Through the years, my co-author Edwin Gantt and I have witnessed many friends experience doubt about the Church and its teachings. In some cases, there were signs they were living their lives in ways that alienated them from the Spirit of God. But in many cases, the seeds of their doubt were intellectual in nature—specifically, they had adopted ideological frameworks or “-isms” through which they evaluated all prophetic counsel and divine truth. Across the spectrum, they asked, “How can prophets speak for God if they teach things that contradict what I know to be true?”
This pattern revealed something profound: Many of us have unconsciously elevated abstract systems of belief—whether political, philosophical, or theological—to the level of absolute truth. When we do this, we begin measuring prophetic teachings against these ideological frameworks rather than measuring our ideological frameworks against the words of God’s servants. We call this “ideolatry,” which happens when we prioritize abstract ideas over ongoing revelation from God—a worship of ideology. Our modern conception of truth has been heavily influenced by Greek philosophical traditions.
When we see truth as a set of abstract ideas, we expect religious teachings to remain static and unchanging. We measure new revelations against our mental models of how things “must” be. But if truth is a Person—specifically, Jesus Christ—then we can understand why God might give different instructions to different people in different contexts while remaining perfectly reliable and trustworthy. We remain open to surprise, just as we do with people. Of course, the idea that “truth is a person rather than an idea” is itself a mental model that we should keep provisional and find useful only so long as it points us towards and keeps us connected with the Truth made Flesh.
This message feels particularly urgent in our current moment. We live in increasingly polarized times, where ideological divisions are hardening into what feels like unbridgeable chasms. Social media and partisan news sources make it easy to surround ourselves with voices that reinforce our existing views while dismissing or demonizing those who see things differently. These ideological echo chambers don’t just separate us from each other—they can separate us from God by making us increasingly resistant to any divine guidance that doesn’t align with our chosen framework.
We see this happening across the political and ideological spectrum. Progressives might dismiss prophetic counsel about gender, sexuality, or family as outdated cultural artifacts. Conservatives might resist Church teachings about refugees, immigration, or vaccine policies as compromises with worldly thinking. In each case, we risk letting abstract ideological commitments—our “-isms”—harden our hearts not just against our fellow Saints but against the voice of the Lord speaking through His servants. When this happens, we become less able to hear God’s voice, less willing to consider perspectives different from our own, and less capable of building Zion with those who see things differently than we do.
The book isn’t primarily about answering specific doctrinal questions. Rather, it’s an invitation to fundamentally reconsider how we think about truth itself. Instead of measuring prophetic counsel against our preferred ideological frameworks—whether conservative, progressive, libertarian, or otherwise—we invite readers to aside these “-isms” and place God at the center of their affections. It’s an invitation to fundamentally reconsider how we think about truth itself.
In short, the solution to our ideological divisions isn’t finding the right framework of ideas (although developing unity surrounding essential doctrines may be part of the project of building Zion)—it’s drawing closer to the Person who is Truth.
What binds us together is not a shared system of abstract beliefs (an “ism”) but shared covenants with the divine person of God. Those covenants set forth a shared identity and a shared set of commitments and values that bind us to our Father in Heaven and make us Christ’s people. Ultimately, what will save us at the great and last day is not the ideas we claim to know but whether we know and are known by the good shepherd Himself—a fundamentally different sort of knowledge.
