately take care of all of the negative consequences.
No negative consequence will follow us permanently. Sometimes we may still have to fight lingering guilt. Maybe sometimes we’ve developed an addiction or formed a weakness that we’ll fight for the rest of our lives. However, none of it will follow us permanently. If we continually use the atonement of Jesus Christ, then it will actually just help us accumulate further strength.
Nothing need be lost. No opportunity, no blessing, no period of time is truly lost to us when we connect our lives with Christ’s atonement. Even the worst of sins can be flipped on their heads and turned into valuable lessons and strengthening experiences. The atonement leaves us with the good.
The definition of sin
The concept of repentance and what it truly is has expanded since I’ve started preparing these messages. I suppose the same has happened with the definition of sin. The concept of sin hasn’t exactly “expanded,” but it’s been made clearer in my mind.
Let’s look at Joseph’s heart again. We can’t judge exactly where his heart was, but we do know a couple of things. We know that Joseph loved the Lord. We knew that he wanted to do what was right by the Lord. We also know that he was deeply grateful to Martin and recognized what Martin had done for him. Joseph’s recognition of Martin’s support and his desire to please Martin wasn’t evil; in fact, it was the opposite. Those are usually marks of a good person.
And yet, the Lord allowed Joseph to believe he had lost his soul for a while. Why? Perhaps Joseph took his own guilt too far, but I have a different theory.
The “type” of sin I’ve most often pondered on over the past couple years is the sin of the heart. When we’re being ungrateful, using people, being selfish, and seeking our own ends at a high expense. I have learned just how significant it is that the Lord wants us to simply be good people who contribute to the atmosphere of heaven. I think this was a perspective I needed to focus on in my life so that I could let go of perfectionism and focus on the most important types of growth.
However, perhaps it’s time for me to shift my own focus just a bit.
Sin does include times when we disobey God even when our hearts are still primarily good.
Joseph would walk a fine line throughout his life. There would be no ceasing on the part of the devil to claim his soul. When it came to this particular sin of Joseph’s, it was not a horrible reflection on his heart. Yes, he was putting Martin above God and that’s an important lesson, but I don’t think I would classify Joseph’s heart as evil. And for me, this has been important to understand.
We know that progression continues after we die. We know that we will still have to work towards perfection as we reach the other side. Perhaps our hearts are good and we will know how to live in harmony with others around us, and this is an extremely important portion of being prepared to live in the Celestial Kingdom.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that preparation for the Celestial Kingdom extends beyond that. Perhaps there are paths of progression that we don’t fully understand yet, and it will require us to walk a line as fine as Joseph’s. When it comes to this type of sin, perhaps we don’t need to be crying out, “Oh I’m this terrible, horrible person!” but we do need to understand the gravity of obedience and its ability to keep us safe.
Plain and simple obedience protected Joseph. His heart was good, and this was crucial to the Celestial Kingdom but so was plain and simple obedience. He needed that obedience to survive the process of exaltation, and so do we!
Your heart can be good and pure, but if you’re not prepared to try and be obedient to all of His commandments, then you’re not going to be fully prepared for the Celestial Kingdom. There are aspects of the kingdom that we don’t understand; only God does. If we’re not ready to follow His words very closely, we’re never going to achieve the progression we need to reach our full potential.
That kind of obedience includes adherence to the words of the prophets even when we feel like their advice isn’t a big deal. It means following our temple covenants, including the covenant we made to wear our garments. There are lots of commandments that don’t necessarily pertain directly to having an evil heart, but they are still extremely significant to our safety.
Let me give you a physical example of this.
The Lord told the Saints that Zion would be built in Missouri. He then told the Saints to not move there all in a rush. He said that He would lead who moves and who stays, and He would direct the timing of them heading down there. The Saints ignored this, rushed to Missouri, and there was a major conflict.
The Saints had good hearts. They wanted to live in Zion. They wanted to build Zion. There is nothing evil about this desire in their hearts, but the truth of the matter remains. They didn’t follow the Lord closely enough to be obedient, and it cost them their ability to stay safely in Zion (the earthly equivalent of the Celestial Kingdom) and build it. There is a spiritual lesson here. If we can’t follow the Lord in obedience, we will not be prepared to receive all that He has even if our hearts are in a good place. The Lord knew something they didn’t about their journey, but they ignored Him. Their hearts were good, but it wasn’t enough.
I am not preaching perfectionism. Don’t turn it into perfectionism. The Lord took me on this whole learning journey where I learned the significance of the heart of the matter so that I could personally step away from perfectionism.
Now that I’m really thinking about it, this is still about the heart. Your heart needs to be good and turned outwards towards others, but it also needs to be so firmly planted in the Lord that obedience to His simplest commands comes naturally. You trust that He knows what He’s talking about, and you follow it.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who forgives. I testify that Christ suffered so that we could come here to gain everything we need and walk away with all the good things if we choose to follow Him. I testify that there is a purpose to obedience, that it protects us and allows us to walk that fine line all the way towards our exaltation. I testify that Christ’s standards are high because He loves us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
The Cause for Christ Episode 1: “Uncovering the Truth About Grace” by Ryan Sorensen ft. Brent Schmidt
Jan 24, 2025
We are pleased to introduce a new podcast series that will be hosted by Ryan Sorensen. In this first episode, he talks with Brent Schmidt about “Uncovering the Truth About Grace.”
Brent J. Schmidt earned degrees in history and classics from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in classics from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He teaches in the religion and humanities departments at BYU-Idaho. He specialized in Greek and Latin moralistic literature and he wrote and later published his dissertation on ancient utopian communities. He has published works on Biblical subjects including word studies about grace and faith. He is an author and editor of the BYU New Testament Commentary series. He enjoys reading, especially the Book of Mormon and Bible, gardening, collecting ancient coins, world travel, skiing and learning ancient and modern languages. For fifteen years now he has read at least one academic book a day. He and his wife, Judith, are the parents of one son.
Ryan Sorensen is a native of Cache Valley, Utah. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at BYU-Idaho and is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Abilene Christian University, with plans to become a chaplain after graduation. Ryan previously hosted a podcast called The Whom Shall We Go? Podcast. In his spare time, he enjoys being involved in interfaith work, reading about Latter-day Saint theology and history, training for triathlons, and spending time with friends and family.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 2; Joseph Smith—History 1:27–65 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 20, 2025
What is Required of Us
by Autumn Dickson
Like last week, I’d like to dive into Joseph’s story and find parallels to our own stories. We were not given the responsibility to restore the church in the last days, but we do have responsibilities given to us by the Lord. Every single one of us will hold callings, but even beyond that, every single one of us has more to give. When I speak of responsibilities given by the Lord, I am expanding that definition beyond formal church service. There are other labors you have been given to perform in this life. Some of those labors may include things like career choices and hobbies. We all have gifts to give.
As we read Joseph’s history, we get to watch as he learned difficult lessons. Hopefully, we’re wise enough to learn through him rather than through our own mistakes. We will always make mistakes, but hopefully Joseph’s openness about his own can help us avoid a few of them.
The principle in Joseph’s story that I want to talk about for this post is found in the following verse.
Joseph Smith History 1:59 At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. On the twenty-second day of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, having gone as usual at the end of another year to the place where they were deposited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me with this charge: that I should be responsible for them; that if I should let them go carelessly, or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be protected.
This is such a great microstudy on what Heavenly Father expects from us in our responsibilities. Honestly, it even extends beyond our formal callings and promises we made before we came here; this verse can teach us about what the Lord expects from us in this mortal life when it comes to being worthy to return to Him.
It’s actually on Him
I want to draw your attention to the very last phrase in the verse. Moroni tells Joseph that if he will use all of his endeavors to preserve the plates, “…they should be protected…” Note that this verse didn’t say, “If you use all your endeavors to protect them, you will be able to keep them safe.” It’s a small thing, but it holds a large key to our understanding.
The success of the Plan of Salvation rests on the head of the Lord. Making sure we’re clean enough to stand in the presence of God, temple work, missionary work, any and all worthwhile work is going to be done by the Lord. He frequently describes it as His own work throughout the scriptures. Even if Joseph had not been diligent and the plates fell into the wrong hands, do we really believe that would be the end? Do we really believe that it’s just too bad? The plates are gone. There is no Book of Mormon. The Restoration falls apart, and with it, the salvation of us all.
Obviously not. What kind of Lord would He be if He let the failings of one man doom the rest of us? It’s utterly ridiculous if you actually believe in the perfect fairness of the Lord.
The angel Moroni warns Joseph that if he doesn’t work diligently and responsibly, he will be cut off and he will lose the plates. But the plates were never actually in danger, not in the least bit. Even if Joseph had failed, the Lord had everything completely under control.
Which can be extremely comforting. It can also help us know what we need to be focused on.
But He still requires the work
Despite the fact that the Lord has everything well in hand, He requires the work of us. Even though the plates were never in any real danger, He required Joseph to work really hard to protect them. Why? For Joseph.
Here is an imperfect concrete example.
I have a daughter in gymnastics who learns stunts that I certainly can’t do. For a long time, the coaches will be right underneath her guiding her movements and keeping her from falling on her head. As time moves on, they remove the supports appropriately so that she can learn to do it on her own. They’re not afraid of her making mistakes along the way. They want her to be a gymnast which means she has to slowly learn to do it on her own. She has to put in work, but if they’re really good coaches, then she’s not really in any danger.
This imperfect example doesn’t translate completely, but it can help our understanding along. The Lord already has that gold medal coming in that competition regardless of whether you decide to participate. The work will get done. It’s His performance that ultimately matters when it comes to end results. However, He didn’t just want a gold medal. The gold medal is important, but so are His developed gymnasts. We aren’t working hard in the gym so that we can win the gold medal. It’s already won. We’re working hard so we can simply develop into gymnasts because being a gymnast is worthwhile in and of itself.
This is similar to our responsibilities as well as the whole of our salvation and exaltation. If our responsibilities are crucial to His plan, then the end results are already guaranteed. What is not guaranteed is our development and preparation. The ends for which the Plan of Salvation was created have already been won; it is not in any danger. However, if we’re not given the opportunity to work and develop, then we can’t reap the beautiful rewards of being a developed Being, and the Plan of Salvation ends up being a bust anyway (at least in our personal lives). Our team may have won the gold medal, but we won’t feel all the rewards of that gold medal because we didn’t grow.
This is true of our responsibilities. It is also true of our salvation. The Lord could easily continuously cleanse us and keep us in the presence of our Father in Heaven without burning up. However, we wouldn’t actually be feeling the Celestial Kingdom if we didn’t put in the work to become developed Beings.
Implications of this
There are some implications that come with this understanding.
When we view it from the outside without this perspective, here is what we see.
Joseph worked really hard to protect the plates, following promptings and trying to be creative in how he kept them safe from people who would try to take them. Nothing happened to plates. Therefore, Joseph protected the plates.
It would be easy to believe that Joseph had protected the plates, but not so. The Lord protected the plates, and Joseph grew. Yes, it could be argued that Joseph did contribute to protecting them, but that’s like saying my son keeps our house clean because he picks up his toys when I ask him to. My house was going to be cleaned either way; he was just able to accumulate growth and go outside because I didn’t ground him in order to teach him.
So what are the implications here? There are a few.
The first implication is that we let go of the pressure. Don’t let go of the striving, but let go of the pressure. The Lord already won. Successfully implementing the Plan of Salvation (or any plan, responsibility, etc.) is not on our heads. He will open the right doors, close the wrong ones, and give us the power to overcome obstacles when He deems necessary. If we are trying and taking advantage of the growth opportunities we’ve been given, we have nothing to fear.
The second implication is the fact that trying hard does matter but not for the reason we so often believe. We often believe that we have to try hard so we don’t fail. We’re supposed to be trying hard so we grow. Think of the gymnast coaches. They’re not trying to get my daughter to try hard on her own so that she can avoid mistakes; they’re trying to make her a skilled gymnast. The mistakes are inevitable but they’re so unimportant in the scheme of growth.
The gospel according to Autumn teaches this (and yes, that’s a disclaimer): a grand majority of the peace and joy we feel in the Celestial Kingdom comes internally. It’s not an externally granted blessing. We’re not going to be in heaven, receiving some divine equivalent of drugs that keep our bodies in a continuous state of euphoria. Celestial feelings come from becoming a celestial Being. And you have to try really hard to become a celestial Being, not because you’re capable of doing it but because that’s the only way you grow into one.
This is true of our salvation. It is true of any responsibility we’ve been given. Let’s pretend you were given the responsibility of finding the right plot of land for the building of the temple. I’ve heard of stories where Satan does all he can to stop the building. Angry neighbors, zoning issues, all sorts of legal hoops and prejudice can rise up in a huge wave against the responsibility that was given to a mere human. But if the Lord announced the temple, it’s getting built. Rather than putting the pressure on yourself to make sure it happens (because guess what..it’s gonna happen), view the obstacles you face with the right lens. The Lord isn’t hedging up your way because He is displeased with you. It’s not that you’re not faithful enough to bring miracles. The temple is only a portion of what’s important to the Lord, and He already has that on lockdown. The other portion (the one that is not so locked down) is your very real need for growth so that you can become like Him. The obstacles are not evidence of your failures in your responsibilities; the obstacles are chances given to you to be faithful and grow. You cannot lose if you try so proceed.
I testify that He won. All that’s left is our growth. So put in effort and put your heart into it for your growth. Try hard and hold all the gratitude and faith in the world because the ending is sure. You will be successful in all the ways that the Lord deems successful if you are truly trying.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Joseph Smith—History – Mike Parker
Jan 14, 2025
Joseph Smith’s childhood; the First Vision; Moroni, & the gold plates
(Joseph Smith—History)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
“First Vision Accounts,” Gospel Topics Essays, November 2013. An excellent summary on the Church’s website of Joseph Smith’s various accounts of the First Vision, along with a response to criticisms that he misremembered or embellished his accounts over time.
Dean C. Jessee, “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” BYU Studies 9, no. 3 (Spring 1969): 275–94. (The entire issue is devoted to the historical setting of the First Vision.) This article was updated and expanded as the opening chapter of John W. Welch and Erick b. Carlson, eds., Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820–1844 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press and Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 1–33.
Dean C. Jessee, “The Reliability of Joseph Smith’s History,” Journal of Mormon History 3, no. 1 (1976): 23–46. Jessee explores how the official history of the Church was compiled between 1838 and 1856, the historiographical methods the clerks used, and the limitations of the record.
Steven C. Harper, “Was Joseph Smith a Money Digger?,” BYU Studies 62, no. 4 (2023): 37–55. Harper evaluates the historical claims that Joseph Smith used his spiritual gifts to seek for buried treasure and find lost items.
The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast is a six-part documentary miniseries that explores the history and legacy of Joseph Smith’s first vision. The podcast recreates the world in which Joseph Smith was seeking answers to the pressing questions of his soul. Series host Spencer W. McBride interviewed historians and Church leaders for this podcast.
[The below is additional content not included in Mike Parker’s original lesson]
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Joseph Smith—History 1:1–26 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 13, 2025
Turn to God
by Autumn Dickson
For this week, we read the account of the First Vision of Joseph Smith. It is nearly impossible to overestimate the gravity of this event in the backdrop of the history of mankind, and we have it readily available to read and learn about it. When we read about what Joseph learned through this experience, we can learn a lot of direct truths that had been lost over time. There were doctrines that were explicitly laid out.
There are also a lot of gospel principles to be found indirectly as we read Joseph’s account. As we liken his story to our own story, we can find direction for where we’re supposed to go when we face similar experiences. Here is just one portion of the experience that Joseph recorded. Joseph had watched as religious fervor had overtaken the area and people were branching off into various Christian sects. It was all extremely passionate and intense.
Joseph Smith History 1:6 For, notwithstanding the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect they pleased; yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions.
Joseph found himself entrenched in religious hypocrisy. There are fewer hypocrisies that can be more damaging than the religious type.
We testify that we have the restored gospel on the earth. We testify that Christ is leading our church. I believe this to be true. In the same breath, this true church is being guided and utilized and lived by imperfect people. Within our wards and stakes, we find cliques, strife, pride, self-righteousness, Pharisaical zeal, and greed. We find abusers of power and secrets behind closed doors. I’m not trying to disparage the church. I believe we have the truth and authority. I also know that there are problems in numerous circumstances caused by imperfect people, sometimes done innocently and others done with nefarious intentions. Pretending this isn’t true just leads to disillusionment and a lack of progress.
Joseph’s parents stressed personal religion but disagreed on some religious aspects. While Joseph’s mother affiliated with the Methodists, Joseph’s father resisted organized religion. He eventually joined a Universalist society that argued religious sects weren’t important.
It would have been easy for Joseph to feel rather lost in regards to religion, and in many ways, he did feel lost. He observed his parents moving in different religious directions, and he observed plenty of issues within the church organizations available to him. It would have been easy for Joseph to just turn away from it altogether. It would have been easy to view it as a useless endeavor.
Luckily, Joseph’s parents did stress that personal religion, and this is precisely the principle I want to teach today.
When in doubt, we turn directly to God. Anything else will be insufficient in the face of confusion and disillusionment.
This is precisely what Joseph did, and it was a blessing in his own life as well as millions of others. When we run into issues in the church and feel, “This isn’t right,” we don’t have to turn our back on the entire institution in order to feel peace again. If you turned away from any imperfect system on earth, you would be turning your back on every system on earth. They are all run with imperfect people; there is no getting around that.
The only thing that has truly brought me peace as I’ve faced issues in the church is my relationship with Jesus Christ. I have tried various methods throughout the years, and some were sufficient for a time, and some led me in good directions. But ultimately, everything was inadequate without the Lord. I have tried ignoring, explaining away, finding scapegoats, and a myriad of other choices. It is only in the times that I’ve turned to the Lord and remembered my relationship with Him and who He is that I have found the peace that I was looking for. I find that the issues are so much smaller than all that I’ve been given. The hiccups are nothing compared to the goodness I find in the relationship I have with Jesus Christ.
A disclaimer…
Joseph turned to the Lord and found his very clear answer. He received what he had asked for. This is what many of us are searching for when we find ourselves faced with the same issues of confusion and disillusionment, but I have a disclaimer. Joseph’s story didn’t end there. It wasn’t a happy ending yet; it was the beginning of an arduous journey that would require everything of him.
I’m here telling you to turn to the Lord in order to find peace, but I feel that I should also make this disclaimer. Immediately as Joseph turned to the Lord, he found himself plunged into more darkness than he was before. Logically, we would think that the Lord would answer immediately when we have found ourselves in confusion and turn to Him. If He wants us to remain in the church so badly, wouldn’t He make that a bit clearer?
But for whatever reason (because there are likely various reasons all tailored to individual circumstances), the Lord doesn’t choose this path. When Joseph turned to Him, Joseph found himself in greater darkness than he had ever yet experienced.
It’s laughable to think that Satan would be trying to fight off God to prevent the First Vision. As I originally read this passage this week, I remember thinking, “That’s cute Satan; has that ever worked for you before?” But then I realized that Satan wasn’t trying to fight God and His light; Satan was trying to fight Joseph. Satan can’t beat God, and he knows that. But Satan also knows that he has won against us before, and that is what he seeks to do. If he can sever the connection between us and our Heavenly Father, he wins.
But that is only my first disclaimer. When we run into issues with the church and we make the valiant decision to turn to the Lord and rely on Him, we may find ourselves in more darkness than we previously found. This doesn’t need to scare us. We can recognize Satan and thwart him and hold on. Satan has no power over God, and he has no power over us unless we give it to him. There is a reason God allows the existence of darkness; it is not a sign that it’s time to turn your back on knowledge you’ve been given. It is an opportunity to hold out for more light.
The second disclaimer is that Joseph’s story still didn’t end there. Joseph received this miraculous vision, and then the heavens went silent. FOR THREE YEARS.
For three years, Joseph got nothing. And then even more years passed before the real work of restoring the gospel began.
When we choose to turn to the Lord, it doesn’t mean immediate deliverance from confusion. It doesn’t mean immediate answers or even peace. Sometimes it means more darkness. Sometimes there are long pauses and silence. We may find ourselves asking, “Why? I’m trying to follow You! Why are You making it so hard to do so?”
I cannot tell you why the Lord allows for periods of darkness, doubt, and confusion, and I can only testify that He does and I testify that He does it for a wise purpose in Him. Facing darkness and doubt and confusion do not have to be the end. We get to choose! We get to choose to remember the moments when He did answer, and we get to choose whether we’re going to remain loyal to those moments that we have received.
In the end, we may not get a bigger answer because we held on for longer. It is more likely that in the end, we will be better and stronger and more exalted because we held on for longer. Sometimes, the changes we find in ourselves can be some of the biggest testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I testify of a wise and loving Savior. I testify that only turning to Him will save us. I testify that having a relationship with Jesus Christ brings more joy and peace than any other avenue. I testify that He and His Father answer our prayers, and I also testify that they allow for periods of time for us to be tested. They know that periods of testing means that we will make mistakes and that some of us will choose to walk away, but there was no other way. They had to provide opportunities for us to choose our relationship with Them to the extent that They choose Their relationship with us. They don’t bail when They run into hiccups with us; the least we can do is hold on and trust. I testify that moments of confusion and darkness and periods of silence eventually give way to two things: greater light and a more exalted us. I testify that we can find these results if we choose to hold on to that relationship with our Savior.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 1 – Mike Parker
Jan 07, 2025
Introduction; reception, editing & publication of Joseph Smith’s revelations
(D&C Section 1)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
James B. Allen, “Line Upon Line,” Ensign, July 1979, 32–39. Church history reveals how the Lord has continually added to his people’s knowledge and understanding.
Melvin J. Petersen, “Preparing Early Revelations for Publication,” Ensign, February 1985, 14–20. Petersen explores how Joseph edited his early revelations into the form we have in our current Doctrine and Covenants.
“Mystery Solved: Who Wrote the Lectures on Faith?,” LDS Perspectives Podcast #44 (12 July 2017). In this illuminating podcast, Noel Reynolds, BYU professor emeritus and a long-time Book of Mormon scholar, discusses who wrote the Lectures and what Joseph Smith thought about them. (You can listen to the interview or read the transcript.)
Uncanonized Revelations From the Time of Joseph Smith
The Doctrine and Covenants contains revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith that were “carefully selected” from all the revelations that he had received. At least forty-three uncanonized revelations and inspired statements made by Joseph and other Church leaders were written down during Joseph’s lifetime.
The following is a list of known revelations that were received during the Prophet’s lifetime but not published as scripture:
Ca. early 1830: “23 Commandment AD 1830.” A revelation given to Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page, Josiah Stowell, and Joseph Knight Sr. commanding them to go to Canada to secure a copyright there for the Book of Mormon.
15 May 1831: “53 Commandment, May 15th 1831.” A revelation given to Frederick G. Williams, Ezra Thayer, and Joseph Smith Sr. regarding the disposition of land in Kirtland, Ohio, that had been consecrated by Williams.
17 July 1831: A revelation to Joseph Smith and other brethren on the preaching of the gospel to the Lamanites who lived in Indian Territory west of Jackson County, Missouri. (A contemporary transcript of this revelation is not extant; the only known version was written from memory by William W. Phelps in a letter to Brigham Young, 12 August 1861. Because the transcript was prepared thirty years after the fact, its accuracy should be treated with skepticism.)
Ca. 2 November 1831: “Testimony, circa 2 November 1831.” A document signed by eighteen brethren who testified that the revelations that were to be published in the Book of Commandments were “given by inspiration of God & are profitable for all men & are verily true.” (A similar statement by the Twelve Apostles was published as part of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.)
20 March 1832: A revelation commanding Joseph Smith to suspend work on his revision of the Bible and take paper to Missouri for the printing of the Book of Commandments, given in response to two questions asked of the Lord by Joseph.
5 January 1833: A revelation to Frederick G. Williams, calling him as a counselor and scribe to Joseph Smith and instructing him to consecrate his farm.
18 October 1835: A prophecy of Joseph Smith, received “by the Spirit of Revelation” in the Kirtland Temple, “that the distress, and sickness that has heretofore prevailed among” the Saints in Missouri would “be mitigated from this time forth.”
27 October 1835: The word of the Lord, received by Joseph Smith in answer to prayer, that Frederick G. Williams would arrive soon and successfully assist Mary Bailey Smith in giving birth to her first child.
1 November 1835: A revelation chastising Reynolds Cahoon for “his iniquities[,] his covetous and dishonest principles in himself and family” and for failing to “set his house in order.”
2 November 1835: A revelation to Frederick G. Williams, directing him to not go to New York to take care of Church business, but instead authorizing him to travel to preach the gospel to his relatives.
3 November 1835: A revelation directed to the members of the Quorum of the Twelve, reproving them for covetousness, inequality, lack of humility, and counseling them to repent and “prepare their hearts for the solem[n] assembly and for the great day which is to come.”
14 November 1835: A revelation praising Warren Parrish “because of his desires to do the works of righteousness” and promising him great blessings for his efforts as a scribe for Joseph Smith.
12 January 1836: A record of visions received by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Kirtland Temple, the first half of which was canonized in 1976 and is now D&C Section 137. The uncanonized portion contains a vision of the Twelve Apostles in foreign lands, fatigued and discouraged, with Jesus standing in their midst; Apostle William McLellin preaching and healing in the South; Brigham Young in the desert of the far southwest, preaching to “about a dozen men of colour” in their own language while protected by an angel; the Twelve in the celestial kingdom, the redemption of Zion, and “many things which the toung[e] of man, cannot discribe in full.”
November 1837: A prophecy of the Lord that “peace shall soon be taken from the earth,” for “behold saith the Lord, very fierce and very terrible war is near at hand, even at your doors.” (This prophecy was published in the November 1837 issue of Elders’ Journal as part of a message from Joseph Smith to “the Saints scattered abroad.” Cf. D&C Section 87.)
7 January 1838: A letter and revelation to Missouri bishop Edward Partridge, blessing him for his faithfulness and warning the Saints in Far West about “dissensions among them lest the enemy have power over them.” (A contemporary transcript of this letter is not extant; the only known version is in the handwriting of Edward Partridge Jr., in a book of family history given to the Church Historian’s Office in 1925.)
12 January 1838 (A): Revealed answers to questions about the procedure for holding a disciplinary council to try the members of the First Presidency for transgression. (This revelation clarified the instructions in D&C 107:82–84.)
2 December 1841: A revelation to to Ebenezer and Angelina Robinson, directing them to provide shelter and care for Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde and her children while her husband, Apostle Orson Hyde, served a mission abroad.
22 December 1841 (B): A revelation instructing John Snider to serve a mission to the eastern states and collect donations for the construction of the Nauvoo Temple and the Nauvoo House.
27 July 1842: A revelation for Newel K. Whitney that provided instructions for him to use in performing the sealing of his daughter, Sarah Ann Whitney, to Joseph Smith that same day. (A contemporary transcript of this revelation is not extant; see the historical introduction on the Joseph Smith Papers website.)
25 April 1844: A revelation to the Council of Fifty, declaring to its members, “Ye are my constitution, and I am your God, and ye are my spokesmen.”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 1 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 06, 2025
He Cannot Allow Sin
by Autumn Dickson
By the time Doctrine and Covenants 1 was written, Joseph had already written 60 revelations. In my mind, I imagine Joseph receiving communication from the Lord and writing it down so that he could try and follow and teach it. As time went on and more and more were received, it became clear that the Lord had plenty to say and that these sacred revelations should be made available to others. It hadn’t been originally considered that these words could be considered scripture; it wasn’t until later that the revelations were recognized for what they were. Joseph Smith and other church leaders decided to put them together in a book; this was obviously an inspired decision because the Lord stood ready to write the preface to His own book. This preface is Doctrine and Covenants 1.
The Lord shares a lot of goodness within this chapter. One of the things He chooses to include has been stated often enough before, but for some reason, it hit me a little harder this week.
Doctrine and Covenants 1:31 For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance;
The word that really hit me as I read this verse was “cannot.” The Lord didn’t say that He refused to look at sin with any allowance. He didn’t say He didn’t want to. He said He couldn’t, and I believe this is significant. I’m sure there are aspects of “refusing” and “not wanting to,” but He chose the word “cannot” for a reason.
I believe the word “cannot” (as opposed to the words “will not”) can help us to understand Him a bit better.
In verse 24, the Lord talks about how He gives His words to His servants in their weakness. It can be hard to capture His true attitude and meaning; if we’re being completely honest, it’s pretty much impossible to express it completely accurately. But I want to try and help clarify it a bit more, and He can continue to help me know when I’ve erred, instruct me when I’ve sought wisdom, and chasten me when I get it wrong. I already know that I’m not going to get this perfect, but I’m grateful Joseph published the revelations he published despite his own weakness. So let’s explore and add layers to our understanding of the Lord together.
Cannot rather than will not
Why can’t the Lord look at sin with any degree of allowance? Note that I’m asking, “Why can’t He?” not, “Why won’t He?”
Well there’s the obvious. If He is to remain perfect so that He can continue to be our Savior, He can’t let go of the prerogative. He has to remain wholly clean. An allowance of sin would probably forfeit the characteristic of perfection.
But I believe it extends beyond that. He can’t afford to look upon sin with any degree of allowance for our sake. It’s important to recognize and feel that because it helps us utilize this doctrine for our benefit rather than to our detriment. When we understand that He refuses to be accepting of sin for us (in comparison to picturing Him scowling down at us in our weaknesses), we understand that He is trying to lift us, not condemning us.
In parenting, boundaries are essential to raise healthy, happy kids. Oftentimes, from the perspective of the child, these boundaries can be perceived as a parent being angry or expecting too much (and sometimes that’s not inaccurate because we’re imperfect). However, it is possible to love and accept the child while maintaining the same boundary. I can look at my child and say, “I understand you’re tired, and I understand that you still need a lot of practice with your emotions. I understand that’s why you hit. I love you and will keep you with me. But hitting is not okay, no matter how tired you are.” I’m not expressing that the child is suddenly unacceptable. I’m not telling my child that they are a failure. I simply can’t afford to communicate the idea that it was okay for them to hit someone else. If I communicate, “It’s okay. You’re tired,” then what will my child choose to do next time they get tired? They’ll never seek to control themselves when they’re tired because I taught them hitting is okay when you’re tired.
When I approach my child with love and a strong, important boundary, I hope they will receive the right message. I hope they will receive the message that I accept them and love them even though I have to push them to be better and can’t look at sin with allowance. I can’t afford to. I have to (for their sake!) hold that boundary.
Sin rather than sinner
It is the same with our Savior. He loves us, but He can’t teach us that He’s okay with sin. It would be detrimental to our spiritual health and progression.
The word, “cannot” is significant, but so is the word, “sin.” He can’t look at sin with any degree of allowance. His atonement was literally performed so that He can look at the sinner with allowance. The entire reason He sacrificed Himself was so that He could allow repentant sinners into heaven. He looks at us and loves us and forgives us and recognizes our circumstances and weaknesses, but He holds that proper and fast boundary. He holds it because He loves us.
Sometimes, like a child, we look at verses like this and think, “He won’t ever accept me. He won’t forgive my sins.” We have to mature to the extent that we realize He can accept us and forgive our repentant hearts while maintaining his refusal of sin. We have to choose to see this verse for the act of love that it is.
There are few things more satisfying than when my kids recognize the love I put into my responses. It is so fulfilling when my kids feel grateful that I push them to do chores, to forgive each other, and to learn to control their tempers. I often teach this sentiment directly rather than hoping the message is inherently understood. When my kids are complaining that I’m requiring something of them (and when they specifically complain that I must not love them), I quite passionately explain that I choose to do these things because I love them. It has somewhat sunk in because when my oldest daughter is well-rested and in a good mood, she has expressed a sentiment along the lines of, “Mom, I don’t want to do this, but I know you’re making me do it because you love me.”
We are the child in this scenario! We can look to the Lord and say, “I see what You are expressing. I’m grateful that You want me to be more.” Like a child, we can choose to read that verse and see condemnation or we can see the wisdom and love of an Eternal Parent. We can refuse to allow Satan to make us believe that the Lord is turning His back on us because nothing would please Satan more. He wants us to get confused and misunderstand what the Lord is trying to say.
He that repents and does the commandments
There is a verse that comes right after the verse we read in the beginning.
Doctrine and Covenants 1:32 Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven;
This verse can be confusing. The Lord forgives those who repent and follow the commandments, but usually forgiveness and repenting imply the fact that we didn’t keep the commandments. Satan likes to whisper that we have to stop sinning before the Lord forgives past transgressions, but that’s not true either.
Let’s look at a parent and child again.
There are times in the lives of my children when they need to hear that I love them deeply. A lot of times, this need appears as misbehavior. They’ve done something wrong and if I want them to do better, a huge portion of my message needs to be the idea that I love them and they’re going to be okay.
I try to express this, and I try to express it in this extremely specific manner (even if not in so many words).
I don’t say, “I love you, but we have to do better.” I say, “I love you, AND we have to do better.” A very small word but a very significant difference. The conjunction “but” implies the phrase, “on the contrary.” However, the phrases “I love you” and “We have to do better” are not contrary; they’re complimentary.
I get it. This is such a nuanced little principle, but it’s so significant. If we can teach our loved ones and if we can learn this principle for ourselves, it will change the nature of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
We will hear phrases like, “Keep the commandments,” or phrases that imply, “We have to do better,” and we will begin to simultaneously hear the message, “I love you.” Because that’s exactly what those phrases are. They are messages, pleadings, and expressions of love. If we can connect those phrases, our children will better recognize the love of their Heavenly Father and Savior, and it will change their entire experience with this high-demand gospel. The high-demand will translate to high-love.
I testify of a Heavenly Father and Savior who love us. I testify that whenever They speak to us, there is an implied message of love. They feel that love constantly, and all of Their responses are drawn out of that love. It’s hard to understand and believe that because the responses that we sometimes give to others around us can be rooted in selfishness, but it is never so with Them. We can read any of their words and find the implied, “I love you,” because They perfectly love us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Dec 30, 2024
Joseph Trusted
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we are studying the bicentennial proclamation called, “The Restoration.” It has been approximately 200 years since the beginning of what we call the Restoration in which the Lord once again actively taught His gospel to a prophet on the earth. With the clarified doctrine came the priesthood authority to bind us to the Savior in a way that He could save us.
Proclamations are interesting things. They are official statements given by our leaders. They reaffirm and clearly teach exactly what we believe. Oftentimes, proclamations are given for specific audiences whether for the church as a whole or even to the world outside church membership. It can be extremely informative to those who know nothing about what we believe.
As for the rest of us, it can seem like a summary of things that we have been taught repeatedly throughout the course of our lives. I can find summarized accounts regarding the Restoration in a million places. Why did we need to send out yet another message with the same information?
Then again, why do we have stories in the scriptures that teach the same principles over and over? Why do we have monthly testimony meetings in which we hear the same basic idea that the Savior supports us? Why do we continue to go over the same material in general for years and years?
There are a lot of answers to this, but one pretty thorough answer is that we need to apply the gospel to our lives. Because our lives are constantly changing, the need to process and apply the gospel in different ways is necessary.
This may be called a proclamation rather than scripture, but in so many ways, they are incredibly similar. They are inspired words written by holy men. So in many ways, we can apply our same scripture study tactics when we read these words.
What do we learn from the Restoration Proclamation this week? How do we apply it in our own lives? Surely there are many different ways to liken these words to our lives as there are many different lives being led right now; let’s just talk about one.
The Restoration Proclamation testifies of Joseph Smith’s First Vision in which he went out into the woods to pray. He was confused about what he needed to do, and so he decided to turn to the Lord about it. In the words of our proclamation, “He had questions regarding the salvation of his soul and trusted that God would direct him.”
The salvation of his soul
At first glance, it may feel as though we don’t often turn to the Lord with the specific concerns that Joseph did. Perhaps we are seeking to follow the Lord and protect the state of our souls, but how often do we directly approach Him about the salvation of our souls?
And yet, how often do we approach Him with variations of that same question? If we really think about it, aren’t most of our questions regarding the state of our soul in one way or another? Whether we’re seeking answers to questions or pleading for help because we’re worried about something going on in our lives, it can often be drawn back to the fact that we’re looking to be safe and happy in our futures.
In this manner, we all can relate to Joseph. We all want to know that we’re on a path that’s going to lead us towards an eternal future that is going to be content and okay and happy. Even those living without religion in the world are seeking that same end; they just want to know that their future is going to be okay (no matter how long or short they may believe it to be).
It’s the next part of that sentence that not everyone relates to, and it’s that part of the sentence that can actually change our lives.
Trusted that God would direct Him
Joseph believed in a God who wanted to answer his prayer. He trusted that God would lead him in the right direction.
Joseph did not have a lot of knowledge by the world’s standards. His education was short-lived, and even the short-lived formal schooling was spotty at best. There were a lot of things that Joseph didn’t know, even religiously. I think of one experience Joseph had while translating The Book of Mormon. Emma described Joseph as becoming pale and asking her if Jerusalem had a wall around it. When Emma replied that it did (because it was described in the bible), Joseph was relieved because he was worried he had been deceived.
Joseph definitely learned the gospel throughout his mortal life and by the end of it, I would guess that he knew a lot about a lot, specifically in regards to spiritual matters. However, he didn’t start out that way. He started out very unlearned, but he knew the most important things. Potentially one of the most essential pieces of knowledge that Joseph had was that he knew God would answer His prayer and lead him along.
A knowledge of truth, any truth, is commendable and good. However, some truths are far more valuable than others. I grew up learning the gospel in my home and at church. I could recite any number of doctrines that we believed, not to mention different things I had learned at school. However, it took me a while to trust and feel and know that God wanted to lead me along in my life. Since I have become confident in that fact, my life has changed and become hopeful.
Do you know that God wants to lead you along? When you kneel down to pray, when you are faced with uncertainty, when you don’t necessarily hear any direct answers from Him, do you have a confident knowledge that He is there guiding the details? Do you feel safe in His ability to save you, in any aspect of the word “save?”
Confidence in every aspect of the word
Faith in a specific principle changes how you live your life.
When you have faith that you’re going to be alive tomorrow, you do your laundry and eat food and set things up to be prepared for the next day. When you have faith or knowledge (or if you find yourself at any point on the scale between those two) that Christ is actively involved, loves you, and has the power to deliver His promises, you look at everything differently.
Moments of limbo aren’t necessarily fun, but they don’t induce panic. When He is quiet, you aren’t scared that He’s mad at you; you trust that He will respond in a way that you can hear Him if He needs to respond. When you repent, you rejoice in the fact that your place with Him is secure because of His immense power. When you have a major certification test that will largely determine your career or when you are jumping into the unknown with your entire family, there may still be some hesitation and anxiety, but it doesn’t produce despair. Things may not turn out how you like, and it’s okay to feel disappointed about that. However, when you ultimately know that the Lord will guide you in the salvation of your soul, it ultimately trumps all the other emotions. You look forward to the future, when the Lord is going to fulfill all His promises, and it affects how you look at today.
This is true of any question we’re bringing to the Lord. It is true from the smallest details to the catastrophic times in our lives. The Lord will guide you in your salvation, and salvation includes the very mortal aspects of life that you’re experiencing now. He will guide you, but until you trust that He’s guiding you, you’re going to continue to struggle in ways that are unnecessary. So work on building that trust and knowledge.
Enabling power
When you know the Lord is going to guide you in the salvation of your soul, it changes how you feel about your day and your future. Beyond that, trusting in the Lord’s ability to guide your salvation makes you powerful.
I am convinced that it was Joseph’s trust in God that prepared him to open up the restoration and change the world. It was that specific knowledge that enabled him to survive his chaotic, traumatizing life, and it was also that specific knowledge that enabled him to move mountains. He knew that God, the Omnipotent and loving Being, was on his side. How could he fail?
When we experience God, both in our temporal lives and in the worshiping tools we’ve been given, we collect moments of trust. When we come to trust Him as Joseph trusted Him, not only will we feel more hope, but we will be the powerful tools He wants us to become.
I am a powerful mother who changes the lives of her children because I believe (and therefore, allow) God to guide me in how I choose to respond to the agency of my children. I am a powerful wife because I believe (and therefore, allow) God to guide me regarding how to be happy in my marriage. I am a powerful person because I believe (and therefore, allow) God to guide me in any aspect He chooses to do so. And when He feels quiet, I allow my confidence in His ability to reach me bring the peace I need to move forward of my own accord.
I testify of a Heavenly Father and Savior who are actively involved. I have seen it again and again and again and again, and thus far, it hasn’t gotten old. I have much more confidence in Him than I used to, but I still often find myself surprised by how prepared He is to pull me in the right direction. I testify that He is powerful enough to deliver, and I testify that He wants to deliver. If you do not feel at peace, then the only missing ingredient is your trust in Him. You don’t need to beat yourself up about that; it takes time to build trust. Don’t beat yourself up; rather, take the opportunity to get to know Him and allow Him to prove Himself to you.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Christmas – Autumn Dickson
Dec 21, 2024
As He Is
by Autumn Dickson
The message I want to share about Christ today is a message I have taught indirectly through other topics for some time. It is a message that has changed my relationship with Him, and therefore, it is a message that has changed my life into a joyful and hopeful one. I am so immensely grateful for it.
This year in Come Follow Me, we have read The Book of Mormon. It is called The Book of Mormon because of the prophet, Mormon, who compiled all of the records together so that they might one day be turned into a book. There is a book subtitle that is extremely important; book subtitles are meant to give context and help a reader prepare to look for the message that was meant to be received. The subtitle of The Book of Mormon is, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” The entire book was written with that purpose in mind. Every chapter was crafted to help us understand Him and how He works among the children of men.
There have been a great many times in my life where I have misinterpreted this book, and there will likely be many more times in the future where I likewise continue to misinterpret it. Because of these misinterpretations, I have often assigned characteristics to my Savior that simply don’t fit Him. I have seen anger and wrath, rather than desperate attempts to wake His children up. I have seen condemning warnings, rather than loving advice that was meant to challenge me and push me to live my life at a higher plane.
I testify that The Book of Mormon testifies of the true Christ, and I testify that the Spirit can help us to know Him as He is.
An extreme level
I want to teach what I mean on an extreme level. I teach it this way for two reasons: one, because I believe that seeing it in an extreme case can help us decipher it in more subtle cases and two, because I have observed a common phenomenon that I think could use a direct approach.
I have a dear friend that I grew up with; she was abused by her father. For a long time, she stayed close to the church and tried to follow its teachings. She went to church with her family as she watched her abusive father get called as a priesthood leader in the ward, and she would go home and listen to him scream at her family as they ate Sunday dinner together. In fact, she talks about how she can still smell the pot roast and hear her father yelling. He was manipulative and sneaky. He was narcissistic and controlling. When he praised his kids, it was because it made him look like a good father. When he spoke of his love for his wife, it was in his own defense of how he always treated her right. He was extremely insecure, and those closest to him suffered because of it.
And yet, despite the turmoil at home, many people at church adored him.
Our brains are funny things. The Lord created our brains in a very specific manner. Your experiences, especially those very early experiences at home, often form the framework with how you view the rest of your life. Your brain does this on a literal scale. It’s physically forming connections that push your thoughts in certain directions.
The Lord built our brains like this on purpose. When you put your hand on a hot stove, you learn very quickly that you don’t want to do it again. He did this because in many ways, it protects us. Babies, in their first few years of life, form millions of neural connections every single second. This pruning and building in the brain is happening at a much faster rate than any other point in our lives. Everything a baby experiences forms one of these connections, and this is how they learn so quickly.
Let me put that in the context of my friend.
Because of her early experiences at home, her brain taught her to mistrust certain characteristics. This is what we know as “triggers.” She has an extreme mistrust of the prophets and apostles because those men have similar characteristics (white, male, priesthood leader) to someone who was harmful towards her, and her brain sends flashing warning signals in her mind whenever she hears them speak. She finds them creepy; she assumes their dishonesty. She believes they’re simply seeking their own benefit.
Our blueprint for everything gets originally created at home when we are young children (hmmm I wonder why families were so important to the Lord…). This blueprint can change, but it is very difficult to physically alter some of those connections that were so thoroughly put in place when we were simply babies, especially connections that were formed, repeated, and cemented over and over and over and over and over again.
After everything she experienced at the hands of her father, after all the harm it caused her, is it any wonder that her brain would send neon flashing signals that she needs to be wary of these other men who reflect her father? Is it any wonder that she imagines those men, preaching at the pulpit, going home to be unkind to their families? Is it any wonder that she doesn’t want to hear about a Savior who preached about Himself? No matter how many good actions we can read about the Savior in the scriptures, she will see the facade that her father created.
Needless to say, she’s not a member anymore.
The more subtle connections
Now, like I said, this was an extreme example, but the principle remains and it has plentiful implications. What you experience at home is the blueprint through which you view everything, including religion, leadership, and God. What you know about Christ often starts with how your parents loved you.
So when I read The Book of Mormon, or any words about Christ, I am going to interpret how Christ is acting according to what I learned at home.
Implication number one. We take the name of Jesus Christ upon us when we are baptized. One of the ten commandments is to not take His name in vain. Surely, we don’t need to be saying unholy variations of “Oh my gosh,” but more importantly, we need to act in a way that reflects Christ if we’re going to try and call ourselves members of His church. The damage that can be caused by people who call themselves Christian but act decidedly un-Christian is immense.
This doesn’t mean we have to act perfect because that’s impossible. No one will be able to perfectly reflect the Savior even when they’re the prophet, His literal mouthpiece on the earth. There is a responsibility on the part of the giver to try and reflect the Savior, but there is also a responsibility on the part of the receiver to be compassionate to weakness, to decipher honest but imperfect attempts to resemble Him, and to separate the imperfections of their daily interactions with the perfection of the Savior.
Which leads me to my second implication.
To know Him
Home is the blueprint in which we view the Savior. This doesn’t mean we go and blame our parents if we don’t feel close to the Savior. As I have become a parent, my eyes have been opened to just how hard it is to do the right thing. My parents did a fantastic job, and because of that, I know that my brain was literally set up to have healthy relationships as well as a good foundation to build upon. My parents were not perfect, but they gave me a pretty dang good starting place with which to know my Savior.
There are other reasons we don’t blame our parents for the gaps in understanding about our Savior. There have been times when I have tried to communicate to my children, “I love you so I’m setting this boundary, and I’m pushing you to be independent even though it’s uncomfortable for you.” I fully, whole-heartedly (mostly because they tell me in plain terms) that the message that was received is, “You don’t care that I’m uncomfortable; you must not love me.”
The blueprint we form at home comes from direct instruction and actions from our parents, but it’s also formed on erroneous interpretations that came about because we were tired toddlers or angsty teenagers.
All of this is important to understand because it empowers us to change our blueprint on purpose. It empowers us to change the lens in which we view the Savior. It allows us to disengage with the characteristics we projected onto the Savior that simply aren’t there.
If you often feel like you’re annoying, this is going to affect your relationship with Christ. If you feel like you’re a constant burden, you’re not going to turn to Him for help. If you think nobody cares what you do or how you act, this is going to be reflected in how you choose to follow God.
The Savior is perfect. He perfectly loves you, and He is perfectly capable of saving and supporting you. He wants to be around you. He wants to be reunited with you.
Is that what you see when you think of Him? Or do you see the imperfections of this world and project them on to Him? When you read The Book of Mormon (or any account of the Savior), are you interpreting His actions as they are? Or are you looking at Him through a distorted, damaged lens?
The best thing I ever did was try and embrace my Savior as He truly is, to embrace His love, to view His actions as extensions of that love. If you are one of those who find themselves with a truly broken blueprint (or even just someone with the normal errors), then my message is the same. The Savior is perfectly able to heal, uplift, and bless you, but you have to believe. You have to choose to see Him in the proper light. He can’t force you to believe that He is who He says He is. No matter how often He has professed His love or chosen His actions according to that love, it will not matter if you refuse to believe His intentions were love. It won’t matter if you stubbornly hold to the blueprint that was handed to you rather than allowing Him to heal you and change your life.
I testify that He is all who He says He is. I testify that everything we read about in The Book of Mormon this year teaches us about Him, but we have to interpret those words with the help of the Spirit. I testify that He can heal and change lives.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moroni 10 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 16, 2024
Belief to Knowledge
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we are left with the final testimony given in The Book of Mormon. Moroni testifies of The Book of Mormon, spiritual gifts, and Christ’s ability to perfect us. Moroni also speaks about revelation. He talks about how to know whether The Book of Mormon is true (as well as the truth of all things), and he also speaks about the role of the Holy Ghost in this process.
Moroni 10:7 And ye may know that he is, by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God; for he worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of men, the same today and tomorrow, and forever.
The word “know” can be a heavy one in our religion. What does it mean to truly know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? What does it mean to truly know that He sacrificed Himself for us? What does it mean to truly know Him?
We often use this word, “know.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using it; I don’t think that needs to be changed. On the flip side, I’m also grateful for the conversations that have opened up about the importance of belief. Distinguishing between belief and true knowledge has been a nuance that has both comforted and enlightened me. It has comforted me in the sense that belief feels more sufficient than it previously did. It has enlightened me in the sense that I recognize the eventual goal of “true knowledge,” and the Lord has been able to teach me the process of attaining it by utilizing belief.
Today I want to talk a little bit about the importance of belief, and I want to talk about the process of true knowledge.
The place of belief
When we talk about true knowledge, I’m talking about the point where you don’t have belief any longer. It has completely given way to knowledge and you don’t have to believe in something you can’t see because you know. When we talk about knowledge in this manner, it can often feel like belief is “lesser.” Our goal is to reach the point where we don’t need faith any longer, almost like the stage of belief was always meant to be overcome.
The belief stage (in comparison to the knowledge stage) is not something to be overcome. Yes, we are working towards a true knowledge of Christ. However, the goal of the belief stage is not simply to overcome. There are lessons and strengthening exercises that can only be acquired when we are still in that belief stage.
There is a reason Heavenly Father sent us down to earth with a veil placed over our eyes. He was wise enough to know that there were characteristics we could only develop in this manner. If I truly saw the Lord, would I be following and trusting Him or would I be seeking out a selfish, personal reward? Would I be developing that relationship with Christ or would I just be doing the logical thing so that I wouldn’t be miserable for eternity? Requiring a belief stage enables us to dig deeper within ourselves and grow to be like Christ, rather than simply trying to gain a reward. It forces us to go through the process of experimenting, and as we experiment, we change and become like Him and develop the innate desire to actually be like Him.
Let me try explaining it in this manner.
Let’s pretend that Heavenly Father sent me to earth without the veil. I get here, I know what’s on the other side, so I do what I’m told because it would be ridiculous to do anything else. I’m just trying to make sure I’m not miserable for eternity. There isn’t anything really required of me. It doesn’t force me to actually go through the process of figuring things out. I can “succeed” by going through the motions.
But He did send me with a veil. And because He did, the process looks different. If I want to learn whether the truth is here and whether there is a Heavenly Father who loves me, I have to experiment. As I experiment, I still don’t fully know whether I’m on the right path. However, I do start to learn that I innately want to live my life in this manner. I learn that focusing on others frees me. I learn that being honest helps me avoid a lot of cringey feelings. I learn that relationships should be prioritized because they bring happiness. I change according to what I’m learning during my experiment.
Part of Heavenly Father’s character is knowledge of the reality of eternity. He follows these laws of His own accord, not because He wants to gain a reward, but because He knows that it’s the true path to eternal happiness. He asks us to follow Jesus Christ, not as the goal in and of itself. He asks us to follow Jesus Christ so that we can learn for ourselves. He wants us to innately know and feel the nature of good and evil. Experimenting allows us to focus on whether the path is truly making us happy beings. It allows us to learn for ourselves.
The belief stage is critical to exaltation.
We don’t need to be ashamed of being in the stage where we have faith, where we believe rather than know. It’s an important stage. Do not simply seek to get through this part to the knowledge part. Appreciate the belief stage because it is a necessary step in your progression.
How we actually achieve knowledge
Now that was a bit of a tangent off of the verse that I wanted to talk about for today, but I felt it was an important tangent. Appreciating the belief stage sufficiently and understanding Heavenly Father’s tools accurately can help us on the path to knowledge. Let’s look at that verse from Moroni again.
“Ye may know that He is.” We can know. The veil doesn’t need to last our entire lives. And yes, I am talking about being redeemed from the fall and being brought back into His presence. It’s an exciting notion, and it’s a notion I’ve been fascinated with since before my mission. That being said, there are some powerful and humbling lessons that I’ve received on this journey of learning about the process of knowing.
The first lesson is found in the very next phrase in Moroni’s verse. “By the power of the Holy Ghost.” A true knowledge does not stem from seeing the Lord. Laman and Lemuel saw an angel, and it didn’t do anything for them! They were physically shaken by the Lord and the effects on their hearts were minimal. There were plenty of people who saw the Lord and still didn’t know.
True knowledge of the Savior can only be acquired through the Holy Ghost.
And this is precisely why it’s so important to appreciate the belief stage. A desire to overcome the belief stage is often a sign of misunderstandings about how true knowledge of the Savior is acquired.
Sometimes we think the process goes like this: I build up my faith sufficiently over time until I’m finally good enough that the Lord lets me see Him and then I know He is real. My belief stage is over and replaced with knowledge.
The process actually goes like this: We build up faith and utilize faith to grow sufficiently; we go through that process of learning about the nature of good and evil for ourselves. We appreciate faith, and it helps us appreciate the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the messenger by which we acquire true knowledge. Seeing the Savior is a beautiful experience (at least I assume it is), but it’s not necessarily part of the process of acquiring a true knowledge of Him.
You CAN know the Lord; you can also have an absolute knowledge of Him without seeing Him. True knowledge of the Savior comes from the Holy Ghost. Being brought back into His presence is a separate experience. I’m sure they can happen at the same time, but they are distinct experiences. Knowledge of spiritual things is transmitted through the Holy Ghost.
When I say that a desire to “overcome” the belief stage implies a misunderstanding of the process of acquiring true knowledge, it’s because a desire to overcome often disallows the process of embracing faith. Embracing faith is necessary to appreciating the Holy Ghost, and it is the Holy Ghost that helps us acquire knowledge.
Let me explain it concretely. If I’m trying to overcome the stage where my kids are little, I’m often focused on surviving and getting through it. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes surviving is necessary. What I’m trying to illustrate is the fact that if I’m surviving, I’m usually not embracing or appreciating.
If I’m thinking, “Man, I just want to know. I don’t want to have to wait and believe,” then I’m going to miss out on internalizing messages from the Holy Ghost that will actually bring the knowledge. If you’re constantly trying to have big, crazy experiences that you erroneously assume will give you knowledge, then you’re not actually going to be able to acquire that knowledge. It only comes through the Holy Ghost!
When you understand that true knowledge comes from the Holy Ghost, you cherish the small whisperings. You collect them. You embrace the strengthening exercises when you have to follow the Lord without knowing. You experiment and go through the process of learning the nature of good and evil for yourself.
And as you work through these strengthening exercises and as you innately understand the nature of good and evil, you finally become ready for true knowledge. You don’t need faith anymore because you have gleaned all that you can glean from faith.
In summary
Elder Hales taught, “Our faith prepares us to be in the presence of the Lord.” In summary faith enables us to be prepared because of two reasons.
1) It pushes us through the process of experimenting and innately learning the nature of good and evil, a characteristic that is necessary to develop if we want to be like Heavenly Father.
2) It pushes us to lay hold of our experiences with the Holy Ghost. Because the Holy Ghost is the true avenue of acquiring knowledge, we need to appreciate those small experiences and collect them.
Moroni talks about truth often throughout this chapter. He talks about how we can know the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon through the Holy Ghost, and he also teaches us that we can know the truth about all things by embracing the Holy Ghost.
I am grateful that Heavenly Father was wise enough to require a belief stage. I’m grateful that the experiences He pulls me through are so nuanced and perfect for me to learn from. I’m grateful that He knows how to bring about the immortality and eternal life of me, and I’m grateful He sent His Son to pay for my learning experience.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moroni 7–10 – Mike Parker
Dec 10, 2024
Additional teachings of Mormon; Moroni’s final witness
(Moroni 7–10)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Mormon₂ wrote of “the light of Christ” (Moroni 7:15–19) and Joseph Smith revealed more about the light of Christ in D&C 88:5–13. C. Kent Dunford explains what we know about this power that emanates from God: “Light of Christ,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2:835.
Moroni chapter 8 is Mormon₂’s epistle on the salvation of little children. For more on this doctrine, see Robert L. Millet, “Alive in Christ: the Salvation of Little Children,” in Fourth Nephi, From Zion to Destruction, eds. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1995), 1–17.
Latter-day Saint scholar Royal Skousen believes, based on internal evidence, that the term “pleasing bar” in Moroni 10:34 and Jacob 6:13 should read “pleading bar,” a legal term referring to the bar in a court of law before which a defendant pleads his or her case. See Skousen, “The Pleading Bar of God,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 42 (2021): 21–36.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moroni 7–9 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 10, 2024
May Christ Lift Thee
by Autumn Dickson
I had an experience right before I went on my mission. An article had come out about Texas making abortion more legal and accessible. I want to be very clear here in the beginning that this post is not about abortion itself. This is the story I’m choosing to tell in order to teach my principle, but the principle isn’t actually regarding abortion.
Anyway, the article that I read actually went into detail about abortion. It outlined different ways in which babies are aborted. In fact, it actually went into graphic detail about how some abortions are performed. There was one method in particular that was especially brutal, and it included pictures and diagrams.
There is a lot of scientific debate regarding when fetuses develop the ability to feel pain. Regardless, this article haunted me for quite some time. I couldn’t stop thinking about it whenever I had a moment to myself.
I remember seeing those pictures and diagrams every time I closed my eyes. I remember thinking about how confused and hurt these tiny babies must have felt when their warm little world was suddenly interrupted. I remember wondering if a spirit was already inhabiting the body and whether they went straight back to Heavenly Father, disappointed that their opportunity had been cut short.
I know abortion is a messy subject. I know that there are girls out there who had to make decisions alone, and those decisions were based on fear. I know that there is a lot of pain surrounding the topic, and I don’t want to further inflict pain.
But I share this experience because I feel like it highlights a true principle.
As this article stuck to me, I remember I couldn’t sleep very well. I just kept seeing all those babies. I remember I finally got out of bed and knelt down to pray about it. I hadn’t prayed about it before because I figured there wasn’t anything Heavenly Father could do. He had allowed for agency. Abortion was likely to stick around until Christ came again. I figured the only way I was going to find comfort again was when the issue finally stopped, and that wouldn’t be for some time.
But it got to the point where I wasn’t coping or sleeping so I prayed about it. It shocked me the comfort that was immediately granted to me. I had a picture of Christ welcoming those spirits back. Their pain was comparatively short lived, and Christ wouldn’t allow them to truly miss out on any opportunities. I remember them feeling comforted and being healed. This was probably one of my first experiences with Christ’s atonement where it was specifically utilized to make up for tragedy that couldn’t be explained on earth. I could feel that those spirits were okay.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve also come to appreciate His ability to heal the mothers. He can heal any pain that we have caused to others, and that can bring immense relief.
This is the experience that I thought of when I read Mormon’s words to his son.
Moroni 9:25 My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever.
There is so much tragedy in the world. I am so grateful that I’ve had experiences with Christ’s atonement that have left me feeling hope. I am so grateful for the experiences I’ve had of Christ that taught me innocents are ultimately healed and blessed beyond measure.
For those we love
Christ’s atonement applies to the innocent, but it also applies to those we love.
I had a good friend whose father went off the deep end. After living a “normal” life, he quickly turned to vices that led to his death. He abandoned his family, got into drugs, racked up immense amounts of debt in the form of money and pain, and then he ended his own life.
My friend loved his father and was trying to serve a mission despite the fact that all of this had happened within the previous year. I applaud him for trying. I also applaud the fact that he had wise leaders who sent him home to heal from the overwhelming tragedy.
As he was attempting to serve, he started asking questions about where his father was. Despite the pain that had been caused by his father towards the end of his father’s life, my friend had mostly grown up with a stable home life. He loved his father. He had many good associations with his father. He didn’t want his father to suffer. He didn’t want to serve and testify of the eternal nature of families when he was so deeply hurting over the pain within his own family.
I don’t know where his father is. I can’t testify that the atonement has saved him because I don’t know if he accepted it. I have hope. Though I don’t condone or encourage suicide, suicide can be an indication of remorse which is a step towards the atonement. I hope that remorse stayed and propelled him in the right direction.
That likely would not have been comforting to my friend who just wanted to hear that his father was being taken care of.
Luckily, I can testify of this. Every choice the Lord is making in regards to my friend’s father is the wisest form of care. Sometimes we want to just take away all the pain and make it go away, but this is not always the best care we can provide. The Lord knows that, and He provides what is truly needed.
That’s the power of the atonement. Every single portion of it is merciful and just. The part where Christ withholds the power of His atonement from those who refuse to repent is easily seen as just, but it is also merciful. It is an attempt to bring that soul back because if that soul doesn’t repent, then they will continue harming others and themselves. The pain continues. There would be no reason to even apply Christ’s atonement because the harm would continue on without changing. Why even put on a bandaid if you’re just going to take a knife to it again anyway?
I often picture the experience in the spirit world being akin to the story from “A Christmas Carol.” The spirits who chose wrong on earth find themselves in a “prison” of sorts, but I don’t picture an actual, physical jail. I picture these spirits becoming vastly aware of their choices in their previous life. They can see us more than we can see them. They are forced to acknowledge the pain they caused without being able to fix it since they have already passed on. This definitely feels like a prison; it can feel so painful; it is a life without the atonement. But it can also provide the bridge towards true healing. Scrooge was offered an opportunity to go fix his life. The spirits who have moved on from this stage of existence can’t go back and fix things, but they can embrace Christ’s atonement, and it can free them in the same way. Which leads me to my last point.
For the guilty
The atonement of Jesus Christ is surely good news to the innocent. It is good news to those who have loved ones who have chosen wrong. Eternal life will be made trulyavailable to all, including those who were born into circumstances where they never even really had a chance to rise above. It is available to those who wouldn’t even know how to accept it in this life. This is all extremely comforting.
The atonement can also bring a lot of peace to the guilty, and I’m not just talking about the fact that you had your sins paid for. I’m talking about the aspect that Christ heals others from the pains you brought.
The repentance process can be uncomfortable for many reasons. One of the reasons is that you recognize the harm you caused others. In many cases, it may feel better to continue on in your path rather than turn around and acknowledge that you may have caused irreparable pain. However, if we can accept Christ’s atonement and if we allow that painful recognition to change our future choices, we find freedom from the knowledge that we hurt others.
And this is the true difference between those who inhabit spirit paradise or prison.
Everyone who comes to earth hurts others. We have all caused pain. I was literally thinking about some of my worst moments last night when I was trying to go to bed. We all wince when we remember times that we really hurt someone.
The difference between those who find paradise and those who find prison (in this life or the next life) is a knowledge of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I have often found myself cringing when I think of how I’ve hurt others throughout my life. The only thing that has ever brought me relief (i.e. paradise) is my trust that the atonement can heal those I’ve hurt. Because I’ve felt Him heal me, I know He can heal others. It doesn’t have to kill me forever. He can fix the mistakes I made and bring relief and happiness to everyone. We can all be okay again.
I’m grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ. In so many ways, I know that I’m oblivious to the true depths of the atonement because I know that I have not suffered as some have suffered. But I have had experiences with His atonement, and I do know that it’s real. Those experiences are real enough that I have cause to believe that they extend even deeper and further than I understand. Christ heals. He heals the innocent. He heals those we love. He heals the guilty. The hope of His glory and eternal life can rest in our minds and free us from spiritual prisons.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Moroni 1–6 – Autumn Dickson
Dec 02, 2024
Moroni and Loneliness
by Autumn Dickson
Moroni understood the concept of loneliness. Even before all of his people were wiped out, Moroni practiced his beliefs on his own except for his father. He likely found himself surrounded by his peers, unable to connect with them because of gaping differences in beliefs, desires, and values. People probably didn’t understand him, and though he loved his people, he probably still felt awfully alone.
And then came the genocide.
Moroni was the last Nephite prophet to live upon the land. He had the authority to lead the church on the earth, and yet, he was the last one in the church to lead. According to the institute manual, Moroni lived for 36 years after that last battle between the Nephites and Lamanites in which all of his loved ones were destroyed. He lived alone in the land except for the Lamanites who were trying to kill him because he wouldn’t deny the Christ.
Like I said before, Moroni knew the concept of loneliness. Let’s talk about a couple of things that might have been adjacent to this loneliness.
He thought he was done with the work
Moroni wrote a couple of things in his father’s book after his father died. He then abridged a record of the Jaredites. After completing this specific work, he thought he was done.
Moroni 1:4 Wherefore, I write a few more things, contrary to that which I had supposed; for I had supposed not to have written any more; but I write a few more things, that perhaps they may be of worth unto my brethren, the Lamanites, in some future day, according to the will of the Lord.
From previous writings, we know that Moroni didn’t feel like a very strong writer. It wasn’t his forte. Perhaps he was a great soldier, considering the fact that he outlived everyone else who was destroyed. He was a survivalist as he spent decades alone. Honestly, I’m the exact opposite. I can write, but I’m pretty sure I would have died within the first couple of weeks of being on my own trying to avoid getting killed. Moroni had his talents, and perhaps writing really wasn’t one of them.
It didn’t matter though. He was the last Nephite prophet, and because of that, the Lord had some work for him to do.
I wonder if Moroni wished he didn’t have to do it. I wonder if he looked at the records and knew that there was plenty of doctrine. Moroni saw our day, and he likely saw the restoration of the gospel. He chose to include some of the ordinance wording and instructions despite the fact that he knew these things could easily be restored through Joseph Smith. There were a great many ways that the teachings of Moroni could have reached us without him having to deal with it on top of everything else he was dealing with.
It wasn’t like he could just hide the plates in a compartment in his car and run off with them at the first sign of trouble. Moroni had to protect the plates, find time to “write” in them, and he did all of this on top of his grief. He fulfilled his prophetic role while simultaneously doing everything that was needed to simply survive.
The Lord doesn’t choose to give work according to what’s convenient. It’s simple enough for him to enable us throughout our circumstances. Rather, He gives us work that we need.
Though Moroni did not feel like a strong writer, and though he had plenty of other things weighing on his mind, I can only imagine how these extra responsibilities turned into a blessing rather than a hindrance. It might not have felt that way at first, but I imagine that this process made his 36 lonely years bearable.
Consider what Moroni had to abridge within the record of the Jaredites. The people completely destroy each other at the end, but there is one prophet left: Ether. Ether was left behind by the rest of the people so that he could witness what had happened and record it. Moroni recorded the last words of Ether:
Ether 15:34 Now the last words which are written by Ether are these: Whether the Lord will that I be translated, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved in the kingdom of God. Amen.
Ether may not have been standing directly in front of him, but here was a deep connection between the two men. Both men knew what it was to watch their people destroy each other unnecessarily. They had watched their people drown in violence rather than heed simple warnings. They had both been left to observe it and record it for future generations.
Obviously, I’m pulling in details that may or may not have happened, but imagine Moroni for a moment. Imagine him trying to be strong, even as he is alone and drowning in grief. I imagine him asking the Lord, “So how do I die then? How long do I remain here and then what is the end? Why am I still here?” And then imagine him finding those last words in the records. “It mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved.”
Moroni knew what it meant to be saved. He knew the Savior. He was a strong and good man. But most of us know what it means to be saved. Most of us know the Savior and are strong and good people. However, how many times have we still needed those reminders in the midst of grief? How many times have we needed those tender mercies regardless of the knowledge that the Lord had already given?
Moroni didn’t want to write. He didn’t think it would necessarily help anyone because he didn’t believe he was a good writer anyway. He had other things on his mind, and yet, I can’t help but wonder if the writing saved him time and again as he was given opportunities to reflect on the Lord. I wonder if the responsibility to write and abridge records is what gave him the strength he needed to finish his work on the earth.
The sacrament
As I mentioned already, Moroni was a prophet to himself. He didn’t have a church to lead, but he still had the authority to perform ordinances even if they were just for himself. If he followed the pattern of weekly sacrament meetings, then Moroni took the sacrament alone approximately 1,872 times. Perhaps it wasn’t weekly, but we know that the church was the same in ancient times as it is now. Moroni took the sacrament often enough to renew his covenants.
The responsibility to write and abridge blessed him, but I also wonder if these regular ordinances strengthened him.
Every week, he was reminded of the Lord’s atonement. The Lord’s atonement is so broad and infinite, and yet, it was also individual and specific. The Lord knew Moroni’s loneliness. He knew Moroni’s fear. He knew what it was to lose a father, to lose your entire people to violence. Each week, or at least regularly, Moroni was given an opportunity to remember that he wasn’t truly alone. Regularly, Moroni was given an opportunity to remember that the deepest tragedies can be healed by the Savior. He was given opportunities to remember that he would be reunited with his father as well as other believing Saints. He would be given an opportunity to connect with Ether the prophet who so poignantly understood his pain.
The same goes for us.
Oftentimes, I believe that Satan likes to compound our mortal miseries with making the church feel like a burden. He likes to whisper in our ears that we’re too depressed, weary, lonely, and anxious to go and partake in regular worshiping activities. I know he’s whispered those things in my ear. Satan has most definitely tricked me into believing that life was too heavy, and he has definitely whispered that I didn’t need to participate every single time.
And to an extent, he’s right. He does love to give partial truths. Missing the sacrament one week doesn’t have to knock your entire eternal life off balance.
However, the real problem with his whisperings is the idea that these worship activities are burdens. The times in my life where worshiping has felt like a burden almost always point back to the fact that I’m “worshiping” wrong. I’m going through the motions. I’m fulfilling church duties. I’m doing it because I’m supposed to.
In other words, I’m not even truly worshiping; I didn’t make it about the Savior at all! The times that I have felt like “worshiping” is a burden are the times that I have taken the Savior out of the entire equation. When I actually keep the Savior in the ordinance or worship activity, they are always a blessing. When I actually remember Him, I remember all He has given and all He continues to give. I remember what He sacrificed and felt on my behalf. I remember the opportunities He has provided me with to become like Him. I remember that I’m not alone in my grief, and I remember that He has the capacity to provide happy endings.
So go to church. Take the sacrament. Go to the temple. Wear your garments. Read your scriptures. Speak to Him and listen for Him. And more importantly than anything else, include Him. If you truly include Him in those activities, you will find the same blessings Moroni felt in the midst of his grief, uncertainty, and loneliness.
I know these things to be true.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Ether 12–15 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 25, 2024
Valuable Weakness
by Autumn Dickson
For the chapters this week, we go back and forth a bit between Moroni speaking directly and his abridgment of the Jaredite record. Whenever Moroni is directly speaking (and this is true of the chapters that we read in Mormon as well), we find that Moroni is really concerned about his weakness in writing. He talks about it plenty in Mormon, and he brings it up again during these chapters in Ether. He did not believe himself to be a strong writer, and this was probably exacerbated by the fact that he was simultaneously dealing with a myriad of personal problems.
But it’s beautiful that Moroni was meek and open about his weakness. Because he chose to be vulnerable and talk to the Lord about it, the Lord was able to teach all of us specific principles about weaknesses and their place in the Plan of Salvation.
Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.
The Lord taught us that He gave weakness to us, and then the Lord taught us that He can make weak things strong.
He gave us weakness
There is a phrase in verse 27 that’s super important. The Lord proclaims that He gave weakness to us. It’s important to understand that weakness can stem from a lot of places. For example, when we fall into temptation and sin, we carve out a weakness that can last for a long time afterwards. Not all weakness is given directly by the Lord, but He does clearly teach us that giving weakness is something He does.
This is significant. Not only does the Lord allow for weakness and take care of weakness through His atoning sacrifice, but He also gave weakness. We often look down on weakness, especially in ourselves. We resent our own weaknesses for inhibiting us from truly being able to serve the Lord.
But here this verse is teaching us that the Lord gave it to us. Like a gift. How does this change how you view your weakness?
This didn’t necessarily make sense to me as a teenager. If the Lord is trying to make us like Him, wouldn’t He give us strengths when we ask for them? I feel like I’m still trying to fully wrap my head around the concept, but I believe that the only way for us to truly develop specific Christlike characteristics is to have to earn them the hard way. Let me give an example.
If I were looking to develop more compassion, I could pray for it. It would be easy for the Lord to just “give” me extra compassion, and I believe that sometimes He does that. Perhaps I need compassion for someone in my ward that I don’t get along with. Let’s say the Lord chooses to bless me with that temporary compassion, my eyes are opened to the reality of this ward member, and I’m changed because of the experience and feel a desire to show more compassion in the future. Sometimes, the Lord gives us strengths.
But sometimes, when we pray for something like compassion, He answers us by giving weaknesses. The Lord loves to support us and teach us and give us what we need to develop into a Being like Him. Part of developing into what He is will require us gaining the experiences we need to be compassionate without His constant, direct interference. To stick with our same example, He wants us to learn to be innately compassionate and not just lean on His compassion. When the Lord opens our eyes and gives us some of His compassion, it can be very powerful. It can be just as powerful when He answers that plea with weakness.
Sometimes I get depressed, and there have definitely been a million times in my life when I’ve resented it for being a stumbling block when I’ve been trying to do what the Lord wants. It makes it harder to feel connected to my husband, and I get testy with him. It makes it harder for me to engage with my kids when I want to hide in a closet. It makes it harder to find messages in the scriptures and teach because my own mind is my stumbling block.
I can’t say for sure whether this is one of those weaknesses that Heavenly Father gave me, but whether or not He directly gave it to me, He definitely allowed for it.
It is very easy to see how it’s a weakness. I can name a million times that it interfered with who I wanted to be. On the flip side, it’s taught me things that I couldn’t have learned in any other way. It’s given me opportunities to develop characteristics that will serve me well as I engage in the same work that He is engaged in.
I have had moments where He has given me something beyond myself, and it has blessed and taught me something. I’ve also had plenty of significant moments where He answered my pleas with weaknesses that pushed me to develop in ways I could not have developed in any other way. Because of those weaknesses, I have benefited in ways I couldn’t have benefited otherwise.
Weak things strong
The Lord gave us weakness, but He also promised to make weak things become strong unto us. I think there are a million different ways He can answer this promise. Let’s talk about three specific ones.
I used to believe it only meant that He would give me strength beyond my own to overcome the obstacle. To put it in more concrete terms, I believed that it meant He would take the difficulty out of it. I would be given a moment of time in which I operated off His goodness, rather than my own. As we’ve discussed previously, He does this sometimes depending on what we need.
I was depressed last year as I headed off to FSY to teach. I remember sitting in some of the meetings and wondering how on earth I was going to get through it all because I felt so numb. How was I supposed to bring the Spirit when I couldn’t feel it? How was I supposed to help these kids feel valued when I was so dissociated that nothing felt valuable to me? However, with each class I taught, I watched as He lifted me out of those numb feelings, helped me engage while I needed to, and then removed that extra support as my classes would end. Sometimes, the Lord fulfills our promise to strengthen our weaknesses in the most obvious way.
But other times, He makes our weaknesses strong in more subtle ways. We can turn to Moroni to find a solid example of another way that the Lord fulfills His promise to make weak things strong. Moroni is praying to the Lord about his weakness in writing.
Ether 12:25-26
25 Thou hast also made our words powerful and great, even that we cannot write them; wherefore, when we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words; and I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words.
26 And when I had said this, the Lord spake unto me, saying: Fools mock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness;
Moroni was worried that us Gentiles would mock and twist his words. This obviously happens plenty in our day. We see it all the time. People love taking phrases or verses out of The Book of Mormon and twisting those words into something they’re not.
I don’t write canonized scripture, but I do write messages about Jesus Christ. I write messages, and I put them on the internet where they are permanently available. I’ve looked over past messages I’ve written, and I’ve realized that there was so much that I didn’t understand yet. I’ve looked over past messages and found everything from silly errors about timelines to messages that could be interpreted too far in one direction and be considered completely false doctrine.
I have been weak. I am weak, and I will continue to be weak.
And while that weakness is embarrassing and painful sometimes, I have also been strengthened by it. Having my personal messages out there permanently in the ether have made me overwhelmingly aware of those weaknesses, but they have also made me far more meek than I used to be. These specific weaknesses have helped me understand and love the prophets. It has helped me understand that their words hold truth but can also be widely applied depending on circumstances. It has helped me understand that they’re trying to reach many different kinds of audiences with different needs. It has helped me understand that making an error doesn’t mean they don’t know Christ. And because I am more meek than I used to be, I gain so much more from their words.
In this way, the Lord didn’t directly strengthen my weakness in writing. He utilized my weakness to develop my meekness. He gave me weakness, I became more meek, and this is a strength.
Yet another way He turns our weaknesses into strengths is also more subtle. My husband, Conner, has a unique and strong personality. He’s gifted, like incredibly gifted. He’s the most brilliant man I know; we’re talking autism-genius scale. It’s a good thing he doesn’t listen to these, or he would kill me for saying so.
Anyway, I have watched people look at Conner and misunderstand him. They have wondered why he won’t just let go of things or why he can’t let things lie or why he can’t be silent about things that bother him. They see him grip tightly to things that complicate his life, and they think he’s crazy for it. Because I have a front row seat, I see it a little differently.
Some of his stronger characteristics have definitely caused him problems in his life. They have made certain aspects of his life more difficult than they needed to be. But in the same breath, I have seen those same strong characteristics be the making of him. I have seen very specific examples where his strong characteristics have enabled him to complete the unique work that he was given to do while he’s here on earth. He would not have been able to fulfill his promises otherwise.
The Lord knew that some of these characteristics would bring weakness into his life, but the Lord was also wise enough to know that these characteristics were necessary to make him strong enough to fulfill his mission. That doesn’t mean we can’t work on the weaknesses portion of our characteristics, but sometimes it helps to recognize that some of our supposed weaknesses are also the very strengths we desperately need.
In a simpler example, I once had a friend who complained about how she hated being so sensitive. Being sensitive had definitely caused her problems in her interactions with others; it caused her plenty of heartache that she might not have otherwise experienced. However, she was also one of my most trusted friends during a time of dark confusion. She was able to be that trusted friend because she was sensitive enough to recognize the situation more clearly, and she was delicate enough in how she approached me about it.
Weakness can be painful, but it can also be ironically powerful. The Lord is wise enough and loving enough to give it to us. He is also powerful enough and loving enough to not allow any weakness permanently interfere with our ability to become like Him in time. Rather, He is powerful enough and loving enough to utilize those very weaknesses to exponentially increase our progress towards becoming like Him.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Ether 6–11 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 18, 2024
A Tiny Hinge
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters of Ether this week, we watch kingdoms rise and fall with few details. There were plenty of general patterns of righteousness and wickedness, and we likely missed a great many details in the abridged version. On the flip side, there were certain stories that Moroni chose to include. Recognizing which stories and details he prioritized can help us understand the gravity of certain principles.
In one of the stories that included more of the detail, we read about a girl who wanted her father to be happy again. Of all the stories that Moroni likely could have chosen from, he wanted our day to read about a critical juncture in the history of the Jaredites where secret combinations were reintroduced among the people. Considering the ability of these secret combinations to destroy entire nations, it’s no wonder that Moroni would want to include this story.
When we zoom out from some of the included details, we can find parallels in our day of which we can choose to be wary and cautious.
Details surrounding the daughter of Jared
Let’s cover the story of the daughter of Jared (not to be confused with the brother of Jared we covered in the last video) in a manner that can allow us to draw out these parallels. It all begins with the daughter noticing the unhappiness of her father.
Ether 8:7-8
7 And now Jared became exceedingly sorrowful because of the loss of the kingdom, for he had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of the world.
8 Now the daughter of Jared being exceedingly expert, and seeing the sorrows of her father, thought to devise a plan whereby she could redeem the kingdom unto her father.
Her plan included reintroducing secret combinations through a man named Akish. She would marry him in exchange for Akish killing her grandfather, Omer, and putting Jared back on the throne.
For all the tragedy that occurs in this specific story as well as its repercussions, it seems like a small enough beginning. We don’t know everything about this daughter. We don’t know how much she was motivated because she wanted to be the daughter of a king again. We don’t know the exact manner in which she was raised. Was she truly just trying to make her father happy or did she value the same things he did because that was the environment she had been given? Did she understand the consequences of what she was bringing into the world she lived in? Maybe she didn’t care about certain consequences, but if she had been allowed to observe that last battle of her people, would she have reconsidered putting it into the heart of her father?
It starts in the heart
Great wickedness doesn’t start out as great wickedness. It starts out as problems in the heart. These grow and develop. They can lead to actions that can tip the scales of tragedy in an entire nation or even just in our own lives.
I believe in the power of righteous disciples of Christ, but I also recognize the fact that our individual decisions to reject the idea of secret combinations (or any other tempting crossroads) may or may not have an effect on whether they take hold in the countries where we live. So let’s take a second and simply look at the daughter of Jared and what these secret combinations brought about in her own life.
Her father desired power, and she wanted to give that to him. She danced before Akish and achieved her wishes. Akish brought about secret combinations and delivered the kingdom to her father. Akish then swiftly turned on his father-in-law by the same means he had utilized to uphold his father-in-law. It’s ironic, but this daughter lost her father because of what she brought into his life to make him happy.
And the story doesn’t get better from there. Her father was killed by the husband she had sought out to kill her grandfather. Then her husband starved her son to death, before the rest of her sons went to war against their father. This war killed everyone except 30 souls who fled to Omer. Omer was once again placed on the throne. More patterns of wickedness and secret combinations follow after this specific timeline, but even when we isolate this specific story, we find the patterns of eternity.
The daughter of Jared swung the door of destruction on a very tiny hinge. It wreaked havoc in her own life, among her people, and for generations afterwards.
A crossroads
Recently I came to a bit of a crossroads myself. I made some mistakes this past week that I won’t go into detail about. I’ll simply teach what I learned from the experience.
After these mistakes, I recognized that I wasn’t really experiencing consequences. It wasn’t hurting my life. It wasn’t hurting anyone around me. I knew what I had done was wrong, and yet, it’s difficult to flip around and do what’s right when the negative consequences haven’t sunk in. Luckily, I’m old enough now to recognize the tiny hinge. I was at a crossroads. I was not hurting myself yet, at least not to any truly visible degree. But I also fully recognized that continuing on could lead to long-lasting problems that would dramatically affect me and my family.
I knew that I never wanted to get to the point where I was experiencing those consequences. I didn’t want to have to live the rest of my life with consequences. I wanted to make the right choice now before any real harm was done.
So I prayed for help. I prayed for help recognizing what my life could turn into if I gave in and continued down this path because I figured it would motivate me to get it together. I also just prayed for help in general in moving forward. I ended up having one of the most spiritual Sundays I’ve had in a very long time, and I believe it came as a result of how hard I was trying to repent proactively. There were frequent moments throughout the day that I would be surprised by the forcefulness of how strongly I was feeling His love for me.
Great wickedness doesn’t start out as great wickedness. It starts out very small in the heart. In the case of the Jaredite secret combinations, it started out as a man who couldn’t appreciate the fact that he had been given so much after causing so many problems within his own family; I mean consider his context. Jared had put his father into captivity so he could rule. His brothers got mad at him, beat his armies back, spared his life, and even allowed him to get his own house. It also started in the heart of a daughter who wanted to help her father gain his power back rather than recognizing what that road held in store for her.
Recognizing the hinge
I have observed that the hinges we usually start out with happen in relation to the words of the prophets.
Oftentimes, we sacrifice obedience to the words of the prophets because we do what we want and find that we aren’t experiencing any consequences. It’s natural for humans to act and observe what the actions bring them before adjusting their next actions accordingly. We do this as children, and oftentimes, we do it as adults. We think, “Hey I did this even though the prophet said not to, and I still feel really good. I still feel close to God, and I still feel my testimony. I still believe in the church so Heavenly Father must be fine with me doing this. I can handle it.”
In some cases, this may be true. The nature of prophetic warnings is to provide a fence between you and a cliff. Climbing over the fence and taking a couple steps towards a cliff doesn’t mean you’re going to immediately free fall over the side. You may climb that fence and still feel your testimony. You may live your whole life playing on the land between the fence and the cliff and never fall off. You may entertain your pride, just as the daughter of Jared did with her father, and you may never bring about the destruction of a nation or the destruction of your family.
But one of the things I have learned from delving deeply into Come Follow Me each week is that you are missing out when you ignore the words of the prophets, no matter how small or silly or unnecessary or outdated you may believe they are. You are missing out on privileges that were meant to be your’s.
Life is not just about avoiding hell; it’s about experiencing heaven.
There are aspects of heaven that you miss out on when you ignore the prophets. These small hinges may not bring about devastating destruction, but they can still close doors to blessings that you didn’t even know were available to you.
I testify that these small hinges wield great power. Not only do they protect you from the possibility of specific tragedies you would not otherwise have to experience, but they catapult you further towards privileges. You have a Lord who is willing to reveal all things to you, just as He has to His prophets. He is simply waiting for you to be ready, and whether we like it or not, a huge portion of that readiness is developed by being mature enough to recognize the hinges and act before experiencing consequences. A huge portion of that readiness to receive is developed when you have the faith to utilize those hinges instead of doing what you want with them because they are not destroying your life as they did with the daughter of Jared.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who has far more to offer than the cliff, or even just that little spot of land where you can look at the cliff. I testify of a Heavenly Father who works through His prophets, who promised us to work through prophets. I testify of a Heavenly Father who rewards faith in the smallest principles by bringing huge miracles. He wants us to trust Him in everything, and He offers so much in return.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Ether 1–3, 6–11, 13–15 – Mike Parker
Nov 12, 2024
The rise & fall of the Jaredites
(Ether 1–3, 6–11, 13–15)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
[The below is additional content not included in Mike Parker’s original lesson] This video by Charles Dike from FAIR’s 2023 Defending the Book of Mormon Virtual Conference offers additional insights on the Jaredite voyage:
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Ether 1–5 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 11, 2024
Faith-Building Experiences
by Autumn Dickson
We have now moved into the book of Ether. Though the people described in the book of Ether occurred before the rest of The Book of Mormon, this record was inserted towards the end of The Book of Mormon. Moroni was the one who worked to add these plates to the records that had been kept by the Nephites. Though the book of Ether ends in tragedy, there are also recorded stories of extremely righteous people.
The brother of Jared was one such righteous person. After a series of experiences led by the hand of the Lord, the brother of Jared had the veil removed from his eyes and he was able to behold the Lord.
Ether 3:13 And when he had said these words, behold, the Lord showed himself unto him, and said: Because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence; therefore I show myself unto you.
The brother of Jared achieved the end that we should seek. He was redeemed from the fall and brought back into the presence of God. I often speak about how heaven can be experienced on earth. I’m convinced that this is yet another aspect of heaven that we can receive before we cross over to the other side. The Lord isn’t waiting for us to die before He redeems us from the fall and pulls us back into His presence; He is merely waiting for us to be prepared.
The book of Ether is one of my favorite books of scripture because on a minute, digestible scale, the Lord teaches us the kind of experiences we need to have in order to be prepared for what He wants to give us as soon as we are ready. There are many events and principles experienced by the brother of Jared in preparation to receive the Lord. I won’t be able to cover all of them. However, let’s cover a couple of the experiences that build enough faith for the Savior to take full effect in the life of an individual.
Observing, listening, and asking
As Jared and his brother watched the people around them building the Tower of Babel, they grew concerned. They were in the midst of wickedness. Jared asked his brother to pray to the Lord for deliverance from the confounding of languages. The Lord did so. This is something that is often natural. Something frightening is happening around us, and we want to be protected from it. As the Lord shows up repeatedly, our faith builds in His abilities and desire to take care of us.
But there’s another part of this story that I think comes less naturally. It’s no less important; it just tends to require a bit of extra conscious effort. Not only does Jared ask his brother to pray to the Lord to avoid the language problem, but he specifically asks the following.
Ether 1:38 And it came to pass that Jared spake again unto his brother, saying: Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth? And if it so be, let us be faithful unto the Lord, that we may receive it for our inheritance.
This request from Jared is a little bit different than the other one. It’s different from the time that Lehi and his family were warned by the Lord to flee Jerusalem. This extremely specific question indicates a spiritual maturity in Jared. When I read that verse, I see how the Holy Ghost has been whispering to Jared, hinting at future events and actions that need to take place. Not only does Jared ask, “Should we leave?” Jared sensed that there was something prepared for his family, and proactively worked to achieve that end.
I think it’s important to understand that each of us has somewhere we need to be. Maybe it’s not a specific location or job or ward. Maybe it’s not a specific park at a specific time to meet a specific person who needs our specific help. However, we all made promises before we came here. Understanding that can help us to proactively seek out any steps we might be missing. It helps us work to be anxiously engaged.
A few years ago, I watched my husband’s assumed and hoped-for future taken away from him. And though I knew it was important to let him deeply grieve what he had lost, the Spirit was whispering to me that there was somewhere else he needed to be to fulfill the promises he had made before coming here. I could feel it so clearly. It took years, but we’re starting to see the path he’s been led to.
We are not the Lord’s prophet. We do not have jurisdiction over the church, to guide it and receive revelation about where to take it. But we do each have a jurisdiction, even if it’s just in our families. I believe there are sacred times in our lives where the Lord will whisper to us about future events; He will whisper to us that we should make proactive changes that will take us places we would otherwise miss. Being prepared to receive those small-scale prophesies on behalf of our families increases faith. And it is faith that prepares us to be redeemed from the fall.
We see the opposite side of this, when Jared and his family were not being proactive. The families went as far as the seashore, pitched their tents, and they simply stopped. They stayed there for four years. Maybe they completely forgot the Lord and didn’t call on Him at all. Maybe they simply got distracted in the midst of trying to survive, and they stopped listening for the next steps they needed to take. They didn’t go anywhere. They weren’t moving forward. They were living, but they weren’t moving.
It’s important to note that following the path the Lord would have you take isn’t always super clear. There have been plenty of times in my life where I felt really insecure about where I was supposed to be. There have been plenty of times that things have felt blank, and He hasn’t been telling me anything. I have learned that sometimes we’re already on the right path, and He doesn’t need to change anything so He doesn’t say anything. Just because you’re not directly feeling those whisperings doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. I’m not telling you that you’re messing up if you haven’t felt those whisperings. I’m trying to encourage you to develop that open stance towards the Lord. I’m trying to encourage you to direct your eyes toward Him, make decisions about what you want in life, and keep an ear open in case He has something to add. Sometimes He is leading us quietly towards those promises we made without whispering ahead of time. The key is to be the kind of person who’s listening so He can easily speak.
Obeying and planning
After building the barges and coming across two new obstacles, the brother of Jared once again turns to the Lord. He asks how they’ll be able to get air and how they’ll be able to get light. The Lord teaches the brother of Jared what to do in order to get air, and the brother of Jared obeys. He then asks the Lord once again about the light.
This time the Lord responds differently. He asks the brother of Jared what he wants the Lord to do for him. The brother of Jared decides to prepare stones for the Lord to touch and light up. The Lord acquiesces.
These are two principles that I paired together hoping that the contrast between the two would help us better see them as separate experiences. It’s important to have both kinds of experiences to build our faith. The first is simple obedience. Obedience builds faith because we follow the Lord according to His foreknowledge and later on, when we see the blessings of that obedience, we realize the Lord really does know what He’s talking about. Obedience is taught often. Most of us have an understanding of the principle of obedience.
The second experience is slightly different. It’s not just obedience. The Lord is pushing the brother of Jared to choose for himself. The Lord wants him to solve the problem, and He will provide the support. If you’ve studied child development or parenting styles, you learn just how cool the Lord is.
We have learned that doing everything for our kids can actually cause a lot of problems. When we step in again and again to solve things for them, we’re teaching them that they can’t do it. We’re teaching them that they’re inherently too small or unskilled to handle problems and come up with solutions. The Lord wants us to feel a power within ourselves, a power that is inherently there because we are His children.
I had a friend once express to me that she thought it was pretty sacrilegious to believe that the Lord was trying to exalt us, to push us to grow and develop. She believed we were sent here to simply worship and praise and let Him carry us. I don’t mock this belief; sometimes I think we need more of the belief that He’s willing to carry us more than we allow. However, I want you to imagine these two different parenting styles in a home.
One parent is allowing their kids to struggle and come up with solutions. They’re providing grounds for creativity and offering support as needed. They want this child to grow to be independent, to love themselves and feel capable and confident. They want their child to experience all of the joy that comes with consciously building a full life. They want their child to have everything they have, if not more.
The second parent handles everything. The overarching theme in the home is that the child is simply unworthy and can’t do anything, and mom and dad are just these fantastic people who are going to swoop in and take care of absolutely everything. The idea that the child should grow up independent and capable is actually kind of offensive. The parents should handle everything, and they should be utterly admired for it for the rest of their lives.
I ask you. Which home produces the child who “worships” their parents more? Which child is going to grow up believing that their parents really did give them everything? Which child feels like the parent is focused on them rather than on their own personal, high status?
Being obedient absolutely builds our faith. I will also tell you that the opportunities I’ve had to make decisions and be supported by a loving Father in Heaven has built my faith just as much, if not more, than the simple decisions of obedience. I feel an immense amount of hero-worship and gratitude towards the Lord when He has allowed me to build and create and learn something for myself. I have felt my faith develop as I’ve recognized how my obedience to His word has uplifted, blessed, and protected. I have also felt a tremendous amount of faith develop when I’ve felt Him building me, investing in me. He’s not looking to keep me down and feeling unworthy on some level far below Him. I know I’m unworthy. I know I didn’t earn these gifts He’s giving me. I also know He loves me enough to build me beyond that unworthiness, and I love Him all the more for it.
There are many sacred mini-stories and principles here in the first few chapters of Ether. We have heard of prophetic experiences and visions of the Lord. This is one of those times that we get to watch the brother of Jared move through his life, learning the lessons and building the faith that will prepare him to welcome the Lord into His life.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who loves us. I testify that He wants to lead us through specific life experiences that will build our faith sufficiently that we can be prepared to enter His presence again. I testify that Christ paid for us to come down here and have those specific experiences.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mormon 8–9, Ether 4–5 & 12, Moroni 1–6 – Mike Parker
Nov 05, 2024
Moroni’s commentary on the Jaredites & the Nephites
(Mormon 8–9, Ether 4–5 & 12, Moroni 1–6)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Moroni₂ informed us that the script he and other Nephite writers used was called, by them, “the reformed Egyptian” (Mormon 9:32). There are numerous examples of Egyptian writing being modified and used by other cultures; see William J. Hamblin, “Reformed Egyptian,” FARMS Review 19, no. 1 (2007): 31–35.
Both Moroni 4:2 and D&C 20:76 instruct the entire congregation to kneel when the sacrament prayers are offered. This practice was observed in the restored Church during the nineteenth century, but slowly fell into disuse in the early twentieth century. In 1902 Church President Joseph F. Smith wrote an editorial instructing that this practice “may be regulated by the presiding authority, according to local surroundings, circumstances, and conditions.” Joseph F. Smith, “Questions and Answers: On Administering the Sacrament,” Improvement Era 5, no. 6 (April 1902): 473–74.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mormon 7–9 – Autumn Dickson
Nov 04, 2024
Trusting the True God
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, Mormon writes his last testimony before Moroni takes the record and begins some of his first writings. Moroni is alone. His people have been wiped out. His father was killed. He has no friends. Even before everyone was wiped out, he was surrounded by people who were bitter and bloodthirsty. Moroni knows what it means to be lonely.
As he is wandering the wilderness, grieving and listening carefully for the Lamanites who are hunting down all the Nephites, he chooses to engrave upon the plates left by his father. In the midst of everything that must have been pressing in on him, Moroni chose to share messages that would point us to Christ.
Here is one such message. I share only the beginning of the verse.
Mormon 8:10 And there are none that do know the true God save it be the disciples of Jesus…
The true God was unknown to these people. Moroni goes on to testify of a time when the knowledge of this true God would be restored to the people, but it would be a long time before that occurred. The Book of Mormon would be brought forth for the express purpose of helping restore true knowledge about God, but for now, these people lived without that knowledge.
What do our lives look like when we know Him? How do we feel? How do we change and act when we know the true God?
The next step in faith
When we know the true God, with all of His loving and wise characteristics, we change how we interact with Him. Knowing Him, in the way you know any kind of trustworthy and uplifting person, changes how you approach Him and how you follow Him. I’ve talked a lot about faith in the form of obedience as well as faith in the form of trust. Both are absolutely essential, but I want to talk about faith in another light today. It goes along with the same idea of trust, but I’d like to delve deeper into that specific avenue.
There comes a point in your faith where you really believe He is there. You start to feel a quiet confidence that He is present and has blessed your life. This makes you feel safe about your future. It’s a good feeling to believe that there is a wise, loving, and powerful Being on your side.
But Heavenly Father likes to take our faith beyond that step. He wants to turn our transactional faith into a transformational faith. Heavenly Father wants to bring our faith to the point where we trust Him and not just the positive outcomes in our lives. It’s no longer about following Him because we get a reward when we do what is right. Learning to trust in this manner is a process that occurs in your mind and heart and can feel somewhat nebulous. Let’s look at it in a more concrete example so that we can more readily apply it internally.
I’m imagining a child. This child has good parents who have shown up repeatedly to help them have the resources and support they need. These good parents have also helped the child to grow independent in appropriate ways. The child sees the good outcomes, and they choose to follow their parents because they see that it’s bringing what they need.
Now I imagine the house of this child is on fire one night. The child wakes up and finds it difficult to breathe. They’re old enough to understand that there’s danger, and they want to get out of the house. They climb off their bed and open their door to find their dad on his hands and knees in front of the door. The child trusts dad so they follow his example and get lower.
But here comes the difference between trusting God and trusting positive outcomes.
The child is primed to start crawling down the stairs after dad to get out of the house as quickly as possible, but dad does something unanticipated. He does not start crawling towards the stairs, but instead, he starts crawling the opposite direction back towards his room. The child logically knows that the wise move would be to get out of the house. Why is dad taking them away from safety? Doesn’t dad love them and want to protect them? Doesn’t dad know better?
There is a crossroads here that would likely occur in a split second in the situation of a house fire, but in real life it might take a lot of time and a myriad of decisions. We all come to a crossroads in our life where we have to decide whether we’re going to follow our Heavenly Father in a direction we don’t understand or even like. We all are going to arrive at a critical juncture where we decide whether we’re going to try and convince Heavenly Father to follow our knowledge or whether we’re going to trust what we’ve experienced of Him. We’re going to reach a point where we say, “Why are things going this way? Can’t you change this?”
This is the moment where we decide whether we trust God as Himself or whether we trust the positive outcomes He’s given us so far in our lives.
In regards to our fire example, the child doesn’t understand why dad is headed away from the front door. The child knows that getting to the front door and out of the house is the right choice. But the child also inherently feels this trust in their father that has been built from a lifetime of choices. The child chooses to follow dad back to his room. Once they’re in the room, the child feels dad putting his hands on their waist before being hoisted up and out of a window into mom’s arms to climb down a ladder that is hanging over the side of the window.
Do we trust outcomes or do we trust God? There is a difference. Trusting God means following Him when you feel like He’s headed in the wrong direction (or even not moving fast enough in what you perceive as the right direction), whether that’s in your personal life and circumstances or things you don’t understand in the church.
Allowing the struggle instead of explaining Himself
It would be so much easier if God would just explain that He was leading us to the window, but if He did, it wouldn’t give us the opportunity to trust Him as He is. And trusting Him on a deeper level is crucial to our development. He has to give us opportunities for imperfect circumstances so we can choose to trust Him and not just rely on the positive outcomes. Allowing us to struggle in our understanding of His decisions takes our relationship with Him beyond the transactional into the transformational.
The world will tell you to trust yourself and demand better. I’m telling you that God sees things you don’t and will lead you towards the right path according to everything He sees. You’re going to have to make the decision about which path you’re going to take. You’re going to have to reflect on your own experiences and make decisions about whether you believe God is involved and whether He is worthy of your trust.
Withholding your heart prevents the process
If you’re going to make the decision to follow God, you have to do it with your heart. Simply doing it with your actions will simply leave you feeling conflicted. When you choose to act without your heart, all you receive is a feeling of cognitive dissonance. Merely acting is insufficient; it will only leave you with discontent.
Let’s make it concrete again. Following the Lord and doing what He says but withholding your heart looks like the child who decided to follow their father but is following him while crawling backwards and constantly looking at the stairs. The child isn’t going to feel peace while staring at the stairs and wondering if they really made the right decision to follow dad. They’re going to be constantly worrying. In our imaginary scenario, the child will likely make it to the bedroom and out the window before they decide to bolt for the stairs. But in real life, that hallway can get really, really long. It can stretch out for a long time before you get to the window. There are answers and perspectives that can bless you just as the window blesses the child, but you won’t stick around long enough to find those blessings if you withhold your heart from the Lord in the process of following Him. You’ll leave for the stairs before He can lead you to the window.
On the plus side, that hallway can stretch on forever, but it doesn’t have to be a painful experience. If you choose to turn around with your heart and trust the Lord (not just follow, but trust), He can give you the assurance you need to make it to the window. If you’re going to try the experiment of following Him, it won’t do you any good unless you surrender your heart. You have to say, “Okay God, I don’t understand but I’m going to trust you. Please don’t let me down.” You may not get to the window immediately, but you’ll feel enough peace to believe that the window exists. You’ll feel enough peace to keep moving down the hallway after Him.
This process will likely need to get repeated over time, whether with new circumstances or the same issue over and over and over.
Moroni trusted the true God
Moroni trusted his Heavenly Father. After talking about the destruction of his people as well as his immense loneliness, he testifies that the hand of the Lord “hath done it.” Moroni’s life was tragic. From what we know of his life, I don’t see much respite. I don’t see the positive outcomes.
But I know what Moroni saw. No matter how cruel life can get, it feels different when you have a loyal, wise, good friend to stand by you. Moroni experienced the Lord as Himself. He experienced the true God. He was probably given tender mercies along the way, but the real experience that Moroni had was getting to know Christ as He was.
I can be going through something terrible and still be able to recognize the goodness emanating from one of my friends. My children build their trust on the positive experiences they have with me. They are learning to continue trusting when I choose things for them that they don’t like. Moroni had moved beyond this elementary understanding of, “I do this good thing and get this good outcome.”
Moroni trusted God and not just his immediate outcomes. Moroni experienced the true God, and it enabled him to stick around in the midst of tragedy.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who is worth trusting. I testify that He is leading us exactly where we are supposed to be. I testify that He can lead us individually, to enlighten and teach us, and I also testify that He guides the church through His prophets. We can trust the prophets. I testify that He can bring peace when we choose to surrender our hearts so that we don’t have to wander in complete darkness. He can help us understand we’re on the right path even if we don’t see the window yet.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mormon 1–6 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 26, 2024
Irreplaceable to Him
by Autumn Dickson
When I read Mormon, I feel as though I’m reading his journal. He had been commanded by Ammaron to find the records that had been hidden and add his own observations. These sacred writings were always meant to come to us, the House of Israel in the latter days, and yet, Mormon also seemed to simply write about his own experiences and life.
Here is one of the things he expresses.
Mormon 2:18 And upon the plates of Nephi I did make a full account of all the wickedness and abominations; but upon these plates I did forbear to make a full account of their wickedness and abominations, for behold, a continual scene of wickedness and abominations has been before mine eyes ever since I have been sufficient to behold the ways of man.
Throughout his life, Mormon saw the worst of the worst. He saw plenty of bloodshed on the battlefield, and he saw the utterly wasteful destruction of women and children to idols. He spoke about being forbidden to preach the gospel to his people. He talked about refusing to join them, about being an idle witness to all of the darkness.
Mormon watched these things and yet, he continued to love them. Because he loved them, he suffered long. In this manner, Mormon is a type of Christ.
Mormon as a type of Christ
There are many ways in which Mormon is a type of Christ. He was quick to observe. He was obedient. He was prepared and sober. These are all incredible qualities that can teach us about Christ. However, there is one specific characteristic that I want to talk about that helps us really learn about our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Mormon’s love and long-suffering towards his people depict exactly how Christ feels about us.
Think about each of the following actions, feelings, and thoughts from Mormon. How do we see Christ represented in each individual aspect?
Mormon tried to preach to his people until he was forbidden to do so. He led his people and fortified their cities to the extent that he could. He got excited when they started to mourn because he hoped it would lead to their repentance, and he felt immense sorrow that they continued to harm themselves and others. He tried to encourage his people with great energy when they were facing off in battle. He stood with them against terrifying odds. He continued on fighting for them even though he knew the end. He refused to help them when they wanted to go to battle for the wrong reasons. He couldn’t help himself from praying for them, even though it was without faith because he knew they were choosing their own destruction. He delivered them from their enemies multiple times. He went back and helped them again in battle after observing them being swept off in a wave of destruction. He fought for them and sacrificed even though he knew that they wouldn’t choose to be saved. His soul was rent with anguish.
Those are many of the experiences that Mormon had throughout the six chapters of this week. I can’t imagine the kind of man that was required to be deeply aware of their impending destruction and simultaneously continue to fight for them. That was the man that Mormon was, and that is the man that Christ is.
Christ’s motivation is love, not perfection
Christ didn’t cut corners and only pay for the sins of those He knew would repent. He didn’t just suffer the agonies of those who were going to come home. He took care of all of it. He sacrificed and fought for those despite being deeply aware that there would be many who would refuse to be cleansed and healed by Him.
I think that oftentimes we pictured Christ doing all of these things because He was perfect and fulfilling God’s plan. These facts are true, but when we look at Mormon as a type of Christ, we see that Christ didn’t do these things because He was perfect, and that’s an important distinction. He did them because He loved us. He couldn’t help Himself from trying even though He knew the end.
I think of righteous parents who can’t stop hoping for their wayward children. They can’t stop the hope that rises each time they repent. They can’t help but feel agony when it doesn’t play out. They can’t help but feel misery when they know deep down that their children are not yet ready to change. Despite everything that the child has done, all they want is for their child to come back around, make amends, and move forward. They would be willing to let go of the past if the child would simply turn around.
Within each of us, He has planted glimpses of what He experiences so that we can understand Him. Like Mormon, we all know what it is to watch someone you love hurt themselves. We know what it is to fight for someone who doesn’t want to be fought for. We know those experiences and those feelings. They are Christlike feelings. Christ has those feelings.
Christ feels. He doesn’t do these things as a perfect robot. He doesn’t do these things because He had to as the perfect, oldest Child of Heavenly Father. He is driven by a deep love. This deep love has caused Him a lot of pain, both as part of His atoning sacrifice that would be left on the shelf by many as well as the sorrow He feels watching them hurt and reject it.
Replaceable
In Doctrine and Covenants 35, the Lord tells us that He gave the keys of the kingdom to Joseph Smith. If Joseph chose to abide in the Lord, he would keep those keys. If he didn’t, another would be placed in his stead. This makes a lot of sense. Heavenly Father wouldn’t throw His entire plan off kilter because Joseph couldn’t get it together. He would have enabled someone else to come and restore the kingdom.
It makes sense, but I personally took this principle beyond its proper bounds as I was growing up. I thought that this sentiment meant I was easily replaceable to the Lord, and He was perfectly willing to leave me behind. As I have reflected on my own, God-given feelings as mother, I have been able to better place myself in His shoes.
If one of my children ever decided to totally destroy their own lives, I would keep moving forward for the sake of the rest of my children. You don’t sacrifice all of them because you lost one. But despite the fact that I would keep moving forward, despite the fact that I would delegate their family responsibilities to my other kids, despite the fact that I would “replace” them, I would never forget them or stop hurting over them.
When Mormon continued to pray and fight for his people, he was without hope because he knew they were choosing their own destruction. He knew that the Lord would stop protecting them. I think sometimes we subconsciously equate that lack of protection and moving forward with Him being angry and not loving us anymore. This is absolutely false.
If one of my kids got deeply into drugs, continually stole from me, and perpetually hurt their siblings, I wouldn’t house them any longer. I would cease protecting them and move forward. Depending on age, that might mean sending them to a rehabilitation center or simply kicking them out if I didn’t have the legal power to take them to rehab. But I wouldn’t house them any longer. At least, my completely inexperienced and naive self believes this is how I would react.
I can understand the sentiment of parents who are in this situation and feel things such as, “I love them. How can I abandon them when they need me the most?” I get that. I really do. True love brings out the desire to forget about yourself and protect the one you love. This isn’t an evil or morally wrong sentiment. I’m also not telling anyone they need to be kicking their kids out because everything is so situational and only the Lord can help you know the right course to take. I’m not telling anyone they are wrong for how they’re choosing to handle difficult situations like this. What I am trying to do is help us understand how Heavenly Father feels.
When it comes to Heavenly Father, He ceases the protection at a certain point. This is not because He abandons them when they need Him most. It’s not because He loves His other children more. Heavenly Father ceases the protection because He loves the wayward child. He is wise enough to understand that people often have to hit rock bottom if they’re ever going to turn around. He loves that individual child too much to enable them. He loves them too much and knows that He can’t teach them, “You can still have everything you want and need. I will protect you no matter what you do. You can keep hurting yourself and your siblings.” Instead, through His actions, He teaches, “It is more important for you to learn the hard way. I’m giving you a gift by teaching you to live better. I love you too much to do anything else. I will still be waiting when you’re ready.”
That was a long tangent that was meant to help us understand the mind of God as He handles His children here on earth. It is meant to help us understand the love He feels as He wisely chooses His reactions. I share this tangent for two reasons.
One. We need to comprehend that Heavenly Father isn’t some nebulous Being that administers mercy and justice in perfection. Rather, He is a loving, feeling Being. He perfectly loves, and that perfect love helps Him perfectly know how to administer mercy and justice according to our needs.
Two. It is essential to understand that even though Heavenly Father may have to move forward without us, even though He may choose to cease protecting us, we are irreplaceable to Him.
Even if I had to make the decision to let my child hit their rock bottom, I would never forget them. I would miss them for as long as they chose to remain separated, even if it meant that I would miss them forever. I would be long-suffering. In other words, I would suffer long because I would love long.
It is the same with our Heavenly Father. Just because He chooses certain reactions in response to our rebellion does not remove His love, it is evidence of His love. Just because He has to administer justice and have a Judgment Day and move forward with those who want to move forward doesn’t mean He will ever stop feeling the ache of the child He lost.
You are irreplaceable to Him. You will never be forgotten if you choose to remove yourself.
I testify of a Heavenly Father and a Savior who act out of love. I testify that we have been given a glimpse of how They feel as we work to react to those we love around us. We were given these feelings so that we could understand Them. I testify that They will wisely do the right thing, but I also testify that you will leave a hole if you choose to not follow. You are essential and important to Them. They will suffer long without you.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 4 Nephi, Mormon 1–7 – Mike Parker
Oct 22, 2024
Mormon led his people; the end of Nephite civilization
(4 Nephi, Mormon 1–7)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
The archaeological record of western New York is persuasive evidence that Book of Mormon peoples did not live in that region. The Cumorah of the Nephites (Mormon₂’s hill) and the Cumorah where Joseph Smith unearthed the gold plates (Moroni₂’s hill) are not the same hill. Dr. John E. Clark, professor of anthropology at BYU, explores this in his article “Archaeology and Cumorah Questions,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 13, no. 1–2 (2004): 144–51, 174.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a legend about a cave in New York’s hill Cumorah began to appear in the writings and sermons of several Church leaders. This legend claimed that the hill contains a cave in which there were hundreds of different records written on plates; however, all of the accounts of this story are late and secondhand. See Cameron J. Packer’s article, “Cumorah’s Cave,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 13, no. 1–2 (2004): 50–57, 170–71.
Is the hill near Manchester, New York, where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon the same hill where the final battles between the Nephites and Lamanites took place? Book of Mormon Central examines the evidence in KnoWhy #489.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 27–4 Nephi – Autumn Dickson
Oct 21, 2024
A Utopian Society
by Autumn Dickson
Fourth Nephi describes a people who were all converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ together. It talks about what their lives looked like and how they felt. Fourth Nephi also describes how everyone was wicked again within three hundred years.
Fourth Nephi describes exactly why the Lord has a Judgment Day. It can also help us see what’s going to be necessary before the Saints are allowed to go and build up Zion again.
Judgment Day
Fourth Nephi can help us better understand Judgment Day and the Lord’s purposes.
Heaven is bestowed, but it is also created by those who live there. Heaven is bestowed in the manner that Christ paid for our sins so we could be cleansed to return to Heavenly Father. He also died so that we could be resurrected and receive perfectly whole bodies; this is another important aspect of heaven. Heaven is also bestowed in the manner that Heavenly Father has created a beautiful, glory-filled place for all of us to live after we die.
But even though there are certainly aspects of heaven that are given to us as gifts, there are also aspects of heaven that the people create. Listen to the heaven that was created by the people who lived after Jesus Christ visited the Americas.
4 Nephi 1:3, 15-17
3 And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.
15 And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.
16 And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.
17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.
What is heaven? What does it mean to live in heaven? Heaven is living with our Heavenly Parents and Jesus Christ again. It is living with everything we need and never worrying about having enough. It is having perfectly whole bodies that don’t decay or have infirmities.
Heaven is also being surrounded by people you can trust. You can look around you and be completely selfless. You can completely let go of what you need because you know that your neighbor is likewise looking out for you. You never have to be wary of people who might hurt you because everyone you’re surrounded by loves you, and you love them. That’s not something Heavenly Father forces. That’s something that we have to be.
Look at what happens later in the chapter after some time passes from when Christ visited.
4 Nephi 1:24-25
24 And now, in this two hundred and first year there began to be among them those who were lifted up in pride, such as the wearing of costly apparel, and all manner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the world.
25 And from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them.
Their little heaven had burst. I picture myself living during that time. Perhaps you’re willing to be selfless and have all things in common among everyone, but because there are selfish people who want to have more, you actually have to be careful. There will be people who will take and not support back. The entire utopian society collapses if you can’t trust those around you to also be giving and work hard to help support everyone.
In Doctrine and Covenants 90, the Lord counsels Joseph Smith Sr. to keep his family small as pertaining to those who didn’t belong to his family. The Lord counseled Joseph Smith Sr. to be wise in how much he opened his home to those in need. We want to help everyone we can, but if everything is gone, there will be nothing left with which to help. Because we do not yet live in heaven, we have to be wise in how we distribute. You don’t leave your own family destitute by giving away everything to everyone else.
And this is precisely why the Lord has to have a Judgment Day. This is why He has to judge and separate us. Otherwise we would just keep living the way we’re living here except with resurrected bodies. There has to be a Judgment Day so there can be a heaven to live in. This isn’t just applicable in regards to temporal wealth; it’s applicable in every aspect of how the Lord asks us to treat one another.
Zion
Zion is a fascinating concept to me. I’ve always pictured what it would be like for the prophet to tell us it was time to head to Zion. I think a lot of us have imagined what that day would be like. Like heaven, I think sometimes we believe that Zion will just be handed to us on a silver platter.
Nope. Zion is something that we create. We don’t get to go build up Zion until we’re ready to be a part of it. When we have created Zion within our homes, wards, and stakes, then the Lord will know we’re ready to create it altogether in one place. Zion doesn’t just happen. It’s not given to us. We make Zion if we want to enjoy Zion.
Now we still live in a mortal, fallen world. The Lord doesn’t expect us to start living in a utopian society where everything is common among everyone. We can’t survive a completely utopian life in a world that doesn’t reciprocate. It’ll just ruin us. The Lord is wise about this.
So we don’t necessarily start living that utopian lifestyle in that manner yet. However, Zion starts in an individual heart. It is built heart by heart, person by person. Zion means you stand ready to forgive and let go of old grievances so that there can be peace. Zion means you stand ready to let go of your possessions and trust that the Lord has surrounded you with people who are like-minded. Zion means that you stand ready to give people the benefit of the doubt in any interaction. Once again, we don’t live in a utopian Zion yet. There are people who want to cause harm and hurt others, so we should be wise in how we interact with others.
But we can prepare ourselves and others will prepare themselves. The wheat and chaff will be separated, and we will be able to enter into that Zion society with the purest hope that we can experience as much heaven as is available here on earth.
As a child, I remember learning that Satan would be bound in the Millennium for a thousand years. I remember asking my dad why they let him go at the end of the thousand years. Was it prophesied that he would “escape” somehow? Obviously, my literal and limited understanding as a child has grown to understand that Satan didn’t have his hands tied behind his back. The world was simply choosing to be righteous enough that Satan had no effect.
We choose Zion, and the Millennium, and heaven. We create it.
In the last April General Conference, Elder Holland posed the philosophical question, “…it has always been intriguing to me that Jesus felt the need to pray at all. Wasn’t He perfect? About what did He need to pray?” Elder Holland gave his beautiful answer, and I add my own philosophical opinions to it.
Asking the question, “Why did Jesus have to pray if He was perfect?” carries the implication that we have the wrong definition of perfection. In our world, we think that being perfect means you can do everything and not need anyone. You can be happy completely on your own. You are a self-sustaining, blooming little island. This is utter garbage.
Real perfection is connection, the kind of connection we observe in 4 Nephi. Heaven is connection. It’s connecting with people who want to genuinely, peacefully, good-naturedly connect with you. This doesn’t mean that every introvert suddenly needs to become an extrovert. It doesn’t mean that you have to be connected to every single person at any given moment. I believe it means you truly treasure the most important and long-lasting sources of happiness, your family and close friends. It means that you can have a boundary without worrying about anyone purposefully crossing it. It means you won’t have to worry that others will assume the worst of you when you have a boundary because they will also be the kind of people who give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Zion, the Millennium, heaven are going to be rather pleasant.
The people in the beginning of Fourth Nephi were experiencing a heaven on earth, and it eventually fell apart because the people destroyed it themselves. Someday we won’t have to worry about that anymore. Someday we will be given the opportunity to go live with our Heavenly Parents and Jesus Christ. Christ will make sure we’re cleansed, and He will help us don our resurrected bodies. If we choose to follow Christ, to trust His judgment of others, and stand ready to freely give to those who freely give back, we will be prepared to go there.
I’m grateful that I have Heavenly Parents who were wise enough to create this plan. I am grateful for a Savior who enabled this plan. I am grateful that They were wise and kind and selfless enough to teach us how to be like Them.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 20–26 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 14, 2024
Keeping a Sacred Record
by Autumn Dickson
Christ continues His teaching and prophesying amongst this portion of the House of Israel. He teaches about the sacrament, keeping records, and the last days. He teaches them to study and appreciate the words of Isaiah. There is a lot of content here.
At one point in time, He asks Nephi to bring forth the Nephite records that had been kept. After looking through them, He notices that the account of Samuel the Lamanite is missing. Samuel had been commanded to go and warn the Nephites that Christ was coming; Samuel did so. There is a faith-inspiring event that occurs because of Samuel’s prophecies in which the believers are about to be put to death by the unbelievers if Samuel’s prophecies don’t come true. The details had been prepared beforehand by the Lord, and the believers are saved by His timing. It’s wonderful and there are a myriad of principles we can draw from that story.
When Christ notices that this account is missing, He turns to Nephi.
3 Nephi 23:12-13
12 And it came to pass that Nephi remembered that this thing had not been written.
13 And it came to pass that Jesus commanded that it should be written; therefore it was written according as he commanded.
Keeping adequate records was obviously important to Christ. He’s a busy Man, and He knows how to fill His time with the most important priorities. Why does Christ ask us to keep records?
How to keep a sacred record
Before we delve into the reasons why, I’d actually like to talk a little bit about what I believe Christ means when He talks about keeping records.
Nephi may have been commanded to write on gold plates, but things are different now. On a surface level, I think that keeping a record can be far more broad than we once assumed. It’s so easy to take pictures nowadays; take pictures of the things that matter to you. You can write in a journal. You can type a journal. I type my journal on Google Docs so that I can access it from my phone wherever I am. You can even just open up the notes app on your phone and record something quickly. Start a gratitude journal; it was actually this specific habit that started my regular journal writing. Make a video or photo book with captions about things that are important. You can even use voice recordings that you transfer to your computer once a month and sort into files according to date. So much of the scripture that we read was given orally and recorded afterwards. There are likely even free programs out there that will dictate your recordings into typed pieces that you can put in a safe place on your computer. Record your testimony twice a year at Easter and Christmas. What I’m trying to say is, you don’t have to be a good writer to record important things. What will it look like in your life?
The second principle (and probably more important principle) stems from the Lord’s commandments in general. When the Lord gives us a commandment, He is usually trying to change us somehow. If your record isn’t changing you, then you’re not getting the best return on your investment and you’re going to discontinue the practice. Record a hard lesson you learned. Record how the Lord helped different details come together. Record a dream that felt different than your other dreams. Record your feelings and not just events. Record the feelings that don’t necessarily feel perfect or worthy. Record yourself as you are and simply allow the Lord to be a part of it.
When the Lord gave the Law of Moses to the Israelites, He wanted them to draw closer to Him. He didn’t really care about sacrificing animals; He wanted them to understand Him and draw near to Him in ways that they could comprehend. It is the same with any commandment that we receive today. It’s not about the recording. It’s about utilizing a powerful way to draw closer to the Lord. When you’re recording, include the Lord in the process. Even if you’re recording silly details, include Him. Maybe even record them to Him. He likes to hear about all of it.
Ultimately, keeping a record can be much broader than it used to be. We don’t have to engrave upon plates. We don’t even have to write on paper. The most important principle is that the process changes you. What are you going to record that’s meaningful? How are you going to record it? If you’re going to make a goal about keeping records, make a goal with those questions in mind.
My sacred record
There are likely a myriad of reasons I haven’t discovered yet, but I’d like to cover a few of the ways that keeping a sacred record has changed my life in powerful ways. The most overarching change it has created in my life has been increased faith in Jesus Christ. It sounds super simple, but the effects are potent. There are two specific ways records have helped increase my faith.
Keeping a record has increased my faith because it allows me to process my life with God. There were so many times in my life when difficult things would come up, whether from my own flaws or from the nature of mortality. Sometimes, I’d put my head down and muscle through on my own because I was stubborn or self-destructive. However, other times I did it on my own because I’d simply forget to include God. Sometimes difficulties would come along, and it wouldn’t even occur to me that I should turn to Him because there was no habit to do so. I didn’t have a strong enough relationship with Him that it was natural to turn to Him.
Keeping a record has been instrumental in changing that. I’ve kept a regular journal since I was 14 because I love writing, but it wasn’t until the mission that I really started to include the Lord as I recorded. And because it became a habit to include Him, it didn’t change when I talked about difficulties that came up. As I learned to include the Lord and as I would write about something difficult, I could be inspired by how He would respond. I would be thinking about the difficult thing, and I would remember to include Him. This would naturally lead to me praying for help.
Here’s a real life example to illustrate that process. When we were living in that hotel in Virginia, I would start writing about all of my fears so that I could release them. Because I had learned the habit of including the Lord, I would naturally start to view these fears in a new light. I would be afraid of making a mistake and missing out on the path that the Lord wanted us to take, but when I wrote it down and put it into the ether, it made it easier to examine my thoughts and find which ones were based on faulty understandings of the Lord. It made it easier to look at the thoughts and change them according to what I had been taught about the Lord.
Or if I was angry at someone, I would write about it. Putting my thoughts outside of my brain where I could look at it enabled me to observe my thoughts in a more objective way. When I also chose to include the Lord, it made it that much easier to change those thoughts to be closer to the reality of eternal things. Observing them so consciously allowed me to change my thought patterns with the Lord, and it allowed me to change.
Keeping a record has helped me “watch” the Lord influence, support, and stretch me; it has increased my faith.
The second way keeping a record has increased my faith is by allowing me to see more than I saw before. I debated whether to tell this story, but if President Monson can share a story about almost starting a forest fire, I can tell this one.
In family home evenings lately, we’ve been talking about fire safety. I taught my kids to not open the door if smoke was filling their room. I taught them to open their windows and scream for help if they could, and we review this quite regularly. I was so proud of myself for being so prepared and teaching my kids.
But unfortunately and fortunately, my four year old is particularly adventurous. He’s capable and smart and brave, and this comes with pros and cons from the viewpoint of a parent. One evening, my son opened his window, pushed the screen out, and climbed onto the roof. Luckily, our neighbor across the street saw him, yelled at him to get back inside, and texted us. Needless to say, he’s learned his lesson, but here’s the part that is particularly relevant to this post.
I type my prayers at least once a day. The next day, I opened up my computer to delete the old prayer and start typing a new one. As I went to delete the old one, my eyes locked on one of the things I had been inspired to pray for the day before. I prayed that the right adults would be in the lives of my children at the right time to protect them. I hadn’t thought of it in this specific context, but the Lord had. The Lord likely would have protected my son anyway because apparently it’s not his time to die despite his frequent escapades. However, because I recorded something sacred, I saw the Lord’s hand where I wouldn’t have recognized it previously. The Lord inspired me to pray for the right adults to be there (because I knew I wouldn’t be there all of the time), and then I was able to see how He manipulated the details and protected Warner.
This has happened over and over and over. I record things, and my eyes are spiritually opened and all of a sudden I see that the Lord was directly involved. He would have been involved anyway in some cases, but it was much more powerful because I knew that He was involved. I watched Him easily sway the currents that were moving in my life. I watched Him show up and prepare me. I saw it happen repeatedly in the past, and it has helped me trust that He will show up in the future.
Conclusion
As I’ve written down my experiences, observed them with the Lord, and changed accordingly, I’ve learned to see how He’s supporting and stretching me in all of the best ways. I’ve been able to observe my thoughts more objectively and more accurately apply what I knew about the Lord rather. As I’ve written down prayers, things I’m worried about, things I need help with, or things I’m grateful for, the Lord is given consecrated time to work with me and open my eyes to how He is handling all the details that come my way.
The more I record, the more I see the Lord. The more I see the Lord, the more I trust Him. The more I trust the Lord, the happier my life has been. It’s as simple (and as powerful) as that.
I know from personal experience why the Lord asks us to keep records. My records aren’t always about traditionally spiritual things. Oftentimes, they’re about very temporal things. And yet, they have become sacred to me because keeping a record has taught me that the Lord is involved in all aspects of my life.
He is involved in your life. He is manipulating the details in your favor, whether that is in the form of a trial or a tender mercy. He will continue to be wholly involved in your life regardless of whether you recognize Him because that’s simply how much He loves you. But until you’re able to recognize Him, you’re going to continue to fret and worry about what’s coming next. The most powerful blessing I’ve received from keeping a record is that I recognize the Lord, and it has enabled me to live my life with a peaceful faith and trust.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 19–30 – Mike Parker
Oct 10, 2024
Jesus Christ’s ministry among the people of Nephi, part 2
(3 Nephi 19–30)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
When Christ was with the Nephites, he felt it was important to bless each of the children one by one and pray to the Father for them. Those children were to become the second generation of the Zion people that Christ was forming; as such, their preparation was vital. See M. Gawain Wells, “The Savior and the Children in 3 Nephi,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 62–73, 129.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 17–19 – Autumn Dickson
Oct 09, 2024
Experiencing Christ
by Autumn Dickson
I want to highlight the timeline of events in chapter 17.
Jesus has just spent a ton of time with these people. He has come to them in glory, not as the mighty but humble mortal who lived in Jerusalem. He has taught them and blessed them, and He recognizes that their capacity to receive more is already bursting at the seams. Receiving spiritual knowledge and spiritual things extends far beyond sitting in front of the risen Christ. It requires a built up tolerance for spiritual things. It requires a strength we can’t observe, an endurance that can’t be measured in mortality, and these people had maxed out. The Lord invites them to go home and pray and ponder.
The people didn’t ask Him to stay, but they wanted Him to. He felt this, and He decided to put aside His to-do list for a short time and show compassion. He healed many of them. They worshiped Him. He blessed their children.
Then something rather interesting happens.
Christ commands everyone to kneel, and He joins them. I want to share three verses.
3 Nephi 17:14 And it came to pass that when they had knelt upon the ground, Jesus groaned within himself, and said: Father, I am troubled because of the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel.
Christ is troubled by the wickedness He views on earth. He begins an incredible prayer that couldn’t be written.
3 Nephi 17:18 And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of praying unto the Father, he arose; but so great was the joy of the multitude that they were overcome.
The people were overwhelmingly happy after hearing Him pray.
3 Nephi 17:20 And they arose from the earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full.
There are characteristics of Christ that we can pull from this happening. There are principles we can learn from Christ and how He felt during what was occurring around Him.
Where His feelings came from
Before we delve into His specific feelings, I want you to reflect on your own life. During this reflection, I’m trying to conjure up memories of when you were overwhelmed at all the problems in humanity. There might have been a myriad of things that evoked these emotions, but it’s the memory of the emotions I want to bring about.
Perhaps you read a horrible news article. Perhaps you heard some incredibly startling and troubling statistics. Perhaps you observed patterns of poverty or abuse. Maybe it was a documentary or a dramatization of true events. There are a million different events across the world that can evoke these emotions. Personally, I get these emotions whenever I think about the mothers and kids who are affected by wars. Those are always the stories that get me.
And then I want you to try and conjure up feelings of when you were surrounded by people you loved and people who loved you back. Maybe it was family; maybe it was a group of really good friends. Maybe it was a parent, a sibling, or a single friend.
For this particular “feeling” memory, I recall quite a few different times. I remember how it felt as a kid when all of my seven siblings would come home to visit for holidays. I remember a specific group date with two other couples where we literally laughed so hard we were crying.
By recalling these memories of times when we have felt certain things, we can find ourselves relating to Christ. I think it’s important to be able to relate to Him. If we ever want to have a personal relationship with Him, relatability is crucial to that connection.
I believe that sometimes we create Christ as this “other.” Obviously, there are things about Christ that we can’t comprehend yet. There are aspects of Him that we worship even though we can’t process exactly what it means. This is good. It’s important to recognize these things.
But I still hold to the idea that it’s important to humanize Him in order to connect with Him.
Christ was looking at these people around Him. He was experiencing really beautiful things, and He was surrounded by children who loved Him and He was able to bless them. Somewhere in the midst of that experience, His mind caught hold of unpleasant circumstances that were happening around the world. Maybe as He looked at the faces of the children, He remembered other children who weren’t finding themselves in such beautiful circumstances. It affected Him, just as it affects us.
And then soon afterwards, He was brought back into the present moment as He looked at all the people around Him. He loved them, and He felt their love returned. It made Him happy.
I’m not trying to bring Christ “down” to our level where we can understand Him better. Rather, I’m trying to highlight the very real pieces of Him within us.
The entire spectrum of feelings we experience in mortality are divine. From the heartbreak and compassion we experience over tragedy to the deep joy and contentment we experience amongst someone who accepts and loves us, all of these feelings are Christlike. They are all essential parts of eternal life. These feelings are part of what makes us like Christ. Those emotions we describe as so very human are actually like God.
Living forever would be empty with the full spectrum of experience and feeling. We came to mortality to feel all of these things so that we could better understand God because until you’ve felt it, you simply can’t understand.
It was the people
The other principle I want to draw from observing Christ’s feelings is the fact that His joy was made full from simply being around these people.
I remember thinking about what it meant to worship Christ when I was younger. I used to try and determine what it meant to worship Him in very black and white terms. I wanted to know what specific acts of worship there were. It’s interesting because I think I used to imagine experiences based off of what I knew from idols. It was about abasing yourself and putting God up on the pedestal. That’s what I believed of worship.
I have now come to believe that the central aspect of worship is connection with God. The acts are less significant; it is about the feeling. There are acts of worship that more readily evoke this connection that is essential to worship, but the act itself isn’t necessarily relevant.
The moments I have held God in the highest esteem have been the moments that I have felt close to Him, not the moments where I separated myself from Him because of my unworthiness. Even now, as I picture King Benjamin’s sermon about us being less than the dust of the earth, I don’t picture a scowling king telling his people to bow down and pray to a Being that towered over them and loved to rule over them. Surely King Benjamin was right when he said we were less than the dust of the earth, but this knowledge doesn’t have to mean any level of hatred towards ourselves. I know that’s how King Benjamin felt because I’ve felt it. I know what it means to have my eyes opened to how the Lord has been patient with me and to have that accompanying feeling of, “Thank you. I can’t believe You did that for me.” If we do it right, the knowledge of our nothingness should be accompanied by a deep reverence and gratitude and connection with the Lord for loving us anyway.
Which brings me back to this account of the Lord being filled with joy as He was surrounded by people who believed in Him, utilized His gifts, and loved Him. Perhaps other apostate gods that we read about in literature desire different kinds of worship. They want to be admired and placed up higher than everyone else. However, the true God, the God that we worship just wants to be close to us. If we want to worship Him, we have to draw near to Him. If we truly want to please Him, we need to allow Him to stand near us through everything. He won’t force Himself on us, but we have to learn that He wants to be with us. That’s what pleases Him. That’s what fills Him with joy. That’s what makes His sacrifice worth it. He just wants to be near us, love us, and feel our love in return.
We feel a desire for unity. We desire acceptance. We desire to sustain and support those we love. We desire closeness and understanding. These are not weak, human emotions. They are Godlike emotions. This is what Christ desires; He doesn’t need it, but He sure wants it.
I’m grateful for a Savior who loves me. I’m grateful that I was sent here to mortality so that my eyes could be opened to this human and divine spectrum of emotions. I’m grateful He created the earth so that I had a place to come down and feel what He feels. I’m grateful that He has opened my eyes and helped me to understand that so many of the feelings I experience here are reflections of His life. I’m grateful that He has helped me see that there is so much of Him within me.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 12–16 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 28, 2024
Be Perfect
by Autumn Dickson
The Savior appears and starts teaching the people immediately. He elaborates on fulfilling the Law of Moses and lays out His higher law for the future. He teaches them about a million different things from prayer to judging to His personal characteristics. There is so much.
In the very first section of the Come Follow Me manual, we find one of the most intimidating exhortations.
3 Nephi 12:48 Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.
The Lord commands us to be perfect. I think logically we all understand that the Lord doesn’t expect us to be perfect just yet. We understand that the entire reason He suffered the atonement was because He knew that we wouldn’t be perfect. So why command it? Why give us what we can’t live up to?
There are two critical understandings we need in order to understand how and why the Lord gave us the commandment to be perfect.
Waiting until we were “ready”
Understanding why the Lord would give us such a commandment can be better understood when we observe the context of the rest of His teachings in this chapter. Christ is teaching about his fulfillment of the Law of Moses all leading up to that last verse in chapter 12 where He asks us to be perfect like Him and His Father. The sequence of this is significant, and it can teach us a lot about what He is asking and why He is asking. Context and purpose are everything if we hope to fulfill what He desires of us.
Let’s look at the context of what the Savior is teaching so that we can understand His purpose.
The Lord gave the Law of Moses back in the time where the Israelites had just been freed from slavery. He didn’t do this because He has lesser standards for different groups of people. In the end, we will receive all that the Lord has by living as the Lord lives. There is no other way to find those blessings. And yet, the Lord gave the Law of Moses because He understood that they had just come out of slavery. Their understanding of morality was childlike at best. They likely believed that life was one big test of whether you get caught when you do something wrong rather than doing right when no one is looking.
The Lord understood this, and He didn’t punish them for it. He never lowered the standards for the Israelites; He merely gave them a stepping stone. One day, if we wish to live the kind of life that He lives, every single one of us will have to live according to this higher law and we will have to live it perfectly. But the Israelites needed a stepping stone before they were prepared as a whole society for a higher law, and the Lord is wise enough and loving enough to give that stepping stone.
As the people spent more and more time away from slavery, and as generations passed and trauma slowly healed, the people became more prepared for this higher law. However, it’s significant to understand that even though they were becoming more prepared, they weren’t “ready” for this higher law in the sense that they would be able to keep it immediately. They had grown in their capacity to do what’s right after having the Law of Moses for so long, but they still weren’t capable of living the higher law perfectly yet. The Lord didn’t give them the higher law because they could live it perfectly; He gave it to them so that they could become capable of living it perfectly.
And that is critical understanding number one: The Lord gave us the commandment to be perfect because if He had waited until we were ready to be perfect immediately, we would have never become perfect because we wouldn’t have strived for it. The only way for us to fulfill that commandment was to begin striving for it.
Think of it in this manner. I teach my kids to control their tempers and not hit each other. My six year old isn’t even ready to live this law perfectly. When Warner comes after Evelyn, torturing her over and over, she eventually gives in and chases him around the house until she catches him and can tackle him.
Emotionally, she is unprepared to live my law of loving her brother enough to control her temper. Logically, she’s not capable of sinning yet because she’s not eight. One could make the argument that I’m cruel for expecting something of her she can’t do, something that she’s not even guilty for yet. But I feel like most of us can understand that that’s a stupid argument.
I give her the law. I don’t do it because I believe she’s capable yet. I don’t have expectations for her to fulfill it perfectly. I give her the law because I want her to start practicing. She will never learn to not hit if I wait until she’s ready to live it perfectly before I give it as a law.
The same goes for the exhortation to be perfect. He didn’t give us this commandment because we were ready to live it right now. He didn’t give it to us so He could hold it against us. He gave it to us so we would have a standard to look to, something to work towards, something to strive towards. The perfecting process would have been held off indefinitely if it wasn’t given as the standard.
The Lord already won
When I think about the Lord commanding us to be perfect, I think of Nephi.
Nephi was commanded to go and get the brass plates in Jerusalem. He hadn’t even left for Jerusalem when he testified that the Lord never gives a commandment unless He opens the way to fulfill that commandment. Nephi “failed” more than once in his attempts. He didn’t agonize over his failed attempts. He didn’t worry that the Lord had disowned him. He kept believing that the Lord would provide a way, and the Lord did. Each misstep and obstacle that Nephi experienced weren’t true failures; they were steps he had to live through in order to be ready to be led by the Lord. Because of his simple belief that the Lord would provide the way, Nephi had already won the battle. He had basically already received the plates before even leaving for Jerusalem because of that simple faith that the Lord would provide the way. You can’t fail with the Lord on your team.
Our second critical understanding in relation to the commandment to be perfect is this: The Lord already provided the way. He already won. Our destiny to be perfect is set and coming if we simply continue trying.
The Lord has provided the way for us to become perfect. He believes in us. He stands ready to teach us everything we need to learn, to guide us through each experience and failure we desperately need in order to actually fulfill that commandment to become perfect. Like Nephi, we have nothing to fear. If we love the Lord and keep trying, then we are 100% safe. The Lord paid for our sins and already won the battle. That means that all of the missteps and failures and obstacles are not evidence that we have failed His commandment; they are opportunities to step towards that commandment. They are precisely what we need to become perfect.
The commandment to be perfect is a gift, not a measuring stick with which to beat ourselves. If we look at it in the manner in which the Lord gave it to us, we will see it for what it is. We will see it as a glimpse of what He has in store for us. We will see it as our ultimate end, our literal destiny, if we simply continue trying. The commandment to be perfect is the ultimate testament to His love, a sign that He literally wants everything for us.
Being perfect was always your destiny. It is your birthright as a literal son or daughter of God. It is something you will grow into. It was given to you now so that you could work towards it, not so you get it right the first time.
In summary, there are two critical understandings when we think about the Lord’s commandment to be perfect.
If the Lord had waited to give the commandment, we never would have made it because we never would have strived for it. He had to give it to us before we were ready so we could grow.
The second critical understanding is that the Lord will provide the way. Work towards that perfection without all of the pressure. The pressure adds nothing to your journey except discouragement and extra exhaustion. The pressure was on the Lord to live perfectly and fulfill the atonement, and He already won. Now we just keep practicing, and we’ll get there.
I believe in a Lord who does everything for our benefit. I believe that every tender mercy comes from Him, and I believe that all of the obstacles and failures we’re experiencing on earth can be turned into gifts when combined with the power of His atonement. They can become contributions towards that ultimate goal of perfection because they can be powerful learning tools. We have every reason to rejoice in the Lord and trust Him.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 8–18 – Mike Parker
Sep 23, 2024
Jesus Christ’s ministry among the people of Nephi, part 1
(3 Nephi 8–18)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks, plus part of the following week.)
John W. Welch explains that everything in 3 Nephi, especially the ministry of the Savior, echoes themes related to the temple and the presence of the Lord in the Holy of Holies. Welch, “Seeing Third Nephi as the Holy of Holies of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 1 (2010): 36–55.
The great destructions and thick darkness in the Book of Mormon lands described in 3 Nephi 8 have all the indications of intense volcanic activity. Several Latter-day Saint scientists have written about this; their conclusions are summarized in these brief articles from Book of Mormon Central:
Immediately before Jesus’s appearance at the temple in Bountiful, the people there “were showing one to another the great and marvelous change which had taken place great” (3 Nephi 11:1). What was this “great and marvelous change”? Clifford Jones argues that it refers to “the essential, infinite change wrought by the Atonement.” (Jones, “The Great and Marvelous Change: An Alternate Interpretation,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 2 (2010): 50–63.)
When Jesus appeared at Bountiful, “the whole multitude” of the people there “fell to the earth.” (3 Nephi 11:12) This description echoes Lehi₁’s dream of the tree of life, in which he saw “multitudes” of people who “did press their way forward, continually holding fast to the rod of iron, until they came forth and fell down and partook of the fruit of the tree.” (1 Nephi 8:30) For more on the connections between these two passages, see Matthew L. Bowen, “‘They Came Forth and Fell Down and Partook of the Fruit of the Tree’: Proskynesis in 3 Nephi 11:12–19 and 17:9–10 and Its Significance,” Studies in the Bible and Antiquity 5 (2013): 63–89.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 8–11 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 22, 2024
Giving Your Broken Heart
by Autumn Dickson
We have reached the crowning jewel of The Book of Mormon. We have reached the climax, the epitome, the purpose of The Book of Mormon. Christ has arrived to reach out to His people in other parts of the world.
When Christ’s voice pierces the darkness that the Nephites and Lamanites had found themselves in, He started to teach them immediately. He proclaims the destruction, but He also invites them to come and be healed. Before He even directly appears before them, His voice teaches them that the Law of Moses has been fulfilled. Of all the things the Lord could have chosen to express with His voice through the darkness, one of the things He chose to tell them was that the Law of Moses was no longer in effect. While this may seem like a slightly less significant happening when compared to all the destruction and His literal presence amongst these people, it heralded the incoming of a higher law. It brought about the new way to draw closer to Christ, and this new way would become the standard for all the generations afterwards (including our’s). It was a big deal that the Law of Moses had been fulfilled. It is a big deal that we have been given new ways to approach Christ and learn of Him.
Christ visited the Nephites and Lamanites. Living according to His new law is how we invite Him to visit us, to make Him a part of our lives.
Here is how Christ told them about the fulfilled Law of Moses.
3 Nephi 9:19-20
19 And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings.
20 And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not.
Christ will no longer accept sacrifices according to the Law of Moses. He doesn’t want burnt offerings or the shedding of blood. He wants a different kind of sacrifice. He wants us to offer the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
The way this is worded is fascinating to me. When we think of sacrifice, we often picture giving up something we really love and adore. We believe that we’re going to receive something back which is the whole reason we agree to it. However, we are still giving up something that holds worth for us.
Which is why I find this new law so interesting. I can understand why Christ would ask for a broken heart and contrite spirit. It makes sense when you understand that the Lord is trying to change us, and a willingness to change often helps that process. However, Christ specifically asked for these things as a sacrifice. What can we learn from the way He worded this?
Broken hearts hold value
If Christ is asking us to offer up broken hearts and contrite spirits as a sacrifice, it implies the idea that these things are valuable to us. If you were to list things that were valuable to you, a “broken heart” might not be at the top of the list. And yet, sometimes our actions and underlying feelings can give us greater hints about what we value than our logical minds.
For example, I can talk all day long about how much I love my kids. However, I remember an experience one day where I was praying for them. I wasn’t at my best at that particular point in my life and so I started praying that they would feel my love even though I wasn’t showing it very well at the time. I think there are appropriate times to pray for that. However, in that particular moment, the Spirit whispered to me that I had prayed for the wrong thing. I loved my kids, but I wasn’t valuing them sufficiently at that time. How could I expect the Lord to just help them feel prioritized when I wasn’t actually prioritizing them? I could talk about how much I loved them all day, but until it changed how I was acting and feeling, then I was really just loving myself. I could tell you that I loved my kids more than myself, but my actions and underlying feelings during that time period were hinting at something different.
The same goes for a broken heart. We may not consciously value our broken hearts, but why do we sometimes withhold our broken hearts? Why do we hide our vulnerability? Why do we often continue to kick against the pricks rather than allowing our spirits to feel contrite? We’re not doing it for funsies, so there must be some reason we want to hold onto these things rather than handing them over to the Lord.
I had an experience some time last year; I believe it illustrates a time when I was withholding my broken heart and when I finally released it to the Lord and the resulting experience. I want to try very hard to maintain the point of me sharing this and not get distracted by the actual subject matter. It’s important to me that we take the principle I’m trying to teach so that we can apply it to all of our different situations rather than trying to hyperfocus on what my broken heart was about.
Last year, I had a quiet moment where I started thinking about Heavenly Mother. It had never bothered me before that She was relatively unknown or that we didn’t talk about her. I hadn’t put much thought towards it up until the time I became a mother and learned what it meant to be a mother. Her role is likely far more significant than we realize, and I started to wonder if She ever felt unappreciated because everyone was so quiet about Her. She likely has much more perspective than I do, but it affected me. I held onto those feelings for a while, not willing to give up how I felt about it. It suddenly felt all wrong, and I felt very right. I held tight to that feeling of my being right.
But then I started to reflect on the relationship I had with my Heavenly Father. I thought about the Savior and how He had sacrificed so much for me. I thought about how He had shown up for me multiple times, and I reflected on how I had sincerely felt His love.
I didn’t understand why Heavenly Mother wasn’t more openly appreciated, but I decided that I’d had enough experiences with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ that I still trusted Them. Instead of holding onto my rightness, I held onto the relationship I had with Them. I turned to pray, and I remember asking, “Why?” but how I asked that question had suddenly changed dramatically.
Rather than asking, “Why?” in my determined rightness, I asked, “Why?” but I also mentally said, “Okay.” I let my heart feel sad over the issue, and I turned to Him for comfort regarding the issue. I gave Him my broken heart.
I’m not going to go into detail regarding the answer I received. It was very personal to me, and I believe that my answer was for me. He spoke to me in a way that I understood, and it changed everything. I don’t want to talk about how He answered me. I want to highlight the fact that giving my broken heart to Him changed things for me. I had held onto my broken heart believing that I was right in doing so, but the experience of giving it up had been beautiful, and I’m so grateful I did.
Different circumstances require giving up your broken heart
I believe that with certain issues throughout our lives, it’s going to be an elaborate dance as we work towards having that kind of experience. Handing your broken heart to the Lord has to be done in your heart; it’s not something you can fake or force. It requires examining where you’re at and accepting where you’re at so that the Lord can work with where you’re at.
I have very little advice on how to go about this elaborate dance of handing your broken heart over to the Lord because that process has been so different for different circumstances in my life. The Lord has had to patiently walk me through that process because half of the time, I didn’t even realize I was withholding a broken heart. He would have to guide me in how to experience my feelings before handing them over to be worked through with Him. I guess my only true advice is to turn to Him. You can even ask Him to walk you through the process because you don’t know how to do it on your own. You don’t have to know how to hand it over to Him; He can teach you how if you ask.
I believe that handing over your broken heart can be related to issues you don’t understand in the church. I believe that it can relate to personal circumstances when you don’t understand why He allowed you to enter into certain trials. I believe that anything that can break our hearts can be taken to the Lord.
I also believe that handing over your broken heart or finding your way towards a contrite spirit can often feel like a sacrifice. You have to sacrifice your pride and question whether you see the whole picture. You have to sacrifice your desire for Him to just fix things instead of allowing mortality to take its course. You have to sacrifice your desire to keep yourself safe and allow Him to step in.
I testify that it’s worth handing over. I’ve never been disappointed when I’ve handed my heart over to the Lord. I’ve also learned that the process of truly handing my broken heart over can take years of trying and failing and patience. As I’ve accepted the need to work through things and not just come to simple, clean answers, I’ve learned that this process of submitting your heart to the Lord has been a worthwhile experience. I trust Him. When He opens my eyes to the details He has adjusted in my life, I see that He has never let me down. Just like with any sacrifice, the Lord offers more than He asks for.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 3 Nephi 1–7 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 14, 2024
Nephi Waited All Day
by Autumn Dickson
The chapters this week are full of some intense events that all occurred within a very short span of history. Within approximately 30 years, we find the almost-genocide of a religion, a major war in which an entire nation comes together to live in the same place, and a governmental collapse. I mean…how long did people even live during this time period? That’s quite the life to have.
Though there were many tragedies and anxiety, there were also great miracles. One such miracle was the birth of Christ in Bethlehem with its accompanying signs in the western world. Before this grand event, we find that almost-genocide. Non-believers were convinced that the prophesied signs of Christ’s birth had past, and they were prepared to put the believers to death.
Nephi, an immensely righteous prophet of the Lord, found himself in charge of a people who were condemned to death. Here is where we find Nephi at this particular point.
3 Nephi 1:12-13
12 And it came to pass that he cried mightily unto the Lord all that day; and behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying:
13 Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets.
Nephi prayed all day, and the Lord’s voice came to him, comforting him and telling him that the sign was coming soon enough to spare his people.
We love the Lord who delivers us. We love the stories of miracles when He comes in and saves the day, and we testify boldly of His sacrifice that made Him the ultimate hero.
However, do we also love the Lord who waited all day before responding to Nephi? Do we trust Him when we’re in the middle of a crisis and receiving nothing? Do we have faith in the last-second Lord and the Lord who allows for tragedy?
Nephi was a good man
In the first chapter of 3 Nephi, we find Nephi who is the son of Nephi who is the son of Helaman. Just to give you a quick recap, Nephi Sr. (the son of Helaman) was the guy who preached to the people on his garden tower about the death of the chief judge. He was also given the sealing power from the Lord in which he called down famines and wars. He was a great man. This Nephi, the son of Helaman, “departs” within the first few verses of 3 Nephi. We don’t know much about his departing, but we know that’s the last we hear of him.
Nephi Sr., son of Helaman, also named his son Nephi. So Nephi Jr. is who we’re working with right now for this post. He is the leader of a people who is about to be put to death for believing in a coming Messiah; he has also just apparently lost his father. The combination of his father’s departure and the new mantle of leader over a threatened people likely weighed on him. Think of all the new leaders we hear from. How many times have you heard them describe their feared inadequacy? How many times have we heard about new leaders feeling overwhelmed and scared of the mantle they were being given?
Nephi (I’m dropping Jr. now since we know who we’re talking about) had this mantle placed upon him at a particularly tumultuous time, both in terms of the church and his personal life. The Lord didn’t pull any punches.
If my child came to me in these particular circumstances, praying about whether they were going to be okay, I feel like I would have responded immediately. That would have my natural inclination, to immediately ease their worry and suffering on top of so much they were already feeling. I would have worked quickly to remove any burden they felt as they were trying to lead my people to be faithful.
But not so with the Lord. A day might not seem like very long to wait relatively speaking. However, the Lord was really cutting it close to crunch time. Nephi was counting down the time to the impending death of himself and his fellow congregants, awaiting the Lord’s response. I’m sure Nephi was pleading with the Lord for comfort, but I also imagine that Nephi was pleading with the Lord for direction. Should the people depart? Should they arm themselves? I’ve gotten answers to “wait” before, but Nephi was getting nothing for a while despite his seemingly pressing need.
An effectual struggle
A few months ago, we talked about Limhi and his people and their effectual struggle. As a reminder, “effectual” means to bring the intended result. We discussed how Limhi’s effectual struggle taught the people what they needed to learn. They were repenting of sin, and being released immediately from any effects of their sin would have likely just taught them, “I can do whatever I want and not experience consequences. Look! I sinned a ton, and I didn’t have any problems. I can definitely go back to sinning.” The effectual struggle did not pay for their salvation, and it wasn’t a result of the Lord exacting vengeance. The effectual struggle was a merciful, beautiful lesson given to the people of Limhi to drive them to be better and avoid their bonds.
Since that lesson, I have been taught that every struggle in mortality can become an effectual struggle with the Lord. Even when we are righteous and seeking the Lord like Nephi, the Lord still has lessons for us to learn. Effectual struggles are essential for those lessons; we couldn’t learn what we needed to learn without them. More importantly we couldn’t become what we need to become without them.
For instance, patience is a highly underrated characteristic of the Lord. We hate learning and practicing patience, but patience is one of the most beautiful characteristics the Lord has. Can you imagine where we would be if the Lord grew impatient with humanity? Someday, we will hopefully step into the shoes of the Lord and do as He does. However, that is going to require a patient being. Patience isn’t something that comes with a perfect life. You don’t learn patience as you receive enough rest, get enough alone time, or have everything sufficient for your needs. Those are beautiful gifts of eternity, but those gifts will not help you develop the patience you need to do what the Lord does, namely being patient when everything seems to be going wrong.
Only an effectual struggle can help you develop that resilience.
Sometimes we experience trials for “no” reason. We get to the end, and it didn’t feel like there was an overarching lesson or purpose. It feels random and tragic and unnecessary. However, as we turn to the Lord, perhaps we’ll recognize that sometimes the purpose is to stretch and practice our patience. You can’t become patient unless you’re given an opportunity to practice it, and we have to become patient to be exalted.
The lesson for Nephi and his people
I don’t know what lesson Nephi specifically needed to learn as the Lord remained quiet during a crucial time. Perhaps there were many lessons. Perhaps all of the followers had different lessons they needed to learn as they waited on the Lord to let them know it was going to be okay. I know that the Lord wasn’t ignoring Nephi because He was too busy, because He wanted Nephi to squirm and struggle, because He was insensitive to the things that Nephi was experiencing. No, the Lord was providing an effectual struggle.
I can guess at one potential lesson. Just like with patience, we need an opportunity to practice faith in order to increase our faith. There comes a point in your testimony where you start to feel pretty sure that God is there and aware of you. You have learned that lesson. God has shown up enough in your life that you know He’s got you. You have developed that faith.
But the Lord calls on us to stretch and grow our faith beyond that. After you know He’s there, He wants to push us to trust that He’s going to show up at the right time with everything you need. You’re not going to have to practice faith with nothing to lose. Imagine if the story we were reading was different. There was no antagonism towards the believers. There were people who didn’t believe in Christ, people who believed that the time for the sign had passed. However, these non-believers didn’t give a rip about whether others believed a sign was still coming.
The believers might have still looked forward with faith or the sign to come, but they had nothing to lose. If it never came, they didn’t really lose out on much. There was no test. There was no stretch. There was no effectual struggle. There was no opportunity to really decide whether you were going to hold on because it didn’t actually matter if you held on. The Lord gave them an opportunity to stretch when He remained silent for a time. It was an opportunity, not a punishment or a sign that He didn’t love them. It was the only way for them to become like Him.
Surely these trials can take different forms. There will be times in our lives where we receive respite and care, and we’re immensely grateful for those times and we enjoy them. However, those effectual struggles are actually the tender mercies that we came to earth for. Utilize them. You don’t have to love them. Christ didn’t love the idea of suffering in Gethsemane so don’t put pressure on yourself to grin and bear it. But utilize the opportunities you’ve been given to stretch your faith and patience and whatever other gifts come from being tested. Recognize what they are for. Don’t use them as “evidence” that you’re being punished. Use them as evidence that the Lord is preparing you. Understand that there was no other way to give us what we had asked for: a chance to be like Him.
I testify that you’re safe. I testify that the Lord is going to show up at the right time. I testify that you’re not going to be abandoned. I testify that the Lord’s overwhelming love is what drives Him to push us beyond what’s comfortable. I testify that appreciating the purpose of the effectual struggle of mortality can make our lives a fulfilling and less bitter process. If you wait on the Lord and trust Him, you are in no danger. Not really. Not when we’re talking about the eternities. We have already won so take your turn being stretched and recognize the struggle for what it is.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Helaman 13–3 Nephi 7 – Mike Parker
Sep 09, 2024
Samuel prophesied; the Gadianton War & collapse of Nephite society
(Helaman 13–3 Nephi 7)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
Daniel C. Peterson compared the style of warfare used by the Gadaniton robbers to historical tactics employed by irregular and insurgent forces, a type of warfare that Joseph Smith was unlikely to have been familiar with: “The Gadianton Robbers as Guerrilla Warriors,” in Warfare in the Book of Mormon, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and William J. Hamblin (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book/Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990), 162–63.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Helaman 13-16 – Autumn Dickson
Sep 08, 2024
Foretold Promises
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we find Samuel the Lamanite. His title, “the Lamanite,” is actually very telling for this particular passage in The Book of Mormon. All throughout the history of The Book of Mormon, the Lamanites were traditionally the ones who rejected the gospel. And yet, we’ve reached a point in the timeline where the Nephites had grown extremely wicked. The Lord sent a Lamanite to go to the Nephites and preach the gospel to them.
Samuel listened and did so. He warned them of all sorts of scary things that could happen if they didn’t repent, and he was miraculously preserved as he delivered his message.
He also testified that Christ was coming.
Helaman 14:2 And behold, he said unto them: Behold, I give unto you a sign; for five years more cometh, and behold, then cometh the Son of God to redeem all those who shall believe on his name.
Samuel told the Nephites that Christ would be born back in Jerusalem in five years. Even though Christ would be born an ocean away, there were going to be all sorts of signs that would precede His birth. The night before His birth, there wouldn’t be darkness in the night. A new star would appear. There would be many signs and wonders, and many would fall to the earth in amazement and wonder.
Even though many of Samuel’s prophecies can be considered frightening, it didn’t need to scare anyone who chose to repent. Samuel even teaches that Zarahemla was currently being preserved because of the righteous people who were still in the city.
Prophets prophesy of things to come. They foretell of signs to look for. They encourage us to change our lives according to the events on Heavenly Father’s timeline. Let’s talk about it in a modern context so that this can be a more relatable principle.
In our day
I want you to imagine that President Nelson told us all that Christ was returning in five years. This will likely not happen since we’ve been taught that no one, not even the angels, know when Christ is coming. However, for the sake of applying the scriptures, let’s pretend that he did.
I’m sure there would be plenty of mockery in the world, just as there was with Samuel the Lamanite. I wonder how many people who are not of our faith would become curious over this miraculous and bold announcement. It would be an interesting day on social media to say the least.
But how would you respond? What would you change? If Christ was really coming within the next five years, what kind of feelings would you experience with this announcement?
President Nelson did not come forward last General Conference and announce the coming of the Savior, but he is a prophet and he has made pronouncements. He has admonished us in specific ways but because there is no deadline, sometimes we underestimate the importance of such guidance.
I can think of two specific ways that President Nelson’s (along with other prophets) pronouncements should change us. I want to cover the first, but I want to focus on the second.
Behavior
The first way it should change us is in our behavior.
If I knew Christ was coming, I’d probably get a bunch more food storage. I’d spend more time with my family and at the temple. I would probably cut out a lot of extra things that once felt so important to me. I would probably spend more conscious time considering how I spent my free time, reading books with tons of value in comparison to these cheap filler novels I can find on Stuff Your Kindle day. I’d spend my money differently knowing that things would change after He came.
To an extent, it’s wise to consider how we would change. It can help us refocus our priorities and remember what has true value.
However, I want to highlight the phrase, “To an extent…” It’s also important to remember that we might live another hundred years before He comes. There’s a balance there. For example, I mentioned how I would change the way I spent my time and money. We just spent the last two months trying to fix up our yard. Would I have bothered to fix it up if I knew Christ was coming? Maybe. I definitely would have reconsidered if I knew that the world was going to look different in five years.
We can’t drop everything and live our lives as though Christ is coming in five years because we don’t know whether He is, but we can consider how we would change. Pondering this idea may not dramatically change our current actions, but they might realign what we’re focusing on and worrying about.
Which leads me to my second point that I truly want to hone in on.
How we feel would change
I hope that an announcement regarding the coming of the Savior would make you feel hope over despair. I hope that the idea of facing Him would fill you with all the best kinds of anticipation. I hope that your life would feel lighter.
When we have something really exciting to look forward to, all of the days leading up to that event can often feel more exciting even though the event isn’t there yet. When you’re looking forward to a cruise or the last day of school, the anticipation can be just as fun as the event itself. I remember I used to love Fridays at school because it meant the weekend was coming. Friday was technically the same as any other day at school, but Friday felt different because I was looking forward to something.
During a district meeting on my mission, we all made lists of the blessings that we were most excited for. It was actually a really fun exercise and made me feel lighter and better even though nothing had really changed. It simply brought the anticipation of the promised blessings of the Savior to the forefront of my mind where I could enjoy them even though they weren’t here yet.
We listed blessings from the ridiculous to the deep. We were excited to hold our children, to be happy and safe in a marital relationship. We were excited to be able to fly (I don’t know if that was ever directly promised, but one could argue it’s implied). We were excited to see a beautiful world that was even prettier than what we already have. We were excited to not get the flu anymore, to see loved ones who had passed on, and to pet lions.
Like Samuel, we have modern day prophets who have warned us. However, also like Samuel, we have prophets who have taught us about the Lord’s promises, and we have every reason to rejoice in those blessings today. If we are repenting, remaining close to the Lord, and trying to be a good person, we have every reason to believe that He will bestow all that the Father has on us. That means whole and healed family relationships, healthy bodies that can move and act in tremendous and free ways, and a gorgeous setting to enjoy all of it in.
What is hurting you? What has the Lord promised you that’s adjacent to that hurt? Can you visualize it? Can you visualize the fulfillment of His merciful promises? We don’t have to be afraid of getting our hopes up. Christ has the capacity to fill our hopes beyond what we could have dreamed of. Sit in that visualization of that fulfilled promise, and let it fill you with faith. Let it fill you with a sweet and healing gratitude for your Savior.
The Savior has promised tremendous blessings. Make a conscious list of them and allow yourself to hope for them. It’s okay to still feel hurt and disappointment and sacrifice in this life as we ache to have those blessings fulfilled now. The Savior does not begrudge us feeling misery when He built the world for the very purpose of experiencing the full spectrum of life. However, when you’re ready to step out of the misery and you’ve allowed yourself to feel it sufficiently, let His promises be a balm to you. Let your anticipation of the fulfillment of these promises be as exciting as the event itself.
I testify of a Savior who is coming again even if we’re not sure when. I testify that He has the capacity to fulfill His promises; He already won! He already secured the right to give us everything our hearts desire. I testify of a Savior who also has the capacity to help you strive and reach and repent so that you’re ready to experience those blessings. If you’re worried about being able to receive those blessings because you’re worried about your ability to follow Him, then visualize the promise that there is no darkness too far where He can’t reach you and save you. And beyond pulling you from that darkness, He wants to give you more than you can imagine. He can give you more than you can imagine. Hold those promises in your heart, and let them fill you now.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Helaman 7–12 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 31, 2024
Healed by the Savior
by Autumn Dickson
The theme of remembrance is abundant in the chapters we’ve been reading lately, and that does not cease for this week. Nephi is preaching to the people from the tower in his garden, and he starts to bring up stories that they should remember. One such story is succinctly taught in these verses.
Helaman 8:14-15
14 Yea, did he not bear record that the Son of God should come? And as he lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, even so shall he be lifted up who should come.
15 And as many as should look upon that serpent should live, even so as many as should look upon the Son of God with faith, having a contrite spirit, might live, even unto that life which is eternal.
Nephi teaches the people of a story found in our Old Testament. The Israelites had been bitten by serpents and were dying. Moses lifted up a brazen serpent, and if the Israelites looked at it, they would be healed. Many looked and were saved; many did not and perished.
Such a simple concept. The Israelites were members of the church who had made covenants with God. They still found themselves in trouble throughout their lives, and in this particular instance, the solution to their problems was to simply look at a brazen serpent.
We are likewise members of the church who find ourselves in trouble throughout our lives. Is it really as simple as looking to the Savior? Is this just another way to teach the theme of remembrance? If we can simply remember to look towards the Savior, will we really find the solution to our problems?
I wholeheartedly argue yes.
Interaction with the Savior
Let’s look at the woman with the issue of blood as an example. This woman in the New Testament had been sick for years and years. She had a blood disorder of some kind that made her continually unclean. When you dive into the Law of Moses, you learn that women who were bleeding were not to be touched. They were unclean, and if you touched them, you became unclean. Though this sounds awful, I believe the Lord was actually protecting the health of His daughters during vulnerable times. After a woman was done bleeding, she needed to go and do specific washings to become clean again. Then she was allowed to be touched again.
This woman wasn’t supposed to be touched. No matter how many washings she went through for the Law of Moses, she couldn’t be healed. No matter how obedient she was to the Law of Moses, it was insufficient. Doctors during this time period couldn’t help her either.
It likely didn’t help that the Jews during this time period were all about the Law of Moses. There were all sorts of extra rules that made sure you were following the Law of Moses. It was a badge of honor to be following the Law of Moses “perfectly.” The outward ceremonies and acts of worship had become dramatic, and the people had forgotten that all of these ceremonies were meant to be pointing them towards a Savior that was coming. Obedience to the Law of Moses was inherently worthless without the coming of the Savior.
And we see the physical manifestation of this truth in this story. The woman could not wash herself clean or heal herself with obedience. She could not return to her relationships because she was untouchable. The only thing that healed her was approaching the Savior and touching the hem of his garment.
It was not obedience that healed the woman; it was approaching the Savior in faith.
That’s an important concept to master. I’m not trying to teach that obedience is unimportant. Obedience is vastly important, but it’s important for different reasons than we’re often seeking. We’re looking for obedience to save us, to heal us from our maladies, to make us happy, but obedience cannot provide that. Only a relationship with the Savior can do that.
Obedience offers many blessings. The Law of Moses was important because it was meant to open the eyes of the people so that they could recognize their Savior. It was meant to help them understand their Savior on a deeper level. It protected them. It pushed them to rise above earthly circumstances. It prepared them.
But it could not save them.
We don’t go to the temple to be healed. We go to the temple so we can more easily feel the Savior who can heal us. We don’t read our scriptures to make us happy. We read our scriptures so we can feel the Spirit and catch a glimpse of the presence of the Savior to make us happy. We don’t pray to get what we need; we commune with our Heavenly Father and Savior so we can find solace, adjust our lives according to their foreknowledge, and learn to trust in Their abilities and promises.
All of the acts of obedience and worship are inherently worthless without the aspect of the Savior. We obey and perform and show up and follow the primary answers because they more readily facilitate a relationship with the Savior. If you’re focused on completing the obedience and tasks, you’ll miss the blessings.
Let that knowledge change your worship. Let it change how you attend the temple, church meetings, and service. Let it change how you pray and read your scriptures. We don’t necessarily need to give more; sometimes we just need to adjust our focus to our purpose – the Savior.
A more specific example
This is an example that is more specific in nature, but I feel prompted to share it so here ya go.
I have found that I cannot feel the Savior in the same ways when I’m depressed. This makes perfect sense because I often feel disconnected from people in general when I’m depressed. No matter how I engage or invite, I feel oddly alone and cut off. This problem is exacerbated when we remember that I can’t even physically see the Savior show up like I can with my other relationships.
So when I’m in a dark place, I try to apply the same principles to the Savior that I do to my friends and family. Even when I feel depressed and disconnected from my friends, I talk myself through it. I feel dark, but they don’t hate me. They don’t think I’m annoying. They’re still here, and they’ll still be here when I come back out of it. I can’t feel the connection with them right now, but I know that’s just something in my brain. That connection was and is real.
The same goes for the Savior. He doesn’t hate me. He’s not disappointed in me. He hasn’t fled from me because I’m doing something wrong. He’s not annoyed with me. He’s still there, and He will still be there when I come back out of it. It’s just something in my brain that was given to me for a wise purpose in Him. That connection was and is real, even if I can’t currently feel it.
I take what I’ve been taught about a perfect Savior, and I apply it to my situation. His promises are still real. His concern and desire to push me farther are still real.
This is not always practiced perfectly. Sometimes I forget or stumble and stay on the ground. But practicing has been worthwhile anyways.
Looking to the Savior
Nephi asked his people to remember how looking towards a representation of the Savior had saved their ancestors because he wanted his people to look to the Savior so they could be saved.
In any aspect where you find yourself troubled, you can look to the Savior and include Him. I promise for any problem you find yourself facing in life, there is a corresponding miracle, story, principle, or promise adjacent to the Savior that can either solve your problem, help you understand the purpose of your problem, or lift your sights, and strengthen your faith that deliverance is coming. Every single aspect.
Include Him. And when I say include Him, I mean actually include Him. Don’t include some skewed version of Him that is inaccurate. I used to do that. I pictured the Savior, but I never pictured Him helping me, offering mercy, lifting me up, and encouraging me on. For some bizarre reason, I pictured Him angry with me.
The Savior is a perfectly loving Being who is constantly pursuing us. If He’s disciplining His people, it’s being done out of love to bring them back. All of His acts are acts of love. His no’s, His silences, and His deliberate choices to allow your struggles are all proof of His love. That’s the Savior you need to bring into your life on purpose. That’s the Savior you need to turn to with each obstacle you face. That’s the Savior who won’t let you down.
It takes a lot of mental strength and patience to develop a relationship with a Being you can’t see. It takes a lot of energy to develop and maintain a relationship with anyone, let alone a Being you can’t see. However, I testify that it is infinitely worth it. I testify that on the days I remember to include the Savior in every aspect of my life, I am changed and happy. Life is worth living. All the wilderness we’re asked to endure and walk through is worth it. I testify that He, and He alone, heals and saves. Worship and obedience are beautiful principles, but they were only ever meant to point us to Him because He is the only path to salvation with all of its accompanying goodness.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Helaman 1–12 – Mike Parker
Aug 26, 2024
The ministries of Nephi & Lehi; Nephite spiritual decline
(Helaman 1–12)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
What does the mention of concrete in Helaman 3:7 tell us about where the Book of Mormon could have taken place? See Matthew G. Wells and John W. Welch, “Concrete Evidence for the Book of Mormon,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 212–14.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Helaman 1–6 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 24, 2024
Treasure in Heaven
by Autumn Dickson
Helaman had two sons whom he named Nephi and Lehi after their forefathers. He named them this so they could remember the good works of their ancestors and try to follow their examples. Helaman wanted his sons to have constant reminders to do good.
Helaman also taught his sons this:
Helaman 5:8 And now my sons, behold I have somewhat more to desire of you, which desire is, that ye may not do these things that ye may boast, but that ye may do these things to lay up for yourselves a treasure in heaven, yea, which is eternal, and which fadeth not away; yea, that ye may have that precious gift of eternal life, which we have reason to suppose hath been given to our fathers.
Helaman wanted his sons to do good, but he wanted his sons to do it for the right reasons. When it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the right reasons are indispensable. It is the right reasons that change us and prepare us to actually receive eternal life because it is only through becoming like our Eternal Father that we can experience the kind of life He lives.
Helaman knew this and so he didn’t want his sons to do the right things so that they could boast and be proud of their good works. He wanted them to lay up a treasure in heaven for themselves, namely eternal life. This was an interesting way of phrasing this because some might argue that Helaman was teaching them to do good works so that they could receive a personal reward. Let’s talk about this personal reward so we can discuss what Helaman was truly teaching when he phrased it in this manner.
What is this treasure in heaven?
When we’re discussing the concept of “treasure” in heaven, we have to understand that this is symbolic. Treasure on earth is valuable, but the traditional treasure that we think of will not be valuable in heaven. It’s too plentiful to be valuable. Everyone will receive a healthy, resurrected body. Everyone (except for those few sons of perdition) will be living in a world that’s better than the one we have. Everyone will have what they need to be sustained forever.
So what’s valuable in heaven?
When you do good works, you’re not earning a mansion and an unending supply of gold and jewels and other nonsense. I have a sneaking suspicion that those things will be rather worthless on the other side because of their inability to provide anything for us. Money has its place here and can provide some measure of security, peace, and happiness. However, on the other side, where the Lord has already promised each of us a place in a kingdom that is above anything we’ve experienced here, I’m going to guess that your money is going to be laughable.
No. This treasure is not a reward in that manner.
In fact, I believe that the true treasure is nothing more than a deep realization of how to actually be happy in the context of eternity. That is what’s going to be valuable on the other side. The implications that follow this deep realization are all a part of this treasure in heaven, and when we understand this treasure in heaven, we will understand that Helaman was not encouraging his sons to seek a reward in the traditional, selfish sense.
Valuable treasure in the context of eternity
So let’s cover some of the realities of the context of eternity. We find ourselves in a world more beautiful than the one we’re living in now. Everyone has everything they need as well as perfectly healthy bodies. There is no such thing as having more than another person because every person pretty much gets whatever they want.
The only thing I want to alter about these realities (in order to drive home my point) is the fact that in my scenario, everyone remains exactly who they are.
How would you spend your time if this were your reality? Where would you invest your energy? Obviously, we’re going to spend our energy in a way that makes us happy. How long will your investment bring a return? How long will it take before your investment grows unbearably dull and miserable as you view your unending life?
Real and lasting happiness requires drama and hardship. Nobody wants to watch a movie where the main character goes through nothing, learns nothing, and is just fine for two hours. In real life, having moments of reprieve where nothing is going wrong is absolutely appreciated. But it’s only appreciated because we know what it feels like when things are going wrong. Otherwise, it’s literally just boring. And in the context of eternity, I would imagine it can actually become unbearable.
I’ve watched my sister experience this on a smaller scale recently. She has ten kids. Needless to say, her life has been chaotic and constant movement for years on end. She has finally reached the point where her kids are growing up. They’re all in school. One is married. Another is off at college, and another is on a mission. She found herself in a period of time where she could finally catch up on reading and watching TV, and she definitely took advantage of it. She had solidly earned that reprieve.
But after some time passed, she got bored. She needed a challenge. She needed more than constant downtime. So she enrolled in school again.
Such is the case with eternity but on an even more extreme level. We will have nothing but constant “downtime.” We will need something to challenge us, or things are going to get dreadfully monotonous to the point where we have nothing to live for.
So here comes our Plan of Salvation in which the Lord allows us to have eternal posterity. Here comes our challenge to love and help someone who needs us, someone we can love more than ourselves. Here comes happiness and an appreciation of it.
But in order to take advantage of that potential happiness that is being offered to us, we have to be willing to look outside ourselves and our own needs. In order to be happy in the context of eternity, you have to let go of yourself and be turned outward like our Heavenly Father. That’s the big secret to happiness. That’s the key. That’s the treasure in heaven.
When Helaman teaches his sons to pursue this treasure in heaven, he wants them to learn the value of turning beyond yourself and the best way to learn this principle is to live it. You can read about serving others all day long, but you don’t change into an others-oriented kind of person until you practice what you’ve been taught. We have to act in order to change. Helaman’s sons were being given opportunities to practice turning outward so they could change and be prepared for the reality that was heaven. That was the treasure that was being offered to them.
Eternal life and its true treasure is being surrounded by loved ones and helping others progress. All of that other stuff (healthy bodies, homes, all of our needs met) is going to be wonderful and a necessary part of our eternal happiness, but those things are insufficient for happiness. Look at real-world examples. There are plenty of rich people who are unhappy and plenty of poor people who are happy so it’s not truly about having resources. The valuable treasure available in heaven is the knowledge that forgetting about yourself is where happiness lies, because it is only in forgetting about yourself that you find something worth living for: eternal posterity who can grow and progress.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who lives and loves His eternal life. I testify that He loves us enough to offer it to us. I testify that He has a complete understanding of eternity and that He’s trying to give it to us. I testify that He set up this entire plan, made possible by Jesus Christ, so that we could come down and gain the necessary knowledge and change to be prepared to live like He does. I testify that performing good works presents that specific opportunity to morph into the kind of person who can appreciate eternity.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 53–63 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 17, 2024
To Support and Suffer
by Autumn Dickson
One of the most well-known stories in The Book of Mormon is that of the stripling warriors. Though their story is replete with inspiring stories and principles, I want to actually discuss their fathers, namely the Lamanites converts who changed their name to the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. These Anti-Nephi-Lehies came to dwell with the Nephites, and the Nephites offered them protection as they had taken oaths of pacifism because of their past dealings with violence. When Lamanites came to battle against the Nephites, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies did not participate in the war despite the fact that they were beneficiaries of the bravery of the Nephites.
Consider the whole of the story. These Nephites, who had once been mortal enemies with the Anti-Nephi-Lehies they were now protecting, were going out to war to protect all the people. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies helped support the war effort by helping to provide for the armies; however, before the stripling warriors, they offered up no warriors. The fathers had made an oath not to fight.
Though I would have whole-heartedly supported these Anti-Nephi-Lehies in keeping their covenant of pacifism, I acknowledge that this might have been difficult for some to swallow (maybe it wasn’t hard for anyone, I obviously don’t know because it doesn’t say specifically). I wonder if any Nephite mothers felt unwanted resentment as they sent out their husbands and sons, knowing that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies were not contributing in the same manner. Perhaps, in the minds of some, they felt that it was actually morally wrong that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies wouldn’t contribute similarly in the middle of a war. It wasn’t just about their own deaths; it was about helping to protect Nephite lives as well. We know this wasn’t a completely absent opinion because before the stripling warriors stepped forward, their fathers (who had taken the oath of pacifism) wanted to break their oaths and help fight alongside the Nephites.
I don’t point out this side of the story to cause discontent or even to play devil’s advocate. I point it out so that we can better understand the principle I want to teach today. That principle is found in the following verse. Helaman is writing to Captain Moroni and explaining that he didn’t want the Anti-Nephi-Lehies to break the covenant they had made with God.
Alma 56:8 But I would not suffer them that they should break this covenant which they had made, supposing that God would strengthen us, insomuch that we should not suffer more because of the fulfilling the oath which they had taken.
Because this was a war and because we live in a fallen world, there was going to be suffering and sorrow and loss. However, Helaman testifies of a benevolent God who would not allow the Nephites to suffer more because they had made the decision to protect the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. The Nephites were making a sacrifice, a potentially heavy sacrifice, in order to support someone else following the Lord. And yet, they were not truly going to lose.
There are a lot of modern day applications to this principle. There were sacrifices made by the saints in the early period of this dispensation as they buried family members, lost limbs, and suffered extreme depravities to provide a safe place for the church to grow for the countless people in generations to follow. There are also modern day implications that are likely more relatable because they aren’t a life or death situation. Serving missions, serving in time-heavy callings, and serving in general can take time away from other important priorities. All of the people who choose to answer the call and volunteer when called upon by the Spirit are sacrificing something potentially important, and yet, no one has to truly lose. Not really.
There are two points I’d like to cover.
A supposed sacrifice
Even if we were to end up sacrificing more than we would have otherwise, the Lord has every right to call upon us. I want to look at the idea of sacrifice as if we were truly sacrificing on behalf of others to better highlight the rightness of sacrifice.
I was called to serve in a primary presidency a week before I gave birth to my second child. Our ward had an enormous primary, and each half could hardly fit into the primary room for singing time. Needless to say, there was some time involved in the calling. It wasn’t even necessarily an extreme amount of time. However, as it came at the inopportune moment of delivering my second child, I was feeling a bit bitter. It didn’t help that my postpartum depression raged harder after my second child than with any other child. I felt stretched to the limit in many capacities. Conner’s schedule was absolutely chaotic, and Sunday was the only real day that I could have him home with the family with any kind of regularity. I wanted that time as a family, and I also wanted my nap time that I felt I desperately needed. But alas, Sunday was the only day that worked for the presidency to come together.
I fulfilled my responsibilities, and I believe I did so with a brave face (though it’s hard for me to tell…when I’m depressed, I have a hard time adequately gauging the success of my social endeavors). However, despite the brave face, I was angry and resentful of having this time taken away from me. I didn’t want to leave my house to take care of other kids. I wanted to stay home with my new baby.
I wasn’t even offering up my life like the Nephites, and yet, I felt cheated.
I’m not sure how long it took for my heart to soften enough that the Spirit could chastise me. But I remember walking around, delivering little packages to the primary families in the surrounding neighborhoods, when the Spirit helped me to see the kids who didn’t have what my kids had at home. I was missing out on a couple hours max with my little baby who was safely tucked away at home napping or with dad, but some of the kids that were on my list needed the gospel and they weren’t getting it at home. The Lord needed someone else to bring it to them.
My bitterness dried up quickly as my mind cleared to see the situation accurately. With everything beautiful that had been given to me, how was I to turn my back on the Lord and say He was asking too much? How could I deny these tiny sacrifices that had the potential to bless kids who needed it so badly because of the circumstances they were born into?
Perhaps the Nephites were wiser than me and recognized this. Perhaps they saw that these former Lamanites had been born into circumstances that were harmful. Perhaps the Nephites had their eyes opened, and they were completely taken aback as they recognized the strong spirits who had turned away from their previous traditions because of their immense faith. Perhaps the Nephites saw the situation for what it really was, and because of what they clearly saw, it was easy to make the decision to protect them even when it might have been perceived as “unfair.”
Which leads to my next point.
The Savior didn’t have the same promise but sacrificed anyway
No one has sacrificed more than the Savior. No one has given up what He gave up to save us. If He had been born into our circumstances, He still would have chosen to be perfect. And yet, despite the fact that He didn’t need to operate with the humble understanding that Heavenly Father would have tried to save Him in our circumstances, He still sacrificed. From our viewpoint, we can have the humble realization that we are no better than those we sacrifice for. For His viewpoint, He is better, but that’s not what mattered. What matters is that He loved everyone enough to want them to come home and so He sacrificed accordingly.
He sacrificed for each of us individually. He asks us to be like Him, to let go of what we believe we deserve, to sacrifice on behalf of those who can’t do it for themselves. There was no one to promise the Savior that He wouldn’t have to suffer more for choosing to step up for those who couldn’t step up for themselves. And yet, He did it. And because He did it, He offers us the promise that Helaman testified of, namely that He will not have us truly sacrifice anything that matters when we’re stepping up to sacrifice for another.
I also know this to be true. There have been a million moments in time where I have asked the Lord why He has asked me to do this blog when all I ever wanted to do was be a mother. There have been moments where I have failed my kids because I’ve been sacrificing to try and share these messages. There have been plenty of moments of bitterness where I have felt like He’s asked me to set aside my family in order to fulfill this responsibility He’s asked me to do. When looking at those individual moments, it would be easy to become confused and believe that it’s wrong to make these sacrifices when my priority should be my family. And yet, when you step back and look at the scales that include all of the blessings and sacrifices that have been made, I cannot testify enough that no one has been blessed more than me and my family. So much of what I love about myself has come because of these “sacrifices” I’ve been asked to make, and I know that these powerful beliefs about my Savior and myself will be passed on to my children. Though there are moments of sacrifice, my children will ultimately receive far more than they would have gotten otherwise.
Be willing to make the sacrifice with a willing heart, and you will also find the overwhelming blessings I have found on behalf of yourself and those you love.
The Nephites did not suffer more for being willing to uphold the Anti-Nephi-Lehies as they kept their covenants with God. I know it because I have had the same experience in my small way. The Lord is overwhelmingly good, and when He has asked us to step up and serve on behalf of others, He will turn again and bless us. If we follow Him with all of our hearts, we will never be able to repay Him for what He offers in return.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 43-63 – Mike Parker
Aug 12, 2024
The Zoramite, Amalickiahite & Lamanite Wars
(Alma 43–63)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
This important book examines Book of Mormon warfare from many different aspects, including Mormon₂’s reasons for including these accounts in the text: Warfare in the Book of Mormon, eds. Stephen D. Ricks and William J. Hamblin (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book / Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990).
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 43–52 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 11, 2024
What You Choose to See
by Autumn Dickson
We have arrived at the war chapters. Within these chapters are plenty of principles that we can still spiritually engage with despite the fact that the events are taking place on a battlefield. During one such battle, Captain Moroni bears his testimony to Zerahemnah (one of the antagonizing military leaders) regarding the protection of the Lord.
He testifies that they have the true faith and that the Lord strengthened and protected them because of their belief and worship. After bearing testimony, he commands Zerahemnah to make an oath that he and his men will never come against the Nephites again. Otherwise they will commence the battle and wipe out the remainder of the men.
Zerahemnah delivers his weapon to Captain Moroni but refuses the oath. Zerahemnah gives this as his reasoning:
Alma 44:9 Behold, we are not of your faith; we do not believe that it is God that has delivered us into your hands; but we believe that it is your cunning that has preserved you from our swords. Behold, it is your breastplates and your shields that have preserved you.
Captain Moroni believes that they won because of their faith. Zerahemnah believes it was because they were good at war. Note that both sentences contain the word “belief.” People can find evidence of whatever they choose to look for. Captain Moroni found evidence of the Lord’s protection, and Zerahemnah did not.
What we choose to see
I taught a man on my mission who had lost his faith. He had grown up a devout Catholic. He attended mass regularly, and after marrying his wife who was a member, he also started attending church meetings with us. He met with us regularly, read The Book of Mormon, and participated in other faith-promoting activities.
And yet, if you were to ask him, he would have maintained that he didn’t feel any faith in God. He had watched a movie that had asked a question, “What if it’s not true?” or something along those lines. That question had stuck with him, and he had not been able to feel faith since.
My companion and I worked over and over and over to teach him to look for those good feelings from God. We wanted so badly for him to find that faith he had lost. There was one evening where the Spirit was so powerful. We had randomly chosen to sing a hymn or primary song (can’t remember which one). He, his wife, my companion, and I found ourselves in tears. It was “thick” in the room.
But still, our friend could not bring himself to attribute it beyond good hormones that were conjured up with beautiful music. He still could not bring himself to see God in it.
I’ve learned since then that faith is a choice, both when it comes to obedience and when it comes to seeing God in our lives.
My friend participated in faith-promoting activities but wasn’t choosing faith; he wanted faith to descend upon him. Where we felt the presence of God, he felt good feelings that didn’t necessarily come from Him. People can look at the same event and draw completely different conclusions.
When I pray about finding my lost keys, I can choose to believe that God helped me find them or that it was a coincidence. When I feel good emotions associated with church, I can believe that the Lord is making His presence known or that I simply have positive pathways built in my brain when it comes to church. When we look at mistakes leaders in the past and present, we can choose to see fallible humans who are still generally led by God or we can see evidence that they can’t really be prophets if they had flaws. When Alma faced off with Korihor, he testified that all of creation was a witness of God. Obviously, there are millions of people throughout history who have come to a completely different conclusion.
The truth remains that you can find “evidence” to support your beliefs no matter which beliefs you ascribe to. I feel that almost most everyone goes through moments in their lives when they ask, “What if it’s not true?” Though these moments can be a little scary, both for ourselves and those we love, these moments can be defining. They can be the threshold in our lives where we really decide where we are going to invest our belief, and that’s incredibly powerful.
We may be tempted to desperately avoid questions such as, “What if it’s not true?” However, rather than avoiding them, we can examine them closely and try to include the Lord we’ve been taught about. We can use it as a testing ground rather than unraveling because we’re afraid of it.
Why should I choose to invest in faith?
So let’s say we’ve reached that threshold. We’ve asked ourselves, “What if we were wrong about everything? What if I was just seeing what I wanted to see?” If you can find “evidence” of whatever you believe in, why should you choose faith?
Unfortunately, this is an extremely personal question that gets handled by the Lord according to each individual. I can only share my experiences.
For a long time, I’m not even sure I had a good reason for choosing to invest in faith because I’m not sure I was consciously choosing it. I was afraid to consider the alternative of leaving the church, and I had found enough goodness and evidence that I felt okay moving forward. I invested in faith because I had been taught to invest in faith. I believed that my good feelings were coming from God because I had been taught to believe. I’m so grateful for that gift.
I’m also grateful that I reached the point where I’ve made my own, conscious choice to continue investing in faith. It was scary facing some of those questions at first, but walking through those low points created an opportunity for me to invest on my faith on purpose, and that has been far more rewarding.
I still receive all those good feelings and quiet moments and associate them with God, but those are not the reasons I choose to keep investing. Those are rewards I receive from investing, but they are not the reasons I continue investing.
I think my most definitive reason for investing right now is how I’ve felt guided. Over the past couple years, I have been watching the Lord guide my prayers before something happened and then watching them be fulfilled before my eyes.
I’ve told the story before, but as we were moving to Virginia, I opened my journal and prayed for absolutely everything I wanted. I left nothing out, no matter how silly or artificial it seemed. At a time when my husband was under immense stress trying to find something we could afford that wasn’t a box in an alley, I was feeling pretty good about everything and asking for whatever I wanted. Sure enough, seven months later, we were led to a temporary home that had every single thing I had asked for. Not to mention, it was given to us at a price that was unheard of, and we did absolutely no work to get it. It quite literally fell into our laps.
I would have been fine if the Lord had given us a tiny apartment without all the extras and I told Him that too, but it was one of those moments where one of the most important lessons He taught me was, “I heard you.” Maybe in and of itself, this can be considered coincidence, but this has been repeated over and over and over.
I pray. I am guided as I pray. Things come together, and I recognize the Lord’s hand because He told me to pray for it. He would likely still bless my family, but because I prayed for it, I was given the tremendous gift of recognizing that He was speaking to me.
Maybe this is how Captain Moroni felt. Maybe Zerahemnah was impressed with their shields, breastplates, and cunning, but maybe Captain Moroni had felt something nagging at him ahead of time to prepare his men in precisely this manner. Then, when he saw everything come together, he quietly thanked the Lord for preparing him ahead of time. Or, maybe Captain Moroni had enough experiences of that manner that he knew the Lord had been guiding them, even if he hadn’t felt any specifics in that particular moment.
Right now, prayer and its results are the reasons I keep investing in faith. I have had other experiences where my prayers have been much shorter and involved far less of my silly, little wants, and I have seen how those prayers were also guided because He led me towards something that I wasn’t expecting. I have had even more experiences where I did pray for everything I wanted, but I felt this little nagging feeling that I wasn’t going to get it. And sure enough, I was led elsewhere.
The Lord could lead me for my entire life without me knowing it. But because He has commanded me to pray, He has been able to guide my feelings ahead of time so that I can recognize Him later. And isn’t that just a beautiful reason to pray? Prayer isn’t about getting what we want. It’s about helping us find our Heavenly Father, and it has surely done that for me.
I testify of Heavenly Father who hears and answers prayers. I testify that He can guide our prayers and feelings if we practice that skill. I testify that He can make Himself known to you should you choose to invest in faith and ask for help in recognizing Him. The experiment surely won’t hurt you. You have nothing to lose by asking Him to help you see Him if He’s really there. The rewards I have personally experienced have gone far beyond what I could have imagined, and I know it all comes from a loving Heavenly Father who loved me because He made me.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 39–42 – Autumn Dickson
Aug 05, 2024
Perspectives on Corianton
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters we’ve been reading lately, Alma is counseling with his sons. We read so many incredible sermons of missionaries and prophets to their people, but these are incredible messages given from father to sons. One of these messages is especially relevant today as Alma talks to his son Corianton. Corianton had been guilty of sexual sin. As the Come Follow Me manual so eloquently puts, it can be hard to know how to help our loved ones when they’ve made a big mistake.
I believe there are a couple of perspectives that can help us when we’re trying to know what to say or how to support. People can feel how you feel about them, even if it’s just subconsciously. If we have the right perspective going into the situation, they will be able to feel how we feel about them, and it will make all the difference in how they perceive whatever words come out of our mouths. There is no perfect way to respond, but if we have a correct knowledge of the Plan of Salvation and an accurate perspective of what we’re really looking at, it can be easier to set aside our own personal feelings and be there for those who need it.
The gravity of certain sins
Here is one of the things that Alma said to Corianton.
Alma 39:5-6
5 Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?
6 For behold, if ye deny the Holy Ghost when it once has had place in you, and ye know that ye deny it, behold, this is a sin which is unpardonable; yea, and whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for him to obtain forgiveness; yea, I say unto you, my son, that it is not easy for him to obtain a forgiveness.
So sexual sin is pretty high up there on the list of sins. If we were to weigh the gravity of sins, the most serious would be denying the Holy Ghost (this is a specific sin that most of us aren’t capable of). The second highest is shedding innocent blood, and the third is sexual sin.
A couple of weeks ago, I actually found myself pondering this idea of the gravity of sins (I suppose the Lord was preparing me for this week), and I remember distinctly thinking that it was interesting to find sexual sin right next to murder. Heavenly Father judges us by our hearts, and I want you to consider for a moment the state of the heart of those who murder vs. those who commit sexual sin.
I would wager that those who shed innocent blood have pretty dark hearts. Now compare the hard heart it would require to murder someone vs. the heart that commits sexual sin. I fully recognize that there are plenty of people out there who commit sexual sin with the intent to hurt, and I believe that there will be reckoning for that.
However, consider the hearts of those who made a mistake. Consider the hearts of the young teenagers who found themselves with too much freedom and undeveloped brains. Consider the hearts of two people who are about to get married. Please do not mistake me. I’m not seeking to excuse sin. I’m merely pointing out the difference in the hearts of those who murder and the hearts of those who commit sexual sin in a moment of weakness because there is a difference. Heavenly Father knows this.
So if Heavenly Father is judging us by our hearts, why is sexual sin right up there next to murder?
This is the perspective I wish to share that may help you know how you should approach your loved one. Namely, sometimes the gravity of sin is not weighed by our hearts but by the potential of consequences and the required healing.
A lot of the hearts that commit sexual sin are nowhere near as dark as those that commit murder. And yet, the fact remains. Even if your heart wasn’t dark, the potential for consequences and the need for healing remains. Even if it was a moment of weakness in the midst of a million successful evenings, the consequences can be painful.
The world doesn’t like us teaching the consequences of sin because they believe that we’re trying to scare people into doing what’s right. There are many positive reasons to keep the law of chastity, but it’s not wrong to teach my kids about how sexual sin can hurt them just like there’s nothing wrong with teaching my kid that they can get hit by a car for running out into the road. Having all the information, good and bad, can help our children make the right decisions.
I don’t want to hyperfocus on the consequences because this post isn’t about not committing sexual sin; it’s about having the right perspective to approach those we love. I believe that most adults can easily imagine all the potential consequences of sex, from a baby (and all of the options in that scenario) to how it changes a young brain. So instead let’s focus on how this perspective of hearts can change how we approach our loved ones.
The other side of repentance
Much of repentance is a true recognition of how sin affects us and others. It’s a realization that we don’t want to bring those kinds of results into the world, and it’s about rising above and choosing to live our life on a higher plane.
But the other side of the coin of repentance is healing. It is essential that we don’t neglect this portion of repentance if we truly want our loved ones to live at a higher plane. We don’t want them limping around the rest of their lives, carrying shame in a desperate attempt to not make mistakes anymore. No. We want them to fully heal. If you really want someone to choose the right, one of the most essential ingredients is that they need to feel good about themselves. Punishing myself and hating myself never led me to goodness, just perfectionism and there is a difference. When I learned to love myself, I wanted to treat myself better and take care of myself. Hating myself made it harder to do what was right because I didn’t care what happened to me.
The other positive aspect of healing is that it can nurture a deep appreciation for the Savior. If we can help our loved ones approach the Savior, they’re going to find something way more powerful than anything they can find in this world. At the end (and all throughout!) the repentance process, we want them to be feeling the effects of the Savior and His ability to wash away the darkest of sins. If you want your loved one to do what’s right, you introduce them to the Savior. Introducing them to the Savior means personally recognizing the state of their hearts, their need for healing, and then helping to deliver those things. Their deep gratitude for the Savior offers a deep propulsion to turn around and live happier lives.
The moment we offer love is important
Alma the Younger is the one delivering the message to his son, and this is so perfect. Alma the Younger came to a deep awareness of his sins. When did he start to feel better? The second he reached for Christ. His sins were washed away, and he praised the Lord. The Lord didn’t wait to deliver His love and healing and acceptance until after Alma went out and started trying to make up for his sins. No. The Lord flooded Alma with His love the second Alma’s heart was prepared to receive it, and because Alma was flooded with that love, Alma wanted to go out and do what was right.
The order of that is important. I feel like sometimes we want to withhold our love because we want them to feel the consequences of what they’ve done to discourage them from making those mistakes again. Ironically, it often comes from a place of love because we want them to be better. Unfortunately, it’s also coming from a place of fear which isn’t as helpful. Consequences can be a great way to not repeat mistakes, but only to an extent.
Think about how the Savior does it (because He obviously does it perfectly). He wields consequences, but He usually does so in response to hard hearts as He tries to soften them. He often responds to soft hearts with love, and that love changes them and turns their lives around. And let’s review what we know about the hearts of those who commit sexual sin. Yes, there are those who have hard hearts, but there are many who have made mistakes and need love instead if we want them to heal and come back from those mistakes.
Love immediately. Put yourself on their team immediately. Recognize that they’re going to experience consequences regardless of whether you deliver them yourself, and recognize where their hearts are sitting. You can help them understand the gravity if necessary, but in most scenarios, they’re already going to know and feel it.
What they don’t know is whether you still love them and whether you’ll still accept them. Helping them feel loved and accepted will be a precursor to their ability to let the Savior in to love, accept, and heal them to the extent that they are changed and want to be better.
I believe in a Savior who understands the consequences of sin. I believe that sexual sin can cause a great amount of heartache which is why the Lord seeks to protect us from it. I also believe that the Lord wants to heal and love, especially when we’re seeking, and I believe that allowing that love and healing throughout the entire process is more effective than sharp disapproval, cold shoulders, and fear. Love them so much that they love themselves and want better for themselves. Love them so much that they catch a glimpse of the Savior’s love and are able to accept His atonement on their behalf.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 36–42 – Mike Parker
Jul 29, 2024
Alma’s counsel to his sons Helaman, Shiblon, & Corianton
(Alma 36–42)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
Alma₂’s testimony in Alma 36 is one of the longest and most complex examples of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon; it is a poetic and literary masterpiece. See See John W. Welch, “A Masterpiece: Alma 36,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, eds. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991), 114–31.
Michael R. Ash, “The Sin ‘Next to Murder’: An Alternative Interpretation,” Sunstone 143 (November 2006): 34–43. Mike Ash argues that the serious offense for which Alma₂ chastised his son Corianton was not sexual sin (although that, in itself, is serious), but rather destroying their testimonies of the Zoramites₂ through his bad example. In effect, Corianton committed “spiritual murder.” See also “KnoWhy #147: Why Was Corianton’s Sin So Serious?,” Book of Mormon Central, last modified 20 July 2016. For the doctrinal reasons behind the seriousness of sexual sin, see Jeffrey R. Holland’s 12 January 1988 BYU address, “Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments.”
In 1856 Brigham Young delivered an address in Salt Lake City in which he discussed, at length, the location of the post-mortal spirit world. See Journal of Discourses 3:367–73.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 36–38 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 27, 2024
Diligence is Underrated
by Autumn Dickson
There was a period in my life where my stress levels grew to problematic levels that were consuming me. I was experiencing some postpartum depression, and that was combined with responsibilities that threatened to drown me. I was tired all of the time. I was waking up at the crack of dawn with a toddler (after waking up with the baby throughout the night), and I would move from task to task to task to task until as late as 10:00 pm. This was compounded by health problems that I started experiencing. For weeks on end (maybe even a few months), it felt like there wasn’t a reprieve. There wasn’t any time to pull my head above water for a breath. Conner was swamped with his own work, and so we were both just surviving.
My sweet mother kept telling me to simplify my life, and I truly tried to do so. I looked at what tasks were filling my day and genuinely considered which of those tasks could be dropped. I wanted to simplify my life, but there really wasn’t anything that I could let go of. I was taking care of small children and all the endless tasks that required. I was making sure my house was a sanitary enough place even if it wasn’t always tidy. My health problems grew better when I started cutting out certain ingredients, but that meant I had to cook a lot of things from scratch which was also time consuming. I couldn’t give up my kids or all the tasks associated with them. I couldn’t give up the extra cooking unless I wanted to have chronic pain again. We didn’t have the resources at the time to take on some of my tasks. The only thing I could really give up was the blog.
But alas, the Lord said no. Quite forcefully actually. I even asked one too many times, and He essentially answered with, “Stop asking or you’re crossing over into disobeying Me.” So I stopped asking, but I remained frustrated. I felt like He didn’t care that I was destroying myself. Every once in a while, I would feel a whisper that I didn’t have to destroy myself; He would enable me to do what I needed to do without carrying the weight of the world.
For some bizarre reason that I don’t understand, I didn’t listen. I suppose I didn’t trust Him sufficiently yet. I felt like I had to carry myself because no one else would pick up the slack.
It would have been easy for Him to remove my stress and let things flow easily. He could have minimized other tasks quite easily for me or brought in resources that would have enabled me to delegate tasks. Some might even believe it was cruel that He simply watched me struggle for so long; there were definitely times that I subconsciously thought so.
But the Lord wasn’t there to make my life easy. Honestly, I see now that He was wise enough to let me push myself until I broke. He knew that there was no other way to soften my heart and help me learn those lessons the easy way. So He let me suffer in my bullheadedness, and He waited to teach me a lesson that would change how I lived the rest of my life.
I know that comparatively, I was blessed. However, I also know that I’m not the only one who feels like they’re being run ragged while trying to do everything they’re supposed to be doing. I know I’m not the only one who has been afraid of failing if I didn’t martyr myself. I know that each of us will have to go through periods in our life where we have to learn to trust the Lord with what needs to be accomplished.
Helaman is given a responsibility
Alma has a son named Helaman, and this week, we read the chapter where he passes the sacred responsibility of the plates down to his son. He admonishes his son to treat them with gravity, to be steadfast in his obedience to the Lord so that he could fulfill the responsibility which he was given.
Over and over and over in Alma 37, we learn about a small principle that can make a big difference in our life. Let’s start with this verse.
Alma 37:20 Therefore I command you, my son Helaman, that ye be diligent in fulfilling all my words, and that ye be diligent in keeping the commandments of God as they are written.
Diligence is a remarkably underrated Christlike attribute. It’s definitely not one of the first qualities I think of when it comes to Christ, but it has made a surprisingly large difference.
According to Preach My Gospel, “Diligence is steady, consistent, earnest, and energetic effort in doing the Lord’s work.” I have learned that the Lord doesn’t ask for some all-consuming, overwhelming effort that completely takes over our lives; He asks for diligence. Diligence is an act of faith where we show up with willingness, and the Lord helps us do what we need to do.
When I finally hit my breaking point in my stress, I turned to the Lord. I told Him I would do what He wanted me to do, and I told Him that if everything totally failed and died, I couldn’t be blamed. I had given everything I felt I could give, and if it wasn’t good enough, well…then that was just too bad. I didn’t have anything else.
The Lord taught me that I wasn’t giving everything; I was withholding my trust. Accurately practicing diligence also requires a faith that He can quicken our abilities, magnify our efforts, and bring miracles where we fall short.
Another phrase found in this chapter is, “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings…” So that’s what I did. Every morning, I would wake up, look at my to-do list, smirk at the fact that there was not enough time in the day, and then I would tell the Lord to tell me what He wanted.
For a while, I had the training wheels on. For a short period of time, I felt guided in every section of my day. I knew when I needed to fold laundry, when it would be wisest to work on the blog, and when I needed to let go of responsibilities and focus on my kids. I even felt very deliberate pushes to rest, nap, or read a book. He gave me way more breaks than I had given myself.
And you know what happened? It all got done. When I needed to work on the blog, the kids would miraculously play well together, and I wasn’t a constant referee. Somehow dinner made it onto the table, and my kids got an occasional bath. I had the same tasks, and sometimes the tasks still lasted into the night, but the weight was gone. I had hit my breaking point and so I finally handed the weight over to the Lord; I physically couldn’t carry that anymore so I handed Him my trust.
I still have lots to do, but the weight is gone. The stress is gone. I guess I should be careful saying that because I’m still imperfect and get tired and fall back into old neurotic habits, but it’s not killing me anymore.
A couple lessons
I have seen this principle of diligence take on many forms. I have learned that diligence looks different at different times in my life.
For a while, when I was really overwhelmed, it looked like the Lord guiding my day to know which activities to perform. Sometimes it looked like me closing my laptop because I was beating my head against a wall, and I knew that the Lord would give me what I needed when He was good and ready. There was no need to force it.
Right now, it looks like a goal and a prayer. When I found out I was pregnant again and needed to be preparing extra videos for when the baby came, I made a goal with God about how much I would work on it. I do my best to hit that goal, and I pray hard that my diligence will be sufficient and that He will help me finish what I need to do in the time I’ve been given. Under normal circumstances, I’m not sure I would be investing enough time. Under my current, miraculous circumstances, I feel like the Lord is going to bring a miracle I need. So even when I worry about deadlines, I remind myself that He has the power to accomplish whatever needs to happen in the time He has given me. I don’t have to carry that weight because He does.
Another way I saw it manifested is when I recently got called to teach Youth Sunday School. I was pumped, but that also meant more gospel study on top of the other messages I was already trying to prepare. When our bishop came to ask me, he spoke about how he had found himself immersed in the scriptures for way longer than he had ever been. He talked about how he felt a deep need to prepare and do his best for these kids. I smiled as I thought about the very individual lesson that the Lord was teaching him.
And rather than putting pressure on myself to spend multiple hours a week preparing lessons for the youth, I had a testimony that the Lord could work with the time I had. I spend about an hour a week preparing the lessons for the kids, but I’m constantly immersing myself in the scriptures and trying to be worthy of the Spirit. Even if I can’t dedicate seven hours to their specific lesson, my spiritual diligence in general counts towards preparation for them.
The principle of diligence evolves and looks different at different times in our lives. Sometimes, He’s telling me to stop being idle. Other times, He’s telling me to stop trying to carry the weight by myself. I can do the tasks without carrying the immense pressure. When I work in this manner, I find that I can still get everything done that I need to and the tasks are much more fulfilling because they don’t feel like they’re killing me.
It’s on Him
The task that was given to Helaman was not an easy one. He was asked to engrave the records of the people on the plates. I’m sure this was not the only responsibility Helaman had, and I highly doubt he was getting paid for it. Think about all the tasks Helaman must have had to just survive in a pre-electricity world, not to mention his other extra religious duties. This was an extra responsibility that was given to him by his father. Despite the extra task he had been given, his father also gave him this promise:
Alma 37:16 But if ye keep the commandments of God, and do with these things which are sacred according to that which the Lord doth command you…behold, no power of earth or hell can take them from you, for God is powerful to the fulfilling of all his words.
There are a couple of keys here. If you do what the Lord commands (not what you command or society commands or outward pressures command), then no power of earth or hell can stand against you. God will help you do the task He has given to you. Whether it’s acquiring the brass plates or finding time to invest in extra responsibilities, He will provide a way for you to accomplish the thing He commands. You will have what you need if you diligently show up with willingness.
So be diligent. Show up regularly and allow Him to work with you. Give the pressure to Him because He’s the one truly doing the work anyway, and small means will show you marvelous works.
I know that the Lord can move mountains through me. I know that He can help me find out ways to carve time into my schedule. I know that He can help me know how much time is sufficient. I know that He can help me accomplish the tasks He’s given to me, and that it doesn’t have to be at the detriment of my health or the happiness of my family. I know that I can trust Him to bring the miracle if I’m simply willing to diligently show up and be utilized.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 32–35 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 22, 2024
Nourish Belief
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we find the well-known sermon taught by Alma about planting a seed of faith and nourishing the tree. Alma is approached by the poorer class of people who have been cast out of the synagogues because of their coarse clothing. Alma then begins to preach unto them, teaching them about worship and belief. Here is the beginning of the analogy he teaches to the people.
Alma 32:28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
When you nurture a seed of belief, it grows within you, whatever it is that you choose to nurture. I believe that many of us read this sermon and apply it to our own faith, but I’m not sure how many of us have recognized the implications for belief in general. A sentiment I often hear is that it’s arrogant to believe you have the real truth when so many others believe the same thing about their own faith.
One of the principles I pull from this verse is that what you nurture grows. My husband often talks about how most people don’t know whether what they believe is true. They believe, but they don’t know. He talks about how any time you take time to nourish belief, that’s where you’ll continue to build and find evidence of your beliefs. You find what you look for. If you invest and nurture belief in pretty much any positive belief system, you’re going to find “evidence” for what you believe.
This has a million implications.
All truth will find a tree
One of the implications is the fact that all truth produces good fruit, not just truth that is directly taught by those within the restored gospel.
We believe we have found the truth in Jesus Christ. However, people who belong to the Islamic faith also believe they have found the truth. They have nurtured their belief and found good-tasting fruit in those beliefs.
When we look at it from the perspective of the seed analogy, it makes complete sense. Whatever bit of truth you’ve found, you’re going to find good-tasting fruit. There was a time on my mission where we knocked on the door of a Muslim family. They invited us in, fed us, and they even took The Book of Mormon. They weren’t interested in the gospel, but they were so kind. They asked if we had any rules about the book, whether it should be kept off the ground or anything like that because they wanted to respect something that was sacred to us.
If they treated most of the things in their lives the way they treated us, of course they were going to find good-tasting fruit. If you’re respectful to others, you find fulfilling relationships and that feels good. That’s just how things work. And as these people practiced these good principles, they were going to find the same blessings. In my mind, they were practicing Christlike principles even if they didn’t yet know Christ, and He still rewarded them and blessed them for that.
Because they were living their lives in a good manner, they were going to find good fruit. They were going to find “evidence” that their beliefs were producing something, and so they were going to continue to invest in those beliefs.
This may feel extremely confusing for some. How are we supposed to find the truth, if any bit of truth that gets nurtured grows into good-tasting fruit? If everyone is tasting good fruit within their own religions, how are we supposed to differentiate who has the truth? This is a legitimate concern. It would make things a bit more confusing if you’re trying to look for the truth. However, look at the Lord’s alternative.
What if He only helped the tree grow when it was a perfect seed? What if He only sent good fruit when we had every bit of truth rather than just a portion of it?
This would be disastrous for a million reasons. I grew up in the church, and my seed (my understanding of the truth) still isn’t perfect. What if He had never let any of the tree grow because my seed wasn’t perfect? What if I had never tasted anything good because my seed wasn’t perfect? The consequences would be disastrous because nobody would ever take the time to nourish anything. If I had never had good experiences with the gospel, I wouldn’t have nurtured anything. I would only have a dormant seed.
In another less-extreme, alternative plan from the Lord…what if He only let your tree grow within the restored gospel?
Surely, this would help people recognize the truth when they found it more easily. No one would get confused about other religions if their religions weren’t producing fruit. However, would anyone seek religion at all? Can you imagine if no one got good fruit unless they had been taught the restored gospel? Once again, the results would be disastrous. The world would be a terrible place filled with people who had never tasted good fruit and probably wouldn’t be willing to try it even if it was offered to them because life would suck.
No, the Lord chose to send good fruit to anyone who was nurturing any bit of truth. It was the only legitimate way to bring as much good into the world as possible. It gave His restored church the best chance to flourish, and it would give people the best chance to find it in comparison to never receiving good fruit at all. Sure, it sometimes makes things confusing as people find good fruit and “evidence” in all sorts of different churches, but the alternative option for the Lord was worse.
And that’s actually another reason I love our beliefs so much. The Lord picked the best option for this fallen world (namely sending good fruit to anyone who nurtured any goodness). This had some tricky consequences because of our fallen world; namely, it made it a little more confusing to find the truth when everyone found evidence within their own good beliefs. However, we believe in the Plan of Salvation. We believe in a perfect God who allows all of His children to truly hear and accept the gospel. Everyone will get a real chance. We don’t have to be scared of the tricky consequences because we believe in a perfectly fair God who sent His Son to perform the atonement and make sure we all really had a chance to go home.
Planting weeds
There is another implication to the idea that whatever we nurture, grows. This isn’t just true for good truth and good fruit. Nourishing the negative will bring in bad fruit. If you nurture weeds, they grow. Eventually, you don’t even have to nurture them anymore, they stick around all on their own. And weeds are tricky, tricky little things.
What have you been nurturing lately? What resources have you been bringing into your life and do you feel more faith or discontent when you’re done utilizing those resources?
Whatever you feed, grows.
There was a time in my life where I was consuming far more social media than spending time in the actual scriptures. This doesn’t have to necessarily be a bad thing; social media doesn’t have to be evil. However, I found that I was listening to lots of voices. Some of those voices even came in the form of members of the church, but they were sowing discontent.
I took a step back from some of the accounts I was following and made a goal to spend more time simply reading The Book of Mormon with no outside commentary. The faith crisis I had been feeding went away rather quickly, and I found that despite my questions and concerns, I felt different. I felt more compassion towards the imperfections. I felt more faith towards a more perfect future. I fed my hope.
What you feed, grows.
Some may argue with me that I was unwise to turn a blind eye towards issues, and that’s fine. I don’t feel blind; I just feel more faith. There are some who believe we have a duty to churn up the issues and make our voices known about it. That’s fine too. You can choose to feed that.
But my personal experience is this. I wasn’t happy listening to the discontent. It wasn’t right for me. There are times when I listen and explore and turn to the Lord with concerns (and that’s important and can lead us to more truth), but there are also times when that discontent grows out of balance. I’m happier seeking out faith over bitterness and discontent. I’m happier when I feed my faith sufficiently. I feel close to God, and my testimony that He’s there seems to grow stronger. I know we find evidence of what we’re nurturing, but I like what I’ve built and worked towards. I like what I’ve nurtured, and I like the fruit I’ve found. I believe it’s a happy way to live.
So picture your future. What do you want your life to look like? What fruit do you want to be experiencing? Do you want to feel closer to God? Are the resources you’re using nurturing that belief in Him?
By their fruits, ye shall know them.
I believe in my Heavenly Father. I believe there’s a reason we’re counseled to seek out voices of faith, and I have found more faith and more happiness as I’ve listened to that counsel. I have found that I want to nurture what I’ve been finding even more. I believe in a loving Lord who provides fruit to help us understand what we want to nurture, and I’m grateful He’s chosen to give good fruit for any goodness we choose to follow. It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best plan He could have chosen for our fallen world, and I believe that He sent His Son to make up for the gaps in that imperfect system. I’m grateful for Them and the peace I’ve received investing in Them.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 30-35 – Mike Parker
Jul 15, 2024
Alma contended with Korihor & led a mission to reclaim the Zoramites
(Alma 30–35)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
Who were the separatist Zoramites₂ and where did they come from? Sherrie Mills Johnson suggests some answers to those questions in “The Zoramite Separation: A Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 74–85, 129–30.
Matthew L. Bowen, assistant professor in religious education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii, has argued that the syllable ram—found in both the names Zoram and Rameumptom—could come from the Hebrew for “the one who is high/exalted,” which fits both the Zoramites₂’ pride and the high tower upon which they prayed. See his article, “‘See That Ye Are Not Lifted Up’: The Name Zoram and Its Paronomastic Pejoration,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 19 (2016): 109–43.
Which spirit is the “spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life”? (Alma 34:34) See John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, “Do Not Procrastinate the Day of Your Repentance,” Insights 20, no. 10 (October 2000): 4.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 30–31 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 14, 2024
Hearts of the Zoramites
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we read an interesting account about some Nephite dissenters known as Zoramites. These Zoramites had stopped following the Law of Moses and taken to a new form of worship that astonished Alma and the other missionaries. Once a week, on the “day of the Lord,” the Zoramites would gather at the synagogues they had erected. Then, they would all take turns standing up and reciting the same prayer. After this worship experience, they would head home, never speaking of their worship again until the next time they gathered in the synagogues. Here is some of the prayer they would recite:
Alma 31:16-17
16 Holy God, we believe that thou hast separated us from our brethren; and we do not believe in the tradition of our brethren, which was handed down to them by the childishness of their fathers; but we believe that thou hast elected us to be thy holy children; and also thou hast made it known unto us that there shall be no Christ.
17 But thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever; and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by thy wrath down to hell; for the which holiness, O God, we thank thee; and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us, that we may not be led away after the foolish traditions of our brethren, which doth bind them down to a belief of Christ, which doth lead their hearts to wander far from thee, our God.
Many of us scoff at the idea of the Rameumpton, this great standing place where each of the Zoramites would offer the same prayers. And yet, are we really so different? Observe some of the actual problems these Zoramites were dealing with. The concept of rote prayers was not actually the problem; we have plenty of ordinances and ceremonies that are to be performed with the same words over and over.
No, the actual problems of the Zoramites were found within their hearts. For example, they only thought about God once a week. Their hearts were set on money. They didn’t believe in Christ. They believed they were special, better than others because they believed they had the truth.
All of us are guilty of these issues to one extent or another, and if you think you’re not, then you should probably pray for the Lord to open your eyes. Do we keep Heavenly Father in our minds, allowing Him to participate with us throughout the week? Do we set our hearts too heavily on things that can’t fulfill us? Do we believe in Christ to the fullest extent in which it influences all of our actions, uplifts all of our worries, and turns our hearts towards others?
And then, of course, there’s the last one. The Zoramites believed they were better because they believed they had the truth. Hmmm. This is the one we’re going to talk about today. We believe we have the truth. Our doctrine is pretty straightforward and frequently taught. We believe that the Lord restored the true gospel and true authority through Joseph Smith. We believe we belong to Christ’s church.
Do we also believe we’re better because of it? Our jerk reaction may be to say no! Logically, we may understand that we’re not better, but has that understanding penetrated our hearts to the extent that we see others clearly?
There are many ways that this particular attitude can manifest. It can manifest in how we treat others who belong to other systems of belief, in how we approach missionary work. It can manifest in our attitudes regarding whether we can learn from other belief systems and whether we recognize the Christlike attributes of those who do not yet know Christ.
Interestingly enough, it can also manifest within our own system of belief. Sometimes we believe we have more truth, more understanding, and more obedience than those who share our same faith. “More” is a relative term that can cause lots of problems. It can be difficult to measure “more,” not to mention, there are millions of different experiences that offer new perspectives and require varying levels of strength. Let’s talk about it.
Inside the church
Sometimes, we think we’re better because we see ourselves as living the gospel more accurately than others. Even if this is true in regards to observing the outward performances and standards of the church, our hearts are going to be what’s judged at the last day. And if we’re harboring and inadvertently nurturing thoughts that we’re better (rather than actively fighting against and rooting out those beliefs), then we’re going to be the ones with a problem.
There was a point in my mission where some of my mission leaders weren’t being exactly obedient. None of us are perfectly obedient; I understand that concept. However, I had noticed the issues and I also saw that some of the other non-leader missionaries had noticed the issues. I remember it being difficult. Some of these missionaries were trying to be really obedient and were meeting minimal “success.” They watched their leaders baptizing often enough and training them in our frequent meetings, but they also watched their leaders doing things we had been asked not to do.
I remember taking this problem to the Lord. I was angry. These non-leader missionaries were righteous missionaries who felt like they were being swept aside even though they were trying hard to do what’s right. These were righteous missionaries who had started asking, “Why bother?” when their leaders weren’t even following the rules and seemed to be met with success.
This was actually a huge turning point in my life. I was filled with what I believed to be righteous indignation towards these leaders who were being bad examples. As I opened the scriptures for my personal study, I found that I was about to read the story of the stripling warriors. I was a little excited because I felt justified in my anger as I thought about the exact obedience of these young soldiers.
But boy was I in for a different lesson than I was expecting.
As I read the story about these young men, the Spirit rather forcefully whispered to me that if these missionary leaders had been in the position of the stripling warriors, we would be reading the same story. They would have been exactly obedient. My eyes filled with tears as the Spirit also whispered that I had no idea what some of these missionaries had sacrificed to go on a mission. I was floored.
Who was I to think I was better? I had happily married parents (which actually makes all the difference in the world). I had been actively taught the gospel and protected from nefarious influences as I was growing up. I didn’t have much trauma. I wasn’t worried about my family back home and whether they were okay. I had never struggled to overcome serious sin because I hadn’t even really had an opportunity to commit serious sin. The gospel was handed to me on a silver platter. I was given a lovely environment to learn about it and love it. A huge majority of my experiences with the gospel were positive.
What these missionary leaders had chosen to do of their own accord with minimal support was awe-inspiring. They had pushed much harder and farther than I had ever had to push. They had to build up a strength that had never been required of me.
And this happens all the time. When a youth has a difficult time being reverent, when an adult is rough around the edges, we can be guilty of this. We think they should know better. We scoff that they can’t get it together. And yet, we never stop to consider how we would be acting if we had grown up in their shoes with their perspectives and experiences.
This doesn’t mean we treat them kindly and then feel proud of ourselves for being charitable to people who we’re actually viewing as lesser. No. This means we pray for eyes to see them clearly and step back as the Lord shows us what we couldn’t see on our own.
The tricky part
Now this is all a little bit tricky. We’re taught to share our light, to love those who need support, and to share the message of repentance. All of these messages can intrinsically hold some measure of, “I’m better than you and need to share all of my righteousness with you.” This is exactly the attitude that turns so many people off.
So how do we accurately apply these principles of sharing our own light while simultaneously sloughing off attitudes that we’re so great?
I have 1000% been guilty of this sin. I have worked to reach out to those who weren’t as “strong” and been proud of myself for being compassionate and giving them all of this fantastic advice about being more righteous. There has been one understanding that has really helped me work towards casting out this inaccurate attitude.
This understanding can easily be defined as, “I don’t really know. Maybe I think I know, but I don’t really know.”
In a more concrete analogy, this would be like looking at someone next to me at the gym and assuming I’m stronger because I’ve done more reps. It would be me arrogantly walking over to encourage them that they can do more reps, faster reps, and still have plenty of energy like me. Awakening to a proper understanding of the world around me would look like the realization that this person I was trying to bless is actually lifting five times the weight that I’ve been lifting.
There are times when it’s appropriate to correct. Even when someone is lifting ten times your body weight, it can still be helpful to tell them that locking their knees isn’t going to help. However, the delivery feels so different when you simultaneously have the realization and respect that’s due for what they’re carrying. I think it’s also helpful to recognize that sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is realize and respect what they’re carrying.
I had another mission leader who used to do exchanges with us. At the end of exchanges, you’re supposed to tell the missionary what they’re doing wrong and then also encourage them a ton in what they’re doing right. This sister missionary was likely very wise when she taught me that she rarely told people what they were doing wrong. In her words, “People already know what they’re doing wrong. You don’t usually have to tell them.”
I have found this to be true. There will be times when you’re encouraged by the Spirit to correct. However, I believe that a grand majority of the time, you’re going to find you’re more effective at helping someone when you genuinely seek out their friendship with a deep and abiding knowledge that they’re children of God, regardless of whether they’re different from you. Not only are you more effectively helping them, but you’ll find that your life is much more blessed and full for having known them and learning from their example too. I have found that if I’m applying this principle correctly, I feel like I’m the one who’s blessed for knowing them and not the other way around.
I believe in a Savior who loves us. I believe in a Savior who judges perfectly according to our experiences and gifts. I believe that if we can recognize and cast out our own attitudes that reflect the Zoramites, we’re going to find a much fuller life because we’re going to be blessed by people we didn’t know we could be blessed by.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 23–29 – Autumn Dickson
Jul 06, 2024
He Relentlessly Pursues Us
by Autumn Dickson
In chapters 24 and 25 of Alma, we read about the details of a war between the Lamanites, Nephites, and the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. Let’s cover the timeline of this story so we can pull out details of how the Lord works with His people.
In chapter 24 of Alma, we see the Lamanites originally coming upon the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. These converts of Anti-Nephi-Lehi had buried their weapons and as they were being slain, they raised their hands and praised the Lord. Over a thousand of these converts were slain before the Lamanites pulled back and couldn’t do it anymore. All of them stopped killing the converts, but there were still two different reactions among these aggressors.
More than a thousand of the Lamanites were so affected that they joined the church that day. First of all, that experience in and of itself is mind boggling, both on the part of the killed and those doing the killing. Let’s say you’re in the group that was attacked; you’re watching a thousand of your family members and friends being killed. The second the killing stops, you jump in to help comfort, teach, convert, and welcome those who had been killing. Wild. I also think it’s wild that so many of those who were doing the killing were able to jump so quickly into redemption. It’s hard to forgive yourself, but these guys did it and it’s remarkable.
But there was also a second group of Lamanites. These guys couldn’t stomach the idea of killing the defenseless people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi any longer, but their hearts were still hard. In verse 1 of chapter 25, we learn that they decided to direct their anger towards the Nephites instead. I want you to try and comprehend the switch. These Lamanite hearts are soft enough that they can’t handle killing someone stretched out on the ground before them, but their hearts are still hard enough that they can’t let go of their anger. I would imagine this is partially because they can’t bring themselves to accept the reality of what just happened. The Lamanites were raised as a wild and bloodthirsty people, but sin always affects the sinner. These experiences stayed with the Lamanites and facing the reality of what they had done to the converts was probably harder than redirecting their anger towards a different group of people who would fight back.
So that’s what they did. They turned their anger to the Nephites and were like, “Yeah. This was definitely all the fault of the Nephites. Let’s get vengeance on them instead.” Their hearts were still too hard to break unto the Lord; their hearts were hard enough that they still felt that killing was the answer.
As the Lamanites turned to the Nephites, they killed all the wicked people in Ammonihah before being driven back again and again. They could not overpower the Nephites, and so we find this experience next.
Alma 25:6 For many of them, after having suffered much loss and so many afflictions, began to be stirred up in remembrance of the words which Aaron and his brethren had preached to them in their land; therefore they began to disbelieve the traditions of their fathers, and to believe in the Lord, and that he gave great power unto the Nephites; and thus there were many of them converted in the wilderness.
Many of the leftover Lamanites converted as well.
There are only a bajillion principles in this timeline ranging from forgiveness and charity to the merits of defending yourself vs. pacifism according to the will of the Lord. I can’t cover them all so the one I want to cover today is summed up nicely in the words of Elder Patrick Kearon in his conference address from this last April.
God is in relentless pursuit of you.
How many chances qualify as sufficient?
There were three chances (that we know of) that this last group of Lamanites received to accept the gospel.
The first chance came in the land of Nephi. Ammon, Aaron, and their brethren came to the Lamanite lands to preach the gospel. Many converted, and it would have likely been impossible to miss the surge of religious fervor in the area. These Lamanites had been given a chance to hear the gospel and accept it. We know that they heard some of the message because in the verse we read (Alma 25:6), it talks about how they remembered the words of Aaron. Though many joined the church, there were still plenty who rejected it.
The second chance came after they literally went to war with the converts who had come to be known as Anti-Nephi-Lehies. Not only did they reject the gospel, but many Lamanites actively sought against it. Think about the state of their hearts. They killed one thousand and five converts who were laid out on the ground in front of them. The people they killed were praising God as they were slaughtered. Think about what you understand of war and what it requires to actually kill someone. Then think about how much more it would require of a man to stab a defenseless person with a sword because you were mad that they had joined a church. So much of war these days is impersonal, bombs dropped where you can’t see the people you’re affecting. Even shooting a gun is less personal than having to use a sword.
I don’t bring up these facts to be gruesome. I bring them up because I want to highlight the state of the hearts of these Lamanites; understanding how far “gone” they were can help us understand just how much the Lord pursues us. I mean, we get discouraged when our friends don’t accept a copy of The Book of Mormon or an invitation to church. These Lamanites were killing, and yet, the Lord didn’t abandon or give up on them. The Lord relentlessly pursued their souls despite everything they had done, despite the state of their hearts and their willingness to kill.
There came a point where even the most hardened Lamanites couldn’t kill any more defenseless people. It was too much. A large number of these Lamanite hearts broke as they acknowledged that the killing they had participated in was wrong, and the Lord was standing there, ready to forgive and heal them from the trauma they had brought on their own heads.
The Lord brought them in and worked with them as soon as they were ready for it. As soon as they were ready to join hands with those who had been their “enemies,” as soon as they were ready to look into the faces of the family members of the people they killed, the Lord was ready to gather them in. I also find it beautiful that the family members of the murdered were standing ready to be the hands of the Lord and welcome them in, to show these broken Lamanites just how far the Lord was willing to go for them.
But the story doesn’t even end there! Though many of the Lamanite hearts broke unto the Lord, there were still many who refused to acknowledge that maybe they were on the wrong side here. There were many who refused to consider that maybe they were only hurting themselves by continuing to kick against the pricks.
Their hearts were still hard! They could no longer stomach the idea of killing defenseless, happy people, but they refused to let go of their anger and hard hearts. Instead, they just decided to go and kill the Nephites because apparently that made loads of sense to them. They couldn’t kill the converts anymore, so they decided that all this apparently revolting (in their eyes) religious conversion was definitely the fault of the Nephites so they decided to go and kill some more.
The combination of Aaron’s warnings and being beaten down by Nephites finally did it for them. Their hearts finally softened and broke, and they finally considered that maybe they had been looking at the entire situation wrong. And there was the Lord, ready to accept them into the folds through the medium of baptism.
If you were in the Lord’s shoes (exactly as you are, not perfect like Him but as you are now), when would you have given up on these Lamanites? When would you have said, “Okay. Enough is enough. I’m done trying to save you; you refuse to be saved.”
In the midst of all this overwhelming tragedy, this one principle screams through. The Lord’s love for us runs deeper than we can truly fathom, and He absolutely, unendingly, relentlessly pursues us. We may give up, but He does not.
Even when it seems like the end, His actions are still demonstrative of His relentless pursuit. As the Lamanites suited up for war against the converts, many of us would have believed, “They’re placing the last nail in their own coffins.” As the killing began, our hearts would have broken for those who were being killed and maybe even for the Lamanites who were hurting themselves. We would have thought, “Surely, they can’t come back from this.” We would have been floored with surprise as many of them threw down their own weapons in their first act of conversion, and hopefully would have cried surprised tears of joy as they entered the waters of baptism.
As we watched the rest of the Lamanites angrily march off to go and kill Nephites instead, we would have thought, “Okay if that experience didn’t change them, they’re never going to change.”
We would have given up, but the Lord never does. Where we saw acts of rebellion that surely announced the bull-headed desire to be damned, the Lord saw opportunities for the Lamanites to finally figure it out. When Satan started to rejoice over the powerful hold he had over the Lamanites, the Lord was just warming up and utilized all of Satan’s chains to wake them up.
We are not the Lord, but let’s not forget the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies, more than any other group, held a balm for these broken-hearted Lamanites that sealed their budding conversion. These converts, who had been changed themselves, believed that the Lamanites could change and welcomed them into their homes and families. The Lord loved and relentlessly pursued, and He utilized the Anti-Nephi-Lehies as one of the extensions of that love. He can likewise utilize us.
I testify of a Lord who never gives up, and I testify that if we choose to offer the same grace, compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance towards our enemies, we will find greater peace than we ever thought possible.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 17-29 – Mike Parker
Jul 01, 2024
The Lamanite mission of the sons of Mosiah
(Alma 17-29)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
Cutting off the arms of one’s enemies (as seen in Alma 17:37–39) is an ancient practice around the world; see:
John M. Lundquist and John W. Welch, “Ammon and Cutting Off the Arms of Enemies,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 180–82.
The presence of horses in the promised land is mentioned eight times in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 18:25; Enos 1:21; Alma 18:9–12; 20:6; 3 Nephi 3:22; 4:4; 6:1; Ether 9:19). Archaeological evidence for the presence of the horse in the pre-Columbian Americas is scant and inconclusive. The following articles explore the possibilities that horses survived to Book of Mormon times or that the Lehites called a similar animal by a familiar name:
Duane Boyce explored the views of the people of Ammon toward war in “Were the Ammonites Pacifists?”, Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 18, no. 1 (2009): 32–47.
At end of Alma chapter 22, Mormon₂ left a detailed explanation of the geographical layout of the lands where the Nephites and Lamanites lived (see Alma 22:27–34). Why did he do this? And how can understanding the internal geography of the Book of Mormon help us understand the text better? Book of Mormon Central examines this topic in KnoWhy #130.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 17–22 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 29, 2024
The Power of Women
by Autumn Dickson
Just as a heads up, I will be speaking about Ammon this week, but it takes a bit for me to segue into it so stay with me.
In the March 2024 Relief Society Broadcast, J. Anette Dennis, the first counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency taught, “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.” This has caused quite a backlash on social media. I’ve read a lot of the comments regarding it, and though there are too many to cover, I’d like to talk about one common argument.
There are many women who feel silenced in the church. They may receive priesthood authority to perform their callings, but there are still male leaders who hold authority over their authority. This can lead to feelings of being stepped on, passed over, and ignored. I don’t disbelieve that this occurs. I know many faithful women who have had experiences where their voices didn’t matter; their perspectives were invalidated, and their opportunities to make a difference felt cut off. On top of that, because of our belief in organized priesthood authority, it can feel like there’s little room for redress.
I believe in priesthood authority. I believe it’s given to men and women to perform various callings on the earth to help build the kingdom. I believe that the Lord leads His church, and I believe that His church policies change according to His will. I believe the general authorities in the church are good people who seek out the Lord’s will to the best of their abilities and that they do a really great job of it. I believe that despite the issues caused by the fact that we are all imperfect people, the system given to us by the Lord is generally effective and gives us opportunities to grow.
I also believe that any of the imperfections we experience in this priesthood system given to us by the Lord cannot truly take away our power nor does it need to impede our personal growth.
Let’s talk just a little bit about this structure, and then we’re going to talk about Ammon.
The priesthood system of management
There are a couple of facts we need to be aware of that can help us recognize what’s really happening around us. Understanding these facts can help us understand what issues we may run into, and it can also help us solve any problems that come as a result of imperfect people.
Our first fact is that a majority of the callings with higher authority in the church are held by men. This is difficult for a lot of faithful women who feel that whatever authority they’re supposed to receive can be usurped and passed over. There are two perspectives we need to take into consideration here. I don’t believe it’s a problem rooted in sexism. In other words, I don’t believe that’s the cause. I have seen my husband have his authority usurped by other men who hold authority over his authority. I’ve had male friends asked to be released because they felt that their opinions never mattered, and they were always being passed over. This is not to diminish the problems a lot of women face, but I think it’s important to recognize what’s really happening in order to fix the problem. I don’t believe this is a sexism problem. I believe it’s a bad management problem.
The second perspective is to recognize that it happens disproportionately to women because of the nature of the structure. Men often hold more authority which means they have more opportunities to usurp power. Women often hold less authority which means more plentiful opportunities to have power usurped.
I don’t know if things are going to change. I don’t see everything that the Lord sees. I don’t know why women have priesthood power and authority but do not hold priesthood offices. I don’t know why the Lord has organized his church in the way that He has. There are plenty of theories out there, but we have to be careful with theories. We should not try to definitively explain the Lord’s mind when He has not chosen to do so Himself.
So we believe in the Lord. We believe that He guides His living church. We also believe that He loves His daughters as much as He loves His sons. Sometimes this can cause some cognitive dissonance. How do we reconcile the imperfections of the priesthood structure with the fact that He (at least for now) has chosen this structure? How do we reconcile that with our belief that He loves all of His children equally?
There are two perspectives I’d like to share. The first perspective is that there are no perfect systems of governance in an imperfect world. There will be pros and cons to each system of governance. There will always be chances for corruption. I don’t know what the Lord sees, but I know that He set things up this way for some reason. I don’t know if He plans on changing the priesthood structure during this mortal period of the earth or if He’s laying the groundwork for change, and it just takes a while. I don’t know. I do know He sees more than I do.
For the second perspective, I’d like to take a look at Ammon. It is Ammon that inspired the message for me this week.
Ammon’s “illogical” decision
This week we read about Ammon going to the Lamanites to try and teach the gospel. As he enters into the land, he is taken and bound and brought before King Lamoni. King Lamoni speaks with him and ends up liking him so much that he offers his daughter to Ammon.
Alma 17:25 But Ammon said unto him: Nay, but I will be thy servant. Therefore Ammon became a servant to king Lamoni. And it came to pass that he was set among other servants to watch the flocks of Lamoni, according to the custom of the Lamanites.
Though we don’t find much detail about this daughter that was offered up to Ammon, it was this daughter that drew my attention to this issue I’ve been pondering so much. Here we find a woman who is a commodity, and we find Ammon turning down the offer. Ammon could have gotten married and exercised his newfound authority to try and spread the gospel far and wide. But he didn’t. Ammon chose to be a servant. Some would have found this approach illogical. How much good could Ammon do as a servant in comparison to being a son-in-law to the king? Despite any arguments about the illogical nature of his choice, this is the route Ammon chose to take.
And this is precisely where we find a key to our problem. Ammon turned down authority to become a servant, and it was this exact process that made him the powerful missionary that he was.
Authority does not equate to power
I have a feeling that if I were to ask some of these women why they wanted more authority, many of them would answer things like, “Because I want to help” or “Because I want to build the kingdom and I feel like I’m not allowed.” Many of these women have likely been in situations where they felt like they had received revelation about how to make a difference, and someone had prevented them from acting on some of that revelation.
It can be extremely frustrating when you’re trying to help, and you’re feeling rebuffed over and over.
Interestingly enough, if we can take on the same perspective as Ammon, we will find far more power to do good than we previously dreamed of.
Ammon chose to be a servant. Perhaps Ammon knew that authority doesn’t always equate to power. Or, in the very least, Ammon chose to follow God and God knows that authority doesn’t always equate to power.
God doesn’t care if you’re a bishop. I repeat; God doesn’t care about whether you’re a bishop. But Satan does. If Satan can convince you that you’re being held back because you’re not allowed to have more authority, then he can distract you from rising to your true power. You can be a nursery leader for the rest of your life, male or female, and make as big of a difference as any bishop, stake president, or prophet.
We see this with Ammon. He was watching over sheep, and it was this very position of servitude that opened the path for him to change the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.
You do not need authority to have immense priesthood power. I know some may argue that this is a copout for a structure that naturally puts women at a disadvantage, but I truly believe it.
I am a daughter of God. I am immensely powerful, with or without a specific priesthood jurisdiction. If we’re diminishing our power to only our formally held callings, then we are holding everyone back, not just women.
You are important. God believes you’re important, but until you believe that you have power within yourself (regardless of what calling or authority you’ve been given) then the only real limiting factor here is you because God is ready to take you above and beyond.
Even if people with more authority than you can override specific revelations you have received for your calling, you have not lost your power. Let’s say you find yourself in this specific situation. You’re a Relief Society President and feel really strongly about changing something in your realm of priesthood authority. Let’s say your bishop tells you no. What is the reality of this situation?
Perhaps your bishop has an ego problem, and it’s affecting his management. This does happen sometimes. Perhaps he’s a good man who the Lord is molding and pulling along; it’s just taking a bit (because hello…we’re all stubborn and often need to get pulled along). Either way, we’re feeling like our power has been limited, but is that really the truth?
I don’t believe so. I believe that if something truly needs to happen, the Lord can move heaven and earth to make it happen. The Lord will handle the bishop, whether he needs to be humbled or have his eyes opened. But you still have everything you need to make the difference that the Lord wants you to make. You have all the power you need to bring His children home to Him, because that’s really our goal in the end, isn’t it? It’s to bring everyone home.
Sometimes we equate power with authority and the ability to make decisions without anyone stopping you, but that is a slim definition of power. True power is a recognition of who you are, who the Lord is, and how He wants to propel you further in life than you could have ever imagined.
Sometimes we equate power with a microphone in a large auditorium. But if you’re looking for true power, do you know what you’ll find?
You’ll find that wrapping your arm around a friend holds more power than the lesson that was chosen to be taught in Relief Society. You’ll find that your broken hearts and compassion will far outweigh the influence found within decisions that are far removed from personal, individual relationships. Your prayers will have eternal consequences that can’t be touched by who gets to teach at the stake fireside. You will find creative solutions that allow you to stretch your wings and bless many despite any authority “over” you.
Think about your own life. What has held more influence over your actions, life perspectives, and testimonies? A talk given by a prophet or the involvement of a parent? Surely a talk given by a prophet can do much good, but a talk by a prophet means nothing without a foundation laid by an individual, personal interaction with a disciple of Christ.
We have all of the power AND opportunity we need to influence the world in incredible ways. None of our systems are perfect because none of our people are perfect, but isn’t that the point of the gospel? There are “problems” with each of the decisions that Heavenly Father has made in regards to our salvation (agency, priesthood authority structure, etc.), but we have the atonement of Jesus Christ. And the atonement of Jesus Christ means there’s always a loophole, there is always a way for things to turn out for our good.
I believe in a Heavenly Father and Mother who made decisions together for the benefit of Their children. I believe They lead, guide, and love. I believe we have everything we could ever need and want to make the specific differences They want us to make, and I believe that Their specific paths for our lives are the most powerful paths we can take.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 13–16 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 24, 2024
Foreordained
by Autumn Dickson
As we begin the chapters for this week, we find Alma preaching to the people regarding a variety of topics. One of these topics is how high priests are foreordained and sent to the earth to fulfill special callings.
Alma 13:3-4
3 And this is the manner after which they were ordained—being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, and exercising exceedingly great faith, are called with a holy calling, yea, with that holy calling which was prepared with, and according to, a preparatory redemption for such.
4 And thus they have been called to this holy calling on account of their faith, while others would reject the Spirit of God on account of the hardness of their hearts and blindness of their minds, while, if it had not been for this they might have had as great privilege as their brethren.
According to these verses, people are foreordained according to their faith and good works before they came here. Men and women were chosen and prepared to do specific things in their lives as dictated by their actions in the premortal existence. I think of all the men and women who are leading the church and building the kingdom in significant ways.
And I also thought about the fact that there are many of us who aren’t chosen as general church leaders. I think about those of us who have quieter callings. What does that say about us? I used to think it meant that I simply wasn’t good enough, that I hadn’t been strong enough to choose or that I didn’t have it within me to be one of these foreordained.
Interestingly enough, the second verse teaches us exactly what keeps someone from having the same great privileges as their brethren, namely a hard heart and blind mind. Let’s talk about those two things in the context of being foreordained.
A blind mind
What does a blind mind look like in the context of foreordination? When I think of blind, I obviously think of someone who can’t see. So we’re talking about not seeing this concept of foreordination clearly. I’m sure there are a million ways this can manifest, but there is one that I’m thinking of specifically and would like to talk about.
My husband, Conner, is the one who helped me see in relation to foreordination. I don’t think he ever meant to. I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation about the doctrine of foreordination. However, observing him has brought about a dramatic shift in how I view callings in life.
Conner is not what I thought I would marry. I knew that I wanted to marry someone spiritual, but my view on what it meant to be “spiritual” was very narrow. I was naive, and I thought that being spiritual included long patterns of praying, reading scriptures, and pondering. Interestingly enough, these are all things I’m relatively good at. My sometimes-neurotic personality means that my family reads the scriptures, prays, and goes to church very regularly. Conner and I go to the temple. We have family home evening with all the prayers and songs, and all of the lists get checked off. In my young and limited world view, I believed that this list checking signaled spirituality, and I believed that these were habits that could be easy to anyone who simply chose to prioritize them.
Then I got to know Conner. He was chaotic and impulsive. If he’s holding still during a church meeting, it’s because I’m tickling his back or hand. He hardly remembers to eat, let alone daily worshiping tasks.
But the more I got to know Conner, the more I heard the Spirit whispering to me that there was something more to him that I couldn’t quite grasp. The Spirit would give me these moments where I could see him as the Lord saw him. I couldn’t describe it but I could feel that Lord was molding Conner into something specific, something very different than what I had pictured. And though I couldn’t reconcile it with my view of what spirituality was supposed to look like, I continued the relationship.
Now please don’t get me wrong. I obviously whole-heartedly believe in regular worshiping activities. I do believe we need to do everything to prioritize them because the Lord asked us to. But I also know now that all of these daily tasks don’t always completely equate with goodness and spirituality, and I know there are far more measures of spirituality to take into consideration. I also know that just because these tasks come easily to my personality, they aren’t easy for everyone. I have also learned that the Lord needed different personalities with different strengths and weaknesses in order to build His kingdom to the fullest extent.
And that is precisely what I mean by blindness of mind. For so long, I would read those verses and picture somber people who fit into this very specific archetype, and this extremely narrow view (this blindness of mind, if you will) limited me.
There are people who were foreordained to be temple presidents and general authorities, but the Lord didn’t just want temple presidents and general authorities. Can you imagine how limited our world would be if we only had temple presidents and general authorities? We need so much more. God is an extremely multidimensional Being, and all of us reflect something of Him.
I used to think I needed to try to tame the chaos that is my husband, but I have since learned that his chaos and all of the unique things about Conner were given specifically to Conner so Conner could fulfill his specific mission in life. There are things that Conner can accomplish that I will never be able to do, and I have a testimony that he can do those things because he is built differently than a temple president.
When it comes to foreordination, sometimes blindness of mind means that we have this idea in our heads of what foreordination is supposed to look like and only some people qualify for it. Only some people fit into the mold, and all of a sudden, we’re leaving out remarkable people who had specific jobs too. Yes, men were foreordained to be high priests, but there were so many more callings to give out.
It’s easy to see how my work (my blog, Youtube channel, and podcast) require revelation from the Lord. It requires me to regularly seek Him out, but I have learned that Conner is just as inspired and attuned to revelation in his work. I have watched him sink into these trance-like states as he ponders specific engineering problems, and I have watched him come out on the other end after he has been inspired with solutions. I am convinced that he receives revelation as regularly as I do; it just looks different than what I receive.
We need to broaden our perspective on what foreordination can look like. You were foreordained to build the kingdom, but there are a million ways to build that kingdom. What principles did the Lord use to create the world? Physics, engineering, biology. These are spiritual principles to Him. Your calling to build the kingdom may very well look like something that is traditionally viewed as secular. But we have to expand that view. We have to cast away that blindness and realize that the Lord wants to utilize each individual in beautiful, specific ways.
There are so many kinds of work, and just about every single one of them can be turned into spiritual work if we’re simply willing to include the Lord. And when we broaden our view of foreordination and realize that our “secular” work can include the Lord, He vastly expands our capacities and influence for good.
Believing that our work is lesser because it isn’t “spiritual” keeps us from stepping into that foreordination we were given and doing all the good we’re capable of doing.
A hard heart
And this is where the “hard heart” principle comes in. Are our hearts soft enough to believe that He can work with us? Have we softened towards Him enough to believe that He loves us, made us as we are, and gave us specific gifts to fulfill specific roles that look different than the roles of others? Can we allow ourselves to believe that He can utilize us to influence the world in powerful ways?
Can we trust Him to take us where we can make a difference? Can we trust Him to help us understand what “powerful influence” means? When we think of changing the world, we often think of people with microphones and stadiums, but Jesus Christ worked with individuals, small groups, and His voice could only carry as loud as He could speak.
Let go of your own predilections for what you’re supposed to look like and what it looks like to influence the world for good. Soften your heart, and let the Lord mold you and give you specific experiences so He can utilize you in all of the best ways, the ways that may not make sense to the world but make perfect sense in the context of everything He knows.
I testify that no one is special. That would imply that the Lord holds favorites, but the Lord is absolutely willing to work with anyone who wants to be worked with. We are unique, and there are unique callings but there are no secret, special ingredients you have to innately possess in order to qualify as “foreordained.” The only thing holding someone back from their “great privilege” is their own unwillingness to see themselves as the Lord sees them or a hardness of heart that disables them from connecting with the Lord to become all they were meant to become. If you’re worried that you weren’t good enough in the pre-existence, it’s never to start turning to the Lord and allowing Him to work with you.
The Lord is willing and capable to turn you into so much more than you have in mind for yourself.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 8–12 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 15, 2024
Revelation for Alma
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we read about Alma and Amulek attempting to convert the hard-hearted people of Ammonihah. In the beginning, we observe Alma as he originally goes into the city to preach to the people. They spit on him and revile him, and he leaves the city with much sorrow. As he is journeying, an angel comes and uplifts him and shares this message.
Alma 8:16 And behold, I am sent to command thee that thou return to the city of Ammonihah, and preach again unto the people of the city; yea, preach unto them. Yea, say unto them, except they repent the Lord God will destroy them.
Alma takes this message and hurries right back to the city to try again.
Now why was this the order of things? Why did Alma leave and come back? The angel could have easily delivered his message before Alma left, comforting him and encouraging him to continue on his work. Is there a reason for it or is it simply a detail of how the story unfolded that doesn’t matter?
Maybe it didn’t really matter, and that’s totally fine. Maybe Amulek needed an extra day of heart-preparation before he was ready for the angel to come and talk to him and prepare him to receive Alma. Maybe Alma needed some time to grieve before the angel came in and encouraged him. And once again, maybe it didn’t really matter.
There isn’t really an answer, so why is it important? I believe it’s important because despite whether there’s a reason for this turn of events or not, it can teach us about the process of revelation in our own lives. It can help us have the faith we need to do two things: grow in the way the Lord would have us grow and trust that revelation will come as needed.
Understanding the purposes of the Lord
I believe that in order to understand why and how revelation comes to us, we have to understand the reasoning of the Lord. What is He truly trying to accomplish with us? I think sometimes it’s easy to believe that the Lord is just trying to keep us on a perfect path with as little interference as possible, and even if we don’t believe that consciously, we often act like that’s His entire purpose. Surely, He wants us to follow Him, but His true purpose isn’t avoiding missteps; His true purpose is our growth, and that is essential to understand (even in the context of revelation).
For example, we often become paralyzed as we’re trying to make decisions about what to do in our lives because we don’t want to misstep. We really, really, really want to do what the Lord would have us do and so we wait and wait and wait for an answer that may never come rather than acting. I don’t believe the desire to do what the Lord wants us to do is bad (obviously), but I do believe that the fear that sometimes accompanies missteps stems from incomplete understanding about the purposes of revelation.
So what is the Lord’s true purpose for us? To put it in incredibly simple terms, He wants us to be like Him. He wants us to make purposeful decisions based on wisdom like He does. He wants us to create the kind of life we desire. He wants us to create goodness without someone pulling us along to do so.
What does this mean for revelation? Everything. It explains why the Lord answers in specific ways.
For example, let’s look at a college student who is trying to choose a major. If you were in the Lord’s shoes, and you wanted this student to become brave and bold in their decisions, how would you respond to them? Would you simply give them the answer whenever they asked for it? Surely, they could potentially avoid some mistakes and anxiety, but what are you truly wanting for them?
There are appropriate times that the Lord gives us an answer directly and quickly. Sometimes He allows us to sink deeper into our faith so we’re prepared to receive more important answers. Sometimes, He is totally silent. Sometimes, He answers and turns us around after we’ve started acting. All of these responses are crafted carefully so that we can be given the tailor-made opportunities to step into His shoes and become like Him.
In the context of Alma
Let’s look at it in the context of Alma. Now one of the difficulties in the scriptures is the fact that they were abridged. We don’t necessarily have the entire story. We might be missing some details about how Alma decided to leave Ammonihah, but let’s just take the story at face value.
Alma was doing the Lord’s work, but we don’t see Alma on his knees for any length of time praying for an answer about whether he should leave Ammonihah and move on to another city that would be more prepared for the work. All we see is that Alma recognized that the people had hard hearts, and he made an extremely logical decision to go find someone who was prepared for the word of God. In missionary work, this is actually tremendously important. Dropping unprepared people in faith is critical because it shows the Lord that we believe in His ability to lead us to people who are prepared. Alma used the faculties of mind he had been blessed with and started to move on.
However, the Lord had more information than Alma. He knew that there were a couple people in the city who needed the missionaries, and He also knew that the people were preparing to destroy the liberty of the Nephites. Was the Lord angry that Alma had moved on without asking? No! He sent an angel to course correct. The Lord wasn’t angry at all. Observe Alma’s heart. Alma had enough love in his heart for these people that he was sad for them and their inability to accept the gospel. Alma also quickly course corrected and trusted the Lord immediately upon receiving an answer. Why would the Lord be angry?
But are we sometimes worried that the Lord will be angry with us if we choose wrong? Do we sometimes inadvertently believe that the Lord will abandon us to decisions made upon limited information? Do we subconsciously think that if we make the “wrong” decision that the Lord will wash His hands of us and we’re going to ruin our own lives? There are wrong decisions morally speaking, where you’re choosing to cause problems. And then there are wrong decisions where you didn’t choose the path the Lord had in mind, and He course-corrects. He doesn’t get mad over the second kind of “wrong.” He just fixes it. So if your heart is set on following Him, you’re going to be fine.
Perhaps we profess faith in the Lord, but do we feel enough faith that we make our own decisions with enthusiasm, believing that the Lord sees the whole picture and will course correct as necessary? Do we feel immense relief over the fact that we know He loves us and isn’t going to abandon us to our limited knowledge? Do we experience gratitude when we think about the fact that He’s given us the opportunity to create what we want our lives to look like while simultaneously promising to guide us along should it be needed? Do we have enough faith in Him to trust that He can give us answers in a way that we will understand?
When our desperate desire to avoid missteps overpowers our faith in Him, His purposes, and His abilities to guide us, we will find ourselves at a standstill. We dramatically limit ourselves from accomplishing so much good. We cripple our ability to grow to become like Him.
Look at this verse in Doctrine and Covenants.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:29 But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned.
We’re damned if we don’t make decisions. We’re not damned because He’s cursing us. We are literally damned in our progression. We aren’t able to grow to become like Him because that’s exactly who He is. He does good of His own accord with His unlimited knowledge. When we stop ourselves from gaining this kind of growth and experience, we’re hurting our progression and damning ourselves.
A word of advice on revelation
If you really want to seize the opportunities you’ve been given here on earth, there are a couple of attitudes you can adopt to help you along. The test we’ve been given on earth is less of a multiple choice test and more of a final project where you are the product that’s turned in. So rather than focusing on trying to get an answer for every decision and following it perfectly, try focusing on cultivating certain attitudes that will allow the Lord to utilize you in tremendous ways.
Honestly, there is one overarching posture that you can cultivate that will enable you to receive everything you need to be successful. Seek a closeness with the Lord. Being close with the Lord will allow you to understand two things: His love and concern for you, and His wisdom.
Knowing that He loves you and wants the best for you will allow you to breathe freely. It will help you trust that He wants to watch you soar of your own free will and that your future happiness is very safe with Him. You have nothing to worry about. He will reach you as necessary so go create goodness as much as you can in the ways that you love.
Understanding His wisdom will cultivate a natural desire to turn Him and check in. Alma may not have been praying about whether he should leave Ammonihah, but he was turned to the Lord. This made it very easy for the Lord to speak to him, and it also made it very easy for Alma to course correct. When we know who God is, it becomes more difficult to ignore Him and very natural to seek Him out regularly as you would a loving, all-knowing Parent.
We have every reason to believe that the best is coming. Even when we know that we’ll be stepping into difficulty and peril throughout our lives, we can know that our ending is perfectly safe. There is no circumstance that can permanently destroy our happiness or take away our eternal reward. Your job is to love the Lord and trust Him, and that love will lead you towards Him and towards perfection.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 8 – Seer Stones w/ Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat (Full Interview)
Jun 11, 2024
Gerrit Dirkmaat was featured in episode 5. This is the full interview. Check out Dr. Dirkmaat’s podcast with Prof. Richard LeDuc: https://standardoftruth.com/
Gerrit Dirkmaat is an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado in 2010, where he studied nineteenth-century American expansionism and foreign relations. He worked as a historian and writer for the Church History Department from 2010 to 2014 with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He is the coauthor, along with Michael Hubbard MacKay, of the award-winning book From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon, published by the BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book in 2015. In 2023, they published another book on the topic: Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon. In addition to books, Gerrit is also the author of dozens of academic articles. He currently serves as the editor of the academic journal Latter-day Saint Historical Studies published by the Ensign Peak Foundation. Since 2021 he has hosted and produced a weekly Church history podcast: Standard of Truth. It examines Church history questions and sources. He and his wife, Angela, have four children.
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 5–7; Alma 8–12; Alma 13–16 – Mike Parker
Jun 10, 2024
The ministry of Alma & Amulek
(Alma 5–16)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the remaining weeks of June.)
Robert A. Rees, “Alma the Younger’s Seminal Sermon at Zarahemla,” in Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown, ed. Andrew C. Skinner, D. Morgan Davis, and Carl Griffin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 329–43.
Why does Alma 7:10 say Jesus was born “at Jerusalem” when the Bible says he was born in Bethlehem? Robert F. Smith answers this question in “The Land of Jerusalem: The Place of Jesus’ Birth,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book / Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 170–72.
Thomas A. Wayment, “The Hebrew Text of Alma 7:11,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 98–103. Wayment argues that the translation of Isaiah 53:4 in Alma 7:11 is closer to the Hebrew text than the English translation in the King James Bible is.
Alma₂ forbade Amulek from using the power of God to save the believers in Ammonihah from being killed (Alma 14:11). Why does God permit evil to take place in the world? Elder Spencer W. Kimball gave some ideas in his article “Tragedy or Destiny,” Improvement Era 69, no. 3 (March 1966): 178–80, 210–12, 214, 216–17.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 5–7 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 09, 2024
The Change of Heart
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we find various sermons and experiences from Alma as he is traveling from city to city to try and build up the church. In one of the areas, Zarahemla, he found some issues within the church that were plaguing the Saints and taking them away from the Lord.
This is another one of those chapters growing up that troubled me and made me worry about my salvation. As I read verses about being stripped of pride and envy (particularly difficult as an insecure teenager), or when I read verses about walking blameless before God, I was convinced I didn’t stand a chance.
I never think it’s a bad idea to consider the state of your soul and talk to the Lord about it, but it has to be done right. There have been plenty of times that I’ve examined the apparently black state of my soul growing up and thinking that there was no way I’d ever be good enough to live with God again. This wasn’t uplifting or helpful. It didn’t make me a better person. It just made me focus more on myself. I was doing plenty of good things, but those good things weren’t changing me. Which is rather unfortunate and ironic when you think about the fact that change is literally the entire point of this earthly exercise.
A mighty change of heart absolutely includes a desire to do what’s right, to follow the Lord, and serve those around us. However, a mighty change of heart includes much more than that. There is a process to follow that I believe often gets pushed out of order to our own detriment.
Let’s observe exactly what Alma is teaching here, and I think we’ll find how to have our hearts changed in a way that is uplifting and joyful. Understanding exactly what Alma is teaching about being prepared to meet God can help us to accomplish more good works than we otherwise would be able to, and it can also help us go about this process in a way that fills our souls rather than leaving us empty.
How does the change of heart occur?
Alma is addressing the Saints in Zarahemla when he starts talking about remembering the captivity of their fathers. He talks about them being encircled by the bands of death and chains of hell. An everlasting destruction awaited them. Were they destroyed? No. Their restraints were loosed. Alma then asks:
Alma 5:10 And now I ask of you on what conditions are they saved? Yea, what grounds had they to hope for salvation? What is the cause of their being loosed from the bands of death, yea, and also the chains of hell?
That’s what we’re trying to find out here, right? We’ve all found ourselves encircled with bands that we can’t break ourselves. We’ve all sinned. So how did our fathers escape? Because if we can figure out how they escaped, we can know how to escape ourselves. Luckily, Alma describes it clearly.
And if I had been able to observe the answer as a teenager, it would have surprised me.
Alma 5:12 And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart. Behold I say unto you that this is all true.
What saved them? It wasn’t an incessant, bullheaded attempt to do everything right. It was faith! It’s so funny because I was absolutely surrounded by Texas Christians growing up who were of the opinion that “works” were completely unnecessary. You were only saved by believing in Christ. We believe in works, and there is a place for works, and we will talk about works. But maybe they were onto something. I feel like we have a culture in the church that talks about our belief in grace and faith as they are related to salvation, but we also inwardly scoff a little. We’re afraid to lean on grace and faith to the extent that we relinquish responsibility for our actions to our detriment. I feel like we profess the idea of grace and faith, and yet oftentimes, our beliefs about our own worthiness and the extent to which we beat ourselves up does not reflect this belief in the Savior’s ability to redeem.
And yet, here we have Alma, teaching that it was faith that freed them from their bonds.
So let’s cover grace and works again. Where does faith come in and what’s the point of works? How do the two relate together? I’ve only talked about it a million times, but that’s because the relationship between the two is complex. There are a lot of ways to teach it and better understand it. There are layers to it, so we’re going to add another layer here that can hopefully add to what we’ve already studied about grace and works.
Works-first method
Perhaps we don’t mean to, but I believe we often follow a “works first” method and we believe that the faith (and all the feelings associated with salvation) just kinda descends later. I tried that for a long time, and it never descended. I think sometimes we believe that if we’re following the commandments and standards, those good feelings of freedom and peace and salvation are simply going to show up. Not so.
Here is a disclaimer before I start elaborating. Someday perfection will come. Someday, you’ll never have to fall down again. That day is not today, not in this environment on earth. Heavenly Father set you up to fail, not because He doesn’t love you but because we had to fail. We needed to fail in order to become like Him. It had to happen. He wants us to be like Him, and He knew the only way to achieve that all-important goal was if we were placed in an environment with enough opposition to fall down repeatedly. He set us up to fail for a good reason, and He provided His Son to pay for those failures.
So stop trying to stop failing. Don’t make that your goal. When we follow a works-first based method, we place all of our hopes on the idea that we’re going to stop falling down. We believe that we have to stop falling down in order to go home. Perhaps we don’t phrase it like that out loud, but that’s what we internally believe. That’s why we beat ourselves up every time we mess up or when we can’t overcome our flaws as fast as we want. That’s why we get discouraged and wonder if we’re good enough. It’s because we subconsciously believe we have to stop falling, and as we covered before, there is purpose in our weaknesses and fallen environment.
In a works-first method, we’re placing our faith in ourselves, not in Christ. We claim to believe in Christ. We claim that He pays for our sins and will forgive as often as we repent. However, if we truly believed that, if we truly let His grace seep into our hearts, we would feel joyful about His ability to save us and bring us home. When I say we’re placing our faith in ourselves, I mean that we’re trying to use our own abilities to stop falling down. It won’t work. It will only leave you battered and discouraged until you eventually want to stop trying. Have you ever felt that way? “I can’t do everything. I’m so tired. I want to just give up.” It’s because subconsciously we believe that we have to do everything, and it’s simply not true.
Faith-first method
Like I mentioned previously, sometimes we internally scoff at people who tell us to stop striving, that belief is all you need. I’m not telling you to stop striving. I’m telling you to change your goal. I’m telling you to switch to a much more effective method of striving.
The works-based method and the faith-based method both have the same eventual goal: perfection. However, they approach it in dramatically different ways. Only one is effective: faith-based.
When you are following the faith-based method, you know that trusting Christ is the only way to salvation. You stop trying to stop falling down. Instead, you collect strength every time you fall down and get back up. You have faith in a Savior who paid the price so you could be sent here to fail and gain the experience you so desperately needed.
And as we choose to focus on collecting strength and developing a deep gratitude for the Savior’s ability to redeem, something absolutely incredible happens.
Our hearts change.
I have experienced it, and it feels so good. The gospel feels good. Salvation feels good.
I do fail. I’m not a perfect mother or wife. I get angry when I feel wronged. I murmur. I can be vain. I can be selfish, and I can hold a grudge. But because I believe in my Savior, I turn to Him. I believe that He adores me, that He thinks I’m wonderful, that He believes in me, so I turn to Him. And as I repeatedly turn to Him with trust, I feel those wonderful feelings of salvation, and I change. It’s difficult to be angry and vain and selfish when faced with the reality of the love of your Savior. My heart changes. I want to do good, and it becomes easier to do good and become good.
Faith comes in two forms, or at least that’s how I’m going to describe it so I can make sure I’m really hitting this point home. There is faith in the form of obedience, and there is faith in the form of trusting your relationship with the Savior. Both types of faith are action words. I had to choose to trust my Savior as much as I’ve ever had to choose to be obedient. Trying to choose faith in the form of obedience without faith in the form of trust is the worst. Don’t do it. It’s a miserable way to live the gospel, and it’s completely ineffective.
I think sometimes we’re afraid to let go of our own constant nagging towards ourselves because we’re afraid we’ll let go, become comfortable in our sin, and then we’ll actually find ourselves in a ton of trouble. I know I was afraid of that.
But it’s not what happens. When we let go of the nagging and embrace the Savior and His ability to save, you find a much deeper motivation to do good and be good. You want to be stripped of envy and pride? Experience the love of your Savior, and you won’t feel a need to compare yourself to anyone. It melts away.
Embrace the Savior. Embrace faith and trust in Him. It’s the only happy and effective way to live the gospel.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 29–Alma 4 – Autumn Dickson
Jun 01, 2024
Mosiah and Amlici
by Autumn Dickson
Within the chapters this week, we see two contrasted examples of men who are types of the Savior and Satan. It’s remarkable that these two examples were so closely put together within these chapters, and it’s very easy to observe the Plan of Salvation on a minute scale because of it.
King Mosiah
First, we have King Mosiah. He is obviously the representation of the Savior. He had all of this power bestowed on him, true power that was valid and recognized among the people. Here are two verses that very clearly put forth the Savior’s stance during the war in heaven as we were trying to decide how to proceed with the rest of our very long lives.
Mosiah was king over the Nephites and decided to form a new government. The people would elect judges and acknowledge laws and all live according to those laws. This is what King Mosiah had to say about it.
Mosiah 29:31-32
31 For behold I say unto you, the sins of many people have been caused by the iniquities of their kings; therefore their iniquities are answered upon the heads of their kings.
32 And now I desire that this inequality should be no more in this land, especially among this my people; but I desire that this land be a land of liberty, and every man may enjoy his rights and privileges alike, so long as the Lord sees fit that we may live and inherit the land, yea, even as long as any of our posterity remains upon the face of the land.
The second verse is very easy to find the parallel. Our Savior wanted us to have our freedom to choose. He wanted us to have the right to design our own eternal lives, to build what we wanted our eternal futures to look like. He was wise enough to understand that this was the only way we could truly be happy, to have the freedom to choose happiness. You can’t force someone into happiness even if you can force them to make choices that were meant to bring happiness.
The first verse that I included was also important because it describes the other side of the coin of freedom. King Mosiah teaches his people that sin can be caused by kings which equates to that sin falling upon the heads of the kings rather than on the heads of the people. Responsibility is as crucial to our happiness as freedom. We need the opportunity to take control of our own futures because it is only in the building of those futures that we find true happiness.
Let me give an example. I dated Conner for a year and a half before we got married, and I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed for an answer about whether to marry him. I know that some people do receive answers when they pray about that kind of thing which is awesome, but I had a slightly different experience. Heavenly Father never truly answered me, and as I’ve made my way through marriage, I learned why.
I chose Conner on my own. I had known him for a very long time. We had seen the worst of each other if I’m being perfectly honest, but we had also seen plenty of good. After we got married, I don’t feel like I was completely caught off guard by choices he made because I knew what I had married.
There was beauty in this. I had desperately craved that validation from Heavenly Father, and I think Heavenly Father is wise in whether He chooses to bestow that validation or not because we’re all learning different lessons at different times in our lives. But for me, at this time in my life, He knew that I needed to make my own choice.
I needed to make my own choice so that when hard things came up in my marriage (which they inevitably always do), I couldn’t shake my fists at the heavens and ask why Heavenly Father had put me here. I had to look at myself, take responsibility for the choice I had made, and decide what I was going to do with those hard things. That doesn’t mean I leave Heavenly Father out of the equation, to the contrary. I ask Heavenly Father for help all the time. The difference is that I decide to make my marriage what I want my marriage to be. When something difficult comes along, I don’t throw up my hands and say, “Well this is where Heavenly Father put me so I guess I just have to deal.” I decide how I’m going to change, how I’m going to approach Conner, and a million other little choices. I’m very blessed to have a husband who makes these same choices.
The Lord let me own my marriage, and because He let me own it, I’ve been able to create something beautiful with my own choices and His help. It’s been an exhilarating and fulfilling process that has brought me far more happiness than I thought possible. It has brought me far more happiness in comparison to hoping that happiness would just fall on me; happiness simply doesn’t happen that way. We need freedom and responsibility to own our lives and build what we want.
Sometimes Heavnely Father gives us an answer, and that’s comforting and wonderful and definitely has its purposes in our life that can teach us important lessons. Sometimes He’s silent, not because He doesn’t care or doesn’t love us, but because He’s trying to push us into our big kid shoes. He’s trying to make us like Him, where we get to create what we want. We get to make choices, tell Him what we want, and then He helps us build that kind of future. He does this because He knows it’s an incredible process. King Mosiah also wanted this for his people.
Amlici
On the other end of the spectrum, we find Amlici. Amlici wanted to get rid of this new system of government five years after Mosiah put it into place; he wanted there to be kings again and he wanted to be king. So everyone got together and put in their votes, and the voice of the people came back. Amlici was not to be king. Not enough people wanted it. When Amlici was not chosen as king, this happens:
Alma 2:9-10
9 And it came to pass that they gathered themselves together, and did consecrate Amlici to be their king.
10 Now when Amlici was made king over them he commanded them that they should take up arms against their brethren; and this he did that he might subject them to him.
Can we not see the parallels between Amlici and Satan?
When Satan lost the war in heaven, he threw a hissy fit and dubbed himself powerful over the world. He enlisted those who had followed him to try and bring as many people under his control as possible.
And that is where we observe the true Satan. That is where we get a glimpse of Satan as he truly is, not as he is promoting himself to the people. Amlici wasn’t going around telling people that he wanted to be powerful and rule over everyone. He was arguing the merits of having a king to protect them. He was whispering and promising power to those who would be loyal to him. Amlici’s arguments were attractive.
But the second he didn’t get what he wanted, he tried to force them.
This is Satan. Satan had an “attractive” plan. Everyone would come home after going down to earth because Satan was going to make sure of it. Anyone who has had a loved one leave the gospel and felt fear or whether that loved one would be coming home can feel the attraction of Satan’s plan. You don’t have to look around you and wonder who is going to be missing. You don’t have to look internally and wonder whether you’re going to be missing. Satan told you he loved you, that he wanted to bring you home, that he would never risk your soul by sending you down to make mistakes. You have a “king” who will protect you and bring you home no matter the cost.
And that was precisely the problem. No matter the cost. What was the cost of Satan’s plan? Everything.
The point of the Plan of Salvation was to come down here, make mistakes and struggle and grow, and go home prepared to live like our Heavenly Father. It is only in this manner that we can find eternal happiness.
Satan’s “Plan of Salvation” would have brought all of us home. But the cost was the entire purpose of the plan. We would have returned unchanged. We would not have been prepared to live like God which means we would have been damned in our capacity to experience happiness forever. We would have been stuck right where we were, forced to do what’s right forever but never tasting the goodness of those right choices because they weren’t really our choices.
Amilici didn’t want to protect the people as king. He wanted to own the people as king. He was willing to risk the lives of his followers and those who voted against him because no one mattered to Amlici except Amlici. He didn’t care about those who died in battle. He cared about whether he won.
Satan didn’t love us enough to want to bring us all home. He loved himself enough to be willing to sacrifice the happiness of all of his brothers and sisters because he believed that power over us would make him happy. The ultimate narcissist. When he lost, he just went on a rampage working to destroy any shred of happiness on the earth. If he had truly loved us, he would have still worked for our happiness under any conditions he was given. But he doesn’t love us. He loves himself, and he’s willing to sacrifice us.
These are powerful stories and characters that can teach us so much about Heavenly Father’s choices for our lives here on earth. We hear people cry about the trauma and devastation on earth, and those are valid cries. But the opposite, a removal of agency, was a fate worse than death literally. It was an eternity stuck in the same state. It was an eternity of boredom and unhappiness and damnation in our progression.
Agency was necessary and beautiful. There were some immensely tragic consequences to agency, but we can look to two facts for comfort. One. The alternative was worse. Two. We have a Savior who suffered and promised to take care of everything. No hurt will stay hurt with the Savior. No wound is too deep. No consequence of agency is too far for the Savior to reach.
Our Heavenly Parents and Savior love us. They chose this plan for us, and then They took care of absolutely everything. They know how to be happy, and they have provided us with the perfect plan to find that happiness and to build it in our lives forever. And then the Savior paid for it. We are so loved; we have every reason to trust Them.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 7 – Seer Stones w/ Allen Hansen (Full Interview)
May 28, 2024
Allen Hansen was featured in episode 2. This is the full interview.
Check out Allen’s other work: https://independent.academia.edu/HansenAllen
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator of the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 25–28; Mosiah 29–Alma 4 – Mike Parker
May 27, 2024
Conversion of Alma & the sons of Mosiah; commencement of the reign of the judges; Nehor & the Amlicites
(Mosiah 26–Alma 4)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the weeks of May 27–June 2 and June 3–9.)
J. Christopher Conkling, “Alma’s Enemies: The Case of the Lamanites, Amlicites, and Mysterious Amalekites,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 108–17. Conkling argues that the Amlicites of Alma 2–3 were the same group as the Amalekites who appeared suddenly, without explanation, in Alma 21, and that Oliver Cowdery simply used a different spelling of the same word dictated by Joseph Smith.
Benjamin McMurtry, “The Amlicites and Amalekites: Are They the Same People?,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 25 (2017): 269–81. McMurtry disagrees with Conkling and argues that that the Amlicites and Amalekites were, indeed, two separate groups.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 25–28 – Autumn Dickson
May 25, 2024
Belief Comes First
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters this week in Mosiah, we learn about the rising generation who did not believe in the word of God. They had not been around in the time of King Benjamin, and so they didn’t have the same experiences as their parents. There is one verse in there that really has me pondering some of the ways I have framed the gospel in my mind.
Mosiah 26:3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened.
They couldn’t understand the word of God because they didn’t believe, not the other way around. As I’ve tried to engage with some of my loved ones and strangers over the church, I have held onto the belief that if I could simply help them understand, they would believe. Apparently this is a fallacy. If you want to understand God and His plan and His choices amongst the children of men, belief actually comes first.
As I look back on my own life, I realize that this is exactly how things work. When I have reached any new understanding of gospel doctrine, belief preceded it.
Being aware of the fact that belief precedes understanding can help us know how to approach the gospel personally and with others.
Reasoning has a place
We live in a world of sophistry, both in temporal and spiritual matters. In temporal matters, it can make sense to engage. I actually read an entire book once about the fact that America was built on argumentation and that effective argumentation can actually bring us closer to our goals. If we can avoid turning those who disagree with us into enemies, disagreement is beautiful because it gives us opportunities to engage, listen, and evolve.
When it comes to spiritual matters, reasoning, disagreements, and discussion absolutely have their place. I work with FAIR, and a huge basis for their work is apologetics. For a long time, their entire purpose was to respectfully argue against critics and help people see a wider perspective. They’ve helped so many people better understand issues and history. We absolutely should discuss, explore, and question. The more I engage with doctrine, the more it has made sense to me and strengthened my testimony.
But in the end, belief has to come first. Understanding will come. But belief is a precursor to that understanding.
Belief first
I know that the idea of “believing first” is ridiculous to some, but let’s talk about what I actually mean when I say that belief needs to come first. I don’t mean, “Ignore the things you don’t understand and may even feel harmful. Just believe because I’m telling you that it’s good for you.” This is not what I mean by belief. In order to understand what I mean when I say “belief first,” you have to understand the transition I went through in my own faith.
When I have run into things that don’t make sense or when I run into things in the church that even seem hurtful, I have approached those uncomfortable feelings in a myriad of ways. If I’m being totally honest, when I was growing up, I simply didn’t approach them at all. I just pushed them to the back of my mind and forced myself to “have faith.” In case you were wondering, this wasn’t exactly effective. Sure, I held on for a while, but looking back, I can see that this approach couldn’t have lasted.
After my period of ignoring things I didn’t understand, I tried to hold onto testimony moments. This meant that I held onto moments where I had felt something beyond myself. These were good stepping stones that pushed me in the right direction, but they were ultimately insufficient in the long term. There were too many questions about whether I was feeling good old-fashioned nostalgia or truly feeling something that was given to me by my Heavenly Father.
And though holding onto testimony moments would have been ultimately insufficient for my personal testimony, this process allowed me to build the foundation for what has really helped me develop a resilience against Satan fighting me with things that I don’t understand or don’t have answers to.
Just over four years ago, I started the blog, and that’s when things really changed. I consistently speak with my Heavenly Father, and He responds. Now when I run into things I don’t understand, they can still bother me. However, I simultaneously can’t deny what’s right in front of me. I speak with God, and He answers back. That is as real to me as the things I don’t understand. Why place the reality of my concerns over the reality of my relationship with God? He has helped me find peace, helped me to understand, and proved His trustworthiness to me a million times over. I trust Him. I believe Him. Utilizing testimony moments to help build the foundation for this relationship was a big step, but I ultimately had to bring my relationship into the present. I had to talk to Him consistently in order to achieve this feeling of belief.
A concrete example
I have been married for seven years. Though this isn’t really that long, it has been long enough to solidify my trust in my husband. My relationship with Conner has consisted of moment after moment after moment after moment of evidence of Conner’s trustworthiness. A few years ago, Conner had some major decisions to make in regards to our family. I didn’t understand the choices he was making when the information I had was pointing us in a different direction. I kept bringing this up to him until one day he confided in me that I didn’t have all the information. There were things going on that were beyond our family that he couldn’t share with me, even though they affected my life as well as that of my family.
It didn’t even phase me. I told Conner I trusted him, and I did. He had consistently proved to me that our family was his first priority. He had proven to me that he could make wise decisions and that he would make decisions based on our happiness. I had no qualms letting him utilize the information he had to guide our path.
I didn’t understand, but I believed in Conner because of the evidence I had observed consistently in our relationship.
This is what I mean in terms of belief.
When I talk about belief coming first, I mean cultivating a relationship with God. Don’t take my word for it. Get to know Him, cast off imperfect qualities that you’ve given Him in your mind, and you’ll find that He consistently shows up in powerful ways. You’ll find that belief in Him is easy because of who He is.
When I talk about belief coming first, I’m talking about real trust based on a real relationship of invested time. I’m not talking about ignoring discomfort or having a death grip on “faith” because you’re supposed to. That’s not what belief is supposed to feel like. It’s not what it has to feel like.
Get to know Him. You will believe in Him, and eventually the truth comes.
When I hit snags
Developing this relationship has changed how I process things when I hit snags. When something comes along that I don’t understand, when I run into information on the news or social media that I can’t disprove, when I hear accounts of history that may or may not have validity, I believe in the very real relationship I’ve developed.
Believing in that relationship looks like a lot of things. Sometimes it means that I push the snag away without a second thought because I’m having a really good day, and I’m feeling really close to Him. Other times, it means that I take that snag to the Lord and talk to Him about it. I know He won’t be angry with me for asking because I know how He responds in the relationship I have with Him. I tell Him exactly why it bothers me, why it logically doesn’t make sense to me, or why I feel hurt.
Then I usually take some concentrated, conscious time for belief. I reaffirm what I know about Him, His power, His belief in me, His love for me, and my indispensability to His happiness. I think about how wise He has proven Himself in the past. Oftentimes, I find the answer or peace I’m looking for as I reflect on my relationship with Him and as I reflect on who He is and has proven Himself to be. Other times, I find that it softens my heart to the extent that He whispers more words of wisdom or comfort. Either way, I usually find what I’m looking for when I believe in Him first. The understanding comes because I believe in Him.
When I read this verse about the rising generation not understanding because they didn’t believe, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first. But as I took the time to reflect on my own life, I’ve realized that is exactly true. When we believe in our Father in Heaven and develop a relationship of trust with Him, understanding will follow.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 18–24 – Mike Parker
May 20, 2024
Ammon’s expedition; Limhi & Alma’s escape to Zarahemla
(Mosiah 7–8, 18–25)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
BYU professor Daniel C. Peterson examines the baptism of Alma₁ in these two articles:
“Priesthood in Mosiah,” in The Book of Mormon: Mosiah, Salvation Only Through Christ, eds. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1991), 187–210.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 18–24 – Autumn Dickson
May 19, 2024
They Were Just Dancing
by Autumn Dickson
This post will probably not be a popular one, at least in terms of the world, but it’s definitely an important one.
One of the stories we read about this week is painful and tragic.
Mosiah 20:1 Now there was a place in Shemlon where the daughters of the Lamanites did gather themselves together to sing, and to dance, and to make themselves merry.
While these daughters were dancing and enjoying themselves, the wicked priests of King Noah abducted 24 of them and married them. This actually snowballs into a battle where a lot of people die because the Lamanites blame Limhi’s people for taking their daughters.
Now, we have no idea what the scriptures mean by singing, dancing, and making merry. I had dance parties with my girlfriends all the time when I was young. We know that when Laman and Lemuel were making merry, they were sinning, but we don’t know if that’s actually what they were trying to imply right here. I’m not going to assume that these girls were doing anything wrong, but I’m still going to use the story to teach a principle.
Perhaps some would argue with me that everything worked out because the daughters end up defending their abductor-husbands later on, but I just don’t buy it. I’ve seen my fair share of abused women defend their abuser. These priests couldn’t go back to their wives so they kidnap women and marry them instead. These priests had spent their time with other women while they were previously married, and they had also abandoned those poor wives! Something tells me they didn’t change just because they got married again. We also know they haven’t changed because when they’re given a bit of power, they use it to abuse other innocent people as well (cough cough Alma). I don’t think these girls were okay.
Which leads me to what I want to teach today.
The Lord gave us standards to protect us, not to blame victims, but to protect us. Read it again. I want to teach both of those principles today.
Not to blame victims
I feel like I should start with the “blame victims” portion of the principle so we can appreciate the second portion of the principle as well.
The standards weren’t given to punish the victims. The girls were out dancing and making merry, but even if the scriptures were purposefully implying that these girls were sinning, could we accurately blame them for what happened to them afterwards? No. Even if their actions enabled wicked men to take advantage of them, the blame lies with the wicked men.
I remember a time when I was growing up and getting ready for a youth conference dance. I was getting ready at my friend’s house, and we went all out for fun. Dance party, face masks, snacks, everything. Getting ready for the youth conference dance was going to be just as fun as the actual dance.
But we were also taking pictures. Even though we weren’t quite ready yet (i.e. not modest). There was nothing crazy, but they weren’t great either. They weren’t meant to be anything. If you’re judging us by intent, the pictures were 100% innocent. We were playing and getting ready and taking pictures. There was nothing else there.
My mom found the pictures and was understandably upset. She was worried that one of my friends wouldn’t think about it and post some of them online. I learned an intense lesson that day about protecting myself.
Here was the reality of the situation: We didn’t sin. I mean, taking the pictures was probably a mistake but we weren’t actively rebelling or sinning. We were young girls getting ready to go to a dance. Heavenly Father was proud of us for going to youth conference and loving it.
Here’s the other half of the reality. I could have had a friend post some of those pictures online without thinking about it. And those pictures could have been downloaded by someone gross. And as innocent as we were, it could have hurt us. As innocent as we were, it could have hurt us.
I was not a bad person. I was a good, innocent person who loved playing and dancing with her friends and going to youth conference. But the rest of the world is not so innocent or good. Heavenly Father is more aware of this than anyone, and that’s why He gave us standards.
I didn’t need to be blamed if those pictures had been used against me. And yet, despite the fact that I am not responsible for the wicked actions of another person, I am overwhelmingly grateful that my mother taught me a hard lesson about protecting myself that day.
Things as they are
I’m going to use a more extreme example, but I’m actually not going to apologize for it as I often do. The world can hem and haw and complain, but the reality is this: I had too many friends from high school for which this was a reality. I have too many friends who didn’t know what happened to them the night before. I have too many friends who wish they could take back actions or words that occurred because their inhibitions were dulled by alcohol. The world can attack us for using “fear” tactics to try and force our kids to do what’s right, but I call it a reality check. I’m teaching them the truth. As my kids grow older, I will try my best to simultaneously teach them to trust themselves and their instincts, but I’m not going to refrain from teaching them about the very real danger that shouldn’t (but does!) exist in the world. They don’t have to be afraid of the world, but they do need to be able to make their decisions with accurate information.
Let’s say my daughter grows up, goes to a party, drinks some of this alcohol, and gets attacked. What is the reality of this situation? What is she going to have to face?
Is my daughter guilty because the attack happened because she chose to go to a party? No. we already discussed this. The guilt that should lay on her shoulders should be equivalent to her growing up, going to a party, drinking alcohol, and coming home safely. There was still disobedience and broken promises, but the resulting attack isn’t on her.
Since we already talked about that a little more in depth, let’s move to the second part of the principle.
I once had a young woman come to me and argue that she should be able to wear whatever she wants, go wherever she wants, and get blackout drunk if she wants, and expect safety. We should be teaching people to protect others, not teaching girls to keep themselves “safe.” I agreed with her. We should live in a world where people are safe even when they’re extremely vulnerable. I will teach my children to protect vulnerable people. I will not stand for behavior that exploits vulnerable people.
But I am not the only person on the planet. And so despite the fact that we should be able to expect safety even when we’re vulnerable, that is not the reality around us.
So I will teach my children to protect the vulnerable, and I will teach my children to follow the standards given to us by the Lord in order to more effectively protect themselves. I don’t believe the Lord curses those who made themselves vulnerable, but I do believe He is trying to teach us commandments and standards to protect us from pain.
And you know what? Sometimes we do all the right things, and those bad things still happen to us. Sometimes we do what’s right, dress modestly, stand in holy places, avoid substances, and those bad things still happen. Sometimes you follow all the standards, and you still unknowingly marry one of those wicked people. That’s why I can accurately say that it’s not your fault if someone takes advantage of you. Because even when you’re doing everything right, it can still happen.
We teach that. We make sure our children know that if someone hurts them, they are innocent of the crime that happened to them.
But we also teach wisdom. Because even though you can do everything right and still find yourself in trouble, I can promise that the odds of protecting yourself are much higher when you follow the standards given by the Lord.
I compare it to locking your door. If you lock your door, someone could absolutely still break the lock, come in, and hurt your family. Is that your fault? No, it lies with the person who chose to do the wrong thing. But it’s stupid to leave your door unlocked because someone could break in anyway.
And unfortunately there’s another harsh reality, and I ask you to please not misunderstand me. I will do my best to express my thoughts accurately.
When you leave the door unlocked and someone comes in and harms the family, you will be asking yourself, “What if I had just locked the door? Could I have spared us all of this pain?” There is no reason to carry guilt around because someone else chose to do the wrong thing, but a lack of guilt does not equate to a lack of pain. It is difficult to experience those kinds of consequences regardless of whether you made yourself vulnerable. I would argue that it’s especially painful when you wonder if those consequences actually had to happen. I reiterate. It’s not your fault. You do not need to take on the guilt of a person who chose to do something very wrong to you.
But I also reiterate. It is painful to find yourself in those circumstances. And even though you can’t perfectly protect yourself, the Lord has given us commandments and standards that do provide a good measure of protection from that kind of pain.
I testify of a Savior who gave us commandments and standards because of how much He loves us and because of His overwhelming awareness of the realities of this fallen world. I testify of a Savior who has the ability to heal us, regardless of how difficult circumstances came about because I can testify of a Savior who has saved and healed me when I’ve been imperfect or unwise. I testify of a day when the Savior will judge perfectly and heal those who desire to be healed.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 6 – Seer Stones: Why Aren’t They Used Today?
May 14, 2024
In this episode, Jennifer, Zach, and Sarah discuss why seer stones are no longer used today. Throughout this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute claims about the seer stones head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 11–17 – Autumn Dickson
May 11, 2024
He is Justice
by Autumn Dickson
This week, we find Abinadi standing before King Noah and his wicked priests. They love to lounge around, preaching at people, and spending their strength in highly questionable ways. Abinadi teaches them a plethora of doctrine, the ten commandments, the Law of Moses and its true purpose in the plan, and the coming of Jesus Christ since the House of Israel seems to forget about the Messiah and hyperfocus on a law that was always meant to point to a Messiah.
Abinadi teaches them that those who listen to the prophets and hope for Christ will be taken care of. Then Abinadi warns them.
Mosiah 15:26-27
26 But behold, and fear, and tremble before God, for ye ought to tremble; for the Lord redeemeth none such that rebel against him and die in their sins; yea, even all those that have perished in their sins ever since the world began, that have wilfully rebelled against God, that have known the commandments of God, and would not keep them; these are they that have no part in the first resurrection.
27 Therefore ought ye not to tremble? For salvation cometh to none such; for the Lord hath redeemed none such; yea, neither can the Lord redeem such; for he cannot deny himself; for he cannot deny justice when it has its claim.
Abinadi is warning these men that they’re going to miss out if they don’t repent. If you’re spending the time reading and listening to Come Follow Me posts, videos, and podcasts, I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re not out doing the things that these priests are doing, not the least of which is murder. I doubt Abinadi would be calling you to repentance in the same manner that he’s calling these priests to repentance.
But there are still principles here for us to learn. There is one phrase in particular that can help us better understand the perfect judgment of the Lord.
“…for he cannot deny himself…”
One of my favorite topics is the perfection judgment of the Lord because I spent so long calling His judgment perfect and attributing less than perfect judging skills to Him. Let’s talk about what I mean. We’re going to cycle around a bit, but we’re going to come back around to this specific phrase.
The definitions of perfection
One of the ways that we can understand Judgment Day and the atonement of Jesus Christ is to look at it through the lens of two different definitions of perfection. I say, “one of the ways,” because these concepts are complex ideas, and I have not yet found a way to completely encompass all of the perfect principles that make up these ideas. I have talked about many of them, but here is yet another way to understand them.
When we’re talking about perfection in reference to Judgment Day and the atonement of Jesus Christ, you could almost say that there are two different definitions of perfection, and they come into play at different points.
The first definition of perfection is the more traditional way we frame perfection. It is to be without sin or flaw. Without the atonement of Jesus Christ, we could not make it back to heaven. We all sin and come short of the glory of God. We messed up, and we don’t deserve it. We have corrupted ourselves, and no corruptible thing can coexist with God or it burns up in His glory. This is our first idea of perfection.
Interestingly enough, is this actually fair? Is this truly perfect judgment? Think of all of the remarkable people who overcame great odds and trials and became compassionate, selfless human beings. Do they truly deserve to find unhappiness for an eternity? Is that really perfect judgment? In my unqualified opinion, I think not. We weren’t capable of being perfect. We needed the opposition to grow into perfection so why punish us for something we were incapable of?
And yet, this is what had to be. Corruption simply cannot exist in the presence of God. It’s obliterated. We needed to come to earth to grow into perfection and happiness; this absolutely, unequivocally meant that we would corrupt ourselves to a degree. These were the very real facts of our circumstances. A catch-22. Stay in the presence of God and experience damnation in the sense that we were stopped from progressing for forever or leave God’s presence, grow, but be tainted and away from His loving presence forever.
But here is where our second definition of perfection comes in. Christ was perfect in the sense of our first definition. He was without sin. We don’t understand how, but He paid for those sins. And because He paid for them, we can be cleansed. Voila. Catch-22 solved. We can go to earth, become corrupted to a degree (because it was inevitable), but we can also gain the experience we need to move past our damnation, our stop in our progression. That corruption gets cleansed, and we can coexist with Heavenly Father without getting burned up in the all-consuming fire that is the glory of His presence.
The second definition of perfection includes aspects of justice and mercy. People who are really trying and growing and believing and learning still get to come home even though they’re made mistakes. What is a more “perfect” definition of perfection? The first or second? Which is a more perfect judgment? The one that called for absolute discipline for the imperfect or the one that included the very real aspects of mercy?
Once again in my extremely unqualified opinion, the second definition of “perfect” is nicer, but it’s also a more perfect definition of perfect.
He became justice
Let’s cycle back to the phrase from the beginning: “…he cannot deny himself; for he cannot deny justice…”
We have all heard the phrases, “Christ is justice,” and “Christ is mercy.” In some sense, those are literal and accurate statements. Because of what He did for us, that first scenario of perfection is not applicable. There is no more catch-22. There is no more third party justice that disallows us from going back into the presence of our Heavenly Father to be consumed by His glory. Christ’s atonement can cleanse us so we can go back. These are our new and true circumstances. Christ gets to decide whether we come home because He took the place of justice when He paid justice. He is our debtor. He is justice.
Our original circumstances that existed with the first definition of perfection are no longer our circumstances, and yet, we keep acting like they are. We keep acting like justice overpowers mercy and not the other way around.
In my home, I am justice. I am also mercy. These are temporary roles that were given to me by a Father in Heaven who needed me to teach His children because He couldn’t do it Himself. My husband, Conner, also holds these roles though he practices them less often because he’s gone working.
Maybe it sounds silly to say I am justice and mercy, but in so many real aspects of the words, it’s true. The worlds of my children very much fall into what I create for them.
I believe that one of the reasons the Lord set up these circumstances in this manner was because He wanted me to understand His atonement. I am wildly imperfect, but I do have some sense of what perfect judgment looks like. I may lose my cool with my kids, but I have my King-Solomon-wisdom moments too. When I take a step back from the overstimulation and chaos, I often know where my kids’ hearts are at. I know if they’ve been stressed with specific circumstances, different triggers for their big emotions, and whether they went to bed on time. I know if Warner was literally trying to play with his sister or whether he was trying to get his kicks torturing her. I know whether Evie meant to push her brother off the couch or whether she’s still learning to control her growing body.
As of yet, none of my children have done anything worthy of getting kicked out. They have punched, bit, threw, pushed, and taunted. They have continuously provoked and purposefully broken things, but I’m not crazy enough to believe that merits getting kicked out of my home. I am not perfect, but I do have some immature understanding of perfect judgment. I have some inkling of what it means to wisely distribute mercy and justice according to the needs of my children so that they can grow into well-adjusted adults without banning them from the home.
Heaven forbid the day ever came that I would need to kick a teenager out to protect my other children, but I hope I would be wise enough to do that too if the situation called for it.
Now let’s take this little home scenario and zoom out to look at the world the Lord created for us. I am imperfect. I am also a good person. I want peace in our “home” here on earth even though I often make mistakes and hurt my siblings. I love my Father and Brother.
And in my imperfect sense of perfection, I know that I have not merited getting kicked out yet. He will distribute mercy and justice according to what I need to learn in order to become a well-adjusted Being like Him, but He’s not kicking me out of the house. I made covenants that bind me to Christ and allow Him to cleanse me so that I can coexist with my Heavenly Parents, and I am someone who wants to follow Them. They can work with that.
I am saved by the atonement of Jesus Christ. I experience salvation regularly in the forms of peace, hope, and joy in my home. It is a beautiful feeling, and it’s a feeling that my Savior wanted me to experience. He paid an excruciating price so that I could experience it and experience it now, not just in the next life. I am grateful to Him for bringing about the second definition of perfect, for banishing the catch-22, and enabling me to experience eternal happiness.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 7–10; Mosiah 11–17 – Mike Parker
May 06, 2024
Zeniff’s return to the land of Lehi‐Nephi; Abinadi’s confrontation with king Noah
(Mosiah 9–17)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the weeks of May 6–12 and May 13–19)
Robert L. Millet, “The Ministry of the Father and the Son,” in The Book of Mormon: The Keystone Scripture, ed. Paul R. Cheesman (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1988), 44–72.
How was Abinadi executed? One suggestion is that he was beaten to death with burning torches.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 7–10 – Autumn Dickson
May 06, 2024
Limhi and Repentance
by Autumn Dickson
One of the stories that starts to get introduced this week is that of Limhi and his people. The order of events over the next few (or ten) chapters can be a little confusing because you’re jumping around in the timeline, and you’re following different groups of people. This is also intermingled with sermons that break up the stories and can make it even harder to follow if you’re not really trying.
I want to talk about Limhi and his people today. I know that their story is spread out over multiple chapters and weeks, and so if I want to talk about them as a whole, I’m going to have to venture into their story a bit more even if I’m getting ahead of myself in the manual. Luckily, the principles that I want to share are all found within verses that are included for this week.
I want to give the full story so we can look at the principles in context. I know I’m omitting some details, but I want to focus on this specific timeline. So the Nephites are all in one big group of people. At one point in time, a man named Zeniff decides that he wants to inherit the land where the Lamanites are living because he feels as though that land was originally supposed to be the inheritance of the Nephites from the Lord. He takes a big group of people, and the Lamanite king lets them settle on some of that land. The Lamanites try attacking Zeniff’s people, the Lamanites lose, and Zeniff’s people are really happy. After Zeniff passes away and time moves on, Zeniff’s people become wicked. Zeniff’s people come into bondage under the Lamanite king and are forced to pay crazy amounts of taxes.
The original group of Nephites become curious about what happened to Zeniff’s people, and they send Ammon and a small group of people to go find them. Ammon finds them, and Limhi (the new king of Zeniff’s group) is ecstatic because he wants to free his people from the Lamanites.
The scope of today’s message
Limhi’s people differ from the other group of people that we read about over the next few weeks in the sense that their sin brought them into bondage. The other group of people (Alma’s people) were brought into bondage despite their righteousness, and they were likewise freed by the Lord. Both this group of people and Limhi’s people are reflective of our own lives. Sometimes affliction happens even when we’re striving to do what’s right; affliction was an essential ingredient to the Plan of Salvation if we really wanted to reach our full potential so even when we’re doing what’s right, the Lord may still allow us to wander into difficult circumstances.
On the flip side, sometimes our affliction is brought about by our own sin, as was the case for Limhi’s people. It is this specific circumstance that I want to talk about today. Despite the fact that repentance can be broadened to encompass the growth experienced by Alma’s people, I want to talk about repentance within the scope of overcoming sin specifically. In my opinion, repentance can be any step towards Christ whether that’s in the form of overcoming sin, learning something new about Christ, healing, developing a talent, or getting stronger. But for this particular message, I want to zoom in the lens and just talk about repentance in the form of overcoming sin.
It is in this context that we can study parallels between Limhi’s people and our own repentance process.
A posture of accountability
One of the things that impresses me most about the parallels between Limhi’s people and the general process of overcoming sin comes from Limhi, himself. In truth, we know very little about Limhi. We hadn’t heard of him before this moment even though he was King Noah’s son. We don’t know what his past was like, how often he participated in wickedness with his father, or how involved he was when Abinadi was killed. And yet, we read this from him:
Mosiah 7:25-26
25 For if this people had not fallen into transgression the Lord would not have suffered that this great evil should come upon them. But behold, they would not hearken unto his words; but there arose contentions among them, even so much that they did shed blood among themselves.
26 And a prophet of the Lord have they slain; yea, a chosen man of God, who told them of their wickedness and abominations, and prophesied of many things which are to come, yea, even the coming of Christ.
Limhi knew that his people had done wickedly, and he didn’t shy away from that fact. He knew that their bondage was a result of falling into transgression.
I want you to think about Limhi for a second. He was raised in a wicked society with an awful father. His experience with religion had been limited to wicked priests that his father had put in place. Not exactly fertile soil. It could have been easy for Limhi to be completely self-absorbed like his father. It could have been easy for him to be vain and surround himself with “religious” men who would stroke his ego. It could have also been easy to turn his back on religion completely considering the fact that his experience with it was full of hypocrisy, pride, and silencing anyone who dared disagree. If this was the God that Limhi was introduced to by wicked priests and his father, why did he want anything to do with it?
And yet, somehow, Limhi became an unbaptized convert waiting for the missionaries to show up. How he learned about the true character of God and the nature of sin is anyone’s guess, but somehow Limhi knew. Somehow he shed the example of doing whatever you wanted and calling it righteous. He stepped into the mantle of king over a people in bondage, and he was brave enough to tell them that their own wickedness had brought their destruction, even though Abinadi had been killed for doing the same thing.
If we’re looking at Limhi’s people as an example of repentance, we can look at Limhi as holding the primary state of mind. Limhi was ready to repent; he was ready to change. His was a posture of repentance that included several aspects: an ownership of the sins, a willingness to seek help in order to be freed, preparedness for penance (was willing to be slaves to the Nephites even though that idea was shot down fast), and a steadfast desire to avoid running right back into the sins that brought the problem in the first place. All of these attitudes provided a readiness for Limhi and his people to be saved.
An effectual struggle
When deliverance for Limhi’s people arrives in the form of Ammon, Limhi addresses his people. This is one of the things he says to them:
Mosiah 7:18 And it came to pass that when they had gathered themselves together that he spake unto them in this wise, saying: O ye, my people, lift up your heads and be comforted; for behold, the time is at hand, or is not far distant, when we shall no longer be in subjection to our enemies, notwithstanding our many strugglings, which have been in vain; yet I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made.
Ammon found Limhi’s people, and Limhi is thrilled for good reason. He sees that freedom is possible. They don’t have to remain in bondage and pay forever. However, there is a little phrase at the end that is very telling.
“…I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made.”
“Effectual” means to produce the desired result, and I believe that this struggle was meant to produce freedom in its truest sense.
I want you to imagine working super hard to free a people from bondage. You succeed, and it’s wonderful and celebratory and beautiful. But then, they run right back into their bonds that you freed them from. It’s silly, but it happens on a spiritual level quite often. We believe that Heavenly Father requires work and allows for guilt and struggle, but not because He wants to punish us or because we have to pay for our sins. Heavenly Father requires an effectual struggle that will free us from the bonds and keep us from going back to them. Having an effectual struggle doesn’t mean destroying ourselves for imperfection (that would not be effectual in the slightest). Rather, an effectual struggle enables us to appreciate the sacrifice that was made by the Savior. We receive enough of the consequences that we recognize we don’t want those bonds (if we were always bailed out with no struggle, why wouldn’t we keep going back?). And there is also a beautiful kind of growth that is experienced in that effectual struggle.
Do not fear the struggle. We want to be freed from past mistakes and the consequences that still seem to haunt us. We want to be freed from flaws that aren’t contributing to our happiness. But the Lord was wise in allowing us to struggle.
Limhi teaches one other principle in this chapter that can help us determine our relationship with this effectual struggle.
Mosiah 7:33 But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage.
Our true requirement here is to continually turn to the Lord. When we sin, we turn to Him. When we struggle, we turn to Him. When we run into obstacles while trying to do what’s right, we turn to Him. We trust Him. If we do this, He WILL deliver us out of bondage. He will deliver us. It’s going to happen. He’s going to deliver us according to His own wisdom about what’s best for us, but we can lift up our heads and rejoice right now. An effectual struggle doesn’t mean we’re not forgiven. It means we are loved by a Lord who frees us from sin and is wise enough to know the struggle will put us where we need to be.
I’m grateful for a Savior who can teach me in whatever situation I need. I’m grateful that I have gained a testimony that He will deliver me, and I’m also grateful He lets me struggle. Or, to be more accurate, I’m grateful for what I get out of the struggle. Even as I face consequences and obstacles, I know that they could easily be removed. I’m not actually in any “danger.” I simply need them to become everything I can be, and I’m grateful the Savior gives that to me.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 5 – Seer Stones: Did the Church Lie?
Apr 30, 2024
In this episode, Sarah, Jennifer, and Zach discuss mentions of the seer stones throughout history. Throughout this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute claims about the seer stones head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (5:44) Richard Bushman Statement (6:11) Overview (8:16) Gerrit Dirkmaat Interview (35:39) Mark Ashurst-McGee Interview (01:12:34) Conclusion
Gerrit Dirkmaat is an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado in 2010, where he studied nineteenth-century American expansionism and foreign relations. He worked as a historian and writer for the Church History Department from 2010 to 2014 with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He is the coauthor, along with Michael Hubbard MacKay, of the award-winning book From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon, published by the BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book in 2015. In 2023, they published another book on the topic: Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon. In addition to books, Gerrit is also the author of dozens of academic articles. He currently serves as the editor of the academic journal Latter-day Saint Historical Studies published by the Ensign Peak Foundation. Since 2021 he has hosted and produced a weekly Church history podcast: Standard of Truth. It examines Church history questions and sources. He and his wife, Angela, have four children.
Mark Ashurst-McGee is a senior historian in the Church History Department and the senior research and review editor for the Joseph Smith Papers, where he also serves as a specialist in document analysis and documentary editing methodology. He holds a PhD in history from Arizona State University and has trained at the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents. He has coedited several volumes of The Joseph Smith Papers and is also coeditor of Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is also the author of several articles on Joseph Smith and early Latter-day Saint history published in scholarly journals and popular venues.
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 4–6 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 28, 2024
Watch Your Thoughts
by Autumn Dickson
King Benjamin doesn’t mess around with his sermon. He knows what he came to do, and he does it. He doesn’t mince words. He teaches some pretty essential doctrines with no apologies attached. Let’s talk about one of these no-nonsense doctrines.
Mosiah 4:29-30
29 And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them.
30 But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.
These are some of those verses that used to haunt me back before I knew how much I mattered to the Lord. There are so many ways to sin and if I can’t watch every little thing about myself, I’m going to perish. There is a reason I can sympathize with those who have left the church and felt a “great burden lifted off their shoulders.” It is because of misunderstanding verses like this. It’s not fun to carry that kind of fear and perfectionism around.
And though there is much I could say about sin and its consequences, I actually want to run in a different direction with this verse.
Interpreting a tone
When my daughter first joined gymnastics, her coach was a lady who had escaped the Soviet Union. She spoke in a thick Russian accent, and there was absolutely no coddling. In a society where gentle parenting has taken a really strong foothold, this was a very different approach. She corrected the girls immediately, loudly, and with no remorse. She also demanded respect from them.
Though some parents shied away from this gym for that reason (more power to them, plenty of right ways to parent a child), I chose this gym for that reason. I wanted my daughter to get used to personalities that could be considered abrasive in our culture because I knew there was value there. Evelyn’s coach loved her, and she showed Evelyn that she loved her. She just didn’t show it with smiles and pats on the back. I knew that if Evelyn could learn to internalize the good in an environment that might seem hostile to some, I would be doing her a huge favor.
It would have been easy to internalize this coach’s approach as criticsm and wither underneath it especially when you consider how different it is from other approaches found in America.
So let’s go back to this verse with King Benjamin. It was very easy for me as a child to read that verse and internalize fear as the motivation for living the gospel. If I didn’t watch myself, I was going to perish. I have seen the church (as well as lots of other churches) get torn apart for teaching this kind of doctrine. “We shouldn’t try to scare people into doing what’s right. It’s so damaging to teach a young child or teenager that they need to behave or they’re going to be destroyed.” In all honesty, I have found that this is true. I have watched friends talk about overcoming religious trauma, and I have had to work through unhealthy religious beliefs as well.
Scare tactics aren’t super effective or healthy; THAT is a true principle. In the same breath, I also feel that the critics are missing a couple key points to the story, and it is these very key points that can help us know how to teach the truth about sin while simultaneously helping our children absorb the gospel in the most effective manner.
The whole truth
So what’s the whole truth here? What parts of the story are missing? What are the critics missing?
As I worked through some of my own incorrect, harmful religious beliefs, I remember experiencing the scriptures and conference talks completely differently. As I learned about the atonement, the mercy of Christ, my own divine potential, the freedom afforded me by my Heavenly Father, and His coaching methods, I internalized completely different messages.
When I look back on my experience with King Benjamin’s sermon as a teenager, I remember fixating on my own nothingness and the need to desperately watch my thoughts, words, and actions so I wouldn’t perish. Now when I read his sermon, I find myself saying things like, “Yes! That’s how I feel! I have tasted of His love, and I want to remember it and follow Him.”
There is an aspect of internalization when it comes to the gospel, and that means there is also a subtle layer of personal accountability. I can only imagine how many times my parents and leaders taught me that I was beloved of my Heavenly Father, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I truly internalized it. My parents did teach the good news of the gospel. I was just a depressed teenager that fixated on the negative.
King Benjamin warned us that sin hurts us, and he rightfully did so. It’s true, and it needs to be taught so we can be protected. But he also taught so, so, so much more than that. Read his sermon. Pay attention to the language about Christ, joy, and freedom. I cannot blame King Benjamin for teaching me to be a perfectionist because he didn’t teach that. Satan did, and I let him because I didn’t recognize him.
Please know that I’m not trying to pass blame around. Maybe we can do better at making sure every child has internalized what it means to a divine Parentage. But maybe there is something else we can teach in addition to this principle that will help our loved ones (and probably ourselves too) take control of what they’re internalizing in terms of the gospel.
Recognizing Satan
A powerful tool in combating the self-loathing and perfectionism that is often associated with religion is to recognize Satan at work.
I believe that one of Satan’s favorite tactics is making the gospel a painful experience. He loves getting into our heads and screaming half truths as we’re trying to learn the doctrine. He’s trying to brush over and numb the parts that teach us who we really are and Who is standing behind us. If he can turn the gospel into a negative thing, the Spirit cannot testify of it. The gospel suddenly seems like the problem because we’re not actually learning the gospel. We’re learning harmful, partial truths, and we feel extremely burdened by it. When we finally shed those harmful, partial truths, it’s no wonder we feel liberated.
I find it interesting that King Benjamin teaches us that we need to watch our thoughts as well as our actions. This could easily be processed as an extreme process to strive for perfection as defined by the world. In relation to what we’ve been talking about, I also believe it’s appropriate to observe our thoughts and try to determine the sources they’re coming from. We watch our thoughts. We look at them. Are they coming from the Spirit? Are they coming from Satan? Are they coming from our own perceived notions and habits? Are our thoughts actually reflecting the gospel or some twisted version of it?
If we don’t take the time to watch our thoughts, trying our best to align them with true gospel principles, we may find that Satan has led us to believe in a false gospel completely based on perfectionism and an incessant need to “do” all the things while neglecting the heart of the matter.
And what did King Benjamin warn would happen if we didn’t watch our thoughts? He warned that we would perish. Living the gospel in the way that Satan wants us to live the gospel is equivalent to perishing. It doesn’t feel like salvation; it feels like hell (which is Satan’s whole point). Satan wants us to perish and be miserable.
We cannot experience a fullness of salvation here on earth. Some of the aspects of salvation will only be unlocked on the other side. However, there is a good amount of salvation that we can experience right now. It includes feelings of peace, confidence in your Savior’s ability to heal and save, and a deep sense of worth. If you’re not experiencing these feelings, maybe ask yourself who you’ve been listening to. Go back and read passages of scriptures, and look at them objectively. What is the actual message being shared and what message have you been internalizing?
Are we teaching our loved ones to watch their thoughts and own what they’re holding onto within their own minds? It’s a powerful teaching to own your beliefs and thwart Satan.
I testify of a Savior who wants to offer salvation now. He never meant for us to carry around the burdens He paid for or the burden of perfectionism. When He teaches us (through King Benjamin) to watch our thoughts or perish, it’s not because He wants to rain down curses on our heads or give us the evil eye for making mistakes; it’s because He knows that Satan wants to subtly destroy us and make us miserable. He’s trying to prevent our unhappiness, not add to our worries.
I testify that He loves you. If you don’t know that, I also testify that He is already doing everything He can possibly do to show you that He loves you. There comes a point where you have to make a choice to trust Him. There comes a point when we will need to choose to internalize that doctrine. There is a measure of personal accountability when it comes to whether we place our faith in that principle. I testify that if you place your faith in Him and His love, you will be happy in the most important sense of the word.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 1–3; Mosiah 4–6 – Mike Parker
Apr 22, 2024
King Benjamin’s temple sermon
(Mosiah 2–6)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the weeks of April 22-28 and April 29-May 5)
John A. Tvedtnes, “King Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles,” in By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley, volume 2, eds. John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990), 197–237.
Donald W. Parry, “Service & Temple in King Benjamin’s Speech,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 16, no. 2 (2007): 42–47. Parry, a professor of Hebrew Bible at BYU, explores how King Benjamin’s speech focuses almost entirely on service, repeating four variations of the word—servants, serve, served, and service—fifteen times in only eighteen verses (Mosiah 2:10–27).
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Mosiah 1–3 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 20, 2024
The Lord Supports Me
by Autumn Dickson
Maybe this week’s message was meant for me. I definitely needed to hear it. I feel like every time I’ve sat down to write a message, I’ve been hitting my head against a wall. I had all these goals about getting ahead and being on top of things, and though I have attempted to completely set myself up for success, it feels as though I have found nothing but obstacles. Maybe, just maybe, that’s because I would need this message for this very week. I couldn’t get ahead because it wouldn’t have come at the right time.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s a message that you need too.
An unexpected turn of events
I’m pregnant again. At the time of writing this, I’m not very far along. By the time this message comes around, I will be near the middle of my pregnancy. I had a baby five months ago. No, we were not being irresponsible. It came about because of circumstances that were actually outside of our control.
I completely recognize that I am so blessed to be able to bear children. I know that there are women out there who would do anything to be in my position. I would not trade my problems for someone else’s.
But I have struggled with this news. My babies will be thirteen months apart. I already feel like I’m going from sunup to sundown with no time to pull my head above water. Add in the nausea and depression, and I’m basically a basket case. Every single time I sit down at my computer to try and share something about Christ, I feel like I’m swimming through mists of darkness. I feel like I’m trying to cut through a nebulous darkness to try and receive something to put on paper. And by the time I’ve been able to start writing and working through my process, I’m so drained.
I don’t do well when I’m pregnant. I’m not the mom or wife I want to be. Trying to share messages about Christ when I’m agitated, angry, or despairing feels like trying to climb a sheer cliff face.
It is in this state of mind that I read this verse:
Mosiah 2:30 For even at this time, my whole frame doth tremble exceedingly while attempting to speak unto you; but the Lord God doth support me, and hath suffered me that I should speak unto you, and hath commanded me that I should declare unto you this day, that my son Mosiah is a king and a ruler over you.
I am not here to declare my child as your king and ruler, but I do feel a kinship with King Benjamin in his other sentiments. I have a message to share, and I’m exhausted. Beyond the emotional toll, my body is worn down. I know that I’m not the only one who has felt too weak to accomplish the tasks at hand, to wonder if God has asked too much this time, to wonder if I don’t have what it takes to choose faith for another day.
So this message from King Benjamin is for us. The Lord God will support us, and He will help us accomplish what He sent us here to do. He has taught me how we’re going to get through this together by reminding me of a couple of principles that I easily and often forget. Maybe I can share them with you, and maybe you’ll have a better memory than me.
A day at a time
The first principle is that we’re going to take it a day at a time. There are appropriate times to plan and make ambitious goals and prepare for future crises. And then there are times when you reach crises, and it becomes appropriate to ration. The Lord can help you know what stage you’re at, but as for me and my house, we’re rationing for the next year.
Each day, I’m going to wake up, I’m going to devote whatever time I can to accomplish the work He’s given me (both motherhood and blogging), and then I’m just going to wake up and repeat it the next day. I’m going to push aside my fears that are whispering that there is too much work, that I need to sacrifice more, that I’ll never accomplish it. I’m going to trust that He will give me what I need to accomplish what He wants done.
And I’ll fail at that. Heaven knows half of my mental effort these days is solely focused on trying to trust Him and forget about tomorrow. However, in the quiet moments when the wind stops and the darkness dissipates just a little, I know that He will magnify what I can give. It may be measly, but it’s not my work anyway. It’s His, and He asked me to do it which means that He’s going to help me do it. I make a pretty poor partner, but He chose me so that’s on Him.
He will carry us
There are three little phrases I want to pull out of the verse we read earlier. The Lord commanded King Benjamin to speak to the people. King Benjamin’s frame was literally shaking while he was trying to do this. But the Lord was also supporting him through the process, suffering him to fulfill the work he had been given.
The Lord could have asked someone else. King Benjamin could have gotten up and said, “My son is your king now,” and turned the time over to Mosiah. Mosiah made a good king too. I’m sure he had been taught well by his father. He was young, but the Spirit could have just as easily testified of his words to his people as it did for King Benjamin’s words.
So why King Benjamin?
We don’t know.
Which is probably an unsatisfying answer, but it’s also the truth. Maybe the Lord needed a little extra sacrifice to consecrate the speech delivered by King Benjamin for the sake of his people. Maybe King Benjamin needed to feel that unending support, that lesson, again (even though he likely felt it a ton throughout his career as humble and serving king). Maybe Mosiah simply wasn’t ready, or maybe Mosiah needed to see his father supported by the Lord so that he would know the Lord could carry him through his service as king. We just don’t know.
So what am I trying to teach here? Because this is all rather unhelpful.
I guess what I’m trying to teach is that the Lord has His reasons, and I’ve never known Him to be unwise or cruel. Maybe I don’t know His specific reasons for why an old king needed to overly exert his body after a lifetime of service. However, I do know that the Lord had a very good reason, and I know that King Benjamin wouldn’t regret following Him.
I don’t know why I’m having a baby right now. Maybe I won’t know until the next life. I’ll probably have guesses, but it’s very probable that I simply won’t know.
But I do know this. I know He is wise. I know He sees way more than I do. I know that He manipulates the details of my life in my favor.
I also know this. I know that He is not doing it just to make my life harder. It is a good reason, even if I can’t see it now. I also know that I won’t regret following Him (at least not permanently).
I can give you a million reasons why I think this is a bad idea. I have this other work He’s given me, and this makes me vastly more inefficient. I have other children who need a loving mother, and being a loving mother while I’m pregnant and depressed is so hard. Oftentimes, they need far more than I am capable of giving. My cup is often empty when I wake up in the morning. I could accuse Him of making me sacrifice all of these other things, and I could even tell Him no.
But I would only be hurting myself. And truth be told, I would probably be hurting my family too.
He has His reasons. I don’t know them, but I know Him. I am so blessed to know Him.
And because I know Him, I also know this. He has good reasons for what He is doing, and He’s also not going to abandon me. He’s not sacrificing me for some greater good. He didn’t look at King Benjamin and say, “Sorry, but you’re out of luck. It’s either you or all of these other people who need these words.” Everything can be for our benefit. My kids may have a much shorter-tempered mother, but they will also have a mother who knows how to apologize, who knows how the Lord loves her and is cheering her on. They will know how to be compassionate. They will know that the Lord does not abandon His own even if He’s pushing them beyond what they believe are their limits.
He has asked me to do something hard, and I love Him for it because I know Him. I may not love my difficult task; luckily that doesn’t seem to be a requirement for celestial glory. But I love how He will carry me through it and bless me and my family for it.
If He asked you to do something hard, it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay for it to feel impossible. It’s okay that you don’t know how you’re going to do it. It’s okay that you’re probably going to fail at it multiple times. Trust Him.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Enos–Words of Mormon – Mike Parker
Apr 16, 2024
Enos’s wrestle with God; Nephite spiritual decline; Mosiah led righteous Nephites to Zarahemla
(Enos, Jarom, Omni, Words of Mormon, Mosiah 1)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Clifford P. Jones, “The Prophets Who Wrote the Book of Omni,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 34 (2020): 221–44. The brief accounts written by Omni, Amaron, Chemish, Abinadom, and Amaleki, taken alone, don’t always inspire confidence in their righteousness. Jones argues that, when the specific words used by these men and all relevant context are taken into consideration, it’s reasonable to conclude that each of these authors of the book of Omni was a prophet of God.
The people of Zarahemla were the descendants of a group that came from Jerusalem who were led by Mulek, a son of King Zedekiah. (Omni 1:14–19; Mosiah 25:2; Helaman 8:21) There is no outside historical record of Zedekiah of Judah having a son named Mulek, and the Old Testament record claims that Zedekiah’s sons were killed by the Babylonians in front of him. (2 Kings 25:7; Jeremiah 39:6; 52:10). However, an ancient Judean stamp seal has been identified as bearing the Hebrew form of the name Malkiyahu, son of the king, which may refer to the Mulek of the Book of Mormon. See Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Has the Seal of Mulek Been Found?”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12, no. 2 (2003): 72–83.
Mosiah chapter 1 is identified as “Chapter Ⅲ” in the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon. This evidence indicates that these two missing chapters from the book of Mosiah were part of the 116 manuscript pages lost by Martin Harris. Royal Skousen, editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text project, discusses this with Michael De Groote in “Scholar’s Corner: The stolen chapters of Mosiah,” Deseret News (24 June 2010).
The Words of Mormon describes Mormon₂ finding the small plates of Nephi and placing them with his own record (the plates of Mormon). This diagram from Book of Mormon Central helps to visualize the source materials that went into compiling the final printed edition of the Book of Mormon.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Enos–Words of Mormon – Autumn Dickson
Apr 15, 2024
Enos is Changed by Prayer
by Autumn Dickson
When I was younger, I remember reading the exchange between Enos and the Lord and finding some of the comments kinda interesting. Enos prays for forgiveness and for his people, and it’s beautiful, but the prayer doesn’t end there. As part of his exchange with the Lord, Enos also prays for this:
Enos 1:13 And now behold, this was the desire which I desired of him—that if it should so be, that my people, the Nephites, should fall into transgression, and by any means be destroyed, and the Lamanites should not be destroyed, that the Lord God would preserve a record of my people, the Nephites; even if it so be by the power of his holy arm, that it might be brought forth at some future day unto the Lamanites, that, perhaps, they might be brought unto salvation
Enos prays very specifically that if the Nephites fall into transgression, He wants the Lord to preserve the Nephite records and bring them forth unto the Lamanites. The Lord answers with, “I will do this at the right time,” and so Enos is like, “Cool. Great. Thanks.” Then the Lord adds on, “Actually, I already told your dad I was going to do this.” In some ways, this all could seem a bit odd. Let’s talk about Enos’ prayer in general and then cycle back around to this specific verse in the context of the whole prayer.
Following Enos’ process
I think it’s important to note that Enos prayed all day and night. What does this mean? It means that we have an extremely tiny portion of the conversation he actually had with the Lord. He didn’t record the entire prayer. This makes sense because it was apparently really difficult to engraven things upon the plates. So what do we learn from the portion that Enos engraved upon the plates? What do we learn from the fact that not all of it is there?
One of the reasons I love this chapter so much is because I write my prayers down too. My process for writing these prayers has given me potential insight into Enos and his prayer. At least once a day, I write my prayer. Usually my process entails opening up a note on the computer and typing everything. It helps me focus at a time in my life where interruptions are frequent. The next day, I erase the whole thing and type a new prayer. Otherwise, my computer would fill up fast. However, if I feel guided by the Lord to pray for something specific that I haven’t prayed before, then I move over to my journal and record it in my journal instead. I keep the significant parts in a place where they’re more permanent.
There have been times where I’ve been telling Him what I’m grateful for, and He will open my eyes to a very significant way that He stepped in and coordinated something perfectly for my family. I want to remember those moments so I record them in my journal where they can be kept. There have been times where I’ve been praying for something we need, and I feel guided to pray about something specific that seems to hint at what may be coming for my family. I likewise record that in my journal where I can refer back to it.
Enos prayed all day, and then he went and recorded the most significant parts. By observing Enos’ prayer, both the recorded AND unrecorded portions, we can explore what prayer was always meant to look like.
Most of us have had lessons on prayer and its true purposes: change, conversion, communion. We all know that prayer is supposed to be a process in which our visions are lifted higher and we change ourselves accordingly. And yet, despite this, we still persist in praying like our Father is a vending machine. Sometimes there isn’t much connection between what we’re putting in and what we’re receiving. Prayer was always meant to be more of a phone call, a communion, where we’re hearing Him and talking and discussing so we can better understand the realities around us and change accordingly.
Enos changed during his prayer. We can see it happen. Let’s point out pivotal moments that can help us watch what prayer is really supposed to look like.
Two influences
As we go through Enos’ prayer, I want to be focusing on the change that’s occurring in Enos. We’ll point out the actual changes that are recorded, and then we’ll delve a little deeper and try to observe some of the influences that led towards that change. Though there are likely many influences that change us while we pray, there are two that I observed regularly through Enos’ prayer as well as my own. The first influence is a given: namely, the direct revelation you’re receiving from Heavenly Father. As you hear from Him, it’s kinda easy to see why it would change you. The second influence is more subtle: it’s when Enos brings in knowledge that he has already received about his Heavenly Father. We’ll point out direct examples of this and why it’s significant.
So let’s just look at Enos’ prayer in order and specifically observe the changes he undergoes as these two influences play upon him.
In the first part of the prayer, Enos prays for forgiveness and receives it. This is the first time we can easily see Enos change. When he is forgiven, Enos responds with the fact that he knows that God cannot lie. Because of his communication with heaven as well as reflecting on what he already knew about God (specifically God’s unblemished honesty), Enos is changed. More specifically, his guilt is swept away and that is a mighty change.
Next, Enos prays for his brethren the Nephites. He describes his prayer as a pouring out of his soul and a struggling in the spirit. That seems like a lot to skip over. What are we potentially missing in all of this pouring and struggling? We can’t know for sure because he didn’t include it; I fully acknowledge that this is all conjecture. However, it still teaches the principle so I’m going to share my conjecture anyway.
Enos was praying for the Nephites to be saved. They were his posterity. They were his brethren. They were close to his heart. They were his children and grandchildren. He prayed for their hearts and righteousness. He wanted them to find the Lord and stay with Him, and that’s probably what he was praying about; that was the struggling and pouring. Maybe he didn’t record every detail about it, but he did record what he received from the Lord. The Lord answered him by essentially saying that He would bless the Nephites to possess the land as long as they were righteous.
We find two changes that come over Enos after this portion of prayer is over.
The first change is that his faith began to be unshaken. This is interesting to me because the Lord’s answer seems to imply that the Nephites will eventually succumb to temptation and be swept off the land (Enos actually does recognize this implication of destruction and we’ll talk about that in a second). You would think that the change that overcomes Enos would be depression. He has just been taught that the Lord will only be able to protect his people for so long, and yet, Enos feels his faith grow stronger.
How? How did Enos feel his faith grow stronger instead of just making him sad? I cannot tell you the mechanism. I can merely bear witness that this is a thing. I have had enough experiences where the Lord has seemed to imply that bad news was coming, and yet, I was filled with stronger faith and less fear than when I began praying. I remember one instance in particular. I was praying for deliverance from some people who were trying to hurt our family. The Lord stopped me from praying for this, and it was at that moment that I “knew” that these people would “win” to an extent. And yet, that experience stayed with me and strengthened me for years afterwards. Even as things got crazier and crazier, I knew that He knew where we were, that He needed to act according to His plan and allow for agency and judgment. I knew that He would support us and that we could never really lose. What should have been bad news somehow pushed me closer to the Lord.
The second way that Enos changes is what he prays for; this actually leads us to the next section of prayer, a portion that I mentioned in the beginning of the post. Enos prays that if the Nephites are destroyed, he wants the Nephite records to go to the posterity of the Lamanites. Enos had felt what the Lord had implied. He wasn’t sure. There didn’t seem to be any sort of vision of the Nephites being destroyed, but the implication of Nephite destruction affected him enough that his prayers altered.
Now here is where we see that interplay of the two influences again. Enos changed his prayer according to what he received from the Lord, namely the implication that the Lord would not always be able to protect the Nephites. But what about the second influence? The knowledge he had previously received?
Once again, this is all conjecture, and I know that. But it can still teach us righteous principles.
In the beginning of the chapter, we learn that Enos was taught in the language of his father. This could mean a couple of things, but some historians believe that Enos was saying that his father taught him how to write. This makes a lot of sense considering the fact that Jacob left the records to Enos. This would also likely imply that Jacob taught Enos the deep importance of the records. He taught Enos how important it was to record something on the plates so that the records would last a very long time. Here is the previous knowledge at play.
Enos didn’t just pray that if the Nephites were destroyed, the Lamanites would eventually find the gospel. No. Enos specifically prayed that The Book of Mormon would be brought forth to the Lamanites. I could be totally crazy, but I feel like there was a moment where Enos’ eyes were opened. There must have been a moment where he was like, “Oh. That’s why we’re doing this. That’s why I need to write on these difficult plates. It’s not for the Nephites. Maybe it’s for the Lamanites.” In verse 15, Enos acknowledges that the Lord can preserve the Nephite records (there is that previous knowledge coming again). He was also alerted to the idea that the Nephites might not be around forever; it changed what he prayed for.
What prayer should look like
We can’t pray every day all day like Enos did in this particular instance, at least not in this manner. And the revelation we receive will not always look like this either. I’ve had many prayers where I have reached out looking for something with all of the elements we’ve talked about, but the Lord has remained silent for His own purposes. It’s not because we’re doing anything wrong; The Lord has His reasons so trust Him.
Oh, but the times when we have these kinds of experiences are so powerful. The times when I’ve been praying and felt guided to pray for something new or my eyes have been opened to something I didn’t see before, when everything clicks into place and I see that He is controlling all the details so perfectly, it has changed me.
Interestingly enough, in some cases, I believe that the Lord would have still manipulated all of those details to make things come together. And yet, because I was praying about it, I was able to see His hand before it happened, and it changed me. I would not have changed nearly as much if I hadn’t been praying about it. The Lord would have brought forth The Book of Mormon without Enos’ prayer, but Enos was changed because he was praying about it.
Do not get discouraged if you feel like your prayers don’t look like Enos’ every time you pray. Go back to the purpose of prayer: change, conversion, communion.
The most intense, eye-opening experiences that I have often occur in the middle of the day during nap time when I have a few less interruptions. They don’t happen every day, or every week, or even every month. But if they’re going to happen, this is usually when they happen because this is when I’m capable of investing the spiritual energy that requires some of those big answers, and Heavenly Father knows this is when He is going to be able to reach me.
At night, my prayers are much smaller, but no less important. I have received a personal witness from my Heavenly Father that He doesn’t begrudge me my weak, tired, mortal body that has been looking after kids all day. He understands. So my prayers look a lot less like spiritual strugglings and much more like an acknowledgment of our relationship, some gratitude, and a mental goodnight hug. And even though these are far more simple prayers, they still change me. They still make me feel close to a Father who loves me.
If you’re worried about your prayers, reflect on the purpose of prayer. What is going to make you feel close to God as your Father so you can feel changed? What has He already taught you about Himself that you can acknowledge? There are a great many beautiful ways to pray. Enos gave us a really fantastic, drawn out version that can help us study, but his prayer is not the only right way to pray.
There are so many good ways to change which would imply the fact that there are so many good ways to pray.
I am grateful for a Father in Heaven who has enabled me to speak to Him whenever I need. I’m grateful that He has described Himself as a Father so that I can understand my relationship with Him, so I can understand how He expects to be approached. I’m grateful for a Savior who paid the price so I could have a communion with Him every day.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 7: Temple Themes in the Book of Mormon with Andrew Miller
Apr 11, 2024
The scriptures have much they can teach us about the meaning and importance of temples. A growing body of research is showing that the Book of Mormon contains temple themes. Andrew Miller, who has recently published a paper on this topic, joins us to discuss some of these themes and how they can make our temple worship more meaningful.
Andrew I. Miller is a FAIR volunteer from Crystal City, Missouri. He has served as a bishop and currently serves as the stake young men president. By profession he is a High School teacher.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Jacob 5–7 – Mike Parker
Apr 09, 2024
The Allegory of the Olive Tree; Jacob contended with Sherem
(Jacob 4–7)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Jacob 5–7 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 06, 2024
Servants in the Vineyard
by Autumn Dickson
There are a ton of resources out there regarding the Allegory of the Olive Tree found in Jacob 5. You can find information about olive trees and why they’re such a fantastic symbol. You can find timelines for the gathering and scattering of Israel that very closely follow the timeline of the gathering and scattering of branches throughout the vineyard. There is so much out there given by extremely qualified people who have researched horticulture and religious history.
I am not one of those people, but maybe I can be helpful in a different way. If you get nothing else out of the Allegory of the Olive Tree, get this: the Lord is currently performing His last work among His people. He has spent a lot of time gathering and scattering His people, and this is the last time He is going to gather them before He comes again. We were always meant to be a part of gathering those people.
Jacob 5:70 And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard sent his servant; and the servant went and did as the Lord had commanded him, and brought other servants; and they were few.
There are so many reasons that we were meant to be a part of the gathering. However, actually jumping in and being a part of it can feel tricky. So let’s talk about some really basic ways to participate in gathering the House of Israel since President Nelson taught that it is the most important work occurring on the earth today. While we talk about it, consider following the action suggested in the Come Follow Me manual and make a list of ways that you feel like the Lord wants you to help with.
President Nelson is quoted in the manual as saying, “Anytime you do anything that helps anyone—on either side of the veil—take a step toward making covenants with God and receiving their essential baptismal and temple ordinances, you are helping to gather Israel. It is as simple as that.” That leaves the door wide open for options on how to help. Anytime you do anything that helps people take a step towards making covenants, you’re doing your job.
It starts with you
We’ve heard it a million times, but it starts with you. And I’m not talking about just learning the doctrine so you can answer questions. Learning the doctrine is fantastic; I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, the doctrine does nothing if it’s not sinking into our hearts. The fact that the Lord sacrificed Himself so that you could experience salvation doesn’t mean nearly as much when you’re not experiencing salvation. Let me describe what I mean. Here is how it looks when the doctrine of Christ has sunk into your heart:
You turn to Him like the Parent that He is. When you run into obstacles or unknowns, you turn to Him. You’re grateful for His advice and reassurances, and you’re also excited when He encourages you to make the decision for yourself. You know that He can support you in every step as He coaches you through building a life for yourself.
When darkness comes, you know your happy ending is safe with him. Let’s say there is a homeless person living on the street. They know that in three days time, they are going to be given a mansion with all of their needs provided for the rest of their lives. Those three days might be brutal. They might be hungry, scared, cold or hot, but the experience feels different when they know what’s coming in just a short time.
When you fail, it’s still easy to turn to Him. Even when you’re failing repeatedly, have some kind of addiction you’re trying to overcome, or have some major character flaw that likes to jump out at you repeatedly, you see it for what it is: opportunities to grow. Remember. Your happy ending is safe with Him. You cannot fail if you’re trying. He will never not invite you back. The fact that “it” happened again doesn’t matter nearly so much as the fact that you keep coming back. That’s what really counts at the end; did you keep coming back?
When you live your life with the truth in your heart, you feel hope and it touches every part of your life. The good times are sweeter; the bad times are worth it. People have much more intuition than we tend to give ourselves credit for. People will sense your hope and desire it for themselves. This doesn’t mean hiding the bad and the difficult; people can also sense insincerity. What it truly means is placing all the bad and difficult in the context of eternity. You were meant to experience difficulty in all of its extremes, but you know what it’s about. And as people go through their own difficulties, they will want to feel as you do.
When I say that gathering the House of Israel begins with you, I mean that the hope of the gospel begins in you and other people see it and desire it. Move beyond the doctrine, and let it change your heart.
Giving love
Perhaps this seems like a copout for missionary work, but after seeing what I’ve seen in the world, I’m convinced there are few things more powerful than loving like He would. We always think missionary work is inviting to church, and it absolutely is. But conversion is more than coming to church which means that missionary work extends beyond invitations to church.
The times when I have felt most converted have been the times that I have felt most loved by my Father in Heaven. If you can teach them what it is to feel love and be accepted and encouraged, you are opening the path for them to experience it from their Heavenly Father. Many of us only begin to comprehend His love when we have felt some measure of love from another person.
Think about all the people in your life who are faithful members of the church with healthy families; think about how many of them have a difficult time feeling the love of their Heavenly Father. Then think about how much harder it would be to find His love when you’re from a broken family and have never been taught about the idea that someone could love you so powerfully. If you can teach them about love, they will be so much closer to believing that a Father in Heaven could love them. They will be so much closer to feeling motivated to live a powerful life, to feeling capable of living a powerful life. Honestly, in my very unqualified opinion, I believe that’s half the battle. Feeling loved is the primary feeling of salvation.
Give the rest to Him
It is the Lord’s vineyard, and it is His work. Which means that He’s going to take care of it.
A couple years ago when we were still in Virginia, we had a very special event occurring in our area, and we were all asked to invite someone to come. I had been so excited to move to Virginia so that I could be around missionaries more often and share the gospel more easily. I was pumped and ready to have the Lord send me anyone who was ready. I wanted to actively and consciously seek opportunities to do missionary work.
I failed miserably. I invited a few people to this special event, and it never worked out. I tried so hard to coordinate schedules and pray and find someone. I tried starting conversations with strangers when I took my kids out to play. No one. I could find no one who could go. I finally gave up and let it go.
A couple of days later, I was sitting with friends at a city event. One of them brought up this special church event that I had been trying so hard to invite someone to. They had heard about it and wanted to go and asked me to take them. I suddenly found myself surrounded by four women and their kids who all wanted to go. We scheduled a time right there, and I got to go with them.
The Lord very distinctly taught me to stop trying to make it my work. If anything was going to be happening, it was not going to be because of me. It was going to be the Lord. I felt very distinctly that He had waited until I let go before He stepped in. I needed to learn that it wasn’t about me or my skills or knowledge.
And though this was on the eager end of the spectrum, the principle remains true on the other side of the spectrum. If you’re scared or nervous or feeling inadequate, it’s not about you nor is it your work. You’re not trying to sell yourself. Heavenly Father is planning on doing His work.
So how do we actually step aside and let Him do His work? Like all great things in the church, it’s more about adopting a specific type of heart than it is about any specific action. I have found that the most effective way to change my heart is to pray about it in the way that prayer was meant to be utilized. The entire purpose of prayer is to change our will to His, and it makes complete sense. Having a conversation with Someone who is all-loving and omnipotent tends to have that effect on you. It becomes easier to adopt their way of thinking.
Talk to your Heavenly Father. If you make no other goal for gathering the House of Israel, make it a goal to speak to Him regularly about it. There are a couple of things you can include in those prayers that will make it more powerful than simply praying for a missionary opportunity. If you just add in, “Help us find missionary opportunities,” into your prayers very often, you’re not going to feel very changed by it. It is not likely that you’ll be able to adopt that attitude that allows for the Lord to utilize you as effectively. So how do we make our prayers more effective so that we can become more effective?
Acknowledge how you really feel about missionary work. Heavenly Father doesn’t mind if it scares you so be honest with Him. In fact, when you approach Him with where you’re at, He’s given an opportunity to talk you through it. When Moses told the Lord that he was slow of speech, the Lord was like, “Who made man’s mouth?” I don’t believe He was trying to be sarcastic with Moses’ I believe He was trying to assure Moses that He could help Moses do whatever He needed to do, and it obviously worked. Moses listened and went on to change the world. If you tell Him where you’re at, He will respond with what you need to hear. I know this is true. I remember telling Him that there was no way I could start a blog about religious things; I wasn’t a seminary or institute teacher. I liked the scriptures, but I wasn’t any kind of scriptorian. I told Him that I felt ridiculous trying to teach others about the scriptures. I told Him exactly where I was at. He told me that if He could work through Joseph Smith with no education, He could work with me. So be honest with Him and give Him an opportunity to respond to how you’re really feeling. He makes good arguments.
Another way to change yourself while praying to Him is to acknowledge what you know about Him. You can say things like, “I know that You know who is ready. I know that You know how to bring those people into my life. I know that You can soften hearts and send the Spirit so that people don’t hate me if I try to invite them to do something religious.” Acknowledge all of the fears and inadequacies you have regarding missionary work, and then acknowledge specific ways that He can work with you despite your fears. After repeating this process somewhat regularly, you’re going to feel different about it. You’re going to believe that He can work with you and you’re going to be willing to work with Him. It is this attitude that enables the Lord to send His children your way.
I know that Heavenly Father wants us to participate in this work because He wants all of His children to feel close to Him, including those performing the work. I know that this work of gathering can change your life because it’s changed my life. I know that He can work with any of us, exactly where we’re at if we are able to adopt a willingness to help. I know that we have reason to have faith in Him and His ability to make us so much more than we are.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Jacob 1–4 – Mike Parker
Apr 03, 2024
Jacob’s temple sermon
(Jacob 1–3)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This week’s lesson includes information that goes with the first 3 chapters of the Come, Follow Me reading scheduled for this week. Next week’s post will cover Jacob 4-7.)
John Hilton III explores how Nephi₁, King Benjamin, and Moroni₂ used Jacob’s words in “Jacob’s Textual Legacy,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 52–65.
Chauncey C. Riddle, “Pride and Riches,” in The Book of Mormon: Jacob through Words of Mormon, To Learn with Joy, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1990), 221–34.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 4 – Seer Stones: How did Joseph use the Seer Stone?
Apr 02, 2024
In this episode, Zach, Sarah, and Jennifer discuss the mechanics and methods of the translation process. Throughout this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute claims about the seer stones head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (2:58) The Mechanics of Translation (4:24) Curtains (8:12) Methods of Translation (13:59) Conclusion
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Jacob 1–4 – Autumn Dickson
Apr 01, 2024
Love and Great Anxiety
by Autumn Dickson
I think one of the defining characteristics of Jacob is his desire to do right by his people. When you go through his writings, it’s very clear that he thinks of them often and wants to steer them in the right way. It is this characteristic that I want to speak about today.
Jacob 1:5 For because of faith and great anxiety, it truly had been made manifest unto us concerning our people, what things should happen unto them.
I think this verse originally caught my attention because of the seeming juxtaposition of the words “faith” and “great anxiety.” My second thought was that it’s possible to have both, and then my third thought was that it’s a fantastic way to parent, lead, and love.
So how do we have faith and great anxiety over our loved ones at the same time? What does that look like?
What does “great anxiety” look like?
There are many different definitions and levels of anxiety, but I would wager that not all of them are applicable in this particular instance since “great anxiety” has been paired with faith. When you feel faith, you know that Christ can help you accomplish anything you truly need to accomplish and you know that your happy ending is safe with Him.
So what is “great anxiety” in this specific circumstance? In my mind, it is a deep propulsion to seek out the best for your loved one. This is a fantastic quality to have. In fact, it’s one of the greatest commandments: to love others as you love yourself. Without charity, we are nothing. So when Jacob talks about having great anxiety for his people, he wants the best for his people.
Interestingly enough, despite this being a good quality to have, Satan is going to try and twist anything he can. If he can’t get you to only care about yourself, he’s going to try and twist your love for others into something detrimental. If we let him, he’s going to take that “great anxiety” and turn it into regular old anxiety that expends energy and makes you feel powerless. I believe a majority of us have felt this “great anxiety,” this propulsion to want the best for our loved ones. Unfortunately, when this great anxiety is not paired with faith, it can become damaging. When your need to protect your loved one overshadows your belief in the Savior, His abilities, and the plan that He set up, things get knocked off kilter.
Utilizing great anxiety and faith in the way you lead
Life can often throw us unexpected circumstances. Even though we’ve been given gospel principles and standards to guide our families, there is this little thing called agency which makes it infinitely more difficult to make decisions about those who are in our charge. If the true goal is to get our loved ones close to the Savior (not just going to church every week but a true relationship with Christ), then it’s going to require some maneuvering that is actually beyond our own abilities.
Do I let my kid decide whether they’re going to play their soccer game on Sunday? What if they choose wrong and don’t feel like it’s a big deal? Do I force my kid to go to Sunday school where the other kids are mean and bad examples? What if it’s actually pushing them farther away from the Spirit rather than closer? Do I let my kid date that person who doesn’t seem like the best influence even though they’re going to be 18 and moving out in a month? Will it actually teach them to have better standards or will it just isolate them from me while they’re in a dangerous situation?
It would be easy to sit and fret and worry and feel great anxiety in all the wrong ways. It’s easy to look at the options before and see only bad ones. But when we look at it through a lens of faith, we stop expending energy on superfluous worry and start investing our energy in worthwhile places, namely action as well as hope in the Savior and His ability to turn a bad option into the very purpose of the Plan of Salvation: growth. We listen to see if one option is going to steer them right, and if there’s nothing forthcoming, we move forward with faith that Christ is still paying attention and will intervene when necessary. If things end up going sideways, we still hold to the faith we had previously and trust that everything that can be done is being done.
The concept of combining faith and great anxiety is so powerful. Instead of fumbling around and trying to make the wisest decision about what to do for your loved ones in the face of uncertainty, take all of that desire to do what’s right for them and let it propel you towards inviting and following the Spirit. You can’t control your kids (or other loved ones) indefinitely so let go, and put your energy where it’s going to count. Let your great anxiety be the motivation, but invest your energy into your faith.
How do we invest our energy into our faith?
The best way to demonstrate the power of this concept is to give an example. Let’s just stick with the sports-on-Sunday example because it’s simple. Before I begin, I know that life doesn’t always play out like this. I know that what I’m teaching is one path in a million, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the principle is being taught so we can apply it effectively not matter what path appears.
So your kid comes to you, and they have a couple of games that are played on Sunday. The great anxiety that Jacob describes is naturally there. You naturally feel propelled to try and do what’s best for your loved one. It would be easy to let that great anxiety fall into regular old anxiety and worry about whether to give them an opportunity to choose for themselves, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to invest our energy into faith. We’re going to trust in His foreknowledge and His ability to speak in a way we understand.
Let’s say He doesn’t say anything. It would be easy to worry that we’re not doing enough or whether we’re worthy enough to receive revelation. It would be easy to worry that we’re just plain missing the answer, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to trust that He can speak to us in a way we understand, and He’s never going to let us permanently fail if we’re trying.
So let’s pretend we decide to let the kid choose whether they want to play on Sunday, and they throw us a curveball. They choose to go to their game. Once again, we have another opportunity to fret that we inadvertently taught them that we don’t care about their church attendance, but we’re not going to fret, are we? No. We’re going to have faith that if there was a better option, Christ would have led us to it. We’re going to have faith that He is doing everything that needs to be done on behalf of our loved one. We’re going to have faith that He can teach lessons in a way that our loved ones will best understand.
Now is our chance to pray fervently and specifically. We pray that we will be guided to speak when we need to, to ask the right questions, to let their choices play out, and to know when to intervene. We can pray that their hearts will be softened and prepared to feel the difference in skipping church. We can pray that the contrast of missing church will be an extremely powerful lesson. Maybe they needed to feel the absence of Sabbath Day blessings in order to appreciate the presence.
Have faith in the Savior. He is playing the long game. He is intensely motivated and ever-present even when you can’t see Him. He is doing everything that needs to be done to reach that end goal of exaltation for your child. Trust His process and invest your energy in Him.
Mimicking your faith
This is a powerful way to parent, lead, and love but not only because you’re putting your energy where it counts. It’s powerful because your children are going to mimic your actions far more than they ever listen to your words. Learning to have faith is the most powerful way to teach your loved ones to have faith.
When we have true faith, we feel the blessings of the gospel. Worrying and trying to force the gospel on someone can work sometimes (and there will always be appropriate boundaries while younger ones are growing up), but it is infinitely more powerful for them to see the blessings in your life and desire them. When Alma the Younger was struck dumb, his mind was drawn back to the words of his father and the joy of the saints.
This is also incredibly powerful when they make mistakes. They won’t sit around and fret that this is the end for them, that they’re too far gone. They will know that there is a Savior who loves them and will always welcome them back with open arms, and that is an extremely motivating feeling to turn around and choose better. It is far more motivating than worrying.
Jacob teaches that because of faith and great anxiety, it was revealed what should happen to their people. Maybe the Lord won’t tell you the specific future, but He will guide you with His knowledge of the future. He will help you know when to act, pause, or whatever it is that needs to be happening. And if He’s quiet, have faith that He’s leading you along anyway because He is.
I’m grateful for a Savior I can depend on. I’m grateful that He loves my loved ones more than I love them. I’m grateful that He can guide me according to His knowledge rather than trying to stumble my way through. I’m grateful that He doesn’t always interfere, but allows us to learn the lessons in the way that will be most powerful.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Easter – Autumn Dickson
Mar 23, 2024
How to Find Peace
by Autumn Dickson
There is a verse in the bible that is probably one of the most quoted and appreciated verses of all time. Christ shared it the night of the Passover amidst instituting the sacrament, teaching and prophesying, and washing the feet of His disciples. He spoke peace to His disciples just a little bit before He went to the garden and suffered.
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Think of the context in which this saying was given to the disciples. Christ knew what was coming. He knew that the coming night would not be peaceful, nor the hours that followed it (at least not in the usual sense of the word). He knew that “peace” as defined by the world would very soon be snatched away from His disciples. But still, He promised to leave them with peace.
What kind of peace was He trying to give them? What does it look like and how do we receive it in our darkest moments?
To have faith
The kind of peace offered by our Savior is not a quiet morning. It is not perfect children or tons of money to do what we need and want. It is not a promise of health. It certainly wasn’t what He was offering His disciples in the moment He made the promise, and it’s not what He’s offering us either. A huge point of coming to earth was turmoil and opposition so offering an escape from that would diminish the ability of the Plan of Salvation to exalt us.
So how does He give peace?
Receiving peace requires faith in Him. Such a simple sentence, but I believe there’s a whole lot to unpack there. For Easter, we’re talking about the peace that comes with faith. But we’re going to have to talk a lot about faith to understand the kind of faith we need in order to receive peace.
We often talk about how faith is an action word, and it absolutely is. Faith in God drives us to keep the commandments which oftentimes leads us away from circumstances that may bring more turmoil, and that’s awesome. In the same breath, not all turmoil comes from choices we’ve made, and sometimes we’re also going to be making mistakes So what does faith look like in the circumstances that are beyond our control or in the situations where the mistake has been made?
Let’s first look at how the experiences of the disciples might have changed if they had felt faith.
The disciples during the time of crucifixion
Let it be known that this is not a critique of the disciples and how they responded with the events around Christ being taken and killed. For some reason, the Holy Ghost was not operating in the same way during Christ’s mortal ministry (see Bible Dictionary, “Holy Ghost”), and we know how the Holy Ghost plays a key role in many of these kinds of circumstances. This is not a critique, it’s a way to observe the past (since hindsight is 2020) and know how to apply it to our current and future circumstances.
So the disciples are sitting with Christ at the Passover dinner. He teaches many things that were likely hard to be understood without the Holy Ghost. He tells them to not let their hearts become troubled. He has told them more than once that He is going to die, but then again, Christ also spoke about being born again. How literal are we talking here?
Christ is taken, tortured, and crucified. As they lay Him in the tomb, what are they thinking? They lovingly care for His body, but are they also a little angry? Are they in shock? Do they feel abandoned? Are they frustrated that He took them away from their lives and then left them to fend for themselves? The disciples are left to mourn their beloved leader, and they are also left to mourn the hopes and dreams they had placed upon Him. They are left to fear the future, and fear they do. Christ rises again, and it takes a while, but eventually they all come to see and believe and feel peace.
Now imagine if they had been able to have faith in Christ’s words.
Jesus is taken, tortured, and crucified. As they watch this come to pass, they are agonized over watching it, but they know what this is for. Even if they don’t fully grasp the fact that Christ needs to experience this suffering to complete the atonement, they know that He promised it would all work out. They lovingly take care of His body. There are still tears and disbelief, but the source is an overwhelming awe at what He sacrificed for them. There are whispers of gratitude instead of whispers of, “Why?” They are still saying, “I can’t believe this happened,” but it’s only because they can’t believe that He suffered in that manner for them; it’s only because they can’t believe they are truly free from Satan’s grasp.
And then there is a waiting period of three days. They know He’s coming back; He promised He would. No matter what they do, their minds are always drawn back to pondering what happened. And they wait.
With faith, they experienced the same events, but the events felt completely different. There were still tears, still agony. There was a lot of waiting, but the waiting had anticipation over fear.
When Christ teaches Thomas that, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,” He’s not talking about raining down arbitrary blessings upon those who choose to believe in something they can’t see. He’s talking about the fact that Thomas could have saved himself a whole lot of pain if he had been able to find faith. He would have been blessed to pass over all of the agony of the past few days by knowing that it was all part of the plan and Christ would return.
So this is all fine and dandy when you feel faith. Forcing faith doesn’t bring peace; it’s when you feel faith. So how do we “feel” faith so that we can find peace?
Faith is an action word
Faith is an action word. It is an action word in the sense that we prepare for tomorrow by keeping the commandments today, but it’s also an action word in the sense that we are in control of our own thoughts.
Alma 34:31 Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.
I have been struck by this verse a number of times because of the line, “immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.” Immediately. If we can soften our hearts and repent, we will immediately experience the great plan of redemption.
What does it mean to experience the great plan of redemption? It can mean a lot of things, but the one I want to focus on today is the aspect of peace. Experiencing the great plan of redemption means experiencing the kind of peace that Christ promised.
So if we can repent and soften our hearts, we will experience the peace associated with the great plan of redemption. Let’s talk about repentance and softening our hearts separately.
Of course we will experience peace when we repent. Repentance is so much more than saying sorry for breaking a commandment. In my mind, repentance is any step towards becoming like Christ. This means we change into people who are calm, steady, joyful, and authentic. It means allowing ourselves to be healed; Christ didn’t need healing in the same manner, but if we want to be like Him, we need it. So yeah, repentance is going to bring peace.
But repenting and living the commandments won’t bring peace unless it’s combined with that soft heart, and having a soft heart is a conscious choice that we have to make.
Don’t harden your heart any longer. Don’t disbelieve that He adores you. Don’t disbelieve that He will make everything up to you. When something comes in and breaks your peace, actively fight it with a mantra that He loves you and will take care of absolutely everything. Note that I said, “mantra.” Maybe the idea that He loves you is not yet a knowledge, but if you want to find that knowledge, you might have to start with a mantra. When Satan comes in, you repeat to yourself how Christ loves you and will take care of it. Eventually that mantra will give way to hope, then faith, then growth of faith, then knowledge. And then bam, you feel peace. It simply comes.
I can personally testify of this. I lived the gospel my whole life with small glimpses of salvation and redemption and peace. But when my heart finally softened and believed, I started experiencing the feeling of salvation immediately and consistently. I started experiencing peace immediately and consistently.
I still have my moments. I still know what it is to feel hopeless, discouraged, weary, explosive. But I have been finding my way back to that peace more quickly or through thicker darkness.
The eternities after this earth life will not be perfect in the sense that the world thinks of as “perfect.” God still experiences sorrow. He still has to watch difficult things and make difficult decisions. But that is precisely why Christ offers a different kind of peace. If He offered us peace as defined by the world, we would find ourselves unprepared for the next life. We need the kind of peace He offers in order to find a peace that lasts an eternity.
I’m grateful for a Savior who sacrificed, and I’m grateful for this time of year to ponder His sacrifice. I know that He loves us endlessly and has the power to support us endlessly. When you find that knowledge and experience it again and again and again, you will find the peace you’re looking for.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 3 – Seer Stones: Post-Biblical Folk Magic
Mar 19, 2024
In this episode, Jennifer, Sarah, and Zach take us through the history of folk magic through post-biblical times. Throughout this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute claims about the seer stones head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction (03:40) The fall of Rome and why it changed culture (06:12) The Beginning of the Dark Ages–A totally different world (11:59) The Cunning Folk in Britain (22:49) The Crusades (26:47) The Inquisition (29:14) The Renaissance (24:05) WitchTrials (39:59) Enlightenment 1637-1815 and 1st Great Awakening (50:00) Joseph Smith’s time and culture (59:32) Conclusion
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 31–33 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 16, 2024
A Strait Path
by Autumn Dickson
The end of 2 Nephi is fantastic. As I read it, I pictured Nephi summarizing everything towards the end of his life. He had kept a record and taught many lessons and told stories from his life, but in 2 Nephi 31, Nephi wanted to make sure that the lessons were explicitly laid out.
There is one specific lesson I want to cover.
2 Nephi 31:9 And again, it showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set the example before them.
Maybe I’m a little slow on the pickup, but it wasn’t until later in life that I recognized the word “strait” as being different from the word “straiGHt.” Though both imply “narrowness,” they are not the same thing. “Strait” was the word that Nephi chose and Joseph translated, and it was a very purposeful word. Let’s explore it.
In the dictionary, “strait” has a couple of definitions. It doesn’t mean a line with no curves or bends. It means, “difficult, limited in resources, closely fitted.” It might not sound pleasant, but these words are actually so cool.
So, “difficult.” The path towards ultimate salvation (as well as the path where we can experience a form of salvation along the way) is hard; that was kind of the whole point. Though it sounds awful, our path towards exaltation included finding ourselves in really difficult circumstances that bring us down. That doesn’t sound very loving or doting of our Heavenly Father, but if we can keep our focus on Him, then it’s actually the most rewarding by far. Strait also means “limited in resources;” this one fascinated me. There will not be many places where we can find comfort outside of the Savior. Luckily, He is actually quite vast in terms of resources.
I could spend a post on each of those definitions, but the one I want to really explore is “closely fitted.” It completely changed the meaning of this verse in my mind when compared to the word “straiGHt.” StraiGHt means no turns or bends. Strait can turn and bend as much as necessary; it’s just closely fitted to the individual. The Lord has extremely individualized paths for each of us. Christ is the only One who walked a “straiGHt” path; the paths we take as imperfect people are much more accurately defined as strait.
There are many ways in which our paths can be described as strait. Obviously, the Lord takes us through specific trials, life experiences, and personalized messages from the Holy Ghost. But there is one other way that I’ve learned that I don’t believe is often talked about.
Strait and sin
So if we were to look at the word “straiGHt” as our example of a sinless path towards God, then it’ll be easier to observe our own paths.
Do we “need” sin in order to get back to our Heavenly Father? Obviously not. Seems like a very silly question, but the silly question helps me highlight the actual truth. We don’t need sin in order to get back to our Heavenly Father, but we do need the lessons that often accompany sin. Sometimes we really do need to learn the hard way in order to change into what God would have us become. God doesn’t want us to sin, but He did send us here to grow and learn. He sent us to taste the bitter so we could comprehend the sweet.
My personal strait path has included plenty of opportunities to fail. One of the first ones that come to mind is this blog to be honest. When Heavenly Father first started prompting me to start this journey of blogging and Youtube videos and podcasting, one of my main worries was my vanity. In college, I wanted to be a musician which takes a fair amount of promoting yourself. Which is awesome for other people. Not so awesome for me. I was painfully aware of rejection and perceived rejection everywhere. I craved validation from other people. I became self-centered in a lot of ways. I wanted to be on a pedestal. When it all came crashing down around me, it felt like one of the biggest blessings of my life (or at least it did later on). I was taken out of that dark place and away from putting myself out there. I became a much happier person, and I shunned temptation because I never wanted to feel that way about myself again.
So when Heavenly Father came knocking on my door, asking me to put myself out there again, I told Him I wasn’t interested. I told Him that I was trying to avoid my obvious weakness of vanity and pride and caring too much about what other people think about me. I know what happens at the end of that road (at least what happens for me). It wasn’t a place I wanted to go to.
As I talked with Heavenly Father about these concerns, He told me that He was giving me an opportunity to practice sharing my light while letting go of that vanity. I told Him that if I failed, that would be on Him haha.
And I have failed many many many many many times. There have been plenty of times where I have cared far too much about whether people like what I put out there. There have been plenty of times where I have felt sharp embarrassment over mistakes I’ve made or when I’m not particularly articulate. There have been plenty of times when I’ve gotten too excited about when I have done a good job. I still have all of these problems, but they have gotten significantly better. It doesn’t affect me as much as it used to.
But I’m so grateful that Heavenly Father wasn’t worried about keeping my path perfectly straiGHt. He was wise enough to take me on a strait path that would allow me to practice being like Him even if it meant some curves, bends, failings, and even sin. He knew that it was the only path that would help me become what He needed me to become. It was specifically tailored to me.
This is not me encouraging you to go seek paths of temptation and sin in order to learn a lesson. That would be dumb; excuse the word, but I used it because it’s accurate. So if I’m not encouraging you to go out and seek opportunities to sin, why am I bringing it up?
Why teach this?
Because it took a weight off my chest. I don’t look back in agony at past mistakes, and I don’t look forward in fear about making more mistakes (since…you know…it’s inevitable). I was never meant to be perfect during mortal life. Heavenly Father has specific lessons that we, as individuals, need to learn. Sometimes it means putting us in situations where we’re going to fail, fail often, and fail hard (hello mortality in general).
He sent us here to make mistakes so that we could become what He meant for us to become, and He sent His Son to pay for it. That was always the plan.
I don’t seek sin, but I’m also no longer afraid of failing. I get to move forward in my life, exerting my energy toward becoming like Him without carrying around the weight of my mistakes. I have a powerful Savior who paid for my sins. Rather than worrying about the fact that He didn’t deserve to take on all that pain, I trust Him and I have a testimony that He was the One who led me on this strait path. He brought me here to fail, He paid for my sins, He comforts me and has the ability to comfort those I’ve wounded, and all I’m left with is a powerful lesson.
As parents, family members, leaders, and friends
I also share this message because it makes us powerful disciples.
Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in a desperate desire to keep our loved ones from making mistakes, to keep them on the straiGHT path so that they never have to experience consequences, that we end up doing more damage. We were never meant to walk a straiGHt path, and neither were those we love. Of course we would like to spare our loved ones pain, but that goal is ultimately short-sighted.
I went through a rough patch my senior year in high school when I wasn’t making great choices. I remember seeing my mom crying, and I wondered if I’d disappointed her. At the time, I worried that her tears meant she’d lost hope for me, and if she didn’t feel hope for me, maybe there wasn’t a way back.
But my dad was more practiced at zooming out and taking the long view. He’d learned from experience that worry feels a lot like love, but it’s not the same. He used the eye of faith to see that everything would work out, and his hopeful approach changed me.
If we can tap into the doctrine that Christ always meant for us to walk a strait path, not a straiGHt path, we will become much more powerful in our ability to help those we love. If we can focus on developing their relationship with the Savior, helping them rely on Him, helping them learn from Him, helping them take powerful lessons from their mistakes, we will exponentially increase their progress in comparison to a desperate attempt to avoid pitfalls, curves, and bends. Our loved ones will no longer feel like it’s their responsibility to be perfect; rather, they will feel and know that mortal life was about progress and that a relationship with the Savior will give them everything they need to achieve that.
I’m grateful for a Savior who paid the price for me to have this experience. I’m grateful that He has taught me about His sacrifice. I’m grateful that He didn’t have impossible expectations for me, and I’m grateful that He has never lost sight of who I can become.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 6: Temple Sealings with Brian Hales
Mar 13, 2024
On this episode, Brian Hales joins us to discuss the history and significance of the crowning ordinance of the temple.
Brian C. Hales is the author or co-author of several books dealing with Joseph Smith and plural marriage, and runs the website JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. He is also the author of several articles dealing with the origin of the Book of Mormon.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 28–33 – Mike Parker
Mar 11, 2024
Nephi’s prophecies of the Book of Mormon; “the doctrine of Christ”
(2 Nephi 28–33)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This week’s lesson includes information that goes with the Come, Follow Me reading schedule for the next two weeks. The previous post covers the first two chapters of this week’s reading.)
Michael B. Parker, “Nephi’s Later Reflections on the Tree of Life Vision,” Insights: A Window on the Ancient World 22, no. 5 (2002): 2–3. In this—my one and only published scholarly article!—I compare Nephi’s language in 2 Nephi 31:20 with his description of the tree of life in 1 Nephi 8:30. In his final testimony, Nephi appears to have purposely alluded to his father’s earlier vision.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 26–30 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 10, 2024
Mixing Doubt with Anger
by Autumn Dickson
One of the topics given as a suggestion in the Come Follow Me manual for this week is to study Satan’s tactics. This has actually already been a topic on my mind for a while. There is one tactic in particular that I’ve come to recognize over the past few months, and so I feel like the Lord has prepared me to learn about this before He even gave me the verse. Here it is.
2 Nephi 28:20 For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.
As I have read this verse in the past, I always pictured two specific ways of Satan raging in the hearts of men. One, I always pictured Satan tempting people to get angry with each other, and two, I pictured him tempting people to hate the church. Both are totally valid examples. However, as I read it this time, I was reminded of this observation that the Lord has been helping me ponder lately.
Namely, I’ve been pondering the observation that Satan likes to mix our doubts with anger. Doubts happen. Even Joseph Smith taught that in order to reach salvation, we have to be able to “contemplate the darkest abyss.” Faith is non-existent without its opposite: doubt. We can’t have faith in something unless there is reason to doubt it, and I believe Satan has a major victory when he can mix our doubts with anger and frustration.
The toxic combination of anger and doubt
One of my children is going through a bit of a phase recently. There have been quite a few stressors in our family life with frequent moves, a new baby, and dad going out of town frequently for work. She also recently started school every day, and all of this has thrown her a bit of a curve ball. She is a daughter after my own heart and loves routine and so all of this upheaval is an obstacle for her. There have been a couple of days in a row where she has absolutely lost her mind at me, screaming, crying, throwing, hitting, slamming doors, all of it.
There have been two sentiments that she has expressed to me in her anger. Namely, she has expressed that she believes I hate her or that I’m not treating her like she’s part of the family.
It’s extremely easy for me to see that my disciplining her has everything to do with how much I love her and how badly I want her to be part of a functional and healthy family, but to her, these are very real feelings. She doesn’t always understand my decisions, she doesn’t always see my perspective, and so she draws a conclusion that I must not love her.
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to explain my love and reasoning to her when she’s angry. I’ve tried. When she’s throwing a fit and I’m trying to hold her and explain to her why I’m choosing to make certain decisions in her life, sometimes she simply can’t hear me above the big feelings.
Later on, after she’s had time to calm down, the conversation goes far more smoothly. She is able to see the big picture, to see that I have a responsibility to teach her even if consequences make her sad sometimes.
This is not a perfect similitude of the principle I’m trying to teach, but it can teach the principle that we can apply to broader circumstances. Let me give a better example.
I love the gospel, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my personal struggles with different aspects related to the church. It’s especially difficult when those struggles are highlighted on social media or by a friend who has left the church. There have been times when I have felt very dark inside. I know there is a temptation to believe that the only way to escape that darkness is to leave, to stand up against a perceived (and possibly very real) injustice. I know the temptation to get angry and demand better in comparison to sitting in the darkness and allowing yourself to feel hurt, invalidated, and unimportant.
Interestingly enough, Satan is on both ends of that spectrum. He is the one in the dark, whispering that you’re nothing. Heavenly Father would never have you sit in the darkness believing that you’re lesser, and as soon as He starts to build you and help you believe that you matter, Satan is right there. Satan is whispering that you should be angry and demand better, that you should have never been made to feel the darkness in the first place.
Whether or not we should have been constantly protected from darkness is a conversation for another day. For now, let’s consider why Satan would like us to feel angry when we have doubts or don’t understand. Let’s consider what can happen when we’re able to let go of the anger.
Letting go of the anger and frustration
It’s easy to say that we should let go of the anger that accompanies doubt. It’s much harder to actually accomplish the task, especially when those doubts make you wonder if you’re insignificant, lesser, or weary. It’s harder when those doubts can easily lead to feelings that something is wrong.
If there is anything I wish for anyone to get out of my blog posts, YouTube videos, or podcasts, it is this truth: any gospel problem can be solved when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I would even go as far to say that any problem at all can be solved. We don’t have to force or contort or squash anything about ourselves or how we’re feeling. We simply need to approach Christ with an understanding of who He is.
Imagine how powerful it would be if my daughter could come to me and calmly ask why I made certain decisions in regards to her life. Let it be known that I don’t have expectations for this; she’s really young and that takes a lifetime of practice. But imagine for a moment, that she was able to. How would that change how she feels about herself? How would that change how she sees the circumstances around her?
Like I said, she’s young. Some of the principles I use to make decisions are beyond her ability to understand, and so there has to be a level of trust. But if I prove myself to be a loving mother and if I reassure her of her importance, it becomes much easier to feel okay even if she doesn’t fully understand.
If I can approach my Heavenly Father with faith that I’m important to Him, the doubts are resolved or become insignificant to me.
Maybe that sounds like voodoo. Maybe it sounds like I’m trying to placate people by telling them to “just have faith.” But it’s a reality, at least for me. More than once I have approached Him and told Him that I don’t understand something, that it feels wrong. As I approach Him, replacing my anger with faith that He loves me and is perfect and capable, I find that the doubts are bearable, miniscule even. Trust finds me. I don’t have to ignore doubts or push them down; they dissipate in the comforting knowledge that He really can fix everything and help me come out on top of it all, powerful and glorious and everything He meant for me to become.
It takes a relationship
The power to overcome these doubts does not often happen overnight. My daughter can come to me and be reassured of my love because she experiences it consistently. However, if a stranger did something that felt vastly unfair, it probably wouldn’t mean much if that stranger insisted they wanted what was best for her.
The same goes for trusting the Savior. Think of how often you have little testimony moments. If you were to apply that to a normal relationship, how much would you trust the other person? How much satisfaction and joy would you find in that relationship? The answer is probably not much. If I saw a random stranger do a couple of good things, that would probably give me a good opinion of them, but without a relationship, that good opinion of them would do very little to bless me.
If we want to be truly changed by the atonement of Jesus Christ, if we truly want to experience the blessings of the gospel, to experience salvation now, we need more than a testimony of Him. If we want to feel power over Satan and doubt, if we want to feel secure in this world, a testimony is insufficient. We need a relationship with Him. It is only in a relationship with Him that we gain enough exposure to Him that we start to trust in the promises that make life bearable, worth it, and wonderful. It is only in a relationship with Him that the doubt feels insignificant, laughable even. A relationship with a perfectly loving and powerful Being melts the anger that Satan tries to infuse in our lives. Satan is no competition when we have that relationship. Why do you think we’re encouraged to read The Book of Mormon every day? I believe it’s because it’s giving us a taste of that relationship even if we don’t fully recognize it.
It can be hard work to know your Father in Heaven. Spiritual effort is as difficult as physical effort, maybe even more so. There are no markers. It takes focus in a world that diminishes our ability to concentrate. It builds slowly over time in a world that can deliver gratification quickly.
But it’s worth it. My life has never been so happy and peaceful as it has been since I’ve come to know and experience His power regularly enough that I trust Him and what He says. Invest in that relationship. Above all else in relation to the gospel, invest in that relationship. Help your children develop that relationship so that when the storms come, they will feel that storms are either insignificant or contribute to their ability to be awesome.
I testify of perfectly loving Parents and a Savior. I testify that They have the ability to do all that They have promised to do. I testify that we can’t see the full picture, and I testify that when we do, we will laugh at ourselves for ever having been worried. That is not meant to diminish how difficult it may feel now; it is meant to give comfort. Someday, everything will make sense. I know it because I know my Savior.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
FAIR Conference Podcast #82 – Kerry Muhlestein, “Keys to Understanding Isaiah”
Mar 08, 2024
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2022 conference.
Kerry Muhlestein, Keys to Understanding Isaiah
Kerry has several books available from the FAIR Bookstore.
Kerry received his B.S. from BYU in Psychology with a Hebrew minor. He received an M.A. in Ancient Near Eastern Studies from BYU and his Ph.D. from UCLA in Egyptology, where in his final year he was named the UCLA Affiliates Graduate Student of the Year. His first full time appointment was a joint position in Religion and History at BYU-Hawaii. He is the director of the BYU Egypt Excavation Project. He has been teaching about Isaiah for almost three decades, and has been teaching classes specifically on Isaiah for several years, and has written a verse-by-verse commentary on Isaiah. He and his wife, Julianne, are the parents of six children, and together they have lived in Jerusalem while Kerry has taught there on multiple occasions.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 2 – Seer Stones: Ancient Use
Mar 05, 2024
In this episode, Sarah, Jennifer, and Zach go through ancient uses of seer stones and other objects seen as sacred. In this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute these claims head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (03:30) The questions (07:37) Examples from the Scriptures (15:24) Interview with Allen Hansen (36:48) Wrapping up (39:44) Conclusion
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 20–25 – Autumn Dickson
Mar 02, 2024
Keeping the Law of Moses
by Autumn Dickson
I have been waiting for the verses I want to talk about today. I have held them in my mind for a couple years, waiting for the opportunity to write this post. And as I have written it, I have found myself truly humbled as I realized this message extended beyond what I previously thought and hit me directly where I needed it.
Before I delve into these verses, I want to call to your attention the character and circumstances of Nephi. Nephi was a friend of Christ. Nephi knew Christ on a personal level that most of us will only realize on the other side. Such is the man who taught the following doctrine:
2 Nephi 25:24-25
24 And, notwithstanding we believe in Christ, we keep the law of Moses, and look forward with steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled.
25 For, for this end was the law given; wherefore the law hath become dead unto us, and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith; yet we keep the law because of the commandments.
Throughout this chapter, Nephi taught that we believe in Christ; he knew that salvation came through Jesus Christ. He knew that belief in Christ is what releases us from the power of Satan, faith that Christ can truly free us from sin and make us everything we hope to be. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we find the peace and freedom and happiness we seek because we know of His power and ability to take care of everything.
But Nephi’s teaching didn’t stop there; Nephi also taught his people to keep the Law of Moses.
When I think about the character and circumstances of Nephi, I would wager that Nephi didn’t actually “need” the Law of Moses. In order to have a fulfilling relationship with Jesus Christ, he didn’t need all of those laws and ordinances and constant rituals to keep him in line with his eyes on Christ. I believe that Nephi would have thrived in his relationship with Christ in our day, in a time when we are much more principle-based in our learning and worship.
And yet, Nephi still taught his people to keep the Law of Moses. In fact, Nephi didn’t just teach the Law of Moses, Nephi kept the Law of Moses. Despite the fact that he didn’t need it in order to remain close to Christ, Nephi probably kept the Law of Moses better than just about anyone in his day.
The Law of Moses in our Day
In our church, we have a personal line of revelation and a priesthood line of revelation. There are a million reasons for this, but one of the reasons is this: the Lord needs to guide us individually because we are all different and have different needs, but He also guides the church as a whole.
At the time of the Law of Moses, all of the extra rules and rituals were necessary. If you were to compare the Israelites to a person, they likely would have been a toddler. They needed very clear boundaries and teaching because they had just spent years and years and years in brutal captivity. Even beyond the fact that they had forgotten the Lord, their moral compass was questionable at best. Who can blame them? Think about where they had been in Egypt; growing up as a slave would have made it very difficult to form proper attachments and character. The more I think about the Israelites in the Old Testament, the less I see a vengeful God who was constantly frustrated with His people and the more I see a loving and wise God who knew what His people truly needed.
As time has moved on, the Israelites (as a whole church) have grown. Just as my older kids have outgrown their baby gates and training wheels, the Israelites outgrew the Law of Moses. It was fulfilled and no longer needed, and the church became more principle-based as Christ came in, fulfilled the Law of Moses, and left them with a higher law.
We again live in a time where the church is growing towards principle-based learning; just observe the changes in the For Strength of Youth. And yet, as much as we’ve grown as a whole church, there is a reason that some of our more “Law of Moses” rules stand. Things like coffee, dating standards, and garments are all examples of rules that fall more in line with the Law of Moses in comparison to a principle-based type of worship and learning. There is a difference between, “Keep your body healthy,” and, “Don’t drink alcohol.” There is a difference between, “Keep Christ in your thoughts,” and attending weekly sacrament meetings where we are given a very specific time period to think of Christ. There is a difference between principle-based learning and worship and Law-of-Moses-rules-and-rituals type of learning and worship.
Our need for the “Law of Moses”
As I said before, Nephi likely didn’t “need” the Law of Moses in order to remain close to Christ. When it comes to the modern day rituals and rules that are similar to the Law of Moses, there have definitely been days where I didn’t feel like I needed them. I think about the gospel a lot, and I feel close to my Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ. Trying to create a post about the scriptures every week has forced me to think about the gospel and my covenants often. It puts me in a position where I need the Lord, and so I am constantly turned towards Him over and over and over.
And yet, as I was typing out this post, my similarity to the Israelites smacked me in the face. As I scoffed and face-palmed through the Old Testament, wondering on how on earth the Israelites could be missing the symbolism of the rituals they had been given, I realized that I am just as guilty. As I judged the Israelites for going through the motions of the rituals and completely missing the change of heart that was supposed to accompany it, I didn’t realize just how relatable they are.
As one example, I put on my garments every day. And yet, like the Israelites in their action-minus-the-heart worshiping, I find that I am thinking of how inconvenient they are more often than I think about the covenants and blessings they represent. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I were to think about what my garments truly represent, I would forget all about their inconveniences. In truth, if I could glimpse what my garments represent, I would likely be floored at the opportunity I’ve been given to wear them. Like Naaman who washed and was healed in the dirty Jordan River, I wonder if I will get to the other side, and whisper, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what a blessing I was given.”
It is only in writing this post that I’ve realized how much I still need our little modern-day “Law of Moses” rituals because I obviously haven’t fully realized what a gift I’ve been given.
Christ definitely didn’t need it
As I mentioned previously, Nephi taught and lived the Law of Moses despite the fact that he had a very close relationship with Christ. And yet, as I picture Nephi going through the details of the Law of Moses, I picture him in a posture of humility. I don’t imagine that he stomped around, murmuring about the fact that he has to wash something or sacrifice something since he just spoke to Christ personally. No. I picture Nephi performing the Law of Moses rituals in deep awe because he knew the Savior personally. He knew what the Savior did for him. Those rituals meant everything to him.
To take that a step further, there was no single individual who ever lived on the earth that needed the Law of Moses less than Jesus Christ did. And yet, there was no single individual who ever lived on the earth who more perfectly lived the Law of Moses than Jesus Christ did. And just like the comfort and awe it inspired in Nephi, I actually believe the Law of Moses helped Christ too. It taught Him about Himself; it brought comfort and understanding as He realized what He would be required to do.
In our day, it’s not about whether we “need” the “Law of Moses” rules and rituals like temple attendance, the sacrament, and garments. Need is relative. Maybe there are some of us who don’t “need” it (though I’ve realized I’m not one of those people). But there is always room for more blessings and growth and awe and thundering humility when we view these Law of Moses-ish things as they truly are. Maybe it’s not about need; maybe it’s about the opportunity to find more faith in Jesus Christ.
No; garments aren’t perfect. Perhaps sacrificing to go to the temple can feel like a burden. Perhaps taking the sacrament every single week doesn’t feel necessary. But if you feel this way (and I say this with utter humility because I have been guilty of feeling a “burden”), consider the idea that perhaps you’re looking at it all wrong.
A sheep could NEVER truly symbolize Christ. And yet, if the Israelites had been able to grasp what the sheep represented, it wouldn’t have mattered that the sheep feel pitifully short. If the Israelites could have really seen that sheep symbolically, if they could have looked past what it would cost them to sacrifice it, their lives would have changed because they would have felt changed.
I suppose my overarching plea is this: if you have found yourself frustrated, flip the frustration on its head. Check your reverence as you participate in modern-day Law of Moses equivalents. Check where your focus is as you engage. Are you thinking of Christ? Are you thinking of what He sacrificed for you?
If we utilize the rituals and rules in the way they were meant to be utilized, the burden dissipates and we are left with awe and wonder. And, like Nephi, we will come to know our Savior on a deeply personal level. In fact, it is likely through our deep appreciation of these rituals and rules that we will find ourselves prepared to know our Savior on a personal level.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 11–27 – Mike Parker
Feb 26, 2024
Nephi’s quotations & commentary on the prophecies of Isaiah
(2 Nephi 11–27)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This week’s lesson includes information that goes with the Come, Follow Me reading schedule for the next three weeks.)
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 11–19 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 24, 2024
The Context of Eternity
by Autumn Dickson
One of the topics that gets covered this week is the Millennium. Life in the Millennium is going to be a little bit different than we are experiencing now. Nephi quotes the following verse about what life will be like:
2 Nephi 12:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks—nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
This verse teaches us that war will cease. People won’t be fighting anymore. They will take their weapons that have been used to destroy, and they will be turned into tools that build and cultivate instead. This has often brought me an immense amount of comfort.
Interestingly enough, I actually found a warning when I read it this time.
The warning
When I read about this verse of weapons being turned into tools, I actually thought of The Book of Mormon war heroes, Captain Moroni being one example. Captain Moroni was good at war, really good at it. He spent a good portion of his life preparing for war and fighting in wars. However, the following verse teaches us something essential about Captain Moroni.
Alma 48:11 And Moroni was a strong and a mighty man; he was a man of a perfect understanding; yea, a man that did not delight in bloodshed; a man whose soul did joy in the liberty and the freedom of his country, and his brethren from bondage and slavery;
Captain Moroni didn’t enjoy war despite his talent with it; Captain Moroni enjoyed freedom and helping his people enjoy freedom. Why is this so important?
It’s important because when Captain Moroni arrives at the Celestial Kingdom (or if the Millennium were to have occurred in his time), he will have righteous desires that allow him to experience happiness in eternity. If he enjoyed war specifically, he would have found himself feeling rather useless and empty because a desire for war cannot be fulfilling in eternity. Maybe he could enjoy some competitive strategy board games, but that kind of joy is only going to last so long.
Captain Moroni had become the kind of man who could feel fulfilled throughout all of eternity. He lived according to his circumstances here on earth, but he changed himself according to the laws of eternity. He aligned himself with the nature that exists there rather than with the realities of mortal life that only exist for so long.
So here’s the warning. When there is no use left for our swords, will we be happy with our pruning hooks? When our “weapons” become obsolete in the Millennium or in the eternities beyond this mortal life, will we be left empty?
Understanding the nature of our swords
Maybe we are not professional soldiers in our day and age, but there are plenty of mortal desires that will not be compatible with eternal life. There will be plenty of desires that become obsolete.
What are your desires? What makes you happy? What fuels your choices? What makes your work feel worth it? The interesting thing about mortal desires (in comparison to eternal desires) is that mortal desires really can make us happy on earth; the doctrine that is essential to understand is that mortal desires expire.
I have concocted a practical process that can help us examine our desires to check ourselves; there are really only two steps.
Step 1: Make a list of things that fulfill us here in mortality
The first step in the process is to make an honest list of our desires. It is important to be as honest as possible because eventually we’re going to be faced with the truth, and it’s far more unpleasant to meet that truth on the other side. This process is also more effective when we can be kind with ourselves. Every single one of us holds desires that are not compatible with eternity. We don’t have to hate ourselves for it, and hating ourselves just makes it more difficult to be honest and progress. Heavenly Father gave us the opportunity to change ourselves so that we could learn to be strong like Him, and Christ paid for that opportunity. We have nothing to fear.
So what are your desires? It’s easy to write all of the “right” answers, but let’s look at some more leading questions. What occupies large portions of our thoughts? What is our first thought when we wake up and what do we think about before falling asleep? Where do we spend a majority of our free time? What sacrifices are we making and to what end? For example, are we sacrificing so we can provide for our family or are we sacrificing our family in the name of providing? That’s an intensely circumstantial question that may differ day to day, but it’s essential to go to the root of these desires so that we can truly examine how we’re going to feel in eternity.
Looking back over our list of desires, we can also ask questions like, “What makes me happy about this particular desire?” For example, we could write, “Making money,” but there are so many facets of money. Do we like having the freedom that often accompanies money or do we like the prestige of money? Those desires play out differently in eternity so we have to be specific.
Step 2: Place those desires in the context of eternity.
The next step is to take a look at each desire and place it into the reality of eternity.
This step is harder to ask general questions about so instead, I’m going to take one pretty common mortal desire and show what it’s like to observe it in eternity. In that way, we can apply this process to our own personal list of desires. Let’s talk about money again because it’s practical and easy to observe.
There is nothing wrong with making money, working for money, and enjoying money. Let me reiterate that Captain Moroni didn’t like war, but he understood the realities of mortal life. Money is essential, and money can provide a measure of security and happiness. Let’s not pretend that it’s not true.
But. We keep ourselves safe and happy when we keep money in perspective by recognizing the nature of eternity. What are some realities about eternity that correlate with money?
First, if we make it to the Celestial Kingdom, all that the Father has will be ours (that also means it will be everybody else’s too). And if we end up anywhere else, we’re going to still have our temporal needs filled. Our feelings about money should reflect this. Are we going to end up on the other side and wonder, “Well now what do I do?”
Second, there is no prestige over our brothers and sisters in the Celestial Kingdom. If you enjoy all the mortal prestige that stems from money, then understand that the prestige cistern will dry up quickly. You will feel empty.
Third, what did we sacrifice for it? Everyone will have to sacrifice some measure of family time to provide for family needs, but are we spending sufficient time with our families so that we are the kind of people that find deep fulfillment within our families? Because a good majority of the happiness that is available in eternity will be found in family. This is an extremely internal question. It’s not even really about how much time you’re spending; it’s about your desires once again. Some people work three jobs because they have to, but they wish they could come home to their families more. Some people just stay at work because they want money.
Placing all of our desires in the context of eternity can help us align our desires with everlasting realities. In this way, we can make sure we are capable of finding happiness in the eternities.
The key is to change
These questions and lists can seem practical, but people vary widely even within their individual circumstances on a day to day basis. You will likely find that your desires are eternally compatible one day and mortally compatible the next. The key is to nurture your eternal desires. We can enjoy our mortal situations without being left bereft in eternity, but we have to open our eyes to the true nature of things and align ourselves with the truth. As you open your eyes to the true value of things, it becomes easier to invest in the things that matter most.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 6–10 – Mike Parker
Feb 21, 2024
Jacob’s teachings about the Messiah & the gathering of Israel (2 Nephi 6–10)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class.)
John S. Thompson argues that Jacob₂’s sermon was given in connection with the Nephite observance of the Feast of the Tabernacles: “Isaiah 50–51, the Israelite Autumn Festivals, and the Covenant Speech of Jacob in 2 Nephi 6–10,” in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 123–50.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Me, My Shelf, & I – Episode 1 – Seer Stones: Questions & Criticisms
Feb 20, 2024
In this episode, Zach, Sarah, and Jennifer go through an overview of the most common criticisms of Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones from all sides. They introduce direct claims from faithful members who dispute the use of Seer Stones as well as critics who attempt to use the seer stones to explain away the Book of Mormon. In this 6 part series, Me, My Shelf, & I will tackle and refute these claims head-on using facts from the historical narrative.
Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:23) Are Seer Stones Evil? (11:38) Folk Magic (17:42) Was Information Hidden? (23:08) Conclusion
Sarah Allen is a senior researcher with FAIR, and the 2022 recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith Award. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She is a co-moderator the LDS subreddit on Reddit and the author of a multi-part series rebutting the CES Letter. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 6–10 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 17, 2024
Reproach and Revilings of Men
by Autumn Dickson
There are many things to fear in this world. Our own prophecies of the state of the world before the Second Coming are not for the faint of heart. Jacob knew this, and he chose to teach his people that they were of the house of Israel and would not be forsaken by the Lord. Those who trust in the Lord feel reason to rejoice. Jacob was pleading with them to trust their God so that they could feel this.
There is one very specific fear that Jacob addressed to his people, namely the fear of being hated by others, the fear of being reviled by them.
2 Nephi 8:7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart I have written my law, fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.
Jacob was quoting Isaiah, and surely Isaiah wrote these words for our day. We believe in a fair amount of doctrine that is revolting to others. Hopefully we hold to these doctrines with courage as well as kindness; after all, Isaiah was speaking to those who “know righteousness” and part of being righteous is recognizing the divinity in everyone around us. Hopefully we are met with the same respect, but this is not always the case. It is highly likely that we will come across someone hostile to our beliefs, no matter how much kindness we throw their way.
However, this verse hit different this week. I believe it hit me differently this week because I realized how deeply and personally Jacob must have felt this. Jacob, as much as anyone, knew what it was like to be reviled by someone for your beliefs. Did the import of this verse hit him as he read it to his people who had been driven away from family who wanted to hurt them? Did he exchange a knowing look with Nephi as he taught this? Did he think of all those times the good people in his family were reviled by their own brothers?
Jacob and Nephi never reconciled with their brothers in this life. They died estranged from them.
How long did it take these brothers to heal from those familial rifts? We see all the best of Jacob and Nephi in The Book of Mormon, but I’m pretty convinced they had some trauma to work through. I have personally seen estrangement in my own extended family, and it’s ugly. I can only imagine how much uglier it gets when that estrangement is a result of one side trying to kill the other. Today, I want to talk about reviling on a traumatic level – on the level experienced by Nephi and Jacob. And even though I will be talking about reviling in a manner that is extreme, abusive, and traumatic, there are principles here that are applicable to everyone, no matter what level of reviling you have experienced.
Naturally achieving the peace of the gospel
I am a huge believer in the sentiment that we do not have to force our feelings in the gospel. When we are met with reviling and resentment, we don’t have to be afraid. But we also don’t have to fake our bravery or peace. We don’t have to try to force ourselves to forgive and feel okay when we find ourselves in broken relationships that refuse to heal on one end. We believe in forgiving, but trying to force forgiveness is counterproductive.
So if we shouldn’t try to force faith and forgiveness, how do we naturally reach those feelings? How do we get to the point where the faith and forgiveness pours out of us rather than us trying desperately to dam up the hurt and be polite anyway? How do we get to the point where we look at our enemies and find that we can’t help but love them anyway? I’m not talking about being polite and taking the high road and patting yourself on the back for being righteous and loving. I’m talking about truly loving those who revile us, where we want to defend them and miss them and we anxiously await the time that we can welcome them back?
Since we’re talking about reviling on a traumatic and abusive level, I want to make sure we understand that there are times in this life where boundaries need to be set and kept for a lifetime. Nephi and Jacob were commanded to flee and make those boundaries. However, we can arrive at a feeling of love for those who have hurt us even if we can’t ever trust them in our mortal lives again. Love does not mean enabling, but finding love within ourselves is important if we want to feel peace. I have also found that when we fill ourselves with real love, the fear of being reviled simultaneously dissipates.
The trauma reaction scale
I’m reiterating this because I think it’s important: When Christ asks us to forgive someone who has reviled us, He is not asking us to try and beat our hurt into submission. He is not asking us to allow someone to hurt us over and over. He is not asking us to “take the high road” and scorn others for being the “unloving ones.” When Christ asks us to forgive those that revile us, He is asking us to free ourselves.
It is critical to understand that this is a process.
It will take time to achieve this true forgiveness, and in my personal opinion, it will take plenty of anger and reasoning and pleading and wading and trying to heal before we make it there.
I want to talk a bit about trauma because trauma can be a natural result of being reviled severely by others. I know that not every experience we have with being reviled will be traumatic, but you can scale the principles I’m hoping to teach. I am not an expert on trauma, but I do love learning about it. Understanding the nature of trauma and being able to overcome our body’s biological processes of protecting us will help us achieve forgiveness and freedom from fear in regards to our enemies..
Our bodies have biological processes built in to keep us safe. When trauma occurs in the brain, our bodies skip over our thinking processes and immediately jump to fight or flight. Our brains do this without our consent. That is why the actions of traumatized people can be irrational; those actions often occur without the rational portions of their brains. When we are continuously introduced to trauma over and over and over again, and when we are not able to fight or flee, our brain goes into the next portion of survival mode – dissociation. When someone is stuck in a traumatizing situation with no chance for escape, their bodies will naturally escape within themselves. Their brains take them somewhere else. On the outside, this looks peaceful and accepting and even Christlike. But it’s not. It is survival mode. Here it is in a flow diagram:
Trauma (i.e. abused or severely reviled like Nephi) → Fight or Flight → Dissociation
So quick recap. Let’s say a person is tied to a ship by their brothers. They can’t flee or fight it off. Under normal circumstances, the person (even a person of faith) can find themselves dissociating in order to survive mentally. They detach from the physical circumstances and hide within their own brain. Let’s look at it in a modern circumstance.
Let’s say a person is being mentally abused by a family member. They do not feel the ability to fight or flight and so instead, they dissociate. They withdraw into themselves. THIS IS NOT FORGIVENESS. This is a reaction of trauma. It is quiet. It does not argue back. It looks more Christlike, but it does not feel heavenly. In fact, on the trauma reaction scale, it is worse than fighting back or fleeing the situation. I have seen dissociation praised as Christlike behavior, and I have seen people who are healing look very un-Christlike as they work back down the trauma reaction scale towards normalcy which requires working back through fighting or fleeing. There is anger. There are family members or friends who get cut off. It can look ugly.
But. When that anger and hurt and trauma gets truly worked through, there is a heavenly feeling on the other side. There is a moment on the other side when you become free from all of those trauma reactions and live your life happily despite the revilings of another. It ceases to affect you. You are healed. You feel forgiveness. You let go, and you find freedom. You’re no longer afraid of the revilings of man.
That is why Christ asks us to forgive, not so we can be pious or enable someone to hurt us further. He asks us to forgive because real forgiveness is real freedom from the revilings of others.
I once posted a status or something about forgiveness; I can’t quite remember the details to be honest. However, I had a friend reach out to me in anger. She was really upset that I had preached forgiveness. She had been brutally traumatized by an ex-spouse, and she was angry that I would suggest any kind of forgiveness despite the fact that it wasn’t specifically pointed towards her. She mockingly and angrily asked me if I would have her forgive him.
At that point in my life, I was too naive to understand what she had gone through and to truly understand what forgiveness meant. I can’t remember how I responded, but my reaction now would be, “I want you to heal so thoroughly that he no longer affects you, that you release yourself and him and feel peace and love.” Because that really is what I want for her.
If you go back and read Nephi’s Lament (2 Nephi 4), you will find that he had to work through this as well. One of my favorite lines in that entire chapter is, “Why am I angry because of mine enemy?” I love it because it makes Nephi human and relatable and real. He did get angry with his brothers. He did have to work through everything they did to him. Jacob had to work through watching it all happen as a young boy, and they were able to come out on the other side and preach the feeling of freedom from the reviling of others.
Perfect love casts out fear
Reading Nephi’s Lament can also give a glimpse in how we travel back towards forgiveness and healing and freedom. To put it in very short terms, we get to know our Savior on a personal level. I testify that this is true. I testify that the Savior’s love can be so all-consuming that it heals all the broken fragments left by others. He is real. He loves us. He is powerful. His love is powerful.
I testify that perfect love casts out fear. I testify that as we come to trust and be filled with His love, as we work through all the anger and trauma and finally heal, it will cast out the fear that is embedded in our lives. We will let go of the knee-jerk reactions that come with being reviled. We won’t have to force ourselves to feel more faithful, to “fear not the reproach of men,” it will naturally come.
I talked about this verse in the context of true trauma, but I also testify that this occurs on a much smaller scale. When we have that personal tie to the Savior, any reviling or reproach on any level will bounce off of us. We won’t have to fight off the discomfort and fear. It simply won’t reach us because of the security that we have found in Christ.
Approach Christ; you will find the negative feelings start to dissipate on their own. I know this is true.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 3–5 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 10, 2024
Nephi’s Psalm
by Autumn Dickson
Nephi’s psalm is a classic, and there are a great many things we can learn from it. Rather than focusing on any specific phrases or words, I want to look at the message as a whole. I believe there is something we can learn as we follow Nephi through his transitions.
All throughout the chapters we have read thus far, Nephi has given us examples of his righteousness. He turned to the Lord for his own testimony, faithfully followed his father out of his home, valiantly encouraged his brothers to let the Lord help them accomplish the impossible, and then frankly forgave them after being beaten with a rod. We appreciate these examples; we learn a lot about revelation, turning to the Lord, and following in faith. If we can read these examples with the right heart, we will learn many of the mysteries of the kingdom. However, oddly enough, there is also something very strengthening and reassuring about hearing someone be vulnerable and open about their flaws. It builds connections between people that are much harder to cross over otherwise.
During his psalm, I feel like I catch a glimpse into Nephi’s heart, and it’s one of my favorite Nephi moments. In this awful moment of sorrow after his father died, he bears his soul a bit. He writes down his feelings exactly as they’re coming along and being processed, and it’s a beautiful process to watch. It’s a process that we can mimic. And interestingly enough, when we mimic this vulnerable process out loud at appropriate times, we can often strengthen our relationships with others and strengthen them in general.
Following Nephi’s process
I want to break up Nephi’s psalm into four parts. I will share a verse from each of the four parts that summarizes his train of thought.
2 Nephi 4:17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
So Nephi is experiencing what many of us have felt before. We’re frustrated with our own lack of progress. We’re frustrated that we continually hurt others with our weaknesses. Nephi then transitions into, “I’m a weak man, but I know the Mighty One I have trusted.”
2 Nephi 4:20 My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.
After praising the Lord for all that He has done on Nephi’s behalf, Nephi is then like, “If He has blessed me so much, why am I so worried about my afflictions? Why do I let Satan come in and destroy my peace?”
2 Nephi 4:26 O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?
Nephi then transitions one last time to more of a plea. He asks the Lord to keep him spiritually safe essentially. He recognizes the reality of his mortal weaknesses and asks the Lord to essentially not let him get lost.
2 Nephi 4:33 O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies! Wilt thou make my path straight before me! Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way—but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the ways of mine enemy.
Each of these transitions is important and has something to teach us about where to transition emotionally when we’re struggling. Honestly, I wonder if Nephi has actually given us the secret to his relentless optimism – namely consciously processing the yucky stuff with God. Let’s look closer.
Nephi speaks of feeling wretched; all of us know what it is to feel worthless and incapable and discouraged. Do we make the same transitions that Nephi makes? Do we stop to remember the doctrine surrounding our mortal lives and the power of Christ’s atonement? Do we stop to remember all of the encouragement that He has already given us? Nephi did; he looked back and remembered how he has been supported before.
After that original, “I trust the Lord,” it almost appears as if Nephi dips back down into despair again. He asks why do I get angry or yield to sin? It feels like Nephi might be getting discouraged again. Maybe he did. I have interpreted it that way many times, but there is also an alternate interpretation. When I read it this time, I saw an encouraged Nephi. I heard him saying something along the lines of, “Oh my gosh. How did I forget all the ways the Lord has taken care of everything? How did I forget that He always makes it okay in the end? I don’t have to be anxious or discouraged or angry. That’s just Satan trying to distract me from God.” When I read it this time, I didn’t see Nephi falling back into discouragement. I saw him standing up taller, recognizing Satan, and casting him off. And then of course, it ends with Nephi’s plea with the Lord to protect him.
We can follow Nephi’s transitions very easily. We can imitate them and find his same optimism. In the face of death, homelessness, and familial issues, we can literally choose to be like Nephi. It starts with acknowledging your discouragement very openly. It then proceeds with a conscious choice to trust the Lord again; this is much easier when we take the time to recall other times this trusting process has worked, and eventually our eyes are opened to the reality of the situation. We know that we have nothing to truly fear. We find ourselves asking, “Wait a minute; I have God. Why am I worried?”
Stepping away from worry
Worry is an interesting concept because of its close association to love. An oft-occurring reaction that follows love can be worry, and so I believe that sometimes we translate worry into a good thing, and we encourage it. If we’re worried about someone, it is “evidence” of our love. If we’re worried about our salvation, it means that we’re humble and don’t assume that we’re worthy. If we’re worried about accomplishing everything, then the Lord knows that we were anxiously engaged (the irony…). While I agree that worry can have appropriate bounds and doesn’t have to devolve into a dire problem in and of itself, I also believe that sometimes worry becomes this compulsion of righteousness. We feel like we’re supposed to worry because it makes us feel like we care.
Once again, I do not feel like we have to be ashamed of worry. There are appropriate times for worry because it can also help us act. However, Nephi is a fantastic example of the fact that we don’t need worry in order to be righteous or loving or engaged. He is also a fantastic example of how to overcome feelings like worry.
We consciously choose to trust, and one of the feelings that come along with trusting is rejoicing. It is casting off Satan and not giving him a place in our hearts to destroy our peace of mind.
Another reason I love the psalm
There is another reason I love Nephi’s psalm, and it connects to these transitions that we’ve been talking about.
I believe that Nephi’s immense examples of faith can make him feel different than us. Sometimes we can place him on a pedestal and because of this, we simply view it as unrealistic for most people and therefore are discouraged from trying. We commend him for his examples, we’re impressed by them, but we don’t always follow that faith because we turn Nephi into an “other.”
Nephi’s vulnerability in the beginning allows us to relate to him and then realize that we can follow him into that same faith. It’s a fairly simple transition to go from discouragement to faith; it’s a simple choice. Sometimes Satan can make us subconsciously feel like we don’t deserve to step into that faith and optimism, but the Lord literally commands us to trust Him. He wants us to experience the peace, faith, and miracles that Nephi did. He wants us to make the same kind of difference in the world that Nephi did, but it takes that simple choice of trust.
I’m grateful Nephi chose to be vulnerable. I’m grateful that he chose to record his feelings after the passing of his father so we could catch a glimpse of how Nephi is the way that he is. There is a small extension to this message that I mentioned in the beginning. There are appropriate times to be vulnerable. There are times when vulnerability and acknowledgement of weakness will take us much farther in our ability to reach others in comparison to advice or life lessons. Sometimes, simply realizing that you’re not the only one who gets discouraged does more to bolster you than any plea to be faithful. And when you choose to combine this vulnerability with an absence of shame, it gives others the permission to follow suit.
I’m grateful for a Savior that I can trust. I’m grateful for all of the powerful examples of faith given to us by Nephi, and I’m just as grateful for his example of mortal weakness. None of us are alone in our less-than-charitable thoughts, moments of despair, or times of anger. We are especially not alone when we consider the fact that the Savior is always ready to draw near. We can trust that outreached hand, cling to it, and find gratitude and joy in it.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 1–2 & 2 Nephi 3–5 – Mike Parker
Feb 05, 2024
Lehi’s farewell address; Nephites & Lamanites separate (2 Nephi 1–5)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This week’s lesson covers both this week’s and next week’s Come, Follow Me reading.)
Lehi₁’s teachings are an example of a biblical testament offered by a dying patriarch, which included the dying family head gathering together his relatives and close friends, exhorting them to avoid temptations, instructing them in the ways of righteousness, uttering blessings and cursings, and prophesying of the future. See “KnoWhy #29: Should 2 Nephi 1:1–4:12 Be Called the ‘Testament Of Lehi’?”, Book of Mormon Central, 9 February 2016.
Matthew Nickerson, “Nephi’s Psalm: 2 Nephi 4:16–35 in the Light of Form-Critical Analysis,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6, no. 2 (1997): 26–42. Nickerson’s article outlines the Psalm of Nephi₁ and shows how it follows the same literary pattern found in the Old Testament Psalms.
Steven P. Sondrup, “The Psalm of Nephi: A Lyric Reading,” BYU Studies 21, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 357–72. Sondrup analyzes the poetic structure of Nephi₁’s Psalm.
After the death of Lehi₁, Nephi₁ recorded that “the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon” to those who followed Laman₁ (2 Nephi 5:21). Clifford P. Jones argues that Laman₁ and his followers marked their skins with “a permanent, self-imposed mark—an ancient tattoo—cut into the skin in defiance of the law of Moses” as a sign of rebellion against God. Jones, “Understanding the Lamanite Mark,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 56 (2023): 171–258. (Kyler Rasmussen has prepared this brief summary of Jones’s paper.)
Joseph’s September 1830 revelation to Oliver Cowdery commanded him to “go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them.” How did the Book of Mormon define a Lamanite ? And what does DNA evidence tell us about the descendants of Lehi₁ living in the Americas today? Book of Mormon Central examines this complex subject in “KnoWhy #486: Who Are the Lamanites?”
See Also:
“The apparent genetic discrepancy between Mormon’s narrative and the origin of Native Americans” by Michael R. Ash and Ugo Perego at the 2023 FAIR Conference
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 2 Nephi 1–2 – Autumn Dickson
Feb 04, 2024
Choosing Liberty and Eternal Life
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we find Lehi’s family in the promised land and Lehi is dying. He knows he is dying and decides to share some last messages with his family. He pleads with Laman and Lemuel to get it together, blesses his grandchildren to be protected from bad influences, encourages the others to do what’s right, and prophesies of future events. He also shares essential doctrines.
One of these doctrines is a huge focus in the Come Follow Me manual this week as well as the huge focus for my post.
2 Nephi 2:27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.
I have taught about grace and works and the atonement of Jesus Christ many times. And yet, I feel like Lehi has taught about these topics in a way that illuminates my understanding further. Not to mention, he did it in a single sentence.
They are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the great Mediator of all men.
This is a fantastic way to teach grace and the role of works in the Plan of Salvation.
A multiple choice test
I want you to imagine for a second that choosing the Celestial kingdom was occurring on a multiple choice test. There is only one question. This is how I imagine it would look like:
What do you want?
Liberty and eternal life
Captivity and death
It sounds simple to the point of silliness, but I want you to think about it in this manner. Without Jesus Christ, the test would look like this.
What do you want?
Captivity and death
And that is why salvation is a gift. No matter how often we would have chosen to do what’s right, no matter how much we would have changed, no matter how much we would have gotten glimpses of what eternity is supposed to be like in moments with our family and friends, it would have been out of reach. Without the Savior, Heavenly Father could not have given us eternal life without spurning justice and ceasing to be God and newsflash…that would mean there was no heaven to be had. The price had to be paid, and Christ was the only one who could pay it. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, the option for eternal life was now available to us. The option was unlocked for us. It was a gift to us.
That is why we, as Latter-day Saints, believe in grace. That is why we believe salvation was given to us freely. We didn’t pay for that option to show up. Christ gave the option of salvation to us; He didn’t have to give it and He dearly wants to give it.
And yet, it is still a choice.
The “works” portion
This week, I sat down and watched “Prince of Egypt” with my kids. Phenomenal movie. Please watch it. I feel the Spirit every time.
Anyway, as I’ve been pondering this specific principle this week (i.e. Christ providing the option for us to choose eternal life), the “Prince of Egypt” movie hit me differently. There is a part where the Egyptians come chasing after the Israelites, and the Israelites are trapped at the sea. Moses, as a type of Christ, parts the water thereby providing a way for escape for the Israelites. The option for liberty appeared because of the power of Christ.
And yet, the Israelites still needed to choose to take the option. Christ didn’t transport them onto the other side of the sea; He merely made liberty available. Can you imagine the silliness of the Israelites cheering on the shore, ecstatic that the waves had parted and then just sitting there? Can you imagine them praising the Lord for parting the sea and then choosing to camp on the shore until they were slaughtered by the Egyptians or brought back into captivity?
Christ provided the option, but He won’t force us to move forward. He won’t force us to live an eternal life (which, by the way, starts today if we want). He can’t force us to live in a manner that allows for us to feel the peace and happiness He offers.
Some may argue that belief is all that is required, but I believe that eternal life isn’t bestowed. It’s something you grow into. And yet, Latter-day Saints still believe it’s a free gift because Christ paid the price for that option to become available to us..
Walking through the sea
I simplified our choice of liberty and eternal life earlier with my test question, but I did that in order to highlight grace and the principle of Christ providing an option that was not there beforehand. It’s easy to circle “Liberty and eternal life” on a test, but choosing it in real life is a little more involved than that.
I’ve talked often about growing into an eternal life, about progressing to become like our Heavenly Father rather than believing that heaven is something that simply descends upon us. Integrity, charity, and humility aren’t just arbitrary traits that Heavenly Father chose because He thought it would make us better worshippers. In actuality, these are traits that make us feel the happiness and peace that He feels. They are traits that make us feel happy with ourselves and enable us to have heavenly relationships. I could talk a lot about the importance of pushing ourselves to grow into eternal life. I could wax long about the blessings of feeling these qualities within yourself, but I believe there is another part of choosing liberty and eternal life that is equally important to our peace and happiness and ability to grow into eternal life.
Eternal life is not just about becoming like our Heavenly Parents; it’s about being with Him and our Heavenly Mother again. We may not fully comprehend the import of that concept, but there was a time when we loved and felt loved by Them. If we could taste of that mutual love again, we would understand why living with Them would equate to an eternal life.
Consciously choosing to live a life like our Eternal Parents enables us to feel happiness and begin our eternal lives now. Consciously choosing eternal life today also means inviting our loving Parents and Savior into our lives and developing a relationship with Them now. This can be accomplished through a little phrase found in the same verse we read earlier, namely, “…through the great Mediator of all men.” To be a Mediator means to reconcile two parties. The Savior provides the opportunity for us to be reconciled and united with our Heavenly Parents. But just like with any other part of eternal life, He simply provided the opportunity. We are the ones who have to walk through the sea.
There are many things that can keep us from feeling that relationship with our Heavenly Parents. We are very aware that conscious rebellion and laziness can keep us from feeling this precious relationship, but there are also more subtle tactics from Satan that keep us from Them. A belief that we are unworthy, holding onto guilt longer than is needful, and perfectionism are all subtle tactics BUT THEY ARE STILL FROM SATAN. For some reason, it may feel oddly righteous to believe we are too unworthy to approach our Heavenly Father, but nothing could be farther from our Heavenly Father’s desires. He misses us. He feels cheated when we keep ourselves from Him.
Satan would do anything to keep you from believing that you have Parents who are perfectly supportive, perfectly coaching, perfectly pushing us to become as They are because Satan knows the absolute power of that belief.
Satan knows that if we learn how much our Heavenly Parents love us, we will find the happiness and peace that is available in eternity. And if we find that happiness and peace and love, we will find the motivation and power necessary to become like them. Following the gospel will no longer feel punishing; it will be freeing and powerful, and we will crave it.
Christ provided the opportunity for us to develop that relationship by paying the price that kept us from Them. However, it will never be enough to camp on the shore. We will constantly be plagued by fears of the enemy and there will not be any growth. If we camp on that shore and keep ourselves from Them, we will likely be taken over by the adversary just like the Israelites would have been if they hadn’t walked through the Red Sea.
We have to throw off Satan. We have to choose to mentally shun him and send him away. We have to walk through the sea, not only by living the commandments, but by actively choosing to trust in Their love for us.
Trusting Their love is an act of faith; we may not see it ahead of time. Maybe you don’t feel Their love for you yet. We may have to act before we can feel it. However, if we choose to act as though they love us, if we choose to change our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves according to the love we’ve been taught about, that act of faith will start to grow and grow and grow until it fills us and we know it is true.
That is what it means to choose liberty and eternal life, and it is all made possible by a loving Savior.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 16–22 – Mike Parker
Jan 29, 2024
The journeys to Bountiful & the promised land (1 Nephi 16–22)
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Calvin D. Tolman, “Liahona: ‘Prepared of the Lord, a Compass,’” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 51 (2022): 211–52. Tolman reviews the various English interpretations of the term Liahona. He proposes that the translation of Liahona is “a vessel prepared of the Lord” and the interpretation is “a compass prepared of the Lord” (Alma 37:38).
“Book of Mormon Evidence: Nahom,” Evidence Central, 9 March 2021. This page summarizes the current state of research regarding “the place which was called Nahom” (1 Nephi 16:34), where Ishmael₁ died. The location of this place in the Arabian desert is a “bullseye” for Latter-day Saint claims that the Book of Mormon is a historical work.
Portions of this lesson include segments from Journey of Faith, a 2005 documentary by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University. This documentary provides insights from Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint scholars into the route of Lehi₁’s journey through Arabia, including likely locations for Nahom, where Ishmael₁ died, and Bountiful₁, where Nephi₁ built the ship that took his family to the promised land.
In this follow-up to Journey of Faith, Latter-day Saint scholars delve into Mormon₂’s description of the Nephites’ land of promise and the religious history, culture, and traditions of its people.
How difficult would it be to make a functional bow and arrow using only primitive tools and materials on hand, as described in 1 Nephi 16:23? This Australian blogger did it with only a stone hatchet, a stone chisel, and stone blades and fire sticks. How much better would Nephi₁’s bow and arrow have been, considering that he almost certainly had more advanced tools?
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 16–22 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 27, 2024
The Second Spindle
by Autumn Dickson
I learned something this week about the Liahona that kinda blew my mind. I want to share what I learned, and then let’s take some principles from it.
In a Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Robert L. Bunker describes an engineering phenomenon that I was completely unaware of. He talks about a concept that was invented by man in the 1940’s known as fault tolerant systems. Essentially, you build a computer that does the same processing twice (or more sometimes). If the processing comes back the same, then the computer can continue on because it is “correct.” If the processing comes back different, then something failed and the computer can know about it. Thus, it is fault tolerant. The computer can detect if it’s having its own issues.
Maybe I’m way behind on figuring this out, but the Lord built a fault tolerant system in the Liahona. It didn’t even register in my mind that the Liahona had two spindles until I was an adult. Even then, I couldn’t figure out why it had two spindles until I googled it and found this article from Robert L. Bunker. This verse is not in this week’s reading, but it does give us insight into the Liahona which we’re studying this week.
Alma 37:40 And it did work for them according to their faith in God; therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God, day by day.
Spindles. Plural. Both were pointing. If the Liahona only had one spindle, how was Lehi’s family supposed to know whether it was “working?” They could have waned in their faith and diligence, but the one arrow was still going to be pointing somewhere. There was no way they could have known that it was pointing “wrong.” Maybe this is completely obvious to anyone with any kind of predilection for engineering, but this totally blew my mind.
First of all, the idea that Joseph Smith, with all three years of his formal schooling, could have come up with that would have been impressive to say the least. This kind of fault finding system wasn’t formally invented until the 1940’s, but Joseph kinda just threw it out there while interpreting The Book of Mormon in three months. If it hadn’t been in there, I’m sure I could have found the faith to just assume the Lord had a way of letting the family know, but I still think it’s super cool that it was included.
Anyway, I obviously do not claim to have figured this out on my own, as made apparent by surprise. However, I do want to try and take this a step further. It makes sense that the Lord would provide a way for the family to know if their Liahona was in working order; He was planning on using it as a tool to teach them about faith, diligence, and being led along. He didn’t just give it to them, and they were done. The Lord is purposeful and wanted them to practice living the gospel principles in a continuous manner.
Though the second arrow has very obvious implications for Lehi’s family, I believe there are spiritual implications for us. After all, The Book of Mormon was written for our day so that we could learn about the Lord’s dealings with His children. So what do we learn from this fault tolerant, second spindle?
The words of the prophets
One of the fail-safe systems the Lord has provided are dual pathways for revelation. Like much of the world, we believe that the Lord can speak to us directly. This pathway of revelation is critical to our exaltation. It requires us to stretch and reach and dig for ourselves. When we have to seek out personal revelation, we are able to gain that personal relationship with Christ which is ultimately what saves and exalts us. It also allows us to be guided in our personal lives so that the prophet doesn’t have to tell me whether studying elementary education in college is a good idea. Personal revelation is crucial.
The world is also a great example of what happens when you don’t have that second pathway; President Oaks has coined this pathway the “priesthood line.” The priesthood line is how we received the scriptures in the past, and it’s how we receive His guidance today. As a missionary, I remember coming across a group of Christians who had a table up on campus. They were of all different Christian faiths, working together to spread the word. It was admirable. We tried talking to them, but they quickly denounced us as non-Christians. When I pointed out that they weren’t completely similar in their own beliefs of Christ, they quickly responded that they were similar in all of the important things. I found this extremely fascinating since some of them believed that baptism was essential to salvation and some of them did not believe this. You would think that this particular aspect would be classified as “important” since it was determining credentials for salvation, but I digress. Even within the same denomination, you can wander from congregation to congregation and find different beliefs.
This second spindle, this priesthood line, helps us know what the doctrine is. Yes, we do have random quotes from random priesthood leaders that are questionable, but true, canonized doctrine is repeated again and again and again and again. It is not hidden; we know what we believe. These two lines of communication help with the concept of fault tolerance.
Personal revelation
Now the fail safe of a priesthood line can be very helpful in finding out the doctrine of the kingdom. The personal line is still necessary; there are some revelations that only come from the Lord, and we all still have to receive our witness. However, the priesthood line can take us pretty far in establishing the stage.
But what about the personal decisions for which there is no doctrine? There is no “right” answer for what people should choose as careers. There isn’t any kind of doctrine about where we should live or how many kids we should have or who we should marry. There are guiding principles, but guiding principles aren’t always enough. I can be righteous as an accountant or as a fashion designer, but is there a specific direction I need to take? Maybe there isn’t a specific direction, but if there is, I definitely want to know about it.
So what are the fail safes for personal decisions? The priesthood line and personal line can help us with doctrine, but is there a fault tolerant system for our personal decisions? How do we know we’re on the right path if there is a “right” path for us to take? There are plenty of times when there isn’t necessarily a “right” option and we’ll be fine either way, but I’ve also lived long enough and been guided often enough to know He has specific instructions sometimes. What is my second spindle?
I kinda have two answers for this.
First, the Lord helped me understand a simple way to practice receiving revelation. I practiced it with the FSY kids I taught last summer. At FSY, we were given this incredible opportunity where the Lord wanted to speak to us and guide us and teach us. Not to mention, they were all given a journal to carry around anyway. That week, I challenged the kids to write down everything that even barely registered as a potential prompting. I told them that if a thought popped into their heads, they should write it down. They didn’t necessarily need to question whether it was a prompting. They should simply write it down. Was everything they wrote down going to be revelation? No. Would writing everything down help them establish the pattern? Absolutely. If you want to understand whether the Lord is speaking to you, you need a second spindle with which to compare it. Writing down everything could help you start to puzzle out those feelings very consciously and start to recognize the pattern of the Lord’s voice in your own life.
Second answer.
I can’t tell you what your second spindle looks like; it may take time to determine that. However, I can testify of a second spindle. If we learn nothing else from this fault tolerant system of the Lord, learn this: the Lord is capable of helping you know so have faith. When you have a big decision to make and you’re worried out of your mind about whether you’re doing the right thing in your life or whether you’re doing the right thing for your family, set your worry aside and trust the Lord’s ability to speak to you in a way that you can understand. If you don’t feel His voice, don’t fret. If you are regularly turning to Him, He will make His will clear to you if there is a will. Perhaps He will simply close a door that you were planning on taking, or He will open a different one. Perhaps He will guide your desires without you even knowing it, or perhaps you will get a big “warning” feeling that only goes away when you turn around. No matter how He chooses to answer you in any given circumstance, have faith and rejoice that the Lord has a second spindle that works very well. You can trust it.
And if all else absolutely fails, I testify of a third spindle. It’s called the atonement of Jesus Christ, and it makes up for mistakes. It turns all bad into good for those who are trying their hardest to follow the Lord. When I was getting ready to marry Conner and I desperately wanted an answer, I finally gave up and said, “If everything goes wrong and we get divorced and things go totally crazy, the Lord can’t be mad at me because I couldn’t have possibly tried harder to follow Him.” I don’t recommend getting married that way, and I have also learned a lot about marriage since then, but the key is this: you cannot truly fail when you remain close to the Lord. In the end, He can turn everything into a triumph. That third spindle is not fault safe; it is fault proof. It does not fail when we turn it on.
I testify of a Savior who revealed The Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. I testify that He included the coolest, smallest details that can give us so much insight. I testify that He saw all ahead of time and created systems with which to protect us (but not at the expense of our growth), and I testify that He did that because He loves us.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 11–15 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 20, 2024
Hell was Prepared
by Autumn Dickson
When I was younger, I remember being a bit troubled by the judgment and justice of God towards those who choose to do what’s wrong. If He really loved us, I couldn’t imagine Him wanting to be separated from any of us for eternity. It didn’t make sense to my young mind.
As I’ve grown older and observed the world a bit more, it has come to make more sense. Though I know that I can’t make any final judgments of people and I know that I don’t fully understand the circumstances of others, I can still see enough of the world to understand that people choose their outcomes. And despite all efforts to help people make choices that lead to good outcomes, some people still want to choose things that don’t bring anything worthwhile into their lives.
Why would He send His children away from Himself?
I had an experience with a friend a few summers ago where she expressed some of the same sentiments that I had felt when I was growing up. She was a mother of two, a boy and a girl. She told me she didn’t understand how we could believe in a God who was willing to send some of His children to a place like hell. We all make mistakes, we’re all imperfect. She couldn’t possibly grasp the idea of sending one of her children to hell because they weren’t perfect.
I had this entire response built up in my mind, but luckily the Spirit caught my attention before I could give her that response. I simply asked her, “If your son assaulted your daughter and didn’t change and continued to belittle her, would you force her to spend eternity with him? That wouldn’t be heaven for her.” She didn’t have much of a response, but the Spirit will do that to you.
The Spirit did it to me too in that same moment; I had never looked at it in some real terms because I had never been forced to. I have never yet had to question how I would respond if one of my children was making destructive choices that severely influenced the happiness of my other children. It was at that moment that I understood Heavenly Father just a little bit better. As much as it would make my heart ache forever, I would hope to be wise enough to not sacrifice the happiness of all my other children. If that child changed and chose better, then I would rejoice and cry and throw my arms around them and welcome them home. But if they continued to choose what they wanted at the expense of others, they would have to leave my home.
An understanding of hell
The simple fact of the matter is, there are those who will continue to choose to harm others despite any attempt we might make to help them be happier. We see this so clearly with Laman and Lemuel! Once again, I can’t make any final judgments; I hope they finally figured it out, but they were given every advantage, but they did not want it. Their father taught them how to reach the Lord, but they would not inquire of Him. They saw an angel rebuke them, but that didn’t stop them from hurting Nephi again and again and again. Happiness and salvation were handed to them over and over and over, but they did not want it.
I don’t know why, but some people choose what they want to choose despite all evidence to the contrary. The Lord understood this, and He taught it to Nephi.
1 Nephi 15:33-35:
33 Wherefore, if they should die in their wickedness they must be cast off also, as to the things which are spiritual, which are pertaining to righteousness; wherefore, they must be brought to stand before God, to be judged of their works; and if their works have been filthiness they must needs be filthy; and if they be filthy it must needs be that they cannot dwell in the kingdom of God; if so, the kingdom of God must be filthy also.
34 But behold, I say unto you, the kingdom of God is not filthy, and there cannot any unclean thing enter into the kingdom of God; wherefore there must needs be a place of filthiness prepared for that which is filthy.
35 And there is a place prepared, yea, even that awful hell of which I have spoken, and the devil is the preparator of it; wherefore the final state of the souls of men is to dwell in the kingdom of God, or to be cast out because of that justice of which I have spoken.
There is a place prepared for those who would continue to harm others and rob them of the heaven that our Father wants for them. Much of the world believes that this place is scary; we have a different theory.
One of the keys to understanding God is to understand hell. Hell is a word that can mean a couple of different things to us, but let’s discuss it in this context.
One version of hell includes a place called “outer darkness.” There is not much known about this place other than the idea that most of us aren’t even capable of going there. You have to know Christ perfectly and then reject Him. That’s one version, but it’s not super applicable so let’s move on.
Another concept of hell is associated with the three different kingdoms of glory. The concept of hell can expand to mean any place where we are not directly living with God (basically anything lower than the Celestial kingdom). Hell is like a lake of fire and brimstone, not a literal lake of fire and brimstone. The pain of being separated from Heavenly Father is the fire, the brimstone, the hell.
Interestingly enough, sometimes salvation is even expanded to represent anyone found in the three kingdoms. We know that even the lesser two kingdoms are more glorious than what we have on earth. They are beautiful places and Heavenly Father’s children who go there will receive resurrected bodies. In this sense, everyone in one of the three kingdoms of glory experiences salvation to an extent.
In a sense, the lesser kingdoms are places of heaven and hell, and that completely matches up with what I understand of a loving Father. Even as an imperfect parent, I can understand the logic behind this plan of Heavenly Father. I may not be able to have all of my children with me, but I still love them. I still want them to be as comfortable as I can make them for eternity so I will prepare a place for them. It will be a wonderful place, but unfortunately, because of their choices, they will still experience aspects of hell. There is nothing I can do about that except rob them of their ability to choose, and even then, they will still not experience happiness; they will still not feel the full extent of heaven because it will be forced upon them. So I leave them to experience hell to the extent they choose. They will be separated from a loving parent, their siblings, and they will be surrounded by others who make the same kind of choices. I would grieve knowing that some of my children are continuing to hurt each other and that they are separated from me, but I would find peace in the fact that I had done everything I could for them. Everything that could have possibly been done to help them was done.
I love the Plan of Salvation because it makes perfect sense to me. Nothing is arbitrary. I look at the plan, and I see the love of Heavenly Father. If no one had ever told me that God loved me, but they showed me this plan, I wouldn’t have to be told of His love. You can see it in the decisions He has made regarding His children.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who truly loves His children. I testify that He gave us children so that we could better comprehend His choices surrounding us. I testify that He did everything He possibly could to give them everything He has. He sacrificed His perfect Son, gave them the ability to choose happiness, and made up for all of the bad that would occur. I testify of the Savior’s atonement that can make up for all the wrong that happens to us. I testify that what will truly matter at Judgment Day is whether we will be a harmful influence in the Celestial Kingdom because the Savior paid for the mistakes we would make while figuring it all out.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This week’s lesson covers both this week’s and next week’s Come, Follow Me reading.)
Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 16–25, 80–81. Nephi₁’s vision of “a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins” who was “the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh” (1 Nephi 11:15, 18; 1830 edition) is connected to Lehi₁’s vision of a “a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy” (1 Nephi 8:10). Dr. Peterson’s article shows how they’re both connected to ancient Israelite belief in the female divinity Asherah, whose representation was a tree.
Stephen E. Robinson, “Nephi’s ‘Great and Abominable Church’,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 32–39, 70. In this article, Professor Robinson draws a clear distinction between a specific “great and abominable church” described in 1 Nephi 13, and a general “great and abominable church,” representing any and all wicked organizations, in 1 Nephi 14. (A shortened version of Robinson’s article was published in the January 1988 Ensign, 34–39.)
What is apocalyptic literature, and how does Nephi’s vision in 1 Nephi 11–14 fit into apocalyptic writings of the Ancient Near East? Book of Mormon Central explains in KnoWhy #471, “Why Can Nephi’s Vision Be Called an Apocalypse?”
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 6–10 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 16, 2024
What does it mean to be worthy?
by Autumn Dickson
As I was reading through Lehi’s vision this week, I was struck by a verse that I have thought about plenty before. For context, we see large groups of people moving towards the fruit of the tree which represents the love of God. There are lots of things occurring, but here’s just one:
1 Nephi 8:25 And after they had partaken of the fruit of the tree they did cast their eyes about as if they were ashamed.
As we continue on reading, we learn that there was a great and spacious building representing the pride of the world, and it was filled with people. Some of the people who came and partook of the love of God looked around, saw the building, and they became ashamed as they were moved by those who were in this building.
But I saw something new in that verse this time. I know that Nephi explains the reason that these people felt ashamed. However, the Spirit whispered another possible interpretation to me.
I have found that there are many of us in the church who partake regularly of the love of God. However, despite this regular partaking, we still feel ashamed of ourselves for past transgressions. I don’t think this is a completely abnormal feeling; in fact, I think it’s actually quite natural. When you find yourself partaking of something that pure, it can be hard to look back at your less-than-pure actions and intentions in comparison. It makes it doubly difficult if those less-than-pure actions and intentions still haunt you in the form of feelings and memories.
Though I believe that this can be a “natural” response, I don’t think it’s a feeling we should entertain. The Lord utilizes guilt to help us come back, but He does not utilize shame. Shame is an unhelpful feeling that draws us away from God in every instance. Whether we’re ashamed because we’re being mocked by others or if we’re ashamed because of our past sins, shame will never bring us closer to Him. It will only cause us to withdraw and hide. Shame comes from Satan.
I think that shame, at least in this particular context, stems from a misunderstanding about what it means to be worthy.
What does it mean to be worthy?
What does it mean to be worthy? We know the atonement paid for our sins, but we also know that the Lord still has expectations for us. We have learned our entire lives that there is a Judgment Day, and it will be determined whether we have been worthy.
The Lord has taught me about this a lot over the past few years. He has taught me about His atonement, and He has taught me about His perfect judgment.
My understanding of Judgment Day used to look something like this: I believed I would stand before the Lord and He would tally up all the good and bad I had done. The Lord paid for the bad, but it still had to be determined whether I had done enough. The “good” and the “bad” also included desires and thoughts rather than just actions. He would then place these things in the context of my life, the opportunities I was given as well as the weaknesses and struggles I received.
I have learned that Judgment Day (all of the mini judgments in between) are not really determined like this. Understanding the atonement and what it means is key to understanding what Judgment Day will look like. The atonement of Jesus Christ paid for all sin so that it would no longer count against us. The sin you committed yesterday, the one you will commit today, and the one you will commit tomorrow are gone. They were paid off. When you stand before the Lord on the other side, you’re not going to find any “tally marks” on the bad side because they’re not there anymore. Judgment Day isn’t about the sum total of your good and bad actions (thoughts and desires included).
Judgment Day really is about who you are. The Lord judges us by our hearts. When you stand before the Lord, He is going to determine something very simple: will you contribute to the feeling of the Celestial Kingdom? When people are around you, will they know that you mean well even if you’re not perfect yet? Do you contribute to a happy, spiritual home? Do you love Him and do you love others? Do you understand the importance of wielding power responsibly? Do you already experience the peace that comes with living with integrity?
This has completely changed how I approach the gospel. It has changed from perfectionism (minimizing bad and maximizing good) to simply attempting to utilize the commandments to get closer to Christ. I no longer hold onto my sins, but I allow the Savior to take them away because they’re not really there anymore. I actually get to experience the blessings that come with the gospel: redemption and closeness to Christ.
Perhaps this view of Judgment Day still has you feeling worried…you have flaws that will certainly take away from the heavenly feeling in the Celestial Kingdom. I’m obviously not a perfect judge, but let’s discuss those flaws too. Sometimes I yell at my kids (especially when I’m pregnant), and sometimes I still have a hard time forgiving and assuming the best of others. BUT. I have a desire that runs much, much deeper than those flaws. I want to be free of those flaws. I want to follow the Savior perfectly and willingly; it’s just difficult sometimes. When I get to the other side, and Satan can no longer tempt me and all secrets are out, I will be free of those flaws. The only time flaws are going to follow you to Judgment Day is if you are clinging to them all on your own. For example, if you need to forgive someone but you refuse to, then when you get to the other side you’re going to continue to hold onto that flaw regardless of the fact that Satan is no longer tempting you. If you have a deep and abiding desire to follow the Savior and love others (even if you’re not perfect yet), then you’re going to be just fine. Trust that the atonement took care of it so that you can start enjoying the blessings of the gospel now.
And let’s not forget this is all placed in the context of our lives as well. Not everyone has been taught or given the advantages that come with growing up in a healthy home. The Lord knows that. However, I teach this doctrine because there are a lot of people out there who do understand the importance of worthiness and are given advantages, and a lot of these people are worried about their personal worthiness. Make the switch from desperately trying to be good enough to simply trying to draw closer to Christ. Interestingly enough, it actually helps you develop the kind of character that belongs in the Celestial Kingdom. Following the gospel in this manner allows you to experience the blessings of the gospel rather than experiencing the negative side effects of perfectionism. It allows you to partake of the fruit of the tree and experience gladness and joy and relief without any of the shame.
All we have to do is remain at the tree
Satan uses shame because it logically makes sense. He knows that we know that we don’t deserve the atonement, and he uses that logic against us. Because it’s logical, we don’t really question it. But we need to! It’s dangerous and incomplete. Shame is uncomfortable enough that it would cause us to shy away from the Lord so we don’t have to feel that shame anymore.
But Satan is also just distracting us from the good feeling that is meant to come with partaking of the fruit. God put that tree there, not so He could stand around and make us feel bad for eating it. He wants us to take it so we can be close to Him. You don’t deserve it, you have hurt Him, you have caused Him pain, but don’t make it worse by retreating from Him. Don’t deprive Him of your company because whether it makes logical sense or not, He wants your company.
If you also want to consider logic, consider this: Christ experienced all of the bad feelings we experience so stop holding yourself hostage with sin that was already paid for. If you have repented and been deemed forgiven, then lift up your head and rejoice. Turn shame into a deep gratitude. If you really want to be a better person, if you really want the ability to become everything He wants you to become, then cling to His love and let it fill you until the shame isn’t there anymore. That is what will fill you with light. That is what people will notice when they see you. That will be the reason for the joy in your eyes: His love has changed you and turns all the bad in your life into goodness.
I know some of us are still haunted by past sins. Even if we’ve repented, you can’t always get rid of the memories, and Satan will use them against you for as long as he can. If you find yourself in this situation, take heart in two gospel principles:
1) If you continue on the road you’re on, staying near to the tree, then one day Satan will be bound and there will be no more temptation. You will be freed from those past aspects of your life – another reason to find ultimate gratitude!
2) Turn those “bad” things upside down. Christ’s atonement gives you the power to do that. Every time those memories pop up, rewrite the story with the Savior. Instead of saying to yourself, “There it is again, a memory of my past that will forever remind me I don’t deserve this,” say, “Here is an opportunity to become even better. Here is a thought that has been placed in my mind that I have the power to replace with something more powerful. Satan has presented me with a stepping stone to become stronger.” And if you falter and those memories linger longer than you would have liked, repeat the process anyway! Repentance is about becoming perfect, but the “becoming” process is going to take way longer than you think. In terms of this mortal life, it’s not about never failing again, it’s about being able to cast off Satan enough that you remain close to the tree, to His love. Remaining close to the tree is what is going to actually bring the perfection we so desire.
I testify of a Savior who never wanted us to carry shame. I testify that He utilizes guilt to the extent that it changes us because He loves us enough to push us. I also testified that He paid for sin so that it can’t hurt us anymore. We only hurt ourselves by depriving ourselves of His company on purpose – whether we do it by willingly rebelling or holding ourselves down under the weight of shame. We also hurt Him when we do that because I testify of a Savior who wants to be around you.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 1–5 – Mike Parker
Jan 09, 2024
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Neal Rappleye, “Learning Nephi’s Language: Creating a Context for 1 Nephi 1:2,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 16 (2015): 151–59. Rappleye explains how Nephi₁’s record could have been written in Hebrew language using Egyptian script, and he gives examples of ancient Israelite documents that did exactly that.
Book of Mormon Central team, “When Did Lehi Leave Jerusalem? (KnoWhy #475),” Book of Mormon Central, last modified 11 October 2018. Lehi₁’s ministry began “in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah.” (1 Nephi 1:4) Scholars have variously dated his departure from Jerusalem between 605 and 588 ʙ.ᴄ. Read about the arguments for early, middle, and late dates.
Research and Perspectives, “Nephi and the Exodus,” Ensign, April 1987, 64–65. Latter-day Saint scholars have identified numerous parallels and motifs that show how Nephi₁ used the story of Moses and the Exodus as a type for his family’s own journey into the wilderness.
S. Kent Brown, “The Hunt for the Valley of Lemuel,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 16, no. 1 (2007): 64–73. Professor Brown explains how Wadi Tayyib al-Ism, the best candidate for Lehi’s valley of Lemuel, was discovered.
David Rolph Seely, “Lehi’s Altar and Sacrifice in the Wilderness,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10, no. 1 (2001): 62–69, 80. Professor Seely explores why it was important for Lehi₁ to travel “three days in the wilderness” before making an offering to the Lord (1 Nephi 2:6–7), and how Lehi₁ could have made such a sacrifice, even though he wasn’t a Temple priest or Levite.
John W. Welch, “Legal Perspectives on the Slaying of Laban,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1, no. 1 (1992): 119–41. Welch argues that Nephi₁ was legally within his rights to slay Laban, according to the moral and legal code at the time.
When Lehi₁ and his family left Jerusalem, they came to the Red Sea and then traveled south for three days until they reached a river valley, which Lehi named after his sons Laman₁ and Lemuel. An excellent candidate for this valley has been discovered in Saudi Arabia; Book of Mormon Central discusses this in KnoWhy #286.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Nephi 1–5 – Autumn Dickson
Jan 08, 2024
Goodly Parents
by Autumn Dickson
When we read the first seven chapters of The Book of Mormon, we find a great many patterns for how the Lord works with His children. We find patterns of revelation, agency, perfect timing, and the nature of personal progression and testimony. One of the patterns we also find is that of righteous parenting. One of the first things declared in The Book of Mormon is:
1 Nephi 1:1 I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father…
Over and over and over again we see how Lehi and Sariah followed patterns of righteous parenting. Before you non-parents wonder if this message has relevance to you, I promise you that it does. Studying the patterns of Lehi and Sariah can teach us about how to become better parents, but it can also teach us a couple of other things such as how the Lord deals with His children so we can recognize why He is making specific decisions when we wonder what the heck He must be thinking. It can also teach us about the dual, and sometimes conflicting, principles of loving another person but simultaneously appreciating agency and feeling peace despite worries over their destructive choices. I will be referencing “parenting,” but this is not just about parenting. It’s about how the Lord works with us and how we work with others.
Personally seeking the Lord
One of the first things discussed in the righteous pattern of Lehi’s parenting is the way that Lehi personally sought out the Lord on His own. In verse 5, we see that Lehi went and prayed with all of his heart to the Lord. In return, Lehi receives a vision; this vision discusses a lot of things, but one of the things it talks about includes the abominations and impending destruction of Jerusalem at the time. These could not have been easy things to watch. The destruction of Jerusalem at the time of Zedekiah was ugly and brutal, and yet, Lehi came out of that vision in this manner:
1 Nephi 1:15 …his soul did rejoice, and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him.
There are a couple of things we can learn from Lehi’s experience.
First, Lehi was led because he was actively praying. Interestingly enough, Lehi wasn’t even praying about anything specific in regards to his family. He was praying to the Lord with his whole heart on behalf of his people. My key concept here is this: Turn regularly to the Lord, and He will lead along in the specifics on how to protect your family. You may not even originally recognize how the Lord is leading you along. After Lehi finds out Jerusalem is going to get destroyed, the Lord doesn’t say anything about leaving. It isn’t until Lehi is about to be killed before he receives the life-saving, miraculous gift of being driven from the lands of their fathers. From the outside, it might not look like Lehi was being led along, but we have hindsight which means we see the miracle in all of it. I attribute this incredible miracle to the fact that Lehi was turning regularly to the Lord.
And there is an implied principle that comes with this previous principle. If we’re turning to the Lord, we will be guided. This means we don’t have to live in fear. In the world we live in, it would be incredibly easy to let our desire to protect our children overwhelm us to the extent that we actually harm them. I want to protect my children from danger, but I can’t really…not unless I want to take them away from everything, and that’s not healthy for them either. We do the best we can to provide gospel principles, healthy homes, and reasonable boundaries, but we have to turn to the Lord and ask Him to guide us and our feelings when it comes to specific events that could hurt them. Only He can really protect them and lead them along the path that will protect them but still allow for growth.
There is a third principle for parents here. No matter how much we follow the Lord, our children still have agency. We want them to choose the right, but we can’t force them to. It’s not possible. Not even the Lord does that. It can be extremely difficult to watch loved ones make destructive choices. Lehi knows this firsthand. My children are young yet, but I’ve had other loved ones go down paths that would hurt them. Lehi prayed on behalf of his people with his whole heart. He loved the people who were going to try and kill him, or at least he loved the other people who were indulging in choices that would lead to their destruction and exile.
Where did Lehi find comfort? When Lehi turned to the Lord, he saw what would happen to his beloved people. I can’t imagine that was the source of his comfort. Lehi rejoices in His Redeemer. When all else is failing, there is comfort in the Redeemer. When there is no happy ending currently in sight because loved ones are choosing unhappiness, there is still a source of peace that we can cling to.
Sending his sons into difficult circumstances
Lehi sent his sons to go back to the volatile Jerusalem twice, and Sariah was not happy about it. Honestly, I can’t imagine that I would have been happy about it. If there was a time that I was going to doubt the visions of my husband, this would probably be that moment. I probably would have sought the Lord and asked if I could go instead. I was a mother, a parent. It was my responsibility to protect them, not send them to get slaughtered which is precisely what almost happened. By parenting standards today, this is terrible”parenting. I mean…some of the stuff I get side eye for nowadays is nothing compared to what Lehi was doing.
And yet, Lehi was doing exactly the right thing by following the Lord. As far as we know, he didn’t even question it. The Lord wanted the sons to go, not Lehi, and that was good enough for Lehi. And look what it brought to his sons! Laman and Lemuel were going to use their agency how they wanted to, but I can’t get over the experiences that Nephi had. This was an early, soul-stretching, pivotal experience in his testimony. I think about all the things I learn while reading about his experience. Just think about what he learned living them, and it was all because Lehi was brave enough to follow the Lord and let it happen. This doesn’t even cover the fact that Nephi brought Zoram back with him.
When we send our kids out into the world, it may feel like we’re sending them straight into Babylon, the place we often feel a desperate need to avoid at all costs. There will be appropriate times to leave Babylon, and there will be appropriate times to be in the world but not of it. Trust and follow the Lord to lead you and your family along about which path you’re supposed to be taking at any given time. Have enough faith, like Lehi, to follow that path.
And also, don’t feel like you failed if some of your children still utilized their agency in a way that you wish they hadn’t. Heavenly Father is a perfect parent, and He lost a third part of His children before we even made it to earth. Just do your best to follow Him, and the Lord won’t let you fail. Your children may still choose wrong, but it won’t be because you failed them.
He loved their mother
One of the most critical things that can occur in a family is for a father to love the mother; it’s not the only critical thing, but it is what I’m going to talk about in this section. And though I’m talking about Lehi loving Sariah, these are still principles that apply to anyone who has the opportunity to love someone else.
Let’s consider the circumstances of Lehi for a second. Lehi is a visionary man. Because of these gifts and because he loved others enough to try and serve them with those gifts, Lehi was almost killed. He abandoned his home, led his family to the wilderness, and was constantly receiving criticism from his sons. After receiving another vision and sending his sons out to Jerusalem, he got criticism from his wife. And honestly, I wonder if this was one of the hardest ones for Lehi to face. It can be particularly stinging when a spouse isn’t supporting you, especially when you have devoted your life and sacrificed everything to try and uplift your family. Sariah mocked him as a visionary man and mourned the loss of their sons. This could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Lehi could have easily felt justified in calling her out. He could have responded with the same scorn. He could have yelled at her and told her that he had lost everything too. He could have told her that he was trying to do what was best for their family by following the Lord, and he could have iterated that he didn’t appreciate her undermining him in this.
Rather, he loved her. He bore testimony to her. He took her biting words and sent them back in a loving manner. He didn’t have to do this. He could have felt as though he was in the right, and he could have gloated when their sons returned. But I wonder how his compassion affected her testimony in ways that the miraculous return of her sons could not.
Lehi was an incredible example of the Lord. He loved her at her worst. And because of his example, Sariah was one step closer to understanding the Lord. When difficult things came along in the future, she could trust that the Lord was making His choices because of His love for her not in spite of it. When Sariah faltered again (just like we all do), she could trust that He would lead her along through the rough patches despite the fact that she might not have deserved it.
I am so excited to be in The Book of Mormon this year. I testify of a Savior who loved people everywhere and led along one of the tribes of Israel to the Americas. I testify of a Savior who prepared the way perfectly for all of us, but also for each of us. Everything I’ve studied over the past few years and everything we get to study this year shows example after example after example of His awareness, power, and love.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon – Mike Parker
Jan 04, 2024
by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class)
Sources of the Plates of Mormon – Mormon and the other writers and editors of the Nephite records drew from many different source materials. This diagram depicts all known sources of the material that was abridged into the plates of Mormon and published as The Book of Mormon in 1830:
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon – Autumn Dickson
Jan 03, 2024
What is Scripture?
by Autumn Dickson
The title page of The Book of Mormon has me pondering about a couple of things that have actually been on my mind over the past year as I read the New Testament – namely, what really is scripture? Why do certain things get counted as scripture? What does it mean to be a writer of scripture?
As you read various books in the New Testament, you find that some of these men might not have even known they were writing what would be classified as scripture one day. We have the four gospels which are retellings of the life of Christ, replete with testimonies of who He is, but then we also have letters written by missionary-apostles. Lastly, we have a vision written by one of the apostles. In the same breath, we find the Doctrine and Covenants. These were a collection of blessings, visions, and dictations of the voice of God from a prophet. Apparently, the word “scripture” can be used to connote many different types of writing though I would still argue that there are a couple of criteria. The biggest criteria is that scripture is the “word of God.” How that chooses to manifest seems to include a wide array of options, but it all comes back to the idea that writing scripture is writing the word of God.
Let’s also look at this concept of “scripture” in the context of the title page of The Book of Mormon. There are a couple of phrases found on the title page that originally caught my attention. Mormon is teaching us that The Book of Mormon is a record “Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation.” I do not believe this to be an exhaustive list of criteria required for canonized scripture, but I do believe it can give us a glimpse of what the Lord views as scripture as well as giving us ideas of personal application.
Revelation
Though it is listed last, I want to start with it first so that I can describe why you can find personal relevance in this message. Scripture is written by way of revelation. This is obvious and makes sense. If the Lord had left us alone here on earth, revealing nothing, we could have likely found a wide range of things to worship. We could have pondered and thought and believed and worked and formed theories and acted, but none of them would have likely been accurate. Writings about the true nature of God and His plan for His children had to be revealed to us, and we see that in any of the canonized books of scripture we read. He has to speak to us, and it gets written down. Scripture is the revealed word of God. All of the men who wrote the books of scripture had the Savior revealed to them by some measure of His power.
But as I ponder this idea of revelation as well as the general concept of “word of God,” I also realize that we, as individuals, have the gift of revelation that enables us to receive the word of God directly. The Lord can reveal the mysteries of His kingdom to us, just as He did with other servants. That being said, that doesn’t make generalized scripture a free-for-all. Though we can all receive revelation, we also have limited jurisdiction with our revelation. I can receive revelation for my family and me and the actions we need to take in our own lives. I can receive revelation for myself about the mysteries of the kingdom, but I cannot receive an answer about where my friend should move or whether my brother should take a specific job he’s been offered. If I have a dear friend who is struggling with a question in the gospel, I may feel inspired to say something, but it has to be revealed to them in some manner by the Spirit. In the end, the true revelation will go to the person who has the right jurisdiction to receive such revelation.
I believe it is the same with scripture. There have been countless times where I have felt the Lord speaking to me (cough cough word of God) as I’ve written in my journal. He has revealed new perspectives, specific life directions, and even knowledge I had never noticed. Does that mean my journal is scripture? Maybe for me. It’s the word of God directly to me. Like scripture, I can go back and read through old entries and feel the spirit anew. I make new connections about things I have written in the past while I was feeling inspired.
On that same note, I feel as though I’ve caught a glimpse of what some of these scripture writers might have felt. The men who were commissioned to write scripture did have jurisdiction to write revelation for the entire church. They were apostles and prophets. The Lord had given them the authority to lead the church, and therefore, the word of God that they were receiving could come to us with authority. And even though some of these men were likely far more righteous than I am, they were still imperfect. There have also been times that I have gone back in my journal entries and found imperfect understandings, incomplete thoughts, or just the smallest fledglings of new knowledge. I think of Paul. If you read his epistles in chronological order, you see him grow in his own understanding of the Savior! His sermons describing grace become more eloquent and complete.
Much of the world believes scripture to be final, infallible; there is nothing left to say. This is extremely limiting to a God who has never ceased wanting to speak to us. This is extremely limiting to a God who is trying to teach us more about who He is and His plan for us, but we’re not ready to receive everything immediately. That doesn’t even begin to touch the idea that our language isn’t even perfect enough to describe what heaven can reveal; don’t we want to get better and better at expressing it? What if Paul stopped progressing after writing his final letter before his death? That was it. There was nothing else to learn or be said. What if we had only been given the first letter written by Paul? Having an understanding that scripture is the inspired writings of holy (imperfect) men means that the Lord can continue to reveal His will to us!
Scripture is the revealed word of God given to men, and it has not ceased.
By way of commandment
According to the title page of The Book of Mormon, this record was also written by way of commandment. The men who kept the records of the Nephites (as well as the men who abridged those records) were doing so because they were commanded.
To be totally honest, I don’t have a ton of commentary on this particular principle other than this: we have been commanded to keep a journal (even though we don’t always like to think about it), and I don’t think it’s because the Lord wants our posterity to hear all about our crush in the seventh grade. I think the Lord knows the power that can come from writing while being guided by the Spirit, and He wants us to find that power. Perhaps you have a hard time writing; try recording your thoughts. Most of us have phones with voice memo capabilities. I don’t believe it’s the writing so much as the expansion of inspired promptings. If you come across a thought in scripture or a feeling about a question you’ve been asking for a while, pause long enough to speak or write about it for a little bit. I can promise you from personal experience that the Lord has more to tell you if you’ll pause to hear it. The word of God continues on, and the commandment to write it down (or record it some manner) only furthers that process.
Spirit of prophecy
This section is like the commandment section; I don’t necessarily have a ton of commentary, but I still think it’s worth being brought to attention specifically. The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus Christ; the testimony of Christ enables the writing of scripture.
Once again, we do not have authority to write scripture for the entire church, but we do have a testimony of Christ, and it can lead us to write the word of God for our own lives as well as our circles of revelatory jurisdiction. I should also mention that my most powerful moments of writing what the Lord is trying to tell me often comes when I write about Christ. It’s not easy to just sit down and start writing about Christ spontaneously, at least not for me. Rather, I usually write about what’s going on in my life, I get it all out there on paper, and then I start to write it again with the perspective of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I reconsider what’s going on in my life through the lens of His promises, love, and power. These are definitely the times when I feel like He is revealing the most to me.
Interpretation by the gift of God
The Book of Mormon was written in reformed Egyptian, and it came to us by “the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof.” This is honestly a pretty significant claim that we lean on in the church. We testify that Joseph Smith, a simple farm boy, was able to translate this book in record timing through the power of God.
Perhaps we do not need to “translate” the word of God into our language, but there is personal and general relevance in this message. Whenever we seek to read the word of God, it needs to be interpreted by His power to the best of our ability. This has two implications. It means having a healthy understanding of our own imperfection and a willingness to be corrected as we mature in the gospel, but it also means pushing a significant portion of our energy towards having a communion experience with God as we read His word. If we want to get the most out of it and truly hear His word for us, it will require hearing from Him again. It is not enough to simply just read what’s already been written. God has not stopped giving His word, and this extends to the circumstances of reading what’s been written. When we read, He has more to say about His own mysteries as well as direct relevance to our own lives. Seeking that interpretation brings more of His word directly to you; it brings more “scripture.”
I testify of a Savior who is not finished speaking with His people and leading them. I testify that He continues to reveal His word, both on a church wide scale and an individual level. I testify that we can receive and write the word of God for our own lives and our own posterity. I testify of that because I feel and experience it all the time. It is through this process of recording (not just writing) His word that I have been able to experience the gospel in a way that has brought so many of the promises that have been made by the Savior.
And if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men. They are the frailties and mortal limitations of men who are trying to receive something heavenly into broken vessels. I testify that even some of these mistakes can be turned for our benefit because they push us to seek His word for ourselves. If we knew the word was completely written and perfect, we would not have to struggle to receive it for ourselves and develop the relationship with the Savior that He desires. I am so grateful for a Savior who continues to reveal His word because there is no way we can catch it all the first time.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
By Study and By Faith – Episode 10: Response to “The Gospel for Mormons”
Dec 21, 2023
by Zachary Wright
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we often run into people who criticize us for our beliefs. I served my mission in a place where the Church was often criticized by General Christians who wanted me to abandon my faith and accept what they believed to be “the true Jesus”. While they may seem confusing at first, it’s a common phenomenon for many Christians to believe that we, as members of the church, aren’t true Christians, and that we consequently, will be going to Hell. However, in my experience, I’ve found that many Christian antagonists of the church often bring a number of ideas that have questionable reality. This is what I want to focus on today.
In order to explore the dangers of some presuppositions those who oppose the Restoration often present, I wanted to focus this episode on Apologia Church in Arizona, specifically their pastors, Jeff Durbin and James White. They are a Denominational Baptist church, with a Reformed or Calvinist view of Salvation or Soteriology. Their pastors frequently level attacks against LDS Theology based on the presupposition we are not saved. Their claim is largely focused on three main areas of contention, which included:
We worship a God who is not the “God of the Bible”.
We believe in a “different” or “false” Jesus not depicted in the Biblical texts which can therefore not “save” as they define that term.
They believe we reject the “free grace” of God offered through Jesus as a result of our belief in “works” as a necessary evidence of our Covenant relationship with God.
From these ideas, they state that we as members of the church cannot be saved. They’ve produced many tracts and pamphlets explaining why they label us in this way. I will address a common one entitled: ‘The Gospel for Mormons’. As we discuss the issues, I will also share clips from a discussion a fellow Latter-day Saint had with members of the Apologia Church based in Utah to highlight some of the issues we face and the dangers of the presuppositions which form the foundation of their attacks. By using some of the skills we’ve learned throughout this series, we’re going to address the complaints found therein.
The pamphlet’s text will be in red. My references will be scattered throughout the response (as opposed to the end as they have been in previous articles), and I’ve added parentheticals in some instances to help clarify words that most people don’t know about, such as “soteriology” previously mentioned. If there are mistakes, they are the mistakes of men.
Let’s get into it.
THE GOSPEL FOR MORMONS
The Mormon church teaches a message that sounds so similar to Christianity, but it is fundamentally a different Gospel that cannot save.
Apologia Studios
It is a common misunderstanding, if an intentional misrepresentation, of those associated with Apologia to call the Church, “The Mormon Church”. Many who are hostile to the Church similarly refuse to call the church by its proper name.
(Kylie clip #1)
We are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which I will shorten to “The Church of Jesus Christ”. I don’t care as much about how people first hear our names (Jesus himself was known by many names) and the Church he founded was called “The Way” as in Acts and its members “Saints” as we do today. This pamphlet however, reiterates the same hostility as those who labeled the Saints at Antioch “Christians” or “Christ Worshippers” in derision. Interesting those who claim allegiance with Christ adopt the tactics of His opposition. The idea that these pastors refuse the basic requests of what the church wishes to be called already indicates a lack of respect
The “gospel” is found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. It’s the fact that Jesus came, died for us, and then rose again so that all may return to His presence. The LDS scriptures support that fully and completely as well (See D&C 76:40-42, 3 Nephi 27:13-14, 3rd article of faith, etc). There is no “Contrary Gospel” taught in The Church of Jesus Christ today. Joseph Smith is said to have taught:
The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 121, link here).
When asked by those not of our Faith, this should be our response to “what is ‘The Gospel’?”
MORMONISM BEGAN WITH A LIE
The lie was that the Heavenly Father came to Joseph Smith and told him not to join any church because they had it all wrong. All their creeds were an abomination, and all denominations were corrupt. So Joseph told the world that God had told him that the Christian church had fallen away, and it needed to be restored.
This is an interesting claim which presupposes religious claims are subject to some objective criteria which would identify them as “true” and a person might “lie”. This claim could not be other than an opinion based on perspective. Unless those associated with Apologia have some way to affirmatively disprove Joseph’s claim made on The Joseph Smith History respecting his interactions with God, I’m not sure how this could be a “lie”? Additionally, the claim “all churches” that existed then were “wrong” is (objectively speaking) an opinion, not a misstatement of fact that could form the basis of a lie. Representing as “a lie” someone’s admitted religious beliefs cannot be other than a product of deceit lacking context.
Considering the substance of Joseph’s claim to a restoration as a way to overcome a rejection of Prophets as seen in Matthew 23, is an objective claim for example, just ask Apologia if they accept the possibility of living Prophets and additional scripture consistent with the claims of Jesus and Paul.
Other churches chose to reject the concept of divine messengers, a hallmark of the original church established by God. Our belief is that such practices, and others, needed to be restored. Are they claiming this wasn’t the case? If so, why? They never explain.
One might initially point to Hebrews 1:1-2, which many General Christians will use to show that God doesn’t call messengers anymore. However, this is a self-defeating idea…The Book of Hebrews was (allegedly) written by an apostle/prophet, and future books were written by apostles/prophets.
This is a lie because two thousand years before Joseph came along with this revelation, God said that he would build his church, and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
This interpretation causes some problems for their position, not only logically because of their reliance on the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation (more on that in a moment), but also because what this tract is extrapolating is a translation variation that doesn’t match the true meaning of the Biblical Greek.
In the original Greek, this passage in Matthew 16:18 does not say “the gates of hell” as this argument claims, but rather “καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου” (pronounced Keh Pee-leh Ah-thoo) or “the gates of hades”. Most modern translations render this passage this way, and the fact that Pastor Durbin “reads Greek” and neglects to mention this important nuance is equally disconcerting. Hades was universally understood then as the place where spirits go after this life, making this phrase here a direct reference to physical death. Even Bible lexicons as old as Thayer’s refer to this place as the “the realm of the dead” (link here). If you don’t believe me, consider the following reference that links death with Hades from the Wisdom of Solomon (written about a century earlier):
12 For neither herb nor poultice cured them, but it was your word, O Lord, that heals all people.
13 For you have power over life and death; you lead mortals down to the gates of Hades and back again. (Wisdom of Solomon 16:12-13 NRSV, updated edition)
As we can see, even in ancient sources, there is a connection between “Hades” and “death”. We can even consult this elementary commentary on the verse;
[The Gates of Hades is] a familiar ancient expression for the realm of the dead (both in Greek literature, and in the Greek translation of the biblical gates of Sheol or death, e.g. Job 38:17, Isaiah 38:10); even martyrdom (vv. 21,24) cannot stop God’s plan (NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, pg 1659, online version can be bought here)
The NET Bible commentary also suggests that “Gates of Hades” be understood as the “power of death” (link here, best accessed on computer). Did physical death conquer the church? Did death defeat or conquer Jesus upon His own fate on the Cross? Theologically speaking, no, because thanks to Jesus Christ, all will be resurrected as He was. Already, this passage is being stripped from its context and exegetical meaning by the presented argument.
Let me turn the question back onto Apologia Church: What is (or which is) the church that the gates of Hades would not prevail against? What were its structure and teachings? Are these pastors claiming that the protestants (and especially those who are Calvinist or Reformed) adheres completely to those structures and teachings, including, but not limited to, Baptismal regeneration, Apostolic leadership, Salvation, Scriptural Interpretation, etc? Can these pastors demonstrate that Protestant theology (e.g. Sola Fide, Optional baptism, etc.) has existed as far back as Christ’s ministry? Who would they consider to be a “proto-Protestant” before the 15th or 16th centuries?
In Jude 3 we are told to earnestly contend for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints–already.
Where are they getting “already” from? I could be mistaken, but I don’t see that word in this verse.
(Kylie video #3)
As seen here, the usage of this passage is absurd in this context. Not only would their interpretation presume to close the canon with these verses in Jude, but another problem arises.
LDS scholar John Tvedtnes makes an excellent point that Abraham was taught the gospel (Gal 3:8), so is Jude correct in saying that the gospel was only delivered once and for all? If the Gospel is never to be revealed again, what use is there for the angel in Revelation 14:6-7 to come to deliver the gospel? Understanding the verse the way the pamphlet is using it provides conflicts and contradictions in the Bible. Is the idea that the Bible has contradictions a position Pastor White and Pastor Durbin are willing to concede?
The promise given to us in Daniel 7:13-14 is that the Messiah would come and that he would have a kingdom that would never be destroyed. Speaking of that promised Kingdom, Jesus said in Mark 1 that, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”
Let’s pretend that this interpretation regarding apostasy is what the author of the Book of Daniel meant for a minute. Seeing as Daniel 7:16-22 seems to indicate that this time of “spreading the gospel” occurs before “the judgment”, who is to say that the kingdom of God would be done “rolling forth” until that time? That alleged apostasy wouldn’t even really affect this interpretation of Daniel’s prophecy, seeing as all God would have to do is ensure that the gospel was done rolling forth by that time. With this in mind, where do these passages exclude a chance of apostasy?
Scripture tells us that the Messiah has been seated on his throne; he is King of kings and Lord of lords. He brought the kingdom already. Joseph was two thousand years behind.
Jesus brought it, the people rejected it, and Jesus restored it again the same way he did it all the other times in scriptural history: by calling a messenger. Seeing as God called messengers in both the Old and the New Testaments, why would God just stop doing that in our day? The burden of proof would be on those using this argument against the Church to demonstrate why this is no longer the case if they are using the Biblical texts.
(Kylie clip #4)
That’s why this really is about God and His gospel. We are told, “Before me there was no god formed, neither shall there be after me.” (Isaiah 43:10) “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no God.” (Isaiah 44:6)
Putting aside for the moment the fact that historically the Jews believed in the existence of other Gods, let’s break down the wording for these verses.
The phrase “None else besides me” is a Hebrew figure of speech to mean “the best of them all”. The linked verses below are where the phrase is used in a boasting sense. Consider how Isaiah 47:8 used this phrase:
8 Therefore [Babylon] hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: (Emphasis added)
15 This is the rejoicing city [Nineveh] that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand. (Emphasis added)
Are these anthropomorphized cities claiming to be the only cities in existence? Not at all, rather these cities of Babylon or Nineveh are just claiming they’re the best or the most powerful. Therefore, this would entail that Isaiah’s claim about God is not that He was the only one, but rather that He was the most powerful.
To support this argument further, we can turn to other ancient documents. The Thanksgiving Scroll, numbered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, affirms this point, and offers clarification to the nature of the ancient Israelite belief (and accurately reflects the grammatical argument I’m making in this section):
See, you are the prince of the Gods and the king of the glorious ones, lord of every spirit ruler of every creature. Apart from you, nothing happens, and nothing is known without your will. There is no-one besides you, no-one matches your strength, nothing equals your glory, there is no price on your might. -1QHa XVIII 8-10 (Emphasis Added)
As we can read here, we have God being represented as being the greatest among all the Elohim, and yet being told that “There is no-one besides you”. Again, even if we were to reject these passages as being “non-biblical”, the grammatical argument still stands. With this information in mind, how do these verses demonstrate a belief that God is the only God in existence?
But Joseph Smith disagreed. He said “We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity, I will refute that idea, and will take away and do away the veil, so that you may see… you have got to learn how to be God’s yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you.” (Journal of Discourses, Volume 6 pgs. 3-4).
The historical best practice here is to go back to the original sources, that is, the original documents given by Willard Richards, William Clayton, Wilford Woodruff, and Thomas Bullock. None of them say verbatim what they claim was said (link here)
Let’s put aside the fact that the LDS belief system doesn’t condemn anyone from believing in eternal regression or not, and even a notable few general authorities have seemed to view the King Follett Discourse differently than what is implied from the contextually butchered passage cited above. This concern is still predicated on the idea that teaching the existence of multiple gods/elohim is wrong, when that, of course, still needs to be demonstrated.
HE IS NOT A CREATED BEING
This goes against everything God says who he is. In Deuteronomy 6 he tells us that He’s the only God and the only God that has ever been.
See previous, but to prove the point I made before about this strict monotheistic belief of the Israelites being anachronistic, consider this quote made by a study bible brought up by the Jewish Publication Society:
Many modern readers regard the Shema [Deut 6:4] as an assertion of monotheism, a view that is anachronistic. In the context of ancient Israelite religion, it served as a public proclamation of exclusive loyalty to YHWH as the sole Lord of Israel . . . the v. makes not a quantitative argument (about the number of deities) but a qualitative one, about the nature of the relationship between God and Israel. Almost certainly, the original force of the v., as the medieval Jewish exegetes [noted], was to demand that Israel show exclusive loyalty to our God, YHWH–but not thereby to deny the existence of other gods. In this way, it assumes the same perspective as the first commandment of the Decalogue, which, by prohibiting the worship of other gods, presupposes their existence. (The Jewish Study Bible [2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 361, link here)
This makes sense. After all, didn’t God just finish saying that they shouldn’t put any other gods before him (Exodus 20:3), again implying that the Israelites believed in the existence of other gods? I challenge Pastor Durbin and White to refute the argument itself instead of dismissing it as “liberal scholarship”. Why would this interpretation of the OT here be incorrect?
Also, consider another refutation to this argument by Paula Frederiksen, in Bible Review 19:01 (February 2003):
In antiquity, all monotheists were polytheists….No ancient monotheist was a modern monotheist. Divinity expressed itself along a gradient, and the High God—be he pagan, Jewish or Christian—hardly stood alone. Lesser divinities filled in the gap, cosmic and metaphysical, between humans and God (link here)
These quotes should do for now, but there are plenty more.
The Bible teaches plainly that there is only one God and he eternally exists as three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Where does it plainly say He exists as one God in three persons? No text of the Bible states this
(Kylie clip #5)
When John 1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” it is speaking of Jesus.
Yes.
We are told that Jesus created everything in existence and without him, nothing has come in to being that came into being (John 1:3). Jesus is God who took on flesh, John 1:14 goes on to tell us that God took on flesh and He dwelt among us. The one and only true God, in the person of Jesus Christ, the creator of all things, came into his own creation and took on flesh. He is not a created being.
A common mistake in claiming Latter-day Saints believe in a “different Jesus” is this:
(Kylie clip #6)
The LDS church does not teach that Christ was a created being. God and all of God’s spirit children are eternal and have always existed (see D&C 93). Even the King Follett Sermon they cited earlier (from the version they cited earlier) affirms this fact when it says “I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits [has] no beginning, neither will it have an end.” (link here) With this in mind, how does this aspect of LDS theology contradict John 1:3, and other creation passages regarding Jesus? After all, John 1:3 (in most translations) is rendered as God creating everything that was made. If we were not “made” then how does this passage contradict LDS theology?
It is true that God is our Father. He organized and formed our spirit bodies, and I would rightfully classify that as a type of creation. That being said, that tenet of our beliefs does not counteract the idea that our intelligences have always existed. In this manner, we both have been created, and have also always existed. They would need to unequivocally prove Creatio Ex-Nihilo (Creation from nothing) to counteract the LDS position on this.
He is not the spirit offspring of heavenly father and one of his goddess wives, which is what Mormonism teaches (see: Messages of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4:327ff).
Their source is interesting. Anyone can look at a photocopy of the source in question here. It does, in fact, refer to the concept that Jesus Christ is the literal son of Heavenly Father (it cites Brigham Young’s comments on the matter to support this). It does not, however, affirm any kind of polygamy in the heavens, nor does it imply that Jesus is the offspring of said polygamy.
Charles Harrell aptly points out that a notable few cautioned against inferences that involved any kind of sexual intimacy between God and Mary (See This Is My Doctrine, pg 182, link here), and the church publicly condemned Orson Pratt’s magazine The Seer when he tried to propagate the idea (among other things) that God had multiple wives (link here). More can be said about this, but with these sources in mind, does that sound like a resounding affirmation among the leaders (or even the church as a whole) regarding this doctrine?
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” -Colossians 1:16-17
Jesus created all things. He is not Lucifer’s brother—He is the creator of Lucifer.
Doesn’t this verse contradict the argument they were trying to make with Isaiah 43:10? As they state, if Satan was created by Jesus Christ, and if Paul is correct in calling him a θεός (pronounced “theos” the Greek term meaning “god”, and is the exact term used to describe Satan in 2 Cor 4:4. It’s how the term Elohim is rendered in the LXX), wouldn’t that contradict the argument they just made that God is the only true deity in existence that no other one exists?
And before anyone tells me that this isn’t what Paul meant, I’ll remind the reader that even older sources like Thayer’s Bible Lexicon states that “θεός is used of whatever can in any respect be likened to God, or resembles him in any way” (link here), and that the same Greek term using the same conjugation is used in reference to God a few verses later. “Elohim” is used in a similar way in the OT, and I’ve already discussed in part the ancient Israelite understanding that there are multiple upper-tier Elohim. The argument here is that Satan is a lesser god, one that isn’t ultimately sovereign, but a god nonetheless, which actually lines up closer to the original conception of Satan in the Hebrew Bible.
Consider how non-LDS scholar Cory Baugher puts it:
The sons of God (bene ’elohim) are divine, spiritual beings that rule on Yahweh’s behalf (Gen. 6:4; Deut. 32:8; Ps. 29:1; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). The Hebrew phrase “son(s) of x” means the son(s) is the same essence as x, so son(s)= x…These sons of God are a part of the divine council of Yahweh. They serve as His council, representatives, and host (army). (link here)
In other words, the members of the divine Council, were the same essence as God, and acted on his behalf. He then cites Job Chapter 1 to prove his point, saying that the figure “Satan” used to be a member of the Divine Council. I’ll use a translation that I think shows his point better, and will likely be more acceptable to the reader, and to Pastor White and Pastor Durbin.
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. (Job 1:6 ESV)
After citing this scripture, this scholar continues:
The Hebrew word the satan [or “Satan”] means “adversary” and is always translated as “adversary” except in Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; and Zech. 3:1-2 with no real contextual or theological evidence for it. All other times the Hebrew word the satan appears it is translated as the noun “adversary” (Num. 22:22, 32; 1 Sam. 29:4; 2 Sam. 19:22; 1 Kgs. 5:4; 1 Kgs. 11:14, 23; 1 Chr. 21:1; Ps. 109:6) or the verb “accuser” (Ps. 38:20; Ps. 71:13; Ps. 109:4; Ps. 109:20; Ps. 109:29; Zech. 3:1).” (link here; Minor edits in brackets made for ease of reading)
This is a little technical, but this scholar is basically saying that Satan, or “the accuser” on God’s behalf, was initially understood in Hebrew thought as being a member of the “sons of God”, who were of the “same essence” as God. They were given authority by God to rule over nations, but ultimately were under God’s power. The ways that the concept of “satan” have developed over history are complicated, but the reader can analyze the cited article if they don’t believe me. When we take these ideas for what they were, any historical argument that Paul is only metaphorically referring to Satan as being “like a god, but not really one in essence”, would be based on assumptions in light of the previously cited sources I mentioned. And yet, this doesn’t contradict any claims the Bible makes about God’s superiority. Baugher continues:
Though the Bible clearly teaches that other gods do exist, it all makes it clear that Yahweh is absolutely sovereign over these gods as totally unique and incomparable. (ibid)
(Kyle clip #7)
Therefore, under the line of logic here in the pamphlet’s argument, either Pastor Durbin and Pastor White must accept that the Bible contradicts itself, or accept that this verse is saying something else. There’s more that can be said about this passage NOT being monotheistic, but this tangent is long enough already.
Going back to the “Jesus and Lucifer are brothers” thing, in case anyone wanted some other quotes to think about, let’s consider what some of these earlier Christians had to say when commenting on the Septuagint (The Greek translation of the Old Testament) rendering of what is now known as Psalm 110. Note whom they refer to as coming out of the womb after Jesus Christ:
The womb of the Lord – the hidden recess of Deity out of which He brought forth His Son. In the Psalm: Out of the womb, before Lucifer, have I borne Thee [the Son]. (Melito, Bishop of Sardis, link here)
Listen to the voice of the Father to the Son: ‘Before Lucifer I have begotten Thee.’ He who was begotten before Lucifer Himself illuminates all. A certain one was named Lucifer, who fell; for he was an angel and became a devil; and concerning him the Scripture said, “Lucifer, who did arise in the morning, fell.”And why was he Lucifer? Because, being enlightened, he gave forth light. But for what reason did he become dark! Because he abode not in the truth. (Augustine, Homilies and Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate III, Chapter 1, 15-18, 7, link here)
Therefore wilt thou give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. For in thee was born the prince begotten before Lucifer, whose birth from the Father is before all time. (Jerome, Epistle to Eustochium, Letter 108, 10, link here)
The tradition behind these texts is tricky, I understand that. However, these quotes clearly indicate that they believed that Jesus and Lucifer were begotten from the same womb. Would they deny that these early bishops, leaders, and apologists were Christians for believing that Lucifer was begotten of the Father after Jesus Christ was? How would their teachings differ from the LDS conceptualization of how Jesus and Lucifer were “brothers” so to speak?
This is important because the Mormon church teaches a message that sounds so similar to Christianity, but is fundamentally a gospel that cannot save. It teaches another Christ, and that is a Christ that cannot save you.
(Kyle clip #8)
With all due respect, according to their soteriology (i.e. the understanding of how to be saved), the only person ultimately responsible for the people who aren’t saved is God. Why? Because according to them, God created every aspect of us, including our desires and abilities, and controls and wills the occurrences leading up to everything that happened/happens to us. The burden of proof is on them to explain why God created people in such a way where they would almost have no choice but to disobey (or as John Calvin taught, be willed to disobey), and then punish the people for doing exactly what He designed and willed them to do.
Again, if I am, or anyone else is, misunderstanding their positions, I openly invite correction, but the natural conclusions that are drawn from Calvinism, Creation Ex-Nihilo, and an Unknowable God are rather disconcerting.
End Part #1
It’s a Christ that is not found in scripture, and Jesus says in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, the life, and no man comes to the Father except through Him.
The Trinity is a concept that is foreign to biblical texts as well. For example, Greek terms like “Homoousios” (found in the Nicene creed meaning “one in substance”, which later creeds developed to mean “Consubstantial”) are not found describing God in the Bible (sources indicate that more of it came from influences of Greek philosophy, link here). You can’t find the concepts of these words either when it comes to describing God. This argument about something being absent from scripture may come across as hypocritical.
HOW CAN WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD
Jesus is the only way we can have peace with God,
Yes.
Mormonism teaches of a different Christ.
Different than what version of Christ? The Bible’s version? With all due respect, that’s the version I’ve been working off of so far. I’ve demonstrated that the verses they’ve cited don’t support their arguments when scrutinized on a historical and/or exegetical level. I don’t blame them, that’s a problem with the arguments they present and their interpretation of the Bible. I have nothing against them personally. Still, they have yet to demonstrate how our “Christ” stands contradictory to anything that the biblical texts teach about him.
It actually tells people that you can, through obedience to the laws and principles of the gospel, move your way through exaltation to become a god or goddess of your own planet, like the god of this earth did, and hardly anything could be further from the truth.
This argument grossly misrepresented LDS belief. I already talked about how we’re under no obligation to assume that God the Father was a human being like us. The LDS church has never taught that strict obedience earns our salvation. Instead, verses of the contextual LDS scripture teach:
I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. (Mosiah 2:21)
And moreover, I say unto you, that salvation doth not come by the law alone; and were it not for the atonement, which God himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of his people, that they must unavoidably perish, notwithstanding the law of Moses. (Mosiah 13:28)
Now they did not suppose that salvation came by the law of Moses; but the law of Moses did serve to strengthen their faith in Christ; and thus they did retain a hope through faith, unto eternal salvation, relying upon the spirit of prophecy, which spake of those things to come. (Alma 25:16, emphasis added)
Ultimately, exaltation is given by God’s grace as we prove our loyalty to him. Do these LDS scriptures say that we earn our way to heaven? If not, why would they be included in our modern-day scriptures? Why wouldn’t modern prophets (or even Joseph Smith) just edit them out?
One may initially bring up Moroni 10:32 to claim that grace saves us only after we serve God with all our “heart, might, mind and strength”. However, one need only read the next verse to see that Moroni clarifies his point by saying:
And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot. (Moroni 10:33)
Furthermore, regarding their assertion that we as LDS believe that we can become a “god or goddess of their own planet”, I assert that this is a gross oversimplification of our belief. Here is what I think can be clearly said about the matter.
We believe in the concept of Exaltation, wherein we will become like God (See D&C 76:58), even so, claims about us getting our own planet are not found in the scriptural canon
Many Latter-day Saints are partial to a belief in a “creative potential in the eternities” (link here)
Some leaders of the church have provided commentary as to what they believe that creative potential entails. For example, Spencer W. Kimball stated that “We educate ourselves in the secular field and in the spiritual field so that we may one day create worlds, people and govern them.” (link here, but it’s originally found in Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball).
With this in mind, church leaders have consistently leaned away from the idea that we “get planets” as some kind of reward for us and our posterity to live on (link here)
I think this is where people get confused about the church’s dialogue on this. This doctrine isn’t the equivalent of God patting us on the back, and giving us a lollipop at the end of a doctor’s visit. Such sentiments of creating worlds reflect the idea that we are participating in the activities that God does, and they would need to demonstrate how this is a theologically problematic doctrine.
The bible teaches that there is only one God eternal, and we will never be a God one day.
It’s worth mentioning that many of the early church fathers believed in a concept of deification. However, it’s worth noting that some differences exist between their concept of deification and ours (which chiefly had to do with how they viewed our relationship to God due to the convergence of Greek Philosophy with Christianity). These discrepancies pose no threat to LDS theology for a few reasons, mostly due to the relationship prophets have with scripture intertwined with the concept of modern revelation.
Why would it be a problem to believe in the LDS concept of deification in light of modern revelation? We don’t believe that we will replace God anymore than we believe that Jesus Christ replaces God the Father in our theology. They would need to demonstrate how this understanding of deification is incorrect (after, of course, proving Sola Scriptura due to its relationship to my argument about modern revelation).
So the important question is this: how can we know this God? It’s not about minor differences, musical style, color of carpet in church, or whether or not you drink coffee. It’s really a question of how we can be reconciled to God and have peace with Him?
How can we be reconciled to God? Through Jesus Christ. That is what the LDS scriptures and leaders universally teach.
The Bible says in Romans 3 that there is none righteous, no not one. There are none who seek after God, that there is no fear of God before our eyes. Paul goes on to say that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of law. He says that the Law, and our inability to fulfill it, can only reveal our sin to us and shut our mouths before a Holy God.
I’m going to assume that they’re referring to the Law of Moses here, seeing as that is what Paul is referring to in his epistle to the Romans. See the above-stated Book of Mormon scriptures about how the Law doesn’t save us, rather it is “faith unto salvation”. It is clear that the Book of Mormon and the Bible are united at least in that regard.
The only question to reconcile at this point is what Paul meant here when he talked about faith. We’ve talked about faith previously, back when I talked about logical fallacies, but to recap it’s likely that being “saved by faith,” doesn’t mean “Salvation for a mere intellectual acceptance of Jesus”; rather it is a loyalty that saves us or a belief that leads to action (Note again that this is a linguistic and historical argument, not a theological one). This is affirmed by LDS and Non-LDS scholars alike (link here and here), but think about how this interpretation resembles the LDS position on faith and salvation. Would anyone who affirms the idea that “faith” mean “faithfulness or loyalty”, be labeled as “non-Christian”? Would these pastors, with equal ferocity, label their fellow Evangelical scholars as being “non-Christian”?
Since what Jesus says is true, and he said the wrath of God abides on us, how can we hope to have eternal life?
Through Jesus Christ.
THE ONE TRUE GOD IN THE FLESH
Our hope is in the gospel because of what he did.
Yes.
Jesus is the one true God in the flesh, Who went to the cross to take full punishment for his people. What they deserved, He took. He was buried, and he rose again. This was not so you could have His work in addition to your good works.
See my comments above on faith and loyalty. On top of that, James seems to indicate that good works/actions are an important aspect of faith.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:14-17 NRSV)
How should we understand these verses? Is there any conflict here between what I’ve demonstrated about the LDS concept of faith, and what is discussed in the Book of James?
The Bible says that our good works are nothing but filthy rags to God. Consider this: Galatians 5 tells us that we are severed from Christ if we seek to be justified by the Law.
“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law;” (Galatians 5:4)
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
As stated previously, the Book of Mormon teaches the same thing. The church just holds a deeper understanding of faith thanks to historical context and modern revelation.
Compare that to the Mormon Teaching:
“for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” (2 Nephi 25:23)
We’ve talked about this verse already back in my Logical Fallacies video, but to recap, the phrase “after all you can do” likely means “in spite of all we do”, and one can read more about this claim in the link here. It’s basically the same way we use the phrase “after all I’ve done”, If I was to say “Can you forgive me…after all I’ve done?” I’m not asking for forgiveness because of what I’ve done, rather, I’m asking for forgiveness in spite of what I’ve done.
The beauty and freedom found in the gospel is this: Christ became a curse to His people. There is no work that you can do to help establish your own righteousness. Galatians 3 actually tells us that if you try to establish that righteousness for yourself, the Law will become a curse to you. But instead, Christ became a curse for God’s people by taking the punishment they deserved and giving them a righteousness that’s not their own.
The beauty of the restored Gospel is that Jesus saves us, and we can understand and strengthen our faithful relationship with Jesus Christ in a more profound way thanks to modern scripture, and divine revelation. We can have an assurance of our good standing with him. Jesus Christ is the way to return to the Father. On top of that, we continue to receive modern revelation from chosen messengers of God, who provide increased insight into what He wants for us today. While I understand their position, I fundamentally reject it, because to do otherwise would be to reject the truths that God has revealed today. The heavens are opened, and the Lord God Almighty speaks.
He lives, and He guides his people. I think I speak for most, if not all, of us when I say that we want all people to come and see it for themselves, and appreciate what we have to offer. If these pastors refuse to do so, I respect their decision but cordially ask that they cease their unwarranted assault on His true and living church.
Now, if anyone from Apologia church is hearing, reading, or watching this, I want to reinforce this idea right now that I’m trying to act in good faith here. I’m not deliberately trying to mislead, and I’m willing to engage with you on this. If you have any questions, I urge you to reach out to me so we can have further discussion. I am more than happy to edit my article, revise my position, and even delete these videos if you can unequivocally prove that my position is wrong. Even so, I think that the points I have presented here pose a serious problem for the conclusions you’re trying to reach, and I plead with you to not dismiss them.
As for everyone else, I want you to consider what principles I employed from previous videos to help me arrive at my conclusions. What questions did I ask? How did I evaluate my sources? What logical arguments did I present? What epistemic sources did I pull from to establish my points? What misinformation did I try to correct, and how did I try to correct it? If you look hard enough, you’ll be able to see my methodology, and you can decide for yourself whether you find my points to be convincing. As you do so, I hope you’re able to recognize how asking these questions pertains to critical thinking, and I hope that being able to use these skills can teach you to be the kinds of thinkers and believers God wants us all to be.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – The Book of Revelation
Dec 11, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Book of Revelation
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Oh my goodness, we have made it to Week 50. And we’re almost done with this project. The whole goal this year has been to give you a peek into how your Evangelical friends and family see things differently – and how we can approach conversation a little bit differently with them and perhaps have more success sharing the goodness of our faith with them. And it’s been an amazing year for me – I’ve clarified some of my own thinking on this topic and hopefully helped some of you too. I’ve received so many kind and thoughtful notes from some of you that I never could have met any other way, so I’m incredibly grateful for this project.
However, and I’ve alluded to this before, trying to same format with the Book of Mormon just doesn’t make sense. It’s worked this year because we’re doing the New Testament, and maybe we’ll do it again when Old Testament year comes around, but for now we’ve got 3 episodes left in this series. Today the topic is on the Book of Revelation, next week it’s about Christmas, and what I’d like to do the week after that, our final week, is to do quick question-and-answer for anything you would like to know that we haven’t covered yet, that you were hoping to have addressed, or that you’re still wondering about. You can either put questions in the comments below, or email me at jroach@fairlatterdaysaints.org. I’d like to fit in as many questions as possible so hit me up if you’ve got something.
And, just a tiny bit more business before we start, I’ve teased you already about what will happen next, and it’s 2 things. First, there will be a new concept taking over this weekly format that relates closely to the Book of Mormon, and it has to do with helping your loved ones who are in a faith crisis. I will not be hosting that one, but I know who is and I’m very excited for you to get to hear a lifetime of wisdom on this topic from them. AND, we have a new show with a new format coming out. The idea is that we’ll do 5-6 episodes on specific topics in scripture or church history analyzing them from multiple perspectives – historical, cultural, textual, psychological, and more. I am one of 3 hosts on that show and it’s been so fun to plan it out with our team. The other two hosts are 1) Sarah Allen – who is basically everyone’s research hero – she wrote that incredibly comprehensive response to the CES Letter that is something like 70 parts. There simply is not a more comprehensive collection of research on that than what Sarah has done…. 2) Zach Wright who is the young scholar who hosts the By Study and By Faith podcast. He’s so bright and so quick, if you don’t know Zach yet I think you will really enjoy his energy and perspective. Yesterday we filmed a couple of trailers for this new show that will come out later this month.
Last thing….this week I got to film episodes with two of our partners – Scripture Central’s show Let’s Get Real with Stephen Jones; and the Saints Unscripted show. Both were on my other research area which is sexual abuse in the church and they were great fun to do. You can check those videos out on their respective channels.
Okay, let’s get started for today. We’re going to talk about the Book of Revelation. The reality is that Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals alike are confused by this book, kind of afraid of it, and often prone to taking it out of context. Why? Well, frankly because it’s a weird book. It’s a vision, it’s a dream, and just like your dreams, sometimes symbols intermix in weird ways and then morph and mix again.
Another way to say the same thing is to say that it’s a book that has been mostly treated as a subjective text – that is, a reading the reader brings meaning to based on their own culture, perspective, time in history, personality, and life details. You know a Roarsch test is – the ink blot pictures a psychologist holds up and asks the client to say what they see – well, many of the treatments of Revelation have been little more than that. It’s a subjective text that the reader brings his or her own meaning to. Think about a scenario where you’re telling a group of friends about a dream you had, and each one offers a slightly different interpretation. Who’s right? Well, who is to say?
But this gets complicated for us, Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals alike, and honestly, for every other group out there. Revelation is a difficult-to-understand book. And we’re not going to dive into explaining it here today – that’s the task for plenty of other shows – but I do want to talk about the different ways we approach a text like this that is just so weird.
And really, the differences here come down to our beliefs about prophecy, covenants, and dispensations. But let me back up and tell you why that’s important. So, the book of Revelation is a very specific type of prophecy called apocalyptic literature. A regular prophecy foretells something in the future – but not necessarily on an epic global scale. For example, in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, we get a prophecy that Babylon Will Rule Over Judah for 70 Years. Now, that’s a pretty earth-shaking prophecy if you happen to live in that time, especially if you’re living in Judah. But this type of prophecy is very specific to the people living in a certain time and place. Your life, and my life, are not significantly impacted by the face that Babylon ruled over Judah for 70 years. However, what we call apocalyptic literature is about events that will impact all of humanity. There is no way for the events of the Book of Revelation to unfold without it impacting every human being forever. And all of this applies to both Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints.
Where we have differences has to do with how our understanding of covenant theology and dispensationalism intersect. In the Evangelical world a person’s beliefs are either formed by the idea that God makes covenants with humanity OR the belief that God deals differently with humanity in different dispensations. But you generally can’t have both. It’s an either/or situation. You can find lots of Evangelicals, especially of the Calvinistic persuasion, who very much believe in covenants in a similar way to how we do. But those Evangelicals would absolutely cringe at the idea of talking about the different dispensations. And vice-versa, the Evangelicals who think about how God works in the various dispensations are very unlikely to see him also working through Covenants.
But Latter-day Saints don’t have this problem. We easily talk about how God deals with groups and individuals through covenant, and we also see how God works differently in different dispensations. It wasn’t until after I joined the church that I even put that together. Like, wait, they’re integrating both?!? It sort of blew my mind because in the Evangelical world those 2 are water and oil. So how does this impact how we read Revelation?
Well, an Evangelical dispensationalist is very likely to read Revelation literally. They try to see a one-to-one correspondence between the symbols in Revelation and the unfolding events of history. For example, “This symbol in the book of Revelation represents that nation of the Soviet Union, and this one represents the United States…” There is a lot of concern for making sure every person knows the saving message of Jesus before the Book of Revelation unfolds. They really deeply want everyone to hear about Christ. Meanwhile, the Evangelicals who think of their relationship with God as part of a covenant tend to think through Revelation really differently. They believe that certain human events can trigger the end times – primarily meaning here that every human being who is supposed to be saved, has been saved. Evangelicals in this camp – roughly 60% of all Evangelicals – believe that only some humans are able to be saved. The problem is that no one knows which humans are to be saved, and which aren’t. Only God knows if he made you for salvation or damnation. So the end times begin when the final person God has chosen for salvation is saved.
And Latter-day Saints kind of combine these two views. We believe that all are God’s children and he would like all of his children back and this promotes our entire missionary enterprise. This is our thinking about all of humanity as a whole. But at the same time, we believe in covenants and that God will keep his end of the covenant with us as individuals. We would agree with them that “God will save who he will save,” We just happen to believe he wants to save everyone.
In addition, our views about prophecy are different. Evangelicals don’t buy into the idea that God has further light and knowledge to give. So they have no modern teaching about what to do with Revelation, they’re kind of left on their own here. While the leaders in our church have given clarity on how to understand many things from the Bible, including this confusing book.
So, all of this to say, the Book of Revelation is rather confusing to most people, and having a conversation with an Evangelical friend might leave you both more confused than when you began! What to do? Here is my advice….The glorious end of the book is that God puts everything right and a place exists where his people can be with him forever. That part could certainly lead you to a good conversation.
Okay, 2 weeks left. Please let me know if you have questions specific to Evangelicals that I haven’t been able to answer yet, I’d be glad to use them in my wrap up episode in a couple weeks. See you next time.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1–3 John; Jude
Dec 04, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Do You Have the Holy Ghost?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Hi friends, and welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. If you wondered if you missed last week’s episode, it wasn’t you, it was me. And sometimes life is like that. Several of you reached out with kind notes asking if I was okay and I’m grateful for your caring. And here we are, back on track now.
As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I also wanted to tell you….I got to run up to Salt Lake this last week and participate in a preview of Come Follow Me for next year. There are some structural changes in the manual that will likely make it easier for families as well as new material that was not in the manual last time we went through it 4 years ago. I got to take home a physical copy and honestly, if you have kids I recommend getting a physical copy. The digital copies have access to all of the children’s activities, but you will have to print things out and the physical copy has everything in one place.
So, I’m behind a week and here is how I’m going to solve that problem. Today you’re going to get the content from last week, and I’m going to combine the text for this week and next into my episode for next week – they’re both in Revelation and it’s easy enough to cover in the same talk.
Okay, today we’re going to talk about the Holy Ghost from last week’s readings. One of the questions I’ve received at least a couple of times in the last year goes something like: How can Evangelicals claim to have the Holy Ghost, I thought our church was the only church with authority to give the gift of the Holy Ghost. And it’s a good question, you can see why it would be confusing because Evangelicals absolutely do claim to have the Holy Ghost, though they’re much more likely to refer to him as the Holy Spirit. So, what is that like for them?
We’ve talked about this a bit before on this show regarding the “charismatic” or “pentecostal” side of the Evangelical world, but what about the rest of them? Because here is their dilemma: There is no possibility for new authoritative revelation. So anything they feel from the Spirit does not have the same idea underpinning it that God can reveal new things. In fact, they are warned against believing that God might reveal something new to a person through subjective means. Whatever they hear from the Spirit will be echoed in the Scriptures, and that is now they know it’s true. The problem, of course, is that there are millions of choices a person has to make over the course of their lifetime that the Bible does not address, and can not address specifically. They have to take broad principles from the scriptures, apply them to what they feel the Spirit is saying, and only move forward if they see a match. Some of this is a very good safeguard – they have a good understanding that the Spirit is not going to tell them to do something wicked. If you boil the whole endeavor down to it’s most basic parts the idea you’re left with is that the Spirit can remind them of things that the Bible has already said, He can contextualize things the Bible has already said, but not much more.
And in some ways, dear Latter-day Saint friends, they have it easier. They view the scriptures as a check-and-balance against the subjective experience of hearing the Spirit. It’s a cleaner process, far less messy. There is another way they have it easier, but it doesn’t always work out fo them very well – that is they have no one above themselves telling them what the scriptures or Spirit are actually saying. The vast majority of them are going to make an honest attempt to listen to both scripture and spirit in an open way that allows God to guide them. But we little humans are excellent at self-deception, even when it comes to spiritual things. It’s very easy to mistake one’s own desires for the Spirit. We have this problem too – all humans do – but our risk is mitigated a tiny bit because we have a Prophet who can give a final word on big things. We don’t need – or want – to have a Prophet giving us exact directions on every single thing. But there is some rest available in the fact that we’re not left alone to figure it all out by ourselves. The difference here for Evangelicals is that they do accept pastors and others to teach them, but those teachers are employed by the will of the listener. If the Evangelical person does not want to listen to a particular teacher or pastor, they don’t. And they feel no compulsion to see that person in authority. While Latter-day Saints are much more likely to see the goodness of having someone with authority being able to teach us.
So, do Evangelicals have the Holy Spirit? I will speak for me, not the church, not FAIR, just myself. Long before I knew very much about our church at all, I know that I had the influence of the Holy Ghost in my life -guiding me, teaching me, leading me. At the most basic definition, that is the gift of the Holy Ghost. So, what’s different now that I’ve joined this church, been baptized and confirmed? Well, honestly, it’s not a lot different in terms of feeling the Spirit and allowing him to lead me. The difference is the presence of covenants.
In the Evangelical church someone can hear the Spirit, and as long as it confirms basically what is in scripture, then it’s considered a good thing. For me, now as a Latter-day Saint, the Spirit’s role is to provide a broader kind of guidance that allows me to do the things I’ve already been asked to do, or promised to do. It’s not about confirming the scriptures – it’s about how do I live out the covenants I’ve made. Now, there are Evangelicals who believe in covenant theology, but the role o the Spirit is still kind of stuck just being able to confirm what scripture says. And I’m sure other people’s experience is different than mine, I can only tell you my experience.
Okay, that’s about all I’ve got to say on that. Next week we’ll do Revelation – which is always weird, but that will be fun. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 and 2 Peter
Nov 20, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Priesthood of all Believers
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about priesthood of all believers. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
It is Thanksgiving week here in the US, so happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate. We got snow on the mountains here in Utah County, so there is plenty to be thankful for in these parts. I hope it’s a week of gratitude for you too, no matter where you live.
Okay, today we’re going to talk about one of the most misunderstood verses in the New Testament when it comes to conversation between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints: The priesthood of all believers. We’ll start with 1 Peter 2:5:
You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Now, no Latter-day Saint that I know of would disagree with that verse or verses like it. There is no quibble as to if this is a good verse translated properly or not. The question becomes what does it mean by “priesthood”? And as with most things, digging down a little into history and language helps us clear up the confusion.
Let’s start with history. So, rewind all the way back to before the Protestant Reformation. In 1517 Martin Luther has had it with the corrupt practices of the Catholic church and nails his 95 thesis to the door of the Wittenburg Chapel. Luther had 95 complaints and social media hadn’t been invented yet, so nailing something to the door of the church was what he had available to him. A lot of that document has to do with the concept of purgatory and the paying of indulgences. Indulgences were purchased for money by living people in essence to shave off some of the time a dead person would have to serve in purgatory. Sometimes they’ve been wrongly thought of as purchasing a free pass to commit some sin, and there may have been some of that happening, but what Luther was really upset about was the idea that a living person could impact the experience of a dead person- without that person having to accept the work. Luther wasn’t even primarily mad at the idea that a living person could do some proxy work for dead people – he was mad that indulgences discouraged the purchaser from doing works of mercy in a way that would cause growth in their own soul. His logic was: How could people who were not pious give any assistance toward the piety of dead people? It would be as if we were baptizing people for the dead but there were no requirements on the righteous living of the person doing the work. Luther saw this issue really clearly. By the end of the 95 Thesis Luther makes it clear that he’s not trying to do away with proxy work altogether, he just wants to have it be done in such a way that requires righteousness from living people.
And what Luther was trying to do, he states this very clearly, is to begin a conversation among the religious scholars of the day. But by 1520 (just 3 years later) the whole thing spins a bit out of control for him as the conversation morphs into, “what is the role of the priest in forgiveness – are they actually the ones deciding if you get forgiven? Or are they the ones who pronounce forgiveness upon you but that forgiveness is granted from Christ, not the priest.” And that’s where we’ll pick up the thread.
So things are not going well for our boy Martin, at least in terms of debate among his academic peers. He wanted to be having this as an academic conversation, and he got some of that, but the people are starting to understand at least a bit of what he’s talking about when they see the implications for them. And Luther himself sees this to. In 1520 he puts out a document that has a very unfortunate name if you’re standing on this side of history. “The Christian Nobility of the German Nation.” But this is the document where he really lays out his growing ideas on the priesthood of all believers. And what he’s trying to do is react against the pre-Reformation idea that humans are divided into 2 categories – the secular and the sacred. So before this, if you lived in some little German town, there would be the regular people living their lives, mostly just trying to feed themselves and their families. These were the secular people. Even if they were followers of Christ, they were considered secular. The sacred people were the priests and those who had taken holy orders to live in monastic communities. And how it played out was that the secular people who believed in Christ didn’t have much access to materials that would help them learn the scripture or grow on their own – so they kind of gave up and let the sacred people take on that burden. It was sort of the attitude of, “I’m just a regular person, I don’t need to spend my day praying because those monks up in the monastery on the hill are spending their days doing that on my behalf.” And you can see where Luther gets upset at this – he’s not mad about the “proxy-ness” of it, he’s mad that the secular people side-step their own responsibility to grow and outsource most spiritual tasks to the priests, monks, and nuns. In the monasteries, the system was set up so that they prayed at fixed points throughout the day, including the middle of the night. And this system of prayer became more and more elaborate, requiring more and more time. The regular folks just trying to live their lives and feed their families couldn’t live under a schedule like that, so instead of modifying it for their own use in ways that were workable, they mostly just let the monks and nuns take care of the prayers for them. And Luther is upset at this because it leaves the regular people spiritually immature. And he wants to correct this situation, so he writes about it in “Nobility of the German Nation.”
And so one of Luther’s goals becomes the emptying of the monasteries. He wants everyone – secular people and sacred people – to know how to do the work of prayer and Christian living. The term “liturgy” has its origins here – liturgy means, “the work of the people.” And you can see how Luther is using this term in particular – he wants the regular people to do spiritual work too. But in order to do that, he has to help them break out of the system they have going that separates secular and sacred. So he spends a lot of time and energy teaching that the regular people also have a priesthood to which they belong, the priesthood of all believers, and there are responsibilities in that priesthood.
So far, Latter-day Saint friends, I don’t think there is much for you to disagree with. What Luther was doing is very reasonable in lots of ways. But let’s flip contexts out of Luther’s German world, and into our English-speaking world. And you’ll easily see how the problems develop.
Very often when translating from Biblical Greek to English we have more English words to choose from. But in some instances it works the other way around – Greek has more words for something while English only has 1. Probably the best example you’re familiar with is the various words for “love” in Greek describe important nuances between different forms of love. But in English, we use the same word for, “I love pizza” and “I love my child.” It’s the same situation with “priesthood.” We have 1 word, priesthood, while the New Testament has 2 words: One that means “sacred person” and the other that means “one with elderhood.”
So when Luther says, “you are the priesthood of all believers” he means, “You are not just secular people who have nothing to do with the spirituality of those monks and nuns….you too are sacred people, even just living your normal lives of taking care of your families.” He never intended to say that there aren’t 2 different kinds of priesthoods. The one we are talking about right now, the priesthood of all believers, is a universal priesthood that everyone who claims the name of Christ has – the priesthood that asks us to do the spiritual work for ourselves and those over whom we have responsibility such as children. The other form of the word meaning, “the one who has eldership,” is not canceled because of this universal priesthood responsibility that the average believer also has.
So, what about our Evangelical friends? What do they make of all of this? Well, as we’ve talked about here a number of times Evangelicals value 2 things above all else – independence and devotion to Christ. When I say “independence” what I mean is they do not want to be told what to believe by anyone who claims authority. To them, the very claim of authority is problematic. They want an absolute level playing field where no person has authority over any other. They want to do what is right in their own eyes – you get the appeal, I’m sure. But they also value devotion to Christ and the concern here is that they do not want anyone “standing between” them and Christ. Not monks and nuns up on a hill, not priests that help with confession and repentance, not even the body to which they are a church member. If they don’t like what is being taught they see no obligation to stay – they move on to another church. In practice what this means is that they each have to be their own Prophet. They don’t get – or want – guidance that comes with authority. They are the authorities.
They also see Christ as being not just the “great High Priest” but also the only current priest of any type. And to be honest, we’re not too far apart from each other on this one – we would also say that the priesthood belongs to God. It is his power on the Earth. But Evangelicals worry that any claim to priesthood is an attempt to take the power away from God and give it to man.
And this is part of the arc of development for them as people embedded into a particular time and place. The Evangelical movement grew up right alongside of the modern, hyper-modern, and post-modern era. The natural conclusion of this arc is that the concept of authority itself is invalid. Think of how people conceptualize books. It used to be that the author had a meaning in mind, she would write her thoughts, and people who wanted to understand what she’s on about would read the book. The author got the final say, as it were. But in the postmodern turn it is the reader who brings meaning to the book. The reader decides what it means, even if that meaning is wildly different from what the author intended. The reader gets the final word. There is an important philosophical concept that started back in the 1960’s that says, “the author is dead”….and by natural progression, the very concept of authority dies with him. Author-authority. We see this play out in our national debates – what is an authority anyway? Is a guy at home with an internet connection just as much of an authority as a guy with a PhD? Large parts of our current culture answer that question as: Yes. Authority has died. And this is the culture the Evangelical movement has grown up alongside. Any authority that comes with priesthood is bad, it’s nonexistent to them. Only the common authority anyone has over their own lives matters, the idea of, “you can say what you want as long as its true for you.” But, “history predicts the future” and these things are cyclical – at some point things change. If you look at last week’s Deseret News you will find an article titled: Want to fix education? Bring back authority.” (You also will find a piece in DN last week with my name on it – its a summary of the presentation I gave at the FAIR conference back in August if you’re curious.) But “Bring back authority” is essentially getting at this same thing – we’ve swung too far away from the idea that anyone, teacher/priest/researcher/anyone can have authority at all. And maybe these things correct themselves over time.
This got to be a long episode, but I hope it helps you think though why your Evangelical friends get so worked up about the “priesthood of all believers” concept.
Okay, we’ve got 5 episodes left. Next week we’re talking about the Holy Ghost and asking what does it mean when an Evangelical also experiences the Holy Ghost. I think you’ll be plenty fascinated with that one. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – James
Nov 13, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Perfection?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about perfection. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
We are on Week 46. This year of Come Follow Me is rapidly coming to a close which means that talking about how Evangelicals view things in the Bible doesn’t really make sense next year because we’ll be doing Book of Mormon year. And I know several of you have wondered what will happen next year. Fear not. Things will change for next year, this particular podcast needs to pivot a bit, but I will still be around. FAIR is working on a show in addition to this one where there will be fewer episodes, but higher quality. I have been working with 2 of the best researchers FAIR has and we’re putting something together I think you’re going to like. So you will still get to see me – Congratulations and I’m sorry. I don’t know exactly what to say about that. But it will be good and I will have much more to share with you after Thanksgiving.
We have arrived at week 46 and we’re in James. 2 of the biggest verses in James that we could have talked about are James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God…” and James 2:14 and following talking about works. We’ve actually covered both of these topics pretty well in this series, so we’re going to back up a little and talk about James 1:2-4. This is in the ESV:
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
There is some history here that will help put Evangelicals in the right context. And, as we’ve seen before many times here, even when an Evangelical church presents itself as a “community church” with no denominational tie, there is usually a tie somewhere in the background – and that might be a formal denomination that just isn’t put front and center (Lifeway Research says that over 60% of the cosmetically named churches, things like Vision Church, are Southern Baptist churches that simply do not name the SBC anywhere on their website or materials and they present themselves as if they are no ties with a larger group at all.) Or it can just show up in the education of the pastoral staff – if they all went to Dallas Theological, then you know something about where they’re coming from.
So, the particular part of the Evangelical world a church comes from matters here. Churches that are informed by the Lutheran, Reformed or Calvinistic traditions are very unlikely to ever talk about the idea of becoming, “perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect.” It’s not a category for them, and their theology reveals why. Their position is sometimes called, “hyper-sovereignty” which is trying to get at the idea that God is so perfect, so complete, so good that it’s insulting to him for any human to have the audacity to say that they could be perfect as he is perfect. So, for them verses about perfection are part aspirational – they believe God is perfect and we should try for perfection even though we will never achieve it. But they’re also part of their system that says all humans are depraved and hated by God – only the power of Jesus Christ can heal the rift between us and God. So verses like this function as a sign to point out not only how good God is, but how bad we are. You know how Paul sometimes says that the law exists to point out our sin – these folks would likely say that these verses about perfection exist to point out how imperfect we actually are. In their way of thinking perfection is impossible, even thinking we could ever do it is hubris. Their interpretation is that God is so good he is perfect, and we are so bad that we could never obtain perfection. It doesn’t feel as grim in real time for them as it sounds to you. It sounds awful, I know, but they think of it more like: The stronger of a believer you are, the more willing you are to affirm God’s goodness and your own depravity. It’s a way for them to say that they are so committed to God that they’re willing to accept their own terribleness, and its a point of pride when they’re able to do so. All of this that I’ve just described is true for Evangelical churches that are influenced by Reformed theology, probably about 60% of current Evangelical churches. But there is another side.
It started in the 1700’s with John and Charles Wesley, the brothers who begin the Methodist Church. Just for timeline, John dies about 15 years before Joseph Smith is born. The Wesleys are part of the 1st Great Awakening, and Joseph Smith is part of the 2nd Great Awakening. And what the Wesleys do is pull from the group in early Christianity known as the Church Fathers who lived in the couple hundred years after Christ. And there is plenty in their writings about the idea of perfection. But, things get weird around the 4th Century and that thinking about perfection turns into a very deep asceticism and monasticism – so life either in a cloistered monastery or life lived in public society but living with deliberate poverty and frankly, near starvation. Now, Christian history had to go that way – the fall of Rome happens right around this time and the governmental structure that had been holding Europe together disappears. And we get the dark ages. By this time Christian monastic communities were already well established in such a way that they could continue to exist. So, its not an entirely bad thing, but the Wesleys look at that and think its awful – that Christian life is intended to be lived out publicly in a way that nonbelievers can see and understand. Not cloistered away or taking vows of extreme poverty. So the Wesleys want to rewind time and go back to what the early Chruch Fathers were talking about with perfectionism. Over time, Methodists have moved away from the idea quite a bit, but it gets picked up by a group of churches known as the Holiness Movement. The Free Methodist Church (different from their much larger sibling the United Methodists), The Church of the Nazarene, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), The Salvation Army, and the Wesleyan Methodist Church (the smallest of the Methodist groups.) And an awful lot of current Evangelical churches are influenced by this arc in all kinds of ways. But it gets weird.
You can trace the influence of the Wesley brothers into modern Evangelicalism in about 100 different ways. But the idea that we might become like God is not one of them. Mostly what they do is take advantage of the wiggle room that exists in the Greek word used here for perfection. There is a legitimate nuance in that word that is something closer to “mature.” So you get translations like the NIV that say, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” The ESV still gives us, “that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” The ESV is considered a little bit more scholarly than the NIV, but the NIV has been around for decades longer and has had more influence on Evangelicals. So when they read a verse like this they hear, “be mature” and it doesn’t trigger the same response that, “be perfect” does. So some of them don’t even know, “perfect” is a possible translation here.
So what do we do with all of this?
Well, first, I can’t help myself…the mental health therapist in me needs to tell you that this conversation has nothing to do with perfectionism or the idea that today you must do all things perfectly in order to be loved or accepted by God or others. Part of the joy of having family and friends is that those are the people who can see your imperfections and love you anyway. So we’re not talking about some kind of scrupulosity or perfectionism. And to be fair, you do see a slightly lower incidence of these issues in an Evangelical population than you do in a Latter-day Saint population.
But as far as how to talk with Evangelicals about this, let me offer you my experience when I was an Evangelical. I didn’t know a lot about Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I had picked up some things along the way, not as any kind of serious study, just part of being alive in the 20th century in America. And I can say from that perspective that there is some overlap for people outside our church on the concepts of “perfection” and “worthiness.” Before I knew better, I would have heard the phrase, “a worthy Latter-day Saint” as “a perfect Latter-day Saint.” I knew that didn’t make sense, but I also knew the reputation of people in the church as being good people, excellent mothers, and excellent people to have around in a crisis. So, my first thought is that if a conversation about the concept of perfection came up, you might want to make sure your friend is able to differentiate between the two concepts.
Here is my second thought. There is a quote from President Nelson long before he was the president of the church. Back in 1995 he said, “We all need to remember: men are that they might have joy—not guilt trips!” And I love that because guilt is…kind of contagious. If you feel guilty about what you have and have not done, and you’re talking about the ideas of perfection, or even worthiness with an Evangelical friend, they will intuitively feel that guilt in you. The role of guilt in spiritual or personal development must be to point out something that has gone wrong – thus prompting us to make a change to address the issue. That’s the only reason you get the emotion of guilt. It doesn’t add to your holiness, it doesn’t add to the love you receive from God. It’s a big arrow pointing to a situation or event – not to make you feel worse about yourself, but for you to do some problem-solving around how to change. We humans don’t like to change, and sometimes barely know how to change, but that is the role of guilt – to point to where change needs to happen. In that sense its an empowering and problem-solving emotion. But what we do a lot of times is turn guilt to shame – instead of, “I did a bad thing” it becomes, “I am a bad thing.” That’s not growth or development, that’s self-pity. As much as you can, for your sake and the sake of those with whom you talk about gospel issues, let the feelings you have about your own lack of perfection be the things that makes you progress forward – not stay stuck on how awful you are for getting something wrong. So much overlap between this and mental health, forgive me for my soapbox.
Okay, next week is Priesthood of all Belivers. Come back and we’ll have some fun.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 9: Cognitive Dissonance
Nov 07, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
For today’s introduction, I’d like to share a story from my own faith journey with you. In High School, I found myself in a dispute with a classmate who consistently challenged my faith. He didn’t believe in God, and he was very argumentative and combative regarding why he was right. I found myself thrown into a loop…it had been the first time I was forced to really consider my faith. I had deeply spiritual experiences, but those didn’t seem to answer his questions. I felt like I was on the defense, like my head was on fire. Everything I had ever believed in seemed to flip upside-down. I began poring over everything I had learned, trying desperately to find out what I could trust, and clinging to whatever truth I could find. In psychology, this is referred to as “Cognitive Dissonance,” and it’s something that critical thinkers need to be aware of in order to be successful.
Throughout this series, we’ve talked a lot about dealing with information, and processing it in a way that can help us to arrive at correct conclusions. However, lots of the data (especially about people-centered topics such as politics, history, and religion) we have comes from differing worldviews, and is loaded with differing presuppositions about life. This, naturally, will lead to some kind of conflict, because not all ideas are compatible with each other. This is further complicated by the fact that sometimes people can be closed-minded, or otherwise are unwilling/unable to accept the points you bring across. Critical thinkers need to learn how to deal with cognitive dissonance, because if you haven’t experienced cognitive dissonance yet, you will experience it eventually. It’s important to learn how to effectively navigate your ideas being challenged in a way that doesn’t make you feel miserable all the time, but also doesn’t prevent you from continuously learning. To do this, we’ll first explore what cognitive dissonance is. We’ll then look at it from a more faith-based perspective, and then, we’ll discuss how to better resolve cognitive dissonance. With our goals in mind, let’s get into it.
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance has been described as “the most influential and extensively studied theory in social psychology”(1)- and for good reason. It was termed over 60 years ago (which in terms of modern psychology, is VERY old) by a psychologist named Leon Festinger. He described it as “an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented toward hunger reduction” (2). This is important to keep in mind, because unlike the common colloquial usage, cognitive dissonance is not “holding two contradictory ideas at once” (3). Instead, as Festinger indicated, it’s the mental condition that prompts us to want to reconcile conflicts in our minds.
A renowned fable may help illustrate this idea. There was a fox walking through the forest, and he stumbled across some beautiful, delicious-looking grapes. They were high up on a vine though, and so he tried jumping up and down to get them…to no avail. He tried and tried again, eventually stating to himself “They’re probably just sour grapes anyway, I shouldn’t waste my time on this” or something to that effect. He then gave up, having convinced himself to leave. This actually explains this psychological phenomenon rather well. The fox in this story was put into distress-cognitive dissonance-when he found that he was unable to get the grapes. To resolve said dissonance, he convinced himself that the grapes were sour to “justify” himself giving up.
There are also some very interesting, real-world examples of this occurring as well. In a follow-up experiment, Leon Festinger once again took it upon himself to explore the concept of cognitive dissonance. He took 71 psychology students (one at a time), and had them take 12 spools, and place them into a tray using only one hand. Then, using the same hand, the students were to take all of the spools out of the tray, and repeat the process for about 30 minutes. Then, they had to do a similar exercise where they had to turn wooden pegs a quarter turn for another 30 minutes. Basically, it’s designed to be boring. At the end of the experiment, an experimenter would pull them aside, and tell the participants that they needed help convincing others how exciting the experiment was. To one group of students, the experimenters offered $20, to another group, they offered $1, and to another group of students, they offered no compensation. Take a moment to guess which group reported the highest satisfaction with the experiment. If you guessed the group that was offered $20 gave the best report of the boring experiment, I don’t blame you. Interestingly enough, that’s not what happened. Instead, the group that was offered $1 rated the experiment most positively.
So, what happened? Well, in the analysis, they explained the following.
1. If a person is induced to do or say something which is contrary to his private opinion, there will be a tendency for him to change his opinion so as to bring it into correspondence with what he has done or said.
2. The larger the pressure used to elicit the overt behavior (beyond the minimum needed to elicit it) the weaker will be the above mentioned tendency. (4)
Put another way, the conclusion arrived at was that the participants changed how they viewed the experiment and that the participants who were most heavily rewarded were less likely to change their behavior. This makes sense…the students who got rewarded $20 (an amount that was far larger back in the 60s) didn’t need to change their opinion. They were already compensated for their time, and the dissonance has been resolved. However, those who only received one dollar didn’t get that satisfaction, so they had to resolve it a different way. This is the crux of what cognitive dissonance is.
However, this still leaves us with questions like “What do you feel when you experience cognitive dissonance?” or “What specifically can cause cognitive dissonance?” Some writers indicate that a person suffering from cognitive dissonance experiences “anxiety, embarrassment, regret, sadness, shame, and regret” (5). Some causes for cognitive dissonance include being forced to do something you believe is wrong, making decisions based on options that don’t seem appealing, or giving in to addictions (6). Again, all of this goes back to the idea that something prompts us to feel “bad” about something that is happening that goes against what we believe, or challenges the presuppositions that we have.
Dissonance in Faith Contexts
Religious discussion, like many other topics, can prompt cognitive dissonance. The example I used in the introduction is one of many stories wherein cognitive dissonance played a role in my behaviors and actions. One author doing a qualitative study on the feelings behind these “faith crises” in Christianity noted the following:
In the words of Durà-Vilà and Dein (2009), a Christian is susceptible to a period referred to as the, “Dark Night of the Soul,” which is described as a “loneliness and desolation in one’s life associated with a crisis of faith or profound spiritual concerns” (p. 544). This crisis of faith can cause great suffering and emotional distress and can even resemble symptoms of a depressive episode (e.g., feelings of guilt, loss of interest, anxiety). Efforts to participate in spiritual activities such as prayer, attending church, or fellowship with other believers can feel overwhelmingly difficult. Additionally, these spiritual practices can lack the meaning they once held for the believer. These crises of faith can be short-term, or last years, and can potentially become as severe as an individual abandoning his or her faith altogether. (7)
Those feelings sound familiar, don’t they? Basically, the argument being made is that those who are experiencing these feelings are having what many have called a “crisis of faith,” which prompts them to make decisions to resolve the negative feelings. These “Faith Crises” are often described by both members and former members as being among the most difficult parts of their lives. Remember, when someone begins to question the nature of their faith, they’re questioning the very nature of reality as we understand it. The negative feelings that come along with such questions are very real, and should not be ignored.
As we’ve learned though, those feelings are only part of the story, seeing as how cognitive dissonance is manifested not by the feelings alone, but also how people set out to “resolve” those feelings. Many members of the church who experience a “faith crisis” may have questions about whether or not Joseph Smith was a prophet, and so they might peruse the Joseph Smith Papers to help gain insight into who Joseph Smith truly was. Others may have questions about whether or not God exists, and so they turn to the scriptures (as well as other sources), and ponder whether or not God exists. Others may even choose to leave the church, believing that the reasons to believe in the church’s truth claims are unsatisfactory. As you can see, when the dust settled in terms of my faith journey, I did not come to the conclusion that the church was false. Even so, the final option of abandoning organized religion seems to be one that many people (especially in my generation) seem to be embracing. (8)
It’s worth noting from a cultural perspective though that some people have issues calling this a “faith crisis.” Critics of the church might be more prone to blame the church and not their own faith, and members of the church sometimes get self-conscious at the prospect of losing faith. Instead, members of the church want to structure this as more of a “faith remodeling” focused on questions as opposed to some kind of crisis. (9) I can get behind this rhetoric, as I believe that asking questions about our own faith and restructuring it seems like a good practice to me. However, having been acquainted with my own feelings, and the feelings of others, of people navigating these issues, I also have no issue talking about it in terms of the strong emotions involved. Regardless of how you view it, the relationship between cognitive dissonance and the feelings associated with what many people call a “faith crisis” is worth analyzing.
Resolving the Dissonance
With such powerful emotions at play, it almost goes without saying that this topic should be taken seriously. There are a few things that people can do to resolve the dissonance. For example, psychologists suggest that cognitive dissonance is resolved in a few different ways, including:
Changing our behavior so that it is consistent with what we’ve learned.
Changing one of the dissonant thoughts in order to restore consistency.
Adding other (consonant) thoughts that justify or reduce the importance of one thought and therefore diminish the inconsistency.
Trivializing the inconsistency altogether, making it less important and less relevant. (10)
I think that breaking down the issue in this way is useful. Objectively, we need to do some kind of reorganization of our thoughts, whether by adding to, changing, or ultimately changing the authority of those thoughts. For example, I’ve made it clear that I don’t like raw tomatoes. If I’m forced to eat raw tomatoes, I can resolve the ensuing cognitive dissonance by either:
Just choose not to eat the tomato
Try to convince myself that the tomato is actually good
Adding a thought as to why I’m eating the tomato (perhaps I’m being paid to do it, or I don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings
Or I just dismiss the thought that I don’t like tomatoes, and choke them down anyways.
Now, addressing cognitive dissonance from that perspective is certainly not a bad approach. However, that still leaves us with the more practical question of “How can I help my friend or loved one”? You can tell them to change how they’re thinking or feeling, but that alone probably won’t do much good. As will soon be shown, a careful application of critical thinking in combination with spiritual direction can allow us to connect to those who are struggling in ways that are meaningful and effective. Specifically, Latter-day Saints should understand and care about this topic so they can empathize with those experiencing a faith crisis, help them identify what the root of their faith crisis is, and eventually help them recognize that the feelings they have are a natural part of a healthy, progressing, and ultimately fulfilling faith.
While a technical psychological definition is still up for debate, empathy is usually characterized by “a complex capability enabling individuals to understand and feel the emotional states of others, resulting in compassionate behavior.” (11) While it does not necessarily mean that you embody the anxiety, anger, or sadness that may arise during these crises, it does mean that you are emotionally present and that you are able to perceive the emotions that others are feeling accurately. (12) Consider the following commentary stated during the Annual Seminary and Institute Training and Institute Broadcast:
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Genuine empathy brings people together; it sparks connections and helps people feel they are not alone. It is a critical part of creating a sense of belonging. This attribute is a key to responding effectively to a student with a question and to effectively leading a group discussion where many students listen carefully with unspoken questions. (13)
An important aspect of empathy includes asking questions, and genuinely listening to people. We’ve discussed the importance of asking questions in terms of critical thinking, but getting to the root of what a person actually feels requires careful questions, and patient effort. Not only are you able to get to the root of what a person is feeling, but you in turn get to figure out exactly what a person is truly concerned about. Put another way, by figuring out what they are feeling, you figure out what they truly care about. In the last episode, I alluded to the idea that many people leave the church not because of historical issues or doctrinal issues themselves. Rather, they leave because of the feelings that are brought about by these issues. If you can address the feelings, you can figure out more how to help resolve the dissonance.
And that brings us to another very important facet to this conversation: Cognitive dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve changed how I view cognitive dissonance (see what I did there?) in such a way that I now look at it as evidence of learning, and an opportunity to grow and develop my ideas. This is true in just about every aspect of life, but it’s especially important to remember when we talk about faith. I find experiences that we refer to as “faith crises” often work in a similar way. We find something that prompts questions and challenges us, and it prompts us to learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, or the history of the restored church, and it can provide us an opportunity to cling onto the peace that is found with the Savior. When we embody this pursuit of truth inherent within LDS theology, this aspect of critical thinking comes very naturally, and we should make full use of that advantage. Although it’s difficult to navigate the complexities of cognitive dissonance, connecting with trusted sources, open communication, continual learning, and consistent connection with our Heavenly Father resolves cognitive dissonance far better than anything else I’ve found.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cognitive dissonance is an important and recurring aspect of our journey to become critical thinkers. It has a long history, and pertains to many different contexts of our lives, including our identities as children of God. Even so, there are a few options at our disposal that can help us, and others, navigate the complexities of cognitive dissonance. Whether we are actively regulating our thoughts and opinions in a manner that is conducive to critical thinking, or we’re helping others by being empathetic, or even just becoming more comfortable with the complexities of life, cognitive dissonance does not need to be a stumbling block in our lives. If we’re able to navigate those feelings well, we’re all that much closer to becoming the kinds of thinkers, and believers that God wants us to be.
References:
Alfnes F., Yue C., Jensen H. H. (2010). Cognitive dissonance as a means of reducing hypothetical bias. Eur. Rev. Agric. Econ. 37, 147–163; Cited in Perlovsky L. (2013). A challenge to human evolution-cognitive dissonance. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 179. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179; This article also references the “Fox and the Sour Grapes” story, which likewise originates from one of Aesop’s Fables.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Spreng, R. N., McKinnon, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of personality assessment, 91(1), 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890802484381
“On Dealing with Uncertainty” by Bruce C. Hafen, link here
“Faith is Not Blind” by Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen, link here
“Questions of Faith, Not a Crisis of Faith” by Molly Ogden Welch, link here
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Hebrews 7–13
Nov 06, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Isn’t Jesus the Only Melchizedek Priesthood Holder?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about part 2 of 3 on priesthood. There is so much to say on this and we’re going to get right to it. But I want to point out one thing…
Sometimes, at least in people I know, Latter-day Saints seem a little unsure of their overall Bible knowledge. And it’s true, there are some ins and outs of the Bible, especially the New Testament, that Evangelicals will tend to know better than our people. But the Book of Hebrews is not one of those places. The Book of Hebrews is the least read in the New Testament among Evangelicals. It’s not that they don’t think it’s scripture. They do. But it’s a dense book, and you have to know some things about the Old Testament, and even then it’s still considered kind of esoteric. But because of the mention of Melchizedek in Hebrews, more Latter-day Saints have spent significant time there. The parts of Hebrews they really do like are chapters 11 and 12. You probably see this too, but it feels more familiar in tone, pace, and voice. It feels like Paul writing. The first 10 chapters of Hebrews just feel different to them. And, to be fair, they are different. If this is Paul writing, these chapters are the only ones where he talks like that.
Okay, so let’s get to our jumping-off point. Hebrews 7:17:
You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
So what do Evangelicals do with this verse?
If we’re talking about percentages – how many Evangelicals engage with this concept – the answer is: its not a very high percentage. It’s just not on their radar. We say, “The Bible doesn’t lay flat,” meaning that some passages form a canon within a canon. Those are the go-to passages that all Evangelicals would know. And the verses in Hebrews about Melchizedek are not on that list. Latter-day Saints certainly have our own “canon within a canon” – the passages we pay more attention to, and those outside of it don’t get much air time.
So the most likely question an Evangelical would have here is simply, “Who is Melchizedek anyway?” Because we don’t have tons of details about the historic priest Melchizedek, the answer to that question is pretty short, so they think there isn’t much here and move on to the other parts of Hebrews that have more content they can do something with. They don’t really have a conceptualization of “priest” so it doesn’t really go anywhere with them. They do like the part in Hebrews that talks about Jesus’ ability to be our Great High Priest because he suffered in the same ways we suffer. And who wouldn’t? There is a lot of comfort in that idea and we are on very firm mutual ground here. Both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals would feel good about that concept.
Among Evangelicals who are theologically educated, you might get conversation about how Melchizedek is actually “Jesus in disguise,” as one of the few places in the Old Testament where Jesus shows up. That was a really popular theory all throughout the 20th century, less so now.
I think the question that might most come up for them here is, “Why are you making all of this priesthood stuff more complicated than it needs to be?” And if you’ve been listening to this series at all you know that is pretty on-brand for them. The entire Evangelical project has been all about simplifying the Gospel, taking away the parts that make it hard for people to understand or participate – church services are very casual, “priests” are now “pastors,” Difficult to sing hymns are replaced by pop worship choruses. There is a way to take this question without disrespect intended, I think it could be a very sincere question: Why are you making this so complicated? Because in many ways Evangelicals are doing what the early Campebelite churches were doing – trying to get rid of everything that is not the absolute most essential part of the Gospel. The Campbelites considered that the “restoration of all things,” to them it meant just getting to the most important part and let everything else go. And you can hear echoes of that in the Evangelical question: Why are you making this so complicated? And to be honest, it’s a fair question. On the outside looking in, it can seem like a lot when you’re used to the “paring down” philosophy. However, Joseph Smith was not interested in a restoration that gets rid of everything. He wanted to add in everything, always be expanding, worlds without end. So Latter-day Saints look at this and think: Why wouldn’t you want EVERYTHING restored?
And what it comes down to on this one is the question of authority. What is needed in order to do God’s work? The go-to verse for Evangelicals is in 1 Peter, “the priesthood of all believers,” and they interpret this to mean that no special authority is needed to baptize or perform ordinances. They see the Bible as giving anyone who believes in Christ the proper authority. To them, the concept of authority means that someone else is going to stand between you and God and regulate what you must do. While we would see authority slightly differently – the power of the priesthood is God’s power and we all are invited to participate in it in various ways.
We see the priesthood as belonging to God, it is his power, and we humans are invited to participate. While they see the priesthood as belonging to humans who just want to get in the way and make it more difficult to understand God. And sometimes they’re not wrong. There really are, “evil priests who seek to destroy and oppress,” even if those people don’t always carry the title, “priest.”
And I gotta tell you….I sympathize with their opinion in some ways. No one wants evil priests, and it is very easy for someone who thinks they’re acting in the power of God to confuse that with their own desires for power. That goes bad in 100 different ways. But the saying, “misuse should not mean no use,” applies here. Just because evil priests exist, does not mean there is no good priesthood at all. And this is part of what Hebrews is getting at – Jesus is the only priest who never messes it up and misuses his power.
But you can see that what Evangelicals are really worried about here is something like: Who gives you the authority to make all these rules? And the accusation is: You’re just making stuff up to make it seem more complicated than it is. And in a weird way, they see THAT as being an “evil priest.” A person who is blocking access to God – in this case through “complications” – instead of doing what Jesus did which is to make access to God even possible.
They see things like baptism being required as an extra rule. They see all of the ordinances that way. The idea of a priesthood is just another example of this. But this is actually where we find some common ground. In the Evangelical way of thinking authority or leadership is bestowed on someone because they themselves feel a direct call from God to do whatever it is that God is calling them to do. No one chooses you or calls you, you have to do it yourself. And, depending on the corner of the Evangelical world you’re standing in, anyone can claim to be called to anything simply because they feel God wants them to do the thing. In the simplest terms possible, this is the main difference that they would be able to identify – they call themselves and qualify themselves, and we have a process for it that involves requirements and accountability. A young deacon in our church might not have given much thought as to whether he should become ordained or not – I hope he has, but these are young boys and that process probably happens a bit more automatically for some than for others. They get ordained as a deacon simply because they’re the right age to do so – but the further up he goes the more it will require the man himself to desire to take on the requirements and responsibilities of the priesthood. He has to want to do it too. That piece – the man’s desire to serve in this way, and his own understanding of his calling – that is something Evangelicals can relate to. They might never love the structure (though to be honest, for someone like me the structure in our church is a breath of fresh air) but they might also be surprised that a man taking on priesthood responsibilities is also doing it out of his own sense of desire to do so. I mean, have you met the men in our church? My impression is that yes, they can certainly submit to their spiritual leaders when necessary – but it’s not divorced from the man’s own desire to serve. And Evangelicals would recognize and respect that if it were pointed out to them.
Okay, next week we’re in the book of James, so a break from talking about priesthood – and then we do the “priesthood of all believers” which is the continuation of this. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Hebrews 1–6
Oct 30, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Ordain Every Man in the Church?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about why in the world ALL men in the church can be ordained as a priest, not just a few. As you know, we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
You will also notice I am not in my regular spot. I’m in the airport waiting on a delayed flight. I planned on recording when I got home, and that is not going to happen. But I got to have a fantastic girl’s weekend with friends that I know from growing up in Modesto, CA. So, this video is going to be shorter, and well, it’s an airport. So, yeah. Here we go.
The word, “priesthood” is a very loaded word. At least when we’re trying to talk about how different groups use that word, and the situation between Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals is one area where it gets hard in about 8 different directions. But, luckily, we’re spending 2 weeks in Hebrews, and then some time in 1 Peter, so I’ve got 3 episodes worth of material to try and unpack this. Today we are only going to focus on the aspect that we come across in Hebrews 5 which is this:
For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. 3 Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. 4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. 5 So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him,“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; 6 as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
So the question that comes up here might not even be obvious to you as a Latter-day Saint if you haven’t spent much time in other Christian churches. For this episode, we’re going to talk about “priest” as a category, not necessarily a job title. Most Evangelical churches are not going to use the word, “priest” except in the context of, “priesthood of all believers” and we will get to that specific issue once we hit 1 Peter. However, today we’re just going to stay tightly focused on the issue of why most men are ordained to the priesthood in our church. It’s a rather unique thing. I actually can’t think of another denomination where that happens – where every eligible man is ordained. If you know of one, hit me up in the comments.
In Evangelical churches the word priest morphs into “pastor” and all the variations on that word. But we’re in the same category, sort of. But we need a little history lesson first.
For most of the history of Christianity churches were led by pastors, and those pastors were overseen by a bishop – maybe they didn’t call him bishop, but that’s the category of the role. So it goes, congregation, pastor, bishop, and then someone over him, and up some more. And initially, Evangelical churches were organized this way too, at least in th e1950’s and well into the 1960’s. By the late 70’s, and certainly by the 1980’s this structure had significantly disappeared. The nature of Evangelical churches lends itself very much toward independent churches that are not overseen by a bishop. This is not scientific evidence, but I messaged a handful of my Evangelical friends who all attend church regularly and asked if any of their churches had this set up, and not one did. It’s mostly gone away. So what they have now is congregation, pastor, and maybe he has some kind of advisory board, but there is no one above him. And so the language started to change in the 80’s and into the 90’s. They started to say things like, “Every member a minister” and the idea was that the senior pastor was now the overseer of all the members of the chuch, who are actually the ministers. It’s no longer a bishop overseeing a number of churches in the same city, but a pastor overseeing non-ordained people who mostly do the work of the church.
This set up should sound somewhat familiar to you. An Evangelical would look at how our local wards are set up and wonder why someone is being called the Bishop (I mean, if they know the word at all) because he’s only over 1 congregation and traditionally bishops were over multiple churches. But if you go up one level in structure we have Stake Presidents who essentially are in the same category that would traditionally be called Bishop – he oversees multiple congregations. And it’s not immediately intuitive to Evangelicals that we have formalized a structure that they arrived at because of the changing landscape of how churches work. So, back to our question, why is every eligible man and boy ordained? But the only structural difference there is that we have formalized what they keep informal. They actually do see each member (men and women, for the most part) as ministers – they just grab the title “priesthood of all believers” to sort of cover them in that role.
This is one of those fascinating situations where, at first glance, we are in very different structures…..but as it turns out, no, not really. Now, questions about priesthood certainly don’t stop at understanding who is ordained and why. We’ll get to the rest in parts 2 and 3.
But I do hope this clears up a bit of the language difference between us. We use a formal ordination process for “ordinary” men – and they use an informal process that accomplishes the same thing.
This is a short episode, but I’m in the airport. So. Come back next week and we’ll take up the next bit on priesthood.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 and 2 Timothy; Titus; Philemon
Oct 23, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Husband of One Wife
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about polygamy. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
We are on Week 43 of this 52-week project. I’ve teased you a little about what will happen next year. I’m still not ready to spill the beans, but we had a planning meeting for it yesterday and I’m really encouraged.
Our jumping-off point is 1 Timothy 3:2:
Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach…
Before we start, let me set some expectations. This is not an apologetic for polygamy. This is not to pretend there are not hard issues with polygamy. If you yourself, Latter-day Saint friend, are struggling over the history of polygamy there are so many resources to help you. Let me just briefly touch on 3 of them. 1) The work of Brian Hales on this topic is the the very best source for learning the history here. His site JosephSmithsPolygamy.org should be your first stop if you’re wanting to see the most in-depth display of original documents as it relates to Joseph’s polygamy specifically. Brian and his then-wife Laura Harris Hales (now passed) created the site. Laura was amazing and kind. I gave my first formal talk for FAIR in 2020 and Laura was the speaker right before me. We had never met but she just sort of told me, “You and I are going to be friends because you need to know the things I can tell you.” Maybe not that blunt, but in essence, that’s what it was. Laura’s talk that year was on Helen Mar Kimball’s later-in-life reflections on polygamy. Helen was sealed to Joseph when she was 14, which gets really complicated for us today. But Helen’s own words, written after a lifetime of living polygamy, are the essence of what it means to embrace faith in the midst of something really messy. And if I had not already been completely swept off my feet over this church, I would have become so right then and there. My very favorite genre of speaking or writing is from the standpoint of, “You can maintain faith even if things are messy, even if you have doubts, even if you have questions. Those things in no way disqualify you from having a strong faith.” So, resource 1 is: check out Brian’s site (Brian is very much alive and well – just this last week he released a paper on Joseph Smith’s education called, “Joseph Smith’s Education and Intellect as Described in Documentary Sources.” Our friends at the Interpreter Foundation have it up on their website. It’s 8,000 words and over 120 footnotes. Brian’s site and Laura’s talk on HMK at the 2020 FAIR conference. 2) Second resource you should know about is the 2023 talk at FAIR by Don Bradley. Don is a proper historian and did the deep research for Brian and Laura’s work. And he has continued on in that work. Don’s talk at FAIR a couple months ago brings new information into play that changes the timeline of Joseph’s polygamy – which snaps several previously problematic ideas into place. It is well worth your time. 3) Finally Brittany Chapman Nash’s book, “Let’s Talk About Polygamy.” Brittany worked in the church history department for a long time, she was on the YW General Advisotry Board. She makes the topic very accessible and this is a very easy read. I think it’s less than 150 pages, in plain language, and it’s a great resource if you are struggling here. Ok, those are 3 great resources if you’re struggling in general with the topic as a Latter-day Saint. But what we are going to do today is different. We, as always, are going to talk about this topic as it comes up for Evangelicals.
So, before I was interested in the church, I knew some rough details about polygamy – mostly from movies or tv shows. I couldn’t have sketched out an overview of why it started or when. I just knew it was a thing, and supposedly wasn’t a thing anymore. But even that small amount of knowledge is more than a good percentage of Evangelicals have. As evidenced by this reality….Since joining the church I’ve received a handful of messages from friends about various tv shows that go something like this: “Hey, I’m watching such-and-such tv show about your church. There’s a lot going on there – you okay?” And they mean that with the kindest of intentions, they really do. They just don’t realize they’re watching a show about the members of a different group who practice polygamy, not our church. And I would say most Evangelicals have an understanding that is somewhere between what I knew and the knowledge that my friends displayed in their messages. So when they think about polygamy you need to know that their imaginations are populated by what they see on television and not by actual historical realities.
But even if you can explain all of that to them, and I think many (most?) Latter-day Saints could, you still have a problem…They interpret this verse in 1 Timothy to mean that all expressions of polygamy are bad for all places and all times. They get real squeamish explaining the polygamy of almost every prophet in the Old Testament and will usually say something like, “Yeah, they might have done that, but God didn’t like it or allow it – they just did it.” You can point out that 30% of the countries in the world still allow it today. They just…it’s usually been a hard no for them. But even that is changing.
In 2003 Gallop does a survey and finds 7% of adult Americans thought polygamy was morally acceptable – by 2020, 20% of adult Americans said it’s morally acceptable. And 35% of adults who consider themselves politically liberal say it is morally acceptable. This is sort of the spot where I walked in. I wouldn’t describe myself as particularly liberal, but I lived in a very liberal West Coast city for 25 years and that exposes you to a wide variety of people and lifestyles where the automatic response of most people is, “love is love.” So when I was investigating the church, that’s the cultural soup I was living in, so when the issue of polygamy came up my response was something like: Love who you want to love, why should I care? When the conversation came up with 2 women friends that are members of the church I was surprised. So surprised. I asked how they thought about the history of polygamy or the issue in general and they kind of fell all over themselves trying to tell me how bad they thought it was. They wanted to put lots and lots of distance between today and the 1800’s. I was confused. My liberal culture had taught me: You don’t get to have an opinion on how other people structure their marriages. Now, I get what they were doing – I was an investigator and they were trying not to freak me out – and I see the goodness in that. But I was far less worried about the issue than they were. As time went on, and I learned more, there were parts of the topic that I struggled with harder than others – I struggled with Joseph’s polyandry and if you struggle with that one too you must watch Don’s talk that I referenced earlier. But my initial reaction to the topic of polygamy was kind of, “So?” And I really haven’t moved too far from that. I understand the problems, I understand that the theological framework that supported polygamy is still found in places in our church. I listened to 100 episodes of a popular podcast talking about polygamy. And perhaps I’m not the typical example here, but what I’ve observed is that people inside the church are more touchy about this topic than people outside of it. So, all of that to say, you might be surprised that this conversation could go an entirely different way than you imagine. You, Latter-day Saint, might have far more complicated feelings about this than someone outside of our faith. You’re allowed to have complicated feelings here, and there is plenty of help for that, but Evangelicals don’t necessarily walk in with the same baggage.
And here is the other direction I want to go. I think sometimes we Latter-day Saints look at Protestants widely, and Evangelicals specifically as being a people who don’t have to grapple with history as hard as we do in our church. Since we’re talking about polygamy we’ll use that as the example. There are 2 reasons for this.
1) Evangelicals are perfectly aware of polygamy in the Old Testament. But, that was a very, very long time ago. Meanwhile, in our church, there are people alive today whose grandparents practiced polygamy. So stories about polygamy (and all of its challenges) are not just random stories about stuff that happened 3,000 years ago. Evangelicals have the luxury of not thinking about this topic very much because 3,000 years is a long time. And, to be honest, in general, they’re fairly unaware of the events that have happened in the interim. For example, Martin Luther, the great reformer and father of Protestantism, said, “I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture. If a man wishes to marry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may do so in accordance with the word of God. In such a case the civil authority has nothing to do in the matter.” But even that was 500 years ago, so it just doesn’t feel as relevant for them.
2) Evangelicalism is very young as a faith community. Younger than ours. They really didn’t start gaining steam until post-WW2. And what was the cultural zeitgeist in post-WW2 America? Everything is modern and new. Everything is about the future. New is better than old. So they’ve culturally been able to tell their origin story that way. Think of the biggest Evangelical church in your town, I can almost guarantee you that their origin story is something like, “Well, Pastor So-and-So just wanted to study the Bible with some friends so they started a Bible study group in his living room. And pretty soon it grew into a church, and now here we are.” Well, that’s a pretty tidy history. But you understand that it’s an edited history. “Jesus did some stuff, died and rose again, then fast-forward 2000 years and we started this church.” And that’s the end of the history lesson. Because its culturally allowed (even expected) for the story to be told that way, they mostly just accept it, and no one asks harder questions based on history. They actually really do have it easier here than we do. But this is sort of the pay off on this topic and what I want you to hear….
Faith in messy. History is messy. People are messy. There was a time in our church’s history when a more sanitized version of history was being told – that happened for a lot of reasons, and it seems we’ve mostly moved past that mentality. And now we grapple with this stuff. And yes, some people leave over these issues. But have you met the people who know the depths of these issues and don’t leave? Don’t abandon their faith? People who can struggle through these issues, faith intact? If you’re watching this, I suspect there is at least some of that in you too. And you have no idea what a gift that is. A person who goes to a church whose origin story is Pastor Bill and his living-room Bible study, well they don’t develop the same skill in the same way. They don’t have to because the messier details are obscured from sight. My very favorite people in the world are people who model this for me – they want to know all the details of everything, and they still choose faith.
My point here is not even to prep you on how to talk about polygamy with outsiders. I don’t think that’s even a very interesting conversation, and a pretty large number of them won’t even care. But there’s a pretty easy pivot from that conversation to how one keeps faith alive while also acknowledging the messy. This is one of the gifts of our faith that you might not see, but in my opinion, helping other people build their faith by modeling how to wade through complex issues is one of the holiest things you can do in this world. I hope and aspire to be able to do that for other people, and I know you do too.
Okay, well, there you go. And seriously, if you are hurting or struggling over this issue please check out the resources I listed at the top of the show. Sometimes I’ve seen this cynical attitude from critics of the church that says, “Well, if you knew everything I knew, you’d leave too.” Which is just ridiculously untrue. And the folks in the sources I mentioned can really show you what its like to know all the details and still maintain faith.
Next week, “the priesthood of all believers” is up. That will be a great conversation. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 8: Misinformation and Propaganda
Oct 23, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
Imagine for yourself for a moment that you’re face-to-face with a critic of the church who states “The church is lying to you about its history” or “the church is trying to cover up its past.” When you ask them what they mean, they explain how the church has suppressed the details behind how a seer stone was used throughout the translation of the Book of Mormon. They continue “It’s only until the advent of the internet where the church has been forced to be honest.” What this critic does not know is that this claim is, for the most part, misinformation. The unfortunate reality is that misinformation can be spread as simply as the example above, and it can have some devastating consequences.
Now, the vast majority of this series has been dedicated to arriving at correct conclusions, and I’ve mostly talked about us using data to build our own arguments and arrive at well-reasoned conclusions. However, besides my episode on logical fallacies, I haven’t given all that much attention to teaching how to identify bad information. So far, all my episodes have been working under the assumption that the information I’ve been presenting is accurate. In reality, this isn’t always the case. Reality is often very complicated, and the manner in which data is presented can be incorrect, misleading, biased, or otherwise presented in a way that can incorrectly sway our opinion. Critical thinkers need to be aware of how data can be presented in ways that can lead to incorrect conclusions, so that we don’t fall prey to information that can have lasting negative consequences. To start, we’ll discuss what misinformation is, and talk about how it can be combated. Then, we’ll talk about propaganda in a similar way, and finally, we’ll discuss how to protect yourself against bad information. Let’s get into it.
Misinformation
Before we can launch into describing propaganda, we first need to understand what misinformation is. Misinformation is described as “incorrect or misleading information” (1). This kind of information serves critical thinkers very little good because in order to solve problems, we have to acknowledge the effects those problems have in reality. If we don’t understand the reality of a problem, that is, how that problem affects us in the real world, then we run the risk of implementing ineffective solutions. Keep this in mind as we proceed through the sources we analyze.
Let’s jump back to the example in the introduction. For those who don’t know what a seer stone is, the short answer is that it was a small, chocolate-colored stone that Joseph Smith used during the translation process. This hypothetical critic made the claim that the church was actively hiding the fact that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during the translation process of the Book of Mormon (2). If this was true, then members of the church who wanted to explain what happened would need to explain not only why Joseph used a seer stone, but also why the church was allegedly hiding the issue. In other words, those kinds of details would need to be factored into whatever analysis we did on the church and its truth claims. However, is it true that the church hid it? Well, the answer is kind of complicated, but I’ve found that it’s actually pretty universally “no.” For example, we have records of David Whitmer, a witness of the translation process, recording during his lifetime that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during the translation process (3). We also have Emma Smith, another direct witness, indicating that he used a seer stone as well (4).
This is where things get tricky though. These are both rather late sources, which if you remember from my article on evaluating historical sources, can sometimes make things a bit more complicated than we’d like. This led some members and leaders of the church to disbelieve the idea Joseph used a seer stone. Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, knew that Joseph Smith had the seer stone, but didn’t believe that it was used during the Book of Mormon translation (5). This sentiment arguably dominated the rhetoric of the time regarding the translation. However, this certainly wasn’t the unanimous opinion in the 1900s. We have records of historians such as Richard Lloyd Anderson, alongside apostles Neal A. Maxwell and Russell M. Nelson, who affirmed that Joseph used the seer stone in the hat during the translation a few decades later (6). As you can see, there’s far more nuance to this issue than meets the eye.
That brings us back to the topic of misinformation. With this in mind, is it really fair to say that the church as an organization was actively trying to hide the fact that Joseph used a seer stone? As you can see, this critic’s claim had information that was either misleading or even outrightly untrue. We have multiple general authorities affirming that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during a portion of the Book of Mormon’s translation. Was this detail contested? Sure, but that’s very different from saying that the church was actively, knowingly, and deceptively lying or hiding this issue from the general membership. Even so, we see this issue rehashed by critics of the church time and time again, despite the claim’s misleading nature.
Before we move on, it’s worth noting that there is some distinction between misinformation and its more devious cousin Disinformation. Disinformation is described as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth” (7). To put it another way, misinformation is just information that is incorrect, while disinformation is the intentional use of incorrect information. Now, I don’t like accusing people of spreading disinformation, because that would be assuming the intent of another person, which is very VERY difficult to prove with any degree of certainty. I think that Hanlon’s razor may be useful, or at least a variant of it: Don’t assume malintent when human frailty can account for the same behavior. Impracticality aside, it’s an important (albeit theoretical) distinction to make, seeing as it entails that we see the purveyor of disinformation in a different light than we see the purveyor of misinformation.
Propaganda
Now, misinformation is definitely a problematic thing, and its presence is felt in a lot of aspects of life and is often implemented in the realm of propaganda. Propaganda is described as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” (8). Another source described propaganda as being “dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumors, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion” (9). As you can imagine, this is often an instrument in much of political discourse, but as you can imagine, propaganda can also be found in a lot of other areas of life, such as in religious discourse.
If we study those definitions carefully, propaganda is focused on this idea of swaying people to agree with you, using a carefully selected concoction of facts and/or misinformation and fallacious reasoning to get people to agree with you. Researchers seem to agree with the idea that propaganda is information that is disseminated to elicit emotional responses, often using rhetorical devices and vaguely defined terms (10). However, as some writers have noted, there aren’t a lot of great ways to determine the difference between genuine persuasion and overt manipulation, and consequently, it’s difficult to define propaganda well (11). For our purposes, we’ll be working off of the definitions above wherein propaganda is more manipulative, biased, and misleading, even when it contains partial truths.
For example, consider this comment I saw on social media recently (source available upon request):
This is an excellent example of propaganda. It’s a claim made about the church that attempts to elicit an emotional response: A feeling of unfairness. It wants us to actively distrust the church, and leave behind the organization that is allegedly extorting money from us “under duress”. However, if we take some time to unpack this claim, we find it’s stringing together points that don’t make much sense. I don’t pay tithing because I’m under duress. I pay tithing because I love God and I want to give everything I can to him. I hope my family will do the same, but I recognize that some of them may choose not to. If they don’t want to be around me in Celestial glory, then they don’t have to be around me. I won’t do anything to force them to, and neither will the church. Think about this for a moment: How could anyone force them?
Now, more could be said on this topic from a theological perspective. For instance, according to LDS theology, if someone I love doesn’t want to live a Celestial life, our scriptures indicate that I’ll still be able to minister to them, and consequently be around them (12). However, this example shows how a deeper dive into propagandistic claims can expose the kind of half-truths inherent in a lot of these kinds of arguments. By oversimplifying the issue, and targeting the emotional response of the reader, the critic employing this kind of argument may cause serious doubt to a genuine believer.
Fighting Bad Information
How do we avoid falling victim to misinformation and misleading propaganda? Well, analyzing the data very much like I did now may prove to be useful. It’s helpful to go back over the primary sources, see what different people are saying, and then draw conclusions about the data. Drawing on the first article I wrote, a pattern of asking questions may also be useful. Asking questions like these may be helpful:
What is the cultural background of the people who are talking about X?
How has discourse about X shifted over time?
Is there ambiguity regarding what the sources say that would be benefitted from further research?
Is the person I’m listening to omitting important information, or focusing on information, about X in a way that alters their conclusion?
We can use tactics like these to analyze information regarding just about any topic, and there are definitely benefits from using these techniques when analyzing church history. While we should always be open to being wrong, following these patterns can lead us to be wrong less often, and consequently be more able to resolve problems in a practical, powerful way.
Luckily for us, critical thinking is also helpful in discerning what is true and what is not true in regards to propaganda as well. As it is with misinformation, asking questions can prove to be useful, and having at least a cursory grasp of the discourse behind the issues at hand is just as helpful. By knowing a thing or two about the topics being discussed, it can become easier for us to understand where the people presenting arguments are coming from, and consequently discern between bias, truth, and especially assumptions.
Honestly, as someone who has spent a significant amount of time parsing through arguments for and against the truth claims of the church, I’ve found that the most prominent thing that brings people out of the church is assumptions and negative feelings. The idea that Joseph Smith used a seer stone for portions of the Book of Mormon’s translation doesn’t necessarily bring people out of the church. More often than not, it’s the assumption that church leaders lied about their history, and often the negative feelings that follow thereafter (13). Manipulative propaganda thrives on assumptions, inferences, and fallacious reasoning. To avoid being misled, think about the presuppositions you have, so that you can study them out, and not allow your emotions alone to guide your behavior and thought processes. Figure out what presuppositions other people have so that you can parse through bias more effectively. In this series, we’ve talked about several tools now that can help us identify good information, and differentiate it from bad information. I hope those tools can be useful.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s valuable to us as critical thinkers to practice discerning between good and bad information. Misinformation runs rampant in every corner of our society, and manipulative, deceptive propaganda can cause just as many problems. Luckily for us, there are ways to combat misinformation, and to protect ourselves from those who would deceive us (intentionally or otherwise). Critical thinkers have a plethora of tools to help them find truth, and with those tools, we can develop the confidence we need to make decisions that will help us accomplish what we need, and to solve the greater problems in today’s world. As always, I’m of the opinion that doing so will help us become the kinds of thinkers, and believers, that God wants us to be.
The reasoning behind this criticism varies significantly depending on the critic. Mostly though, this criticism ties Joseph’s use of a seer stone to local folk magic practices, which can make people uncomfortable. Many authors have tackled this topic more extensively than we have time to do here, but some great resources to study more about this include Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling, alongside Michael Hubbard Mackay and Nicholas J. Frederick’s Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones. Other balanced sources include analyses from Mormonr, and FAIR presentations like this one.
D&C 76:85-87, It is for this reason that I believe that the “together” part has to do with unity just as much as (if not more than) proximity. Families can be united in purpose and love forever, if they so choose. No one is going to be coerced to live a certain way, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.
Introduction to Propaganda; A great introduction to propaganda. Note how they indicate that propaganda in of itself is “morally neutral”, once again affirming how propaganda can be viewed and used in different ways.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 and 2 Thessalonians
Oct 16, 2023
Evangelical Questions: What Apostasy?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about The Great Apostasy. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our jumping-off point is 2 Thes 2:1-4. This is in the English Standard Version:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone unfamiliar with The Great Apostasy you are probably familiar with the look on their face that says something like, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” And I imagine that is rather confusing to you, Latter-day Saint friends. The signs of it seems so obvious to us it’s barely something that needs proving. You might as well ask someone to prove that air exists. But it’s different for Evangelicals. So, what are the issues?
Well, first, they don’t deny that apostasy with a lower-case “a” has happened many times in history. You can see it in the Bible and in every generation since. However, they will always couch it in terms of being individual apostasy, not collective. This forces the conversation into an awkward corner because the natural response might be something like, “Oh no, it wasn’t just one person, it was the whole thing.” And now you’ve got a problem. Because it wasn’t the whole thing. You’ve just conflated 2 different ideas about apostasy. Let me explain.
What does, “complete apostasy” mean? And what doesn’t it mean? Well, it can’t mean that there were no people who loved God, had the desire to serve him, and patterned their lives after Jesus Christ. We know from history that this is not true. So Evangelicals have a rough little piece of logic to work through here – and sometimes we make it harder on them by over-playing our hand. The Evangelical who knows even the basics of history can point out plenty of people who are examples of faithful believers throughout the ages. So, even being able to point out 1 counterexample seems to discredit the claim.
But the claim of The Great Apostasy is not that no one loved and followed God to the best of their ability. It’s that the priesthood power was taken from the Earth. Those are 2 very different things. The Great Apostasy is an institutional situation, not an individual one.
All that to say, when you’re in a conversation with an Evangelical about the apostasy try to stay out of the trap of “the apostasy means no one loved Jesus Christ at all during that time.”
Second issue. Evangelicals absolutely believe in a great apostasy. But, like many times, they’re not talking about the same thing we are. They would define the great apostasy as something that will happen at some future point in time. GK Beal, an Evangelical Biblical scholar says it this way, “The point Paul appears to be making is that the visible church community, within which true saints exist, will become so apostate that it will be dominantly filled with people who profess to be Christian but really are not. The church will continue to profess to be Christian but most in it will actually not be true believers.” Dr. B. J. Oropeza, an Evangelical at Azusa Pacific University has written 3 volumes, 800 pages, on apostasy. And every single one of those pages deals with the apostasy of the individual. Not the removal of priesthood power.
So, we’re on the same page that there is such a thing as a great apostasy. They just think it is a future event while we believe it is a past event. But this nuance brings up an interesting layer. Some of the pushback Evangelicals give on the concept of an apostasy (as we define it) is that God wouldn’t do that to us humans – why would he send Jesus and then let the whole thing fall apart? Well, interestingly enough they are perfectly okay with believing that is a possibility – a future possibility, but a possibility nevertheless. The only difference between their thinking on this and ours is that we think it happened quickly after the Apostles were gone, and they think it won’t happen for a long time to come.
In this 2 Thes passage, we also get Paul warning the reader to not let anyone deceive you. Which is a very good and helpful thing for him to be saying – but it also sets up the Evangelical way of thinking – that apostasy an individual matter. The person who becomes apostate has been tricked or fooled out of proper belief. And it is their responsibility alone to right their ship. Apostasy happens to individuals and must be fixed by individuals. The closest they can probably get to apostasy being the removal of priesthood power is looking at the Catholic church in the middle ages – if they know much about history they can probably point to that time period and say that the whole project seems to be off the rails. But Evangelicals and Catholics have an uneasy relationship. A very typical response here would be something like, “Well, those were Catholics.” The implied message is, “they aren’t real Christians like us.”
So what do you do with all of this? They see apostasy as an individual matter. And while we certainly can also see it in individuals, when we use the term The Great Apostacy, what we mean has to do with priesthood power, not individual behavior. And while they agree that a great apostasy is going to happen in the future, they don’t think its happened yet. Are we just at a stalemate? No, I don’t think so.
It gets tricky because they tend to see the concept of priesthood as a burden, not a gift. They think it is an unnecessary barrier between an individual and God. All they know are “false priests who oppress.” So one path you could go down is talking about how having the priesthood restored actually helps you get closer to God, not further away. I have experienced this in my own life, I’m sure you have too.
But another way to talk about this is to think about apostasy as they do. Accept their definition for a moment – that apostasy only has to do with the individual holding incorrect beliefs and has nothing to do with the lack of priesthood power. That it only happens to individuals and not all humans together. How does someone come to understand that they hold an incorrect belief? Your Evangelical friends hold incorrect beliefs – I did when I was an Evangelical. But, most good people who hold wrong beliefs really have no idea that they’re wrong. They’re not trying to be wrong, and they have nothing else to go on that might help them see that some things are off here. Some very simple questions about epistemology would come in handy here – how do they know what they know? How do they know they’re not wrong?
If you know and love Evangelicals you probably already know where this goes – they point to the Bible as the source of what they believe. And I trust them when they say that. But here is the thing….the Bible doesn’t lay flat. What does that mean? It means that some passages are given more emphasis and importance than others. And this is true in a way that makes people “blind” to certain passages. They can quote and believe the ones they like, and ignore lots of other verses that add more information. The solution here? You are not going to like it….You need to know your Bible better than you do. I know. I teach Gospel Doctrine and it’s only October and I can already hear the sighs of relief that people have about getting to do Book of Mormon year next year. -And I’m excited too – but as a people, we don’t know the Bible very well, so conversations with folks who are basing literally everything off the Bible are difficult because they can outwit you. I know you’re antsy to get to the BoM but I implore you, if you have a missionary heart toward Evangelicals at all please don’t run out of energy on the New Testament yet. We’ve still got 10 weeks left of the New Testament and one of the best things you might be able to do for the Evangelials you care about, is learn the Bible better.
Alright, that is that. Next week we get the wonderful phrase, “husband of one wife” and all the worries Evangelicals have about the history of polygamy in our faith. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Philippians; Colossians
Oct 09, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Is this a Gnostic Church?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Gnosticism. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
We are just going to jump right in with this week’s verse Col 2:8-9:
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form.
Okay, normally I don’t exegete passages for you, that’s not what we’re doing here, but I do feel like a little guidance is helpful here in order for you to understand where we’re going. Paul’s statement here in Col 2 is kind of weird if you don’t understand what’s happening in the background. He makes this statement that you shouldn’t be deceived by human philosophy and traditions. Okay. And then if you don’t know what he’s doing it seems as if he makes a strange left turn by adding in the reminder that Christ had a body. No one would blame you if you read that passage and wondered if the pages got stuck together or something. It’s odd on the face of it.
But what Paul is doing here is addressing Gnosticism. What is Gnosticism, why should you care, and what does it have to do with Evangelicals?
Gnosticism is a philosophy that covers many things, and we only have time to talk about 1 part of it. The Gnostics believed that it really only matters that you get the correct knowledge in your head. Thinking correctly and having knowledge is not just the most important thing, it’s everything – to the degree that the world which exists outside of the invisible things going on in your head just don’t matter. The only things that really matter are things you can think about – things you do with your actual physical body have nothing to do with it, they certainly don’t need to be regulated, and something that’s just pointless to worry about. If thinking in your head is everything….then the things that happen outside of your head are nothing. There was a very specific version of this in Paul’s day that he’s fighting against – and that idea was that Jesus either didn’t have a body, or maybe he only appeared to have a body. In this view, Jesus had obtained enough knowledge that he was able to be body-less because of his advanced knowledge. And someone with that much knowledge shouldn’t even be bothered with a body – it distracts from the really important thing, knowledge in your mind. So when Paul says, “Hey, don’t get distracted by this philosophy, Jesus actually had a body,” he is responding to this issue.
So, what does this have to do with our conversation about Evangelicals? As you know, Evangelicals reject the idea that anyone can choose to accept ordinances done on their behalf after the person has died because of their view that the afterlife is a binary between Heaven and Hell. But that’s only the first part of why they get confused about proxy ordinances. Gnosticism is the other reason why.
To Evangelicals having a body is not considered a gift, it’s not something they even think about all that much. They tend toward a kind of dualism that says belief is more important than behavior. What you think in your head is more important than what you actually do with your body. Now, to be fair, most people don’t study philosophy, and probably couldn’t tell you much about Gnosticism, but you can see the impact it has on their faith in the way they don’t value doing good works in the same way that we would in our church, or they don’t think baptism is important – it’s a nice thing, but accepting baptism is not really required for entrance into Heaven. They’re happily less restrictive on clothing, language, substances, and more because as long as you’re believing the correct things, it doesn’t really matter all that much if your physical body is allowed to do other things. So even though most of them won’t know the word “gnostic” they live in a system greatly influenced by it. The theologically trained folks know what it is – and they understand that Gnosticism is a bad thing. In that world, it is a legitimate and devastating blow to call someone out for being “too gnostic.” So it’s not like the leaders and theologically educated folks are embracing the idea that your body dosn’t even matter, but to preach about that doesn’t really go very far in that world. What you wear doesn’t matter, what you say or where you go doesn’t matter, what you do doesn’t matter – as long as you say the right things.
Okay, why should you care about any of this….It is a fair question for those outside our faith to ask why proxy work is how it has to be. If they can set aside the idea that there are no chances after death to believe (which is hard for them to set aside) they still get stuck on exactly why it requires a person who still has a physical body to get baptized, for example, on their behalf. Couldn’t God just accept their confession of faith after death? Why involve the people who are alive today and have bodies? This truly makes no sense to them. They might bring up the thief on the cross to whom Jesus spoke and said, “today you will be with me in paradise.” No baptism, no proxy work for that guy was required in what Jesus said. Though to be fair, Jesus was a bit busy at the moment when this conversation was taking place.
So, if you’re having a conversation about proxy work with an Evangelical this concept of Gnosticism is in the background, even if either one of you know it. So, what do you do?
Well, one interesting way to address this is to wonder with them: Why was it important that Jesus had a body through which he suffered greatly? Couldn’t God have just decided to forgive the sins of anyone who would come to the correct cognitive beliefs about their sin? They will probably tell you that God could have done that – but he didn’t. Why was it important to Paul that Jesus had a real body when he did his proxy work for us?
The other piece that comes up here is something I want to be really careful and kind with. There is a piece of Gnosticism – and especially the kind that is at the heart of modern-day evangelicalism – that says not only is knowledge important, but MY version of knowledge is the most important. For example, the key to salvation in the Evangelical world is that each person makes a “personal profession of faith in Christ.” And that is good. We believe that too – no one can decide about Christ for you, you have to decide for yourself. But from there, the Evangelical faces some different challenges. If MY personal salvation is based on MY own thinking – then everything can be. And there’s no one to tell me otherwise. If I don’t like what my pastor teaches, I go find a pastor who teaches what I like. When I get mad at him – or when he’s too old or not cool enough – I can go find another one. No one gets the final word but me. They’re not being self-centered or egotistical about this – its a theological expression for them and they feel the great responsibility of having to decide every single thing in their own head. There is no authority. No prophet. The first time I heard the phrase, “the authority of God was taken from the Earth,” I remember being confused because I had been so indoctrinated in the idea that God really wanted us to figure everything out on our own. In the Evangelical way of thinking that’s not seen God’s authority being taken – but that the very concept of authority doesn’t matter anymore. It’s postmodernism – the author is dead, and with him the concept of authority. You yourself have to be your own authority. Shoot, today in our Western culture we don’t even like the idea of saying that someone who has spent decades studying is an “authority” when I person can spend 5 min on Google and piece together a loud opinion. Evangelicals aren’t just up against this in our culture, they’re up against it as part of their faith system.
If you’re thinking ahead, you can already see how this same dilemma causes them to reject having a Prophet. They DO value prophets – they just value the ones who they can read and not see. The ones who lived so long ago they couldn’t possibly understand life today. Having a living prophet – another way to say that is to say we have a human Prophet who lives in a human body – feels much more dangerous to them than reading dead Prophets who are now disembodied.
That’s a lot of philosophy for today. So I’m not going to go on too much longer. But I hope this has helped you see how these differences play out. And really, if anything, I want you to recognize the goodness of the water you’re swimming in but probably don’t even realize.
Next week, I don’t remember what we’re doing, but in 2 weeks we’re talking about polygamy. So that’ll be fun. See you next time.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Ephesians
Oct 02, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Do Works Work?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about works. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today, is Sunday evening, October 1. I hope you had a great conference weekend. I certainly did. And I’ve got a list of talks I need to go back and listen to again. You probably do too! I will not tell you how many Cinnamon Rolls I ate, but you can probably guess.
We are just going to jump right in with this week’s verse Eph 2:8-9:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
So, I remember grappling with this verse when I was an Evangelical, probably age 16 or 17. I grew up in a non-LDS church that tried to walk a fine line between Calvinism (God chooses whom he will save, and your choices don’t matter. Even if you want to be saved, you might not be) and Arminianism (People have free will to choose God or not therefore we should Evangelize around the world. And, for what they were trying to do, they did an okay job at it. “Spend your days like an Arminianist, but spend your nights like a Calvinist” – meaning, work hard to share the gospel but also go to sleep knowing God is going to do what God is going to do. But when we would come to verses like this I was rather confused because my church taught that in order to receive this grace what you were supposed to do was pray, “the sinner’s prayer” which means asking Jesus into your heart. And that was it. Pray the prayer, that’s all you have to do, and God’s grace does the rest. But, in my 16-year-old brain, I couldn’t quite work out why that sinner’s prayer was not considered a “work.” It’s something that the person does. If it was actually true that God’s grace is all that’s needed, then why do we even need to pray the prayer? Evangelicals do have answers for this, but none of them felt very satisfying for me. Eventually, I just moved on from the question.
And, this will not come as a surprise to listeners of this show, I was also taught that Latter-day Saints are trying to work their way to Heaven and if they made one small mess-up, their chances were ruined. Which is part of why I was so intrigued when I read the Book of Moses. If you haven’t heard me say it before, Moses was actually the first Latter-day Scripture I ever read. And there’s a lot contained in that little book – something I understand now way more than before – so when I talk about it I usually say something like, “I really didn’t even know what I was looking at yet.” And that’s true. I didn’t. But there is also this. Literally, by verse 4 I’m confronted with ideas about works. In vs. 4 God tells Moses that his work is vast – and that he is still not done working. He’s got more to say and more to create. Well, hmmm, this is not something that Evangelicals ever taught me. But by Moses 1:6 we see God telling Moses that he has a work to do as well, just as Jesus Christ had a work to do. Huh. If you had asked me even a few weeks earlier to guess what a verse like this would say I probably would have guessed something like God telling Moses: I have a bunch of work for you to do, and if you do it well enough you can earn your way back into my presence. But that’s not what happens in Moses 1. Even by Verse 4 we know that God is calling Moses, “son” – and presumably Moses hasn’t even done anything yet. He is assured of his sonship and then given work to do. I’m not even sure if I articulated any good questions about that at the time. So, right from the beginning, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this concept. And I think that most Evangelicals who are baptized into our church have to go through a version of the same puzzle. People who have been members of our faith for their whole lives often get really confused here as well. The questions Evangelicals ask here don’t really make any sense and we all talk right past each other. So, what I want to do today is try to fairly explain why Evangelicals are in the place they are on this, and hopefully some ideas on how to have a better conversation.
About 6 weeks ago the magazine Christianity Today (which has long been considered the Evangelical’s magazine) published an article called, “Mormons Expect More of the Next Generation. Why Don’t We?” And the whole point of that article is basically that Evangelical kids don’t fair as well because they’re given far lower expectations – counterintuitively to some, high expectations (coupled with high levels of support) are good for kids. CT actually publishes articles like this roughly every decade. The most recent one I could find before the article in August was back in 2013. What is fascinating though is that all these articles, every decade or so, praise the works of Latter-day Saint youth – they talk about the goodness of their service and how the missionary program helps in young adult development. They talk about the humanitarian work, and all other good things our church does. But they divorce it from our beliefs. The logic goes something like this…We Evangelicals believe the Latter-day Saints are doing really good works – those works end up being meaningless because they think they’re earning salvation with them – but at least some people are getting some benefit out of them. In these articles, you get statements along the lines of, “Mormon culture is founded on a worldview requiring works in order to gain eternal life.” And, “Trying to earn God’s favor through human effort is not going to help any teenager, whether Mormon or Protestant.” One more, “Christians have a unique core that motivates our service, a core that separates our religion from others, including Mormonism. That core is grace.”
Now, Latter-day Saints, I know you’re minds are full right now of verses from the Book of Mormon, or from modern Prophets, explaining that we do not believe our works save us. But no matter how much you talk about those verses, Evangelicals have not budged on this, as evidenced by the simple example of the decade-after-decade articles from Christianity Today that we are a works-based religion.
Remember when we did the “Different Jesus” episode? Evangelicals have a deep worry that getting Jesus wrong, even a little bit, means that no matter how strong your faith it won’t really matter because you don’t believe in the “correct” Jesus. And that comes into play here. It’s not so much that they don’t believe in doing good. They do, and they can cite the Bible verses which support this. The problem is that because, in their view, we don’t believe in the “correct” Jesus whatever good works we do have to stand on their own as just nice things people are doing. They can’t see our works as an expression of our faith in Christ because they can’t see that we have faith in Christ.
Now, it’s conference weekend, so heavily in my mind was the number of times that speakers mentioned Jesus Christ. I thought I’d keep a tally, but quickly lost my ability to keep up. The text of those talks is not available yet, so I went to last Conference, April 2023, to see how many times Jesus Christ was mentioned. There are over 500 times, and if you take out all the mentions of the name of the church (“Welcome to the annual conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) you still have well over 400 times. Elder Gary Stevenson, in that conference, talks about him the most, 25 mentions in a 14-min talk. He mentions Jesus Christ on average every 30 seconds. And in fact it’s rare to have a speaker not mention Jesus Christ multiple times. You and I all know this. But our Evangelical friends won’t accept those 400 times because to them it doesn’t matter how hard you believe or how big your faith is if it is invested in the wrong thing. And here, “the wrong thing” essentially means that we don’t accept the things written about Jesus by a committee 400 years after he was gone – the basic Trinitarian conceptualization. You don’t believe in the Trinity, the object of your belief is false, therefore your works are not a product of faith – they’re you trying to earn your way to Heaven.
The only way that I really see out of this corner is to speak more specifically about what you believe regarding Jesus Christ with your Evangelical friends. “I believe in Jesus Christ,” is met with, “But you believe in the wrong Jesus.” That’s an expected reflex. But something like, “I believe Jesus Christ is the eternal Savior of the world and no one can return to God except through him,” would certainly get you some agreement and understanding with them.
I’ll say one other thing about getting out of this corner. If you want to have credibility, you have to live up to what you’re saying. You actually have to be the kind of person who embodies the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is why I don’t personally participate in conversations about Christ with people I don’t know online. There is a spot for that – and if you are gifted in the area, God bless you – I think many of our missionaries are gifted this way as they knock on doors of strangers or start discussions with people they don’t know well at all. But I am not one of those people, at least in part because the biggest piece of credibility I have is the fact of who Christ has led me to be. You can’t really communicate that to someone you don’t know well. But occasionally an Evangelical friend will say something like: “I don’t believe a thing your church teaches you, but I can see that it’s working for you because you’re happier than I’ve ever seen you.” Said by a friend who has known me for more than 30 years. How you live your life and what makes you happy really actually matters. And my life is certainly not perfect, and neither am I, but my friend was right, I am happier than I’ve ever been, despite some real challenges. And if you’re like most Latter-day Saints I’ve met, you’re that way too. You conduct your life in a way that is what Jesus described as letting them, “see your good works and glorify your father who is in Heaven.” Who you are, and how you live your life – the good works that you do – actually gives you more traction with people who know you in getting them to want to listen to you about Jesus.
Okay, that’s about it for today. Next week we’re going to talk about something called Gnosticism which Paul fought hard against – and why proxy work is a perfect antidote to Gnosticism. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Galatians
Sep 26, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Another Gospel
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the phrase, “another gospel”. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
A couple of reminders for you. This last weekend FAIR hosted an online only conference called Defending the Book of Mormon. Those talks will be released on the FAIR Youtube channel in the upcoming weeks. Brent Schmidt’s talk about grace is still exploding in my head. And Stephen Smoot’s talk – not on the Book of Abraham where he is an expert – but on the difference between translation and revelation was also fantastic. And yes, you see me a bit in there too – I didn’t present anything, but got to introduce speakers and ask questions. Which, really meant I got to have all the fun of a conference without the pain of writing a paper to present. You also get to see Zach Wright and Sarah Allen doing the same thing. And…oh goodness….at one point we end up with more time than we’d planned for. A couple speakers were efficient with their time and we needed to fill some space. So you get to hear me interview Sarah – she’s the author of that 70-part response to the CES letter – and we had a great chat. Though I think it was something like, “Hey, you girls are interesting, and we’ve got some time to fill – can you just go talk and we’ll film you?” In other words, you can probably fast-forward through that section. But it was fun. Last bit of news….at FAIR we do have some fun projects cooking up for next year. Not ready to let details out yet, but lets just say that I will be busy. More to come later.
Okay, we’re going to talk about that phrase, “another gospel” and our jumping off point is Gal 1:8:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
And this verse comes up a lot for Evangelicals when thinking about what our church teaches. So I want to dive in here and try to understand why they say that – and then take a look at how Evangelicals actually define, “the gospel” and see how much agreement there actually is between the two groups. What IS the gospel, according to Evangelicals?
So, “the gospel” literally means, “the good news” and no one is disputing that. Both Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints are on the same page here. But we do differ in some areas.
I think I could come up with a pretty good answer on my own, but I wanted to see what is currently being taught in their own words so I surveyed some of the most popular sites for Evangelicals and here is the criteria they’re talking about…
The gospel is…”Imputed righteousness. What do we receive because we are counted righteous in Christ? The answer is fellowship with Jesus. (This will) remove obstacles to the only lasting, all-satisfying source of joy: Jesus Christ.”
Latter-day Saint friends I suppose some of you are thinking, “Umm, what’s wrong with that?” We’ll unpack.
Let’s start with the first one which talks about “imputed righteousness.” And here is your can of worms. What is “imputed righteousness.” It is, “Imputed righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus credited to the Christian, enabling the Christian to be justified.” This is a term that comes from Martin Luther and was a corrective to some of the Catholic practices at the time including buying indulgences with money. An “indulgence” kind of sounds like it is a free-pass to do some elicit activity without getting in trouble, but what it really means is that the person’s “sentence” in purgatory will be reduced by a certain number of years. Luther was right to fight against this practice. He’s trying to say that people don’t need to spend money to get a softer sentence in purgatory – Jesus pays the price. And I know, in theory, when you put it that way, we don’t disagree. But the idea is part of a bigger package of ideas that include believing that God is angry at all of his children and will absolutely torture them for eternity unless during their lifetime they profess faith in Christ. Luther’s phrase here, imputed righteousness, solves one problem (indulgences) but opened up another – and 500 years later, Protestants are still grappling with what it means to accept salvation that they can’t earn. This doctrine is called Sola Fide, “By faith alone” Lately – meaning the last 120 years – its turned more into “Jesus did it all – so you don’t have to do anything.” But it hasn’t always been this way.
If we go back even further to Augustine – who isn’t always trying very hard to keep the apostasy at bay – but he gets it right here. He uses the term, “Infused righteousness” which for him means, “God bestows justifying righteousness upon the sinner in such a way that it becomes part of his or her person.” The implication here is that after one receives this righteousness it becomes part of them and they go on to strive to live a life of holiness. But you can see how Luther’s change – which made sense at the time when you compare it to the practices of the Catholic church – has been used to claim that Jesus’ righteousness does everything for us and we don’t have to do anything. Here it is expressed by one Evangelical pastor, “Your salvation is a free gift. You can not do anything to earn it. You can’t even ask for it because asking would be you doing part of the work. If God is going to save you, he’s going to save you. It has nothing to do with you. It is God’s work. You are the object of that work. But that’s all you are.” Augustine was closer to the truth on this one than Luther – and I’m not really a fan of Augustine. But he’s right here.
John Wesley, founder of the Methodists, tries to offer a correction here to the change Luther made by coining the term, “imparted righteousness” as a way to say that salvation is through Christ alone, but it must, “empower the process of sanctification,” which Wesley also called Christian perfection. By “perfection” here he means something similar to what we mean when we say that we will become “like God.” And it’s no wonder that Joseph Smith said that the Methodists are closer to truth than some other groups.
So, what is the gospel to Evangelicals? They would all affirm that its good news. That it comes through Christ alone. But they radically disagree on what comes next. Do we have to do anything after receiving salvation or not? The room is deeply divided on this. Why did I tell you all this?
Why do Evangelicals think we have “another gospel”?
I think you can see at this point that the versions of the gospel offered by Luther and Wesley (2 men who still influence Evangelicals to a great degree) are radically different, or at least have been taken in radically different directions. And yet, these 2 versions of the gospel do not trip the Evangelical worry about “a different gospel.” But they couldn’t be more different. They in fact opposite. The only thing they have in common is that Jesus Christ paid for salvation. In one version of the gospel you, the individual, are not required to do anything at all – and if you try you are insulting God by saying that Jesus is not enough. And in the other, Christ paves the way for salvation, but you, the individual, must change and grow in holiness as time goes on in order to reach perfection. It’s weird right. Totally different views. But Evangelicals will sometimes easily say that we Latter-day Saints have a “different gospel.” If you ask for specifics you’re more likely to get quotes from past leaders that are not part of the standard works and that are taken out of context. Or perhaps were not even recorded correctly in the first place – see the last FAIR conference and the talk by LaJean Carruth for an incredibly detailed account of how and why this is true.
Why else do they think this? Because, frankly, anti-mormon propaganda has been effective. That was true in Joseph Smith’s day. There is a book – if you don’t know about this book you should – written by 3 BYU professors and came out this year called, “Marrianne Meets the Mormons.” And it’s about the church in France in the first part of the 20th century. During this time there are less than 500 members of the church in all of France. Statistically, they’re not a significant group in that culture by any means. But, the amount of literature, art, and music that uses “Mormons” as the bad guys is huge. There’s 42 Million people in France at this time – 500 of them are members of the church – but anytime a movie or book needs a bad guy, he’s very likely to be a Mormon. It’s very similar to the same stereotyping that we see today – turn on any number of television shows from the last year and you already know this.
What now?
So, what do we do with this? Within the Evangelical community, you can have 2 radically different versions of what the gospel is and no one cares. But when you want to talk about the gospel how Latter-day Saints do, which includes a belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ, and agree with both Augustine and Wesley that sanctification matters after salvation – all of a sudden that’s just too different.
You have a number of options here. You can fight with them, though I dont recommend it. You can simply bear your testimony knowing that they can’t really refute what you believe, and that’s a good move. But on this chanel we’re really focused on how you talk about these things with the people you love – friends and family – and sometimes bearing your testimony can feel like you’re shutting down the conversation, not opening it up. At least when it’s with people you’re close to. Our leaders – Prophets, Apostles, your local leaders – have given us plenty of spiritual advice on how to manage these situations. I won’t repeat all of that you – you know it already and should listen to them. But I will offer you a piece of psychological advice.
People love to feel understood. I love it. You love it. One quote says, “Being heard feels so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” So try to hear them before you try to get them to hear you. What does the gospel mean to them? Does admitting that there are different versions of the gospel even among Protestants make them feel anxious? Why? What’s that about for them? And similar questions will help them teach you about what they need in order to have this conversation. Maybe that’s just therapist psychobable. But if you want them to understand why you see the gospel the way you do – you’re probably going to have to put in the work and understand why they’re resistant to it. If they’re throwing a bunch of complaints that sound like they got them off some website, they probably did. Try to help them identify what their actual concerns are. And listen to them to understand them. That is the most effective way to get them to listen to you, at least from a psychological perspective.
All right, next week we’re to do what is essentially part 2 of this week’s episode and talk about how Paul sees “works” in the book of Ephesians. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 2 Corinthians 8–13
Sep 18, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Why do you believe in Levels of Heaven?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the 3 kingdoms of Heaven. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Quick announcement for you first: This coming weekend, Friday Sept 22 – Saturday Sept 23 is an online only conference put on by FAIR and the focus is evidence for the Book of Mormon. I am not presenting at this conference but I do get to help out a bit with introductions and questions which I am thrilled to death over because it means I get to hang out with some very smart people all day long. The Friday evening presentation is none other than Richard Bushman. On Saturday there are a number of speakers including Stephen Smoot – he’s the most up-to-date scholar on issues surrounding the Book of Abraham; a presentation by my 2 favorite Spencers – Spencer Marsh and Spencer Kraus – which I think has been jokingly titled, “Revealing the One True Spencer” but in reality is about 2 Nephi 19:1, which is rather a puzzling verse. Several good talks on archeology challenges and ancient artifacts. I’ll be there live with the speakers, but the conference is online only and you can stream it on the FAIR YouTube channel.
Okay, we’re going to talk about the levels of Heaven. Our jumping-off verse is 2 Corinthians 12:2:
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.
And I’ve noticed that Latter-day Saints sometimes are confused about why Evangelicals don’t accept this idea, it’s in the Bible after all. I want to talk through how and why Evangelicals see this verse in 2 Corinthians the way they do, and then we’ll talk about some intersections with our faith and where you might go in conversation about this topic.
I don’t have research to point to that backs this up, but my sense is that if you asked most Evangelicals what Paul means by “the 3rd Heaven” they wouldn’t even understand the question. It’s considered an obscure verse that they generally don’t spend a lot of time on so the average Evangelical person might not even know it’s in scripture. But, for those who do, they have a very concrete (meaning physical) explanation for it – rather than a spiritual one. Which brings up a bigger question: Why do we – why does anyone – take some verses literally and some spiritually? Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use both techniques, but at different times and for different reasons. The cynical explanation is that the other group, the group that is opposite of you, does this at their own convenience only to fit their doctrine in. But I think it’s more complex than that. Both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals (as well as every other denominational group or religion out there) are heavily influenced by a set of interpretative rules called hermeneutics. The hermeneutic you use – here the choices are physical or spiritual, but there are lots of others – determines how you will interpret a passage. Let me make an analogy to help you understand.
In English, there is a proper order for adjectives in a sentence. An adjective is a descriptive word and if you string them together in the wrong order your sentence won’t sound right. However, if you ask almost any native English speaker to name that order, they can’t do it. I can’t do it. I had to look the order up for this talk to make sure I got it right – it’s a rule I follow, but don’t even know I’m following it. I just know it sounds right. The order is Quantity, Quality, Size, Age, Shape, Color Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin), and Purpose. A classic example of getting this order correct is the sentence, “I love that really big old green antique car.” If you’re a native speaker, this sounds right to your ears while, “I love that antique, green, old, big car,” just doesn’t sound right. You follow this rule without even knowing the rule exists. And hermeneutics are like this. Knowing when to read literally or physically and when to read spiritually is a rule that you follow without even knowing there is a rule. And Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use different rules. So when they interpret something, it doesn’t sound quite right to our ears – and vice versa.
What are the Evangelical rules for the interpretation of a verse like this one in 2 Cor? They interpret this verse literally by saying that the first heaven refers to the atmospheric where the birds live (and yes, this is how it’s normally phrased.). The second heaven is the area of the stars and planets. The third heaven is the dwelling place of God and Heaven. But why?
So, I think the tendency here is for Latter-day Saints to claim that Evangelicals get it wrong because they don’t have the Spirit and therefore can’t interpret correctly. But that’s not a very satisfying answer and it probably breeds more us-them than is good for anyone. So let me offer a couple different ways to understand what’s happening here.
First, you remember from past episodes that the Evangelical movement is not even 100 years old, and it really came of age alongside the Baby Boomers. It is very much a post-WW2 American invention. The cultural mix at the time was encouraging everyone to move into the modern world with all its conveniences. And they didn’t want to be seen as old fuddy-duddies. If you’re close to my age, our family lines probably play out in a similar fashion. My mother was born in the first wave of the baby boom, but her parents were both born in the 19-teens, and all 4 of her grandparents were born in the 1800’s. The Evangelical movement rose up with these baby boomers whose parents and grandparents seemed to be from an entirely different era. So they wanted an entirely different version of church than what their parents and grandparents had which was now out of fashion for being too fundamentalist and strict. They found what they were looking for in the Evangelical movement. The Evangelicals were a reaction to the fundamentalists who came before them.
But like with all reactionary movements, the very thing they’re reacting against often gets smuggled right in any way, and in this case, we’re talking about the temptation to interpret in an overly literal way. They will say things like, “The Bible is the literal word of God.” At face value, what that sentence means is that God’s message to use is found in this book. But what that gets morphed into is something like: everything in the Bible should be taken literally. This leaves you in a weird place if you read in Luke that Jesus says he gathers us like baby chicks under his wings because the rule of “everything should be taken literally” falls apart unless you want to regard Christ as some kind of giant cosmic chicken. So what has happened with Evangelicals is that their interpretative rule is something like: in order to take scripture seriously you have to take it literally whenever possible – and when it is not possible you must find the spiritual meaning instead. In other words, if it can be literal – it should be taken literally. Evangelicals will get a little squirmy if you try to say this plainly. When they ask, “Do you take the Bible literally?” what they’re really asking is, “Do you think the Bible is actually true?” The word “literal” here is morphing in meaning – it’s okay, words do that within the context of a culture. But it leaves Evangelicals with this sense of the literal meaning has to come first.
So, when they look at our verse about the third Heaven in 2 Corinthians their first impulse is to look for a literal meaning. Remember, these rules are often as invisible to people as the English rules of which order adjectives go in – everyone follows the rule, even though most people don’t know it exists. And, Evangelicals have a second interpretation rule here that reinforces the first: If another verse in the Bible mentions the same thing, it should be used to enhance the meaning of the verse in question. So, Evangelicals interpret the 1st Heaven to be where the atmosphere and the birds are and they back that up with a verse like Deut 28:12, “The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season.” And they see this as a perfectly valid explanation. Paul mentions a 3rd Heaven, implying that there are 1st and 2nd Heavens. Can we interpret this literally? Yes, and we have scriptures that do so, a literal interpretation works and therefore should be used.
Latter-day Saints have our own history of why things have been interpreted the way they have. And we face the same reality that Evangelicals do – many of the rules we use for interpretation are rather invisible to us, we just know what sounds right. My experience has been – and I’m sure some of you have had different experiences and I’d love to read about them in the comments – but my experience has been that the hermeneutics Latter-day Saints most often use is something called an emendatory (amendatory) hermeneutic which just means that we have been given additional information or clarity on what the Bible is talking about through either the Book of Mormon or our modern Prophets. In general, we would look at a verse like this one about the 3rd Heaven and easily be able to quote all kinds of modern revelation that help us know what “the 3rd Heaven” actually means. The challenge for Latter-day Saints comes in 2 directions. Either we’re overly quick to jump to, “this part of the Bible is clearly not translated correctly and I don’t have to do any study or work to try and tease out some meaning.” Or, we over-relate a Biblical passage to modern revelation – sometimes making connections that the Prophet himself (whichever one speaking) did not make. Latter-day Saints can also go a little too heavy on literal interpretation just like Evangelicals can simply because we’re impacted by history here too – the early half of the 20th century was dominated by more literal/fundamentalist thinking in our church too.
Okay, so how do you talk about this concept with your Evangelical friends? I have 2 thoughts.
First, Jesus doens’t use the phrase “levels of Heaven” or “Kingdoms of Heaven” but he does talk about varying degrees of reward in Heaven and makes it clear that certain things we do here on Earth will bring more reward, and certain things less reward. For example: Matthew 5 Jesus says there is a great reward for those who are persecuted. Meaning that the people who did not have to face persecution will not be rewarded in that way. Jesus is offering a compensatory reward for suffering faithfully for his name. In the very next chapter Jesus talks about how some folks really want to draw attention to the fact that they’re giving to the poor – Jesus tells us that these people have their reward in full already and this behavior will not get them further reward in Heaven. Romans 2 Paul tells us God will give to every man based on his deeds. In 1 Cor 3 Paul teaches that our works will be judged – some will burn up, and some will endure – those who produce works that endure will be rewarded. All this to say, pointing out that these passages (and many others) describe different degrees of reward and that might open up the conversation really nicely.
My second thought on how to talk with Evangelicals about this: Read the CS Lewis book, “The Great Divorce.” It’s fiction and a rather easy read. The audio book is only about 3 hours. Lewis was not a member of our faith, and at times actually had some rather snarky things to say about our faith, but in The Great Divorce, he sees the same truth we’re talking about. Here is the basic plot: It’s set in the afterlife and people from the lower kingdoms (here represented by a large, noisy city) are given a chance to go on a bus ride to the higher kingdoms. In the book the higher kingdoms are thought of as being closer to God – the countryside is closer to God than the city – and the great mountain is where God lives but its rather steep and hard to get to. However, God reigns over all 3 kingdoms. You might think that when the people from the lower kingdom get a glimpse of the country side and its fresh air that they might awaken their desire to progress. But they don’t. They complain that the color of the grass is such a vivid green it hurts their eyes and feels “too real” when they put their feet on it. They complain that living in the countryside requires too much of them and they want to get back on the bus and go home where it’s comfortable. The point here is that the people who spent their lives preparing to live closer to God are the ones who are best able to adapt to the higher kingdoms. You can’t climb the great mountain without some training. But in the book, progression is possible if you want it. Most people don’t. Lewis never intended this as a pro-LDS book by any means – and yet he is getting at some of the very things we’re saying about 3 Heavens. I actually read this book long before I investigated the church and it was an important thing for me to have on board in my brain as I learned how to adjust to a different way of thinking about eternity.
I hope this episode helps you think through some ways of how to understand your Evangelical friends and how to talk with them about the beautiful doctrine we have about Heaven in a way that they can actually hear.
Next week we’re talking about the phrase, “another gospel” in Galatians. Looking forward to seeing you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 7: Confidence and Bias
Sep 17, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
Imagine for yourself, for a moment, that a critic of the church stumbles across some quotes about the Adam-God theory. “Brigham Young taught this, and seeing as he was a prophet, this must be what Mormons believe!” they reason to themselves. They post these quotes on social media, proclaiming that “Mormons believe that Adam was God the Father! Your leaders taught it, it’s what you profess to believe!” However, what this critic did not know is that as early as 1897, we have records of church leaders stating that Brigham “no doubt expressed his personal opinion or views upon the subject,” supporting the idea that members of the church are under no obligation to support the notion that Adam was God the Father (1). The critic doesn’t retreat from their position though, doubling down on how members of the church believe it. At the end of the day, their bias led them to an incorrect conclusion about what members of the church believe.
For those who are well acquainted with criticisms of the church, I’m sure that you can recall with ease similar instances wherein bias led people to incorrect conclusions about our beliefs. However, unlike most of the previous cognitive biases we’ve discussed, the bias outlined above can’t necessarily be learned by simply taking time to think about it. It’s a little different, and has been classified by many researchers as being called The Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is what we’ll be discussing today. Critical thinkers need to be aware of cognitive biases due to their possible impact on our daily decision-making and behavior, thus affecting our ability to arrive at conclusions and solve problems. So today, we’re going to be going over the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s quasi-reverse bias (often referred to as Imposter Syndrome), and afterwards we’ll talk about what we can do to combat these biases. Let’s get into it.
How Confidence Relates to Bias
Now, I need to lay some groundwork for the rest of the article to make sense. It’s understood that confidence is related to bias in a few different ways. For example, the Overconfidence Bias is understood to be “the tendency people have to be more confident in their own abilities.” (2) This is demonstrated in a plethora of studies, such as one wherein it was shown that younger children rate their memory recall ability more highly than their older peers.(3) This makes sense…we talked about how dominant emotions (such as high confidence) are associated with cognitive biases in our previous episode. As we’ll soon see, however, the connection between confidence and bias goes a little deeper than that.
So, a group of researchers set up a study where they had participants determine whether groups of dots moved left or right. Sometimes the dots moved more noticeably in a given direction, and other times, the dots moved less noticeably in a given direction. After the participants made decisions about what direction the groups of dots were moving, they were shown evidence that either confirmed their suspicions (when they guessed right), or went contrary to their suspicions (when they guessed wrong). They then used magnetoencephalography, which is just a fancy method of scanning brain activity, to see how areas of the brain related to confidence behaved throughout this process. At the end of the study, the researchers stated the following:
As hypothesized, we found that after high confidence (vs. low confidence) decisions, accumulation of neural evidence was facilitated if it was confirmatory, but largely abolished if it was disconfirmatory…In other words, our MEG analysis reveals that high confidence leads to post-decision accumulation becoming “blind” to disconfirmatory evidence. (4)
To translate that, it basically means that when the participants were super confident in their decisions, it led them to be blinded to evidence that went against their decisions. If that sounds familiar, it should, because in our last episode this phenomena is described as being confirmation bias. This study was super useful in being able to demonstrate how our confidence can relate to bias in ways that we may not expect, and it’s important to retain this in mind as we proceed talking about more confidence based biases.
However, I do want to caution against any inference that confidence is a bad thing, or that confidence indicates weakness in a position. As we talked about in our article about epistemology, there are ways to be epistemically confident in something that leave us less susceptible to errors. We don’t have to associate confidence with bad ideas, and in my opinion, we shouldn’t! As we’ll discuss more later, a lack of confidence can lead to just as many, if not more problems in the long run. Even so, critical thinkers should be aware of how certain biases related to confidence can affect our ability to make decisions, and solve problems. As we’ll soon see, the effects of these kinds of biases can be long-lasting and far-reaching.
The Confidence Biases at Large
To begin explaining more concretely how bias and confidence may be related, an excellent place to start is to explore the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger Effect earned its name from a pair of psychologists named David Dunning and Justin Kruger. They published a very famous paper in 1999 wherein they tested people on their social and intellectual skills. Later, they tested the participants again, asking them to rate themselves on how well they actually did. What did they find? They found that those who scored on the bottom percentile rated themselves as being much more competent than they actually were (5). Since that time, psychologists have referred to this effect as being the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it’s been a well-studied phenomenon ever since.
Those who are familiar with my previous article are familiar with the aspects that make up a cognitive bias. While each cognitive bias is different, it usually stems from people focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (6). Unfortunately for those who fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, one could make a convincing argument that they are victims to all four of these heuristics in seemingly negative ways. First, they recognize the pattern that they’ve been able to accomplish tasks such as “deductive reasoning” before. However, there’s no guarantee that because they’ve successfully done something before, that they’ll successfully do it again. Next, they draw on the information that they already know, prioritizing this information, seemingly at the expense of other information. However, this leads to other problems, seeing as the information that they are seemingly missing is often important, and may complicate the simplicity of the answers they’re looking for. This becomes increasingly apparent as time goes on, but by the time that they realize it, a lot of the effects have already had long-lasting consequences.
To explain why this is, I first need to explain a common way that the Dunning-Kruger effect manifests itself. Let’s use myself as a hypothetical example. Arguably, I happen to be one of the few people right now doing a series on critical thinking in regards to LDS theology and history. Let’s say that I suddenly get a lot of popularity for my discussion about critical thinking. I suddenly gain thousands upon thousands of views on my videos, and chart a lot of internet traffic on my articles. People start reaching out to me, asking me questions about obscure aspects of LDS history, which I may know less about. I can tell you about the things I’ve studied (Epistemology, Evaluating sources, Logic, etc), but I’m less equipped to tell you about every single pioneer story ever recorded. However, because I want to be successful, and because I want to make people happy, I start exploring other topics that I have less experience in. Consequently, I begin saying more things that are wrong; but because I was right about some things, I have the confidence to keep persisting in my incorrect ideas. However, any attempts to correct my incorrect ideas would fall on deaf ears, because I would be far too inexperienced to recognize how I was wrong. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in its purest form, and they (Dunning and Kruger) reported the principle in the following way:
Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. (7)
In the formal business world, this idea is referred to as The Peter Principle, which indicates that managers will “prioritize current job performance in promotion decisions at the expense of other observable characteristics that better predict managerial performance.” (8) In other words, the managers look at what the employees do, and assume that their current performance will predict how well they will perform in a position that, in reality, would be too much for them. It’s events like this that often lead to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the person being promoted (either formally, like in a business, or informally, such as on social media platforms), will suddenly begin to feel confident about their abilities, despite the often obvious lack of ability they may have in a given area. The bias here is evident. We’re recognizing patterns of our success. We focus on the dominant and impactful ideas that agree with our own ideas. We also ignore or downplay the issues that challenge our own ideas. After all, if we were right before, who’s to say that we won’t be right again? However, if we put that into syllogistic form, it falls apart rather quickly.
P1: I was able to solve/answer X problem using X method
P2: I am presented with Y problem
Conclusion: I will be able to solve Y problem using X method
The premises, in this instance, do not support the conclusion, and I hope you can do some research to find out what fallacy this is ;). Proficiency in one area of study does not guarantee proficiency in another. I’m sure that the reader can imagine a plethora of examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect being present at work, in politics, and of course, religious discussion.
Now, I certainly hope that I’ve stated things that are accurate and useful to critical thinkers, but regardless of how well-intentioned I may be, this does not change the fact that the internet as a whole is a breeding ground for the Dunning-Kruger effect in ways that have been previously unprecedented. Normal, ordinary people with little to no formal training in a given field, are suddenly given power and influence over hundreds, if not thousands of people. They can be proclaiming utter nonsense about a given topic, and not a single person will realize that they have no idea what they’re talking about. This is why critical thinking skills are as important as they are. We need to be able to parse through information ourselves and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments at play. If we don’t, then it becomes all the easier for us to fall victim to cognitive biases, and otherwise fallacious thinking.
Now, I will introduce one caveat here, just to cover my bases. There is a bit of controversy right now regarding whether or not the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually a psychological bias. There are some writers and researchers now who are advocating for the idea that the Dunning-Kruger effect is more statistical in nature. (9) The question as to whether or not this is a psychological issue or a statistical issue is important to consider. However, the authors of these articles don’t deny that these behavioral patterns exist. Instead, they attribute it to other factors, such as the Overconfidence bias. Whatever the underlying cause is (whether that be psychological, statistical, or otherwise), I think these patterns of behavior and thought are worth mentioning and analyzing.
Flipping the script
We’ve talked about how people who are low-achieving tend to rate themselves as being much more proficient than how they actually are. However, that still leaves us with the question of how people who are proficient in their field of study view themselves. Now, you’d initially think that people who are proficient in their fields would likewise rate themselves as being significantly better than their peers in their profession. However, we actually find the opposite to be true. High-achieving, competent people often rate themselves as being less competent than their peers. (11) It’s my understanding that this doesn’t happen all the time, but one study estimated that it happens to about 70% of the population at least once in their lives. (12) Some authors note that this is often cited in association with Dunning and Kruger, though those two psychologists never expressly talk about it in their studies. (13) Even so, I do think that exploring this issue may prove to be useful.
The imposter effect, also known as Imposter Syndrome, was initially described by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, wherein it described that those who are extremely competent tend to downplay their abilities, feeling like they are less competent than they actually are. (14) While this pair of researchers initially assumed that this phenomenon was exclusive to women, most researchers accept the idea that this effect is not exclusive to women. (15) Some authors argue that it affects women more than men, while others suggest that Imposter Syndrome simply manifests differently among men and women. (16) Regardless, this confidence problem inherent within the imposter effect contributes to the Dunning-Kruger effect, due to how the people who are less competent end up being given a larger platform due to the Peter Principle. As demonstrated earlier, this can lead to a lot of problems within a short period of time.
The imposter effect can have some very negative effects on people and their performance. As you can imagine, it’s associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression. (17) Those feelings are serious, and can cause problems in a variety of aspects in our lives, but something just as problematic is how the imposter effect can negatively impact critical thinkers in their quest to solve problems. How so? Well, let’s say that you have a brand new foreign-speaking missionary who’s afraid to speak up, because their trainer appears much more competent than them in terms of speaking, or even understanding the lesson content. How about a bishop who resists a calling to become a stake president because he’s afraid that others will “discover his inadequacy.” Examples of similar phenomena can be found outside of LDS culture, but you can probably already see the principle at play. This can inhibit critical thinkers from making decisions that are genuinely going to solve problems.
That prompts the question though, how do we overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect and Imposter Syndrome? Well, I think that the ways I mentioned in the last article are worth noting. Slowing down, looking at things from a different perspective, and getting a multitude of opinions all may help decrease the effects and longevity of these effects. However, I think it serves us to examine this from a more theological standpoint: Both of these problems are resolved in a similar way. True humility is the answer here. To explain why, we first need to explore what humility is.
Humility, in our theological context, is described as “recognizing our dependence on God.” (18) I totally agree with that, and of course, an obvious application here is that humility would allow people to more easily admit when they don’t know something, hampering the effects of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Why? Because suddenly our eternal value doesn’t come from what we know, it comes from who we are. Humility, when channeled in an appropriate way, can allow us to more easily admit when we are wrong. If we really think about this, the imposter effect comes from basing our inherent value on the things we can do, instead of basing our value on who we are in relationship to God.
What about Imposter Syndrome though? Surely that must be different, right? Well, when we recognize that one of the most important aspects of our identity is that we are children of God, (19) it becomes much easier to recognize that we are not better than anyone else. However, the opposite is also true: no one is inherently better than us. Instead of feeling like we’re letting people down, those who are truly humble recognize that even if there are imperfections in what they do, their imperfections do not make them less than other people. Humility, in an ironic twist, decreases the fear that comes from failure. When we realize that our true worth comes from our inherent, unalienable relationship with God, we open the door to true, enduring happiness.
Now, I’m not blind to the fact that humility exists in places outside the church. General Christians, Atheists, as well as members of the church are all able to experience this kind of humility (though arguably for different reasons). However, I bring this idea up for a few reasons. First, obviously, I want to show how confidence and bias relate to each other, and likewise show a way that I think we can mitigate the effects of unhealthy confidence. I want to show one of many ways of how looking at things from different perspectives can be useful. This is the epitome of critical thinking: the idea that we can bring together data of different types, analyze it, and then use it to help us solve problems. This pattern is something that I hope everyone would try to emulate. You don’t even need to be a member of the church to appreciate how this method of data analysis can be useful.
In conclusion, I think that there are some important things to consider when we talk about how confidence can impact bias. First, we need to know some of the mechanics behind how bias and confidence are related. We also need to know some documented biases that relate to confidence, and we need to know how to fix them. Again, I want to reiterate that certainty isn’t a bad thing, but like most things, it should be employed after careful consideration and restraint. As we do so, it’ll be easier for us to arrive at correct conclusions, and eventually become the kinds of thinkers and believers God wants us to be.
References:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/80389221-debe-4168-89a6-9e2bd7709a5c/0/369; The quote part comes from Joseph F. Smith, a contemporary to Brigham Young, and a future prophet and leader of the church. While this quote was said after Brigham died, other leaders, such as Orson Pratt, publicly denounced the doctrine while Brigham was still alive. Later, after meeting with Brigham, Pratt apologized. Pratt continued thereon to allow Brigham to have his opinion uninhibited, but stated that he would not teach the doctrine himself (link here). Orson was counseled by the brethren on the matter, but was never once disciplined by the church for this position. There are also points wherein Brigham himself was less dogmatic about the Adam-God theory, and you can read more about that here.
Piehlmaier D. M. (2020). Overconfidence Among Young Decision-Makers: Assessing the Effectiveness of a Video Intervention and the Role of Gender, Age, Feedback, and Repetition. Scientific reports, 10(1), 3984. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61078-z
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1121
Korteling, J. E., Brouwer, A. M., & Toet, A. (2018). A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1561. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01561
Gravois, J. (2007). You’re not fooling anyone. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(11), A1. Retrieved November 5, 2008 (link here, though there is a paywall to the full article)
Magnus, J. R., & Peresetsky, A. A. (2022). A Statistical Explanation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 840180. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840180; This is another one of those articles that tries to use statistics to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect.
https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2013/11/fraud; Some sources claim that this affects those who are considered demographic minorities differently than those who are not considered demographic minorities. For example, one study suggests that for African Americans “impostor feelings are a stronger factor in mental health than perceived discrimination and possibly minority status stress” (link here). As you can see, imposter syndrome can have repercussions that can affect a lot of discourse about minority populations.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 2 Corinthians 1–7
Sep 11, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Obedient in Everything
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about obedience. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I do love to tell you about things that are going on just in case you don’t know. This coming weekend, Sept 15-16, is a conference in Salt Lake, at the Conference Center and it’s regarding the completion of the Joseph Smith Papers. The conference is free and you can come in person, or watch online. Each session will be focused on a different aspect of the world during the time of Joseph Smith. Which is really cool because you can think about what the social and economic forces are at play behind the scenes of the beginning of the church. So there’s a session on what it was like for women and families during that era, or what race, ethnicity, and politics were like then. There’s a session on how they handled conflict and one on finances. And lots more. If you’re into historical stuff like I am, you will be sure to enjoy it.
Okay, we’re going to talk about the concept of obedience. And our jumping-off verse is 2 Corinthians 2:9 which says:
Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything.
So, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. What we call 2 Cor is thought to actually be his 4th letter to them, and as you can see in the letter, things are not exactly going well. They’ve gotten themselves into some very precarious situations, and Paul is trying to help them out. But he’s also apparently a bit worried that they’re not going to listen – as evidenced by the fact that this is his 4th letter and things have gotten worse over time. So he starts out the letter with a reminder about obedience. Which leads us to an interesting question….What does the phrase, “you should be obedient in everything” bring up for Evangelicals that’s different than what it brings up for Latter-day Saints? In church we sing, “We love to obey thy command.” And that’s good. I actually really like that song. But Evangelicals get a bit weird around this sentiment and it’s not because they don’t want to obey the commands of God. They do. They interpret them a bit differently than we do, but on the whole, they are interested in obeying God. The problem, which actually is illustrated rather well in this song, is that those “commands” often come through human leaders. That song, “We Thank Thee oh God For a Prophet,” is praise directed toward God for a variety of different blessings, including the blessing of having a Prophet.
We’ve touched on this briefly in the past, but there are some variations on this topic. They’re not as much based on the different denominations or groups, but on where you fall in the authority structure of that group. Here’s an example: The average pew-sitting Evangelical will likely never be in the position to promise obedience to a human leader. They do have membership agreements that they agree to when joining a certain church, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But in general, they are assuaged into obedience based on what the individual or family will get out of that obedience. For example, the church starts some new program they want everyone to participate in. The church leadership will use various marketing techniques to help the people see the need for this thing they’re offering and then willingly participate. That’s mostly what it’s like for the pew-sitting person, no matter what version of Evangelicalism they’re following. But you will see far more variety regarding how leaders in those churches are dealt with.
Latter-day Saints, I think you’ve vaguely familiar with this, but I’ll go over it just to be sure. Church leadership in the Evangelical world is almost all done by paid employees. Those employees fall into 3 categories. First category, ordained pastoral staff. These are people who went to Divinity School and have been through an ordination process. This is a long-term career kind of position. They intend to spend their life serving a group of people by teaching them. When you think of someone who says, “I’m a pastor,” this is what you’re thinking of. Second category, non-ordained pastoral staff. These are folks who maybe are in the process of finishing their pastoral education or those for whom that level of education was simply out of reach. They might have a title like, “youth pastor” or “children’s pastor” I was a children’s pastor for a lot of years at a great church in California. And this is the category I was in. Sometimes people in this category are called “youth director” instead of “youth pastor” depending on the rules of the church, but they function identically. The third category are folks who have been hired because they possess a skill that the church needs in order to run – someone to work on printed materials; someone to keep the grounds; someone to keep the books, etc. Mostly these are people who could be doing the same work somewhere else, but work for a church instead. Our church hires lots and lots of people in these categories – people who make the website and LDS Tools work; people who know how to manage a warehouse, etc. But in theory, these people could take their skills and work for any other employer as well. So, in talking about obedience, Category 2 (non-ordained pastoral staff) and 3 (skilled professionals) are mostly compelled to obedience in their work environment by human resources, or an employee manual, or a board that oversees their work. But the Category 1 people, those who have a formal education and are ordained, might also have a different level of requirement for obedience. In the denomination where I was ordained the ordination service included what is called the Oath of Conformity and the Oath of Canonical Obedience which is a lot of words just to say: You promise to do what the Bishop tells you to do. But my experience is on one end of the spectrum – not every ordained leader is asked to take an oath for conformity and obedience. And in some places, the pastor almost ordains himself and decides to start a church all on his own, and he only answers to himself. So you can see, sometimes obedience is required at higher levels, but that is a tiny, tiny percentage of people. Most Evangelicals won’t even come across any kind of wording like that unless they’re paying attention to the process of how people get ordained. But what Evangelicals have been frequently asked to do is sign a membership agreement. But some interesting exceptions have popped up and there’s history here.
A membership agreement is traditionally exactly what it sounds like: an individual signs something to say they agree with the doctrine of a particular church, that document probably says something about the expectation that they participate in the life of the church and that they obey the scriptures. There would probably be something about what might happen if a person becomes apostate. Eventually – think 1960s – 1980s – those begun to be seen as too legalistic, too controlling. Churches mostly moved away from specifics into something that just sort of signs the person up for membership without there being any requirements – or even more likely, they did away with membership all together.
Around the year 2000, many Evangelical churches started to think about church membership differently. There was a huge resurgence of Calvinist or Reformed churches during that era. The vibe of these churches was very slick, urban, young. In the past on this show I’ve told you the history of Mars Hill Church in Seattle – which at one point was the largest church in America – before it blew up in spectacular fashion. But MH is the epitome of this time in Evangelical history. These are the folks who wanted to say – with good motives, I think – but it’s going to sound really weird to your Latter-day Saint ears….they wanted to say that God hates humans and thinks we’re disgusting worms, but the faithful response to this is to kind of take it like a man. Any softening of that was seen as weak faith. These Reformed churches revitalized the practice of church membership – and then they took it to ridiculous lengths.
Instead of being a simple statement between a church and a member about their beliefs, it started to morph into a legal document or contract. What had happened was churches that were trying to practice some form of church discipline – that is keeping members accountable for their behavior – were getting sued by the people they were trying to discipline for defamation of character. Let me read you a quote from an attorney familiar with the story,
When a church begins the process of exercising formal, biblical discipline, it will often receive a letter from the member’s attorney threatening to sue the church for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Many church leaders who would not back down have found themselves forced into court, subjected to days of humiliating cross-examination, and shocked to see juries penalize their churches with six-figure damages awards. This trend was triggered by the Guinn case in 1984, which resulted in a $400,000 judgment against a church and its leaders, and has continued to grow for twenty-five years.
So Evangelical churches have, more and more, reframed the idea of church membership. On one side they’ve completely given up the idea and said, “we just want you to come and learn and be with us – but we make no demands of obedience on you.” OR, they’ve gone the other direction and morphed their membership agreement into a legal contract, sometimes even requiring members to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding all church issues. I’d don’t have a study to point to that says this, but my own estimate is that probably 60% of churches have very low-key membership, or none at all. There are no expectations placed on people who attend. They’re treated like customers that the staff needs to keep happy. In your town if you have some slick megachurch that goes by the name,”The Rock Church” or “The Well” or “Elevation Church” this is very likely the model they’re using – church members are customers and customer service is the highest priority. And probably 40% that are trying some kind of membership agreement, which may or may not include phrasing about obedience. The ones that do contain words about obedience are probably leaning toward the legal contract side of things.
There are rare churches that have done extra sneaky things. Mars Hill in Seattle, for example, drafted their membership agreement so that in all reality, the church only had 3 members. Despite having 40,000 (or something) attending on Sundays, those people were not members. The membership contract they signed said they are members in name only, and have no right to anything – the 3 members of the church (the senior pastor and his top 2 board members) are the ultimate authority and the ones who must be obeyed above all else, and the only ones who will decide what happens, and attendees have no ability to influence that at all ever. There are other similar things. So, frankly, Evangelicals are not stupid people – they hear about stories like this and get suspicious that membership is a trick, and revert back to their hyper-independence of wanting a relationship to just be between them and God where no one else has the right to say anything about obedience.
So, all that to say, the word “obedience” is really loaded for Evangelicals. It’s either become a dirty word and been eliminated except in the most basic sense of obeying scripture – or it’s been hyped up into the realm of contracts and law. It’s probably going to take another 20 years, probably more, before they can find a sensible stance on it again.
Let’s briefly contrast this with what we believe in our church. We came to this Earth, in part, to prove our willingness to obey a Father that we can no longer see. It’s Abraham 3:25 “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” We covenant to obey the Law of Obedience, but it’s not blind obedience. At one point in my investigation of the church I had a true fear that having a Prophet actually meant that some guy I never knew could tell me what to do, and I’d have no choice but to do it. But the Law of Obedience is not God legally forcing us to comply with his dominance, it is him inviting us to come unto him. And then we get to make any choice we want – all those choices have consequences. There are no consequence-free choices in any aspect of life. But our obedience is not compelled – it is seen as a voluntary act of faith. We see – at least on our best days – that obedience is something that leads to happiness. Evangelicals have had a rough go on this topic and that word is going to bring up a lot of division (some of which we haven’t even covered here) and it’s not a word most of them would associate with “happiness.” I highly recommend to you the Youtube channel called Temple Light where my friend Jasmine talks through all things Temple in a direct way. Her episode called, “The Law of Obedience” would be a great video to watch after this one (and she’s more efficient than I am and can make her point in 10 min where it takes me 25) But that video will help you to think about why obedience has been played out in our church the way it has.
Next week we’re talking about the 3 levels of Heaven and why Evangelicals think we’re crazy to think such a thing, and how they think about it instead. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 14–16
Sep 05, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Baptism for the Dead (Part 2)
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about baptism for the dead. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Since we talk about Come Follow Me stuff on this channel I do want to make you aware of a new resource for next year. Dr. Grant Hardy has a new book, The Annotated Book of Mormon. And it is delicious. It’s much closer to a study Bible, but with the Book of Mormon, than I’ve seen before. It includes the entire text of the BoM but has Hardy’s notes embedded on the same page – at least in the physical book. There is a Kindle edition, but it makes the book much harder to use because you have to click about 4 times to actually see the footnotes and get back to your page. The notes are the whole point of this book. And you can just access those much easier in the physical form. I teach Gospel Doctrine in my ward and picked this up to help me prepare for next year. It’s very good.
One other resources you should know about that is coming up. FAIR is hosting an online-only conference specifically focused on just the Book of Mormon. Richard Bushman will be presenting along with many others. Details are available here.
Okay, We talked about baptism for the dead on a past episode in a more general way, but today we’ll get down to some specifics of why this one bothers Evangelicals so much. We’ll use 1 Cor 15:29-32 as our jumping-off point:
Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
So, Evangelicals have an interesting dilemma with this verse about baptism for the dead. Evangelicals generally have a view of the Bible called inerrancy – this means that they see the Bible as being free from error. So, here they have a verse talking about baptism for the dead, they believe the Bible is without error, but they won’t accept the idea of baptism for the dead. But they have to figure out some way to explain this verse. I’m going to lay out the most popular arguments for you as best as I can.
One way they deal with this is to basically say, “Who knows?” One Evangelical leader says it this way, “The phrase ‘baptism for the dead’ is so obscure and perplexing, the meaning so uncertain, and the variety of interpretations so numerous that it seems wise to say it seems impossible to know what the phrase means.” And in one sense, that’s a fair answer – if you don’t know what something means you should say so.
A slightly more sophisticated explanation goes like this: The baptism Paul is using “dead” here in a metaphorical sense. He’s not talking about actual dead people, but rather those who are “dead in sin.” Baptism for the dead is then re-cast as just regular baptism. Another possible option that they put on the table is really a rather odd one, and you have to torture the sentence structure a bit to make it work. But this argument says that “baptism for the dead” actually means “baptism because of the dead.” The idea being that those who had already died had strong testimonies and they were still inspiring currently alive people to get baptized themselves. It doesn’t really work in the structure of the argument, but it’s one of the ways they talk about this. A slight variation on this is that Paul is talking about the martyrs who bravely faced death in the 1st century and were inspiring others to be faithful to Christ.
A slightly less tortured explanation says that the dead who were being baptized for had already decided to trust in Christ, they had just not been baptized yet. So after they die, their friends or family symbolically get baptized for them – but it’s more like a family member finishing a mountain hike on behalf of a loved one who died while trying to complete that hike. Everyone knows that this kind of “on behalf of” isn’t really the person finishing it – it’s just a comforting ritual for the people who are still alive.
The final argument that they use is something like: there is one mention of this practice one time in the Bible so its not enough to build a doctrine on. And they’re partly right, this passage is the only time it is mentioned in the Bible. But the Bible is not the only history we have access to. 1 Cor was written about 55 AD – fast forward to 393 AD (350 years later – longer than the United States has been a country) and it’s still being practiced. No new Bible texts are being written at this time, so we don’t have that, but we do have writings of all kinds from the churches in various locations. We’ll look at one of them: Egypt. We call the Christians there Coptic Christians. The word ‘Coptic’ is derived from the Greek word that means “Egyptian.”
It was Hugh Nibley who put much of this work together initially. He traces through the Coptic writings and shows dozens of Coptic writings talking about baptism for the dead. But eventually other Christians radically distance themselves from the practice. How did this all happen?
In the early Christian world there are lots of competing ideas in various places and their method for deciding who was correct happened through a series of formal councils. Some of these were considered major councils – where there would have been leaders representing all the different areas where faith was being practiced. But some of them were minor councils, and not everyone attended. One such council was called, “The fourth canon of the Synod of Hippo,” it was held in 393AD and in that council, they declared, “The Eucharist shall not be given to dead bodies, nor baptism conferred upon them.” The ruling was confirmed four years later in the sixth canon of the Third Council of Carthage. However, the Coptic Christians were not represented at either council, so they didn’t feel particularly bound to the decisions being made there. Nibly complies all kinds of references to baptism for the dead in their church. Eventually, the Coptic Church split away from the Roman Church in 451, just 50 or so years after this event. It’s not the only reason they split off, but it’s in the mix.
All this to say, Evangelicals use a wide variety of arguments to try to make that verse mean something other than what it means. However, if you asked most of them why they think baptism for the dead is wrong you will probably get something like: Baptism isn’t necessary, only faith is necessary. They tend to think that baptism – even of the living – is just a nice symbolic way of expressing that you belong to Christ. Kind of like finishing the hike where a deceased relative died is a nice symbolic way to help them finish their journey. Most of the time they’re not just rejecting baptism for the dead, they’re side-lining all baptism, even for the living. At best, it’s a nice thing, but it’s not required to be a Christian. At worst it’s an insult to Christ because it’s saying that something needs to be added to his work on the cross.
And I think a lot of Latter-day Saints get stuck here because it’s hard to understand why they see it they way they do. I want to suggest one way to talk about why baptism is so important to our faith just straight out of the Bible. We have a lot of great verses about baptism in our other scriptures – but those are scriptures Evangelicals wont accept, so they might not get you very far. But in the Bible we get this great conversation on baptism in 1 Peter 3. Peter makes the argument that baptism is like Noah’s ark. He says, “After being made alive, [that is Christ] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits [understood as people who have died]— to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Peter then goes on to say, just a couple verses later in Chapter 4, “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.” It’s easy for the modern-reader to make hard lines between chapters, but Paul didn’t write in chapters – those were added later. Take Peter’s argument as a whole and we get something like: Christ wanted even the dead to be saved, baptism is how this happens, and for this reason the gospel is preached to the dead. You can’t separate faith and baptism as only belonging to the living here. Your Evangelical friends or family members might not immediately jump up and accept the idea after this, but it does move the conversation into a wider collection of verses in the New Testament – which is something that helps Evangelicals feel like you are taking scripture seriously.
Okay, that’s all I have for you today. Come back next week and we’ll talk some more.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 6: Cognitive Biases
Sep 04, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
Someone I know, who is a very vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, once got into an argument with me about concepts behind gender. I did everything I could to understand where they were coming from, seeing as this is a complex topic with differing perspectives. However, they were trying to convince me (among other things) that gender is a social construct. Having studied the issue, I pushed against their ideas, arguing that gender is more complicated than that and it certainly isn’t a mere social construct. However, despite my best efforts, my research and perspectives fell on deaf ears. Instead, my friend seemed to cling to the ideas of the people she agreed with. I’ll be sure to go over LGBTQ+ perspectives another day. However, my purpose in telling this story is to show an example of what researchers and psychologists call cognitive bias, which we’ll discuss today.
A few episodes ago, I explained logical fallacies – errors during logical reasoning – that can lead to incorrect conclusions. Today, we’ll be talking about the equivalent of that, but in regards to psychological bias that we sometimes employ. Cognitive biases are “errors in thinking that affect people’s decision-making in virtually every situation” (1). Unlike logical fallacies, cognitive biases are negative brain processes (usually coming from intuition) that can affect our thoughts and lead us to wrong conclusions. In other words, logical fallacies relate to arguments in the way that cognitive biases relate to intuitive brain processes. Critical thinkers must recognize cognitive biases in their thinking in order to more objectively analyze the data they interact with and make more informed decisions. Today, we’ll be going over where cognitive biases come from, explore some examples of cognitive biases, and then explore some principles that can help us avoid them. Let’s take a look.
Heuristics: The Brain’s “Easy Way Out”
Before we explore examples of cognitive biases, we must first understand where they come from. Most documented cognitive biases come from “mental shortcuts” in our minds. Psychologists call these shortcuts “heuristics.” One group of researchers described heuristics in the following way:
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort. While heuristics can reduce the burden of decision-making and free up limited cognitive resources, they can also be costly when they lead individuals to miss critical information or act on unjust biases. (2)
Heuristics help us make decisions and arrive at conclusions easily and quickly. Heuristics take information that seems familiar and draws a connection to something we’ve observed in the past. These shortcuts often lead to good results… except when they don’t.
How heuristics can sometimes be misleading can be shown in some basic examples. For instance, consider this video below:
If you’re like me, you initially see a series of dots moving around in a circle. However, that’s not REALLY what’s going on. It’s a series of points lighting up and growing dimmer in a specific pattern. Our brains provide the illusion that it’s a circular-moving line of dots. This example is one of many optical illusions that employ heuristics (3). Another example of a heuristic is the “inattentional blindness” phenomenon. Here’s another video example of a cognitive bias stemming from a heuristic (4).
In both instances, our brains are either making connections based on information that isn’t present or ignoring information that is present. The accepted psychological theory states these intuitive (and I use that term very deliberately in light of my previous article) heuristics came from evolutionary processes and natural selection (5). In other words, we’ve inherited instincts from our ancestors that protected us, enhancing our chances of survival. This detail will be important later.
It almost goes without saying that this power of heuristics is nothing short of incredible, and one thing that I do want to stress here is that pattern recognition isn’t a bad thing. I’ll be discussing how drawing inappropriate patterns can lead us to jump to conclusions, but not all heuristically-based decisions are bad ones. One pair of researchers noted that “for many decisions, the assumptions of rational models are not met, and it is an empirical (after the fact) rather than an a priori (before the fact) issue how well cognitive heuristics function in an uncertain world” (6, parentheses added). In other words, we often don’t know how well our heuristically-based decisions worked until after the fact. However, they sometimes have unintended consequences that can cause problems in our thinking, as we’ll soon see.
Cognitive Bias: Bad Processes, Worse Outcomes
There are multiple types of Cognitive Biases, each with observable patterns, chiefly focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (7). I’ll be sure to link a more comprehensive list of cognitive biases below, as we won’t be able to discuss each one today. However, we’ll cover some of the most important ones today, which may help outline some principles to help overcome cognitive biases.
The Anchoring Bias is “the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions” (8). When we see information and don’t critically think about it, we tend to allow that source to color how we see other sources of information. For example, imagine someone learning from their parents that “the Mormons are just a cult.” From then on, they cling to that information, allowing it to color how they discuss the church with the missionaries. The problem with this kind of heuristic is evident: It inhibits valuable analysis and thought. It hyper-prioritizes information we already know at the expense of additional information that may relate to the issue.
The Fundamental Attribution Error is the “tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the situational explanations.” (9). In other words, we tend to associate certain attributes as being a part of personality rather than just being due to the surrounding circumstances. An example of this is found in the hypothetical example of Member #1 and Member #2. Member #2 is in a hurry and comes across as rude and impatient to Member #1. Member #1 is offended at his impatience and then classifies Member #2 as an impatient person. In reality, he’s in a hurry to get home to take care of his sick family. As you can see, the situation was mostly governing Member #2’s behavior, not necessarily his personality as a whole. Our heuristics focus on the dominant information in front of us and jump to conclusions as a result.
The Availability Bias indicates “The more available and relevant information there is, the more likely the event is judged to be” (10). Put another way, we tend to prioritize more available information, even if it doesn’t tell the complete story. For instance, there is a lot more critical information about the church than positive information about the church in places such as social media, where people talk about bad experiences they had in the church. That information is often more accessible, and more advertised, than information about how members of the church end up being more generous (11), more pro-social (12), and have overall higher well-being (13) than most other populations of people. This isn’t to say that it’s a contest. However, it goes to show that there is evidence to go against the idea that church members aren’t happy, but it’s less available, so fewer people outside the church know about it. This bias manifests from the intuition’s dismissal of seemingly absent or irrelevant information.
The Bias blind-spot Bias states “that most people believe they are less biased than their peers” (14). In other words, we’re often able to point out other people’s biases more easily than notice our own biases. Consider these statements (based on actual statements by critics)
“You can get unbiased information about the church from books like Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer”
“You can get the REAL Mormon history from *Insert critic here*”
The problem with these statements comes from appealing to an idea of purity that doesn’t really exist. There is no such thing as “unbiased” sources. As you can see, it’s easier for people to ignore bias in favor of what they believe, because our mental heuristics tend to lean in favor of the information we already know.
Confirmation Bias is characterized by “seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs” (15). This can also be described as only looking for things that support your opinion. Examples of this can be found in critics of the church only associating with people who agree with their assessments about church history while ignoring or dismissing organizations such as FAIR. This, however, is problematic seeing as it once again prioritizes what people already believe at the expense of data that contradicts it. This bias is prevalent (even among members), so watch for it.
The Framing Bias “refers to the observation that the manner in which data is presented can affect decision making” (16). The way that information is initially presented to us can affect how we process that information and can lead us to incorrect conclusions (i.e. we make a decision based on how the issue was framed). For example, “You belong to a manipulative cult” differs greatly from “You belong to a high-demand religion.” (Lots of high demand groups exist, whether they be secular like the Navy Seals, or religious such as nuns, etc.) This heuristic pulls on the idea that our brains focus on dominant, impactful data. “Cult” is a very charged word often used with a negative connotation, so hearing it leads to conclusions that may or may not be accurate. After all, depending on how you use the word, you could describe all religions as cults.
The Hindsight Bias is “the tendency, after an event has occurred, to overestimate the extent to which the outcome could have been foreseen.” (17). This one is a little more well-known through the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20”, but its status as a cognitive bias is well-deserved. This is often used against prophets and the mistakes they make. It may be easier for us to say “How could Brigham Young have said X thing, isn’t it obvious that wasn’t true!?” However, this just shows our bias…we have more information than Brigham Young did, and we’ve been able to draw patterns and make connections in ways that Brigham Young may not have been able to. However, in such discussions, we have to remember that we are all human, we all make mistakes. I try to be as charitable to people (past or present) as I imagine Jesus would be charitable towards me during Judgement Day.
Loss/Regret Aversion Bias was put by one researcher as “an expression of fear” (18). Fear of what? Well, fear of regret, pain, and loss. This can manifest itself in a few different ways. Perhaps a member is scared to take a serious look at church history because they’re afraid of losing their testimony. Perhaps a critic of the church is scared of regretting their decision to leave the church, and so they double down on their criticisms. These fears, even if somewhat justified, can impede our ability to understand the world around us. Our brains tend to focus on dominant information and – let’s be honest with ourselves – we remember our failures. Our mistakes/failures present themselves as very dominant information in our minds (19). Keep this in mind as you’re making decisions.
The Stereotyping Bias is probably more familiar to most people. A more technical definition of “stereotype” is “[the] category-based beliefs about a group that also involve affective–evaluative loading and behavioral tendencies” (20). In other words, we put people with certain characteristics in a category in our minds, based on patterns we see. For example, a critic might say something like “Mormons are raised to be bigoted and judgemental.” Among other things, this is a stereotype placed on us by other people (21). However, this bias comes from people’s tendency to over correlate data, that is, it’s easy for us to categorize other people into “being a certain way,” sometimes even if we don’t realize it.
Finally, in a similar vein, we have the In-group Bias, which is described as the willingness of members of a group to “treat their own group superior than others” (22). In other words, we’re willing to hold those we don’t like to a higher standard than those we do like. For example, I’ve seen instances where critics of church tend to give the benefit of the doubt to other critics, but not with those who defend the church. When members of the church didn’t know something, it’s because we’re “ignorant,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find a member of that same community who would call another critic “ignorant.” You’re far more likely to find them saying that the lay-members are ignorant than you are to find them saying that a member of their own ranks is ignorant. Again, this kind of practice goes back to how people focus on dominant information, and for many people who have left the church, there are a lot of criticisms that are dominant in their minds.
Now, before I move on, I’d like to make one disclaimer: I am not saying that those who have left the church are more susceptible to cognitive biases than those who have not left the church. With just as much ease, I can find several instances where members of the church employ the same kinds of cognitive errors. However, I do think that these examples of cognitive biases can demonstrate some of the ways that cognitive biases can affect how we interpret information, and consequently affect how members and non-members can be treated in negative ways. It will always be in our best interest to avoid unnecessarily ostracizing other people. See if you can identify cognitive biases in yourself, make note of which ones tend to cause you the most amount of trouble, and see if you can find ways to correct them. As you’ll soon see, the first step to being able to combat cognitive biases is to identify them, and I hope that these examples can help you do that.
How to improve
That prompts the question: How can we avoid cognitive biases? There are a lot of sources out there that you can find that provide insights as to how you can prevent (or at least diminish) cognitive biases from affecting your life. However, we won’t be able to go over all of them today, and even if I could, the ways that those practices can be applied vary from person to person. Instead, I’ll cover a few principles that I think can help mitigate the effects of cognitive biases in our lives. Hopefully that will provide insight as to what you can do to reduce the effect of cognitive biases, at least a little bit.
Right off the bat, it’s helpful to slow down the decision making process when possible. As mentioned before, heuristics are basically “mental shortcuts” that help us make decisions quickly without spending too much time and energy thinking about it. However, if we don’t need to make decisions quickly, then there’s no reason to take the shortcut. Take some time to do research, and to “study it out in your mind” (23). By taking more time, you’ll be more likely to avoid impulsive decisions. If you’re able to, allow your intuition to be supported by other epistemic sources such as reason.
So, what should we do while we’re taking this “time out,” so to speak? Before we can answer that, let’s take a step back for a moment. We know that cognitive biases come from heuristics, which help us make decisions quickly. It stands to reason, then, that in order to limit the cognitive biases we’re employing, we have to first recognize what heuristics are at play. Asking yourself questions like “Am I focusing on some information at the expense of other information?” or “is there some kind of information that I’m missing?” can be helpful when analyzing what biases are at play. By reviewing the presuppositions we have, it’s easier to see how our intuition may be helping us, or hurting us.
It’s also important to look at the issue from different perspectives. Being able to seek further information, as well as receive feedback, may help reduce the effects of cognitive biases (24). When you find something that confuses you, don’t just take the critics’ word for it, look at what FAIR has to offer, or consult other experts in different areas. Not only is there likely to be information that you didn’t know (thus helping your intuition recognize true patterns and adjust to dominant information), but it can also be nice to analyze issues from people with different perspectives (25). It’s also easier to verify your information too, so this practice of looking at what other people have to say can be useful in fact-checking your data, which is always going to be useful for critical thinkers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, heuristics can be a widely versatile tool that can help us resolve problems in powerful ways. However, just like any tool, it can be misused, and can sometimes get in the way of our ability to arrive at correct conclusions and solve problems. Cognitive biases come in many shapes and sizes, but they don’t have to define our thought processes. There are good ways to avoid allowing these mental shortcuts to disrupt our analyses. It’s imperative to recognize that these cognitive biases will never truly disappear. They will always be a part of us, and no one is impervious to their influence (26). Again, heuristics are important…even if we could ignore them we don’t have the time or energy to function well in this modern world without them. Instead, it serves us to be patient with ourselves as we root out what we consider to be good and bad. As we analyze where our intuition can sometimes lead us astray, it will become easier for us as critical thinkers to solve problems, and avoid common pitfalls that inhibit good reasoning. In short, learning how (and how not) to use heuristics can help us improve how we learn, how we use our agency, and eventually help us become the kind of thinkers and believers I think God wants us to be.
Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic decision making. Annual review of psychology, 62, 451–482. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346
Korteling, J. E., Brouwer, A. M., & Toet, A. (2018). A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1561. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01561
Nickerson, R. S. (1998a). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175
Huang, S., Stanley, M.L. & De Brigard, F. The phenomenology of remembering our moral transgressions. Mem Cogn 48, 277–286 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-01009-0 ; This is especially true for moral failures.
Fiske, S. T., & Tablante, C. B. (2015). Stereotyping: Processes and content. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Vol. 1. Attitudes and social cognition (pp. 457–507). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14341-015
Derek Westra’s talk “Whistleblowers in the last days” goes over how the media portrays stereotypes, and sometimes falsehoods, about members of the church. It’s accessible online for free at this link here (you’ll need to log in first).
Abbink, K., & Harris, D. (2019). In-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in naturally occurring groups. PloS one, 14(9), e0221616. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221616
Bojke L, Soares M, Claxton K, et al. Developing a reference protocol for structured expert elicitation in health-care decision-making: a mixed-methods study. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2021 Jun. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 25.37.) Chapter 6, Reviewing the evidence: heuristics and biases. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571047/
Berthet, V., & de Gardelle, V. (2023). The heuristics-and-biases inventory: An open-source tool to explore individual differences in rationality. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1145246. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1145246; This is a more comprehensive, open list of cognitive biases noted by several different authors/researchers. Feel free to explore them at your leisure.
Kunkler, K. S., & Roy, T. (2023). Reducing the impact of cognitive bias in decision making: Practical actions for forensic science practitioners. Forensic science international. Synergy, 7, 100341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2023.100341; This article discusses multiple more practical ways to reduce cognitive biases from a more technical standpoint. While this focuses primarily on scientists, it has some useful ideas that might be translated into other aspects of life.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 8–13
Aug 28, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Men and Women
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the interdependence of women and men. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
In a past episode, we talked about the role of women in both groups -there are some similarities and some significant differences. So I don’t want to rehash that part. But what I want to talk about has more to do with the way both groups see the interdependence of men and women. We’ll use 1 Cor 11:11 as our jumping-off point:
Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
I’ll start by saying neither group denies this verse. You’d be very hard-pressed to find an Evangelical who is going to write off any of Paul’s words and Latter-day Saints certainly embrace this idea as well. The difference is in how each group plays this out. And really, the short summary of that, is that Latter-day Saints generally think in a more communal mind-set than Evangelicals do. Let me give you an easy example.
I like to listen to audiobooks while I’m doing things around the house and lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with books on the history of the Western states, especially as it comes to water issues. So I’ve been listening to a classic in that genre called, “Cadelic Desert.” The early part of this book is about the history of the irrigation system in the West and the author is explaining the challenges and extraordinary effort required to bring water to the right places. The thing that caught my attention is that as he goes through this though is that he says, in many different ways, the “Mormons” figured out irrigation systems early on because they were a tight-knit society where the communal good could be more easily be put ahead of the individual good. Now, that doesn’t always work out, and certainly worked out easier in the 1910’s and 1920’s that this author was referring to.
So today what I want to talk about is some of the factors that cause Evangelicals to think about the individual and the community slightly differently than Latter-day Saints do. And then we’ll apply those thoughts to the concept of how gender roles play out differently for each.
We’ll start with some history. The Evangelicals are really influenced here by their desire to react against the Methodists. When the Evangelical movement begins – think early Billy Grayham, 1960’s – the largest player in the Protestant world in the United States are the Methodists. Today you can find Methodist churches all across the spectrum from very conservative to extremely liberal. But back then, Methodism mostly meant, “Your grandmother’s church.” There’s a lot of cultural upheaval at this time, rules in society are changing, and the early Evangelicals want to attend churches that feel like they’re keeping up with the times. In some ways, the early Evangelicals are in “reactionary identity” – meaning that they’re doing what teenagers sometimes do: first decide what they don’t want to be, and usually it’s, “I don’t want to be like my parents.” In their early days, Evangelicals were in this reactionary-identity mode of, “I don’t know what I am yet, but I’m not a fuddy-duddy grandma church.” So their initial starting place is: We want to be opposite of what is currently happening.
And really, they start with the most basic question: How does one enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ? For a very long time, the answer is: Well, not the way my parents did it. And how their parents did it, in the Methodist churches of that time, was infant baptism. Now, Methodists don’t conceptualize infant baptism the same as Catholics do, and I don’t want to get into the weeds of what that’s all about, but suffice it to say that the early Evangelicals were very clear on not wanting anything that seemed too old-fashioned, so they reject the Methodist practice. But every movement, especially a brand new one, needs allies and mentors, and the early Evangelicals found that support in the Southern Baptists. Why are they called “Baptists”? Because they believe in credobaptism, which basically means the individual person should be old enough to make a decision about baptism on their own. The opposite of that is pedobaptism, which is the fancy word for “infant baptism.” So it’s not even that the early Evangelicals were theologically set on credobaptism, they just knew they didn’t want pedobaptism. But that move sets them into an alliance with the Baptist churches – which are nothing if not independent. If you’ve been a Latter-day Saint your entire life this might take a moment to wrap your mind around, but Baptists are technically not considered a denomination. A denomination has some kind of central authority, the member-churches must follow certain rules and policies, as well as receive direction and over-sight from the central authority. Baptists conceptualize themselves as a “convention,” that is a group of like-minded churches that want to associate with each other – but who operate entirely independently and have very little responsibility to their headquarters. And if they want out, they can easily leave. Historically they disagree with each other on just about everything and for the most part that is not a problem. Though you might have heard in the news this year, one of the largest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, Saddleback Church in Southern California, left the Convention over disagreements about the role of women.
But when the early relationship with the Baptists only gets them so far. By the time the late 1960’s come around the Evangelicals are trying to reach the hippie flower children and want to even further distance themselves from the “grandma church” culture (as they saw it – grandmas hold the churches of the world together, truth be told) so they start to remove the concept of baptism at all. It takes decades for this move to fully take effect, but today baptism has been sidelined in many Evangelical churches. It’s seen as an optional thing you might do if you feel led to do so, but it’s not necessary for salvation by any means.
This creates a problem for them though – if you’re not going to teach people to, as the New Testament says, “believe and be baptized” then how are people to identify themselves as believers? They invent something that today is called, “the sinner’s prayer” where they ask Jesus to be their “personal Lord and Savior.” Do you catch that word, “personal” – we’re talking today about individualism and community, how that has developed, and what it means for women and men. That phrase, “personal savior” comes to symbolize their entire stance toward their faith – it is a relationship that is entirely between you and God and no one else really gets a say in it. So from very early on in their history, Evangelicals are shaped by this idea that their faith is theirs alone, no one else can do it for them. And to this day that is a strong value for them. In 2020 a book came out called, “Jesus and John Wayner,” which is a critique of the Evangelical impulse toward rugged individualism.
Latter-day Saints on the other hand have spent most of the last 200 years being in a different situation. Because of the situation the early Latter-day Saints found themselves in, they didn’t have the luxury of straying too far away from the main group – they needed each other in order to survive. So from the very outset, Latter-day Saints are being formed as a people who rely on each other, sometimes for very basic survival. And though this is not as true as it used to be, you still see it play out in television and movies. A few weeks back at the FAIR conference Derek Westra gave a talk about this and how Latter-day Saints are portrayed in the media. Derek works for the church in the communications department and his job is to keep tabs on how our church is portrayed in the media. He showed example after example of recent shows and movies that portray Latter-day Saints as insular, afraid of outsiders, and as “not allowed” to reach books that are not printed by the church. The kind of communalism that I’m talking about is probably lower now than it has been in 200 years, but it’s still significant enough that outsiders see it and exaggerate it for entertainment.
Let me give you one more example of how Latter-day Saints have been shaped by a communal mindset. In contrast to, “you must ask Jesus to be your personal Lord and Savior,” Latter-day Saints have been formed by these words, “How are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah.” We are formed not by a reactionary identity but by trying to link the entire human family together. It’s the opposite of Western Individualism or John Wayne Christianity. This is kind of a dumb analogy, but Evangelicalism is like team gymnastics. You’ve seen the Olympics, each team is made up of a certain number of athletes, and each athlete contributes their individual score to a group total. No gymnast can do anything to help the others. She is responsible entirely for her own performance which is then added to the group total. But no one helps her. Contrast that with baseball (or softball, or kick ball) if the bases are loaded and you’re up, you know what your job is – get your friends home. They can’t progress without your effort.
And that brings up to the interdependence of men and women. One of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked by friends outside of our church is something like: Has it been hard for you to “lower your status” as a woman? Or, “What does it feel like to now be in a church where women have no voice?” And sometimes I don’t even know how to answer that question because the context is so entirely different. Before I was baptized into our church, it’s true, I had some opportunities that I don’t have now. I was ordained, for example. That is not open to me now. I’m 100% fine with that, and let me explain why. If I were a gymnast and I were told, “You’re not allowed to do any of the coolest tricks,” I’d be upset for myself and for my team, “If I can’t do the coolest tricks, how will I ever contribute a high score to our team’s total?” It would be insulting because I know I can do more and I’m being artificially held back. But when you’re playing a team sport like baseball the whole thing is set up so that certain people are in certain positions for reasons. The pitcher isn’t placed there because he’s bad at catching, he’s placed there because he can pitch. The outfielder isn’t there because he’s bad at being a catcher – he’s there to play his role for reasons and without him the game would be lost. So, if I have a choice – and I do – between being just an individual and trying to get the highest score I can all on my own, and being part of a team where we’re meant to help each other get home, I know which one I choose.
Okay, that’s all the time we have for this week. Next week we’re talking about prophecy and how all of that works for both groups. I will see you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 1–7
Aug 21, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Satan and Jesus are brothers?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about an issue that baffles Evangelicals to their core: Jesus and Satan as brothers.. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
So, we’re in 1 Corinthians now, and in chapter 1 we get a lot of talk about unity, acting as one in Christ, that we are all brothers and sisters. I don’t have a specific verse that really sums this up in a tidy way, so I’m just using the overall theme here. There is a lot of corruption and immorality happening in the church in Corinth and Paul is writing to them to basically tell them to get it together. You may know this but Paul basically has 2 modes that go something like this. We see the first mode in the opening of this letter. Paul says, “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints….” But there is another side of Paul that he gets to pretty quickly here and it’s all, “For the love of God, could you little freaks act normal for 5 min?” And this is what we get a lot of in both 1 and 2 Corinthians. And for good reasons. But with both of these modes what he is doing is trying to inspire them to be better than they have been, and treating each other like actual brothers and sisters is a big part of that here.
Now, Latter-day Saints, when I say, “God is the Father of us all,” you nod your head and hear no issue with that. You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, Jennifer, skip past the part I already know. God is the Father of all.” But, let me tell you how it gets a little weird for Evangelicals. They would put a huge asterisk next to the word “all” and in the footnote would be something like, “Well, God is the Father of all humans who choose to belong to him. But not really the Father of ALL.” We’ve talked before on this show about how Evangelicals see God as an entirely different species from humans, so he’s not actually their Father in the way Latter-day Saints think about. And the question that comes up here sometimes from Evangelicals is something like, “Wait. You think God is the Father of both Jesus and Satan?” A lot of Latter-day Saints would respond with, “Umm, yeah, of course. He is the Father of all.” I want to explain to you how and why Evangelicals hear it differently and we’re going to do that by talking about a very old little film called The God Makers.
If you are close to my age, or older, you probably already know what this is. But if not, the brief summary is that it was the most popular anti-mormon propaganda of its day. It’s a movie that was put out in the early 1980’s. It runs about an hour long. You can watch it on Youtube if you really want to. Sometimes its under the title, “Banned Mormon Cartoon!” It was very popular with Evangelicals in the 1980’s. Most of you know I grew up in an Evangelical church and my church showed that film as frequently as they could. We watched it during the church service sometimes, and they would have Sunday School classes where they’d watch it and talk more in-depth about it. The reason I bring up this movie is that it is one of the big sources of twisting truth just enough so that our beliefs seem very unreasonable. It was the CES Letter of its day. As an aside, I will tell you that the author of the movie, and the book by the same name, is from Washington State. When I joined the church 4 years ago I was actually living in the same stake where he had spent most of his life, and where he wrote that book. Which I just found to be incredibly ironic – here I am, this lifelong Evangelical who had received a lot of my early information about the church from this terrible little film, I move into Ed’s neighborhood, and join the church. I just find that amusing. Anyway..
One of the themes in that movie is this idea that Jesus and Satan are brothers. And Evangelicals are scandalized by this. Even though that movie is from 40 years ago – and I’d be surprised if there are any Evangelical churches that are still using it – the slant that he put on it stuck in the Evangelical imagination because of what that means for them. Let me try to explain how they hear it…
One popular Evangelical apologist says it like this, “the biblical witness is clear and convincing: Jesus Christ is the eternal Creator God. Paul explicitly teaches that Jesus is the creator of all.” Now, Latter-day Saints, I know that your brain is going, “Yeah…but what does that have to do with this?” Because Latter-day Saints also believe Jesus is the eternal creator God. He was there at the creation of the world. In Evangelical-speak what they’re trying to say is that 1) Satan is a created being 2) Jesus is the Creator God 3) How can Jesus both create Satan AND be his brother?
The first time I read through Mosiah and got to 5:7 I was puzzled by what I was reading. Here is the verse, “because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.” I really only understood how to read that through Trinitarian eyes. My thinking was something like: Jesus is the Son, but he and the Father are the same, so he is the Father also. But this is not a Trinitarian statement. In Evangelical thinking Creator and Father are identical. When Jesus is functioning as Creator (something Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals do not disagree on) Evangelicals see that as him being “the same substance” as the Father. So they get upset about the idea that Jesus and Satan could be brothers because it drags Satan into the Trinity. To them…brothers are equals (as in “we’re all brothers and sisters”) so to say that Jesus and Satan are brothers is to say that Satan is equal to Jesus. We talked in the early episodes of this series that one of the best characteristics of Evangelicals is that they’re passionately protective about getting Jesus theologically correct. And that deserves respect. But what they can’t quite see here is how extra-biblical teaching from the 4th century obscures the picture. In the 4th Century God the Father and Jesus Christ are said to be made of “the same substance” homioousias is the word there, they no longer know how to make sense of the fact that God the Father is still the Father of all – including Jesus, including every created thing, including Satan, including you and me. But the “same substance” issue obscures how they see Jesus. If you’d like more on this part of the topic I recommend an article by my friend and colleague Ben Spackman called, “Covenants and Kinship: Jesus as the Father.” He gets into more of the technicalities there than we have time for here.
So, all of that to say, when an Evangelical says, “You believe Jesus and Stan are brothers,” it’s intended as a critique. What they mean is: You have an improper view of Jesus. This is at least part of where the phrase, “You worship a different Jesus,” comes from.
Let me pivot a bit and use a different, less philosophical argument. In the Bible, both Jesus and Satan are called, “The bright and morning star.” The name “Lucifer” is a Latin word literally meaning “morning start.” And we know that Jesus is called the morning star a number of times in the New Testament. Both of them are given this title. Another example from the Bible….both Jesus and Satan are called a lion. Satan is a lion who seeks to devour believers, and Jesus is called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. So, they’re both stars, they’re both lions. They’re also both called sons.
If you ask any Evangelical they will be very clear with you: They are not confused when Satan is called a lion, and when Jesus is called a lion. They understand that just because the concept of lion can be applied to both of them does not make them equals. They also easily understand this with the “morning star” phrase – though that one is a bit more obscure and you’d have to have an Evangelical who has studied a bit to get deep into that example. But for those who know about it, they’re not confused about Jesus and Satan being different, even though the term “morning star” is applied to both. The term “son of God” is applied to both Jesus Christ – and to humans. In the book of Job “Sons of God” sometimes means angels, sometimes it means devils, and sometimes it means humans. But no one is confused that 3 different groups are being referred to here.
But it’s a trigger for them to hear that Jesus and Satan are brothers – despite all these other examples where they’re fully adept at language and can see words used in different ways – when they hear “Jesus and Satan are brothers” they really only hear “Jesus and Satan are equals.” We’ve talked a number of times in this series about the “species” problem. Latter-day Saints see God, angels, devils, and humans as all the same species. While Evangelicals see 3 different species there.
So, how do you get out of this corner with them? This isn’t the one and only answer, but here is my suggestion. Go back to the beginning. Non Latter-day-Saint-Christians don’t have the same understanding of the pre-mortal council that we do. But helping them understand that story might be a good direction to help them understand what we’re actually saying about God being the Father of All, Jesus still being the eternal Creator God, and how all of us from Jesus to Satan, to you and me, are all children of Heavenly Father. At least part of the point that teaching is making is that we are all God’s children – and we are given the ability to make choices. Jesus chooses to serve and save all the rest of us not by force, but by allowing us to make a choice. Satan wants to take away choice. Evangelicals want to know that Jesus and Satan are as different as night and day, and the conversation about what happened even before this world was created might help them see what you believe about that in a different way.
Alright, come back next week, we’ll be at the end of 1 Corninithians and we’re going to take about Paul’s great verse regarding men and women needing each other and how that plays out differently in both groups. See you then!
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 5: Epistemology
Aug 20, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
In my life, I’ve found that everyone has a specific philosophy that they live by, whether they realize it or not. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the philosophical branch of epistemology. Epistemology, while sounding complicated and boring to some, is just the fancy way of saying “the study of knowledge.” Consider the following:
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things? These questions, and so the field of epistemology, is as old as philosophy itself. (1)
As we can see, this is a pretty deep topic, and I doubt I could cover everything about epistemology in this article. For example, a branch of epistemology touches on whether or not it’s even possible to know anything, and we’re not going to be getting into that. However, we will be going over the branch of epistemology that covers “how do we know what we know,” or in other words, “where do we learn what we know.” Why does this matter? Critical thinkers need to establish an epistemology so that they can develop levels of confidence about the validity of certain information. With that confidence, it becomes easier for us to make decisions in light of the evidence, and solve problems. In this article, we’re going to be explaining some terms, then go over some sources from which we can learn, and then explore how these concepts can relate to LDS theology. Hopefully, that will help explain this complex issue in a useful way.
Knowledge & Certainty
Now, a brief definition of terms is warranted here. Knowledge is a tricky thing to define, and there is a lot of discussion about how every epistemology fails to account for something at some point (2). However, this does not mean that all epistemologies are created equal, and there are good ways to establish confidence about an idea regardless. For this article, when I use the term “knowledge,” I’m going to be borrowing from philosophy professor Michael Huemer’s definition of it as outlined in his book Understanding Knowledge. Michael Huemer suggests that there are four things that we need to have knowledge, which is referred to as the “defeasibility theory of knowledge.” It’s outlined in his book in the following way:
Belief: You have to believe that it’s true
Truth: it must agree with reality
Justification: there has to be a reason for you to believe it
There can’t be any proposition that, if added, would remove the justification for believing it (3)
This model, as with all models, has some presuppositions. It presupposes that objective truth exists, and that it is indeed knowable through specific processes. (Whether or not it does exist is another discussion; but to be fair, claiming the opposite would in itself be a claim of objective truth, so denying objective truth is a self-defeating proposition, and in my opinion, should be avoided.) In short though, at least for this article, knowledge is an idea/conceptualization of something that meets those four criteria. Otherwise, at least from this perspective, that idea is only classified as a belief, and not necessarily knowledge.
Now, this is where things get tricky because according to this model, knowledge is differentiated from certainty. There are a few kinds of certainty defined by philosophers out there, but I’m mostly going off of the idea of “absolute certainty:” that is, the idea that we can know something without any kind of doubt whatsoever. Absolute certainty, as I see it, implies the idea that we are 100% confident that something is true. However, we can’t be 100% certain about anything, because even if we were to identify a way for us to be 100% certain about something, it would by necessity employ circular reasoning of some kind (4). Consider this illustrative argument:
P1: X Method teaches us how to be 100% certain about something
P2: This argument follows X Method
Conclusion: We can be 100% certain that X Method works
The problem there is apparent: the argument presupposes that X Method is true, and begs the question why it is true. It’s the same thing as saying “We can be 100% certain of X Method because X Method states we can be 100% certain of X Method”, an argument we recognize as fallacious. It’s worth noting too that absolute certainty is often associated with “psychological certainty”, and it can be had about beliefs just as much as it can be had about knowledge. Consider the following:
Psychological certainty, for its part, is generally regarded as being non-factive. For example, John can be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris even if it is not raining in Paris. In addition, psychological certainty does not require that a subject be in a favorable epistemic position. John can have no reason to believe that it is raining in Paris, and yet, be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris. (5)
In other words, the confidence we feel about something provides no strength to our ideas. With this in mind, absolute certainty is as worthless as it is impossible to obtain. So, does that mean that we can’t have any confidence about anything? Well, no, it just means that we can’t be 100% certain about anything. This doesn’t mean that we can’t develop confidence in an idea at all. The goal of epistemology is to provide a system of learning that can help us be confident about our ideas, an “epistemic certainty” if you will (6). It is for this reason that I and others have no problem saying statements like “I know the church is true” when we bear our testimonies. We’re not saying that we have absolute certainty that the church is true: rather, we’re saying that we have a high degree of confidence (due to the Spirit) that the church is true and that our testimonies are based on the prerequisites for “knowledge” described above.
The Umbrella Model
When we “Learn” something, I’m referring to two kinds of processes by which a piece of information ends up in our brain. The first kind of learning comes from a more concrete psychological perspective, where learning is characterized by terms such as Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, and Observational Learning. Using sensations and perceptions, we’re able to receive signals from the outside world and translate them into thoughts (7). Those thoughts are then put into our brains, and we have them at our disposal (though the mechanism by which this occurs is still lost on neuroscientists and psychologists). The second form of learning is more abstract and has to do with consciously or unconsciously processing the information we’ve taken in (8). I mention this because I classify my epistemology as being under these two umbrella categories: internal to the mind, and external to the mind. Consider the following diagram.
This is a diagram of epistemology that I think suits the purposes and needs of all people, including LDS critical thinkers.
Under the external umbrella, I’ve allocated each of the things that I reserve as being primarily focused outside of the self. In other words, this is the umbrella where we have outside information being put into our minds. Behavioral consequences or outcomes, for instance, happen outside of the body, and must be observed (and I have yet to find other things to put under this umbrella, as you’ll soon see). When I use the term “observe” or “observation,” I’m not just referring to using your eyes; rather, I’m referring to the full spectrum of sensation and perception. For example, if I were to take a bite of an apple, that’s an outcome of a behavior that I would observe and internalize through sensation/perception (9). It’s worth noting that the scientific method falls into this sub-category. Some basic examples of this include the following:
We look in the sky and see a bird flapping its wings. We observe the outcome of that behavior: that bird can fly.
I reach my hand out and accidentally touch a hot stove. I observe the outcome of that behavior: my hand gets burned.
We, against our better judgment, bite into a raw tomato. We observe the outcome of that behavior: That tomato tastes terrible.
In the same realm as behavior outcome, we have communication or testimony. Communication is unique among behavior outcomes in the sense that it is the only way for us to understand ideas that other people have in their minds, and the only way for others to understand the ideas in our minds (10). Some basic examples of this include the following:
My mom tells me she loves me. I observed the outcome of that behavior: I now have the idea communicated to me that my mother loves me
Someone scrunches up their face, furrows their eyebrows, and is yelling. I observe the outcome of that behavior: I have the idea communicated to me that they’re upset.
My sister hugs me. I observed the outcome of that behavior: I now have the idea communicated to me that she cares about me.
As you can see, with communication, there is a bit of clarification that needs to happen, and a bit of cultural background and knowledge is required. However, I wouldn’t put it outside of the external umbrella, as it is still very clearly the result of behavior outside of yourself. However, that specific behavior seems to be subject to more complex, internal processes (more on that in a moment).
As for the internal methods of having ideas put into our minds, we turn to both the processes of reasoning and intuition. The internal umbrella is characterized by our brains processing or adding information in our minds, (mostly) independent from their surroundings. This is where I place Reason and Intuition as epistemic sources. Now, I’ve already done two articles that explore logic, logical fallacies, and reasoning, so I won’t go into too much detail here. However, suffice it to say that reason is the process of arriving at specific conclusions based on specific premises, analyzing the strength of ideas to arrive at new ideas. An additional note I will add here is that these premises can be arrived at by any source of information, but reason allows us to arrive at new conclusions/ideas. Intuition though is a bit harder to explain, and it has a kind of slippery definition. Roughly speaking, it’s all the ideas that arrive in our head that don’t come from conscious reasoning (11). Consider the following characterization of intuition, and how it differs from Insight:
Based on these examples, both phenomena – intuition and insight – may be conceived of as non-analytical thought processes that result in certain behavior that is not based on an exclusively deliberate and stepwise search for a solution. Non-analytical thought means a thought process in which no deliberate deduction takes place: individuals are not engaged in the consecutive testing of the obvious and/or typical routes to solutions that define deliberate analysis. Instead, intuitions are characterized by the decision maker feeling out the solution without an available, tangible explanation for it; insights are characterized by the fact that the solution suddenly and unexpectedly pops into the mind of the decision maker or problem solver being instantaneously self-evident. (12)
There is a bit of debate as to where intuition comes from, but its ability to recognize patterns, its overall efficiency, and its impact on morality are all worth noting (13). Some basic examples of intuition include the following:
A surge of nervousness rushes through you as you enter a dangerous situation. You know that you’re in danger.
You make a decision quickly, but can’t explain why. It just “felt” right.
You have a feeling in your ‘gut’ that you should listen to the missionaries and what they have to say.
As you look at the chart, there seems to be some kind of connection between each of the sources of information. Intuition and Reason seem to rely on outside information often to recognize patterns, establish arguments, and arrive at conclusions/ideas. Consequently, we see Intuition and Reason classify certain events a certain way, manipulating the authority they have as being stronger or weaker, thus affecting how we learn from external sources. I can cite an example of this concerning a historical figure in the church.
Those familiar with LDS history are familiar with the figure John C. Bennett. Bennett was a friend to Joseph Smith and the mayor of Nauvoo for a brief period. However, Bennett was cut off when Joseph found out that, among other things, Bennett was using his position (as well as rumors of plural marriage in Nauvoo) to trick women into sleeping with him (14). From that point on, Bennett became a bitter, hostile critic of the church, making all kinds of claims against Joseph Smith and the saints (with varying degrees of veracity). Here’s how one author described Bennett’s allegations against Joseph.
Bennett was touring the nation with a lurid, book-length exposé, charging Mormon leaders with “infidelity, deism, atheism; lying deception, blasphemy; debauchery, lasciviousness, bestiality; madness, fraud, plunder; larceny, burglary, robbery, perjury; fornication, adultery, rape, incest; arson, treason, and murder.” He said Smith and his followers “out-heroded Herod, and out-deviled the devil, slandered God Almighty, Jesus Christ, and the holy angels, and even the devil himself.”(15)
That’s quite the list of allegations, and the critical thinker will rightfully begin to question whether or not those claims are legitimate. Some people think so, others not (myself included), but that debate in and of itself isn’t the issue. The point I’m trying to make is that when we as critical thinkers read things like that, we are aware that our internal reasoning, or our intuition about Joseph Smith, affects how we view John C. Bennett. Perhaps intuition suggests that Bennett may be acting out of rage, or perhaps we reason that there’s more going on in the story. Whatever the case may be, our internal processes affect how we interpret external sources. More on that in a moment.
This explores another important facet of epistemology: that is, that epistemology shifts somewhat depending on the topic. I’m not saying that it changes without any standard; rather, I’m saying that outcomes of behaviors (both communication and otherwise), intuition, and reason all play different roles in different scenarios, and that what we give priority to needs to shift to be effective. Why is that? Because we only have so much information to work with for a given topic! For example, as in math, reason may be more helpful than communication in some scenarios. There are only so many people who talk about math, and the conceptualization of math is a purely internal, reason-based process done in our minds. For historical analysis, while reason may be useful, communication is often more important when it comes to arriving at conclusions. Communication provides more (hopefully accurate) details about past events, and the thought processes of the people who lived through them than reason does. As critical thinkers, we need to apply the right sources of information for the right kind of job…and this is especially true when it comes to religious belief.
Epistemic Regress and the Spirit
This is where things get tricky though, because we begin running into a problem. While the external umbrella sources are vital, most of the brunt work done in epistemology is done under the internal umbrella sources. It doesn’t matter how many testimonies or behavior outcomes exist around somebody, if the internal sources are in charge of processing the information, they ultimately have epistemic superiority over the sources in the external umbrella. But let’s say that we’re analyzing a complex topic such as “morality”…which one is better: Reason or Intuition? One may initially suppose that “reason” is the ultimate source. However, we run into a problem there because reason requires an infinite number of premises to be acknowledged valid. Consider the following:
Arguments are our model for how these reasons go–we offer some premises and show how they support a conclusion. Of course, arbitrary premises won’t do, so you’ve got to have some reason for holding them as opposed to some others. Every premise, then, is a conclusion in need of an argument, and for arguments to be acceptable, we’ve got to do due diligence on the premises. This, however, leads to a disturbing pattern–for every premise we turn into a conclusion, we end up with at least one other premise in need of another argument. Pretty soon, even the simplest arguments are going to get very, very complicated. (16)
This dilemma is referred to by philosophers as the epistemic regress problem. However, before we can more fully explore the implications of epistemic regress, we have to explore some of the ways people have tried to solve it.
There are a few philosophical systems out there that attempt to resolve the problem (epistemic foundationalism, coherentism, infinitism, etc.). While there are notable differences between them, there is good evidence to support that they all derive their strength from a singular principle: metaphysical grounding (17). Metaphysical grounding tackles the question of “what grounds what,” or “what is the foundation or basis of something” (18). Consider the following:
Metaphysical ground is supposed to be a distinctive metaphysical kind of determination. It is or underwrites constitutive explanations. These explanations answer questions asking in virtue of what something is so. For example, suppose that an act is pious just in case it is loved by the gods. Following Socrates, one might still ask whether an act is pious because the gods love it or whether it is loved by the gods because it is pious. This may be interpreted as a question of ground. (19)
In other words, epistemologists seem to converge on the idea that the true basis of something is grounded on a fundamental principle (either that or they just embrace skepticism). After all, how can we expect to learn about topics like morality if we can’t identify the sources by which things like morality are learned from? However, that leads us back to our question: What is the ultimate source of knowledge about something like morality? What’s the foundation of morality? This is where I think Christianity, and specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really begins to shine.
As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that the foundation of everything good comes from God (20). We also believe that every person is given the ability to discern what is right and wrong through the Light of Christ, which is described as being “in all things” (21). This is where I believe that our moral intuitions come from (at least in part), though as we mentioned earlier, intuitions are affected by other aspects of our surroundings all the time. I see the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost interacting with the above-outlined epistemology in a few different ways:
It suggests that the light of Christ is interwoven within every one of the sources of epistemology (though it’s arguably manifested most through intuition), helping us classify things as being morally “right” and “wrong”
The Holy Ghost uses these sources together to testify of Jesus Christ and to help us believe that he is the Savior and Redeemer of the world.
By enhancing our understanding of these sources, it becomes easier for us to recognize the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost in the natural world.
This has all kinds of fascinating implications for what we find above. If this is how the Light of Christ/Holy Ghost works, what does that imply for our souls? Do they interact with intuition in a similar way to help us choose? Or is there more than meets the eye? As it stands, it’s impossible to say, but this umbrella model of understanding epistemology accommodates LDS theology rather well.
Now, there is one more thing that I’ll mention here, and it has to do with the grounding example found above. Many people wonder whether something (let’s call it X) is good because God does X; or whether God does X because it is good. Other people phrase the question in terms of “is God subject to laws, or does God make the laws?” I find such discussions somewhat pointless (being a rather practical person), and a part of me thinks it’s a distinction without a difference. There is room in LDS theology for people to disagree on this issue. Regardless of your opinion, the point remains: by grounding our moral epistemologies on God, we claim that we can learn about an objective moral standard and that through a relationship with him, we will continue to learn more about that standard. Either way, God helps you gain access to that information. A belief in God also helps add insight to a centuries-old philosophical problem, which is always a plus.
Conclusion
In conclusion, epistemology is an important topic with a complex history. I hope that by discussing this topic, critical thinkers can be more equipped to answer questions and recognize where they’re getting their information from. By doing so, critical thinkers can arrive at better conclusions more often. LDS critical thinkers can also benefit from these ideas by being able to answer questions like “Do I know the church is true?” or “What are the sources of truth I can rely on?” We all have a lot to gain from studying epistemology, and I hope that by educating people about it, we can make a positive difference in the world.
Huemer, M. (2022). Understanding Knowledge. M Huemer.
Ibid
With this statement, I’m referring to a certainty that isn’t the philosophical concept of “objective certainty” or “propositional certainty”. Objective certainty states that something MUST be true given the premises (this relates to deductive reasoning, which I’ve discussed here). However, I’m referring to ideas outside of this realm of certainty…the realm that deals with history, theology, and the vast majority of human experience.
Reed, Baron, “Certainty”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/certainty/>.
Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2020). Psychology (13th ed.). Worth Publishers. It’s worth noting that this is where many psychologists arrive at the realm of determinism. If all behavior is just X action + Y Environment → Sensation/Perception → Z result, then it becomes easy to believe in determinism. For a deeper dive into how this psychological view contrasts with LDS Theology, I recommend this article here (noting a more negative view of Determinism from a psychological perspective). For a more favorable view of (soft-)determinism concerning LDS theology, I recommend Tarik D. LaCour’s content here.
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-know-your-brain; The National Institute of Health does an excellent job in outlining the consensus of what psychologists and neuroscientists have determined is associated with brain function (they associate “reason” with the electrical signals fired in the Frontal Lobe). However, and you’ll find this universally, very few if any of the medical and psychological studies on the brain can explain why human brains “reason”. Determinism is the closest thing I’ve been able to find to an explanation, but as you can imagine, this prompts the question as to whether or not concepts such as “reason” or “moral responsibility” are possible to begin with.
https://dictionary.apa.org/intuition, note though that a growing body of literature is starting to reject the dichotomy between intuition and reason, such as this resource here
Hales, S. A., Goldberg, J., Larson, M. L., Maki, E. P., Harper, S. C., & Farnes, S. (2018). Saints: The story of the church of jesus christ in the latter days. (L. S. Edgington & N. N. Waite, Eds.) (Vol. 1). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.; see also Bushman, R. L., & Woodworth, J. (2007). Joseph Smith: Rough stone rolling. Vintage Books.
Ulrich, L. T. (2017). A house full of females: Family and faith in 19th-century Mormon Diaries (First). Alfred A. Knopf.
Aikin, S. F. (2010). Epistemology and the regress problem. Routledge.
Bliss, Ricki and Kelly Trogdon, “Metaphysical Grounding”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/grounding/>.
https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023; Steve Densley discusses how we can understand “knowledge”, and explores how we can “prove that the church is true. It’s the very last talk of the very last session of the Fair Conference, and you can find it for free at this link (you’ll need to create an account first though)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23yprWj_yAI; Jeffrey Thayne is an LDS psychologist who does an excellent job outlining how our moral intuitions are affected by our surroundings, and what the implications are for this are for LDS theology and practice. I cited him above, but I recommend him here too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo484enDccA; This is another introduction to epistemology, and Huemer’s book. It’s pretty good, and I appreciated how it was explained here (this guy is an atheist, but tends to be pretty fair)
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Romans 7–16
Aug 14, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Problem of Suffering
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the role of suffering. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our jumping-off point today is Romans 8:17:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
And we’re going to talk about how suffering is viewed differently by Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. Let me give you an overview of the Evangelical view, some of the history of how they got there and what it means for them on the practical level. At the end we’ll briefly compare it to the Latter-day Saint view.
Before I do that though – we’re in Romans. There is so much here in these chapters, and we’re going through it so fast. If you’re not confident in your ability to really follow Paul’s argument through this book please take advantage of the Come Follow Me resources that are available to you. My favorite to really break it down for you are the Scripture Central shows (previously Book of Mormon central.) They’ve got 3 or 4 different shows and they will talk you through it. We’re doing something quite different here and it’s not intended to teach you the content of the book of Romans, or any book really. But the books we will go through from now until the end of the year in the New Testament really deserve your careful consideration. Moving on.
As always, there is not one singular Evangelical point of view. I’ll try to give you the version of it that is pretty much right down the middle. A really good example of this view is heard in what one popular Bible teacher recently said, “In answer to the question of why God allows suffering, I don’t know. My ‘I don’t know’ answer to the question of why God allows suffering may not feel very theological. However, it does point to a truth that we sometimes forget. God’s ways and purposes are higher than ours, and we won’t always figure them out.”
And according to a Pew Research study in 2021 over 80% of Evangelicals say that the main reason suffering happens is random, “sometimes bad things happen.” When pressed for a reason beyond that 75% say that suffering is mostly because that person made bad choices and is suffering the consequences of their own actions. What I want you to get a sense of is that overall, for them, suffering is a glitch in God’s plan. Not a feature of that plan. In the same Pew study slightly over half of them see suffering as a punishment from God and almost 70% say that suffering comes directly from Satan and is opposed to God’s plan. Suffering is a glitch, not a feature.
Let me give you an example by talking through their view on the Garden of Eden.
When they hear the Eden story they focus on the idea that God created this perfect garden, and gave clear rules for living there that he expected them to follow. He gave them free will to disobey, but it was never in his plan for them to do so. Staying in the garden was Plan A and when Eve messed it up, God had to figure out how to fix the problem she caused.
If you remember back to our episode on atonement theories, you can really see how this plays out. The two most popular theories for Evangelicals are Substitutionary Atonement and Christus Victor. Sub Atonement uses a courtroom metaphor where God is the judge who condemns humanity, but Jesus offers to take the place of God’s wrath instead. And Christus Victor is a battle metaphor where Eve’s sin unleashes Satan into the world, and Christ has to fight him in order to save humanity. I think you can see, both of those are reactionary. God had a perfect plan (the garden) that he intended to keep going forever. Side-note: Evangelicals don’t read “and they discovered their nakedness” the same way we do. Latter-day Saints read that and understand that prior to this moment Adam and Eve were not able to procreate. Evangelicals read that differently and believe that life could have gone on forever and in theory, you and I could be living in the Garden today if only Eve hadn’t messed everything up. So, God creates this perfect Garden and wants humanity to live in it forever. And somehow, unexpectedly, Eve ruins the plan, and God must figure out how to solve the problem she has created. God must react to Eve’s choice.
What does this have to do with suffering? In the Evangelical view, suffering is a problem that must be solved. The only role it has in God’s plan is either, “Well, sometimes bad things happen,” or “That person is experiencing the consequences of their own dumb choice.” So in the Garden, Eve’s actions were not motivated to obey all of Heavenly Father’s commands, they were motivated solely by her wanting to be rebellious. Now, both Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints agree that Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden because of their own actions. The difference is that Latter-day Saints believe they had a bigger motive than just rebellion in the mix.
In the Evangelical view, Adam and Eve needed to suffer through living in the lone and dreary world because they had been bad, and this was their consequence. But the consequences were still not enough, and Jesus had to cover the cost for them in a reactionary way because of their mistake.
So you can see that underneath the question of, “Why is there suffering in the world?” is something like, “Is suffering a problem God had to unexpectedly react to?” Or was Jesus the plan from the beginning? Before the creation of the world did God already know he would send Jesus for our sins? Latter-day Saint friends I know you’re at home thinking, “Yes, of course, Jesus was the plan from the beginning!” But Evangelicals don’t see it that way. For them, there was no forethought of God saying, “We will provide for them a savior.” It was a crisis that had to be solved.
I’m going to pivot a tiny bit and talk about another aspect of suffering which is sometimes called The Problem of Evil. It goes something like this: If we are God’s children, and he actually loves us, how could he let ____ happen? How could he let my child die? How could he allow my friend to die of cancer? How could there be all these children suffering from abuse? And these are fair questions that deserve answers. Evangelicals answer the problem of evil very differently than Latter-day Saints do, at least at the theological level. Let me say, in the Evangelical world, they are very comfortable making a distinction between the theological answer to something, and the pastoral answer to something. Theological answers are allowed to sound cold and sometimes harsh, which pastoral answers are given in such a way that allows the one suffering to find some comfort. I’ll give you an example. My dad died when I was 12. The church I attended vigorously taught that anyone who didn’t make a profession of faith in the way they defined it would go straight to Hell. I had been taught this since childhood and even at 12 I knew what the theological answer was. But when I was actually in a situation where something terrible happened, I heard much softer answers, much more pastoral answers. Things like, “You don’t know what he actually felt in his heart.” Or, “Maybe he placed his trust in Christ at the very last second.” There’s not tons of comfort in those, but they’re better than outright saying, “Well, your father is being tortured in Hell right now.” But the theological answer to the problem of evil comes in a few different forms. I’ll briefly talk through 3 of them.
One, Evangelicals will sometimes say that suffering is God’s judgment against evil-doers. They will cite various scriptures, often from the Old Testament, to say that God uses bad circumstances to punish his children. Fair enough. But not a very satisfying answer if you’re 12 and just lost your dad. Second, this theory is sometimes called the, “soul-building” solution which says that God lets evil happen so that he can bring about better character in his children. Also, fair enough, and they can certainly provide scriptures to base that on. But – and not to make this all about me, but it’s just a good example – tell that to a 12-year-old who just lost her dad. That doesn’t get you very far. The third version is sometimes called, “God’s megaphone.” In this version pain and suffering are a way for God to loudly get our attention and focus back on him. Okay. But tell that to a child with cancer. It’s nonsensical.
The thing that all these theories have in common is that the premise is that God could go against the laws of nature if he wanted to. Again, not untrue, but these theories create another problem because the idea is that suffering should be considered unexpected and that God’s job is to help us avoid suffering whenever possible. It’s asking God to step outside of the very laws of nature, that he set up, and act in a way opposed to his own laws.
Latter-day Saints solve this problem slightly differently, and to me, this should be obvious by now, in a more satisfying way. Evangelicals are asking the question, “Why didn’t God transcend nature to help me avoid pain?” While Latter-day Saints are asking, “How is God operating within the bounds of nature in this situation?” God is using the natural world – including the parts of that world that make us suffer – to help us understand for ourselves what is good and what is not. In the Latter-day Saint view God is not the author or evil, but he’s also not going to prevent suffering or evil as it exists in the natural world. Elder Maxwell once said that trying to understand suffering without seeing the whole plan of salvation is like trying to understand a 3-act play by only watching the 2nd act. If you don’t know what came before, and what is going to happen at the end, the middle is a confusing mess. Latter-day Saints believe that we came from God, and will return to him. The whole point of coming to Earth is to learn and grow. We could have stayed in Heaven with God, and probably been quite happy – but we had to leave Heaven (had to leave Eden) to come to learn some things for ourselves. Evangelicals believe that humans only come into existence when they’re born, and not before. They miss the information given in Act 1 of the play. In Act 2, here on this Earth, we experience many terrible things. I do, and you do too. But the reason we’re here is to see if we will choose to hold true to what we knew before we got here. For Evangelicals Act 2 can be a time when they’re really confused and mad that God is not acting in ways outside of the world that he set up for us. They don’t understand why the play is set up the way it is – so they want the author of the play to change the story. But if they knew about Act 1, they’d know why the story is playing out the way it is. And when you miss Act 1, and misunderstand why God is not acting in certain ways in Act 2, it’s really hard to understand why Act 3 (eternity) is set up the way we believe it is.
Now, I will tell you, Evangelicals – many of them, most of them – are trying to stay faithful to what they know to be true, in the midst of lots of suffering, and doing the best they can. But the frustration of the problem of evil, or the problem of suffering is closer to the surface for them, and more frustrating for them than it might be for Latter-day Saints.
Well, that was a lot. Suffering is a huge topic and we’ll actually come back to this in a future episode, but I hope this gives you enough to start to see the differences in how we think about these things, and maybe gives you some ideas about how to talk about our hope based on the knowledge we have. Come back next week, we’re going to do one of the most common Evangelical questions: How are Jesus and Satan brothers? It will be fun. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Romans 1–6
Aug 07, 2023
Evangelical Questions: How Do ‘Works’ Work?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about more about grace and works. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before I get started I just have to say….It was so fun to meet so many of you at the FAIR conference last week. So many of you have lived lives of long-term faithfulness to this gospel and yet you are kind enough to embrace a newcomer like me. I have never once felt unwelcome or unloved in this church – and to me that is a testament to the gospel. We have all these people who have just lived lives of patient faithfulness and it shows up in all parts of who they are. And, you know, I’ve got to do a lot of really cool things in our church over the last few years, and sometimes people are surprised that I’ve been in the church less than 5 years. But, I will tell you what, almost all of that has been through people I met at FAIR. I’m so grateful. My understanding is that the talks will be available online sometime this week. I gave a talk on my research into how the church handles sexual abuse on Friday afternoon and I encourage you to take a listen when it’s available. It’s totally outside of the scope of what we’re doing here – so I’m not going to recap any of it – but if that topic interests (or worries!) you at all, find my talk and take a listen. I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you this, but also so incredibly proud – every year FAIR gives out an award called the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award to a person who has made a significant effort toward the work of apologetics and this year they gave it to me. I’ve read the list of recipients from years past – I consider many of them friends and all of them colleagues in the Gospel. It’s a huge honor to be listed with them. And I feel so grateful for being honored like that.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about grace and works. This is the third of, I think, 6 times we will address it – each time from a slightly different angle. Today’s scripture jumping off point is Roamans 3:23-24:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Now, I don’t know any Latter-day Saints who read that verse and say, “No, absolutely not. This is not how it works.” And in recent years there have been a number of General Conference talks and other teachings about the importance of grace. If we were just tracing Latter-day thought on this topic there isn’t very much interesting in the way of debate. We believe Paul when he says we are saved by grace. Which is part of why conversation about grace gets difficult with Evangelicals. The traditional line would be something like, “You guys don’t believe in grace.” And Latter-day Saints get confused and say, “No, I’m pretty sure we do…” Sometimes they can quote statements from the past that are not part of our teachings to “prove” we don’t believe in grace. And the conversation goes downhill from there.
Evangelicals here are very similar to other Protestants – and there is history here. We have to go all the way back to the 5th century and talk about Pelagius. He wrote about how to be a Christian while the Roman Empire is disintegrating. He came from Briton to Rome and is actually the first known British author. He was condemned as a heretic in 418 in a complicated series of trial that were trying to hold him responsible for things he said – as well as things that were said in his name. This might sound like ancient history but even in 2018 there was a major book, 400 pages, called The Myth of Pelagianism, so its still alive and well in theological circles. Anyway, the main charge against Pelagius is that he denies grace – while the opposite camp Augustinianism says that grace is all you need. What happened was Pelagius is a British Monk and he travels to Rome. While living there he observes the lax moral standards of the Christians living there. Sometimes this period is called “Late Antiquity” and during this century there are lots of wars between the Goths and Byzantines. It’s essentially the last vestiges of the Roman Empire as it once was and morals have mostly collapsed in all of society, including among the Christians. So, Pelagius shows up, sees the moral decay, and starts to preach and teach that people need to use their will to choose to do things as God would have them do. Neither the political leaders nor the religious leaders like what he is saying – and there was a lot of moral corruption in the Catholic church at that time – so they have him declared a heretic. They actually find him guilty at 3 different trials – one while he was alive, and then after he died they were still so mad at him that they had 2 more trials and found him guilty again, even though he was already dead.
Now, Pelagius was actually wrong about plenty of things, and I’m not here to defend him. Im telling you all of this because this is the history that is playing in the background. Many – maybe most – Evangelicals are not going to know this history in specifics. But they have been handed down a tradition for 1600 years that says they shouldn’t ever say anything except that grace is all one needs and putting out effort toward good works doesn’t really matter.
Evangelicals also went through a repeat of history in the 20th century on this. I covered this in one of my earlier episodes but Evangelicals used to be called Neo-Fundamentalists. The term fundamentalist was coined in the 1920’s around the time of the Scopes Monkey Trials which had to do with the increasing acceptance of evolution in science. But by the 1940’s the fundamentalist movement had really fallen apart. And after WW2 there were a number of younger leaders who had grown up in the fundamentalist heyday who wanted to revive the enthusiasm of those days. They initially call themselves neo-fundamentalists, then later neo-evangelicals, and then later they drop the neo and just call themselves evangelicals.
And what this early group of Evangelicals really wanted was to not be seen as they saw their grandparent’s generation -as a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who had all kinds of rules for church that had to be followed. Billy Graham rises in fame during this period in part because of this cultural mix – people who were interested in the saving grace of the gospel, but none of the rules for behavior. They wanted people to preach to them that Jesus would save them – without also telling them that their behavior needed to reflect the fact that they had been saved. It was kind of late-Rome all over again. And while those details are probably too many decades past for most current Evangelicals to know, the culture they have is steeped in this.
So, whether they know it or not, Evangelicals have been taught that grace is good and works are bad. Never mind that the New Testament teaches over and over about what kinds of behaviors Christians should have. “Works” is a trigger word for them – its not based in the Bible, it’s based on their own history. I’m not saying that as an insult, but rather as a way to maybe help you think through other ways to talk about this stuff. If they’re using the word “works” with you, you now know what they mean by it. You might be able to shift the conversation toward a different way of saying the same thing out of respect for the amount of baggage that word carries for them.
Latter-day Saints are sometimes told by Evangelicals that we must “pray to accept Jesus into our hearts” and not rely on grace at all. But if you tell an Evangelical that you absolutely have Jesus in your heart they will tell you that you have the wrong Jesus so it doesn’t count. In other words, you must have the absolutely correct understanding of Jesus and if you err even a tiny bit, the whole thing doesn’t count. How are you to gain this perfect understanding of Jesus? You must be taught by the right kind of teacher and accept their teaching before your prayer will be accepted. The whole thing is based on the actions – or works – of the individual. If the correct actions, the correct beliefs, the correct prayer do not take place then the person is denied salvation. If this weren’t true they would easily accept us as Christians too, but they generally don’t because we have not done their version of works. They can’t see it as works, but that’s what it is.
Here is my suggestion if you want to have this conversation with an Evangelical loved one….skip the works/grace language. It’s so culturally and historically loaded that it’s really hard to get to the actual meaning of what’s being said. The reality is that both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals believe grace is important, and believe works are important. They don’t necessarily see their works as “bad” works – they see our works as “bad” and it’s all just a muddle. Maybe instead try to talk about all of this in their language. If you wanted the video from last week about testimonies this is a good place to start. When an Evangelical gives their “testimony” they’re telling you the story of what their life was like before they found Jesus, how they put their trust in him, and how their life is different now. If you can “borrow” that language it might put them more at ease to see that you too are a believer in Christ who might have something to offer them. I actually had a conversation last week with someone who didn’t know I’m a Latter-day Saint and he was going on about “those Mormons” when he stopped himself and said, “you know, I’m sure that at least some of them must know about Jesus and love him – how could you not love Jesus if you really knew him?” And I thought that was a beautiful bridge because as it turns out there are an awful lot of members of our Church who know and love Jesus.
Well, that is what I have for you this week. If you’re interested go check out the FAIR Conference videos this week. Would love to hear what you think – there’s a little bit of something for every level of geeky interest. Come back next week and we’ll do some more.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 22–28
Jul 31, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Do Evangelicals have “a testimony”?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about testimonies. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about scripture as a concept. We get our jumping-off verse from Acts 22:1:
Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.
And really this is just one example from the Book of Acts of people bearing their testimonies. And you might not realize this, but Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use the word, “testimony” in rather different ways. Let me talk you through some of the variations.
We’ll start in a general sense. Evangelicals very much have the concept of having a testimony, but they use it in a very specific way. “Bearing one’s testimony” for an Evangelical usually follows a formula (all groups actually follow a bit of a formula, its just different depending on the group) but the Evangelical formula follows 3 steps that are….Before; How; Since. They talk through what their lives were like before they came to Christ, how it is that they came to trust Christ, and what their life has been like since. If you’re like me the immediate question that comes to mind is about how that works for children who were born into their church.
There will be some slight variation here, but the thing you have to understand is that Evangelical children are understood to be born into the world as sinners. From the second they are born they are headed toward eternal separation from God unless they make a profession of faith. That’s the theology. In practice it works out a bit softer – they have an understanding of the “age of accountability” which is said to be anywhere from age 8 to age 15 (the higher end of this range happens in churches where confirmation is practiced.) So if a child dies before the age of accountability people will comfort each other by talking about this concept – but at the same time, Evangelicals fall exactly in line with the broader Protestant theology that says anyone who has not made a public profession of faith will be damned to hell for all eternity. This is one of the reasons the practice of infant baptism, or pedobaptism, developed. Most Evangelicals don’t practice paedobaptism, but those who do see it in a similar same way that Latter-day Saints see the status of a child born in the covenant – they have a level of protection while they are young and unable to reach up to God. Infant baptism is seen as God reaching down to them before they are able to reach up to him. Catholics (and EO and a few others) are doing something different in paedobaptism, but Evangelicals are basically conferring to their child the same idea that we confer to all children under age 8.
So when an Evangelical learns to give a testimony, and they were born into a church family, it usually says something like: I was born into a church family and didn’t even realize I needed to do something about my faith, but at age 8 (or similar age) I learned that I should invite Jesus into my heart so I did. And now I am much happier and I know I’m going to Heaven when I die. Before, How, Since. Obviously, the people who convert to Evangelicalism later in life have a wider variety of stories depending on their circumstances.
But that’s pretty much where “bearing your testimony” ends for them. It is almost exclusively about how they came to faith and got saved from Hell. An Evangelical is just never going to say, “I have a testimony of the Bible,” or “I have a testimony that this church is true.” That’s not what testimonies are about for them. For them a testimony is the simple story of how they came to know Christ and be adopted as God’s child. This is an aside, but for them the word “adopt” is a huge theme – they don’t see themselves as being born as “children of God” they see themselves with the Devil as their true father, but God adopts them into his family despite how wretched they are. It’s more complicated than that, and I’ve got 2 previous episodes on this topic, so I’ll leave it at that for now. In summary, Evangelical testimonies are about how they “got saved.”
Latter-day Saints on the other hand are likely to say they have a testimony of all kinds of different aspects of faith. And we are taught, pretty consistently, that bearing one’s testimony should be focused on Christ – but we use all kinds of different tools to do that. You might hear someone say, “I have a testimony of repentance and how it lets me see Christ more in my life.”
Also, the mechanism of what a testimony is supposed to be doing is vastly different. For Evangelicals it’s mostly just a public (or semi-public) telling of how they came to be saved (“saved” from hell) and the function is to participate in a public declaration of faith.
Latter-day Saints come at it differently because a different mechanism is being used. For LDS a testimony is talking about how a belief was solidified through the exercise of faith. It’s faith-in-action that results in a deeper faith – called a testimony. For example, a person has faith that God really cares about them. And that faith is good, but maybe a little shaky sometimes. The person goes through an experience where they must put action into that faith – they must act on the fact that God cares about them in this example – and at the end of the process, their belief is built stronger. This is gaining a testimony of something. Their belief is made stronger through the process of trusting in what God has already revealed to them.
And something you will never hear Evangelicals say is, “I don’t really have a testimony of…..this or that.” They’re not going to say, “I don’t know that I really have a testimony of tithing right now.” Or, “My son really needs to develop his testimony of repentance.” For Evangelicals you either have a testimony that you’ve been saved, or you don’t.
How testimonies are expressed is also really different. Evangelicals will express their testimony almost exclusively for trying to convert other people. That’s the whole point – so that the other person can be saved from Hell too. But Latter-day Saints express a testimony for different reasons – certainly missionary work is in there, but we express testimonies in front of our families and loved ones so that they can know how we feel and that more faith and trust in God can be inspired in them too. Evangelicals have very limited opportunities to express a testimony publicly – their worship services just don’t make room for it. While Latter-day Saints are given the opportunity to do so in the church service every few weeks.
Now, Latter-day Saint friends, I know….Fast and Testimony meeting can be a grab-bag where you never know what you’re going to get. And I’m sure everyone listening can think of times where Fast and Testimony meeting got weird. My best 2 examples of this are…1) The time when the police had to be called in the middle of F&T meeting. But that was not nearly as interesting as my very first F&T meeting when I was investigating the church where a very old man went to the podium and talked about how disappointed he was that polygamy has not come back. I was sitting with a friend who just reached over and grabbed my hand and said, “We can talk about this later.” So, yeah, it goes weird sometimes. But I wouldn’t get rid of the practice if I could – and that is because of the mechanism that is driving it. We are able to see how putting faith into action works to bring us closer to Christ. And while we love reading about that in the scriptures, we’re still human and need to see how that is worked out in the lives of other human beings. That does something for us that is encouraging and inspires us toward our own acts of faith.
My biggest goal in telling you all of this, Latter-day Saint friends, is to help you understand that you’re using the word “testimony” differently than Evangelicals use it. “I bear my testimony that….” makes no sense to them. I’m not saying you should avoid that phrase, I actually was really drawn in by that phrase when I was investigating the church. I’m just saying that it might help to have some language for understanding how Evangelicals use that word, and how we’re using it differently. Because the concept of putting faith into action – which results in more faith and a closer relationship with Christ – that’s pretty compelling. But you have to be able to explain what you’re doing to them. If you say, “I have a testimony of having a Prophet to lead our church,” your Evangelical friend is going to mishear that as, “I believe our Prophet is how you gain salvation,” because for them baring a testimony really is only about talking about how you obtained salvation – which isn’t even really a category we talk in.
Shorter episode today – but it’s summer. So. I know some of you are coming to the FAIR conference this week, or you’ll be listening online. Still time to register for online streaming if you want. I think in-person registration is closed by now because they needed to get a head-count for meals. But if you will be there in person please be sure to find me and say Hi. I’d love to meet you. Next week the Come Follow Me readings move into Romans. And I could do a year’s worth of these episodes just on Romans alone. But it will fly by and we’ll just grab the most relevant stuff. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 16–21
Jul 24, 2023
Evangelical Questions: If you believe the Bible, why do you also need the Book of Mormon?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about scripture, what is it, how we read it, and more. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
All right, I think this is the last week I will be telling you this – you have 1 week left to purchase tickets for the FAIR Conference, August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. Or you can register online to get free streaming access. I haven’t even told you about half the people who will be presenting. But I will tell you about one more that is near and dear to my heart. Avraham Shannon will be speaking about the Book of Moses. If you listened to my conversation story a bunch of episodes ago you might remember that the very first Latter-day Saint scripture I read was the Book of Moses. I can easily tell you today that I had no real idea what I was reading at the time and mostly read it out of curiosity, not submission to the commandment to read scripture. But I was hooked right about from the beginning. Dr. Shannon is a professor at BYU in the religious studies department and he will be presenting some of his research to us. It should be really great. My talk will be on Friday afternoon. I will be doing 2 things….1) Presenting my own original research on rates of abuse. One of the vexing questions in the area of church abuse is: What practices actually have better outcomes for kids? So one way of answering that question is to take an organization where many different churches are involved and take a retrospective look at which churches the abusers are coming from. You might think you know the answer, but I promise you that you will be surprised on several items. The other part of my talk is 2) addressing some of the most frequently asked questions about abuse in a church context like, “Why don’t we require universal background checks?” It will be a fascinating time together.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about scripture as a concept. We get our jumping off verse from is Acts 17:11:
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
So what we have here are Jewish people living in Berea which is in modern-day Greece. Paul and his group have come up from Jerusalem into modern-day Turkey and then up into this part of modern-day Greece. It sits just south of modern-day Serbia and right next to Albania. (Geography is important – you can’t understand history without understanding geography. And you can’t understand theology without understanding history.) And when Paul arrives they go to the synagogue to teach the people there. He finds that the Bereans were eager to listen and willing to actually investigate what he was teaching. It’s an interesting point because these were Jews still – so when the verse says they “examined the scriptures to see if what Paul said was true,” what they were examining was not the New Testament, it didn’t exist yet, and even if it had those were not their scriptures. What they were examining was the Old Testament – probably the first 5 books called the Pentateuch. And probably studying the major Prophets as well (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) as well as the minor Prophets (the 12 small books at the back of the Old Testament.) So, Paul is teaching them something new – about Jesus Christ – and they were able to look in the Old Testament and verify that what he was saying was true.
Now, you know that the Old Testament does not talk much about Jesus Christ directly. And Latter-day Saints will sort of frequently roll their eyes and wonder why we can’t just get back to the good stuff where Jesus is mentioned on just about every page. But these Jews in Berea were able to understand what Paul was saying enough to interpret the Old Testament in a new way. This is the task of all the early Jewish converts of course – they must take the scriptures they love, the Old Testament, and use it to verify that the teachings of the New Testament are true. Most people today – even people who have impressive academic credentials – are unable to see the correspondence between the Old and New testaments. But here, these Jews are doing it. And in doing so, they open themselves up to accepting new scriptures – the ones that were being written during that era and would become the New Testament.
Latter-day Saints would see this as a model or precedent for how people in a standard Christian church today have to look at what’s in the Book of Mormon and compare it to what’s in the New Testament. But right here in the Book of Acts we have this beautiful example of the Berean Jews doing this – and being called noble for doing so.
But things get tricky if you talk about this model this way with Evangelicals. I want to explain why and what their thinking is behind that. Let me use an illustration to talk about it.
My grandparents and great-grandparents were cattle ranchers in California. They had a couple thousand acres and managed herds there. And if you’ve got a big property like that there are a couple ways to do it. You can either make sure you’ve got really, really good fences around every single square inch of the place so that the cows can’t escape. Or, you can let the cows help you out a bit – meaning that if you make sure the cows have access to the resources they want (like a water or food source) they are going to naturally make sure they are able to find their way back to you – you don’t have to force them within the fence, you can kind of let them go where they want, knowing they’re going to come back because they need the water, or whatever. So it’s 2 different philosophies to get a cow to stay where you want it to stay – cage it in, or let it police itself in its own best interest – it can roam all it wants, but it’s going to come back to get what it needs. And our 2 different approaches to scripture are kind of like that.
Evangelicals, all Protestants and Catholics too, have taken the cage-it-in approach. They put some very high fences what is and is not scripture. Now, these fences have moved over time – some books of scripture are in and then later they’re out – but there is always a high fence up. The question they’re trying to answer is something like: How can we make sure we’re protecting the small amount that we’ve been given?
Latter-day Saints take an entirely different approach. Instead of asking how to protect the amount we’ve been given, we ask something like: How can we make sure we’re able to receive anything God has for us? And this is applied to the question of what is – and what is not – scripture.
One of the very best ways to talk about this is to compare what both groups do when an individual wants a direct message from God. And, as always, there is a wide variety of ways Evangelicals deal with this. Most of them, the vast majority of them, would say that God speaks through the Holy Spirit to individuals today and that those words can be trusted in as far as they are understood correctly. But the problem comes if you want to write those words down and treat them like actual messages from God. This can be done sometimes in perhaps the most private of private settings, but very few of them would go around and act like something God told them is on the same level of trustworthiness as scripture. Those would be treated with 2 radically different levels of trustworthiness.
Compare that to how Latter-day Saints think about Patriarchal Blessings. Every Latter-day Saint is entitled to receive a Patriarchal Blessing that is personalized for them, and which they can consider their own personal scripture. These blessings are transcribed and recorded with the church. Latter-day Saints don’t treat these blessings as fortune-telling or step-by-step dictates on exactly what to do, but we do treat them sacredly and as scripture. We consult them throughout our lives and do our best to see them as God being aware of us and our circumstances. They are considered as trustworthy as other scriptures. They have to be understood correctly, and sometimes that takes a bit – but that’s true of any other scripture too.
You can see the 2 different approaches to scripture. Evangelicals have the very best of intentions here. Their sort of locking down what can be considered scripture is their way of making the boundaries very clear about what is out and what is in. They’re not doing this to be controlling or to limit what the people have access to in terms of hearing from God, they’re doing it with the intent of treating scripture with the sacred respect it deserves. Sometimes we Latter-day Saints look at that and wonder: Why wouldn’t they want EVERYTHING God has for them? But that’s not how they think of it. I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt here that their motives for limiting things is good. Latter-day Saints just see it differently – we’re not trying to fence in exactly what God has said with fences that limit what he is able to say. Or at least limit the trustworthiness of things God tells individuals.
And sometimes Latter-day Saints feel frustrated, or perhaps confused, by Evangelicals’ lack of willingness to consider a message God might have for them. And Evangelicals feel frustrated or confused by Latter-day Saint’s willingness to ascribe the word “scripture” to the Book of Mormon (most of them won’t even know what a Patriarchal Blessing is and their heads might explode if they did.) But they look at the Book of Mormon and see that it’s on the outside of the fence they’ve already set up, so it’s hard for them to let it in. I get that. But the reality is that the Bible and the Book of Mormon very much go together. As a complete outsider to the church when I first read the Book of Mormon I saw that very quickly. It can be an interesting conversation to have with someone who is used to scripture being very tightly defined.
Well, that is what I have for you today. Next week we’re on our last week of the Book of Acts and then on to Romans which will be super fun. Go and register for FAIR. I will see you next week.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 4: Logical Fallacies
Jul 20, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
In the last article, I took some time to describe some of the basics of logic, and how to form good arguments. However, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that not all arguments are created equal. For example, when it comes to deductive reasoning, the premises need to support the conclusions in order to be valid. When they don’t, the argument is called “fallacious”, that is, it’s based on poor reasoning. While there is some variety in how someone defines the term “fallacy,” and a massive history behind its usage (1), it’s generally understood that fallacious arguments are simply bad arguments due to either a faulty premise or a lack of important information (2). We’ll get into how that is in a moment, but it almost goes without saying that critical thinkers need the ability to discern the difference between valid and fallacious reasoning. Without being able to parse through the validity of good and bad arguments, critical thinkers are unable to arrive at appropriate conclusions. Consequently, they’re unable to analyze information accurately, and thus cannot maximize their problem-solving efforts. There’s not a ton of background information I need to provide that I haven’t already provided in my previous article, so we’re going to do things a little differently today. For this article, I’m going to list common fallacies and give examples of them in relation to historical and theological topics relating to Latter-day Saints. Let’s get into it.
Logical Fallacies: Thou Shalt Nots
Logical fallacies are best understood as “thou shalt not” commandments of logical thinking. They severely cripple your capacity to make key points and arrive at correct conclusions. Those who have studied Jewish law would know that there are about 613 commandments found within the Law of Moses, with some more famous ones that are given more attention than others (3). While there are not 613 logical fallacies (that I know of), there are many MANY fallacies that have been identified and studied that we don’t have time to go over today. However, we do have time to go over a few more popular/notable ones that inhibit logical reasoning. While I do so, I encourage you to ponder on some similarities that each of these fallacies share. With that brief introduction, let’s begin listing them off.
Ad hominem is an excellent place to start, seeing as it’s both easy to explain, and common to encounter. This fallacy is characterized by the arguer attacking their opponent, rather than attacking the arguments their opponent presents (4). For example, just this last week, I was engaging in classic Facebook debates, when I was called “Hitler” because I wouldn’t allow spam to be posted. This kind of personal attack tries to discredit me by associating me with one of the most evil people ever recorded in history. However, as you can imagine, this doesn’t at all discredit my argument that spam posts contribute little to the actual discussion. This fallacy is unfortunately common in the realms of both political and religious discussion and is done by both members and non-members of the church, so be careful!
In a similar vein to the previous one is the fallacy of faulty motives, or “Argument from motives.” This fallacy seeks to discredit an argument based on the motives of the person making the argument (5). An example of this is when people attack how Joseph Smith presented polygamy. Joseph Smith claimed that the command to practice polygamy came from God (6), but some critics of the church claim that Joseph was looking explicitly to satisfy his own sexual desires (7). Even when we ignore the (many) quotes that come from those involved in Polygamy that tell a different story when taken holistically (8), attacking Joseph’s motives here does nothing to actually address whether or not the command to practice polygamy actually came from God. It also, of course, presumes the ability to read people’s minds, which to my knowledge isn’t possible yet.
An ad-populum fallacy, more commonly known as the “bandwagon fallacy,” is where the arguer assumes that because many people have believed something, it must be true (9). If you’ve heard someone say something like “Everyone’s doing it, so you should too!” or “How could it be possible for so many people to be wrong?” then they’ve committed a bandwagon fallacy. For example, even if thousands of General Christians believe that the concept of biblical inerrancy is true, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. This fallacy should also be avoided when it comes to scholarship. While a consensus of scholars may provide a lot of confidence, the consensus of scholars alone does not automatically entail that something is true.
Circular reasoning, also known as “begging the question,” is a fallacy that is characterized by assumptions of the conclusion’s truthfulness being found in the premises of the argument (10). That may sound confusing, and to be fair, it’s not just characterized that way, but it’s easier to show than it is to tell. Consider this discussion (based on an actual argument I’ve read):
Question: Why is the Bible inspired scripture?
Answer: Because the Bible is inspired, and it follows the patterns of scripture outlined in the Bible.
You see the problem here? The conclusion states that “The Bible is the word of God because the Bible says that it’s the word of God.” The problem here is that deductive reasoning necessitates that the premises support the conclusion, not the other way around. The conclusion can’t be used to prove the conclusion…that’s why arguments like this “beg the question” of why the conclusion is true.
The Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, also known as the “false cause” or “Texas marksman” fallacy, is a bit tricky to explain, but it’s committed when the arguer tries to make connections where a connection does not exist (11). It gets its name from the idea that if a gunslinger shoots a wall 100 times without looking, there are bound to be a few clusters of bullet holes closer together. The gunslinger could then paint the wall, putting the cluster in the bullseye, and declare himself to be the greatest shot in the west, despite the fact that he wasn’t aiming there. With so many data points out there (bullet holes), it’s natural to find some similarities, but those similarities don’t necessarily mean that there is a connection. For example, many people have made connections between The Book of Mormon and other books like View of the Hebrews or The Late War, due to certain similarities that can be drawn. However, this doesn’t prove that Joseph Smith used these texts to fabricate the Book of Mormon; and in fact, certain textual evidence found within the Book of Mormon helps to challenge the assumption that The Book of Mormon is a 19th-century pseudo-archaic text (12). While this shouldn’t dissuade you from making observations and connections, critical thinkers need to keep an eye out for the possibility that some things just happen by chance.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy is an appeal to purity: that is, it’s an appeal to a specific definition of a term as being authoritative over all others (13). The name comes from the example given by Anthony Flew where he says “No true Scotsman puts brown sugar in porridge.” In other words, the true members of X group don’t do/believe Y; appealing to a strict, limited definition of X. Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are familiar with this argument in terms of the debate of “Are church members Christians?” I remember being told several times on my mission that real Christians “believe the trinity” or “test modern revelation (Like the Book of Mormon) by prior revelation (The Bible)” (14). However, this kind of shifting of definitions does little to prove anyone’s point, and the arguer would need to demonstrate how their definition of “Christians” is superior to that of the church’s definition.
Another important fallacy to cover is that of the “Either/or” fallacy, also referred to as a “False Dichotomy/Dilemma” or “Black and White” fallacy (15). This is committed when the arguer sets up a false binary in a discussion, reducing the outcome to only two options. An example of this in relation to LDS theology would be someone being told to either denounce The Family: A Proclamation to the World or admit that they hate gay people. However, critical thinkers would be able to state that there are a plethora of ways to support the proclamation without hating people who have same-sex attraction. The arguer would need to prove first that those are the only two options before they can support the conclusion that those are the only two options.
The argument to moderation fallacy, also known as the “false compromise” fallacy, is kind of the opposite of the previous one (16). This happens when one asserts that a position is correct or is an ideal answer simply because it’s a compromise between two extremes. An example of this would be someone saying something like “Lots of people think Joseph Smith was a prophet, or he was a fraud, but the truth is that he was just a man that was sincere, but wrong.” However, just because this is a middle position doesn’t prove that the conclusion was true…such conclusions would need to be supported by other premises.
A hasty generalization fallacy is characterized by drawing conclusions about a group of people due to the actions of a few people in that group (17). This would be like someone saying “I found a few missionaries that were rude or ignorant about a given topic, therefore, all missionaries are rude and ignorant”. However, this is making an assumption that would need to be shown about every missionary in order to be accepted as true. After all, the fact that some missionaries don’t know something doesn’t mean that all of them don’t (in fact, quite a few of them know quite a lot!!!). There are a lot more variables at play when it comes to anyone’s education, and hasty generalizations are characterized by their lack of accounting for all of those variables.
The Genetic fallacy, also known as “poisoning the well,” is similar to the ad-hominem fallacy in a way. The genetic fallacy states that an argument is untrustworthy because of the background, education, or goals of the source. A considerable example – pertinent to everyone reading – has to do with FAIR. If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve heard people discredit an argument because it came from FAIR, I’d have a substantial number of nickels. However, as we learned in the previous article, conclusions are arrived at based on the premises…not the place where the premises came from. Anyone is capable of making good arguments, and dismissing arguments and conclusions because of who they came from is the epitome of bias, and the antithesis of critical thinking.
The Tu Quoque fallacy is one that many people are guilty of, including members of the church. The Tu Quoque fallacy is committed when someone tries to justify the shortcomings of their arguments by pointing out the weaknesses of their opponent’s arguments (19). An example of this would be when someone asks about biblical (or BoM) archaeological evidence, and the other person points out the fact that the Bible (or BoM) has incomplete archaeological records as well. However, those kinds of observations neither support nor protect anyone’s arguments/premises. While we should be open to asking questions, clarifying the positions of others, and evaluating hypocrisy when possible, it’s important to not mistake that as defending our own arguments.
The Slippery Slope fallacy states that one decision will lead to one outcome, then another, and then finally arrive at a conclusion that is preposterous and/or terrible (20). An example of this found in LDS theology is found in the idea of personal revelation. A critic might claim that because we accept the idea of personal revelation, we may be inspired to break our covenants and break the law of chastity, therefore, the idea of personal revelation is bad because it leads to breaking the law of chastity. Putting aside the fact that the spirit would not tell us to break covenants (21), this is a logical fallacy in the sense that personal revelation does not necessitate the idea that we’ll break our covenants. Generally, it’s good practice to avoid large improbabilities and hypotheticals like that in a conversation…critical thinkers should focus on specific behaviors and ideas, and act accordingly.
Special Pleading is a fallacy that refers to instances when an arguer would ask for an exception to the rule to be made in regard to a premise (22). In other words, they “specially plead” that someone or something is an exception to a rule of some kind. An example of this is found in LDS theology, where people state that there were no prophets after Jesus. We’ll then cite that the term “prophets” is used repeatedly to refer to messengers for God in the New Testament and that those prophets are understood to be authoritative and foundational like apostles were (23), to which the critic would reply “that doesn’t count” (24). Asking to change the rules when a premise is shown to be faulty does not make the premise any stronger, and thus does not support the conclusion.
Equivocation fallacies are characterized by using the same term in different ways, that is, changing the meaning of a term partway through the argument (25). An example of this found in LDS theological discussion is when people are talking about “faith.”
P1: The Bible teaches we’re saved by Grace through faith (26)
P2: The LDS church teaches we’re saved by Grace through Faith and Works (27)
Conclusion: The LDS believe differently than the Bible
Now, at first glance, this may seem like a home run for the critics of the church in terms of proving that we disbelieve the Bible. However, what they don’t know is that the definition of “faith” is very different in both of those premises. The term “faith” in P1, according to scholars, is likely to be understood as an allegiance to God (28). However, the term as used in P2 (and by most people in the 19th century) means something more like “belief” (29). When you put both of those terms in their proper context, you come to find out that they’re not saying anything all that much differently. This is a tricky one to spot though, so slow down and keep an eye out for it.
Red Herrings are characterized by bringing up something unrelated, or mostly unrelated, to your point in an attempt to distract from the real issue (30). This fallacy can be characterized in the following conversation:
Critic: Mormons believe that you’re saved “after all you can do” (31), it’s an impossible gospel! Have you done everything you can do?
Member: Well hold on a moment…research shows that the term “After all we can do” really means something more like “In spite of all we do”. Lots of non-members during Joseph’s time used the phrase “After all we can do” to mean “In spite of what we do” (32).
Critic: Well, that doesn’t change the fact that your Book of Mormon affirms the Trinity
As you can see, the topic shifted under the burden of additional scrutiny. The discussion as to whether or not the Book of Mormon teaches Modalistic Trinitarianism is a completely different discussion from the discussion to be had about 2 Nephi 25:23. This attempt to distract from the original topic does nothing to protect or maintain the strength of the original claim.
An erroneous appeal to authority is an equally inappropriate fallacy, and is the flip side of the “poisoning the well fallacy” we talked about earlier. It’s characterized by inappropriately appealing to what something (or more specifically someone) says as being the be-all, end-all thing that proves something is true (33). An example of this fallacy would be a Christian saying that because the Bible outlines a world shaped like a dome (34), we should believe it too because they’re authorities. Unfortunately, similar to the well-poisoning fallacy, just because the argument came from a specific source, even an authoritative one, doesn’t mean that source is right. While we should be willing to note the extensive time and effort that professors, researchers, historians, and other authorities have put into their fields of study, we need to remember that arguments are good or bad based on their premises and information…not based on who made them.
A loaded question is one that has no correct answer: that is, no matter what the answer to the question is, there is an unjustified or controversial assumption baked into the question (35). An example of this is found in a hypothetical question that a critic of the church asked, “Have you always been a brainwashed member of that cult?” No matter how you answer that question, it’s already making the assumption that first, you’re brainwashed, and second, that the church is a “cult” (36). Both of those would need to be demonstrated in order for the argument to be valid. Sometimes loaded questions can be methods of disguising ad-hominem attacks too, so keep an eye out for that.
The Gish Gallop fallacy gets its name from a skilled young earth creationist debater named Duane Gish. His style of debate included long lists of points, and thus the fallacy named after him is characterized by attempting to bury the arguer’s opponents in many different (and mostly not very good) claims, sources, and arguments (37). The assumption here is that it takes far less time to make a claim than it does to disprove a claim. One of the devious things about this fallacy is that even if they make 100 arguments, and you’re able to successfully refute 99 of them, the critic can point to the one you weren’t able to refute, and “claim victory” (it’s difficult to refute every argument, regardless of strength, during a formalized time-delineated debate). A very popular example of this right now in LDS culture is the CES letter, written by Jeremy Runnells. Despite the fact that the claims made in the letter have been addressed (and debunked) over and over again (38), the CES letter’s tactic of presenting dozens and dozens of arguments makes it difficult for the inexperienced reader to parse through all the information. The Gish Gallop is fallacious in nature because the strength of the tactic isn’t based on the premises itself: instead, it’s based on the fact that the arguer is manipulating the circumstances around the debate and discussion, rather than focusing on the specific arguments/premises itself.
The perfectionist fallacy describes an instance where a solution to a problem is rejected because it doesn’t solve the problem perfectly (39). As those who are familiar with LDS history and theology know, this is a common fallacy used against prophets. In LDS theology, prophets are used to fill the role or “solve the problem” of testifying of Jesus Christ, and have authority from God to teach us about him (40). However, as per our theology, they’re not perfect (41). However, just because they’re not perfect doesn’t mean that they don’t accomplish their job, or consistently testify of Jesus Christ’s divinity. Pointing out the fact that prophets aren’t perfect doesn’t change the fact that prophets help solve the problem of bridging the gap that exists between God and us.
“Shifting goalposts” is a fallacy that’s similar to “Special pleading.” It’s characterized by changing the complaint in such a way as to narrow the question so it can’t be answered, or so that an original answer is no longer included (42). An example of this found in LDS apologetics refers to archaeological evidence about the Book of Mormon. Consider the following conversation:
Critic: There is no archaeological evidence that supports the Book of Mormon
Member: That’s not really true. Putting aside the fact that lots of things that were considered problematic in the Book of Mormon have now been verified by modern science (such as the use of metal plates used to keep records in the Middle East), there’s also discussion about places like NHM region, which matches the description of Nahom in the Book of Mormon. Does that not count?
Critic: Well that doesn’t account for the fact that there’s no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon found in the New World. For example, do you know where Zarahemla is?
You can see how the complaint shifted from “all archaeological evidence” to “New world archaeological evidence for BoM cities.” Such attempts are used to evade the fact that the points were defeated and do nothing to protect the premises found in the original criticism, change the kind of answer that needs to be given, and are consequently found to be fallacious.
An Appeal to Nature fallacy is a type of “erroneous appeal to authority” fallacy, in which nature is set as the ultimate standard of right and wrong. In other words, an appeal to nature states that because a behavior/observation is found in nature, it must consequently be a good thing (43). An example of this is often found in LGBTQ+ discussions. Many proponents of LGBTQ+ relationships will point to instances where different species of animals engage in homosexual activity in order to show that homosexual activity is morally acceptable (44). However, this point presupposes that Nature is the highest moral authority, which would need to be demonstrated.
An Appeal to ignorance, simply put, is a claim that because there is no evidence to the contrary, something must be true, or because something has never been proven true, it must be false. An example of this given by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is “Nobody has ever proved to me there’s a God, so I know there is no God.” (45). This is also found in reference to exclusively LDS theology when it comes to things like Book of Mormon archaeology or DNA in the Book of Mormon. Just because we don’t know where the city of Zarahemla is doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist (46). While we should always be willing to look for new information and use critical thinking skills to evaluate the possible validity of claims, we should be wary of saying that because we don’t know something, it therefore definitively exists or does not exist.
One fallacy that I find to be particularly devious is gaslighting. Based on the 1944 film Gaslight, this fallacy is characterized by attempting to call into question the sanity of the arguer’s opponent by challenging their experience, or by distorting established facts (47). For example, I remember being in a discussion with someone and me explaining to them that Joseph taught about the concept of a council of gods, and citing the sources where he made that claim (48). The person I was debating with promptly replied, “No, he didn’t talk about it there!” Admittedly, I was thrown for a loop; going over my sources again, double-checking each of my points – based on the fear that I was missing something. I later found that Joseph Smith did, in fact, affirm that there was a council of gods, as per my cited source, but it was already too late…the tactic had succeeded in derailing my conversation. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but in reality, gaslighting can be either purposeful or unintentional (49). Gaslighting doesn’t actually disprove anyone’s premises, making it as fallacious as it is manipulative.
An unfalsifiable claim is somewhat tricky to deal with and employ, due to its limited context. Unfalsifiable claims are fallacies found in scientific discussions where claims that cannot be verified are made (50). This is most commonly used in discussions about God, where for instance, one person may say that something happened because God made it happen. This is unfalsifiable because we have no way to objectively prove that God did or didn’t do something, at least using scientific methods. I’ve found a lot of discussions about this to be somewhat futile for just this reason. It’s equally unfalsifiable to say that “X thing happened because of God” as it is to say that “God can’t exist, because the universe doesn’t need God to function.” We can’t prove either of those things objectively as it stands, so we must find other ways to talk about God’s existence or non-existence.
Finally, we have the fallacy fallacy, the great equalizer of all the different fallacies. This fallacy states that even if fallacious reasoning is used, the proposed conclusion may still be true (51). For example, and in the spirit of the previous fallacy about unfalsifiability, even if we concede that a belief in God is unfalsifiable, the mere fact that a fallacy is used doesn’t make it impossible that a God exists. This is why Critical thinking is so important: We have to be willing to understand what our assumptions are, and limit the amount of fallacies we employ, but realize that sometimes, fallacies exist in our thinking and in ideological discussion that just can’t be understood or traversed right now.
Conclusion
In conclusion, that was a lot of material to cover, and there are far more fallacies that have been unmentioned here that deserve serious attention. However, the fallacies we’ve discussed today are common enough that mentioning them to LDS Critical thinkers is useful. While there is a limit to how fallacies can help you, they can serve as guidelines for evaluating information. Review these often, and see if you can practice identifying them in both religious and non-religious contexts. As you do so, I promise that you’ll be able to figure out how to parse through information more effectively, and more often avoid conclusions that are inaccurate. Then, you can keep solving problems, becoming a more informed and decisive critical thinker. As long as we act with charity, and the pure love of Christ (52), we can all become the kind of thinkers, and believers, God wants us to be.
Ulrich, L. T. (2017). A house full of females: plural marriage and women’s rights in early Mormonism, 1835-1870. First Edition. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. for a more detailed, historical analysis of this issue
If you’d like to explore this more, see Are “Mormons” Christian? Gospel Topics Essay; see also Peterson, Daniel C. and Ricks, Stephen D., “Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-Day Saints” (1992). Maxwell Institute Publications. 57. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/57
This requires a bit of explanation. We are to understand that the Holy Ghost is the Holy Spirit of Promise (D&C 88:3), and we know that the the Holy Spirit of Promise must seal upon us our covenants in order for them to be valid (D&C 132:7). It goes almost goes without saying that breaking the covenants would cause them to be invalid, and would be against the will of God/the Spirit, seeing as one of the purposes of the Holy Ghost is to support/seal those ordinances and covenants. This is the basis of my assertion that the spirit will not ask us to break our covenants. This is my understanding of D&C 132:26, and this analysis is seemingly supported by the Preach My Gospel manual when it says “Breaking covenants may remove the sealing [of the Holy Spirit].”
To show how this argument is incorrect, I’ll cite the commentary from the NET Bible found online about Ephesians 2:20 reads the following way
“Because the prophets appear after the mention of the apostles and because they are linked together in 3:5 as recipients of revelation about the church, they are to be regarded not as Old Testament prophets, but as New Testament prophets.”
I’ll also refer to the work of Jeff Lindsay, which you can access here. While Mr. Lindsay is not a theologian by trade (not that his profession would disqualify him from making a good argument), it’s worth noting that his work here has been endorsed by theologians such as Robert Boylan, who cites Lindsay’s article here.)
While it’s worth noting that the term “cult” here is used in a derogatory sense, I’m of the opinion that all religions are cults. Where there is a veneration of a being or object, that is “cult” behavior but that’s another article. However, most of the time when the term “cult” is used, especially against members of the church, it’s often used in a derogatory, harmful, loaded sense, hence why I use it in my example
It’s worth noting that LDS often fall into the same trap when refuting this fallacy: That because the majority of species have heterosexual relationships, it’s only “natural” and therefore “good” that heterosexual relationships are of God. However, this too appeals to this fallacy, and should be avoided when possible. Just stay away from animal parallels…that’s a good rule of thumb.
Logical fallacies – FAIR (This is FAIR’s complete guide to logical fallacies, complete with more examples of how they’re used in conversations with church members about LDS theology and history)
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ (Another Non-LDS collection of fallacies that’s a bit more user-friendly. More comprehensive lists exist though, and are found in the references above)
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 10–15
Jul 17, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Who is – and who is not – a Christian?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about what being a Christian means. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I will remind you about the FAIR Conference August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. I’ve told you about a lot of the speakers already but I want to tell you about another one who is speaking on a topic near and dear to my heart: The Pathyways program. Brian Ashton is the president of the Pathways program. Pathways, if you don’t know, is a way for adults around the world who have either not started college, or not been successful at college to get a path toward success. One of the things I do in life is teach a remote class for BYU-Idaho and while I don’t teach Pathways students I often have them in my classes after they’ve finished Pathways. And I’ll tell you what, 9 times out of 10 they are more serious students than my non-Pathways students. The year they spend in Pathways really prepares them to do college-level work. When I was 18, I went to “junior” college and it was a disaster. I’d had a lot of trauma in my life by that point and the only support I had was what I was able to cobble together for short amounts of time. Predictably, I failed out of school. I would make a couple other attempts in my early 20’s but just could never get myself to a place where college worked for me. Honestly, I started to believe that I was too dumb for college. It took me into my 30’s before I tried again. My life was stable by then and it worked. I ended up getting 2 Master’s degrees. So today when I look at the people who come up through Pathways I am so happy for them – it’s a program absolutely tailored to the needs of students who couldn’t make the traditional college experience work, but they generally end up being very successful with the high level of support they get.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about what a Christian actually is. Our scripture is Acts 11:26:
So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
In the past, we’ve talked about this subject by looking at the traditional Christian Creeds and that’s a fair way to answer this question. Back in 2004 when Larry King interviews President Hinkley this is the answer he gives – that if being a Christian means agreeing to the Creeds 100%, then you wouldn’t call us Christians – but if it means having faith in Christ as he is found in the scriptures, then yes of course we are Christians. And when we’re talking about faith in this way – does the person believe the correct things – we’er talking about Orthodoxy, that is “correct beliefs.” Ortho means “straight” like a straight line. And doxa is “beliefs or opinions.” But being a Christian is not a cognitive exercise that happens only in your mind – it is also how you live your life and the practices you engage in. This is “orthopraxy.” The “praxy” here means “conduct” in both the ethical and liturgical sense. That’s the way we’re going to talk about the question this time. It’s not that correct belief doesn’t matter, it does, but you need both correct beliefs and correct practices. What is a Christian as evaluated by considering: What are correct practices?
I’ll make a mental health analogy here. Most of the time we humans believe that if something is wrong we need to figure it out in our minds or our emotions first – and then we can easily figure out the right way to act. And that’s fine when you can do it – but most people get lost in their own minds and don’t know how to find their way out. They just spool on the same anxiety for decades. We call this “top-down processing” meaning you’re trying to figure it out in your head so that your body can do the right things. But it’s not the only way to make a change in your life. You also can do, “bottom-up” processing which is where you act in a way you believe is right or ethical, and wait for the emotions or thoughts to follow. This is getting at the differences between orthodoxy (beliefs in your head) and orthopraxy (practices you do.)
Let’s look at a historical example of orthopraxy. The Holy Kiss.
Unless you are Eastern Orthodox you probably have little idea of what this means. In some EO churches, not all, they still practice this. During the service, after the scripture readings are complete, the congregation – which is separated by gender, women on one side, men on the other – give each other the kiss of peace. Traditionally this is not cheek-kissing, but mouth-to-mouth short kisses. There are 2 reasons they do this…1) Paul teaches it in the New Testament and tells the believers to greet each other with a kiss. This is the symbol of the love that should be between believers and a reminder that the Holy Spirit is with them. Their highest goal is union with God – that is for humans to grow up to be like their Heavenly Father. 2) The kiss comes right before they ask the non-baptized adults to leave in preparation to take the sacrament. The priest of deacon would shout, “The doors, the doors.” and all non-baptized adults are excused from the room – the moment of the sacrament being considered very private worship. And they don’t want people who don’t understand to be gawking. But they are given this kiss of peace before they leave.
Now, no Protestant or Evangelical church that I know of uses this practice today. Some of them might ask the people in the congregation to turn and greet someone sitting next to them, but they certainly aren’t being asked to kiss that person on the mouth. To our ears, it’s a very odd practice.
But if you study the practice, and really listen to what they’re saying about why they do this, and how it shapes them, it makes a lot of sense in their context. And this same dynamic comes up in discussions between Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals. For the most part, Evangelicals do not understand our beliefs, our orthodoxy. Likewise, they do not understand our practices either – some of our practices sound as odd to them as the Eastern Orthodox Christians practicing the Holy Kiss sounds to us.
So, how do we decide what is actually orthopraxy – what are the right practices? If you’ve been following these episodes you probably already know the answer here. Latter-day Saints have a Prophet who can give a final word. Evangelicals are very independent-minded and they each want to decide for themselves what the correct practices are.
Here is a simple example: Our Latter-day Saint churches have gone through a variety of schedule changes. Most of you know the details of those better than I do. The one I experienced was moving from 3-hour church to 2-hour church. I wasn’t officially a member until after we started 2-hour church but I attended for months while it was still 3 hours. All of our congregations around the world were instructed to make this change and on what date. Evangelicals don’t work that way for lots of reasons, the most basic one of which is that there is no central governing body for them. Some of them might choose to group together into denominations or coalitions, but even then, the denomination isn’t going to prescribe how long church should be. If an Evangelical person is attending a church and that church changes their schedule and the person doesn’t like it, he simply moves to another church. And in most areas of the country, he would have dozens of choices. In their way of thinking this isn’t a problem in the slightest. Latter-day Saints think more collectively. If someone attends outside the boundaries of their assigned ward there has to be a pretty good reason why that is happening. The reason being that we belong together, we shoulder the responsibility of the church together. To voluntarily refuse to worship with your neighbors would cause most Latter-day Saints to wonder what was going on.
You can see why our 2 groups would approach something as simple as the church schedule so differently. Evangelicals would have a hard time understanding why you would want to voluntarily give up your independence and allow someone else and let them decide how your church should be structured. Some of them would be very suspicious and skeptical of such a thing! It can really cause problems in conversation.
But the way out is pretty simple, and honestly, it applies to both groups. Our practice of allowing our leaders to decide details like our church schedule is informed by our beliefs that God expresses his love to us by providing prophets. And our following their teaching (in this example, switching from 3 hours to 2 hours) gives us experience in learning that we can trust their leadership. Of course, Evangelicals would see their version of this the same way. They themselves are their own “prophets” as it were. Each one individually gets to have the final word over what is correct belief and correct practice. Their practice informs their belief and vice versa. All of this is to say….There are reasons why each group does what they do. We get bogged down by rejecting their practices – or them rejecting ours – as “crazy” simply because we don’t understand why they are being done, or what results they are producing. Moving from the “what” to the “why” is a really helpful trick for having conversations where you can understand each other better.
The last part I want to talk about here, and this really is an aside, not the main point, is just to say that moving from the Evangelical system (where the individual gets to be their own authority) to the Latter-day Saint system (where Prophets of God are authorities) is tricky. I’ve been in the church about 5 years and it’s still tricky for me sometimes. And I’ve walked with enough other people who have converted from Evangelicalism to see how it is hard for them too and long-term members don’t always see why. I hope this can help you see the struggle from their point of view and have patience as they learn.
Okay. Next week we’re going to talk about the idea that the Bible contains all truth – and anything else claiming to be revelation from God can’t possibly be such. That will be a fun one. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 5: Ceremonial Clothing and Garments with Lisa Ann Thomson
Jul 13, 2023
Lisa Ann Thomson joins for this episode to discuss the ceremonial clothing of the temple as well as garments. We cover topics such as what they are, why they are important, and some practical tips for wearing them.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Lisa Ann Thomson is a writer living in Salt Lake City, UT.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 6–9
Jul 10, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Holy Ghost
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the Holy Ghost. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I will remind you about the FAIR Conference August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. You can buy tickets and come in person, or you can stream online for free. Go to FAIRLatterdaySaints.org to sign up for streaming. Did you know that Don Bradly will be speaking too? Don has an amazing story. First off, he is a proper historian, and if you haven’t read his book on the Lost 116 pages you really should. And Don has been working with Latter-day Saint historical documents his entire career. But what I find most fascinating about him is that he left the church for a good while. On his way out he wrote a letter to his bishop that, in his words, was so severe that when he decided he needed to come back he feared that he would not be allowed based on that letter alone. He tells a touching story of how his bishop welcomes him back by saying something like: This is the Lord’s church and if you’re not allowed to repent here, where would you be allowed? So he rejoins the church and has done lots of amazing work since then including on the Joseph Smith Papers. At FAIR he will be giving a talk about evidence of Joseph Smith’s actual religious sincerity – contra what some critics say that he was a charlatan for money or power. Don has this really great way of explaining some of the truly confusing things that Joseph does in the context of his sincerity. I might be looking forward to Don’s talk more than I am my own.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about the Holy Ghost. Our text in Come Follow Me is in the early part of the book of Acts and there is a lot going on. As an aside, you know, we’re not covering the narrative of the story here in these episodes. We’re pulling out issues as they come along where there would be interesting inter-faith discussions. But there is so much going on in the story I would just encourage you to listen to some of the other Come Follow Me podcasts that cover that aspect much more in detail. All of the Scripture Central (used to be called Book of Mormon Central) podcasts do this well, and others too. Anyway, the things that are happening in this part of Acts are very much driven by the Holy Ghost. And that’s where we land today.
And we’re going to talk about 2 aspects of this. First, the Gifts of the Spirit, and second, the question of who has the Spirit and how do they listen to what is being said?
Gifts of the Spirit
And here we are going to branch out a bit from the broad Evangelical group we normally talk about. Under the umbrella of “Evangelicals,” there are a number of positions various groups take on the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. And there is a continuum – on one side are Evangelicals who really barely want to talk about the Spirit, all the way over to the other side that only really ever wants to talk about the Spirit. Evangelicals on the other side that do not like to talk about the Spirit are worried about one thing, and people who want to mostly talk about the Spirit are worried about another. And to be honest, most of the Evangelicals we’ve talked about in this series are on the side where the Spirit just isn’t talked about much. Those folks are worried that relying too much on the Spirit – and not the written scriptures – has a high potential to lead someone astray because of the subjectivity involved. People on the side that really only want to talk about the Spirit are worried that those on the other side have over-intellectualized faith in a way that has been boiled down to mere cognitive assent without any real power behind it. One of the ways Evangelicals talk about this is by talking about Speaking in Tongues, or glossolalia.
There are a lot of Evangelical churches that participate in speaking in tongues, some of the biggest ones are the Assemblies of God. They have 68 million members worldwide and trace their roots back to the Azuza Street revivals around 1910. The Vineyard Churches which have 2500 congregations around the world (they give statistics on congregations, not members.) And lots of smaller groups or independent churches that might have names with, “Holiness” or, “Apostolic” in them, plus lots of others.
And when we say speaking in tongues what we mean is that they will sometimes speak in an unknown language – meaning not any actual language you can study – but an unknown language. And then, usually, someone else in the congregation will give an interpretation of what those words meant. In doing this they are trying to listen for what God might be teaching them through supernatural means.
Now, in our Latter-day Saint church, most people think of “the gift of tongues” as meaning the gift of learning foreign languages proficiently by supernatural means. Speaking in an unknown language is called glossolalia. And speaking in a known language that you do not have proficiency in is called xenoglossia. These are not “gibberish” sounding languages but actual languages that missionaries might teach in. And we have lots of examples of this all throughout our history. But many Latter-day Saints seem surprised to learn that besides practicing xenoglossia – the supernatural learning of unknown languages – the early Saints also practiced glossolalia, the speaking of unknown languages. In fact, at a church conference in 1833 Joseph Smith opens the meeting with prayer and then speaks in tongues, glossolalia, followed by others who do as well. You can read about that incident at the website for the Joseph Smith papers in Documents Vol 2. John Witmer writes a letter that same year talking about how one of their meetings contained singing in tongues. An article on the church’s website LDS.org talks about Elizabeth Ann Whitney singing in tongues. Brigham Young said that speaking in tongues felt Electrifying. The Nauvoo Relief Society Min Book talks about them. Here is a quote from that book, “Councillor Cleveland stated that she many times felt in her heart, what she could not express it in our own language, and as the Prophet had given us liberty to improve the gifts of the gospel in our meetings, and feelings the power resting upon, desired to speak in the gift of tongues; which she did in a powerful manner.”
Now, don’t get the wrong idea and think it was some free-for-all where reason and good teaching could be substituted for speaking in tongues. We also get lots of statements like this one that is in the RS Min Book, but there are plenty of other similar ones spoken by Joseph Smith and others. But the Min Book quote is, “If any have a matter to reveal, let it be in your own tongue. Do not indulge too much in the gift of tongues, or the devil will take advantage of the innocent. You may speak in tongues for your comfort but I lay this down for a rule that if any thing is [p. [40]] is taught by the gift of tongues, it is not to be received for doctrine.” And a short time later Joseph teaches, “As to the gift of tongues, all we can say is, that in this place, we have received it as the ancients did: we wish you, however, to be careful lest in this you be deceived. … Satan will no doubt trouble you about the gift of tongues unless you are careful; you cannot watch him too closely, nor pray too much. May the Lord give you wisdom in all things.”
Around the turn of the century, turning to 1900, a lot of cultural things were happening in the church and in society. Values were shifting away from the supernatural and toward science and order. The Victorian era ends in 1900. This was in all of society, not just in our church. But people were interested in the emergence of a slick modern era (such as it was) and not what felt like ways from the past that might have been a bit embarrassing. By 1904 there is a letter in the Improvement Era recounting the former prominence of speaking in tongues in the LDS Church and lamenting the loss.
So as unusual as this kind of worship sounds to most Latter-day Saints today it was very much practices in the early days of our church and they considered it a very sacred and special thing.
I imagine that talking about that history with an Evangelical friend who practices these gifts of the Spirit or speaking in tongues would be just fascinating.
Okay, on to the other part I want to talk about here…
One of the questions I get from lifelong members a lot is: How is the experience of having the Holy Ghost now compared to before? Sometimes they are surprised to hear that I’ve been able to listen to the Spirit since childhood and have never felt deprived of it. I think there can be a cultural belief among some that people in our church are the only ones who have the Holy Ghost, which certainly is not true, and certainly not what our leaders have taught. But members sometimes think that – and I can understand why.
You might not be aware of this but just recently the Missionary department released a new version of Preach My Gospel. I was delighted to see this subject come up in one of the changes.
The Old version of Preach My Gospel says… “We receive the baptism of the Spirit through an ordinance called confirmation. This ordinance is performed by one or more priesthood holders who lay their hands upon our head. First they confirm us a member of the Church, and then they confer the gift of the Holy Ghost upon us. This is the same ordinance that is referenced in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon.”
And all of this is correct. None of this truth has changed. However, the new version of Preach my Gospel brings an additional layer of clarity. It says, “The Power of the Holy Ghost is the witness that comes to sincere seekers of truth before baptism comes through the power of the Holy Ghost. All people can receive a testimony of Jesus Christ and His restored gospel through the power of the Holy Ghost. The Gift of the Holy Ghost: The Prophet Joseph Smith said: ‘There is a difference between the Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Cornelius received the Holy Ghost before he was baptized, which was the convincing power of God unto him of the truth of the Gospel, but he could not receive the gift of the Holy Ghost until after he was baptized.'”
And this change brings a delightful clarity I think. The Holy Ghost is what makes anyone anywhere tune their heart toward God’s truth, even the tiniest bit. So of course he is active in people who have not yet made a profession of faith.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 3: Logic
Jul 06, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
If you’ve ever listened to an argument, you’ve probably heard someone angrily protest to the other “You’re not being logical!”, or something to that effect. When I heard the term “logic” previously, I usually thought of things like “facts” or “math,” or even more vague ideas like “things that make sense.” This is mostly true, but there’s a bit more to it than that – and that “bit more” is what we’re going to talk about today. Logic, at its core, is a methodology for creating and evaluating arguments (1). Of course, when I say “arguments” I don’t mean shouting matches like the one in the previous example, rather, I mean “a reason given for or against a matter under discussion” (2). We make these kinds of arguments daily: at work, at home, and even in church. You see, we as people run into problems, and have to make decisions all the time to survive, maintain relationships, and accomplish the tasks we set for ourselves. As critical thinkers, it’s important to understand what “logic” is, because logic is key in helping us convince other people of our ideas, evaluate the arguments of others, and can help us make those decisions based on the information we have obtained (like from the good sources we learned to evaluate in our last article). No matter who you are, logic can help you accomplish your goals, make informed decisions, and be the kind of people God wants us to be. That being said, there is a lot of information to cover. First, we’re going to be talking about the history and basics of logic, then we’re going to talk about how to make a logical argument, then finally we’ll talk about the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. Let’s begin.
Logic: Terms and Tomatoes
The roots of logic trace back to Greek philosophers, specifically Aristotle. Most of you watching have probably heard of him at some point in your educational lives, but suffice it to say that he lived through a LOT of significant Greek history. For example, he studied at Plato’s (another very important philosopher you’ve probably heard of) academy for 20 years (3) and also got to see Greece transition from being a Republic to being an empire under Alexander the Great (whom Aristotle personally tutored) (4). More important to our discussion today, though, is the fact that Aristotle is one of the forefathers of modern logic as we now understand it. As one website put it, “Aristotle’s logic, especially his theory of syllogism, has had an unparalleled influence on the history of Western thought.” (5) As I explain what Aristotelian logic is, you’ll probably begin to understand why; but first let’s take some time to build the foundations of logic by defining some terms.
Now, there are a lot of explanations of logic out there, and a lot of them have some pretty complicated figures and materials if you don’t look at them carefully. Here are some things that we can say though: Logic is based chiefly on propositions. Consider the following synopsis from British Philosopher A.C. Grayling:
“Aristotle took it that the fundamental unit of logical interest is the proposition, the ‘what is said’ by an utterance, this ‘what is said’ being either true or false.” (6)
Okay, that’s easy enough…Aristotle focused on what each claim was actually saying, and what the parts of a claim are. What are the parts of a claim? Well, that’s where tomatoes come in handy. I’m personally not super fond of tomatoes in their raw form, but it’s actually pretty easy to describe tomatoes, especially ones like this:
Ignoring the stems and seeds, if I were to say “The tomato is red,” that would be a proposition. A proposition can be a singular sentence, or expressed in multiple sentences. For example, if I were to say “The tomato is red” and “The redness quality is shown by the tomato,” those two sentences would share the same proposition: in other words, they make the same claim. I borrow this description from Grayling’s book again, where he makes the same point using “white” and “snowflakes.” (6) Easy, right?
Next, we need to talk about the subject phrase and predicate/verb phrase (7). The subject is the chief noun that’s being discussed or described by the predicate. In our statement “the tomato is red,” the subject phrase would be “the tomato,” and the predicate phrase would be “is red.” As you can see, the subject is described by the predicate phrase. Try playing around with descriptions of things in your head, and identify the subjects and predicates of each proposition or statement you make.
Next, we have universal/particular propositions (8), and affirmative/negative propositions (9). This part is a little more self-explanatory: universal/specific propositions have qualifiers that describe the subject, and affirmative/negative propositions have qualifiers found in the predicate. Let’s explore what that looks like for a moment. A universal proposition is one that explains that all of the subjects have a specific predicate. For our tomato example, it would be like saying “all tomatoes are red,” not just “some tomatoes are red.” Particular propositions are the opposite – they just refer to specific subjects, very much like our example of “the/this tomato is red.” Not all the tomatoes are red…just this one. Affirmative and negative propositions describe subjects as having (or not having) specific characteristics or qualities. “All tomatoes are red” would be a universal affirmative proposition, seeing as it affirms that all of the subject does have a specific description. The proposition “all tomatoes are not red” would be a universal negative proposition, as it’s negating the idea that the subject has the predicate’s description. Consider this example here about birds (10):
In this chart talking about propositions about birds, “A” describes a universal affirmative proposition, “E” is a universal negative proposition, “I” describes a particular affirmative proposition, and “O” describes a particular negative proposition. You can do a decent amount with propositions like this, but there are a few more things we need to go over as we build our logical foundation.
We’ve already touched on “quantity” (universal/particular) and “quality” (affirmative/negative) classifications, but there are a few more that might be useful to discuss before we learn how to build an argument. Grayling states that Aristotle had several categories that he classified things into when he was looking at propositions (6).
Species: a definition of the essence of a thing. It’s what makes something that something. For our tomato example, it would be “what makes a tomato a tomato.”
Genus: the part of something that’s not unique to some essence, but is shared by others. “A tomato” would be the species, “fruit” would be its genus. Tomatoes are not the only fruit, but they fall in the category of fruit in general.
Difference: what distinguishes one species from another. For example, Tomatoes don’t usually go in fruit salads. Tomatoes are also noticeably nastier than other fruit.
Properties: the characteristics that make up a specific something. Tomatoes have skin on the outside, and are wet, mushy, and have seeds on the inside.
Accident: Basically, a property something has right now, but doesn’t always have. For instance, “The tomato is red, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.”
To wrap this section up, there are a few things to keep in mind as we continue our discussion about logic and arguments.
First, we need to remember that each proposition/idea can be broken down into subject and predicate phrases, where the subject is the essence/thing, and the predicate is the description of the essence/thing.
Second, we keep in mind that we need to differentiate the number of things the predicate describes (universal vs particular), and also the qualities of the things we’re talking about (affirmative vs negative).
Next, we need to know what category of the subject we’re talking about, namely, whether we’re talking about the species, genus, differences, properties, or accidents of something.
With this baseline information, we’re now ready to explore the basics of making an argument.
Syllogism: The Art of Making an Argument
We’re going to be shifting to the topic of syllogisms. Propositions when used as a part of an argument (not just a mere description), are referred to as “premises,’, and syllogisms are defined as “the simplest sequence of logical premises and conclusions, devised by Aristotle.” (11) In other words, we can use propositions to make arguments and arrive at a conclusion. Consider this example of a syllogism (12).
P1. All A is B
P2. All C is A
Conclusion: All C is B.
We can go back to our tomato example here, too. Let’s just pretend that “A” is “tomatoes”, “B” is “fruit”, and “C” is “cherry tomatoes”. Let’s apply that to our syllogism.
P1. All tomatoes are fruit
P2. All cherry tomatoes are tomatoes
Conclusion: All cherry tomatoes are fruit
Each syllogism has the same kind of makeup. For example, syllogisms always have a collection of premises that are understood and agreed upon as true. In this example, we have two premises, but you can have any number of propositions here if you’d like. Conclusions are also important for every argument based on syllogism, because if we don’t have a conclusion, then all we’re doing is making observations. That’s not a bad thing, mind you: we need to be willing to gain knowledge. However, if we want to make decisions, we need to be able to learn – or, in other words, arrive at conclusions. Just don’t forget to make sure that your premises actually support your conclusion (we’ll talk about Logical Fallacies another day).
In the introduction, I made a syllogistic argument, in a way. It kind of looked like this:
P1. We run into problems
P2. Logic helps solve some problems
Conclusion: We may use logic to help solve some problems
These are super basic examples, but I’m sure you can see how they can be expanded to make more complex arguments. Consider practicing looking at syllogisms in work, at church, or even in just the daily mundane statements of life. These are literally the building blocks of learning and making decisions on a daily basis.
Let’s use an example from church history. In the original 1830 edition of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith is labeled as being the “Author and proprietor of the Book of Mormon.” Some critics have asserted that this is actually Joseph Smith admitting to having “authored” The Book of Mormon himself. However, not only does that contradict what Joseph Smith wrote about in the next few pages, but it also ignores the important context of New York publishing laws at the time (13). The argument against the idea that Joseph was claiming to the the “author” in the sense that he made up The Book of Mormon can be summarized in the following syllogism:
P1. Joseph needed to publish The Book of Mormon
P2. To publish The Book of Mormon, he needed to secure a copyright, which involved him labeling himself as “Author and Proprietor” according to New York laws at the time
P3. Translators for the 1824 KJV Bible, claimed to be “authors” of their work for copyright purposes (14)
Conclusion: Joseph labeled himself as the “Author and Proprietor” to publish, and secure copyright for, The Book of Mormon while clarifying throughout his life that he was merely a translator for the texts.
Now, I will caveat this discussion with a warning similar to the one I made in the last article. With people, you can never really be sure what to expect, so it’s generally not a good idea to use universal arguments when dealing with people or people-based subjects…like history or religion. If we believe in the concept of agency, we need to believe in the idea that people may choose to act differently than they previously have. We can observe trends in behavior, but stereotyping and generalizing individuals or groups too much may lead to unnecessary conflict, limit your ability to work with others, and even sometimes lead you to make a wrong conclusion about how someone will act or react to a situation. Critical thinkers should be willing to re-evaluate their arguments and should avoid hasty generalizations whenever possible.
Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning
This actually transitions rather well into the next portion of the discussion. What we’ve discussed so far constitutes what most people refer to as “deductive reasoning,” or a system of proofs where the “premises logically entail its conclusion.” (15) There is one other type of reasoning we should discuss, namely inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning works by making observations, and coming up with conclusions based on grouping together certain things/people. Here’s an example:
P1. Most members of the church are nice P2. Zach is a member of the church Conclusion: Therefore, Zach is nice
There’s a bit of a difference here in this argument. With deductive reasoning, if we assume that both P1 and P2 are true, then P3 MUST be true, while with inductive reasoning, P3 is only “likely” true (15). You would have to get to know me personally and make observations to confirm that for yourself. This is why, in most debates and discussions, deductive reasoning is usually stronger than inductive reasoning (more on that in a moment). Even so, in terms of definitions, inductive reasoning is best understood as observing patterns in specific groups and making a prediction based on those patterns.
For those of you who have studied statistics, this kind of thinking should be familiar to you. Observational studies are very closely related to inductive reasoning. For example, consider the following phrase:
“Every raven in a random sample of 3200 ravens is black. This strongly supports the following conclusion: All ravens are black.” (16)
Like with traditional statistics, inductive reasoning can only give you a degree of confidence as to what to expect from individuals who are part of a group. Like I was saying before, even if you’re looking at 1,001 people, and you see a thousand people do the same thing, that makes no guarantee that the last remaining person in that group will do what everyone else does. This is actually really important to us as critical thinkers because we will run into inductive reasoning very often, especially in the realm of politics, personality, and religion (things LDS people have to deal with often). People are complicated, so naturally, those with more subjective ideas will have more inductive reasoning involved, even if inductive reasoning is considered to be “weaker” when compared to deductive reasoning. Even so, there is a use for inductive reasoning. Consider the following:
“In an informal, or inductive, argument, the conclusion may be false even if the premises are true. In other words, whether an inductive argument is good depends on something more than the form of the argument. Therefore, all inductive arguments are invalid, but this does not mean they are bad arguments. Even if an argument is invalid, its premises can increase the probability that its conclusion is true. So, the form of inductive arguments is evaluated in terms of the strength the premises confer on the conclusion, and stronger inductive arguments are preferred to weaker ones” (17)
As we can see, using both inductive and deductive reasoning may help increase the strength of your arguments. As critical thinkers, we should make decisions based on the best evidence available, look at things from different perspectives, and use coherent arguments. As we do so, we’ll be able to make more informed decisions and analyze what other people say in a more effective manner, ultimately progressing on our path toward fulfilling our divine destiny.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we’ve covered a lot of material today – and there’s still so much more that can be said about logic, and the things we can do with it. I recommend that you review this article a few times and take some additional time to study the topics presented in this essay: understanding some of the foundations behind propositions, building your own deductive arguments, and supporting your claims with inductive reasoning. Logic can help you make decisions and strengthen your communication and problem-solving skills. I’ll end with one note of caution though, bringing us back to the beginning of the article. I started by giving an example of a couple of people angrily shouting at each other. While this is definitely a form of argument, I strongly advise against it. As Latter-day Saints, we have an obligation to speak truth, but we also have an obligation to be peacemakers (18), and to avoid contending with anger (19). How we say things can be just as important as what we actually say (20). It’s a difficult line to walk, but as proponents of faith in Jesus Christ, it is our solemn duty to teach and do as He did.
Smith, Miriam A., and John W. Welch. “Joseph Smith: “Author and Proprietor”.” In Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch, 154-157. Provo, UT/Salt Lake City: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies/Deseret Book, 1992.
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 1–5
Jul 03, 2023
Evangelical Questions: What IS an Apostle anyway?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about apostles. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I will remind you about the FAIR conference August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. You can buy tickets and come in person, or you can stream online for free. Go to FAIRLatterdaySaints.org to sign up for streaming. I am speaking on Friday, so you can come hang out with me. But I also want to tell you about a new podcast FAIR has going called, “By Study and Faith.” It’s hosted by an up-and-coming young scholar named Zachary Wright. I met Zach when he was still a missionary and have been impressed with how well he gets what the Disciple-Scholar model is all about. The basic idea of which is that your head and your heart don’t have to be in competition. The scholar makes the disciple better – and the disciple makes the scholar better. He has a few episodes out already and the one on how to evaluate evidences is very good. There are so many areas of evidences that can be explored – this is what apologetics is all about – but you have to have a good understanding of how to evaluate sources or you get off-track pretty easily. And Zach’s video is a great introduction to that topic. So go give him a listen.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about Apostles. What actually is an Apostle? What makes someone an Apostle? Why do Evangelicals have such a different way of understanding this topic? The Come Follow Me readings are working our way through the New Testament and we’ve arrived at Acts – or Acts of the Apostles. Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals would easily agree that the Apostles mention in the New Testament are true messengers. The word “Apostle” literally means, “messenger” or “one who is sent.” The question becomes, “Who is a true messenger?” In our view, a true messenger is one who helps the people know what to do to follow God, to stay true to the instruction they’ve already been given. And a false messenger is one who leads the people astray, burdens them, exploits them.
Why wasn’t the apostleship passed down?
Often Latter-day Saints wonder with something like, “Maybe the Apostles forgot to pass it down?” Or, “Maybe they didn’t know they were supposed to?” As if the Apostles all died without ever trying. So this is not the common understanding for Latter-day Saints, but Peter actually does pass on his authority. He ordains Linus to follow in his place. Linus ordains Anacletus who ordains Clement 1. We use the word “Pope” to describe this role today, but what they’re doing is handing down authority to act in God’s name. My thinking is that they did try to pass it down. But there is a difference between passing it down and having that priesthood honored and respected. I know men in the church, and you probably do too, who appear to be “priesthood holders in name only.” They’ve been ordained to the priesthood – but they do not bear it in any recognizable way. If you follow the story of what happens to the generations that follow after Peter, you can see how this plays out – fast-forward to the year 950 and we get Pope John the 12th. He’s ordained as Pope at age 18 and things pretty much play out how you’d expect they would if a hormonal teenage boy was in charge of the church.
Evangelicals don’t disagree with this storyline. They would call Pope John the 12th a bad example of priesthood too.
Evangelical View
The Evangelicals certainly can talk about how they see the original apostles as being the only ones, and they have verses they use to explain that. But more likely their view can be summed up by saying that Apostles are no longer needed because we have the Bible and the Spirit to listen to.
If you’ve listened to very many of these episodes that won’t feel surprising or non-sequitur to you. Evangelicals are very focused on the importance of the Bible and are very confident in their ability to interpret it correctly. It’s a very anti-Catholic stand of, “I can interpret this on my own and don’t need an authority to help me do so.” There’s a theological level understanding (their biblical evidence that no new apostles are needed) but there is also a cultural level understanding that says each person is charged with being their own Apostle, as it were. They are the ones who must decide what is true, how to interpret it, and how to apply it. The idea of, “true messengers,” isn’t really a category for them. Evangelical leaders, pastors, and others are only “true’ to the degree that the individual agrees with them. It’s probably easy for Latter-day Saints to see all the ways in which this can go wrong, but if we’re looking for the best version of Evangelicals on this they’re doing it because they’re very worried that someone might corrupt what has been handed down. So they only can trust themselves, and not necessarily what they’re taught.
This is really well illustrated in the story of Rob Bell.
Bell was an Evangelical pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He started a church there in 1999 with the idea that other Evangelical churches had become focused on the wrong things and church should be stripped down to its basic elements: Worship and teaching. 5 years later they have 6,000 members and people around the world were downloading Rob’s sermons – at the height up to 50,000 downloads a week. Bell is very clearly a talented teacher (he was actually an adjunct at my Divinity School and I took homiletics from him, which was a wild class.) He writes a book, makes a video series with a huge following, goes on a speaking tour. He’s basically one of the hottest things in the Evangelical world at that moment in time. He’s 30 years old and struggling in all the ways that you might imagine a 30-year-old would struggle who has been shot to that kind of fame. But he’s created this huge empire that now employs hundreds of people and thousands of people are relying on him for spiritual guidance. And he’s wildly successful at it. People love him.
But in 2011 he writes a book that pushes against the traditional beliefs of Evangelicals that those who have not made an profession of faith in this life will be tortured in Hell for eternity. Honestly, the book doesn’t even push that hard. In our church we have a full-blown theology about how that isn’t true, and in Bell’s book he just gives some pushback to it. But people turn on him in an instant. The book was released in March of 2011 and by November that year he was forced out. He’s the leader (and founder) of this huge church, but the people he’s leading don’t agree with his new book (I would actually say he gets a lot of things right in that book) and he’s no longer considered a worthy teacher. This is the epitome of why Evangelicals don’t accept Apostles. Evangelicals generally love, and sometimes worship, their leaders – until that leader says something they don’t like or don’t agree with and then they’re canceled as soon as possible. The individual Evangelical is the one who decides what is true, and which new ideas are worthy of being considered. If you remember many episodes back we talked about their fierce independent streak. This is how that streak comes out when we’re talking about Apostles.
So, how do you talk with your Evangelical friends or family about this in any helpful kind of way? Their worry is that by following an Apostle we Latter-day Saints are giving up our autonomy. Unfortunately, there are some portrayals in the media that feed into this -the idea that Latter-day Saints are only allowed to think or read certain things and can never have questions, or never take our time to come to a testimony of certain things. In the realm of church culture, not theology, Evangelicals don’t have a very well-developed idea about, “developing a testimony” of something benign true – at least its not nearly as well-developed culturally as it is for Latter-day Saints. Evangelicals are never going to use the phrase, “I know my church is true.” That’s just not in their culture – it would require them to give up the independent spirit of, “I am the final authority.” A conversation about why you have a testimony of certain things would probably really resonate with them.
Okay, shorter episode today – but it makes up for all the other times when I’ve kept you long after class should have been over! Come back next week and we’re talking about the Holy Ghost. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21
Jun 26, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Baptism for the Dead
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about baptism for the dead. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
I will remind you about the FAIR Conference August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. You can buy tickets and come in person, or you can stream online for free. Go to FAIRLatterdaySaints.org to sign up for streaming. I am speaking on Friday – get this – in between Keith Erekson (Director of Historical Research for the church) and Brant Gardner who has written more books on church history than a normal person will read in their lifetime. So I’m feeling pretty lucky.
Today we’re going to talk more about baptism. We will jump off of Matthew 28:19:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
We covered baptism in a couple of the older episodes of this show in terms of authority to baptize. But today we’re going to talk about the Latter-day Saint practice of baptism for the dead.
First, I will tell you my understanding of the practice before I knew much about the church. I’m sure you’ve heard people say this before, but feel free to snicker anyway. I had heard of the practice as a child, and I don’t know if this was told to me, or if I interred it on my own, but my understanding was that this meant an actual dead body was being dunked under the water. I tried to work out how this might happen for people who had been long dead becaue it didn’t seem likely that they were digging up dead bodies and the best I could do was liken it to the Catholic practice of “relics.” In casual vocabulary we use the word “relic” to mean any old object from another era, but the technical religious definition of it is that it’s a bone, or bone fragment, from someone who was considered a Saint. For example, you can go to many of the Cathedrals in Eurpose and see their relics on display – and they’re usually small shadow-boxes with a very small bone inside. So, I figured maybe somehow “baptism for the dead” was baptizing relics. I don’t know, that’s the best I could come up with. And as crazy as this explanation sounds to Latter-day Saint ears you have to understand that I was a very religiously curious child and teenager, and as soon as I was an adult I was reading every theology book I could get access to – so it’s not like I was uninterested in figuring out how things worked. And if I – a weird religious kid who grew up into a weird religious adult – couldn’t quite work it out, then you can be sure other people have odd understandings of this practice too. Maybe theirs go odd in a different direction – mind went odd in a very concrete way – but I’ve met very few non-LDS people who can clearly articulate what the point of baptism for the dead is. All that to say, we should give our Evangelical friends a break on this one when they don’t understand it very well.
So we’re going to look at the main Evangelicals (and others) have understood, or misunderstood, what is happening in baptism for the dead as a way of helping you see a better path for this conversation.
Universalism
One of the ways they misunderstand this is that they think we are saying: God has no criteria for salvation. If everyone – even dead people who had never trusted in Christ – can be saved, isn’t this Universalism? They would cite something like John 3:5, “except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The problem the Evangeliclas rightly point out here is that traditionally God is either Holy and has requirements to be in his presence, or he is merciful and allows everyone to be saved without any requirements, and there isn’t much in between. This was a real puzzle that needs to be solved. Either God is a monster who damns people to hell even if they never had an actual chance to accept him – or he has a path for everyone to meet the requirements to be in his presence. Before Joseph Smith puts all of this together no one had figured out a way for God to be both holy AND mercifully fair to people who had not accepted him.
So here is some timeline of how God reveals this to Joesph a tiny bit at a time. In 1836 he has his vision where he sees his brother Alvin in the Celestial Kingdom despite never having been baptized (this is D&C 137) – and in 1840 he preaches for the first time that baptism for the dead is a possibility. But we have to go all the way back to 1831 to see where this started.
In 1832 Joseph gets the vision that we now call D&C 76 where he was taught that there are different pasts of Heaven appropriate to the faithfulness of different people. It’s not a binary system of either Heaven or Hell and he starts to understand the requirements for these different areas. I’ll quote from the very best article on this topic, Ryan Tobler’s, “Saviors on Mount Zion,” in the 2013 Journal of Mormon History. He says, “Seemingly mindful of how messy life on earth could be, the revelation confirmed sentiments previously held by Joseph Smith, that God would expect no more than humankind could give. He had written to his uncle in 1833 that “men will be held accountable for the things which they have and not for the things they have not, and this revelation seemed to bear that doctrine out. Here was a God who looked on the heart and acknowledged extenuating circumstances. A full, celestial salvation was available to everyone with a good heart and righteous desires. God would hold nothing back from those who died unenlightened.” In other words, everyone would be given the chance to understand Jesus’ sacrifice, give their lives to God, and follow his commands – even if they were already dead.
But the question is still left – isn’t this Universalism? Are there no requirements for entrance into Heaven whatsoever and all humans who have ever lived go there? Up until this point in history the revelation that Joseph had received hinted at the idea that there was a way through this problem, but it had not been spelled out yet. Joseph was having the principles laid out for him, but he had not yet been given a revelation that put them all together – that doesn’t come until Joseph first teaches about it in 1840. But even before that we start to get some hints.
Again from the same article by Tobler we get, “In an editorial Q&A in the Elders’ Journal, a Church-owned newspaper, he (Joseph) responded to a question about the fate of those who had died without embracing Mormonism. “If Mormonism be true,” asked the inquiry, “what of all those who died without baptism?” The editorial offered a new and suggestive response. “All those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the Gospel, and being administered unto by an inspired man in the flesh,” it said, “must have it hereafter, before they can be finally judged.” It was a reply that opened another dimension of possibilities, since it appeared to extend the scope of human action beyond the grave. If not only gospel instruction, but the “administration” of saving ordinances were somehow available in the afterlife, the shape of God’s designs for saving the dead changed substantially.
So, Latter-day Saints, I know that doesn’t sound shocking to your ears. You’re probably wondering why I’m spelling out what you already know so well….but this is the first time in history where there is a possibility that God can be BOTH holy and fair. It avoids the problem of Universalism which says there are no requirements whatsoever – all are saved without ever doing or accepting anything, and a strict reformed teaching that says: If you don’t have the opportunity to accept Christ before you die, you are out of luck forever because God has strict requirements. The revelations given to Joseph about baptism for the dead solve that problem.
Though Evangelicals are still saying, Wait, not so fast. And the problem they raise here is about agency.
Agency
Their worry – and you can understand it – is that if a member of the church is baptized on behalf of a deceased relative today isn’t that taking away the agency of that person? If you get baptized for them today they’re being allowed to bypass the requirements for agreeing to this whole process. But of course we believe that the dead still have a choice. They can still choose to accept the work done for them – and to what degree they will accept it. Evangelicals will often wonder, “Well, who wouldn’t accept it? If you stand someone on the cliff looking down into Hell, who isn’t going to accept an offer of salvation?” But that’s a very Protestant way of thinking about Heaven. Without Josephs’s 1832 revelation about the various parts of Heaven for the people who accept (and agree to live by) various covenants then none of the work for deceased relatives makes sense – the Evangelicals would be right, anyone would choose Heaven if Hell were placed right in front of them. Instead, the Latter-day Saint conceptualization of this is that each person gets to choose exactly what covenants they want to live by. And yes, living by covenants comes with blessings that are also given, but those who choose to live without the restrictive parts of covenants are not dangled over Hell asking if they want to be saved. They’re being asked: How close to you want to live to God, knowing that there are requirements for holiness placed upon those who want to live closer to him.
They don’t believe in baptism for the dead because they believe the dead who did not place their trust in Christ (even if they had never heard of Christ) go directly to Hell with no chance of ever stopping the eternal torment. So right from the get-go they have a very different version of what is happening. One of the thoughts that kept coming to me when I was taking lessons to join our church was: I never thought I had a choice of what to believe as far as eternity goes. But the idea that God punishes people for eternity, even when they had never heard of him, is cruel and offensive. If I get a choice about what to believe I want to believe the thing that most seems like it is consistent with the character of God – that everyone will get a fair chance.
How our different views on when holiness matters come into play
Now, Evangelicals do something interesting right here. They make a very similar argument that we make about temples. Let me explain. We’re both working with the same ingredients, as it were, but we’re baking very different cakes. Those ingredients are: 1) The problem of sin preventing us from being close to God 2) God’s requirement of holiness 3) The solution of Jesus Christ 4) The need for a physical act to represent a spiritual act – going under the water as death, rising again as Christ rose again. We both agree on the ingredients at play here. But we put them in different order, and it matters.
Evangelicals say 1) the problem of sin 3) the solution of Jesus Christ 4) baptism as symbol of resurrection 2) God requires holiness to get into Heaven – and it is Jesus who provides this holiness ultimately.
Latter-day Saints would agree about this in terms of baptism for living people. But we believe that salvation is available to all, even if they’re dead. So for proxy baptisms, we place things in a different order. 1) the problem of sin 2) the requirement of holiness 3) the solution of Jesus 4) the need for a physical act. It’s that second ingredient “the requirement of holiness” that everything hinges on. Evangelicals view the requirement of holiness as God requiring only holy things in his presence – and what they mean by that is that the only ones allowed into Heaven will be the ones who are holy (because of Christ.) But when we talk about proxy baptisms there is a sense that we are partnering with God to accomplish work for people who can not accomplish it for themselves because they no longer have a physical body with which to accomplish it. Standing in as a proxy requires holiness on our part because it is as if we are standing before God on behalf of this person. Of course, our holiness is Christ’s holiness – it’s not some holiness we pull off on our own. But because we are going to get our own physical bodies involved, holiness is required. I understand why Evangelicals get upset that we want privacy in our temple worship, but the part they’re missing is that this is a, “holiness unto the Lord” issue that we actually agree on – they just apply that standard to holiness after death, and we apply it to helping in the salvation of people who are already dead. We say that temples are, “a place where heaven touches the earth, a place where marvelous blessings are bestowed, and a place where we can feel closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as we strive to become more like Them.”
No one, not Evangelicals and not Latter-day Saints, are saying that holiness doesn’t matter. We would all say that it does. But they would say – in a sense – that it doesn’t matter until they themselves are dead and will be judged. And at that moment it is required. And we would say that if we want to help our dead loved ones go into the presence of the Lord that our holiness is required now.
Well, that is it for today. Next week we’re talking about, “What makes someone an apostle?” and I think you’ll be fascinated by it. I will see you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19
Jun 19, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Views on Atonement
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Atonement Theories. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
And this video might be slightly different than some of our other ones where I’m doing a bit more compare and contrast, in this video what I really want to do is help you, Latter-day Saint, to understand what your Evangelical friends are taught about the Atonement.
I will remind you about the FAIR conference August 2-4 in Provo, Utah. You can buy tickets and come in person, or you can stream online for free. Go to FAIRlatterdaysaints.org to sign up for streaming. One of the presentations you will not want to miss is Jenny Reeder talking about the Eliza R. Snow project. I am a huge fan of Jenny’s. She is a PhD historian in the Church History Department. I was at a history conference last weekend where she spoke a few times and she was fantastic. She is a historian’s historian. I am very much looking forward to what she has to say about one of my favorite figures in church history, Eliza Roxy Snow.
We are still in the Gospels and have arrived at the portion dealing with the specifics of the crucifixion. It’s impossible to point to a single verse that summarizes the atonement – and as you will see, that is part of how we arrive at this episode. We’ll start with some history.
100 A.D. At this point it’s been about 60ish years since Jesus’ death and resurrection and he has not returned. Most of the early believers thought he would return in their lifetimes, and he didn’t. There had even been a bit of a sense of, “We don’t need to worry about all the details, or how to pass this stuff down the generations, Jesus is going to come back and it will all be fine.” But that was not Jesus’ plan, so they’re sort of scrambling to figure out how to form a coherent theology out of what is left. Jesus’ apostles are dead by now. Sometimes Latter-day Saints are curious about WHY the truths of Christ were not properly passed down – and this is one of the biggest reasons, in my opinion – they all thought Jesus was coming right back. So now they’re having to think about how to make sense of the story of Jesus in a different way than they were previously doing.
That, “how to make sense of the story of Jesus,” is where the idea of atonement theory comes in. Atonement is about the meaning of Jesus’ death/resurrection as well as the effect it has for humans. Evangelicals – or every more widely Protestants and Catholics – are not saying that they have a theory about Jesus’ atonement as in, “I don’t have proof, just a theory.” They’re using that phrase to describe the various ways of explaining what is happening in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The first guy who is writing very much about this is Justin Martyr, but a lot of what he wrote has been lost so we pick up most of what we know about his theory from the next guy in line, Irenaeus. He was born in Turkey but is later sent to France as a Bishop. His tomb existed in France until about the 1500’s when it was destroyed by the Huguenots (French Protestants.) Anyway, Irenaeus popularizes Justin Martyr’s eary attempt at understanding the Atonement in what is now called the recapitulation view of the atonement. In this view, Christ is seen as the new Adam who succeeds where Adam failed. Christ undoes the wrong that Adam did and, because of his union with humanity, leads humankind on to eternal life (including moral perfection).
Latter-day Saint friends you will notice two things here….1) This view hinges on the idea that what Adam did in the Garden threw humanity off course. William Barclay says about this theory, “Through man’s disobedience the process of the evolution of the human race went wrong, and the course of its wrongness could neither be halted nor reversed by any human means. But in Jesus Christ the whole course of human evolution was perfectly carried out and realised in obedience to the purpose of God.” So you can see here, there is no sense of a “fortunate fall.” There is a sense that God understood a Savior would need to be provided, but that’s as far as they can go. The other thing you will notice here is 2) the phrase, “moral perfection.” During this time there was still a belief that becoming like God actually meant becoming like God. For Irenaeus, the ultimate goal of Christ’s work of solidarity with humankind is to make humankind divine. He says that Jesus, ‘became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself’. [Irenaeus, Against Heresies Preface to Book 5] This idea is taken up by many other Church Fathers, such as Ss. Athanasius, Gregory, Augustine, and Maximus the Confessor. This Eastern Orthodox theological development out of the recapitulation view of the atonement is called theosis (“deification”), and they still hold that as a belief. But all other Christian groups (Protestants and Catholics and others) have lost that plain and precious truth. It’s us and the Eastern Orthodox here. So, that’s what the recapitulation theory is – “As man is God once was, as God is man may be.” But that theory mostly gets lost and the next one to take it’s place is called the Ransom theory.
Ransom theory replaces the recapitulation theory around the year 400. Robin Collins explains it this way, “Essentially, this theory claimed that Adam and Eve sold humanity over to the Devil at the time of the Fall; hence, it required that God pay the Devil a ransom to free us from the Devil’s clutches. God, however, tricked the Devil into accepting Christ’s death as a ransom, for the Devil did not realize that Christ could not be held in the bonds of death. Once the Devil accepted Christ’s death as a ransom, this theory concluded, justice was satisfied and God was able to free us from Satan’s grip.”
Latter-day Saint friends, you will recognize less and less of what you know to be true in these theories as we go along. But this theory does make a very charming children’s story. If you remember in the Narnia books…why does Aslan have to die? Because the Queen reminds him of the “deep magic” and that magic is, in fact, the atonement theory being worked out in Narnia – which is that Aslan’s death must be a ransom to satisfy that deep magic. This theory is the prevailing theory all the way up until the early middle ages – which is not surprising that CS Lewis chose to use it in his books, he was a scholar of the middle ages. Lewis later says that he prefers this theory because it allows us to think of ourselves as participating in Christ’s death and not something that happens without us being involved. But around 1100 another theory starts to gain popularity, the Satisfaction Theory.
This theory uses the metaphor of the relationship between a Feudal Lord and his people. The people live on land belonging to the Lord and are expected to produce some of their crops in exchange for living there. If the people do something wrong that harms the land, they must pay for the damages. In this theory Christ is punished instead of us. So in Ransom theory, Christ is suffering to overcome death itself. But in Satisfaction Theory he is suffering that honor or possession has been taken away, and must be paid back. The debt must be satisfied. The peasants must pay back the Feudal Lord for the damage they did to his property. But they are peasants and can’t afford to pay for the damage they caused, so Christ pays the debt for them and the Feudal Lord is satisfied.
There is also a rival theory during this time called the Moral Influence Theory of Atonement which says that God was trying to influence humanity by showing a great act of love in sending Jesus. That theory doesnt last long. It morphs into what is called the Moral Exemplar Theory which means that Jesus provided a good example for us in obeying his Father even to death and that we should do likewise.
Neither of those last very long and 500 years later they have morphed into what is now called Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
Penal Substitutionary Atonement removes the Feudal Lord metaphor and replaces it with a courtroom metaphor. “Penal” like “penal code” means that a law has been broken. They’re no longer thinking of “property damage” as much as they are “rule-keeping.” A law has been broken and the criminal must be punished. The judge in this scenario is Heavenly Father and he is angry at his rules being broken, so someone must be punished. Christ steps in and takes the punishment for us because we could not bear it on our own. Still today this is the Atonement theory most Christians hold. But there are others.
By the 18th Century there is a popular theory called the Government Theory of Atonement which basically says that God wants needs to maintain Divine Justice and he does through through a government system. We’re in the 1700’s and obviously there is a lot of thinking about what government is during this time and so this theory picks up that metaphor to say, “The atonement is really about God running a good government.”
We also get the Christus Victor theory which is a modernization of the Ransom Theory. In this theory, Jesus is battling powers and comes out the winner. There are also a whole variety of newer theories…There is a Feminist Atonement Theory, an Accident theory, many more.
One of the reasons I wanted to go through all of these and spell them out to you is so that you can see how the further away from the time of Christ we get, the more that has been lost, the more the theories change and sometimes even get weird. Saying that plain and precious truths were lost is no joke. Some of these theories see themselves as offering salvation to anyone – some see it as limited atonement that is only for some.
One thing you might notice in most of these theories is that God is mad or offended and has to be appeased. And I will compare that to what we believe. In our view, we existed with God before we were born. He sends us to Earth to learn and grow but knows that will come with making some terrible mistakes, including some deliberate decisions to disobey him. Those things would pile up and we would never be able to return to God. So he sets out a plan from the beginning that Jesus Christ will offer forgiveness and a lifetime of opportunity to repent and get back on track so that we can return to the presence of God. Our ability to repent and come back to God is only possible because of Jesus’ role as Savior. We live a life practicing repentance so that we may return to him. “As man is God once was, as God is man may be.”
Thank you for joining me for all of this. I hope it gives you insight not only into what other people are thinking about the atonement, but so that you can better understand our own beliefs about the atonement. Join me next time – we have one more week in the Gospels and then we move to Acts and that will be fun. See you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 2: Evaluating Sources
Jun 19, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Introduction
In the last article in this series, we discussed some elementary ideas behind critical thinking. We showed how critical thinking skills like asking questions and evaluating worldviews may help deal with controversial topics behind LDS theology and history. Now, those skills are essential for approaching a controversial topic. Even so, we still have a long way to go to improve our critical thinking skills and achieve our goal to learn “by study and by faith.” That prompts some questions though: What should we be asking questions about? What worldviews can we practice identifying? The short answer to these questions is “You can use these skills on whatever you want,” but to do that, we need to first go over how to evaluate which sources are good and which ones are not. We’ll be focusing on that topic today. Specifically, I’ll be going over what makes a good source in general, what makes a good source from a historical perspective, and then give an example of how I would deal with a historical source. Let’s get into it.
What is a good source?
You may consider this an odd question to ask, but it’s worth diving into for a few reasons. Last time, we talked about how critical thinkers are not just passive consumers of knowledge. Rather, they are active participants in society that are able to use the knowledge they obtain to accomplish their goals and solve problems. However, there’s a lot of information out there, and just as we would want to use the right tool for the right job (Hammer → Nail, Lawn mower → Lawn, etc.), we want to make sure that we use the right information for the right job. In other words, we need good sources to rely on in order to accomplish those tasks. So when I ask “What makes a good source?” What I’m really asking is “How can I determine what sources are going to help me solve a problem?” Let’s explore that topic.
First, a good source has to be in line with the truth, that is, a good source needs to be in line with what occurred in the past, and what’s occurring right now. Now, this presupposes that there is some kind of objective truth. For example, putting aside the efforts of the wonderful editors of this series I work with, I can’t have both written this whole article and not have written this whole article. One of those events had to have occurred: or in other words, one of those things is true, and the other is not. This also works for more theoretical concepts…as long as we both have the same conceptualization of numbers, 2+2 = 4, not 40. This is a presupposition that I’m bringing to the table: There is some kind of measurement that provides us a sufficient level of certainty about something that occurred in the past or does occur now, regardless of whether or not that method is known to us. That was a mouthful, but it roughly means that events happen, and they can be known with decent certainty and accuracy, even if we don’t know how to do that yet. Good sources are in line with reality.
Secondly, the sources need to be applicable to what we are trying to do. There is a lot of information out there for us to consume, but even if it was possible for us to learn all of it (in this life), it is unnecessary and impractical to do so. Some of our problems are far too important and urgent to forego some kind of discerning process when looking at information. For example, I could explain that the Sun is primarily composed of gasses, but that information in itself isn’t going to be very useful when you’re teaching your kids about basic addition. Does that mean that the Sun isn’t made of gasses? Or that I’m lying when I don’t tell people about what the Sun is made of? I would say “No” to that at face value, and I would hope that you would agree with me.
So there we have it, right? A good source is both true and relevant. Well, a critical thinker would rightfully answer “Yes and no.” As I’m about to demonstrate, picking good sources is a process that is much easier said than done. A lot of the time, and for different reasons, the sources that we read aren’t completely objective or aren’t fully comprehensive in their analyses. This is because we are emotional creatures, and all of our experiences are primarily subjective by nature. Consider the following:
“The subjective is characterized primarily by [the] perceiving mind. The objective is characterized primarily by physical extension in space and time. The simplest sort of discrepancy between subjective judgment and objective reality is well illustrated by John Locke’s example of holding one hand in ice water and the other hand in hot water for a few moments. When one places both hands into a bucket of tepid water, one experiences competing subjective experiences of one and the same objective reality. One hand feels it as cold, the other feels it as hot. Thus, one perceiving mind can hold side-by-side clearly differing impressions of a single object. From this experience, it seems to follow that two different perceiving minds could have clearly differing impressions of a single object. That is, two people could put their hands into the bucket of water, one describing it as cold, the other describing it as hot. Or, more plausibly, two people could step outside, one describing the weather as chilly, the other describing it as pleasant.” (1)
I like this explanation because it’s very realistic. Someone who has transferred their hand from ice water to lukewarm water is going to react (and report) differently than someone who just transferred their hand from hot water to lukewarm water. Neither of them is lying in their report, they just are reporting their experience, which is primarily subjective. In this manner, if the source is primarily human experience (which is the significant majority of both historical and theological discourse), then it cannot be purely objective, which makes our job as critical thinkers much more difficult. This, of course, isn’t talking about all the instances where a source can just be wrong, ambiguous, manipulated by bias, or otherwise difficult to deal with. Please don’t misunderstand me though, I’m not saying that we can’t trust anything or anyone, as this would in itself cause problems for our goals of problem-solving. All I’m saying is that there’s no “perfect way” to determine the validity and reliability of a source. In this sense, the trustworthiness of a source is somewhat subjective because we as people value different things, as we have to choose what to listen to and what to not (more on that later). Even so, each of these should be considered when qualifying what makes a “good source”.
The recommendations I’ll make in the upcoming sections about sources are useful and practical guidelines, but this process isn’t a perfect science. There is a bit of subjectivity here, and this is why I dedicated so much of the previous article to being willing to ask questions and challenge assumptions. Those skills come in handy here when it comes to deciding what sources to value and what sources to not. Sometimes, in this process of evaluating sources, we’re going to make mistakes. I urge the reader to make those mistakes early and be patient with themselves as they learn to evaluate sources in a better way.
To wrap up this section, there are a few things that go into what makes a good source or not. As critical thinkers, we should be looking for sources that are both true and useful for our purposes. Furthermore, we should be careful when dealing with sources by acknowledging the imperfections of the writer’s report, both in terms of their bias and potentially incorrect viewpoints, but also acknowledging that they’re imperfect by how they can’t be comprehensive and entirely objective in their analysis. We have to choose what to believe, taking into account the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of each source, and as critical thinkers, we need to choose the “good sources”, or if nothing else, find sources that most closely approximate what is true. How do we do that? Well, let’s examine some principles that might be helpful for looking at historical documents.
Good Historical Sources
Last time, we briefly discussed the historical perspective, and the goals that historians have while trying to work with what people say. To review, good historians strive to construct a cohesive, accurate narrative using records kept by the participants and observers of certain events. How do they do that? There are a lot of great resources out there provided by universities and historians that provide insights as to what criteria make up a “good source” and I’ll be sure to link them below. Some of the criteria we’ll go over here will be ensuring that we try to find sources that are primary, contemporary, have relatively little bias and that the claims that are there are corroborated by other accounts of the event.
A primary source comes from a first-hand witness of the event that occurred. Primary sources may include letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, or anything else that directly comes from someone who actually saw the event with their own eyes (2). These sources are to be differentiated from secondary sources, where an event told by a primary witness is re-explained by someone else who listened to or read what the original witness wrote (3). Now, primary sources have the advantage of having less filtered information, but can often be hefty and difficult to parse through. Many of them have also not been digitized yet and may take more effort to find than many secondary sources (4). Secondary sources often are easier to access and can be more direct than primary sources, but are considered to be less authoritative and authentic (5). In my experience, secondary sources struggle to maintain every detail present in the primary sources and are more susceptible to manipulation than primary sources as a result. It’s important that you make sure that the secondary sources that you use are well-informed and relatively unbiased (6). As you can imagine, there’s a bit of subjectivity here, but generally speaking, primary sources are far more reliable, and provide the most accurate information compared to their non-primary counterparts.
However, critical thinkers can’t stop there when evaluating sources, seeing as the timeliness and contemporaneousness of a source are also important factors that help determine whether a source is good or not. This is likely because the passage of time distorts memory in a variety of ways (7). However, such distortions can be minimized if an event is recorded within a short period of time (the sooner, the better). A diary entry, for example, would have fewer memory distortions than an interview given 30 years after the event occurred. Again, this doesn’t mean that late remembrances should be dismissed altogether, it just means that the critical thinker needs to be more careful when analyzing them, even if they’re dealing with an eyewitness to the alleged event (8).
Relative bias can also play an important role in discerning whether or not the source is reliable or not. We talked a bit about bias in the previous article, and I define bias as being a prioritization of one worldview over the other. No one is completely immune to bias, especially when dealing with controversial topics such as religion or politics. It’s normal to find bias (both positive and negative) in many of the sources that a critical thinker encounters, but extreme bias can either misrepresent information or simply avoid details that may go against what the author says (9). A critical thinker is able to look at the bias of a source, noting if the bias affects the conclusions of the source (10).
Making sure that the claims of a source are corroborated by other sources may also be helpful in establishing a credible source. If you find that multiple sources are affirming the same details of an event, it’s likely that those details did actually occur (11). This aggregation of sources can also provide a broader scope of information that may or may not be contained in a singular source, and also eliminates potential bias (12). Now, this does not mean that sources that have lots of unique material are untrustworthy…it may just mean that they witnessed something that no one else did (as many of us do). Still, corroborating your sources can provide a great deal of strength to support that an event did actually occur.
Much more can be said about how to analyze good sources (for example, we’ll talk about putting sources in their proper context in a future article), but these principles are definitely a good place to start. In short, you just want to make sure that you’re learning about events from people who were actually there, who talked about the events quickly after they happened, who aren’t extremely biased in their views, and that the details of a source are (mostly) corroborated by other sources. As I said before, this isn’t an exact science and it’s likely that the criteria that people use will differ somewhat by the individual. Perhaps some people will care more that a source is early than they’ll care whether or not a source has details that are corroborated in some instances. Still, following these guidelines can help ensure that the sources that we work with are as accurate as possible so that we as critical thinkers can use the information therein to solve problems.
Evaluation in Action
That was a decent amount of content, and I hope I haven’t lost you yet. I wanted to take some time now to show how I would evaluate the validity of a source. Let’s practice with one that I think would be useful: Joseph and Hiel Lewis’ account of how Joseph Smith met Moroni. Consider the following:
“He [Joseph] said that by a dream he was informed that at such a place in a certain hill, in an iron box, were some gold plates with curious engravings, which he must get and translate, and write a book; that the plates were to be kept concealed from every human being for a certain time, some two or three years; that he went to the place and dug till he came to the stone that covered the box, when he was knocked down; that he again attempted to remove the stone, and was again knocked down; this attempt was made the third time, and the third time he was knocked down. Then he exclaimed, “Why can’t I get it?” or words to that effect; and then he saw a man standing over the spot, which to him appeared like a Spaniard, having a long beard coming down over his breast to about here, (Smith putting his hand to the pit of his stomach) with his (the ghost’s) throat cut from ear to ear, and the blood streaming down, who told him that he could not get it alone; that another person whom he, Smith, would know at first sight, must come with him, and then he could get it. And when Smith saw Miss Emma Hale, he knew that she was the person, and that after they were married, she went with him to near the place, and stood with her back toward him, while he dug up the box, which he rolled up in his frock.” (13)
So here, we have a claim that Joseph Smith was actually dealing with a spirit who “appeared as a Spaniard”, whose throat was cut from ear to ear. There are a few historical aspects at play here, chiefly we have Joseph and Hiel Lewis trying to tie Joseph Smith to treasure-digging practices, but let’s look at the claim itself: That Moroni was a mere treasure spirit with bloody features. Is that possible? Well, let’s use the tools we have to analyze the quote in question.
Well, right off the bat this isn’t a primary source. This source is, at best, a second-hand source, seeing as it is someone else describing an experience that someone told them. We can also tell from the date that it was written in April 1879, over 50 years after the events of Moroni’s visit occurred. What about bias, is there bias here? Joseph Lewis was a cousin of Emma Hale, Joseph Smith’s first wife, and was a devout methodist and antagonist of Joseph Smith throughout his life. In that same journal, he accuses Joseph Smith of being a “practicing necromancer”; in other words, Joseph prophesied by communicating with the dead (14). I trust the reader can associate how necromancy would’ve been viewed negatively in the Bible-based culture of 1800s New England, and Joseph and Hiel Lewis didn’t want any association with him for his association with Moroni (15). Do other sources corroborate Joseph and Hiel Lewis’ account? Well, one kind of does…Fayette Lapham reports a story about Moroni having bloody clothes (16), but it suffers from similar problems of being a third-hand, late source with some very incorrect details (17). As we can see, comparing this source by Joseph and Hiel Lewis with the historical criteria outlined in the earlier portions of this paper shows that this source may have some problems with it. It may not mean everything is wrong with it, but it shows that a critical thinker should exhibit serious caution when dealing with the source.
Conclusion
To wrap up the article for this week, it’s clear that there are some sources that are better than others, and that we can have a general idea as to what a good source is and what it is not. First, a good source is one that is both accurate and able to help us answer questions about what we’d like to find out. We can help establish the accuracy of a source by analyzing whether or not it is a primary source, a contemporary source, whether or not it is significantly biased, or whether the details in it are corroborated by other accounts of the event, in spite of the human error that inevitably creeps up in just about every document. While this model isn’t perfect, and there is likely going to be some disagreement about what makes one source better than another, the tools and questions embedded in this model of evaluating sources can help us gain insights into the value of a historical record. Practice using these guidelines as you study LDS theology and history. What you find might just surprise you.
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/ (This is one of the best collections of primary, contemporary sources out there when it comes to LDS history)
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Luke 22; John 18
Jun 12, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Garden or the Cross?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Gethsemane and the crucifixion. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before we get started I want to remind you about the FAIR conference (August 2-4) and tell you about another one of the talks that will be happening. Derek Westra will be speaking on the portrayal of Latter-day Saints in television. Derek works for the church and leads a team that makes sure people around the world have access to information about the church presented in a way their culture can understand. And they do a fair amount of monitoring how the church and its members are portrayed in order to understand what information needs to be available as a corrective when things go wrong. His talk should be fascinating. He is speaking on Wednesday morning Aug 2. You can buy tickets to attend in person in Provo, Utah, or you can watch through streaming for free – we just ask that you go to the FAIR website and sign up for that.
Today we’re going to talk about what is, in my opinion, one of the strangest things that sometimes divides Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints and that is talking about Gethsemane and the Cross. Traditionally Evangelicals place more importance on the cross – it’s where the actual physical death happens. And Latter-day Saints have placed more importance on Gethsemane because it is where the Savior suffered emotionally and psychologically for our sins. All of this is leading us into a discussion on atonement theories, but that’s not until next week. It also sort of veers into a discussion we’ve had a couple of times here about, “Don’t you worship a different Jesus?” But this week we want to look at how these 2 different ideas about Gethsemane and the Cross developed and what exactly is going on.
And before I even get very far I must refer you to two resources that help. One is Elder Holland’s 2022 talk called, “Lifted Up Upon the Cross,” and the other is the FAIR article titled The Garden and The Cross. Both are very helpful and will add to this discussion.
Use of symbols
As usual around here we start with some history. Elder Holland mentions in his talk, and you can read about this in lots of other places, that the cross was not immediately a symbol for the early Christians. And it’s not because they didn’t use symbols. They used a lot of symbols, in part because a huge percentage of the population was illiterate, but also because at various times in the first 4 centuries of Christianity, it was illegal to be a Christian so they sometimes had to speak in a kind of code. Some of those early symbols would mean something to us today like the dove, the good shepherd, and the lamb, others wouldn’t immediately speak to us. For example, early Christians used the peacock as a symbol of the death and resurrection of Christ. Why a peacock? They had a cultural belief at that time that the flesh from a peacock didn’t decay after death. I don’t actually know why they thought that – certainly all it would take is killing 1 of them and seeing that its flesh actually did decay to disprove that, but it was a common cultural belief at the time. So a peacock was used to represent Christ’s rising from the dead. They also used the pelican as a symbol for Christ’s death. Why? In nature, pelicans have a behavior of sometimes wounding themselves called “vulning” so that their young can eat their flesh if there is no other food source available. The early believers looked at this and likened it to what Christ was doing for us on the cross. Eventually, around the 4th century, it starts to become a more well-used symbol.
How did the cross develop as a symbol in America?
There is a story told in the journal “Church History” (a Protestant journal broadly about Christian history) where in 1834 the rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Burlington, New Jersey decides to place a cross on top of their newly designed church. And basically, the entire community of Protestants in that city lose their minds over it. In that era, it is just not the thing Protestants do. They called it an “outward emblem of Popery.” Using a cross is a very Catholic thing in that era. But things were starting to shift. The Victorian Era – starting around the 1840’s – ushered in an era of fascination with nature. And the Protestants who had gotten interested in the cross as a symbol capitalized on this subtly introducing crosses into Christian worship that were covered in flowers, leaves, or vines. The symbolism was obvious – something beautiful and alive sprouting out of something intended to cause death. Into the 1900’s there is a growing interest in neogothic architecture, which certainly included crosses. And many new churches in America wanted to have buildings in the neogothic style. So during this era the flowers and vines on crosses disappear and we start to see replicas of medieval crosses. During all of this, Baptist churches were the longest hold-outs. They were staunchly anti-Catholic and only started using crosses when one of their preachers had the idea that reclaiming this Catholic symbol might trick Catholics into listening to them, and then they could teach them their Baptist ways.
So, in the 1800’s there is a lot of movement on how people are thinking of the cross. But our church was being formed in the 1830’s, primarily with converts from other Protestant faiths who had not yet come to embrace the use of a cross. And by the 1850’s the church is forced into taking an isolationist stance on a lot of things and wasn’t really participating in much dialogue with other faiths, so the movement that was happening between various Protestant groups on the cross was not really happening in our church. 100 years later most Protestant groups had developed to the point where a cross was not just okay, it was expected. But our church developed differently and for us, 100 years later, we see David O. McKay saying that the cross is, “A Catholic form of worship,” which is very much what Protestants were saying 100 years earlier.
So how did the Latter-day Saint emphasis on Gethsemane come to be?
Well, it didn’t come out of nowhere. The Evangelical criticism is that we’re trying to avoid the reality of Jesus’ death on the cross, so we moved the emphasis to Gethsemane to make less of Jesus’ death. That’s not what we’re doing, but that’s what they say we’re doing. What I think is actually happening there is that human beings need symbols to help them understand complex spiritual topics. And what Jesus is doing in dying and rising again is very complex. The cross wasn’t really available to us as a symbol for the historic reasons I mentioned earlier, and we needed something to help us understand the ways in which Christ suffered for us. And because Jesus suffered in both places – Gethsemane and the cross- it made sense to turn to Gethsemane as a symbol. So in 1957, we have David O McKay saying that its not wise to use a cross because it’s still seen as too Catholic, 40 years later things have changed enough that it makes sense for Gordon B Hinkley to say, “It was the redemption which He worked out in the Garden of Gethsemane and upon the cross of Calvary which made His gift immortal, universal, and everlasting.”
For me, all of this brings to mind a quote from the Catholic scholar Stephen H. Webb. Webb never converts to our church, but he was very friendly and fair to our beliefs. He has a great quote that says members of our church, “depart(s) from traditional theology most radically only when it is trying to do justice to the honor and glory of Jesus Christ.” And in another place, he says that our, “Christology born out of a surplus rather than an insufficiency of faith. It puts creedal Christians in the odd position of saying that Mormons make too much of Jesus.” And I think that’s what’s happening here. Because some of our theology happened in a bit of isolation from other groups we were able to develop an entire area of understanding about Christ’s suffering that Protestants and Evangelicals didn’t. And now we find ourselves in a place of being able to say that both are good AND the entire reason for using a symbol in the first place is to point to a reality. Symbols are not things on their own, they point to something else. And this is how Elder Holland is able to make the point he is making in his “Lifted Up upon the Cross” talk. His point being that a symbol is nothing if we don’t take the reality of the thing seriously. Speaking of our faith he says, “It has nothing to do with pendants or jewelry, with steeples or signposts. It has to do, rather, with the rock-ribbed integrity and stiff moral backbone that Christians should bring to the call Jesus has given to every one of His disciples. In every land and age, He has said to us all, “If any man [or woman] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Stephen Webb is right. This isn’t us trying to get out of taking Jesus seriously as Evangelicals sometimes claim – it’s us taking Jesus very seriously. And if you can get to that part of the conversation with your Evangelical friends or family members, you will find a great deal in common as this is what many of them want to do too.
My hope is that in talking about all of this today we’re getting ready to talk about the atonement next week. I’ll give you a sneak peak….in our church we talk about “the atonement” in the singular. In the Evangelical world, they talk about, “atonement theories” in the plural. And it’s fascinating what’s going on there. I think you’ll be really interested. So join me next week for that. I look forward to seeing you.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 4: The Endowment with Nathan Richardson
Jun 07, 2023
On this episode, Nathan Richardson joins for a discussion about the temple Endowment and Initiatory ordinances.
Nathan Richardson is a speech-language pathologist who has published research articles in academic journals. He is also a book designer and has worked for multiple publishing houses, including the BYU Religious Studies Center and BYU Studies, as well as owned his own document design business. He is a frequent speaker at BYU-I Education Week. He received a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in communication disorders from BYU and works for a private family in the Middle East. He designs gospel study aids and a study edition of the scriptures on his website NathanRichardson.com.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – John 14–17
Jun 05, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Grace and Works
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Grace and Works. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before we get started I want to remind you about the FAIR Conference and tell you about another one of the talks that will be happening. Stephen Smoot is a young scholar who was at Book of Mormon Central for a while and is now working at the BH Roberts Foundation, and his area of specialty is the Book of Abraham. Recently BYU Studies put out a 300-page guide to the Book of Abraham and I think Smoot co-authors every chapter in that publication, or just about. There simply are no serious conversations going on these days about the Book of Abraham that Stephen is not somehow involved in. He’s spoken at FAIR several times and is just incredibly insightful and well-studied. You can come and join us in person in Provo, Utah August 2-4, or you can stream online for free – we just ask that you go to the website and register for access for planning purposes. Stephen is speaking on Wednesday, I am speaking on Friday. The schedule is up on the FAIR website if you want to see who else is speaking.
Today we will (finally) get into one of the topics that has come up probably more than any other in the last 50 years of conversation between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints: Grace vs. Works. Maybe the only thing that comes up more is, “You worship a different Jesus.” But Grace v. Works is right up there. We touched on this a tiny bit back in Episode 6 when we talked about, “What must I do to be saved?’ but today we go in a bit deeper.
The traditional argument goes something like this: Evangelicals say Latter-day Saints are trying to earn salvation through good works – and Latter-day Saints say Evangelicals are practicing a cheap grace where all they do is pray a prayer and never have to become like Jesus. I think, as we go through this, you’re going to see that the questions aren’t even really formed in a helpful way and there’s probably a better way to look at it.
Both the Latter-day Saint listeners and the Evangelical listeners to this episode will probably be surprised to know that one of the most hotly anticipated books coming out this year in the Evangelical press is called, “The Doctrine of Good Works: Reclaiming a Neglected Protestant Teaching.” Baker Academic is putting it out and its 3 authors are all Phd’s with impeccable Evangelical credentials. They are serious scholars who write about serious topics. Unfortunately, the book isn’t out until the end of July. I was able to read about 30 pages of it online and was fascinated by the beginning. “To say that Christianity has a crisis of credibility is an understatement…..people are hardly interested in the truth claims of Christianity unless and until they see that it matters….They will not be inclined to give serious consideration to the truth claims of Christianity until there is something about it that makes them hope that it might be true.” They point out that good Christians are constantly told things like, “If you’ve said a sinner’s prayer, your salvation is guaranteed,” and “Rejoice in the fact that there is nothing you can do to help your salvation along. Only Christ can do that for you.” They go on to set out their case that the thing that gives people hope that it might be true is in fact good works. “God is a working God,” they say, “and we are made in his image.”
All of that to say, there is movement on this topic. A lot of the discussion you can find online about this topic has not moved much past the over-simplified works-grace debate that was happening 50 years ago. The old version of this debate oversimplifies things to a point that kind of doesn’t make much sense. And actually conceptualization of “Grace vs. Works” is sort of misleading as if one side believes we are saved through grace alone, and the other side believes we are saved through works alone. And while there are lots of groups who affirm salvation through grace alone, I don’t know of any group that affirms salvation through works alone. Further, part of the problem here is that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, would have a very different concept of what we are being saved toward.
In the Evangelical world the question of, “Are we saved by faith alone, or does faith require action as well?” is something very different than what Latter-day Saints are asking when they say, “Why wouldn’t faith require action – faith without works is dead.” But we’re talking about 2 different things here. The Evangelical is talking about eternal salvation – and remember, as we talked about in a previous episode, for them salvation is a binary choice. You either go to Heaven (they have 1 conceptualization of Heaven) or you go to eternal torment in Hell. So when they say, “Faith alone is required for salvation,” they are saying, “Only faith in Jesus Christ can save you from eternal damnation.” And when they hear us say, “Faith without works is dead” in the context of talking about salvation what they hear is, “You’re trying to add to the work Jesus already did on the cross, therefor you are saying his work was not enough to get you into Heaven.” This is hard for Evangelicals for 2 reasons, both of them pretty understandable….1) They feel very loyal to Jesus and are sensitive to anyone saying what he did is not enough. But also 2) They have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that we conceptualize eternity so differently than they do.
For Latter-day Saints there is a reality called “outer darkness” but very few people end up there. While for Evangelicals, it depends on who you talk to, but they would believe a pretty good percentage of people end up in Hell. So, you can see why this conversation bugs them so much – for them having the wrong beliefs about Jesus means you’re risking eternal torment. For them, the question is, “Will you even make it to Heaven?” While for us the question is, “Okay, you’re going to spend eternity in one of the areas of Heaven, how do you want to prepare for life there?” And those are 2 really different questions. Latter-day Saints are not trying to win God’s favor, we’re trying to get ready for eternity. So the grace-works question is really a hard conversation sometimes.
If the conversation can most past that initial roadblock, it actually can get kind of interesting because the question becomes, “In what way do Latter-day Saints believe in grace?” and, “In what way do Evangelicals practice good works?” And when it’s put this way you start to see how in which we might learn from each other. Interestingly Terryl Givens has an article about this in the BYU Studies Quarterly magazine (I think it’s from last year, it’s volume 60 titled, “Yet to be Revealed: Open Questions in Latter-day Saint Theology) And he starts out by pointing out that there has been an increase in the material produced by Latter-day Saints talking about Grace – from General Authorities all the way down. And that this has caused some Evangelicals to wonder if Latter-day Saints are making a course correction toward a more Protestant theology. But from Givens’s point of view, and I agree with him, the term “Grace” must be given a, “uniquely Restorationist point of view. He says, “Restoration doctrine asserts that it was this act of setting his (God’s) heart upon man that constituted the majesty and miracle of God’s grace….Deep in the primeval past when God found himself in the midst of numerous spirit intelligences before the earth was formed or the first man or woman organized, grace irrupted into the universe. We might consider grace the name of his relentless, inexhaustible, and ultimately irresistible invitation.”
In this sense, grace is like the invitation to the party. You get to attend! But the point isn’t to just get an invitation, the point is to go to the party and talk and dance and eat. To do the actual things. The invitation is how you get to go and do the things. It’s like our invitation to live this life – God placed us here, and we got invited to this great party, this life on Earth, so what activities will we get to do at the party? In the Evangelical view, grace gives you an invitation to a party – but that party happens in eternity, not as much here. And instead of figuring out what you want to do at the party, you are trying to figure out if you’re going to be allowed to go to th party – or if you’re going to be thrown into a lake of fire. I don’t say that to be glib, but to show that we’re answering very different questions.
As for what it’s like for Evangelicals, with everything I said still being true, there is quite a bit of variety in how they approach the issues of works. In the last 20 or so years the Evangelical groups who seem to care more about works are the ones who are more interested in social issues. For example, they see the “work” of caring for the poor to be an important expression of faith. They would be very careful to distinguish that from a “saving faith” but it is still important to them to live out their faith in such a way that it makes a difference in the lives of the vulnerable. And most Evangelicals would have no problem seeing the goodness of something like that.
Where they start to wring their hands and worry though is when something like the, “American Worldview Inventory” study came out in 2020. This is a study that surveyed 2,000 Americans and found 30% of them called themselves Christians. And of that 30% half also said, “Good works will get you into Heaven.” Now, they worry about this because they think this is what we’re saying, “Good works will get you into Heaven.” Which is of course not at all what we’re saying. We believe just about everybody gets an invitation to the party, and ask, “what are you going to do at the party?”
Another major influence in how Evangelicals think about grace and works comes through the Methodist Church. The Methodist Church was started in the late 1700’s by the Wesley brothers essentially because they were eager to go do some good works. They had been Anglicans and things were a bit stifled for them, so they create “the Method” (Methodists) which is also called their “Rule of Life” and it’s number one rule is to avoid evil, and the number two rule is to do good. So their tradition developed in a way that deeply cared about good works. And they have had a great deal of influence over what Evangelicals become.
The Pew Research Center also tells us that about 75% of Evangelicals believe helping the poor and needy is an important part of their faith. But at the same time, it is a somewhat optional practice, less than 25% of them believe in tithing through their local church, and even those who do are most likely to be in a church where the congregation is just covering its own expenses for staff, property and programming – without much left over for doing good works.
We will get into this topic again, we’re almost out of the gospels in Come Follow Me. We’ve got about another month, and then we get to the letters which give us some deeper levels to talk about. I actually really love that we spend 6 months studying the gospels. That’s as it should be. But it will be fun to get into some other things as well. Thank you for being with me today. Come back next time and we’ll do some more.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
By Study and Faith – Episode 1: What is Critical Thinking?
Jun 05, 2023
by Zachary Wright
Have you ever wanted to problem-solve better? Not just the daily issues we deal with, but the massive world-changing problems we deal with constantly? What about wanting to be more effective in your study? Have you ever wanted to learn to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not? Maybe you’re not as ambitious, but you want to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ and learn more about Him and His gospel. All these skills, and more, apply at least some form of critical thinking skills, and I’m here to help you learn how to be a more effective critical thinker.
Throughout this series, we’ll explore some basic principles behind critical thinking and practice critical thinking about LDS theology and history, answering questions about them. We’ll discuss basic logic principles, learn to evaluate sources, and become informed about topics orbiting the restored gospel. Join us every other Sunday to learn how to become a better thinker, debater, and advocate for your beliefs. With the skills you learn in this series, you’ll be able to be more effective in every single field of your life and find ways to help other people in meaningful ways.
I invite you to join me as we learn together, starting our journey of learning “by study and by faith.”
Episode 1: What is Critical Thinking?
Introduction
When I began my research on Critical Thinking in preparation for this series, I came across an article that described “The Emerging Crisis in Critical Thinking”. Consider the following:
“Unfortunately, rather than creating a generation of “super-geniuses,” there are emerging reports that although modern students are quite adept at memorizing and regurgitating facts presented in class or in reading materials, the ability to reason, think critically, and problem-solve has actually been dramatically reduced in recent years.” (1)
I didn’t need an article to tell me that critical thinking is something that modern schools struggle to incorporate. I went to charter schools for most of my life, but while it seemed that my teachers seemed to pay lip service to the almighty “critical thinking skills,” I don’t recall them ever sitting down and explaining to the students “Critical thinking includes X, Y, and Z”. Why would they? It’s not in the syllabus.
It wasn’t until I was about 18 that I began picking up on what it actually meant. Critical thinking has far more to do with how you go about learning and solving problems, and far less to do with what you’re actually learning. You don’t need a college degree in American Religious History to think critically about Joseph Smith’s religious and cultural background, and you don’t need a degree in Biblical Greek to think critically about the New Testament texts. While such knowledge may be helpful, it is not essential to employ critical thinking skills. Latter-day Saints should know and care about these critical thinking skills to help others, solve problems, become good citizens, and “contend for the faith” (Jude 1:3). So, what does it mean to think critically? Let’s explore that topic for a moment.
What is Critical Thinking?
If I had to boil down the concept of “critical thinking” to one concise statement, I’d probably summarize it as “Us making sure that we have good reasons for what we believe” (2). How is this done? Well, according to the University of Louisiana, the process of critical thinking includes an ability “to question; to acknowledge and test previously held assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret, evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions” (3). Fair enough; but consider this for a moment, as you were reading this list, did you stop and consider what each item of the list meant? Did you think about how this list may apply at home? School? Work? Church? Such practices are important aspects of critical thinking, but if you’re like me, you probably didn’t the first time around…and that’s okay. Critical thinking does NOT come naturally to people any more than running a marathon comes naturally to people. Like with any skill, it comes with deliberate practice, and experience…lots of it.
If I’ve succeeded today, you will be able to practice these critical thinking skills more effectively than you were able to before. This doesn’t mean that we’ll go over every aspect of this definition here, but we will be going over some of it. Specifically, we’ll talk about how to ask effective questions, look at events from different perspectives, and then discuss what it looks like to be a critical thinker in conjunction with the spirit.
Asking Effective Questions
An essential aspect of critical thinking is the ability to ask important questions. One pair of researchers noted that in relation to critical thinking, asking questions can: stimulate the brain, open communication/create an exchange, prompt discovery of what others know, encourage listening, provide the opportunity to acknowledge other ideas, and lead to the process of discovery (4). Consider the following:
“Not only do questions and critical thought have an appropriate place in the Church, but as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has pointed out, the Church would not exist without it. He explains that the doctrinally loaded and foundational experience of the First Vision came as the result of Joseph Smith’s critical thought toward existing churches and a desire to know which he should join. Knowing for ourselves if the church that was restored through Joseph Smith’s efforts is truly the “only true and living church” (D&C 1:30) can be done only by following his lead and “ask[ing] of God” (James 1:5). “Asking questions,” President Uchtdorf said, “isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.” (5)
With both secular and religious voices united in the call for asking questions, it almost goes without saying that we should be willing to ask important questions when dealing with important subjects. Why should it be any different when dealing with theological and historical questions regarding the church?
So, what kind of questions should we be asking? Well, cursory internet searches may be helpful here (6), but it may be best to begin by focusing on the basic idea of critical thinking: How do we know what we know? This may include questions such as:
How does this source claim to be getting their information?
How reliable is that method of getting information?
Do other ways of getting information corroborate this source?
Is what the source claims being overly distorted by bias, positive or negative?
When was the source speaking/writing about the subject?
A case study of how a critical thinker may approach a subject with good questions may be helpful here. Consider how a critic of the church may assert that Joseph Smith manufactured a set of fake (not gold) metal plates, and presented those plates as the ancient record of the Book of Mormon. Is that possible? Sure, but a critical thinker would ask questions like:
Where did Joseph Smith learn to make such plates?
Who taught him to create metal plates?
Did anyone contemporary to his time mention his ability to make plates?
What materials did Joseph use? Where did he obtain these materials?
Where did he manufacture these plates?
When did he have time to make these plates?
I could continue, but this should suffice. Do you see how all of these are important questions to ask when dealing with historical issues in LDS history? Anyone making the claim that Joseph was fabricating the plates would need to answer these questions in order to make a more compelling case.
Note that asking these questions doesn’t counter their arguments; it gives the critic the opportunity to support their position. Questions, in this manner, are not to be confused with arguments (we’ll deal with logic and arguments another day). You can support your questions with other sources, but it’s important to recognize that this method of asking questions can be more impactful in the realms of apologetics and research than practically anything else. If a faithful believer can learn to ask pertinent questions about LDS history and theology, it will make the conversation go much more smoothly. However, in order to improve your questions, it’s important to understand how to look at things from different perspectives, which is what we’ll discuss now.
Looking at Problems from Different Perspectives
A worldview is described as “a set of values and assumptions about the world, through which we interpret our experiences” (7). In order to ask important, pertinent, and even faithful questions, it’s essential to understand what ideas your questions are based on. A worldview is also described as “a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action” (8). In order to be an effective critical thinker, it’s important to be able to differentiate between, and look at, different perspectives or worldviews. In truth, we do something similar all the time, almost daily, most of the time without us ever realizing it just by going about our day. A faithful church-going man who wakes up and goes to work may be looking at things from a variety of perspectives: his perspective as a father, his role as a husband, his role as an employee, his role as a child of God, etc. All of these perspectives have different ways of manifesting themselves and have different questions and goals. Similar analyses may be applied to how we critically think about certain topics. Consider the following:
“Furthermore, since belief and belonging are intricately interconnected, these changes in identity will often be accompanied by cognitive forms of restructuring, which allow the coexistence of faith and of secular knowledge of religion. One such form may focus on the recognition of two distinct layers of explanations of reality: a faith-based one, with supernatural foundations, and a secular one, with a focus on human dynamics within the phenomenon of religion.” (9)
I appreciate this analysis because while it’s careful to maintain that the secular and spiritual are connected, it is keen on pointing out that there are two different viewpoints to look at events that both answer different questions and have different presuppositions. We’ll go over a couple of these viewpoints now.
The restored gospel perspective is one that we Latter-day Saints are most experienced in. This viewpoint is primarily focused on things like our relationship with our Heavenly Father, the morality of our choices, and how Jesus Christ established, re-established, and guides his church today. It looks at this world as being a step along an eternal path, one with divine potential, where God’s purpose is to bring about “the immortality and eternal life of man” (10). This perspective assumes that those who deal with it believe in God, believe Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind, believe that God has called prophets (like Joseph Smith) to teach us, and that those who make and keep covenants will return to the presence of God. (This is not a comprehensive view of this perspective, but it will suffice.)
As you can imagine though, other perspectives can be useful. Consider the Historical perspective, which is primarily focused on gathering data from various sources in order to synthesize an understanding of what occurred in the past (11). This perspective is focused on trying to figure out what occurred by studying what people before them wrote and thought about events. They are primarily concerned with finding out what people make what claims and interweaving each of the accounts into one coherent, plausible, and accurate narrative of events. This perspective presupposes that the events are able to be known by the people who record them, and they know there are gaps in the data that are irrecoverable as it stands right now. Even so, they are able to study documents as a means to the end of learning about events in the past with varying degrees of certainty.
Another perspective that Latter-day Saints encounter is the scientific worldview. Tracing its roots back to the Renaissance (and Greek Philosophy), it seeks to establish causality for everything that occurs in the world. Much can be said about the history and assumptions of empirical science, but suffice it to say that it is assumed that knowledge can be obtained through direct observation of the material world (12). In this perspective, scientists are concerned about how different things interact with each other, what causes different reactions, and what variables can be manipulated to bring about what result. Assumptions made by scientists vary, but it wouldn’t be untrue to state that they assume that everything is a long string of “cause-effect” reactions. This perspective, when taken to its extreme, may result in the acceptance of determinism (13).
The perspective of this very article and series is worth mentioning…I wrote this under the belief/assumption that God exists and that concepts such as morality and libertarian free will (14) are true. With those presuppositions in mind, I hope that I’ve been able to show that each of these perspectives is based at least somewhat in reality and may be useful in determining the truth, that is “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;”. Practicing looking at things from different perspectives may be challenging, and it may push you out of your comfort zone, but it is infinitely worth it (15). However, every one of these perspectives can be warped, leading to conclusions that are unhealthy, harmful, and not conducive to the moral life we try to build. This doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the worldview itself, any more than it would mean that a hammer has something wrong with it because it can’t mow the lawn. The purpose, assumptions, and answers each worldview provides are different, and I posit that each one should be used to answer questions in its respective domain.
Now, how does this relate to critical thinking? I mention this because a critical thinker is able to take information from multiple perspectives to find ways to solve problems and make decisions with data from a variety of worldviews. Ignoring one or more perspectives in favor of another is referred to as “bias”. For example, when discussing controversial topics such as the relationship between members of the LGBTQ+ community and the church, it’s important to understand what perspectives are at play and to avoid bias in any format. For example, LDS critical thinkers should be careful to not ignore what role genetics might play in homosexuality (16), and the critical thinking members of the LGBTQ+ community should be careful to remember the role that traditional families play in the afterlife (17). Allowing one perspective to cloud another will lead to contention, frustration, and a lack of intellectual and spiritual engagement with all parties involved.
To recap, a critical thinker needs to be aware of the inherent worldviews/perspectives of every source being analyzed. While not separating the perspectives or allowing bias to cause them to distort or ignore other worldviews, critical thinkers are able to collect, synthesize, and evaluate data from different sources. After all, we believe in anything that is “virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy” (18). Latter-day Saint critical thinkers will then be able to look at the problems and questions of others, and either ask questions about, or provide answers with, the differing worldviews/perspectives in question. In this way, I believe that being able to differentiate between the worldviews (and assumptions) of different people, will prove to be yet another essential aspect of LDS apologetics and research.
An Invitation to All
That was kind of long, I hope you’re still with me. In our discussion above, I’ve alluded already to the idea that I, the author, am carrying a few assumptions with me as I’m writing, namely I believe in God, agency, and moral law. The critical thinker will rightly be able to point out that no one can prove empirically that these things are real with a scientific perspective…and they would be right. There are limits to every worldview, but the careful reader will be able to realize that these very limitations are exactly why I’m writing this article in the first place. We can’t just use “one worldview” as the be-all-end-all standard by which we are to view the universe, any more than we can expect a plumber to be able to perform heart surgery. We need to be willing to look beyond mere bias, and thus, I have an invitation to every critical thinker out there, both church members and non-members alike.
For members, I invite you to study LDS church history and theology, employing critical thinking skills as you research. I invite you to listen to the spirit, and accept truth from all sources. I invite you to redouble your efforts to “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him” (19). Do things to increase your faith as you increase your knowledge of other domains. As you do so, I promise that both your spiritual and intellectual capacities will increase and that you will find greater happiness and confidence as a result. In other words, continue your efforts to seek learning by study and by faith (20), and share the blessings of such efforts with everyone that you know.
For those who are not members of the church, I assert that there is a spiritual domain and that it can be known through spiritual methods. These methods include meditation, prayer, and the study and application of the words of the prophets. Over time, upon acting on these spiritual exercises, I claim that you will begin to feel a rejuvenated sense of power and confidence and that you will feel the inert “good” that comes from each of these (21). I testify that this spiritual perspective will not contradict truth, but will help you embrace it wholeheartedly. I invite you, in this sense, to seek God, and to believe in his Son, Jesus Christ. I invite you to study the words of the prophets, both ancient and modern, and look for the spirit to testify to you of this higher plane. I invite you to Come and See, Come and Help, Come and Stay (22), and most importantly, I invite you to follow Jesus Christ’s admonition to follow him (23).
Hopefully, you’ll take the skills I’ve presented here about asking questions and examining things from different lenses to heart as you do this. I also hope that you don’t dismiss this invitation off-hand. I promise you that as you look over the collective history of God allegedly working with people, you will see His hand, and you will feel Him calling you. I further promise that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can help you find a relationship with God that you cannot find anywhere else. If you have questions throughout your spiritual endeavors, please contact us! We’d love to help however we can.
Conclusion
In conclusion, much more can be said about critical thinking, and those working on this series will spend most of their time finding ways to foster critical thinking, and demonstrating that these skills inevitably leave room for faith. The irony of writing a series on critical thinking is apparent though, seeing as I would hope that you would thoughtfully examine, and even challenge the ideas presented here when appropriate. Even so, I hope that I’ve been able to show the utility of asking good questions, understanding differing worldviews and perspectives, and inspire everyone to more deeply study LDS theology as a means to the end of building faith in Jesus Christ. While I make no claims of omniscience, I do think that these skills will bless lives in both spiritual and secular domains. I look forward to helping pave the road to a far better future as a result.
Anderson, Shayne. “Critical Thinking in Religious Education.” Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel 18, no. 3 (2017): 69-81. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/re/vol18/iss3/6
Gray A. J. (2011). Worldviews. International psychiatry : bulletin of the Board of International Affairs of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 8(3), 58–60.
Mauro Properzi; Belonging (and Believing) as LDS Scholars of Religion. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1 January 2009; 42 (3): 37–44. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/dialjmormthou.42.3.0037
Meredith, Adrianna (2020) “Plea to Professors: A Passionate Approach to Controversy in the Classroom,” Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology: Vol. 15 : Iss. 2 , Article 11. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/intuition/vol15/iss2/11
Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT. He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic. He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history. His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 26; Mark 14; John 13
May 29, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Sacrament
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the sacrament. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before I get into that let me remind you of the FAIR Conference. I will be speaking on Friday, August 4 at 10:30 Mountian time. I would be delighted to see you there in person, but you can also sign up to stream the event. It’s free to stream, but you do need to sign up at https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023. I will be talking about issues of sexual abuse in church settings.
And, before we get started, I’ve been wanting to address a question that comes up a lot, but I haven’t been able to find the right spot to do it. Maybe I just need to do a Q/A video – hit me with questions in the comments if you’d like to see that, but for now, I want to briefly answer this one because I get it frequently. The question goes something like, “My grown child has left the church and joined an Evangelical church and I want to use all this information to talk with them, but they do not want to talk with me about this topic. My faith is such a huge part of who I am, so it seems like I’m being kicked out of their life. What should I do?” The short answer is: What you should do is respect their wishes. I know that’s not the answer you really want to hear, but it’s the only one that makes sense, and here’s why…No one likes being given boundaries by other people. I don’t like it, you don’t like it. It stings. That’s okay. But a boundary is someone telling you to, “stay in your lane.” The idea of “staying in your lane” directly implies the idea that you have a lane in which to stay. You’re not being kicked out of their life. I know it can feel that way. But try to focus on the relationship you do have with them and work with what you’re given. In this scenario, parent-child, it is a very long game, and it makes sense to do the work to figure this out. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense in other relationships, only you can decide that. But in this scenario, you might just have to dig deep into every bit of emotional maturity you can muster and preserve the relationship. All right, that was me slipping into mental-health education a bit, but I hope that was helpful for you. Moving on.
Today, we are talking about the Sacrament, which Evangelicals know better as communion or the Lord’s Supper or the Lord’s Table, and Catholics know better as the Eucharist or the Holy Mass. My favorite alternative name for it is a term that pops up a few times in history, “The Love Feast”. But they all are referring to roughly the same thing, though obviously with some very different understandings of it. Our text comes from Matthew 26:26:
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.
Before about 5 years ago…Latter-day Saint friends, you can laugh at me for this all you want…I did not know that the main worship meeting of the week was called Sacrament Meeting. And I remember when I heard that phrase I thought, “How odd! I wonder what they think “sacrament” means?” Commence laughter, I’m not offended.
In my own defense, I will say that part of this is because I spent about 10 years in the Anglican world where the word “sacrament” can refer to several things: it can be the taking of communion, but things like baptism and marriage are also considered sacraments. I think the LDS word there is more specific, as we would call those ordinances, but we mean the same thing. Anglicans (and Catholics, and others) also have something they call “Sacramentals” which are considered, “sacred signs” (LDS friends, don’t run too far with that word here, they’re using ‘signs’ differently.) But Sacramentals are something like oil that has been blessed to use in healing, or making the sign of the cross, or holy water. These are things that get really misunderstood by outsiders, but they’re functioning very similarly to how some of the ordinances function for us. (There is an episode I want to do on water as symbol – how it’s used in our faith for baptism and in the initiatory, how it’s used as “holy water” in other places. But that’s some deep geek-level stuff and I think I will try to spare you from that. Maybe. We’ll see.)
I’ll start by describing the differences an Evangelical would see in our Sacrament meeting, and include the differences we would see in theirs. And then we’ll go a little deeper and examine on the theological level what is purported to be happening during the sacrament or communion, and we’ll even look at the Catholic side too simply because it’s helpful to illustrate some of the differences in theology.
Evangelical friends, if you were to attend a Latter-day Saint service on a Sunday morning you would probably be surprised to see that what we call “the sacrament” is pretty familiar to you, even if it’s not 100%. The elements are blessed and passed, which would feel very familiar to you. Latter-day Saints are taught to use this time in 2 ways. First, it is considered a renewal of the covenants we have made – I have an episode coming up on covenants so I’ll kick the discussion of what that actually means for us down the road. Some Evangelicals are very familiar with the idea of Covenant theology and none of this would be new to them, others have only the vaguest idea of what that could even mean. The second thing we are taught about this time is it is for focusing on Jesus Christ.
There are 3 things that stand out that are really different though.
1) Most of the time in an Evangelical Church no special priesthood is required to bless the Sacrament. In theory, anyone can do it. In our Latter-day Saint tradition, ordinances require someone who holds the priesthood. It’s hard for me to think of other times in which this would come up, but during the pandemic lockdown everyone was doing church at home, and if you did not have someone in your home who is a priest, then you are instructed to spend that time pondering the sacrifice of Christ but to refrain from taking the elements. That will sound very weird – and very Catholic – to Evangelical ears. But for Latter-day Saints, priesthood really matters, we’ve talked about that on this channel a couple of times already, and I have more planned on that as well.
2) Most Evangelicals use grape juice or real wine for communion. Latter-day Saints use water. In my lifetime more and more Evangelical churches have switched from using grape juice to using wine. It’s sort of considered a little bit edgier of a thing to do, and they like that. But Latter-day Saints have had their own journey through what to use as well. My initial guess at why water was used was something like: Latter-day Saints avoid alcohol, even socially, so maybe this is them just trying to stay really far away from something that looks like alcohol. But, I was surprised to learn later that the Word of Wisdom makes a provision for using wine during Sacrament. Doctrine and Covenant 89 gives us, “Inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father, only in assembling yourselves together to offer up your sacraments before him. And, behold, this should be wine, yea, pure wine of the grape of the vine, of your own make.” Latter-day Saints use wine in the Sacrament well into the 19th century. In fact, in 1861 Brigham Young sent 309 Mormon families to settle in southern Utah, where they could produce, among other crops, wine for the sacrament. (That’s in Leonard Arrington’s book Great Basin Kingdom – which is very good and worth a read.) By 1906 the temperance movement is really starting to come into its own and by that point, the Word of Wisdom had been around for 70 years. The Saints had been given a generously slow onramp to living by the Word of Wisdom, so during that on-ramping time, alcohol and tobacco use was not unheard of among the Saints. But by 1902 the on-ramping time was coming to an end, and shortly after that, in 1906 the First Presidency and the 12 begin using water in their Sacrament meeting in the temple, and the rest of the church soon follows suit. So, yeah, we use water.
3) The third difference Evangelicals would notice is that it’s quiet while the elements are passed. Well, it’s not quiet. I’m in this fantastic ward with lots of young families with babies and toddlers. Just because of the area where I live is brand new, high-density housing, which tends to attract younger families just starting out after college. So, if you’re in a ward like mine, it is actually not remotely quiet during Sacrament. Delightfully so. But, what I mean by that is that there is no music playing. In an Evangelical Church, for the most part, during that time their band would be playing music, sometimes contemplative, but frequently loud worship-rock music.
That should give you a good overview of the practical differences in how we practice Sacrament, but let’s take a look at the theological differences.
In the Protestant/Catholic world, there are 3 ways to think about what is happening in communion. The first way is the Catholic version, and if you’ve never heard it before, or if you can think back to the first time you heard it, it sounds weird. But this is an extremely sacred doctrine to them, so we’re going to treat it respectfully. In Catholic theology, at the beginning of the service, the bread and wine are just common elements. There is nothing special about them, they were made in perfectly ordinary ways. They lay on the altar and look like the bread and wine that they are. At a specific point in the serve, often indicated by the ringing of a bell, the priest says the words of consecration, and the elements become the actual body and blood of Christ. They sill look and taste like bread and wine, but they are not. They are the body and blood of Christ. This idea is called transubstantiation and it is an expression of their desire to take the words of Christ literally when he says, “this is my body, broken for you, take and eat.” This practice has a lot of meaning for them and it deserves respect. But it is very different from the typical Evangelical view.
In the typical Evangelical view the communion bread and wine remain bread and wine and only become the body and blood of Christ symbolically. But there are 2 versions of this. These make up numbers 2 and 3 of out list of ways Protestants and Catholics think about the Sacrament. Some Evangelicals would say that the bread and wine are simply there as a memory jogger. Jesus asked us to remember his death, and he asked us to use bread and wine, so we do this and remember him. But there is nothing happening more than memory or recall. There is nothing efficacious in it. It’s not doing anything other than helping them remember. This is probably the more common view, or at least it has been historically, things are shifting here too. The other possible way Evangelicals `view the element is what gets called, “The Real Presence.” Which is sort of a halfway point between communion-as-memory-jogger and Eucharist-as-literal-flesh-and-blood. In this view, they see Christ’s presence in the elements, though the elements themselves remain bread and wine, but Christ indwells the elements in a special way that brings Christ’s presence to the one who eats it worthily.
For Latter-day Saints, none of those categories are even discussed much. Instead, we believe that what is happening in the Sacrament is the renewal of covenants. Before I was baptized into the church, I attended Sacrament Meeting for a long time, months, and I made a decision that I wanted to participate by receiving the bread and water. And as far as I know, no one had any problems with that, but I also understood the theology was clear: I had not yet made covenants, so there was nothing to renew. My participation in eating and drinking was something else – a desire to express my faith and hope that I could become part of that community. But that was my own personal meaning. The actual point of the Sacrament entirely has to do with covenant keeping.
There is so much more to talk about on this topic, I know that doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. And this is a topic we will come back to again from a different angle a couple of months from now. Thank you for joining me all of this. I’ll be back next week and we’ll continue working our way through the New Testament.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Joseph Smith—Matthew 1; Matthew 24–25; Mark 12–13; Luke 21
May 22, 2023
Evangelical Questions: The Rapture
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the rapture. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before I get into that let me update you on the FAIR conference. Some new details for you…I will be speaking on Friday, August 4 at 10:30 Mountain time. I would be delighted to see you there in person, but you can also sign up to stream the event. It’s free to stream, but you do need to sign up. Initially, my topic was going to be the history of the relationship between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints (spoiler: Lots of ups and downs), and I still hope to give that talk someday, but instead, I’m speaking on an area that I have a huge personal and professional interest in: Sexual Abuse in a Church Context. My plan is to talk through the 5 most common questions that come up on this subject, especially for Latter-day Saints. Some examples are, “Does our church help abusers hide from the law?”….”Is there a higher-than-average number of abuse cases in our churches compared to similar groups?” I’m also working on a huge Q/A page of about 30 questions regarding abuse. I know this is not everyone’s favorite topic, but I have some really interesting original research to present as well as some historical context to add to the whole question.
Okay, moving on. This week’s topic, the rapture, comes up in Matthew 1:23 (JST):
Behold, I speak these things unto you for the elect’s sake; and you also shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled, for all I have told you must come to pass; but the end is not yet.
You will notice that the word, “rapture” is not in this verse, but it’s not in the Bible at all, it’s a word Evangelicals use to describe a concept they see in the Bible. And by “rapture” they mean an event at some future point in time where all believers in Christ will be, “taken up into the air” and then will begin a 7-year period called, “The Great Tribulation” which is a time of great sorrow, and after that time, Jesus will return. This is them leaving Earth to go to Heaven without dying. God pulls their physical bodies out of our atmosphere and into Heaven. You won’t find this taught directly in the Bible. You can look for it, it’s not in there – though certain people take verses and apply them to the concept, even though they’re vague and could describe lots of things. And this belief is huge for American Evangelicals. How did this happen? Let’s start with some historical context.
If you go back in time about 250 years and asked the Christians alive at that time what they think of the rapture, they would no idea what you’re talking about. The idea of the rapture is brand new in terms of history. It’s been around for about 200 years, which in historical terms is brand new. In the 1830’s a guy named John Darby was living in London and working as a pastor for the Plymouth Brethren (they would go on to call themselves the Exclusive Brethren, but you’ve probably more likely to have heard the term Plymouth Brethren.) Latter-day Saint friends I know the thing that catches your attention here is the date, “1830’s”. If you listened to LDS historians at all in your life you’ve probably heard someone talk about the extraordinary outpouring of spirituality happening in that decade around the world, and this is an example of that. Darby is an extraordinary man, he’s given a top-rate education for the day, he comes from a family with means, and he’s set up for success really well. He produces translations of the Bible into English, French, Dutch, and German that are still used today. He initially is ordained as a Catholic priest, but he soon quits in a political protest. Right around that time he is thrown off a horse and has a long convalescence where he begins to develop his signature theology: The Rapture.
Darby travels to America several times and somewhere in the 1880’s (there are conflicting dates) he is in Missouri and makes a connection with Cyrus Scofield. Latter-day Saints, this is during the era when John Taylor was president of the church, so the Saints moved on to Utah long ago, but I know Missouri catches your attention too. And there is a “Charles Scofield” in early Utah history during this era, he was a railroad builder. I did a cursory look to see if he is related to Cyrus Scofiled, but couldn’t find proof that he was. At any rate, Darby meets Scofield who essentially takes Darby’s work and popularizes it. Scofield is in the direct line of people who influence the up-and-coming Evangelical movement. So, American Evangelicals get Darby’s theology as filtered through Scofield. And Scofield publishes what becomes the first modern Study Bible. He publishes his notes and commentary about the text right next to the actual text of the Bible. A few versions of this had been done before, but Scofield makes it take off. I mention it here because it’s an interesting slight-of-hand, and it directly impacts how the rapture theology plays out.
What Scofield did when he places his notes and commentary next to the text of the Bible does not seem very revolutionary today. You can go on Amazon and find 30 or more study Bibles, some of them quite good. And a modern reader can easily understand that there is a difference in authority between the scripture text and the comments provided by the book’s authors. It’s not hard for us to intuitively see the difference. But in Scofiled’s day, people were not used to that. If it was contained inside a bound Bible, it WAS the Bible. They took Scofield’s interpretations far more seriously simply because he embedded them right next to the actual Bible text. So when Scofield is writing about the rapture in his notes, the Christians reading his Bible at that time are roughly putting his words equal with scripture. The average Bible reader in this era is not yet sophisticated enough to easily differentiate the two. At this time, around 1909, roughly 8% of the US population ever graduate from high school. The majority of people in that era can read, but they’re not going to be sophisticated enough to see the difference between Scofield’s words, and the words of the Bible. And his Bible was huge. It sold 2 million copies by the end of WW2. This is how Darby’s rapture theology got popular in America.
Fast-forward to the 1970s and a series of films is made that dramatizes this event. There are 4 movies in the series, they’re called the “Thief in the Night” movies. You can watch them on Youtube if you want. Another series is made in the 1990s that you might be more familiar with – they’re based on the Left Behind books, but the idea is the same, they’re a dramatized version of what would happen after the rapture.
I’ll tell you this story. A very dear friend in my first Ward texted me one day and asked, “What is the rapture?” I gave her a brief explanation and she said: My school-age daughter checked out a book from the library called, “Left Behind” because the cover looked cool, but she’s reading it now and we have no idea what they’re talking about. Evangelical friends, you may or may not know this, but Latter-day Saints have no idea what you’re talking about if you’re talking to them about the rapture. It’s not a thing for us. Incidentally, it’s not a thing for most Christians in the world. The idea is rejected by Anglicans, Orthodox, Catholics, and most branches of Protestants. But it’s got firm footing with Evangelicals and over the last 60 years many Evangelical leaders have made predictions of when this event would happen, only to have those dates come and go. The most memorable one to me was in 1988 when a book came out called, “88 Reasons Jesus Will Return in 1988,” and it gave a specific date for the rapture, which obviously didn’t happen. But some people read that book and sold their homes, thinking they would not need them anymore. Or they ran up huge debt thinking they wouldn’t need to pay it back because they’d be raptured. But there were some significant ones in the 70’s too. I remember being about 10 years old and given a giant button to wear at church that said, “You better get right – before you get left”….meaning you should get right with God before the rapture happens because then your chance will be over.
Now, I’m sure my skepticism of the rapture theology is coming through. I certainly don’t think it’s true, and I will admit my bias to you on that. But, I want to acknowledge that this is an important doctrine to Evangelicals. Yes, it sounds crazy to our Latter-day Saint ears, but some of our doctrine and historical events sound crazy to their ears too. So is there anything in this rapture idea where we can find a good inroad for conversation? I’m so glad you asked.
Which brings up another really interesting issue here. We’ll use the rapture issue to illustrate. So, the main verse that gets used for supporting the idea of the rapture is in 1 Thes 4. This is Paul writing to the church there because they’re worried. They believed that Jesus Christ would come back in their lifetimes. But, enough time has passed since Jesus’ resurrection and the time of this letter, that some members in their church have died. They’re feeling confused and worried because Jesus has not actually come back yet. So they’ve written to Paul to help sort them out with the question, “How can some of our friends have died if Jesus was supposed to come back before any of us died?” Paul, in his wordy kind of way, responds like this…
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
In context, you can see that Paul is helping them understand that their dead still matter and that Jesus has not abandoned them or forgotten the plan. He also has not turned his back on their own suffering. Paul is encouraging them to endure the suffering they have now, and the potential future suffering of the tribulation. The entire point of this letter is for Paul to tell them – in this beautiful figurative metaphor of being “caught up in the air” with their dead – is for Paul to reassure them that they will be reunited with their dead, and all of them – living and dead – are in the hands of Christ. People who believe in the rapture take the “in the air,” the Greek word here is just the word that means “the Heavens” or more literally, “The clouds of the Heavens” and make it literally mean the space of atmosphere above your head. They’re taking what it figurative and making it very, very literal.
There is an entire area of study called Hermeneutics that is concerned with this. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation – or how do we get the correct meaning out of a text. One of the rules of hermeneutics says that is you take a figurative word, but apply a literal meaning to it, things are going to go weird. The best example of this is that Jesus gives us the metaphor that he is like a mother hen stretching her wings out to cover her chicks. This is a metaphor – but if we commit a hermeneutical error here, we take the metaphor as literal and start to believe Jesus is a giant cosmic chicken.
Now, Latter-day Saints, before you get too comfortable, we do this too. It’s not just Evangelicals. We take vague metaphors from scripture and turn them into concrete proof of something literal. One of the best examples of this is when we say there is proof for the Book of Mormon found in the Bible. There isn’t. Not that anyone else would accept anyway. Ezekiel 37 is a great example of this. We Latter-day Saints read in there about the sticks of Judah and Joseph and apply them to the Bible and the Book of Mormon. And it’s a lovely application of those verses. I can certainly look at those verses and interpret them that way with a lot of gladness. But it’s not actually what they say. It’s an application, but not a literal meaning. We have to bring outside knowledge/belief into that verse to pull out the meaning we’re getting. For your own use, for your own spiritual edification, that’s a great way to apply a metaphor to something it didn’t originally refer to. In the original chapter of Ezekiel, read in context, the 2 “sticks” are the Nothern and Southern kingdoms. That is the literal meaning of the text. It’s a little more complicated for us because we believe in ongoing revelation outside of the Bible, so we can apply the metaphor with some certainty to the Book of Mormon. This is the difference between exegesis (figuring out the actual meaning of a text by only looking at the text itself) and eisegesis (bringing your own ideas and sort of reading them into the text.) It’s totally correct to say, “we read about the 2 sticks and apply that idea to the Bible and the Book of Mormon”….but its going to far to say, “This verse in Ezekiel is literally about the Book of Mormon.” It might be a subtle difference, but we have to be able to hold both, “here is what the text is actually talking about” and “here is how we’re applying it.”
I say all of this – and we’ve gone way over on time this week – because this is how a lot of misunderstanding happens between Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals. Both groups tend to think that our application of a verse is identical to what the verse actually says, and it’s just not. The argument goes back and forth, “this is what it means”…“no, this is what it means”…when a more profitable path is something like: there is a difference between the meaning of a text, and the ways in which it can be reasonably applied, we have very different applications of some verses, let’s get curious about why.
Well, enough of that. Please join me next week where we’ll have more fun stuff to talk about.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 21–23; Mark 11; Luke 19–20; John 12
May 15, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Holy Week
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Holy Week. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before we get started though I want to remind you about the upcoming FAIR Conference, August 2-4 in Provo at the Experience Event Center. I will be there and would love to say Hi to you. I’ll be speaking one of the days, not sure which. You can register online at https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023 and there are options for viewing online or in person. Let me tell you about one of the talks that will be happening. You may know who Keith Erekson is, but if you don’t he is the director of historical research for the church. He had a really good book come out a couple of years ago called, “Real vs. Rumor” where he gives really helpful instruction about how to think critically about when you hear a “historical” story. I love history – if you’ve listened to this podcast at all you know that I try to give you the history of why certain theologies or practices developed – but I am by no means trained as a historian. So I adore Keith’s work because he helps normal people like me think better. He really blends expertise in history with a desire to help regular people learn from history in a way that is helpful. I can’t tell you how excited I am to hear his talk. So, come to the FAIR conference and geek out with me.
Okay, onward with our work here. Today we’re talking about Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Yes, I know, it’s already past – you’re probably watching this in late May and Palm Sunday was many weeks ago. But I’m brining it up now because 1) It’s contained in our CFM readings this week and 2) It got talked about a lot at General Conference and I’ve heard a number of really interesting conversations and questions come up about it from lifetime Latter-day Saints. So, our text for this week is Matthew 21:8:
And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.
I think the talks in General Conference did a good job of talking about what Holy Week is and why it’s important. So I’m not going to repeat that information. If somehow you missed those talks go back to the recordings of the April 2023 General Conference and check them out. What I want to do here is talk about what Holy Week is like for Evangelicals, why they’re doing what they’re doing, so that you might have a better conversation with them. And honestly, this is a topic where we Latter-day Saints might have our own imaginations expanded by learning about what they’re doing. I don’t think a re-creation of the typical Evangelical practices of Holy Week should just be copied and used in our church – but Holy Week has been important to believers for 2,000 years and it might be time to figure out how to put some of that into our own context, in a way that fits our church culture, and leads Saints closer to Jesus Christ.
Okay, so you know what a Latter-day Saint Holy Week, Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday is normally like. Let me tell you what an Evangelical version of that is like. And with all things Evangelical there is a wide spectrum. But one familiar dynamic you will notice is that more people are interested in coming to church on Easter (and Christmas) so Evangelical churches try to capitalize on this as much as they can.
Version 1 – The “lowest church” version (you’ll remember we talked about what “low church” and “high church” are in a previous episode – “low church” here just basically means very little emphasis placed on ritual, ceremony, or formalness) of this that I can think of is the “Helicopter Egg Drop.” And this is exactly what it sounds like. For about $500 a church can hire out a helicopter for the hour, it goes up, drops anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 plastic eggs filled with candy in a field – and the kids go crazy hunting for them. This is usually part of the Sunday morning worship, not a side-event on Saturday or something, and it’s a big deal for them. It does draw families out. The kids love it, so their parents love it, and the church hopes this will translate into families being interested in getting involved with them. And it frequently works – churches wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t. And for some churches, this embodies their entire philosophy toward Holy Week and Easter itself – it’s essentially a “put on your best face and try to draw in new families” event. The churches are perfectly aware that dropping eggs out of a helicopter isn’t exactly the essence of how the Savior might want to be recognized on this day. They’re not confused about that, they’re just trying to make a really easy onramp so that the family who comes to church because they want to see a helicopter drop 20,000 eggs (and I’ll be honest – I kind of want to see that too) might be wooed so that eventually their interest in developing a relationship with Jesus grows. They’re playing a long game, and they do a few events like this a year, and it seems worth it.
I will say this though, there are churches that use this strategy full-time. Every single Sunday is about impressing people in hopes that they will want to become more involved eventually. I’ll give you an example that is both dazzling and horrifying (even many Evangelicals I know can see both sides of this one.) Years ago I worked as a full-time children’s pastor at a church in California. They were lovely people who had a passion for Jesus and wanted to know how to bring other families into their fold so that they could teach them about Jesus too. So I was working for this church and it had become obvious that the buildings they were used for children’s ministries were getting old and looking run down. Instead of just doing a refresh of carpet and paint, they decided – with very good motives – that they wanted to have buildings that looked closer to a children’s museum than a children’s Sunday School building. So, they sent me on a trip across the country to go visit a church that had done this very thing.
My purpose for this trip was to get a tour of the building and come to understand what aspects had been worth the investment, what had not, and what elements our church back in California could be inspired by. They start the tour by showing me the check-in desk for school-age children – this is a common feature for bigger churches – the children are brought to that point, checked into their class, and sometimes the parents are given a vibrating pager (like you get while waiting for a restaurant sometimes) and the kids are off to their classes. But in this church, after the check-in process was complete the worker would go to the wall behind the desk and open up 1 of 4 round hatches. When it was open it revealed a slide. The child would then be invited to slide from the main floor down to the floor where their classroom was. A monitor above the portal showed a video feed from the bottom where the parents could see their child greeted by a worker and taken to class. Then they took me to the infant/toddler area – instead of having some toys and blankets laid out on a floor for the nursery-age children they had constructed a room where 2 of the walls were floor-to-ceiling salt-water aquariums filled with exotic fishes. And it went on and on from there. And I’ll be honest, it was impressive. It was exactly children’s-museum-meets-Sunday-School. If I were an Evangelical parent looking for a place my child would be excited to go to on Sundays – this would be it. But much like the churches that use helicopters to drop thousands of eggs, churches that are doing this have to be crystal clear on why they’re doing it and work hard to get people to the actual goal – becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. And sometimes, this goal seems to take second place to “being impressive.” Because it’s really fun to be impressive. When I was an Evangelical I fell into that trap for a long time. And it’s not an easy one to see your way out of.
Version 2 – back to Holy Week – the next version of what Evangelical churches do for Holy Week is a step up in terms of what you might recognize as looking like a religious observation. The bare-bones version of this is…1) Palm Sunday. Congregations members are given palm branches when they arrive for the Service that Sunday. At some point during the service one of the leaders will talk the congregation through the meaning of the Palm Sunday story and the congregation will wave the palm branches in the air. (Many parents know how to teach their children to make little items with the palms after they’ve been waved – they can be made into woven crosses or even little dolls while the children sit in church.) This service is often accompanied by upbeat music and singing. In many scenarios that will be the extent of it. Most churches will allow the mood to stay upbeat until the end. A minority of churches will end the service talking about that while Jesus receives a warm welcome on this day, things would turn against him in the days to come. But most of them will let the mood remain festive. The next even of Holy Week for a church like this might be either a “Maundy Thursday” or “Good Friday” service. Maundy Thursday is traditionally a feet-washing service. And in the past perhaps everyone in the congregation would have the opportunity to have their feet washed, these days it is far more likely to be a symbolic event that maybe a handful of people experience on behalf of the rest of the congregation. The idea here is that Jesus washed the disciple’s feet and we are to remember that he humbled himself to be the servant of all. This is generally a service attended by adults and maybe older children, though I’ve never heard of younger children being prohibited. The same is true with Good Friday. This is a somber service where congregants remember the crucifixion. It’s often an emotional service with music, low lights, scripture readings, and not many bells and whistles. Sunday morning – Easter – can either be a ramped-up version of their normal service, or perhaps a Sunrise service. People are more likely to dress up – Evangelicals normally do not dress up for church – but there are lots of exceptions to that too. All of this is sort of a middle-of-the-road kind of approach to Holy Week.
Version 3 – this is a church that goes all out. They will do all the things just mentioned plus some additional things. The first difference that you would notice is that the palm branches used on Palm Sunday are collected from the congregation – so no little crosses or dolls are made from them. Seems weird at first, but the reason they do this is that those branches are laid out and dried, then later they are burned. The ashes will become the ashes used in next year’s Ash Wednesday service. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season leading up to Easter called Lent. Lent is the 40-day (minus Sundays) period leading up to Easter. The point of Lent is to get your heart ready to celebrate the resurrection. And they will often give up things like sugar to help them stay disciplined and focused during that time. On Ash Wednesday they go to church for a special service where the ashes (made from the Palms) are smeared on their forehead in the shape of a cross. After Palm Sunday they would certainly celebrate Maundy Thursday and Good Friday as well. But they add in a Saturday service that I think you will be fascinated by. It’s called Easter Vigil. It usually takes place on Saturday night. Sometimes this is a simple service, and sometimes it’s a grand production with actors and costumes, lights and music, but here is the point of it…..The service tells this history of humanity beginning in the Garden of Eden. It talks about how and why Adam and Eve left the garden and tells the history of God’s people down to Moses, and then from Moses to Jesus Christ. The point is for them to tell the history of the salvation of God’s people – leading to the resurrection or the doorway to eternity. The highlight of the service is at the end when the congregation is symbolically placed in Heaven celebrating God’s love. I imagine that every adult Latter-day Saint is making connections here to what we’re doing in our temple worship. Some of the same things are going on – we Latter-day Saints have a much more developed theology around what all of that means, and this is a similar practice to what many of you do on a regular basis. So it might be interesting to learn that at least some Evangelicals are doing this once a year – it doesn’t mean the same thing to them that it means to us. But some of the raw materials are there.
I don’t where our traditions around Holy Week will go in the future. We had some great talks and inspiration at General Conference this last time, and we’ll see what that might develop into. I think it’s exciting. Join us next time and we will continue on. See you then!
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 19–20; Mark 10; Luke 18
May 08, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Handling Difficult Texts
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about handling difficult scripture texts. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before we get started though I want to let you know about a very cool event coming up. Every year FAIR hosts the most fantastic 3-day conference that you should think about attending. I will be there, I’d be happy to meet you. I’m speaking on one of the days, though I don’t think the schedule is finalized yet so I don’t know which day. One of the talks I really looking forward to hearing is from Dr. Jenet Erickson. Sister Erickson has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Slate Magazine, and more. She’s a social science researcher and digs into all areas that affect family life. She will be bringing her expertise to talk about the new For the Strength of Youth. Even if you’re beyond the stage of life where you have young people in your home, Dr. Erickson is absolutely worth listening to as she applies wisdom from social science to theological concepts.
Our scripture this week comes from Matthew 19:9:
And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
We’re not actually going to talk about divorce or adultery in this episode – I’m brave but not that brave. What we’re going to do instead is look at the different ways Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints handle the really difficult texts in the scriptures. And like most topics, this one is easier to understand with some historical background.
There has never been a time in history when people of faith have not had to grapple with difficult scriptures. Sometimes there are difficulties come because we don’t understand something about the context or language of a passage, but sometimes they come because the passage is just painful or hard. And all along people have had to figure out what to do with those.
One way of handling it was that sometimes the scribes who would hand-copy the manuscripts would change them intentionally to make the verse easier. Let’s talk about the New Testament as our example. There are lots of changes – or what we call “textual variants” – between various NT manuscripts. In an ideal world we would have original copies of what was actually written by the hand of Paul to compare the manuscripts to. But we don’t. There are no originals. There are only copies of copies. The Book of Mormon and the Bible actually have this in common – no originals to compare them to. Just lots of copies – And those copies vary in quality. There is a branch of study called “Textual Criticism” which isn’t about criticizing what the scriptures have to say, despite the misnomer. Textual criticism is the study of figuring out what the most likely original word was in a text. There are about 5,500 hand-written manuscripts of the New Testament that range in date from about 150 years after Christ to the year 1550 AD. At that point, the printing press was established enough that no one was interested in making hand-written copies anymore. Of those 5,500 manuscripts some are very tiny – about the size of a business card – and just contain 1 verse or a part of one verse. Around the year 350 AD we get the first complete Bible manuscript. It’s called the Codex Sinaitcus and you can go see it – it’s on display at the British Library in London. But before the Sinaitcus we have about a hundred or so fragments, and after it we still get lots of small fragments, but as the centuries go on, better care is taken of newly produced manuscripts, and they last longer, so the newer a manuscripts is, the more likely it is that we have more than just a fragment. Every manuscript is numbered, and some are named – like Codex Sinaitcus. They are also categorized into 5 groups. Category 1 manuscripts are considered the best, but not because they’re the most complete, because they’re the oldest. A Category 5 manuscript might be complete, but if it was created in 1500 it has had the opportunity to have a lot of textual variants.
And, so what? What do we do with this information in our conversation about how to handle difficult texts? If I was fancy, and I knew how to put graphics into these videos, I would show you a copy of Papyrus 28. Papyrus 28 is about 3×2 (considered medium-sized for its category) and is from John 6, the story of the loaves and fishes. It used to be housed at a University in Berkeley, but it was sold to a private collector about 10 years ago. There are 2 really interesting things about 28….1) In that small manuscript there are 5 variations or 5 unique differences between it and other similar manuscripts and 2) it looks like someone took an exacto-knife and cut out 1 word very deliberately. The word that is cut out means, “those who were sitting down.” Somewhere in the history of this papyrus someone probably decided they didn’t like that detail, or they thought it didn’t fit, so they just cut it out. And I suppose that’s one way to solve your issues with difficult texts – just cut the passage out. However, it’s not a very efficient or good way to deal with a difficult text.
Another example of how the scribes deal with difficult passages is to simplify them. Even though the scribes who copy these manuscripts lived across many centuries there are some patterns that appear in their work. One of those patterns is that scribes tended to add words to the text to explain or clarify what they were copying. They were trying to be helpful to the reader in doing this, but for modern purposes what they were doing is giving us a general rule to follow that says, “The shorter reading is probably closer to the original.” If you have 2 manuscripts, and one has extra explanatory words in it, that is probably the manuscript that has been altered. In a similar way, scribes also tended to try and “harmonize” the texts, sort of smooth them out, or make very difficult sayings less difficult. The rule here becomes, “The harder reading is probably closer to the original.” So here we see a slightly more sophisticated version of editing than just cutting the word out of the page – this is deliberate scribal changes because they thought they were doing the right thing.
Modern ways of dealing with difficult passages
So, fast-forward from all of that history to today. How are difficult passages handled today by Evangelicals? There’s 2 answers – the scholars and the people in the pews.
First, there are many very good Evangelical scholars who are offering their very best to help people know what to do with hard passages. The top of the heap, in my opinion, is Dr. Phyllis Trible. Her landmark book is called, “Texts of Terror” and in it she takes the 4 most disturbing passages from the Old Testament – the stories of Tamar, Hagar, the Daughter of Jephtha, and the unnamed woman whose husband is a priest of Isreal, and commits human sacrifice on her. All of these stories are extremely disturbing. And she goes through them one by one and helps the reader understand what is going on beyond all the violence and sadness that are at first so shocking. Her book is a very good example of showing what a very careful and close reading of the text can do as far as figuring out what in the world is happening. But that’s what scholars are doing, not what people in the pews are doing.
And most of the time what people in the pews are doing is…. avoiding the hard passages. In their minds at least, they tend to swap them out for broader 30,000 feet comments that are much easier to listen to. Something like, “Well, I don’t know what Jesus was really saying about divorce here, but I do know he said we’re not supposed to judge, so I’m just going to let God sort ‘em out.” It’s not that Evangelicals don’t have scholars putting out work on these texts, they do, they just prefer more practical answers that let people get on with life. One of the values in the Evangelical church really is an anti-intellectualism which comes across as just trying to get out of the scriptures what they need to live life, and move on. In 1994 an Evangelical scholar, who is also an excellent historian, wrote a book called, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”….and it turns out that the scandal is that there isn’t much of one. Things have gotten somewhat better for them since, at least at the academic level. In 2004 Christianity Today said that Noll’s book did more to change the trajectory of Evangelicalism than any other that had been published in that decade. But the anti-intellectualism in the pews remains. Several authors and speakers in the Evangelical world have tried to address this, but none of them seem to get much traction.
So, how do Latter-day Saints manage difficult texts?
A good test case for this is Doctrine and Covenants 132. That is a difficult chapter that many people need a moment or two when trying to wrap their minds around it. So how do we see people handling it?
For many people, a path that makes sense can be seen in what Scripture Central is doing (they used to be called Book of Mormon Central.) They are not shying away from the passage or making any excuses about it, they’re trying to help listeners contextualize it in history. They’ve got 15 videos explaining it from various angles that take top-level scholarship and make it accessible to regular people. Some of those are bite-sized little videos, while others are 90 min long. But what all of them are trying to do is help the listener pull the lens back and understand the entire context of a passage.
If you go to the FAIR website – which stands for Faithful Answers Informed Responses – you will see similar work being done, but with a different focus. If you have a specific difficulty or question about a passage, chances are very good that one of the FAIR scholars has already written a lot to address that very question. And not just with scripture passages, but with issues from church history, and current events (they have a new page up on understanding what in the world is going on with the Daybell trial, for example.) And they also have very focused responses like Sarah Allen’s 69-part response to the CES Letter.
And how about Latter-day Saints in the pews?
This is just my experience, but it is my experience, and I’m going to tell you something hard. One of the things Latter-day Saints do when they come across a difficult passage in the Bible is immediately jump to, “Well, clearly this is not translated correctly.” And…it’s lazy. Not because it can never be true – we all share the belief that the Bible has mistranslations. It’s lazy when it’s the first solution you jump to when you come across a difficult passage. There is no list of, “these are the passages translated incorrectly,” though you know from the beginning of this video that the science of figuring out what the New Testament actually originally said is difficult. A better approach is that if you come across a passage you don’t know what to do with, don’t jump immediately to, “mistranslation.” Go to the FAIR website or the Scripture Central website and do some reading about that passage. Both are working hard to make scholarship accessible. If you want to geek out even more go to the BYU Studies page and look up some of the academic work on that passage. Go to the BYU Scripture Citation Index – you can search up the passage and see every time it has been referenced in a General Conference talk all the way back to 1830. My point is that the tools are there for you to use and if you do some of the work to learn how to study better you can get more out of your scripture study. This kind of work isn’t a replacement of the Spirit – without the Spirit you’re never even going to get off the ground – but without taking in some content from people who know more than you, the Spirit only has so much to work with.
On a more positive note, the other way I’ve seen Latter-day Saints manage really difficult passages is with the kind of faithfulness that says: I don’t understand what is happening – Doctrine and Covenants 132 is a great example here – but I’m willing to let it ride for a while and see if I can find a way to think about it that’s helpful. One of the greatest gifts in our church is the idea that ongoing revelation exists – you don’t have to have everything all figured out today. Eternity is long, and your intelligence will have forever to learn and grow.
I hope this was helpful to you. This issue of difficult scriptures has been with people of faith for as long as scriptures have existed and I hope out discussion has helped you think about how you handle difficult passages. Join me next time and we’ll take up a new topic.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 3: Sacred or Secret? with Rene Krywult
May 07, 2023
On this episode, Rene Krywult joins us for a discussion about whether temple ordinances are sacred or secret.
René Alexander Krywult, a native of Vienna, Austria, Europe, has been a member of FAIR for over twenty years and has been instrumental in founding the German-speaking FAIR group. He is a software developer and project manager for a European financial institution. He is married to Gabriele Krywult, and they have four children and three grandchildren.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Luke 12–17; John 11
May 01, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Heavenly Mother
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Heavenly Mother. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Before we get started though I want to let you know about a very cool event coming up. Every year FAIR hosts the most fantastic 3-day party. When I say “party” what I mean is getting to listen to and interact with some of the smartest people in our church. They give a talk on what they’ve been working on – and frequently the FAIR conference is the first place their ideas are presented in public. That’s my kind of party. And maybe it’s yours too. This year the FAIR conference is on August 2-4 (Wed – Friday) at the Experience Event Center in Provo, Utah. You can buy tickets to attend in person, or online by going to https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023. I will be there all 3 days and would so happy to meet you. I am presenting a talk on one of those days, I don’t know which on yet, but will let you know once the schedule is finalized. 2 of the talks I am very much looking forward to are…1) Michaelbrent Collings is an American horror novelist and he’ll be talking about, “Horror: the Genre of Goodness, Godliness, and Hope.” Horror is not my genre at all, but I am completely intrigued by what he will say. 2) Dr. Janiece Johnson – her specialty is religious history – will be speaking on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I’ll try to highlight the talks every couple of weeks here – if you enjoy sitting around listening to me, you probably will enjoy sitting around listening to my friends too. Okay, back to our scriptures…
Our scripture this week comes from Luke 13:34:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
Evangelical Views
So here we have God compared to a mother hen. The traditional Evangelical conversation around this verse goes something like this….Yes, God is compared to a female chicken, a hen, but this verse does not require us to believe God is female any more than it requires us to believe God is a Cosmic Chicken. Fair enough. No one is asserting that God is a giant chicken.
And for a long time, this was the boundary on thinking about God and gender. God is male, and images in the scripture that refer to God as female such as a hen, a woman looking for her lost coin, a woman in labor, a nursing mother, a mother bear, and a mother eagle….these were just poetic images and not to be taken too seriously. But the boundary has certainly changed in even the last 10 years. It used to be that if you wanted to talk about any kind of feminine identity for God you were being scandalous. Only the most liberal of the Evangelicals would be talking about this. But last year Eerdmans published 2 books on the topic. If you are not familiar with the Evangelical publishing world Eerdman’s is willing to push the boundaries, and that’s been true for a long time. They’re not Zondervan or Lifeway which are going to take a very traditional Evangelical line, and to my knowledge have not, and would not, publish something about a feminine identity for God. But Eerdman’s isn’t ignored by Evangelicals either. So it’s a big step forward that this is being talked about.
The traditional Evangelical view is not all that interesting to talk about. God is male. End of story. So I’m not going to spend much time there, but what I do want to talk to you about is the direction the Evangelical world is headed on this topic – even if all of them aren’t there yet. And that direction takes 2 flavors. In order to get at what those flavors are I’m going to summarize 2 different books – and the reception they’ve received. By the end of this section, you should have a good idea of where the line on this topic has moved to. After that, we’ll compare the Latter-day Saint view.
The first one is, “Women and the Gender of God” by Dr. Amy Peeler. She is a professor at Wheaton College, which they like to say is the, “Harvard of the Evangelical world.” It’s probably closer to the, “BYU of the Evangelical world.” That probably gives you the right feel for it. Peeler’s PhD is from Princeton and she’s very well-liked in the Evangelical world. The biggest point her book is trying to make is that while Jesus Christ was male, he was born of a woman. His flesh does not exist without her flesh. She’s modernizing an argument first made by Augustine when he said, “(Jesus) was born of a woman; don’t despair, men; Christ was happy to be a man. Don’t despair, women; Christ was happy to be born of a woman.” And her book has been very well received by Evangelicals. But as Latter-day Saints you might sort of tilt your head at that and think it’s awful long path to just connect 2 points. Why not just say we have a Heavenly Mother? Evangelicals can’t get there. You can see their longing to – Peeler is brilliant and she works hard in this book to help people make connections to the idea that God is not solely male. But it’s an incredible amount of effort to get to a far less radical point than Latter-day Saints make about Heavenly Mother. But Peeler’s book demonstrates the idea that the boundary on this topic has in fact moved, even if it hasn’t moved all that much.
In contrast, there is another book that shows pushing the line too far will still get you a slap on the hand in the Evangelical world. The book, “God Is” by Mallory Wyckoff is fascinating, but ultimately most Evangelicals appear to reject where she goes. To be fair, Wyckoff does not have the same kind of educational background as Peeler does. So the work is automatically going to be quite different, and that’s okay. I dont think that’s what gets her rejected. Here’s what she does in the book…She takes the idea that God is not merely male and expands on it using a kind of panentheism that says: because God resides in us, we are God. So if God resides in a woman, then God is a woman. And that line is just too far for Evangelicals. When you read some of the Evangelical criticisms of her book you see the logic of G.K. Chesterson (one of the patron saints of the Evangelical world) – he once said, while talking about this idea, that if a man leans too heavily on the idea that God is part of him – and not also something quite separate from him – then he ends up worshiping not God, but self.
You can see from these 2 examples that Evangelicals are very much grappling with ideas about God and gender….but you can also see that they’re in a muddle it’s hard to find a way out of. I’ll point out one other Evangelical take on this issue. If you watched the “Certain Women” episode a couple weeks ago you heard me talk about what women in leadership or ordained ministry is like for Evangelicals. And an interesting little piece of theology pops up here for the Evangleicals who ordain women. In the past, the Evangelical positon on ordained women could be summed up in something CS Lewis said, which is something like: a woman can not be ordained because it would confuse people into thinking that she represents God, and God is not female. And one of the modern-day reasons why some Evangelicals ordain women is so that their members in their congregation can experience what it is like to see the feminine side of divinity. They can’t make the jump to, “there must be a Heavenly Mother,” but they can say something like: All humans are created in God’s image, therefore God must contian within himself both feminine and masculine. So when a woman is ordained so that the congregation can experience a feminine divine through her, they’re trying to get to the idea of a Heavenly Mother, without ever having to get there. Interestingly enough, in oru Latter-day Saint church we do not ordain women, and looking through this lens, it makes sense why we do not need to.
The take-away here is that your Evangelical friends and family might be more interested in this topic than you think.
If you want to know my first take on hearing about Heavenly Mother, I’ve told you my first experience a few weeks ago back in that “Certain Women” episode. And you might find that interesting.
Latter-day Saint view
So, this is tricky territory. Let’s just acknowledge that. My sense is that 30 years ago that very few people were talking openly about this doctrine, and for understandable reasons. And things have shifted for us too over the years.
There is a resource that if you don’t know about, you should. The BYU Scripture Index – it’s an online site scriptures.byu.edu where you can search general conference talks all the way back to 1830, you can also search “Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith” as well as the “Journal of Discourses” (which can be a tricky reference to wade through – you have to know what you’re looking at in order to not take things wildly out of context) but it’s there and you can search it as well. And you can search for how often certain words or phrases have been used. Pro tip: you might have to do a little research on the historic phrasing of certain words. For example, if you search for “Heavenly Mother” you will only find references going back to the 1970’s, but that’s because before that she was much more likely to be referred to as, “Mother in Heaven.” This doesn’t signal some big theological change as much as it demonstrates how the English language changes over time.
So, anyway, if you use the BYU Index to research Heavenly Mother you find several talks from the last 20 years, a couple in the 1980s and 90s, a couple in the 1970’s, 1 in the 1940’s, and 1 in 1885.
But there have been more things said outside of Conference and the best round-up of those to my knowledge was presented at the BYU Studies symposium in 2011 called, “A Mother There” by David Paulsen and Martin Pulido. It’s a long paper, 28 pages, but it does a great job of tracing the teachings throughout history. We also see Heavenly Mother referenced in the Family Proclamation. And, most notably, Elder Renlund’s talk a couple years ago titled, “Your Divine Nature and Eternal Destiny.”
And, we have our own tension of what can – and can not – be said about her. In the Evangelical world that tension is mostly around, “what is true?” and ours certainly has that element to it but also adds in a layer of, “Even if it is true can it be said?” That layer of carefulness is hard for Evnagleicals to understand as they don’t really have an equivalent dynamic. They don’t have a category called, “sacred things that should be kept private.” Latter-day Saints clearly have that category and the only quibble comes in trying to decide everything that should be in that category.
I do want to take minute to talk about the Catholic perspective here. It’s not my area of research or specialty – for that I would refer you to frequent FAIR speaker Robert Boylan. But there is an interesting thing happening in Catholic theology that Latter-day Saints will find interesting.
You are probably at least vaguely familiar with the idea that Mary the Mother of Jesus has a special place in their theology. Exactly what her position is has changed over the centuries, but her importance has never gone away. Non-Catholics sometimes day that Catholics, “pray to Mary” and while that is sometimes true, it’s probably more accurate to say that they are speaking to Mary and asking her to pray on their behalf. Mary is also sometimes called The Queen of Heaven, or The Mother of God in their theology. The reason I point this out to you is that it revelas the same issue the Evangelicals are trying to grapple with: They long for a feminine divine, but can’t quite work it out theologically how to get there.
Well, we are out of time. We’ll probably pick this topic up another time or two before the year is out. I hope you enjoyed this. Come back next time and we’ll take up another topic.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – John 7–10
Apr 24, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Is It True? How do you know?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about truth – and how you learn it. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our scripture this week comes from John 7:15-17. Jesus has gone up to the temple to teach and we get this:
The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” (NIV)
So, the question is: Do we approach gospel learning differently? Both groups, Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals are highly interested in gospel learning. And yet, we do seem to go about it in very different ways. We’re going to start with the question on a really practical level – what do the 2 groups do when they’re trying to engage in gospel learning, and then we’re going to look at the experiential level that Jesus is talking about in this section of scripture.
Scripture Reading
First, let me make an outsider’s observation. I’m new enough to being a Latter-day Saint that I can still see some things as an outsider. Both groups, Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints fret a lot on this topic. We both worry that people sitting in the pews don’t know their scriptures well enough, that the youth are uninterested in gospel learning, that things were better in a previous generation where more people were interested in studying. Lifeway Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptists frequently puts out studies showing the state of how frequently their people engage with scripture, and much hand-wringing ensues. Pew Research, which is not denominationally based, also regularly puts out studies on how much scripture study various groups do.
My observation is that people in both groups – Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints – fear that their people are not doing this enough and that others are doing it better. I don’t have a study to cite here, but my sense is that many comments get made in Latter-day Saint Sunday School about how we need to do better studying scripture. There might even be worries that Evangelicals do this much more frequently than Latter-day Saints do. And it might surprise you to know that Evangelicals look at Latter-day Saints and think we’re doing better. So what does the research say?
In a 2017 study, Lifeway Research noted that 49% of Evangelicals read a little bit of scripture every day. That’s pretty good and it clearly shows that they’re interested in gospel learning. The same study – done in 2017, so prior to the introduction of Come Follow Me – says that 77% of Latter-day Saints read a little bit of scripture every day. Now, this is survey research, so we’re taking people’s word for it that this is actually what they’re doing – and it’s true that there could be some inflation here. But it’s also safe to assume that if there is inflation on the Latter-day Saint responses there is also inflation on the Evangelical responses. This isn’t a “we win” conversation (in other words, you don’t get to use this information to be a jerk and lord it over your Evangelical friends) but it does show one view into how we both approach gospel learning. But it is just one view, so here are some others.
What Kind of Information
Another way to look at this question is to consider what kind of information the 2 groups are taking in – in other words, what forms the basis of their gospel learning? If you’re a Latter-day Saint the main things are probably: talks in Sacrament Meeting; Lessons in Sunday School/EQ/RS or youth classes; Seminary and Institute classes; General Conference talks, family or private scripture reading, Come Follow Me reading and the various podcasts about them, resources like FAIR, books on gospel topics, and maybe a few other things.
And Evangelicals have a fairly similar list. They listen to sermons in church; they have Sunday School and classes for youth; they don’t really have an equivalent to Seminary and Institute in the same way we do – what they call seminary is an academic graduate school program that most “normal” people don’t ever attend. I was a weirdo and went to Evangelical seminary and got a Masters in Divinity, but most Evangelicals don’t access that kind of learning. While they don’t have something to compare to General Conference talks like we do (where the words said are coming from the centralized authority of the church) they do have a wide range of various conferences they attend. And they have books, podcasts, and organizations that try to supplement and increase people’s learning.
Lectionary reading vs. spontaneous reading
And while both groups do a lot of gospel learning through scripture reading, the recent Come Follow Me change adds an interesting contrast. I’ve only been a Latter-day Saint since the invention of CFM, but my understanding is that prior to that the Sunday School curriculum followed roughly the same pattern (a year for OT, a year for NT, a year for BoM, and a year for PoGP) but that family or individual reading was based on need or preference of the individual family or individual who is reading. And this is roughly the system Evangelicals live in. Their churches set the topics/scriptures for their classes and groups, but they decide for themselves what to engage in for private scripture reading. Some churches do a corporate push toward something like, “We’re all going to read through the Psalms this summer.” But those are special initiatives and not the regular pattern.
Interestingly enough, the invention of Come Follow Me actually places Latter-day Saints in alignment with most of the rest of the Christian world outside of Evangelicals. You might not realize this but CFM is a Lectionary. What’s a lectionary? A lectionary is a set list of which scriptures are to be read during which weeks. The most commonly used one around the world is called The Revised Common Lectionary and is used by millions of Christians around the world. It runs on a 3-year cycle, compared to our CFM which runs on a 4-year cycle. CFM is also different because it includes some commentary, ideas for discussion, ideas for family and the like, but in essence, it’s a lectionary. Most Evangelicals would turn their noses up a bit at the idea of following a lectionary because they are fiercely independent and want to decide for themselves even down to the question of, “Which scripture should I read today?” There are pros and cons to that attitude, but that would be a significant difference in how we approach gospel learning.
Preaching scripture
Another way that both groups engage in learning the gospel is through listening to talks or sermons. And Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints are roughly in the same category here. The biggest difference is that Evangelicals usually have 1 person, or perhaps a small team of people, who are delivering sermons week after week. While Latter-day Saints spread that responsibility around to everyone. And Latter-day Saints you already know the kinds of content you hear in Sacrament meeting talks, so let’s look at what Evangelicals are preaching about.
In 2019 the Pew Research Center analyzed 50,000 sermons that were posted online from over 6,000 churches (Evangelical, Catholic, Mainline, and Historically Black). They compiled the data to look for trends. The average length for an Evangelical sermon was 39 minutes, which is roughly comparable to the total number of minutes that Latter-day Saints spend in Sacrament Meeting listening to talks. We’re probably under that by a bit, but not much. The researchers wondered what the distinctive things each group was talking about, and found that the unique things (this doesn’t mean the most common things – this means the things they’re talking about that others are not) Evangelicals talked about were 1) Eternal Hell 2) Losing salvation 3) Trespassing or sin. It’s a bleak list and we might be tempted to look only at the bleakness of it but on the upside, it does show that Evangelicals are thinking hard about these topics. Evangelical speakers also made far more references to other books in the Bible. They might be preaching a passage from Luke but will take care to show how that passage relates to or references other places in the Bible. Latter-day Saints have their own version of this – we just tend to make connections to modern-day talks more than other sections of scripture. Another trend was that the bigger the Evangelical church, the less likely they were to mention anything at all about the Old Testament. We might have some underlying feelings in common here when it comes to knowing how to talk about the Old Testament.
There are a lot of other practical level ways to think about this question, but I want to switch over to thinking about how gospel learning happens on the experiential level.
Service and Life
Similar to Latter-day Saints, Evangelicals talk a lot about learning gospel principles through serving others, serving their families, and serving God in a general sense. This seems to be a major way both groups are living out Jesus’, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” Both groups also have a good understanding of the fact that the principles of Jesus have to make sense in real life, not just as philosophies. Latter-day Saints don’t love philosophical types of thinking much for our own reasons, and Evangelicals don’t love it because it’s not practical. They are very pragmatic and not usually inclined to care about something that works in theory, but can’t be tested in life. If you’re looking for points of connection, this is a big one where we end up at the same spot.
To make the next part of my point I need to compare Evangelicals to Catholics for a moment. If you think of the typical Catholic service (even if you’ve only seen it on tv) you probably picture priests in robes, the congregation doing a lot of standing, sitting, responding, and lots of ritual, liturgy, and lots of symbolism. This kind of worship is called “high church” and it’s main characteristic is that the service is trying to teach the people something through ritual, beauty, repetition, and experience. Evangelicals generally hate this stuff. It’s too theoretical and not practical enough. It’s not at all what you might expect to see in their services. An Evangelical service would be called “low church” for this reason. It’s not an insult (as if “high” means high value) it’s just a way of describing how much ritual or symbolism is used.
Here’s where it gets kind of interesting.
In this sense, a Latter-day Saint Sacrament Meeting is very similar to an Evangelical meeting. Things are pretty plain-spoken, there isn’t anything mysterious happening, very little ritual. I suppose the passing of Sacrament or communion trays is as close as we come, but outside of that everything is pretty grounded and there is not a lot of learning through experience going on. Latter-day Saint Sacrament Meetings, like Evangelical worship services, would easily be called “low church.”
Latter-day Saints also have access to all the beauty, mystery, ritual and symbolism that is offered in a high church service – we just access it in the Temple. Our temple worship is highly symbolic, full of ritual, very liturgical, full of meaningful words being repeated or used over and over, full of beauty, and very interested in teaching by experience. In this sense, we sort of have the best of both worlds – the down-to-earth practicality of a low-church service, with the experiential learning of high-church in our temple worship. It’s really a compelling combination and most other churches do not have access to both worlds – high and low church. Temple worship is nothing if not experiential.
The other bit of being experiential that comes out is in our theology around why Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden. In Evangelical theology it’s only a punishment. In our theology part of the reason why they have to leave is to go learn from their own experience. The Old Testament tells us many times, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and we put some emphasis on the fact that Adam and Eve had to learn what it was like to be separate from God (kicked out of the garden) so that they would know what to do to be close to him (stay true to the covenants they had made.) The fear of the Lord here is “not liking what it feels like to be out of God’s presence” so the beginning of wisdom is, “so we learn to do the things that keep us in his presence.”
Well, this was a lot – I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the similarities and differences here, and that maybe you picked up a way or two to have these conversations with your Evangelical loved ones. Join us next time and we’ll pick up another topic.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 18; Luke 10
Apr 17, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Church Discipline
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Church Discipline. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our scripture this week comes from Matthew 18:6:
But who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned.
I love Jesus’ powerful word here for people who harm others, especially the vulnerable, especially children. But today we’re going to broaden the scope just a bit and consider all the ways in which church discipline might be necessary. Specifically, I want to look at how this is handled in our church compared to how it gets handled in Evangelical circles. And I will say from the start that I know our Latter-day Saint church has not always gotten this right. And if you’re listening and you are involved in a situation where discipline didn’t happen in a way that you had hoped for, I want you to know that I see you and I know very well that this does not always go down perfectly, and I’m not going to pretend like it does. And at the same time, I want to talk about how the imperfect system we have is different than what Evangelicals do, and why it is that way.
So, if you’ve heard my name before watching any of these videos it is probably because I’ve talked a lot about sexual abuse cases in our church and Evangelical churches. And if you’ve watched the video on my conversion story you know that part of my lived experience is abuse in an Evangelical church and the aftermath of how they dealt with it. I’m aware that I’ve had a very particular experience, in a very particular time and place, and that influences how I think about these things. I think it’s okay to tell you my bias going in.
We’ll start with what church discipline looks like for Evangelicals. The answer, as with all things Evangelical is: It depends. If you remember back a few episodes we talked about how “Evangelical” is not a denomination. There is no central authority. There is no membership for churches. If a church wishes to be seen as Evangelical they may call themselves such – there is no one to police that term. It’s different in our church – if a new church wanted to call themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in exactly the same way as we do, there would be pushback on that. But anyone can open a church in your town and call it something like Journey Church or Crosspoint or some such thing. So it’s almost impossible to fully answer the question of how Evangelicals handle church discipline as there are hundreds of different answers to that question. But we’ll look at some trends.
As you know, Evangelicals are Protestants and at the beginning of the protestant Reformation church discipline was considered part of the mark of the true church. The Catholic church at the time had gone off the rails, and the church leaders offered no discipline or correction. So the Reformers, named three “marks by which the true church is known”: the preaching of the pure doctrine of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline to correct faults.” But it’s been a long time since that has been true. Christianity Today, which is The news magazine for Evangelicals says, “Today, church discipline is feared as the mark of a false church, bringing to mind images of witch trials, scarlet letters, public humiliations, and damning ex-communications.”
Lifeway Research is the research arm of the Southern Baptist Church and while not all Southern Baptists would consider themselves Evangelicals, many would and Lifeway is a good place to look for research. In 2018 they surveyed 1,000 Evangelical pastors across the US and found that almost 60% of them said that their church has never disciplined anyone for any reason. So, how do Evangelicals practice church discipline? Mostly they don’t. I don’t think this is them being lazy or not caring about standards, it’s them playing out their value that each individual hears from God alone and they are each their own prophet. We’ve talked in past episodes about how they really value an attitude of, “You can’t tell me what to do” or “I’m independent and don’t need rules or authority,” and this is one way you can see that attitude play out.
However, sometimes we do see them practice church discipline. The 40% who said that they do have some version of church discipline have not used it in the past 3 years. And there is a slight difference here between big churches and small churches. The smaller Evangelical churches, which grow fewer every year, are far more likely to have at least some version of discipline available to them. The larger churches and they are increasing every year, make it pretty easy for people to hide. If there are 5,000 people who attend your church on a Sunday morning it’s pretty easy to remain a stranger for a long time – and the folks who do that would have no one noticing anything in their life that might require discipline even if a process was in place.
And here is where we see a big difference – in a Latter-day Saint church anyone can ask for a meeting with the Bishop, and even if youd don’t have specific need to ask for one, you are invited at least once a year for a tithing meeting, and every couple of years for a recommend meeting. It just doesn’t work that way in the larger Evangelical churches, which most of them are. Once a church gets over about 500 members on a Sunday access to pastoral leadership starts to diminish. Around the 500 member level members are frequently no longer even allowed to request a meeting with their pastor, though he probably knows the names of many of the families and could recognize many people on sight. But once a church is over 1,000 people that is no longer true for obvious reasons. Some Evangelicals attend a church for a decade and never even meet the pastor.
There is an article from a group called The Gospel Coalition written about a decade ago (so they used the term Mormon) that compared Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints that says, “But compared to the Mormon experience, evangelical churches are a carnival ride of short services, low accountability, and rare church discipline. If you’re a faithful Mormon, you’re not living a 95 percent secular life like so many evangelicals.” So we’re starting to see how some of these differences play out.
Back to the Evangelical churches who do practice some form of church discipline. Some of them like the Evangelical Free Church actually do have a formal process for discipline, but it only applies to the clergy. Others have an informal process where a church leader will use a kind of persuasion/exclusion approach where they will try to persuade a person that what they’ve done is wrong (for example, an unmarried couple living together) but if that person disagrees or isn’t moved by the persuasion the only thing that happens is a “light exclusion” where they are now allowed to do any teaching in the church – meaning maybe they will be asked to step down from teaching the 6th grade Sunday School for example.
Cautionary Tale
There is a really well-documented example of how all of this plays out and you can hear it in a podcast put out by the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today. It’s called “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.” It’s 10 or so episodes long and it’s essentially a cautionary tale of how church discipline goes wrong. The podcast features a church called Mars Hill that was at one time the hottest thing in Seattle. My family and I were members of that church in the early days. My son, who is now a full-grown adult, was a toddler in the nursery when we were there. And Mars Hill was the place to be. It was the fastest-growing church in America and primarily made up of young Seattle hipsters in the early 2000’s. But what happened was the pastor who founded the church really went off the rails in a number of ways that require too much detail to go into here, but suffice it to say that the board of the church came to a decision that the pastor needed to be put under discipline for some of his actions. The church was drawing 15,000 people a week in multiple locations, in 4 states. And when the board wanted to discipline the pastor he initially agreed to submit to it, and then backed out. He decided he would rather quit his role as a pastor than be disciplined by the church. He resigned and moved his family to Arizona 8 years ago. And to this day, the Christian community in Seattle is impacted by this man’s refusal to face accountability for his actions. But, in the Evangelical world, all you have to do is move to a new church or a new city and you get a fresh start. So this pastor moved to Arizona where he formed a new church and is predicted to essentially repeat the process since apparently, he didn’t learn from the last time.
In a Latter-day Saint congregation, this could never happen. If a bishop or stake president went off the rails he can’t just move to a new city and become bishop again. At least not based on policy. Have the policies of the church been poorly enforced at times? Of course. But having some policies around stopping someone who refuses accountability is better than having no policies at all because the end result is there is never an expectation that behavior gets addressed. What this case illustrates is that Evangelicals have decentralized leadership and that Latter-day Saints have centralized leadership. If you don’t like your Evangelical leader or pastor, you just change churches. If a leader is trying to hold you accountable for your behavior, and you don’t like it, you change churches. That is harder to do in the Latter-day Saint world.
Example
I will tell you this next story with a little bit of trepidation. It involves people I care about, so I will disguise some of the details. You’ve probably never heard someone say before, “I have a testimony of church discipline councils”, so here ya go…
I had to take the Evangelical church where I grew up to court to hold them accountable for some things. I didn’t want to and tried for a very long time to find another way. But when the church refused to police itself, I employed the help of the secular courts to enforce some consequences for them. I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad it’s over. It was very hard on me. The church said things in court papers like, “Any damage Jennifer took on due to this is her own fault.” I had to fight them, tooth and nail, to take accountability for their actions.
Contrast this to the experience of a friend. He was abused by a family member who is a long-time member of our church. My friend hadn’t spoken about this to anyone, but in his 30’s he decided to speak to his family about what had happened and found out that he was not the only victim. The cousins of that family banded together, believed the victims, and wanted to help make things right. The legal statute of limitations had long run out so they had no criminal or legal options, which was heartbreaking and frustrating to them. Their next move was to go to the bishop of the abuser. Within a very short amount of time, the man’s stake held a disciplinary council and he was disfellowshiped. If he would ever like to rejoin the church he would need approval from the First Presidency.
When I contrast that experience against my own – where the Evangelical church couldn’t admit what had happened and certainly wasn’t going to disfellowship anyone over it – I understood why church discipline matters in a way I never had before. The church’s actions took the feelings and experiences of the victims into consideration. I relayed the events to a friend who told me about an experience where the details are very different, but the experience of the victim was also prioritized. I know it doesn’t always happen this way in our church. I’ve heard many of your stories in recent years and I acknowledge them and how painful they are. But it does give me great comfort to know that our church at least strives to get this right, and frequently does. I will never meet the men who sat on the disciplinary council of my friend’s abuser. They live in a different state and I don’t even know their names, but their actions of discipline against an abuser knit something back together in my heart, even though it wasn’t my case.
I hope this conversation helps you see and understand some of the differences. Join us next week as we take up a new topic.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 2: Covenants and Ordinances with BJ Spurlock
Apr 15, 2023
Have you ever felt that the gospel is a bunch of things to check off a list? Have you ever wondered what’s up with this “covenant path” that Church leaders talk so much about? If so, join us for this episode with BJ Spurlock as we explore covenants, ordinances, and how God teaches us through symbolism.
BJ Spurlock is a Sunday School teacher in Kentucky, blogs at thingsastheyreallyare.com, and has also written for FAIR and Public Square Magazine.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 15–17; Mark 7–9
Apr 11, 2023
Evangelical Questions: “What Apostasy?”
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the Apostasy. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our scripture this week comes from Matthew 16:18:
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
On the one hand, what a fantastic, reassuring scripture. And on the other hand, you can immediately see how there is a lot of debate about what this actually means. And I’ll be honest, Latter-day Saint friends, some of the ways we talk about the apostasy are adding to the confusion and I think as we go along you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about.
So, first off, I will tell you, when I was an Evangelical the apostasy and the accompanying restoration were the hardest concepts for me to understand. This is the spot in our conversation where it is easiest to see the phenomenon that if you ask a fish to describe water he can’t do it – he has no idea what it means to be without water, so he really has no idea what to compare water to. I took missionary lessons for 9 months and we talked about the apostasy many times, but it was hard for the missionaries to get much past, “the apostasy happened and that’s why we need a restoration.” And even when pressed they could only cite a couple of points in Church History where things were especially bad, usually having to do with the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. But from the Protestant point of view, the pre-Reformation Catholic Church is a blip in a 2,000+ year landscape where God has always been active on the Earth. Honestly, during those lessons, my thought to myself was, “Well, these are young kids who are high school graduates and haven’t studied much history so they are simply unaware of the vastness of Christian history.” But once I started to understand what they were actually saying – and it took me an embarrassingly long time for that to actually click – I started to see that this was a case where Latter-day Saints are using the same language to mean something slightly different. For me, at the end of the day, the nuances of how our church is using that language are better. It’s theologically fuller and more hopeful than the Protestant/Evangelical meanings. And I will also say that this is probably one place in which my formal theological education probably made it harder for me than it would for the average person simply because I was able to see all of the knowledge the missionaries couldn’t and had a hard time reconciling what they were saying with the truth of Christian history. So today I want to talk about the terms we use when talking about the apostasy and help you see how Evangelicals hear them so that maybe you can help someone else short-cut through the difficulties I had.
We’ve talked in many episodes of this series about how Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use the same words differently sometimes and that fuels the confusion between us. You might not be aware but there is a niche dictionary called the Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Theology which gives us a definition that Evangelicals would agree on. Baker is the publisher and it’s a nice, thick 1,000-page dictionary. So we’re going to draw on that a bit.
First, let’s start with the word “apostasy.” Evangelicals don’t use this word a lot, but it’s probably in their vocabulary and according to Baker’s it would mean, “Defection from the faith, an act of unpardonable rebellion against God and his truth. The sin of apostasy results in the abandonment of Christian doctrine and conduct.” And this gets used in two ways.
First, and probably most common, is that apostasy is something an individual person does after making a covenant or decision to follow Christ. “He went off the rails into apostasy.” Basically, a person who used to believe the right things, but no longer does.
Second – and you’ll see that this is where the confusion comes in – this word can be applied to large groups of people. They see widespread apostasy as an eschatological sign – meaning a sign of the end times signaling the second return of Christ is near. So if the whole world goes into apostasy, the return of Christ is near. Here is how they get there. Just like us, Evangelicals can read the Old Testament and see that constant pride-cycle. The Israelites follow God for a while, then they start to prosper and fall away from God, then God allows bad things to happen to them and they get back in line. They see this as a prototype of what will happen before the second coming of Christ. They base this on 2 Thes 2:3 “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day (the return of Jesus Christ) will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.” In that verse, they hear that an apostasy absolutely will happen, but only in the future, and only right before Christ comes again. So when we say, “the apostasy happened” it just doesn’t compute for them because if an apostasy happened, surely Christ would have come again.
Another term that causes some confusion here is “priesthood.” Now there is a lot to say about priesthood, and we’ve got several episodes coming up on that. When talking about the apostasy Latter-day Saints would say, this comes straight from the Church’s website, “(After Jesus Christ ascended back to Heaven)…The Apostles were killed, and priesthood authority—including the keys to direct and receive revelation for the Church—was taken from the earth. Because the Church was no longer led by priesthood authority, error crept into Church teachings.”
That word “priesthood” throws them here because they define it very differently than we do. Again, according to the Baker dictionary priesthood is defined in 4 ways. The priests we see in the Old and New Testaments; the priesthood of all believers; the post-resurrection ordained priesthood which is modernized into, “being a pastor”; the priesthood of Jesus. So when they hear us say, “the priesthood was lost from the face of the Earth” it doesn’t make sense because 1) Clearly that statement can’t be talking about the priests of the Old and New Testaments. 2) It can’t be talking about the priesthood of all believers because believers in Christ have existed on the Earth since his resurrection, which has never gone away. They’re not wrong about that. 3) It can’t mean that pastors don’t exist because clearly, they do. 4) And it can’t mean that Jesus is no longer our great high Priest. So even though they have 4 definitions of “priesthood” available to them, they can’t work out what we’re talking about when we say that the priesthood authority was taken from the Earth.
For Latter-day Saints, there are two additional meanings of priesthood that Evangelicals don’t easily see. Those are 1) Priesthood is the power and authority of God. It has always existed and will continue to exist without end. 2) In mortality, priesthood is the power and authority that God gives to man to act in all things necessary for the salvation of God’s children. Both of those are straight from the church’s website. It’s the power of God, given to humans in certain circumstances to do stuff.
Evangelicals get really nervous right here – and this might sound funny to your Latter-day Saint ears – but they hear that as a very Catholic concept. They have no conceptualization of the idea that certain actions like baptism would need to be done in certain ways, by certain people, according to God’s law. That is not a concept for them. Instead, they would say something like: We take the principle of baptism and contextualize it into our specific culture and there are no absolute rules about how that must be done. It’s sort of a “pragmatism wins” approach to theology. Evangelicals are very pragmatic, for better or for worse. The idea that a person might need to wait to be baptized because baptism requires someone who bears the priesthood is nonsense to them. They would have a kind of “hero cowboy” approach of: Well, I would jump right in and baptize that person who cares about your rules.
There’s a prototype here much earlier in American religion than the Evangelicals. You’ve certainly heard of the Methodist Church. They invented this attitude. Back in the 1700’s, pre-Revolutionary war, the Church of England whose members are called Anglicans was very well established in the colonies, but because all the senior leadership was still headquartered in England things moved very slowly for the Anglicans in America. When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 the Anglican leaders in America were ready to start spreading out further and reach people who were living outside of the cities. Westward expansion wasn’t really in full swing yet, but it was starting and the Anglican leaders wanted to develop churches in outlying places. Their leaders in England made it hard for them – feelings were still pretty sensitive as the war had only been over for a few months. So 2 Anglican brothers, John and Charles Wesley become very frustrated and want pragmatic solutions for how the American churches could self-govern and make decisions about where and how to Evangelize. The Anglican leadership in England said no, so the Wesley brothers started the Methodist church primarily so that they could figure out how to reach people who lived outside of the established cities at that point. They needed and wanted practical solutions. It was sort of a, “Well, I don’t actually need your permission Leaders in England. Goodbye.” And Evangelicals inherited that attitude from them. It’s: you can’t tell me what to do; I don’t need your authority; I can innovate solutions without you getting in the way. It’s very, very American in that sense. And it is a high value for them to solve problems without bureaucracy. So when we say something like, “ordinances require proper authority” they hear “I want to put bureaucracy in your way.”
One final definition I want to touch on is kind of more of a cultural issue than a literal definition issue. From the same article on the church website talking about the apostasy we get, “Because the Church was no longer led by priesthood authority, error crept into Church teachings. Good people and much truth remained, but the gospel as established by Jesus Christ was lost. This period is called the Great Apostasy.” Now, how that sometimes gets taught by members in our church is something closer to, “Absolutely everything from God was removed from the Earth and no evidence of his presence could be found.” And this is maybe were we could be a little more careful with how we say things because that’s actually pretty insulting to the many people who have loved Christ and been faithful to God in the best way they could ever since Christ’s resurrection. In every era of history, we can find that people who love God are alive and well. It’s going to cause some real confusion for Evangelicals if you try to suggest that is not true. And it’s quite needless to suggest that every bit of God’s presence was removed – because that’s not even what our church is teaching, as evidenced by the quote I just read. But still, culturally, some members of the church are still saying it that way.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation about the apostasy and hopefully, you understand a bit more about why this gets muddled between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints, and maybe some ideas about how to talk more clearly about these ideas because this is one area where our church really does have a lot of goodness to offer.
Join us next time and we’ll take up another topic. I hope to see you then.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Easter
Apr 04, 2023
Evangelical Questions: “Don’t Latter-day Saints worship a different Jesus?”
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Easter and Jesus. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
So, you are probably watching this video sometime in April or later. Dear people of the future, I hope the sun is shining and it’s warmed up because I’m recording this in February and the sky just dumped 1 foot of snow.
This week’s topic is a tiny bit different because of Easter. We jump forward in the readings from earlier in the Gospels to the events of Easter this week, we’ll go back and pick up the rest of the Gospels after this. So I don’t have a particular scripture that encompasses the question for this week, but it goes something like this…”Don’t Latter-day Saints worship a different Jesus?”
I’ve you’ve been following along you know that this is our 3rd episode on Christology and there are many aspects to this question. We’ve already talked about the question of, “Is Jesus God?”…and “If Jesus is ‘the son’ doesn’t that prove the Trinity?”…and the question of what worshiping or praying to Jesus looks like. So if you’re interested in those aspects see the earlier videos. And there will be more in Christology coming up, including the ever-popular, “How can you say Jesus and Satan are brothers?” But for today I want to focus on the basics of beliefs about Jesus as Evangelicals or Protestants express them in one of the most important Creeds in mainstream Christianity, the Nicen Creed.
First we need to talk a tiny bit about Creeds as a concept – meaning figuring out even what are they?
So one of my early questions when I was investigating the church was: Aren’t the Articles of Faith a creed? They certainly read like a creed. Afterall a creed is, “a brief authoritative formula of religious belief.” And the Articles of Faith are brief, they’re authoritative as evidenced by the fact that they are found in our standard works, and they spell out our religious beliefs. It’s confusing right?
But the way a creed functions is something else. A creed is not just A statement of belief for a faith group….It is THE statement of belief for that group. That is, it means, “here is what we believe and nothing can be taken away, modified or added.” For Latter-day Saints this doesn’t make any sense when you set it next to the idea of ongoing revelation. You can’t have both. Either you can nail your beliefs down at a single point in time and demand that no changes ever be made OR you can say you believe in ongoing revelation so here are our beliefs but when God reveals more, we will believe that too. So it’s not so much that we disagree with what is contained in a traditional creed – though there is some of that – it’s that we disagree with the entire concept of having a creed because that means saying official revelation is closed. Having said that, let’s talk about the Nicene Creed. What is it? Who wrote it? Why is it important to traditional Christians? So, the Nicean Creed was put together in the year 325 AD. No one who is alive at that time had been alive during the time Christ or the Apostles were alive. More time has passed between the Resurrection and the writing of this creed than has passed since the United States has been a country.
So what happened was there was a guy named Arius who argued that, “if the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not.” This is a heresy called Arianism.
As a side note….if you’ve been paying attention to these videos you remember in the very first week we started talking about this question of, “Was Jesus created?” Your Latter-day Saint ears probably heard that and thought, “Who in the world is even talking about this stuff?” Well, this is a very old heresy that has been talked about since the 300’s and Evangelicals have historically misunderstood Latter-day Saints as believing this. In theological conversations a really bad insult to throw around is that someone is an Arian, meaning they believe this heresy. And Evangelicals think we believe this – that Jesus has not always existed.
So back to the Nicene Creed. Constantine is Emperor at this time and he has made Christianity the state religion. And he’s a smart guy, he can read the tea leaves and see that Arius and his teaching are going to destabilize the entirety of Christianity, and thus the entirety of the Holy Roman Empire. So Constantine asks the leaders of the church to come together and hammer out what the church actually believes, and they do it in a city that was then called Nicea. It’s now called Iznik and it’s in Turkey. If you follow the news you know that some really bad earthquakes recently happened there. The earthquakes were in the southern part of the country, and Iznik is in the northern part, near Istanbul (which used to be Constantinople, named after Constantine.) So the leaders of the church meet in Nicea and want to lay down, once and for all, what the church beleives so that Arias gets knocked down. The creed was a collaborative effort, though there are three main authors called the Capadocian Fathers. They’re from Capadocia (which is also in Turkey, and on my bucket list of places I want to visit. Just google it, it’s gorgeous.) The Cap Fahters are two brothers and their good friend. In the background is also their sister. Her name was Macrana and they all called her The Teacher because she was said to understand theological concept more deeply than any of them and helped them make needed connections. There is a bakery in Seattle named after her. So the three Capadocian Fathers, with Macrena in the background, really are the ones who hammar out the creed.
So the question – the reason we’re going down this path at all – is to ask: What does the Nicean Creed say about Jesus? I’ll read you the section about Jesus…
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”
The only place a Latter-day Saint would quibble here is in saying that Jesus is, “One being with the Father.” In English it sounds a little softer than it does in Greek. In English we can almost imagine stretching that phrase as far as it can go and landing on an understanding of the Godhead that is kind of close to what we believe. But in Greek, which is what the Creed was written in, it doesn’t stretch. The Greek word is Homoousious – meaning, “the same substance.” This is exact spot they take a left turn into Trinitarian thinking and end up having a hard time disambiguating God the Father and Jesus Christ.
I point all of this out because it’s a really interesting example of how Latter-day Saint has taken a creedal statement – that is a statement that is supposed to be set in stone – and applied ongoing revelation to it in a way that undoes the exact left turn that got taken in 325.
I think you’re able to see from here that there are a number of ways to approach the question from Evangelicals of, “Do you believe in the Jesus of the New Testament?” A plain answer would be something like: Yes, that’s exactly what we believe in, and we’ve corrected the error that was introduced 300 years later. But it gets difficult here because Evangelicals do a really normal and human thing at this point. You know, from standing in 2023 looking back over history the year 30 AD and 300 AD seem like pretty much the same thing. If I asked you to tell me 5 developments that had happened over those 300 years, most people couldn’t do it. 30 AD and 300 AD are pretty much the same thing to folks in 2023. So when your Evangelical friends have a hard time seeing the difference between what is taught about Jesus in the New Testament, and what is taught about Jesus in the Creeds, they’re not being difficult or obstinate. They’re just standing in 2023 and can’t squint hard enough to see the difference between the NT and Nicea.
I had a missionary ask me recently, “Do Evangelicals literally think that we believe in another boy named Jesus, who also had a mother named Mary, who grew up at the exact same time, and had the exact same things happen to him?” And no, that’s not what they’re saying when they ask if we believe in the same Jeus. What they mean is that their concept of Jesus has been shaped by the Creeds just as much as it has been shaped by scripture. We might say they have an extra-scriptural book called “the creeds” that they have been shaped by….while they would say that the Creeds are just a summary of what is already in the New Testament. They’re sort of color-blind to the difference between what is in the NT and what is in the Creeds.
So in the 1990’s when Gordon B Hinkley says that we don’t worship the traditional Christ, the Evangelicals lose their minds over it. Because they think the traditional Christ (that is the Christ portrayed in the Creeds) is identical to the Biblical Christ. They can’t tell the difference.
Our rejection of Creeds enables us to embrace a correction to an error that was made by really well-meaning people, long after Christ and the Apostles were gone. If that isn’t the best news ever I don’t know what is. We are not stuck with the burden of someone else’s mistake just because they thought we should be bound to it forever.
The reality is that we share a deep love of Jesus with our Evangelical friends. The vast majority of items we agree with them on, and where we don’t, it’s because we are open to God’s ongoing revelation.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation and have a bit more understanding of why and how this rift happens, and maybe how to talk about it instead. Join us next time and we’ll get to work again.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 5–6
Mar 27, 2023
Evangelical Questions: “Paid Ministry?”
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about paid ministry. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today’s verse comes from Mark 6:7-9:
And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.
And there is so much in that verse alone to talk about, but I want to focus on a question that comes up a lot between Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals: Is it right to pay clergy or isn’t it?
And I will give you a full disclaimer here. I’ve been on both sides of the fence. I’ve earned full-time income working in churches and had no problem with it – and now I’m a Latter-day Saint and I can see why paying clergy is problematic. And, I will also point out that it’s true that our church does in fact have paid clergy – our senior leaders work full-time and are paid for their work. So the answer here has to be nuanced. We can’t just say, “paying clergy is bad,” because we do in fact pay a small number of clergy. The right question is something closer to: Under what conditions should clergy be paid?
As always, let’s start with how Evangelicals think about this issue. And we’ll start with the practical reasons. How does an Evangelical even become a paid clergyperson? There are exceptions to this, but for the most part a person who wants to become ordained as an Evangelical minister must first do a 4-year undergraduate degree followed by a 4-year Master in Divinity (MDiv). There are some types of positions where a person can get away with a 2-year Masters in theology but the standard route is a MDiv. I know this route well – you will notice in my credentials that I earned one. It was a fantastic program, I loved every moment of it. But most MDiv’s come with a pretty hefty price tag, mine did too, so the people who take one are either very serious students of theology who are learning just for the love of learning, or they are hoping to work in a church setting for their employment – in part because they will need to pay off their student loan. So, right out of the gate, on a very practical level, you can see why Evangelicals are set up for a paid ministry situation. And while there are some outliers in either direction, the average salary for an American pastor is about $80,000 a year. Now, the tax situation makes this a little bit more livable for them because a pretty large chunk of that can be claimed as a housing allowance, which is not taxable income. So, there’s our second practical reason why they usually pay clergy – even the American tax system is set up with the expectation that ministers are paid. The third practical reason is that most of the time being a paid minister is a full-time job, meaning they don’t have the opportunity to earn income elsewhere, so they need to be paid.
Moving from the practical to the values of Evangelicals that cause paid clergy to make sense to them. First, Evangelicals, as their name suggests, puts a high value on sharing the message of Christ as they understand it. And while the 75-year history of Evangelicals has always included paid clergy, the idea really found substance in the example of a church in the Chicago area called Willow Creek. Willow Creek was the first of its kind because they made Sunday mornings, not a time for believers to gather and worship, but a time to showcase what a church had to offer for “seekers.” Willow Creek goes on to become the largest church in America for quite a long time and their influence was felt in every Evangelical church across the country. While a typical little church on the corner of some small town would normally have 1 paid minister working alongside several volunteers to present a Sunday morning worship service, Willow Creek employed hundreds of people full-time to produce television-quality services on Sunday mornings. No longer was it good enough for a volunteer to play the piano or guitar, they began employing professional musicians. And the rationale for all of this was that someone who was interested in their church but not yet a believing Christian needed a very specific kind of experience in order to feel comfortable. They coin the term, “seeker sensitive,” meaning that everything is looked at through the lens of the “unchurched” (another term they coined) person. Willow Creek believed that those seekers should be given the most professional presentation possible in order to get them more interested in Jesus. And soon, every other church in the country was trying to imitate them. So the average church on the corner went from one pastor and some volunteers to multiple pastors or other workers who would produce services for them. This fed an explosion in attendance at Evangelical churches during the 1980’s and 1990’s. The downside is that not every church could manage this kind of financial burden and many of them would combine their congregations to make employing these people more affordable.
The unintended result of this was that churches kept getting bigger simply because they were bigger. And any smaller church that was trying to buck the trend and keep Sunday mornings for worship by believers was just financially edged out. The whole experiment doesn’t go all that well for Willow Creek either, to be honest. There were some sexual scandals happening with their top leadership that were not dealt with very well, and they lost well over half their congregation over it. But, the reason I tell you all of this is to illustrate that the Evangelical value of producing services for “seekers” is part of what drove their need to pay people to do the work.
And to be fair to them, the value behind this – wanting to help seekers understand more about Christ – was not bad. It’s even admirable. But there were not enough checks and balances in the system to keep it on the rails as the decades go by.
Another value held by Evangelicals that influences them here is that the members of a congregation are seen as people who need to be fed and taken care of, and I mean that in the very best way possible. It’s not that they don’t think those people can do some of the work of the church, it’s that they want them to feel that the church cares about them, and therefore God cares about them. The church doesn’t want to put too much of a burden on even a willing volunteer because when that volunteer goes out of town for a week, the job won’t get done, and someone else in the church may end up feeling not cared for. Because of this the “most important” jobs are paid – paid work comes with different expectations than volunteer work. A volunteer and a paid worker both sometimes go out of town, but there is a different set of expectations for the paid worker than the volunteer in terms of how things will be taken care of in their absence. So when an Evangelical church hires someone to be the Pastor of Middle Schoolers (yes, that’s a thing) part of why they’re doing that is so the people in attendance have a reliable go-to source for that area of ministry. To put it bluntly, volunteers can flake out, it’s harder for employees to do so. Or at least there are more consequences when they do. These churches place a very high value on what could be called, “customer service” and they don’t want volunteers making that difficult.
Now, Latter-day Saints, the thing you will notice in that discussion is that they use the word, “volunteer” to describe these non-paid positions – and that volunteers are held at slightly lower standards, are seen as less reliable, and are not trusted with the really important jobs in the church. I think you get a sense now of why they’re doing that. But let’s contrast it with what we’re doing.
In our church you are not a volunteer – you are called, sustained, and set apart. Non-paid workers are not given then unimportant jobs, they’re given all the jobs. And we see these positions not as just being good for the church presenting a professional or slick image, but they are good for the person who holds them. Whether you work in the Nursery or are the Bishop that calling is a responsibility where you will help shoulder the weight of what the congregation needs. And we all do it together. And that is part of what shapes our spirituality. Church is not something we pay other people to produce for us, it is something we co-create.
The trade-off here is that Sister Jones might not be very good at giving Sacrament Meeting talks but we all have to listen to her once a year. And Brother Miller hasn’t been able to figure out how to get on Family Search, but he still does his best to learn when he gets the calling to be a Family History consultant. But it’s really, really good for Sister Jones to give a talk, even if she’s not very good at it, because it helps shape her ability to study and articulate her own faith. In an Evangelical church if you are not good at something, you will not be doing it for long, even if you volunteer. The value is on impressing seekers or outsiders. While our value is on shaping the spiritual life of Saints.
But we’re still left with a question I pointed out at the beginning of this video: If our system of calling people to positions of service and not paying them is so good and healthy, why do we pay our top leaders? And it’s a fair question. I don’t have a definitive answer, but let me tell you what I think.
Do you remember earlier in this video where I mentioned that “seeker sensitive” church Willow Creek sort of falls apart in the end? The obvious reason for that is that the man who created that church and led it for decades showed himself to have very poor moral character as evidenced by the sexual abuse he committed. But the less obvious reason is that he had no one above him. He had no accountability. He didn’t answer to anyone. There was no one to have the equivalent conversation that we have about renewing a temple recommend, for example. He had no accountability. And because Evangelicals don’t conceptualize “ministers” as “priesthood holders” he didn’t even have to see himself as accountable to God all that much. In our language he was a bishop without a Stake President to be accountable to. So in our church, you can see how everyone has someone above them they answer to, even the Prophet who answers to God. And when you’re a worldwide church it eventually requires a small number of people who are given a different calling than the rest of us – they are called to work full-time to keep this thing on the rails SO THAT the rest of us can enjoy the blessings that come with ordinary ward-life…callings and releasings and working together and all the goodness and soul-formation that comes with that comes with that. We actually need a structure that goes all the way up so that the vast majority of us can be sheltered in the orderliness of everyone being accountable to someone.
I hope you have enjoyed these thoughts on paid clergy. If you’ve got questions put them down in the comments and I try to get to them as I can, or you can hit me up at jroach@fairlatterdaysaints.org and I will see you in the next video.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Cornerstone: A FAIR Temple Preparation Podcast – Episode 1: The Plan of Salvation with Scott Woodward
Mar 26, 2023
Attending the temple for the first time can be a bit overwhelming. It can seem like a very unfamiliar experience for many, especially because we rarely hear details about what happens there. Understanding the doctrine and purpose underlying the temple will help you be ready and excited to enter the House of the Lord.
The purpose of this podcast is to do just that. We will cover topics such as the Endowment, temple sealings, covenants, ordinances, sacred temple clothing ,and common misconceptions about the temple.
Whether you are preparing for a mission, your own temple sealing, or just desire to receive your own endowment we hope that this podcast will deepen your understanding of the doctrine surrounding the temple.
In this episode, Jacob Crapo talks with Scott Woodward about how the temple and “Plan of Salvation” relate to each other. They discuss what the temple teaches about God’s plan for humanity and how the temple ordinances and covenants play a key role in that plan. Scott teaches religion classes at BYU-Idaho, is a managing director at Scripture Central, and host of the Church History Matters podcast.
Jacob Crapo was born and now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He served his mission in Upstate New York and was an ordinance worker in the Las Vegas Temple. One of Jacob’s dreams is to help build a temple. He is an electrician by trade but his real passion is helping others access the powers of heaven.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 13; Luke 8; 13
Mar 20, 2023
Evangelical Questions: “Certain Women”
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Women and their role in the church. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today’s verse comes from Luke 8:1-3:
Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.
So here we have Jesus and his disciples going around doing what they do – and we also have a group of women who are supporting them financially, and though the text doesn’t say it they were probably offering lots of other practical means of support as well. And so the question presents itself about the role of women in various churches. This is not an easy question answer on a number of fronts, but one of the most complicating factors is that “Evangelical Churches” are not 1 single entity. “Evangelical” is not a denomination or formal group. Evangelicals are a subset of Protestants whose tradition and way of thinking developed about 75 years ago – around the time when the Billy Graham crusades began. But they can be of any denomination – like Baptists or Methodists – or they can be of no denomination at all. So when we say, “What is the Evangelical stance on women?” there is no one single answer to that. There are some general trends and I’ll talk about those, but there are also lots of exceptions. Explaining our LDS understanding is complicated for other reasons. Unlike Evangelicals who have a decentralized structure, we have a very centralized structure so the official list of what women can and can’t do isn’t hard to identify – the difficult thing for us is that there are a lot of feelings around this. And I’ll talk about that a little today too.
The Evangelical View on Women
First, let’s gain some understanding on how Evangelicals view women and why they see it like they do. And the first thing I’ll say is that I’m not talking about the characteristics of Evangelical women. The reality is that they’re not all that much different than Latter-day Saint women in many ways. They love Jesus, they serve their families and community tirelessly, and they want good things for their children. But I’m going to talk about how they’re viewed in their churches, what they’re allowed to do, and why.
I want so badly to be able to explain this to you in a simple way by saying, “there are two groups, and here is what they think,” but the on-the-ground reality is very different than that. I’m going to tell you how I understand it, even though it’s a bit messier. And I know that even though this series is aimed at Latter-day Saints that we have some Evangelical friends who are listening along and I’d love to hear your experience on this issue in the comments – there really is a wide variety of how this plays out here.
So, according to the Pew Research Center roughly 10% of American churches (in all their varieties) will ordain women and allow them to take the top leadership position in a church. And about half of those are Evangelical churches. So a pretty small minority of churches will say that women can be the lead pastor in a congregation. Of the largest 100 Churches in America – churches that have between 10,000 and 40,000 members (a few outliers have up to 100,000 members) 3 have a woman in the senior role, and 4 others have had one in the past, but not now. So the number of churches that have women in top leadership positions is very small, and we’re going to set that group aside for moment. The only reason I really point them out is that sometimes I think Latter-day Saint women look at other churches with a sort of misunderstanding that they all have women who are allowed to do as much as they want, and that’s just not true.
Public Role of Women
Of all the remaining churches, which is the vast majority, there are limits on what women are allowed to do, but those limits vary from church to church. Latter-day Saint women might find it amusing to hear that is that many, many of those churches women are not allowed to speak (meaning teaching or preaching) in a public service. I say that’s amusing because we let 12 year-old-girls teach us on Sunday morning on a regular basis. So sometimes when I hear Latter-day Saint friends complain about women not having enough of a role I just chuckle to myself because right out of the gate girls and women in our church already have a greater role than in many places. Churches that have this practice – women not being allowed to teach a mixed group in public – are doing so because they are trying to obey their understanding of Paul in the New Testament when he says, “a woman should remain silent in the church.” They take that very literally – this doesn’t mean that all of them like it, but they get respect for trying to take scripture seriously.
In other churches women are allowed to speak or teach, but they are restricted from doing other things like bless and serve communion, or perhaps are restricted from being on a governing board or something similar. And here is where women in our church have a lot in common with Evangelical women as girls and women in our church do not do these things either. And it is probably fair to say that Evangelical women have mixed feelings about this just as Latter-day Saint women do. And they manage those feelings much like women in our church do.
In terms of public worship outside of speaking/teaching Evangelical and Latter-day Saint women are pretty similar. In both traditions women are frequently found leading worship – for us that looks like a song leader helping the congregation with hymns, and for them it might look like a praise-band on a stage. In both traditions women are often found doing things like teaching Sunday School, leading youth, planning events, coordinating various service efforts, and more. We sometimes joke that our church would not run without the Relief Society, well their churches wouldn’t run without the women who do the equivalent work.
Ordination
When it comes to ordination it’s an interesting view. Many Evangelical churches don’t even practice ordination, so it’s not an easy comparison to make. Of those who do, they think about it differently. Ordination is usually not about being able to lead priesthood ordinances. There are a few minor exceptions to this and those have to do with who is authorized to do something like perform a wedding. But for the most part ordination is a process through which the community recognizes that a certain person has a call to some kind of ministry and they become ordained as a way for the congregation to say that they will sustain this person in their call. In function this is what we do too. I know that there are women – some whom I like and respect a lot – that would feel really frustrated with that explanation because they feel using the word “ordained” is important. And I sympathize with that pain. But in function, the callings that women experience in our churches work the same way that ordination works in most other churches. It’s recognition that someone is going to be filling a role and the community pledges their support.
Interestingly enough, Evangelical women do not usually receive this formal kind of calling and declaration of support or sustaining. If the 3rd grade class needs a Sunday School teacher, a woman might volunteer, get a bit of training and some materials to use, and that is that. There is no calling and setting apart, no sustaining. While we don’t use “ordination” language for women in our church, the apples-to-apples comparison puts us in a situation that is often better than is recognized.
Heavenly Mother
Another difference to point out is that only the most liberal of Evangelical or Protestant churches would talk about having a Heavenly Mother. And to be fair, it’s not like we know a lot about how to do with her or even have a very developed theology around her – but we do have the concept of her. The only comparison that comes close for Evangelical women is that they can sometimes talk about God having feminine qualities – maybe a reference to the verse about Jesus being like a “mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings.” But it stops there. Before I joined our church I did not know that Latter-day Saints had a belief in a Heavenly Mother. The way I found out went like this…I wasn’t even studying with the missionaries yet, but I wanted to visit a LDS service and just see what it was like. It happened to be Father’s Day. We sang the hymn “Oh my Father,” and I was shocked to see the line about, “I have a Mother there.” But I think I told myself that it was only a song and didn’t think too much about it. But one of the speakers that day was a middle aged man whose children were teenagers. He talked about the work of being a father with all its rewards and challenges, and admitted that he could not have begun that journey in any way without his wife. And then he said something like: It’s just like our Heavenly Father…a Mother is required for someone to become a Father and aren’t we grateful to have a Heavenly Mother.” To say that I was shocked was an understatement. Only the most liberal of liberal churches would talk about God in that way. I was very confused. Later I messaged a friend to ask about it – the only sense I could make of it was that this idea must have belonged to that individual man and he was saying something provocative but it was based in his own belief and logic – it couldn’t possibly be a teaching of the Church.
The Two Trees
Before we are done here I want to make one recommendation. I know this is a tough topic for some women in our church. If nothing else I hope this comparison has helped you see that when you compare like-to-like, we actually have quite a bit to be very pleased with. And still, I think any of us can struggle from time to time. And I have a thought for something that might help.
On the FAIR website (and YouTube channel) there is a talk called The Two Trees by Dr. Valerie Hudson. Dr. Hudson is a member of our church and also a professor at Texas A&M in the Department of International Affairs, previously she taught at BYU. Her list of impressive credentials is longer than my arm. I say all of that to say that this woman is no dummy. She is incredibly impressive. And she gave a talk called The Two Trees that addresses this topic so well. It’s a long and dense talk. I won’t do justice to it with this summary but her main point is that both men and women are required in this work. Without a woman (Eve) the whole human project would have never got off the ground. And without another woman (Mary), Jesus Christ could not have come to save us. But men have their role too. Without the man Jesus Christ we would be stuck in our sin forever. And without a priesthood bearing man we have no ability to accomplish ordinances. It took women to usher us into this world, and it takes men to usher us into the next. If this is at all interesting to you please go listen to Sister Hudson’s talk. It was the single most helpful thing for me to get all of this settled in my head.
So there you have it. There are many similarities – and some important differences between Latter-day Saint women and Evangelical women. I hope this conversation encouraged your faith and sparks something in you to learn more.
Join us next week and we’ll tackle another topic from the New Testament.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 11–12; Luke 11
Mar 13, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Why Don’t You Pray to Jesus?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Prayer. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today’s verse comes from Luke 11:1-2:
“And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name….”
If you’ve ever visited an Evangelical church for a worship service you’ve probably noticed a lot of differences from how we conduct worship in our church. A couple videos back I talked about this at length and if you want a more thorough discussion on that take a look at the episode about honoring the Sabbath. And one of the things you may have noticed is that they address prayers directly to Jesus, while we do not.
…And here’s a bit of an aside…All of the issues I’m discussing are addressed in depth on the FAIR Latter-day Saints website. And many other issues this series won’t touch. Almost every video in the comment section (“Hi people who leave comments!! Love you!”) someone will ask about addressing some other aspect of the same topic, but sometimes it’s just far beyond the scale of what I’m trying to do here. But FAIR has a massive collection of articles and research that explores every nook and cranny of just about every issue you can think of. One of my hopes for this series is actually that something you hear makes you curious about the topic and you set out to learn more. And the FAIR website is just a treasure trove of information for you to dive into. Okay, back on topic…
So before we talk about why Latter-day Saints pray differently, we need to work to understand why Evangelicals are praying directly to Jesus and what it means to them to do so.
First we should say that Evangelicals also pray to the Father. And some also pray directly to the Holy Spirit. That’s not off limits to them and you will hear plenty of this in their services or private prayer. But they have special affinity for praying to Jesus that’s a bit hard for us Latter-day Saints to understand.
Evangelicals would start with the Bible and say that we have examples from the New Testament of people praying to Jesus and it seems to work out for them. There are 3 main examples of this plus one other, and we’ll quickly look at all of them.
The three examples are Stephen, Saul, and Ananias – their stories are found in Acts chapters 7-9. The other instance is in Revelation 22:20, the second to last verse of the Bible. There are some other examples that people quibble about, but these are the ones where there is agreement that these are prayers directed toward Jesus.
Stephen
So first let’s look at Stephen’s example and try to see how Evangelicals see it. In Acts 6 we see that Stephen is a man full of the Spirit and working to spread the Gospel. The ruling council called the Sanhedrian – they’re a ruling council for Jews during this era – if you remember Jews are under Roman occupation so the rule of Rome is still enforced, the Sanhedrian is a ruling body or court for religious matters the Roman government didn’t concern itself with. The members of the Sannhedrian are upset with Stephen, they conspire to make false charges against him and haul him into court. The charge is that he has spoken blasphemous words against Moses and against God. Stephen is asked if the charges are true and he gives a passionate speech explaining how Moses points directly to Jesus. The Sanhedrian is furious – they “gnashed their teeth at him” – and then they drag him outside the city limits and start stoning him. Stephen looks up to Heaven, sees Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in a vision, and prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit.”
Stephen’s prayer is very short and directed at Jesus, despite the fact that Heavenly Father is there too. Evangelicals take this to reinforce the idea that Jesus is the mediator between God and man. They’re not taking this passage to say, “You shouldn’t pray to Heavenly Father,” but they do take it to reinforce the idea that no longer did people need to consult a priest or make an animal sacrifice to approach God. Praying in Jesus’ name is now the key to communication with God. For them, “praying in Jesus’ name includes praying directly to him.” They see Stephen taking this option – even though God the Father was right there too.
Bruce R. McConkie addresses this in his Doctrinal New Testament Commentary by basically saying the prayer was consistent with what Stephen had just preached, and was being stoned for – calling Jesus God. Jesus, showing his approval for Stephen’s actions, reveals himself to Stephen as he is dying, and Stephen addresses him directly because that’s how he got in this spot in the first place.
Saul
We’ll look at the example of Saul, but Evangelicals basically make the same argument here. In Acts 9 Saul (who becomes Paul) is traveling around persecuting Christians for many of the same reasons the Sanhedrian was persecuting Stephen. He and his companions are walking on the road to Damascus. Saul sees a great light and hears a voice asking, “Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?” Saul answers back directly to the voice, “Who are you?” and the voice tells him that it is Jesus speaking and then gives him some further directions. Paul’s “who are you” is a kind of prayer directed at Jesus. Evangelicals would say that this is an example of praying to Jesus when things worked out.
Is it? Technically, yes. Paul speaks to Jesus, speaking to the divine is prayer, so Paul prayed to Jesus. And it worked out for him.
But the experience does seem like an outlier. It’s not a normal occurrence to be traveling down the road, blinded by a light, and have Jesus speak directly. And I suppose if you have this experience, answering directly is the right thing to do. But these are not the normal circumstances of how most of us are going to pray our entire lives.
Ananias
The final example Evangelicals would cite is Ananias. He’s a disciple living in Damascus, where Saul is headed. Now, Saul had been blinded by his encounter with Jesus on the road and Ananias is who gets called on to restore Saul’s sight. Ananias has a vision of Jesus asking him to go to a certain house where Saul will be to restore his sight. Ananias’ first response is, “Yes, Lord.” And I think we Latter-day Saints would agree that if Jesus appears to you and aks you to do something, the correct response is, “Yes, Lord.”
But none of these examples – Stephen, Saul, or Ananias – are typical. They happen very soon after the resurrection of Jesus, they all happen within a short time of each other (Acts 7-9), they all involve Jesus appearing to someone, speaking to them, and the person speaks back. Evangelicals see this as a prototype of prayer, while we would probably see it as an understandable exception.
Revelation 22:20
And there is one other example that helps explain why Evangelicals see praying directly to Jesus as a good thing. Revelation 22 is the last chapter of the Bible. It’s not the last chapter that was written – that’s probably 2 Peter, though there’s plenty of debate – but it is the last chapter of how the New Testament is arranged, and this verse is one of the final verses we read, so it has some weight.
The verse goes like this, “He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” And, ‘he who testifies to these things,’ is Jesus himself, and the phrase “Amen, Come, Lord Jesus,” is seen as a prayer in agreement that he does so.
And that phrase, “Come, Lord Jesus,” has a history. It is considered the second oldest formulation of prayer, second only to the Lord’s prayer. Part of how we know this is that Paul quotes it in 1 Cor. 16:22 – but he quotes the Aramaic version, Maranatha. The people living in Corinth are Greek speakers. So for Paul to assume they would know an Aramaic phrase suggests that it was a well known prayer. The phrase also appears in another book from that era called the Didache, which is kind of like an early “church handbook” and teaches about how the church should be run in practical terms. The phrase, “Come Lord Jesus” or Maranatha is suggested as a way to end a prayer, much like we would say, “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Early Christians could say, “Come, Lord Jesus. Amen,” and they meant the same thing. And the phrase, “Come, Lord Jesus,” goes on to have an important place in Christian worship for many centuries.
Evangelicals aren’t usually super interested in ancient church history though. And they don’t understand the history and development of how that phrase has been used. Remember the entire Evangelical movement is about 70 years old, so they don’t care much about history before that except to jump way back into time to the days of the New Testament. And when they see “Come, Lord Jesus” in the New Testament they take it to be a prayer toward Jesus. But they miss the fact that the phrase was being used as something much closer to, “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Their desire and motivation here is not bad. They want to get as closely connected to Jesus as they can, and that is admirable. But in doing so they miss the fact that Jesus himself asked us to pray in the name of the Father.
One of the weaknesses of the Evangelical movement is that because they hold a view of the Bible as inerrant, they take things in it more literally than context and history would allow. They take “Come, Lord Jesus” as a literal prayer, not a formation of praying in Jesus’ name. Their hearts are in the right place, but they get a bit lost in the weeds of obeying the Bible vs. obeying Jesus. I say that kindly, and I think they have very good motives for doing so, but the resulting practice has some issues.
Repetition in Prayer
The other issue I want to briefly introduce here is repetition in prayer. For the most part we would be on the same page as Evangelicals about scripted prayers. Like us they would say scripted prayers are to be avoided because it’s too easy to pray them without your heart in it. However, there is a sizable minority in the Evangelical world who experiment with scripted prayers, and they have an interesting motivation for doing so that I want to point out.
Now, usually scripted prayers are not new prayers. They are very old prayers that have been written down and repeated throughout the centuries. You’ve probably heard of The Book of Common Prayer which contains the Anglican prayers assigned to any given Sunday. Evangelicals who are interested in this kind of thing have a soft spot for Anglicans so that’s usually their go-to source. These prayers have been prayed by Christians for many centuries. And there is a decent sized minority in the Evangelical culture that longs for learning about ancient ways. They have an innate understanding that their so-called “happy clappy” churches are actually missing something. And they know the thing they’re missing is ancient. Using very old scripted prayers is one attempt they make to learn ancient practices. They know that something has been lost, and they long to have it restored. I’ll push my luck here and say: they long for a restoration. And what they long for in theory and vagueness, we have in specificity. Just something to think about as you talk with your Evangelical friends about these kinds of things.
I hope you will join us next time. I love getting your questions in email – you can find me at Jroach@fairlatterdaysaints.org And I will see you next time.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 9–10; Mark 5; Luke 9
Mar 06, 2023
Evangelical Questions: No Authority Needed?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Authority. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today’s verse comes from Luke 9:1-2:
Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.
Why Authority?
A common Evangelical question that would come up here is something like: Why are Latter-day Saints obsessed with authority? In our church authority comes straight from Jesus.” And it’s interesting because there are several spots in this week’s readings, and in the readings coming up, where Jesus’ authority is questioned. People want to know under what authority he is doing this or that. And in our church we talk a lot about authority…proper authority…priesthood authority…general authorities. Who has authority to do what is an important question to us. We would say its part of how Jesus Christ has ordered his church. Evangelicals see questions of authority differently. I want to explain how they see authority and what they mean by it, so that we might see a way our church’s point of view might be thoughtful or a blessing to them.
First, I need you to set aside, just for a minute, the worry about the Bible being corrupted and translated incorrectly. Yes, those are true, but if that is your whole focus in conversation about the Bible you’re going to be butting heads with Evangelicals and not seeing a way to understand them, or to let them see the beauty in our beliefs. So, yes, there are issues in the Bible’s translation and transmission process. We will just let that sit to the side for a moment. In this video I want you to think of the parts of the Bible that are inspired, that truly show God, that are translated correctly – all the best parts of the Bible.
And this topic gets a little heady – and we need to geek out a bit to get to the point – stay with me there is a pay off, I promise.
If you’ve been following along with these videos you are starting to see that because Evangelicals hold a certain set of values, they prioritize different concepts differently.
When Evangelicals use the word “authority” it’s usually in the context of, “the authority of scripture.” And they put a lot of effort and priority into demonstrating how and why the Bible is the source of authority. They have a sincere desire to live in a way that is resisting the pull of culture (to some degree) and place themselves under the authority of scripture. This value goes all the way back to the earliest Protestant roots. At least part of what the Reformation was about was the question: Who or what gets the final say? Is it the Pope? Who?
The Reformation
Prior to the Reformation (which was not a singular event, but a process over many years) authority was contained in the Catholic Church. Few people had access to a physical Bible, few could read, and frankly few had time to devote to study as their lives were primarily about doing what needed to be done to sustain life. Leisurely sitting and studying the scriptures is not easily compatible with agrarian life. So before the Reformation the Catholic Church holds all the authority. The scriptures mean what they say it means – very few people could open up their Bible and check their work. And it wasn’t just Martin Luther who saw some of the contradictions between what the text said, and what the Catholic Church taught that the text said. Plenty of priests saw this, some were even writing about it. But it took a Martin Luther to have the courage to take the argument public. And he does it in spectacular fashion – and with excellent timing. If he had been born even 100 years earlier his argument wouldn’t have mattered much because there was no way to get scripture into the hands of average folks since the printing press had not been invented. But Luther comes along and makes a good point at a time in history when there is technology to actually apply it. And all of this is a very good thing. However, what happened when the Bible itself was given ultimate authority, and the church took a back seat. Anyone with enough education to read could access the Bible – their level of understanding the context of what they were reading didn’t matter much because the Bible itself was the ultimate authority. As long as they read with as “plain” a reading as they could, the Bible could replace the authority of the priest. This is referred to as Sola Scriptura – meaning “Scripture alone” has the final say. Today’s Evangelicals very much follow in this tradition. The idea for them is that God is the ultimate authority, and he has given us a book, therefore that book has to have authority too.
Did God come to us as a Book? Or did he send a Son?
But here’s the problem. We don’t say, “God so loved the world that he sent us a book.” That feels pretty cold, a bit lonely, kind of disconnected. We say, “God so loved the world that he sent us his son.” Sending his son came with all kinds of messiness and pain and difficulty, but the experience Jesus had while on Earth was very human so that is to be expected. It just seems odd that God would go to this great, messy length to send us a Son, and then expect those who come after that Son to be given a book to represent him and whose authority to follow, and not an actual real-live human being who can act in his authority.
We believe, as the first 1500 years of Christianity believed, that the authority to act in Christ’s name is best located in a human being who can understand the messiness of life – not in a book. Further – without even talking about the problems with translation and transmission of the Bible – all written words have to be interpreted. You have to take the written word and understand what it means. This requires a human mind. There is no bypassing this where God just dumps words straight from his mouth into your head. (Michael Ash’s book, “Rethinking Revelation: The Human Element in Scripture” is 700 pages explaining why this is true if you’re interested.) God’s project of communicating to us has to involve humans. Evangelicals want to place it in an object, a book.
What is the Authority of the Bible?
And it’s easy to see how some problems develop right away when a book is the container for God’s authority on the Earth, instead of a human being who represents him. The biggest question seems to be, How can an ancient narrative text hold authority over modern people who do not understand the culture and context from which it came?
Here is what Evangelicals do, and it’s interesting, they simply open the scripture, read what it says, and apply it to themselves. The end. Or so they think. They understand themselves to be doing a “plain reading” of scripture, and that they have within themselves all that is needed for understanding – anyone who understands differently is at best dull-minded, and at worst outright evil. But most of the Bible is not a list of things to do and things to avoid, or even a list of things to be believed. It’s a story, a narrative. And even when it lists things to be believed or things to do, those are in the context of some story. But if you can’t understand the story, you have no way to understand the do’s and don’ts. It can kind of be a grab-bag approach – just reach into the text and pull out some meaning, doesn’t really matter if it was ever intended to apply or not.
A low view of Scripture
Evangelicals then think about the Bible as something that represents God – He has placed his authority into the Bible. When they say, “authority of the Bible” it’s a kind of short-hand for, “God has authority and he has vested it into the book we call the Bible. We can turn to the Bible to learn what we need to learn.” But we think of it sort of the other-way around. And it’s the same point that NT Wright makes in some of his writing. We would say that according to the Bible itself authority is vested in God – and God gets to decide what to do with it – and the narrative of the Bible shows us, over and over, that God vests it in his representatives. To say that God now vests the authority in a book takes a complete left-turn away from where the story of the Bible is leading you. It’s actually a very low view of scripture because what it’s saying is that: God’s plan within the pages of the Bible is to cooperate with humans to do his work, but we feel ambivalent about that, so we’re going to change the plan and let God place it all in a nice neat book, not a messy human race. By taking the authority away from where God was pointing it, we disrespect him and the very book he gave us.
So what about your Evangelical friends? They want – desperately want – to get things right about God. And having everything all neat and tidy inside a book seems like a good way to do that. So they remove authority from human leaders and place it in a book. They’re trying to keep things “pure” and not let the humans mess them up. That’s an understandable desire and goal. But it’s not God’s desire. God partners with us to create, to organize, and to lead. And to remove authority from the humans God partners with, and placing that authority in a book might feel safe, but it’s not because it’s not God’s plan.
In other words, Jesus gives authority to his apostles in this story. That’s what we read in Luke 9. Evangelicals are saying, “That’s scary because humans mess things up – remember the Reformation.” And they’re not wrong. But the answer isn’t to change God’s way of operating in the world, the answer is to try and get better at following the very pattern the Bible has laid out for us – listening to God’s representatives on the Earth. The Evangelicals desperately want to have a high view of scripture. But they undermine themselves because they’re pivoting away from scripture when they place the Bible as God’s partner instead of the humans God has decided to partner with. Think of it this way, the Bible is kind of like a 5-act play…Creation, the Fall, the story of Israel, Jesus, and then the book we call, “The Acts of the Apostles,” where the gospel is taken to the ends of the Earth. And that is the stage we’re still in. We don’t call it, “The Acts of the Book.” Books don’t commit acts. They’re objects. Everything in the Bible is intended to teach us how to carry on the story of the Bible, and that includes placing authority in humans, not books.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Come back next week and we’ll look at some more.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 8; Mark 2–4; Luke 7
Feb 27, 2023
Evangelical Questions: But I thought Jesus said we don’t have to follow the Sabbath anymore?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Sabbath. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Today’s verse comes from Mark 2:23-27:
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
A common Evangelical question that would come up here is: WHY does your church teach that we should obey the Sabbath when clearly Jesus says we don’t have to. First we’ll address what that looks like during Sunday worship and then what it looks like for the rest of the day on Sundays.
So, how do Evangelicals understand what “keeping the Sabbath” means? As we’ve talked about in another video the history of Evangelicalism really goes back about 70 or so years and it’s growth happens right along side the Baby Boom. And those initial churches that called themselves Evangelical were pretty much following the pattern churches had followed forever – Sundays were for worship, no working, no shopping, no extravagant entertainment, spend time with family, try to keep a reverent spirit about the day. But by the late 60’s that starts to change and it’s a Southern California church called Calvary Chapel they’re at the forefront of that change. They were hugely successful. They become the hub of the “Jesus Movement” of the 1970’s where churches and a tension starts to develop between the rules and expectations that churches, even Evangelical Churches had, and what the Jesus Movement/Hippies were looking for. But for most of the 1970’s this tension is located Southern California and isn’t an issue. Most Evangelical churches across the country would still have been thinking about something like the Sabbath Day in traditional ways. The members probably would have still been dressing up for church, men in ties and women in dresses. But by 1979 the younger leaders at Calvary Chapel wanted to take the church culture they had created there, and start churches with the same mind set around the country. And so during the 1980’s the Evangelical movement takes a radical turn toward a more casual worship style. It doesn’t happen all at once, but by the end of the 1980’s most Evangelical churches are encouraging people to come “dressed as you are” to church, and have also de-emphasized most rules on Sunday behavior. This is the history of how they got there, but why did they do it?
Ultimately Evangelicals place high priority on the pragmatic – does something work – and far less priority on the long term consequences. Beginning in the 1980’s and certainly into the 1990’s the kinds of Evangelical churches that were embracing a casual style of worship were growing. They were exciting places to be. Families with youth flocked to these churches because they had fun programs that kept the teenagers engaged. But by the 1990’s and into the 2000’s a pragmatic practice that had begun for a good reason (to accommodate the Jesus Movement culture) had turned into the normalized practice. By 2000 you would be hard pressed to find any Evangelical church where members and clergy alike were not dressing in casual clothes on Sunday morning. And when that shift happened along with it was the shift away from “rule keeping” around other Sunday practices like not working or shopping. Nobody really saw a point in emphasizing what was relevant because embracing what was casual was working for them from a pragmatic point of view. The casual style did draw in young families and lots of excitement. By the time this had spread to most Evangelical Churches there really wasn’t a way to put the Genie back in the bottle. The change happened and that was that.
Interestingly enough, about 15 or so years ago, a movement started within some corners of Evangelicalism to embrace more traditional practices, to have services that were quiet and not full of rock music. Many of the people who embraced that ultimately move out of the Evangelical world and become Anglicans, Lutherns, Catholics or Eastern Orthodox.
One thing I’ve noticed in our church is that it can sometimes be hard for Latter-day Saints to look at Evangelical services and not be a little jealous. They’ve got exciting music, lots of energy, worship bands, and more. And so sometimes I think that a conversation with an Evangelical friend would end with a Latter-day Saint saying something like, “Yeah, I kind of wish we were doing what you’re doing.” And I sympathize. Our hymns are old, organ music is not the most exciting, even when the hymn says it should be “sung vigorously” it’s usually not. But I’d like to make the case about why a more reverent style of worship sets the tone for a day where the Sabbath can be kept, and that keeping the Sabbath is a blessing, not a rule we chaff against.
When Evangelicals started to dismantle a more formal style of worship for the sake of the Jesus Movement they had the best of motives. But as it grew into a standard practice without the underlying motivation it also came with an unspoken message that said something like: We can follow Jesus without traditional constraints, and in fact, it is our obligation to do so. “We need to show people that church is not about following your grandmother’s rules for church, it’s for us fun, modern people too.” Do you hear the change there? It went from, “We want to change our worship style for the sake of the Jesus Movement people who seem to need an honest accommodation,” into “We make the change for ourselves because we’re not old and boring.” The goal moved from accommodating others to expressing one’s own coolness. And if the point of worship is about me and what makes me feel comfortable, it’s really hard to accept that anyone else, even God, should place any expectations on me. So the idea that God gets a say in how worship goes gets tossed aside. But none of them really looked far enough into the future to say, “If we start to throw out God’s expectations in one area, it becomes pretty easy to throw them out in other areas.” And a deep cynicism starts to develop of God’s right to have any say in our behaviors. If his opinion doesn’t matter on Sundays, soon it won’t matter on Friday night either.
Instead, what we are trying to do in our church is to say that God asks us to have an attitude of reverence when we worship him, especially on the Sabbath day. And that attitude should be carried throughout the day. And it’s true that the expression of reverence might look different in different cultures, but there is no culture where failing to express reverence in at least some way is obedience to that command. God is the object of our worship, His day is Sunday, we modify our behavior to worship him as he would like – not as we would like. And so while I see what the Evangelicals are trying to do, at least historically, I think that project ultimately failed. It became about what makes the members of that church feel good – and when they stop feeling good at that church, they can move to another one across town where they might feel good again.
But what about after church? How do Evangelicals think about keeping the afternoon/evening holy?
In our church there has been some change over time here as well. Some of the more strict practices of the past seem to have softened. If you were to peek in on a Latter-day Saint family during a Sunday afternoon and an Evangelical family during the same time, you might not see much difference. It’s subtle, but let me try to tease it out for you.
In the last 10 years or so there has been a flurry of books published in the Evangelical world on the topic of the Sabbath. I’ve read many of them, one of the classes I had in Divinity School was simply titled, “The Sabbath.” Those books have titles like, “Finding Renewal on the Sabbath”…”The Sabbath for Soul Rest”…and one simply titled, “Breathe.” The thesis of most of these books is that God wants you to feel good and mentally healthy, and taking time for yourself on the Sabbath is God’s plan for how to do that. Now, you know this, I’m a mental health therapist so I’m all about good self-care and doing things in your life that will bring about more mental health. This is not a bad pursuit and I’m certainly not making fun of them for it. You should be taking care of yourself and you do need breaks from your obligations and that is certainly part of what is going on in observing the Sabbath. But is that it? Is it just for me to feel better? You can hear in this the same logic that is used for an Evangelical Sunday worship service playing out here too. This is “you time” which is quite different then,“This is a day where we focus on worshiping God all day long, and in various ways, even when that requires quite a bit of effort from us.” The traditional understanding of keeping the sabbath day holy was that this is God’s day, and we use it for him. But for Evangelicals that has turned into “this is a day for you to rest and feel better.”
So, how do we explain our beliefs to an Evangelical friend without their eyes glossing over and them thinking, “that doesn’t sound like Sabbath day rest to me at all.” Well, let me tell you what it was like for me when I was investigating our church.
I noticed the external differences in worship right away, anyone would. But eventually I noticed the spirit of reverence behind the differences and found that very attractive. It’s impossible to be both reverent and cynical. Those two things repel each other. And, while this isn’t true for every Evangelical, my experience of it was that all that striving to be cool also came with a deep river of cynicism. When you form a church to suit your own preferences, you have to edge out at least some of God’s preferences, and things get confusing. It’s hard to tell which of God’s commandments even matter any more. Or what things about God are even true. Not everyone’s experience, but it was mine. So when I encountered a very typical, boring service at my local ward it didn’t take me long to see the lack of cynicism as very comforting. I came to enjoy being able to worship reverently with friends, but also to have a hilarious time with those same friends in other contexts. But when we’re together doing the things of God we act like God wants us to act. That’s the feeling of community and purpose. There are very few feelings that are better than that.
I hope you enjoyed this discussion on the Sabbath day. Join us again next week when we look at more Evangelical questions as they come up in our Come Follow Me text.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 6–7
Feb 20, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Why Do You Need Prophets Anyway?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Matthew 7:15-20 Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful answers to New Testament questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about prophets. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
A common question from Evangelicals is why do we think we need prophets? Aren’t they easily identified as false prophets? And to be honest, when I was investigating the church this was the hardest issue for me to grapple with. The idea of having prophets made literally no sense to me. These days I can see it how other Latter-day Saints see it – it’s a blessing and a gift – but back then I felt suspicious. So why is it so hard for Evangelicals to understand the need for modern prophets? I think there’s two reasons and we’ll talk about both of them.
First, Evangelicals are suspicious of the idea because they have a belief that Jesus is the last prophet – and to call anyone who comes after him a prophet is to be disrespectful to Christ. Where does this belief come from? Let’s look at Hebrews 1:1-2 “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” I know, to your Latter-day Saint ears there is no problem with that verse. You don’t hear it how they hear it. For them that verse sounds more like, “but in these last days we will only hear from Jesus.” As with most scripture quagmires, a careful reading of the text helps us out a bit. All they hear is, “Jesus was the final prophet, no more prophets will come.” But that’s not what the text says, and it’s not what the New Testament shows.
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, at many times and in various ways” – We have no disagreement with Evangelicals there. The problem comes here, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things.” In that they hear that Jesus is the last and greatest prophet, that him being the “heir of all things” means that no other “heirs” are needed. The problem here, of course, is that we’re talking about prophecy in a few different ways. When we say that we have a living prophet on the earth today we are not saying that the prophet is greater than Jesus. The Old Testament prophets pointed to a future day when God would save his people. Then Jesus came. Now modern prophets still point to Jesus. Evangelicals are confusing the role of Jesus as prophet with the role of all the Old Testament and modern day prophets. It’s a bit nonsensical since they don’t literally think Daniel or Habakkuk are in competition with Jesus. But they feel very sensitive to the idea of upstaging Jesus. One way to talk about this with them is to talk about what a modern prophet does – points us to Christ over and over.
And then the second issue comes up. Evangelicals wonder why they would need someone to, “point to Jesus” when they already have a few reliable sources of doing that. They see the New Testament as pointing to Jesus (and we certainly wouldn’t disagree with them there); they see the Holy Spirit testifying to them of Jesus (again, no disagreement, we believe the Holy Ghost does that too); and they rely heavily on the concept of the, “priesthood of all believers” meaning that they themselves contain all the needed gifts to hear from God, no “mediator” needed. We’ll talk much more about the priesthood of all believers and what that means when we get to that section of scripture but for now we’ll just say that Evangelicals basically believe that no leader can hear from God any better than they can. Their own pastors teach them, but if the individual doesn’t like what is being taught then they move to another church where they like the teaching better.
Latter-day Saints may find it odd to say it this way, but there is a sense in which Evangelicals believe that by doing this they are emulating, as closely as possible, the New Testament church. They would say they’re just trying to boil down to the essence of the gospel and follow that as much as they can. And it might sound odd to you, but underneath that is a desire for Restoration.
They can easily look around and see that the Evangelical world is in trouble in some very real ways. And they long for God to reach down and set things straight. Sound familiar? What a fascinating opening to talk about what it means that we have a restored church. It might surprise you, Latter-day Saint to learn that many, maybe even most, Evangelical churches sometimes talk about how they’re really just trying to live in a way that contextualizes the New Testament for today’s world. They think they’re living a kind of restoration. I want to talk a little more about that in way you might be somewhat familiar with.
This comes from the work of Dr. RoseAnn Benson. She previously had been in the Ancient Scripture department at BYU and now teaches at Southern Illinois University. Her book is Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith: 19th-Century Restorationists and it’s worth reading. Let me explain what she says and then you’ll see how it relates to Evangelicals. My apologies to Dr. Benson for this simplistic summary. Her work is layered and deep and beautiful and I cringe at the way I’m about to summarize it for you, but summarize it I will.
The year is 1830 and Parley P. Prat (PPP) has been corresponding with his friend Sydney Rigdon. You know from church history that Rigdon is a Campbellite preacher at this time. PPP and other missionaries convert him and about 100 others including 5th President of our church Lorenzo Snow and his sister Eliza R. Snow. This is the basic church history information that you probably already know. What you might not know is that the Campbellite movement considered themselves a Restorationist movement. They thought they were doing the work of bringing the restoration, but they were going about it with an entirely different strategy. The Campbellites believed at that time that in order to restore the Lord’s true church they needed to pare down the essence of the gospel and remove everything that wasn’t essential.They wanted to strip away everything that was not the very basics. They wanted to clear things to the side that didn’t support the goal of restoring the the very essence of the gospel. They were trying to take the very heart of what the Bible teaches and bring it into their day in a way that would get rid of all the errors that had crept into the church over the decades. You can kind of see the logic in what they’re doing.
What happens when PPP and Sydney Rigdon meet in person is that PPP is able to agree with him about the need for a restoration – but that Joseph Smith was teaching the restoration doesn’t come from paring everything down. Joseph doesn’t want to take everything away that isn’t the rock-bottom essentials. Joseph wants to restore everything. Every, everything. He didn’t want to push anything to the side – he wanted to open everything up. To restore it all. Once Rigdon, and 100 others including the Snow family, hear this they understand. They already believed a restoration was necessary – but now they understood it wasn’t going to come through removing parts of what God had established, it was going to come through restoring everything.
Back to our Evangelical friends.
They already know things need to be restored. This is where the mental health therapist comes out in me. If they don’t trust you, or you don’t have enough relationship with you, they are not going to feel safe admitting that any kind of restoration is needed. They will feel defensive and not open up. That’s okay, it just means you need to earn more relationship collateral with them. But if they trust you enough to admit that there can be some issues with their church from time to time, you can probably have a pretty cool conversation about what restoration would look like – is it a paring down of everything so that an individual person sitting alone with their Bible is enough? Or is it a restoration of everything – so that the individual can certainly sit alone with their Bible, but they are also guided by a Prophet from time to time to keep them headed in the right direction?
Now, I told you I would tell you how I gained a testimony of having a Prophet and here it is.
Three and a half years ago I was in the middle of taking lessons from the missionaries. (If you haven’t heard my conversion story it’s a fun one and I’ll put a link to it in the description below where you can listen to it on the FAIR website. But, warning, it has some difficult themes in it and probably isn’t great to listen to around small kids – teens and up would be fine.) From Anglican Minister to Relief Society Sister – Interview with Jennifer Roach – FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org) And honestly I was struggling with the idea of having a Prophet. I’ve seen the worst of what can happen in churches when people in power take advantage of that power (listen to my story if you want to know more about that) and I was skeptical that a man with that much power could be trusted.
One day the missionaries say, “The Prophet is coming to Seattle and we have tickets for you.” At the time I didn’t know that this was an unusual thing. Maybe the Prophet just drops by from time to time. But it was a very special event and it was held at Safeco Field, the baseball stadium. It was a beautiful summer evening and 50,000 people showed up to see Russel M. Nelson. And he was great, just like you’d imagine. But it wasn’t his talk or anything in the evening’s program that made me change my mind. What helped me was that when I arrived about half an hour before the event was to begin and sat with friends from my ward. While we were waiting everyone around us was talking about “their prophet” – usually the one who had been leading the church when they were young, and what it meant to them to have a leader like that. To be totally honest I think my own skeptical nature on this topic would have kept me from trusting a man I didn’t know and will never meet. But I saw what having a Prophet did in the lives of my friends and how much goodness it brought to them. And I was converted to the idea that very night – not by President Nelson’s words, though they were great, but by the testimonies of my friends.
I hope these words have given you some thoughts about how to talk with your Evangelical friends about the idea of Prophets. If you have a question an Evangelical friend has asked you that you’d like to get some insight on please email me at jroach@fairlatterdaysaints.org. I got an email this week from some Sister Missionaries in the Houston, Texas mission so shout-out to Sister Cox and her companions. I’ll be answering their question in an upcoming episode. And I look forward to seeing you all next time.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 5; Luke 6
Feb 13, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Why You So Judgy?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Luke 6:37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about worthiness. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
A common question from Evangelicals is why our church spends so much time and energy, “being judgy” – meaning, why do we care about worthiness? Why do we say our Bishops are, “Judges in Israel.” Can’t we just follow Jesus’ words and refrain from all the judgment?
This is a huge issue, and there is not enough time in a video like this to parse through all of it, so I’m just going to cover the parts the average Evangelical would be worried about. And they are worried about it. If you remember a couple videos back we talked about the history of the Evangelical movement and how they can be considered “Double Protestants” because they come from a tradition that protested against the Catholic Church, and then they did it again and protested against their own Protestant churches. And that same dynamic is going to come into play here, especially as it comes to them being Protestants who have moved away from the Catholic Church.
So, an Evangelical’s understanding of what is happening in a Catholic Church is that the priest sets himself up as God and directly forgives sins, or refuses to forgive them, and that people have no direct access to God. Now, that is not what is happening in a Catholic Church – all of you who have a Catholic background can take a deep breath, I know that is not what is happening in a Catholic Church, but that’s what Evangelicals (largely) think is happening. And in reaction to that they have a very high value on the idea that only God can judge and no other human ever has to be involved in the process at all. It’s actually a really unfortunate over-reaction to their misunderstanding because what happens is that the individual is left utterly alone to learn how to repent and change and grow. There is no communal support for how to repent. They’ve created that culture for what they think is a good reason – a really important reason – which is that they see themselves as the ones who take down barriers between people and Christ.
How Does This Work
So you, Latter-day Saint, you know how this works in our church. Let me try to explain how this works in Evangelical churches. You remember from our previous videos that Evangelical churches place a really high value on the conversion experience or, “saying the sinner’s prayer.” Not all Protestant churches function this way, but at least historically in Evangelical churches the entire point of everything is to get people to say the sinner’s prayer….and what happens next varies greatly, depending on the particular church. Some churches are content to pretty much stop there – oh they certainly want people to keep attending, and keep learning about God, but not much more is going to be expected of them. They’ve already done the thing – they said the prayer. One hugely popular Evangelical author says it’s like going around the bases in baseball, once you’ve gotten to home plate you’re done and now your main job is to cheer on the other members of your team so that they can get to home plate too. Sure, you probably need to learn and grow a bit, and that includes confession of sin, but that’s a private thing that you do alone on purpose. No one else is to be involved because that would be putting a barrier between you and God. They don’t even really have a conceptualization of getting help in the repentance process because if a person asked for such help they would be told to go pray in private, confess their sins, and move on. The best case scenario is that this is a system which fosters self-reliance and forces a person to build up their own relationship with God – and the worst case scenario is that it leaves people without much help or hope on difficult issues when they know what they should be doing but can’t quite bring themselves to do it.
So, when your Evangelical friends or family members learn that we require adults and teenagers to sit for worthiness interviews, or that we sometimes say bishops are to function as a, “judge in Israel,” their defenses go up pretty high. They’re worried that we’re doing unnecessary gate-keeping and leaving people separated from God unnecessarily. Interestingly enough we both have the same worry about each other – we worry a bit about them abandoning people to have to handle every act of repentance entirely alone; and they worry that we are causing people to feel abandoned by God because we’re putting up barriers for them to repent.
Common Ground
But at the end of the day, we both want the same thing – for people to repent from their sins and grow in holiness. And still it seems kind of hard for many Latter-day Saints to explain why we do what we do. I don’t have the definitive answer on that, but I do have some thoughts about why what we’re doing is worthwhile and how you might be able to talk about it with your Evangelical friends in a way they can understand, and might even learn from.
Maybe you’ve had this experience, I certainly have….if the topic of worthiness interviews comes up, your Evangelical friend is going to look at you like you are a crazy person for voluntarily submitting to that. They’re going to think you are handing over your autonomy and will probably quote Jesus’ words to you about, “judge not lest ye be judged.” But what is Jesus actually saying there?
In my day-job I’m a mental health therapist and this question comes up all the time. A client will be participating in a certain activity, or spending time with a certain person and the activity or person turns out to not be very good for them. They leave that person’s presence feeling more anxious, or they have some other bad consequence from spending their time that way. If I, as their therapist, suggest that they might need to reconsider who they spend their time with I am often met with the objection, “Well, I can’t judge them.” But, I don’t even know what that means, to be honest. When I go to the grocery store and want to buy a nice piece of salmon I have some choices to make. I can buy the piece that looks like it came off the boat that morning, or I can buy the piece that looks like it’s been sitting in the case for 5 weeks. Buying the fresh fish has one set of consequences, and buying the weeks old piece of fish has a different set of consequences. I get to choose which consequences I’d like. These days I know exactly how to go to the store and notice the signs of freshness in a fish, but I didn’t always. Someone had to point them out to me so that today I can properly judge which piece of fish is going to give me the consequences I want. Am I judging the fish? Yes. But what I’m really judging is the consequences of my own actions. The topics that come up in a worthiness interview are kind of the same thing. Let me use an old example to explain.
As you know, the worthiness interview questions have changed over time. A previous version of the questions asked members if they had, “stolen irrigation water from their neighbor.” I grew up in an agricultural area where irrigation water was, and still is, fiercely debated. Stealing water that does not belong to you is going to have bad consequences for you (you will be used to a certain amount of water for your crops, and when it becomes restricted after you get caught the crops you planted with that extra water will die); it’s bad for your neighbor (their crops will die), and it’s bad for the entire ecosystem (I don’t have time to explain that piece, just trust me). So if we’re looking at a behavior called, “stealing irrigation water” we can demonstrate how it will have negative effects on the individual and community. It will be negative in the same way that eating a bad piece of fish from the store will be bad. In our modern worthiness interview when you are asked, “Do you live the law of chastity?” is that an improper use of judgment, the kind Jesus was talking about? Or is that designed to help people consider the consequences of their actions and decide if those actions are going to have good or bad consequences for them and their neighbors? I think most members would say that this is intended as – and functions as – a question about considering consequences. Infidelity is an act that is not between two people in private, that’s an act that impacts everyone they love and have influence over. And those consequences – the natural consequences of infidelity – are far more devastating than eating a piece of bad fish.
Despite the fact that your Evangelical friends or family members largely are left to confess sin in private they could probably see the benefit of worthiness conversations when we think about them this way. The word, “judgment” has a bad reputation these days, and probably for some good reasons, but we’re left without a better word to explain what we’re after in those interviews. In this topic my mind often goes to the youth. Youth in Evangelical churches are going to be expected to sustain some form of chastity (for the most part) but without a vehicle to talk about that and potentially get help repenting over that, it’s an incredible burden to place on them and ask them to manage it alone. In this sense the very concept of a worthiness interview is similar to teaching someone how to choose good fish at the market. It’s not the kind of judgment that tells the person, “you’re a bad person,” it’s the kind of judgment that helps them discern which outcomes they would like to have the best chance at getting.
I hope this episode helps you think through how to talk about these things with your Evangelical friends and family members. The unique gift that our church has in this realm is that we provide a private place for every member to have a private chat with their local leader to think through these things, and that’s not just limited to a worthiness interview, but includes going to your bishop when an issue comes up where you can’t figure out how to repent on your own. If you’ve grown up in the church you might not realize how rare it is to have that option. There may be a few exceptions but for the most part Evangelicals don’t have that option – and at the larger churches their local pastor won’t even know their name, nevermind how they or their family are doing managing the challenges of life.
Join us next week as we take up another Evangelical question. If you have a specific question you’d like to see answered shoot me an email at jroach@fairlatterdaysaints.org See you next time.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – John 2–4
Feb 06, 2023
Evangelical Questions: What Must I Do To Be Saved?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about what it means to be saved. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Well, if there ever was a topic where Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals get confused over language it’s this one…What is salvation? Our agenda for today is this: First we’ll talk about how Evangelicals understand salvation and why they think the way they do, next we’ll answer their questions hopefully in a way they can hear, and then we’ll talk about the unique contributions our faith makes to this part of the conversation.
What Does it Mean to be Saved?
In our church when we talk about life after death we have a conceptualization that pretty much everybody is “saved.” We get anxious about what exactly that will look like, and especially anxious over what the relationships will be there, but the actual question of salvation isn’t really all that interesting to us. But it is huge to Evangelicals and I want to help you understand why. First I’m going to talk about Evangelicals broadly, and then about the two subsets of Evangeliclas who view these issues slightly differently.
First, in general Evangelicals believe that after this life is over each person will face judgment where there really is only one question God asks, “What did you believe about my son, Jesus Christ?” Those who can answer that question by saying they believe Jesus is Lord receive a reward of eternal happiness in Heaven, and those who either can’t say that Jesus is Lord, or who have never heard of Jesus are condemned to eternal suffering in Hell. While historically Catholics have believed that there is some wiggle room with their conceptualization of Purgatory, Evangelicals believe it is a one-time judgment that can never be changed, even if the reason for the person’s lack of belief is that they lived in a time and place where no one had heard of Jesus.
And if you remember from an earlier video you know that Evangelicals as we know them today are really a post-WW2 invention. One of the original goals of the Evangelical movement was to take down all barriers that churches had put up for people coming to Christ. And as their name – Evangelical – implies they are very interested in sharing the message of salvation with everyone. But they had a problem which was churches who put up, in their opinion, too many barriers to faith. And by this they meant requiring people to be baptized. Now, many Evangelical churches still practice baptism, it has not gone away. Instead what has happened is that they’ve changed the process from, as the New Testament puts it, “Believe and be baptized” to “Believe, say the sinner’s prayer, and later show evidence that you have done these things already through your act of baptism.” Baptism itself is not efficacious, it’s the sinner’s prayer that actually does the heavy lifting, and the baptism is for show. So for them, to be saved means that you pray a prayer of repentance, inviting Jesus “into your heart,” and then you are saved. When judgment day arrives for you the issue will be already settled since you have made some declaration that Jesus is Lord and will be placed in Heaven. That’s what salvation is for them in a general sense.
Two subsets
I don’t want to get too far off track here but there are two important distinctions to talk about here. “Evangelical” is a broad term. It’s not a denomination. It’s a descriptor that applies to many different types of churches. You can be a Baptist, and be an Evangelical. You can be a non-denominational church and be an Evangelical. And there is another descriptor that it’s important to talk about here: Calvinist. Evangelicals come in 3 varieties: Calvinists, Non-Calvinists, and Blind-To-Theology. The Bling-to-Theology category simply means this: members at a specific church are not taught using theological terms or categories. This is your, “We just love talking about Jesus” kind of church. Now, the leadership of that church, and the denomination they belong to (if they belong to one) absolutely has a stance as Calvinist or Non-Calvinist, but the pew-sitting people in those churches couldn’t tell you who Calvin was or how he is influencing their lives if you paid them. Their leaders simply side-step the issue by using other language to talk about the same things. So, really, we only have 2 categories.
100 years ago it would be easy to spot a Cavlinist church because they were mostly called either “Presbyterian” or “Reformed.” That hasn’t been the case for a long time. The hipster church on the corner that is called something like, “Engage! Church” could be Calvinist, or they could be Non-Calvinist, you’d have to dig to find out. So what is a Calvinist anyway and why is it important?
John Calvin was born during the Renaissance in France. He’s educated at the University of Paris but right after his University studies he breaks away from the Catholic Church and becomes a Protestant (French Protestants are called Huguenots) but eventually he has to flee to Switzerland because there is a great deal of violence against Protestants in France during that era. Calvin was trained as a lawyer, but he becomes a theologian and you can see the lawyer in him when you read his theology. And Calvin’s biggest theological contribution is the idea that because God is so Supreme, so sufficient, so all-knowing, he already knows who will and won’t be saved (at this time in history that’s the “believe and be baptized” version of being saved, not the “pray the sinner’s prayer version.) And in fact, this knowledge in God is so certain it must only be because he chose who would be saved and who wouldn’t. And, even further, it is entirely possible for a person to want to be saved, but if God has decided they will not be saved, there is no hope for them. The opposite is true too – if God has decided you are to be saved, that will be “irresistible” to you in a way that requires no agency from you. Today, there are various versions of Calvinism, some softer than others, but the basic idea is the same: God chooses who will be saved and who won’t. A person can’t really know for sure that they’re saved until the judgment.
Calvinism still has a huge influence on Christianity today, especially in America. Roughly 60% of Evangelical churches believe some form of Calvinism, and this is part of what fuels the grace-vs-works debate. But it’s not a clear-cut distinction for which Evangelical church follows it and which ones don’t. The opposite position, Armeniniasm believes every person has the possibility of being saved and that the church should work hard to reach as many people as possible. But most churches have some mix in them. I grew up in an Evangelical church where we were jokingly told, “You should spend your waking hours as an Armeniest (meaning you should work hard to spread the gospel) but you sleep like a Calvinist (meaning you should leave it all in God’s hands and be content with whatever he decides.)”
You can see, in these two subsets there are two very different views on what it means to be saved. In one version God pre-decides it for a person, and no agency of theirs is required. In the other version the person has to use their will to decide to follow God, and that creates salvation for them. (I know this doesn’t make any sense, I didn’t make the rules, I’m just telling you.)
So, you can see, even within Evangelicalism there is disagreement about what it means regarding how to get saved. But they all agree on the fact that not being saved means eternity in Hell. How will that time be spent? Opinions vary from, “eternal conscious torment” to “obliteration,” and obliteration is about the best you can hope for. About 15 years ago there was a movement in the Evangelical world to reconsider what Hell is, who goes there, and how that time will be spent, and the “obliteration” option largely became more popular because of that movement. Which means that in their view, if we’re considering a person who has never heard of Jesus Christ, the very best thing we can hope happens after they die is that they simply no longer exist. The alternative is that they are consciously tormented forever.
Talking About Salvation
Normally in these videos I’ve tried to explain the Evangelical position in a way that hopefully makes you say, “yeah, I can see where they’re coming from even if I disagree.” But I gotta be honest, it’s really hard to do that here. The best I can do is to point out to you that their belief system (whether they’re Calvinists or not) is highly self-reinforcing. When I was an Evangelical I completely bought into this system because of the ways it’s self-reinforcing. There is the threat of eternal damnation hanging in the balance after all. But I’ll tell you how it started to crack for me.
I grew up in a family where my mom took us to church and my dad only attended if us kids were having some kind of special event (a special choir performance, etc.) I was taught as a girl that someone like my dad would go immediately to Hell if he died in his unbelief. They softened that for people like me by saying, “life is long and you have no idea when someone’s heart might turn to God.” But it turned out that my dad’s life was not long. He died in a car crash at 44 years old. I was 12, which doesn’t sound very old, but I was a weird kid and interested in theology straight out of the womb. So I had to figure out how to understand that my church said my father was going to be consciously tormented forever without letting it break my faith. And in my little 12-year-old mind I kept a secret thought, “I think my church is wrong about that.” It would take me decades to gain enough theological sophistication to think all the way through that, of course, but that’s where it started. And I can tell you exactly where I was standing when I had it (12th and M street, Modesto CA), because it shook my world. The fruition of that thought wouldn’t come for decades, but I don’t know that I would be here today without it.
I tell you all of that to say this: There are Evangelicals out there who question this system they’re in, even if it is very quietly. And frankly, our church’s conceptualization of the afterlife is far kinder, far more in line with the character of God. In this series we’re talking about the gifts our church has to offer to the larger Christian world, and this is certainly one of those areas. When you talk with Evangelicals about, “what it means to be saved” you will have to fight past a lot of anxiety about the threat of Hell, and worries about getting things wrong, and an entire self-reinforcing system. But you have something to offer here that your friends or family members might end up wanting.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 4; Luke 4–5
Jan 30, 2023
Evangelical Questions: Why is there so much of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon anyway?
by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Luke 4:15-17 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read… the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.”
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about something from the New Testament that is actually something from the Old Testament, and what it has to do with the Book of Mormon. We’re talking about Isaiah, and why so much of it is in the Book of Mormon. The reason this topic comes up in this week’s readings is because we see Jesus going to the synagogue and reading from the scroll of Isaiah. Luke 4:15-17 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read… the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.”
If you’ve had conversations with Evangelical friends and family before this topic has almost certainly come up: Why is there so much Isaiah in the Book of Mormon? So we’re going to talk about that in a couple ways. First, we’re going to try and understand what Evangelicals mean when they ask that question – it’s a bit different than what we mean when we ask it. Then we’ll look at some answers to their questions and finally look at the unique gift our faith brings to this part of the conversation.
What Are They Asking
You have certainly heard church members ask (complain? bemoan?) about why is there so much Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, but they mean it more in a way that says, “We already get this during Old Testament year, why do we have to spend weeks on it again?” It’s a complaint about repetition, or sometimes a complaint about not understanding the meaning, but that is not what an Evangelical is doing when they ask this question.
I’ll tell you my experience….The first time I read the Book of Mormon I did not know what it was about. I think I’ve mentioned before that I actually thought it was about the Utah period. So I went in not knowing the plot, and certainly not knowing that Isaish would be quoted so much. I was surprised and curious about what it was doing there and how it was functioning inside the larger text. That’s a conversation for another day because what a lot of people reading the Book of Mormon initially think is that this is plagiarism. “Oh look, he just straight copied that out of the Bible!” Now, that’s not what’s happening or how the Isaiah quotes are functioning inside the text, but it is what Evangelicals worry about. Why?
Because what they’re really asking with this question is something like, “Aren’t you just stealing scripture from the Bible to legitimize the Book of Mormon?” And that’s a fair question for them to be asking because it puts them in a dilemma that goes something like this…If I believe the book of Isaiah is scripture, and it’s here in the Book of Mormon then I have to concede that I believe at least parts of the Book of Mormon and I feel uncomfortable saying that because of my loyalty to the Bible.”
In order to understand a bit deeper we need to look at that word, “scripture.” For Latter-day Saints the word “scripture” is a pretty broad word. We refer not only to our 4 standard works as scripture, but we refer to our Patriarchal Blessings as “personal scripture,” we treat some documents that are not officially part of our 4 standards works as if they are scripture such as the Proclamation on the Family, and even further we sometimes treat the words we receive from our leaders during General Conference as scripture. For us, the word, “scripture” has a lot of wiggle room in it. But it is not that way for Evangelicals. In the Evangelical world only the Old and New Testaments are scripture. Some of them have a bit of fuzzy knowledge about the fact that there has been debate over certain books of the Bible which are sometimes included in the canon, and sometimes are not. But all of that is seen as just part of the historical process – today the lines of what is scripture and what isn’t are very clear for them. You can see why they get a little nervous when material from their very carefully defined canon is mixed into our open canon in service of a story that they don’t know, and don’t understand. We’ll leave out of the conversation the fact that the entire Old Testament (not just Isaiah) is included in their Christian Bible and sometimes the Jewish people (whose Bible it was first) have had some things to say about that. But that aside, you can see how this is a really a conversation about open vs. closed canon.
Why does an open canon bother them so much?
Many latter-day Saints have a hard time understanding why an open canon is so troublesome to Evangelicals. “If God has more to say, wouldn’t you want to hear it?” But when you get into conversation with Evangelicals something confusing starts to happen. Evangelicals DO want to hear more from God, they do believe God speaks today, they do believe he has both personal messages for them as well as larger messages for all who call themselves Christians. We very much have that in common with them. During my first read-through of the Book of Mormon I really had to grapple with this. I believed that God can and does speak today, but I felt a bit queasy about it being written down in a book. But when I started to formulate that into a sentence that went something like, “God can speak today, you just can’t write it down in a book,” I knew that wasn’t a solid place to stand. It was surprising for me, but what this question illuminates is the struggle Evangelicals have around authority.
A bit of history is in order here. Evangelicals are a subset of Protestants. Which means, as you will see, that they already have two strikes against the concept of authority. In 1517 Martin Luther nails his 95-Thesis to the church door and Protestant Reformation begins (that’s not a historically accurate version of how it began or why, but it is the popular version and good enough for our purposes here.) The Reformation results in churches that used to be under the authority of Rome, now becoming their own authority. And it was mostly based on country or region. The Dutch Reformation happened very differently than the English Reformation, for example and by the end the Dutch wanted to do things the way they wanted to do them, and the English wanted to do things the way they wanted to do them. Fast-forward about 500 more years and we have many churches doing as they see fit. Around the same time as the Baby Boom is happening there starts to be a feeling in American Christianity that the old ways should be moved on from, and that included religion. Starting in Southern California, and moving across the country churches began with the expressed purpose of not being fuddy-duddys about church but bringing in rock music, allowing for casual dress and a more relaxed service. This group, initially called Neo-Fundamentalists, become the Evangelicals. So, Evangelicals are not just Protestants (protest-tant) and the children of all that entails, they “protest” against their own tradition and advocate for a more relaxed and informal worship setting where no one is going to tell them how to dress or to cut their hair. In this sense they’re double-Protestants, and have a double-dose of suspicion of authority.
Their attitude of being suspicious of authority shows up in their theology too. You’ve certainly heard an Evangelical friend say something like, “We don’t need the priesthood, we have the priesthood of all believers” (this is an issue we will also get to in another video) and that is the ultimate anti-authority statement because they get to have it both ways by saying that authority is not needed, and even if it were we have it in ourselves.
But then a funny thing – a very human thing – happens and it’s a psychological principle that happens to everyone. Let’s take the topic of budgeting and responsible spending. Most people will look at those who spend their money more freely than they do and consider them foolish, maybe even reckless. But they will look at those who are stricter with their money than they themselves are and see them as too tight or too rigid. Somehow the human mind always sets itself as the exact, perfect midpoint. And this phenomenon happens here to Evangelicals – the very ones who we can call “double-Protestants” look at the open canon of Latter-day Saints and say, “No, that’s too far. Our fuddy-duddy grandparents didn’t go far enough, but you go too far. We are the correct midpoint.”
I don’t tell you that so that you can go and argue this reality with them, I tell it to you so that you can understand what is going on with them and why they think the way they do. It’s actually a very human and understandable process. Instead of arguing against it and trying to convince them of why we actually do have the proper authority to introduce new scriptures, or that having an open canon is a good thing, maybe go back to the very thing that prompted this entire discussion. What is Isaiah doing in the Book of Mormon? Or for that matter, consider the verse that inspired this conversation: Why is Jesus quoting from Isaiah?
Here is what Jesus read from Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
When Jesus takes Isaiah out of its original context and applies it to his day, he does so in a very unique and unexpected way. The poor get good news, the prisoners get free, the blind get sight. To be totally fair, this is what the Evangelical movement was about when it began, or at least what it tried to be about – making room for all kinds of people in the church. The sections of Isaiah that are in the Book of Mormon are there to teach us about covenant keeping and that God keeps his side of the deal, and that even when we keep messing up there is always a path back to God. When your Evangelical friend asks you why there is so much of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon at least part of what they’re asking is: Do you really have the authority to add Isaiah to your book? But it’s the same pattern and purpose that they are longing for in their churches too – that there is room for everyone, that it doesn’t matter what has happened in your life, there is always a path back to God. They put a huge emphasis on the Gospel being for everyone, no matter what. And by including the sections of Isaiah that we do into the Book of Mormon, we are also saying that God has a path for us back to him, and that when we make covenants with God he will always help us keep them. In that sense, we want the same things….and if anything our unique contribution here is that the path back to God is not some ethereal path you have to figure out for yourself. It’s defined well and there is an entire church to support you on that path.
I hope you enjoyed this episode, join us again next week when we look at more questions about the New Testament.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
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