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Forgive the provocative title. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints certainly should care for the poor and needy as modeled by the head of the Church, Jesus Christ Himself.

There is, however, a consistent thread of criticism whenever the cost of a Church-involved project becomes public, that all of that cost should have been spent helping the poor instead. 

The argument has even been extended to time, with critics arguing that spending time in worship is a waste when it could be spent in soup kitchens.

I disagree. Worship is not an alternative to doing good. It’s the engine that makes doing good last.

And this isn’t a new argument. A home crowded with people. A dinner. A sense that Something Big is about to happen. Then a woman—Mary of Bethany, in the telling of the Gospel of John—breaks open a jar of costly ointment and pours it on the feet of Jesus Christ. The room fills with fragrance. It’s extravagantly impractical. It looks, from a certain perspective, like waste.

And right on cue, a voice rises with the sensible objection—the ethical objection:

Why wasn’t this sold and given to the poor?

It comes from Judas Iscariot. And if you’re honest, the line sounds persuasive. It sounds like moral clarity. It sounds like priorities. It sounds like what an enlightened, modern faith should say.

But Jesus doesn’t nod along. He doesn’t say, “Great point—let’s liquidate the perfume and put together a hunger-relief budget.” He defends the act. 

Jesus’ action should break the false spell that says devotion and discipleship are only real when they are immediately convertible into measurable “impact.” It reminds us that worship—direct, reverent, God-facing worship—can look inefficient to anyone who thinks humanitarian deliverables are the only ledger that matters.

And it’s not the only time Jesus refuses to reduce the life of faith into a single social program. He commands His followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, lift the heavy burden. But He also commands love of God with heart, might, mind, and strength. He commands prayer. He retreats to commune with the Father. He institutes ordinances. He receives honor. He welcomes adoration.

In other words, worship and service both matter enormously. The Christian life is not either/or.

Let’s take that critique seriously, because the best versions of it come from a good instinct: people are suffering, and we should not be casual about it. If you believe in Christ, you should feel a holy discomfort when you see hunger, war, displacement, addiction, loneliness, and abuse. If your faith never pulls you outward into sacrifice and service, then it’s not discipleship.

But the critique collapses when it assumes something that sounds compassionate yet ends up being corrosive: Worship is basically overhead, and the “real work” begins only when worship ends.

That assumption is not just spiritually mistaken. It’s historically naïve and psychologically backward. In practice, it’s one of the fastest ways to kill the very humanitarian impulse it claims to maximize.

Worship is the foundation of sustainable humanitarian good.

Not because worship is a loophole to avoid helping people. But because worship is how you make a people who keep helping people when it’s hard, when it’s boring, when it’s thankless, when it’s politically inconvenient, when the cameras are gone, when your own life is falling apart, when you’re tempted to turn cynical.

And if—hypothetically—humanitarian aid were the ultimate end goal, you would still want a church to stay fiercely centered on its religious mission. Because that mission is what grows the community, strengthens the moral muscles, and keeps the generosity from becoming a short-lived mood.

Even if the only goal was to maximize humanitarian efforts, a religious mission is a wise investment. 

The Trap of Turning a Church Into an NGO

The world already has many institutions whose job description is “make material life better.”

Some are incredible: disaster responders, hospitals, development orgs, refugee agencies, food systems, governments running safety nets. Many of them do heroic work, and believers should often be their most loyal partners and supporters.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if a church becomes just another version of those institutions, it loses its reason to exist.

Not because humanitarian work isn’t holy. It is. But because a church’s unique contribution is not merely relief—it is redemption. It exists to reconcile people to God, shape souls, bind communities through covenant, preach repentance and hope, administer ordinances, and teach a way of life anchored in the living Christ.

When a church quietly trades that identity for the safer, more broadly applauded identity of “a values-based service club,” it doesn’t become more relevant. It becomes replaceable.

And replaceable institutions tend to shrink.

That isn’t an abstract theory; it’s one of the storylines of modern Western Christianity. Beginning in the mid‑20th century, many churches in Europe and North America leaned hard into social and political engagement, sometimes explicitly downplaying doctrine, miracles, and distinctive worship as embarrassments from a pre-modern past. On the far edge, you even had “Death of God” theology in the 1960s, arguing that belief in God had become meaningless in modern life.

At the same time, older currents like the “Social Gospel”—a movement that interpreted the kingdom of God as demanding social reform as well as personal conversion—became newly influential in modern form.

These movements that built on the foundation of faith and religious strength produced real good. Civil rights advances, anti-poverty efforts, humanitarian advocacy, not to mention the millions of individuals given a hand up—many believers gave their lives to these causes. That deserves sincere admiration.

The sociological details are debated, but the broad fact of mainline decline is not. Pew Research Center has documented significant declines in mainline Protestant identification and retention in the United States in recent decades. And these losses have been localized in the congregations that went all in on a modern social gospel emphasis. When social action becomes the main product and worship becomes a mild preface, churches tend to lose the very people who would have fueled the action.

A church that abandons worship does not become a better charity. It becomes a worse church and, eventually, a weaker charity too. Because the deepest engines of durable compassion—repentance, gratitude, covenant, awe, accountability, forgiveness, hope, spiritual discipline—are cultivated primarily through worship.

Learning From Our Catholic Friends

It’s worth noticing: even traditions that have built enormous global service institutions still insist that worship is primary.

The Church of Jesus Christ has focused most of its humanitarian efforts in assisting other organizations. Two of the most prominent are Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium (the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), the Church describes itself as “eager to act and yet intent on contemplation,” and explicitly orders “action to contemplation,” not the reverse. And it says the liturgy is an “outstanding means” by which the faithful express the mystery of Christ and the nature of the Church.

You don’t have to be Catholic to see the wisdom of this approach. Worship is neither a waste nor a reward after the work; it’s the source that motivates the work, and connects the work to identity, rather than mere philanthropy. 

What Worship Actually Does

People sometimes talk about worship like it’s a little more than a cultural habit, a vibe if you will.

But biblically (and in Latter-day Saint practice), worship is much more like alignment.

Worship is what happens when you stop treating yourself as the center of the universe—and deliberately, repeatedly, bodily re‑center on God. That sounds “spiritual,” and it is. But it has very practical effects:

• Worship builds a different kind of person

Humanitarian service requires more than empathy. Empathy is a spark; it flares and fades. Service that persists needs character: patience, chastity, honesty, restraint, long‑suffering, courage, meekness, integrity when you’re not being watched.

Worship is where these virtues are named, demanded, practiced, and—over time—formed into muscle memory.

• Worship builds a different kind of community

A congregation isn’t just a crowd of like-minded individuals. At its best, it’s a covenant community with thick relationships. You notice when someone disappears; you show up when a baby is born or a parent dies; you bring soup; you sit through awkward conversations; you forgive; you get forgiven.

That kind of community is a miracle. It’s also a logistics machine for mercy.

• Worship builds time horizons long enough for real good

Some problems yield to a burst of attention. Most don’t.

Addiction. Poverty. Education. Conflict. Cycles of abuse. Trauma. Refugee resettlement. Loneliness. Generational hopelessness.

If your only fuel is outrage, you burn out. If your only fuel is applause, you quit when the applause stops.

Worship trains people to act from a longer story. It makes sacrifice rational because it places sacrifice inside eternity.

• Worship protects service from becoming ego

Humanitarianism can become vanity. Service can become a way to be seen, to feel superior, to justify contempt for others (“I help people; why can’t you?”), to build a brand, to control.

Worship is where the ego gets humbled. Where you remember you’re not the savior. Where you’re reminded that you, too, are poor in spirit and desperately in need of grace.

The Data Says Worship Grows Generosity

The argument is not only theological, but empirical. 

In the United States, religious participation—especially regular attendance—has repeatedly shown up as one of the strongest predictors of charitable giving and volunteering.

• Gallup reports that Christians (and especially those who attend church regularly) are more likely than the nonreligious to say they donated and volunteered in the past year.
• A widely circulated analysis hosted by the Hoover Institution (drawing on the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey) found large gaps between weekly attenders and secular respondents in both donating and volunteering—differences measured in double-digit percentage points.
• The Generosity Commission summarizes the broader pattern bluntly: declining religious participation is frequently cited as part of the donor-participation decline, and there’s “substantial evidence” that religious Americans are more likely to give and volunteer—including to secular causes, not only religious ones.

Some of these benefits likely come from the fact that believers tend to be part of strong communities. Worship, however, doesn’t just create community; it rehearses a moral story where generosity is expected. It normalizes sacrifice. It turns giving from “extra credit” into “this is what we do.”

And psychologists have tried to probe causation more directly. Experiments have found that subtly priming religious concepts can increase prosocial behavior in anonymous economic games. Meta-analytic work reviewing many studies finds religious priming shows a reliable positive effect on prosocial measures.

You don’t need to overclaim this research to see the headline: religious practice isn’t merely “private meaning-making.” It measurably shapes how people behave toward others.

Which means the critique “Stop worshiping and start serving” is not only spiritually misguided. It’s practically self-defeating. Because the evidence suggests worship is part of what produces servers.

You can say, why do you waste time and money worshipping instead of serving, but in practice those who spend their time and money worshipping are also the ones spending the most time and money serving. 

So What About The Church of Jesus Christ Specifically?

Let’s talk directly. The Church’s religious mission costs money. Meetinghouses, temples, missionary work, youth programs, education, publications, administration, welfare logistics.

Critics sometimes frame this as theft from the poor, as if every dollar spent on worship is a dollar stolen from a hungry child.

That’s a powerful emotional frame. It’s also simplistic in a way that would get laughed out of any serious discussion of how organizations work.

Low overhead is not proof of effectiveness. Some of the biggest organizations in non-profit accountability went to bat to combat this myth in 2013. It remains true today. And the problems that need to be solved won’t be solved by pouring money into them. They require infrastructure, training, and longevity. Looking at just welfare for low-income countries, between 2020 and 2023, nearly $700 billion was spent, and the problem remains far from solved. 

The real question is not, “Could we spend this dollar on something else?” Of course, we could. You can always redirect dollars. The real question is what is the best way to spend that dollar. What system produces the most good for the most time? 

And research suggests that churches that focus on worship and doctrine do a better long-term job of addressing those problems. 

For example, in its “Caring for Those in Need” report for 2025, the Church says it supported thousands of humanitarian projects across nearly the whole world and reports $1.58 billion in expenditures and millions of volunteer hours. In 2024, it was $1.45 billion, in 2023 it was $1.36 billion, and in 2022 it was $1.02 billion. And the projects they choose to spend on are those that will produce a virtuous cycle of improvement in the communities where they take place. Consider the self-reliance push of the Church’s welfare system. Consider BYU-Pathway and the Perpetual Education Fund. When it came to serving in the community, the Church didn’t just have members show up, they created JustServe, to create an engine to help local non-profits find volunteers. And the Church has focused on improving neonatal care by training nurses, and training nurse trainers, creating generations of healthy babies.

As we’ve seen in recent history, a church that forgets worship forgets why it serves. It may still do good for a while. But it begins to hollow out—spiritually, culturally, demographically—and eventually it loses the very capacity it once had to mobilize good.

So when critics say, “Stop spending on worship and spend it all on humanitarian aid,” they are—ironically—advocating to dismantle one of the most powerful known engines of mass voluntary generosity.

Worship is how God turns ordinary people into a durable community capable of extraordinary service.

So yes—celebrate humanitarian giving. Expand it. Partner widely. Be transparent where appropriate. Improve effectiveness. Learn from everyone.

And also: do not let anyone shame you into believing worship is wasted time. 

Mary’s ointment filled a house with fragrance. A room full of people could smell her devotion.

The modern world is hungry for that fragrance—devotion that doesn’t flee from suffering, but also doesn’t pretend that suffering is the only thing worth talking about.

A relationship with Christ is not a side quest. It is the center.

And from that center—when it is real—flows a river of service that can outlast outrage, outlast politics, outlast the news cycle, outlast your own energy.

That’s not an argument against humanitarian work. It’s an argument for why the Church should keep being unapologetically a church.

The post The Church Is More Than A Charity appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The Church’s soft power is built on credibility through collaboration—pairing a global volunteer culture and substantial resources with trusted partners who already have expertise, reach, and on-the-ground legitimacy. In a world hungry for trust, this posture multiplies humanitarian impact—and it quietly teaches the rest of us how to lead with humility, stewardship, and shared purpose.

For the Church, the aim is covenant discipleship and Christlike love; any “soft power” that follows is a byproduct of that faithfulness. In other words, credibility is fruit, not the vine.

Soft power is earned, not asserted.

Soft Power, Reframed as the Fruit of Discipleship

Here I use “soft power” descriptively, not normatively—the Church serves because it follows Jesus Christ; trust accrues because it serves consistently. Humanitarian service is an outgrowth of that discipleship. 

To understand the Church’s “soft power,” we first need to clarify what we mean by the term. In Joseph Nye’s framework, soft power is the ability to shape outcomes through attraction and persuasion rather than force or payment. In practice, it runs on one scarce resource: credibility—earned over time through consistent values and reliable action.

Historically, the Church has maintained both an inward-facing welfare system and an outward-facing humanitarian effort—tracing its formal welfare program to 1936 and its broader humanitarian outreach to 1984. The existence of both streams is important: it signals that partnership is not a substitute for institutional capacity. It is, instead, a strategic and moral decision about how to deploy capacity for the widest good.

Why Partnership Is the Strategy—Not the Exception

The Church’s own public framing is revealing. It speaks of a desire to “maximize” impact so that help blesses not only individuals but families and communities—and it explicitly acknowledges “trusted organizations” as part of the ecosystem that makes the work possible.

In this context, partnership becomes more than a practical convenience. It becomes a posture:

• Stewardship: directing resources where they will do the most good.
• Humility: letting others lead when they hold the expertise.
• Unity: working across lines of faith, nationality, and institutional identity.
• Fidelity: cooperating widely without compromising revealed doctrine, standards, or church governance

And just as notably, the Church’s model often aims to serve people regardless of religious affiliation—an approach it states openly in its humanitarian descriptions.

Partnership is not a compromise. Partnership is a multiplier.

Creating a new program from scratch is not always the most compassionate option—especially in global humanitarian work. Building a parallel infrastructure can mean duplicating supply chains, duplicating local relationships, duplicating compliance systems, and, unintentionally, competing with the very organizations already trusted on the ground.

For example, organizations like the World Food Programme have global distribution systems and emergency operations that can be activated rapidly. The Church can amplify those systems faster than it could replicate them.

By contrast, partnering lets the Church contribute what it can uniquely offer—funding, commodities, volunteers, convening power—while relying on others for what they uniquely offer: specialized public health capacity, emergency logistics, refugee systems, school feeding programs, and long-developed accountability frameworks.

The Church’s own communications sometimes name this directly: long-standing work with organizations “recognized for their effectiveness and integrity,” including World Food Program USA, UNICEF, and CARE, is presented as part of how its projects are carried out.

What looks like “outsourcing” can, when done ethically, be a form of respect.

Case Study One: A Logistics Hub in Barbados

Consider a moment that is easy to miss if we only look for dramatic headlines: the Church and World Food Program USA jointly funded an emergency response logistics hub in the Caribbean, supporting construction and operations in Barbados with a combined $4.3 million, including an initial $2 million grant from the Church.

That is not merely a donation. It is an investment in readiness—the kind of capacity that makes the difference between good intentions and timely food, shelter, and supplies when disaster strikes.

Context: influence grows where reliability lives

And that choice keeps compounding. The World Food Programme identifies Latter-day Saint Charities as a partner since 2014, emphasizing measurable progress toward hunger relief.

Implication: soft power that doesn’t need the spotlight

Soft power, at its healthiest, doesn’t demand center stage. It chooses impact over branding, durability over applause, and coalition over control. A logistics hub is, in many ways, the perfect symbol: unglamorous, essential, and quietly decisive.

Case Study Two: Eight Organizations, One Women and Children Initiative

Now widen the lens from logistics to public health.

In a Relief Society–led global effort to improve maternal and child health, the Church announced $55.8 million in support. It is collaborating with eight internationally recognized nonprofit organizations—including CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Helen Keller International, iDE, MAP International, Save the Children, The Hunger Project, and Vitamin Angels—to strengthen health and nutrition programs in 12 high-need countries.

This is a partnership built not as a one-off, but as a deliberate coalition

Context: the Church as a convener, not just a funder

Furthermore, convening is its own kind of power. When a large institution chooses to collaborate across multiple NGOs—rather than selecting one “favorite” or building an in-house global health apparatus—it signals that the goal is not institutional dominance. The goal is reach.

In Helen Keller International’s own public statement about the collaboration, the logic is explicit: scaling “proven” nutrition services, with multiple peer organizations working together, to create lasting change.

Implication: the soft power of “shared credit”

There is a subtle leadership lesson here: the Church’s influence increases when it refuses to hoard ownership. It strengthens other institutions—and in doing so, it becomes the kind of partner other institutions want nearby.

That desire—to collaborate, to coordinate, to trust—is the heart of soft power.

Case Study Three: Feeding the Hungry Through Systems Already in Place

The Church’s partnership approach is not limited to international NGOs. It also shows up in the way it feeds neighbors close to home.

On its own “Feeding the Hungry” summary page, the Church describes a three-part approach: donate to immediate needs, collaborate with organizations focused on long-term food security, and run its own child nutrition program.

The Church reports operating 122 bishops’ storehouses across six countries, using them to care for members in need, and where storehouses are unavailable, it sometimes works with local grocery store chains.

But perhaps most notably, the storehouse system is not treated as a closed loop. The Church states that food and supplies from bishops’ storehouses are distributed to charitable organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada—and that in 2024, more than 32 million pounds of food were donated through humanitarian organizations and food banks (about 32 million meals).

It even offers concrete local examples, including support to Catholic Community Services in Salt Lake City and assistance to El Hogar Buen Samaritano in Spain.

This is one of the clearest answers to the question, ‘Why partner rather than build everything internally?’ Because hunger is not solved by a single pipeline. It is solved by networks—food banks, shelters, grocery chains, local ministries, civic agencies—each doing what they do best.

The Church’s soft power here is the power to strengthen the network without demanding the network become the Church.

Case Study Four: Trust Across Lines—The NAACP and the Red Cross

Soft power is not only global. It is also social: the ability to lower defensiveness and raise cooperation in places where history, misunderstanding, or suspicion might otherwise block progress.

The NAACP partnership

The Church’s relationship with the NAACP, as described in Church Newsroom coverage, began with a joint call for greater civility and racial harmony in May 2018, later developing into education and humanitarian initiatives.

Local and national outlets described scholarship support and related initiatives tied to the partnership. Later, Church News summarized additional education and humanitarian commitments, including scholarships and related efforts.

Whatever one’s perspective on institutional history, the partnership model here communicates a clear principle: we do not wait for perfect alignment before we begin building shared good. Such collaboration proceeds under prophetic direction and clear boundaries. Partnership does not equal endorsement of every position; we work together where concrete objectives align with the gospel and established Church policies.

The Red Cross collaboration

Similarly, the Church’s collaboration with the American Red Cross is framed—on the Church’s own regional humanitarian summary page—as having “staying power” because of shared values like humanitarian spirit and trust.

And the Red Cross itself publicly describes Church donations supporting Red Cross efforts, situating them as part of a longer pattern of giving.

The Personal Lessons: How to Practice “Soft Power” Without Losing Your Soul

Institutional examples matter because they give us patterns to imitate—not in scale, but in spirit.

Here are the takeaways that translate most directly into ordinary life. Our influence grows when our service is dependable.

Lesson 1: Choose contribution over control

In families, workplaces, wards, and neighborhoods, we are often tempted to help in ways that keep us central. The Church’s partnership posture suggests a different path: support what already works, and let others lead where they’re strongest.

Lesson 2: Let “shared credit” be your leadership style

Soft power in personal life is rarely about charisma. It is about trust—built through consistency, humility, and credit-sharing. The Church’s collaborations—from global NGOs to local food banks—model a way of doing good that doesn’t require ownership.

Lesson 3: Build ecosystems, not just moments

A single act of service can be beautiful. But durable influence comes from strengthening systems: the food pantry, the school, the shelter, the community volunteer network.

In this light, platforms like JustServe become more than a scheduling tool. They become an institutional habit of connecting people to organizations that can sustain service beyond one weekend.

Lesson 4: Measure what matters—then tell the truth about it

The Church’s annual summaries are not perfect proxies for every form of generosity, but they reflect a principle: service should be reportable, accountable, and visible enough to build trust. We count to improve care, transparency, and wise use of sacred funds—not to keep score. And we remember that many of the most important outcomes—conversion, dignity, belonging—resist quantification.

In our lives, that can look like simple clarity: following through, closing loops, showing receipts (sometimes literally), and making outcomes legible.

Lesson 5: Keep the moral center clear

Finally, partnership only works when your values travel intact. The Church repeatedly frames its humanitarian collaborations as rooted in Christlike love and a desire to bless communities broadly.

For us, the equivalent is straightforward: serve in ways that are clean, respectful, and non-transactional—without turning people into props for our identity.

Soft power is often misunderstood as image management. But at its best, it is something far more demanding: the disciplined practice of becoming trustworthy.

The Church of Jesus Christ demonstrates a version of that discipline through its partnership-centered humanitarian work—mobilizing volunteers, funding, and commodities, while collaborating with organizations that bring specialized expertise, local legitimacy, and global reach.

And the institutional example returns to us as a personal invitation: to live in a way that multiplies good—through humility, collaboration, and a steady willingness to build trust.

The post The Quiet Multiplier appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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When I was thirteen, my father and I would watch Saturday morning cartoons. It was like a comforting ritual. It was on one of those quiet, gentle mornings that my world was shattered. There was a pound on the door. I opened it and was surprised to find officers with weapons drawn, the air thick with confusion and accusation. Together we woke the rest of the family. Together we watched strangers go through our home. It was not long after that my father was arrested.

For four long years, the courthouse became my second home. Week after week I sat on wooden benches, praying my father would not be swallowed by a witch hunt of lies. And then, one summer afternoon, the world became still. The jury declared him guilty of a crime he did not commit. I left the courtroom without saying goodbye.

A few weeks later, I sat in church, trying to do anything to fill the void in my heart. A teenage girl—about my age—was speaking to the congregation about the power of God to answer prayers. She spoke about how she lost her keys, searched everywhere, and finally prayed to know where her keys were. “As soon as I prayed,” she said, “I knew exactly where they were.” 

I remember sitting there absolutely stunned. My father had been convicted and sentenced just days before, after years of prayers. Why had heaven opened for her but not for me? Surely a set of keys was not more deserving than a boy in need of a father. Was her need somehow greater than mine? 

Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Why did Christ heal one soul but walk past another? Why does relief come to some but not to me, even when I know He can give it? These are mysteries I do not pretend to solve. 

Could it be, however, that the mystery itself is a whisper of grace—the quiet grace that sustains us while we wait for the answer to such questions? As we wait for our own “miracle”?

She waited twelve years. Joseph waited thirteen years in slavery and prison. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Moses waited forty years to reach the promised land—and died before entering. Adam waited one hundred and thirty years for Seth after losing Abel by the hand of Cain. The woman at the well waited through five husbands before meeting the Messiah and finally feeling seen. I waited four years for my father.

It seems that the Lord has always asked His children to wait. Why would we be an exception? 

Hebrew has a beautiful way of providing new insights into words and meanings. I am no linguist, just a student, but one Hebrew word for “wait” is qavah. It appears in the psalmist’s cry, “Let none that wait on thee be ashamed.” The same root word can also mean “expect” and is often associated with tension-filled waiting for the expected promises of the Lord to be fulfilled. For example, Isaiah uses qavah to foreshadow the long-awaited gathering of Israel, “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob, and I will put my trust in Him.” (Isaiah 8:17). The word is derived from a concept of binding two things together in a cord, pulled tight with expectation and anticipation. We are able to wait on the Lord for salvation, or healing, or redemption, or whatever it is we are waiting for because those specific concepts are concomitant with the promises of God. We cannot have healing without the Healer, or salvation without the Savior, or redemption without the Redeemer. Qavah is not the uncertainty of wondering if something will happen, but the quiet assurance that it will. 

Another Hebrew word for “wait” is yachal—often translated to “hope.” It is the word used by Job in his famous lament, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15). The connection between waiting and hoping amidst suffering paints a picture of responsibility. Hope is not merely the denial of suffering, but the denial of despair amidst suffering. We must guard the sacred time we spend waiting, protecting the heart from bitterness and bolstering our faith until the dawn of our miracle comes. One’s integrity does not shine until it is tested. The time to shine is in the waiting. So, what are we doing to protect the sacred time we are given while waiting?

The woman with the issue of blood waited in this way. She took responsibility for her waiting. She did not let resentment in, like poison. She protected the fragile place between promise and fulfillment, and when the Savior walked by, she was ready. Waiting, then, mustn’t be a passive suspension of time but a deliberate intention of the soul. Whether we think of qavah—the expectation of God’s promises—or yachal—hope amidst suffering—we discover that waiting is itself a form of discipleship. It is the space where character is shaped, where trust is tested, and where our deepest commitments are revealed. We wait not because we are uncertain, but because we are tethered to something sure, the sure foundation of a promise made by Christ. In the quiet stretch between promise and fulfillment, we learn who we are becoming. And perhaps that is the quiet miracle of waiting: it gathers us, guards us, and prepares us to become the person we were always meant to become.

The post Miracles in the Waiting appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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The first time I really noticed it, I wasn’t in a chapel or a chemistry class or even a quiet moment. I was just thinking about clapping.

Picture someone standing in the middle of an empty room, alone, with no music playing, and no performance ending. And they start applauding. Not once, not as a joke, but like it means something.

It’s wrong, and you know it’s wrong. Not morally wrong in the “someone needs to be punished” sense. More like, wrong in the way a sentence feels wrong when it’s missing a subject. The rhythm might be there, the hands might be moving, but the action is looking for a receiver. 

Applause is built for an audience. It’s shaped like a response. Gratitude is like that, too.

I’ve been thinking about this because of a conversation I had with a friend at school. He is the smart, calm type—and an atheist. He doesn’t believe. Not in a rebellious way, not in a “look at me” way. He just doesn’t see it.

I was driving him to campus as we scanned the rows for a parking spot. When we finally saw an open one, my friend laughed and said, “I’m grateful there’s such a good spot.” 

It was such a small moment that it almost slipped past, but I felt something in me pause. Not because he said “grateful”—people say that all the time—but because he said it like he meant it. So I asked him, half curious, half teasing, “Grateful to who?”

He looked at me like I was insane. “What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean,” I said, “you don’t believe in God. So when you say you’re grateful… who is that for?”

He shrugged, “It’s just… a feeling, don’t overthink it.” 

After all, he knows I wish he would become a Christian. And the thing is, I don’t think he was being internally inconsistent when he said he was “grateful.” I think he was being deeply human.

Because even if we pretend otherwise, we all know gratitude has a direction. When we observe the good in the world, good that bends toward us, we feel that gratitude, even if we don’t know which direction it should go.

It’s the feeling you get when someone holds the door. When your mom texts you at the exact moment you need it. When you pass a test you were sure you failed. When you find the open parking spot after circling like an exhausted shark. It’s not just “nice.” It’s receiving something. And receiving automatically raises a question: from where? That question doesn’t always show up as words. Sometimes it’s just a little inward tilt, like your soul is turning its face toward something. Sometimes it’s only a breath: thank you. Sometimes you don’t even say it out loud, because saying it out loud would make you feel exposed. But you still feel it. That’s what’s interesting to me: how natural it is. 

We can be cynical about almost anything, but we still get grateful by accident. We still feel it leak out of us in moments we didn’t plan. My friend didn’t “choose” gratitude as a philosophical statement. He didn’t sit there and decide, “I will now experience an emotion that implies a giver.” He just felt what a human being feels when a small mercy appears.

If you want to argue about God, you can start with the usual categories: cosmology, morality, suffering, science, history. People do. And sometimes those arguments help, and sometimes they just create arguments.

But gratitude is different. Gratitude is not a debate tactic. It’s an emotion that shows up uninvited. It’s one of the ways reality touches us from the inside. So what do we do with that?

Gratitude is not just a social lubricant. It’s not just an “adaptive behavior.” Gratitude has an object built into it. It reaches outward. It points. And when you try to keep it strictly impersonal, you run into what I can only describe as a missing target problem.

It’s like shooting a basketball without even imagining a hoop you’re aiming for. Your body still knows the ball is supposed to be aimed. Your muscles still commit to a direction. But there’s no place for it to land. Try it. Seriously. Try being intensely grateful and keeping it strictly impersonal. Imagine the thing you are grateful for. Now say: “I’m grateful to… nobody.” It feels off in the same way applauding to an empty room feels off. The motion exists, the emotion exists, but the relational shape has nowhere to go.

Some people solve that discomfort by refusing to feel gratitude at all. They turn it into entitlement, or into a kind of numb self-protection: “I earned everything I have. Nothing was given. Nobody helped. I don’t owe anything.”

The other option is to let gratitude be what it is: a signal.

When you’re thirsty in the desert, your thirst is not an argument in a debate. It’s not “evidence” in the courtroom sense. It’s a clue about your body and your environment. It suggests you were made for water. It nudges you to look for a source.

Gratitude feels like that to me.

It’s an inward thirst that says, “Something good happened, and it wasn’t just me.” It doesn’t always tell you the whole story. It doesn’t automatically answer every question about suffering or silence. But it does carry a kind of pointed direction to something that I don’t think is accidental.

I’m not saying that if you feel grateful, you secretly believe in God. My friend’s gratitude wasn’t a trapdoor to make him lose an argument. But maybe the better question about gratitude and God isn’t “Does gratitude prove God?” Maybe the question is: “What kind of universe produces creatures who keep wanting to say thank you to someone?”

A universe where gratitude is purely accidental is possible, I guess. You could argue it’s just neurons doing neuron things. But then you still have to account for why the feeling is shaped like a response. Why it wants to land somewhere. Why, in our best moments, gratitude doesn’t just make us happy, it makes us humble. Why it makes us want to be gentler. Why it makes us want to share. That moral effect matters.

My friend might not have had a name for the “who” of his gratitude, but he still felt the pull. And I think that pull is one of those small invitations that shows up in ordinary places, parking lots, hallways, and text messages.

So what do we do with that? Try this the next time you feel genuine gratitude: don’t rush past it. Don’t immediately turn it into a joke. Don’t file it away as random luck and move on. Pause. Name it: I’m grateful for this. Then, just for five seconds, let it have a direction. If you believe in God, aim it there. If you don’t know where to aim it, use it as an urge to begin looking, thinking. Just one small step.

Maybe gratitude is more than a pleasant emotion. Maybe it’s a compass. And even if it doesn’t hand you certainty on a silver platter, it can still tell you something true: that you were made to receive goodness, and be grateful to someone.

I can’t prove that with a parking spot. But I’m convinced gratitude is one of the quiet clues that reality is personal at the deepest level. And if that’s true, then the most honest thing we can do with gratitude is not to silence it or flatten it into impersonal randomness, but to follow it.

The post To Whom Thanks Belongs appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

That cluster of ideas is what some describe as body-self dualism or mind-body dualism: the tendency to treat the self (mind, soul, identity) and the body as two different things with two different destinies—one high, one low; one essential, one disposable; one “me,” one “mine.” 

Body-self dualism can appear harmless, even useful. It seems to protect our dignity against sickness, disability, aging, and social judgment. It can sound like the spiritual truth: “I am more than my appearance.” Yet the same idea can smuggle in a much stronger claim: that my body is not part of my person in any deep or eternal way. And that stronger claim collides head-on with the gospel of Jesus Christ—and, in especially pointed ways, with the restored gospel’s doctrine of what human beings are and what salvation ultimately means.

Where does dualism come from, why has it spread, and how has popular art helped make it feel like common sense? And how does it disrupt restored Christian doctrine, and subtly shrink our spiritual horizon—keeping us from the very fullness of life the gospel promises?

What Body-Self Dualism Is—and Why It’s Attractive

Dualism is not merely the claim that body and mind are different. That much is obvious: thoughts aren’t bones, and love isn’t liver tissue. Dualism becomes a worldview when it turns “different” into “separable,” and then “separable” into “ranked,” so that the self is the “real” person while the body is a tool, costume, prison, or accident.

This is attractive for understandable reasons.

• It promises control. If “I” am essentially my inner self, then the body becomes something I can manage, optimize, discipline, or transcend.
• It promises safety from loss. Bodies get sick and die. If the core self is detachable from the body, then the worst facts of mortality can feel less threatening.
• It promises moral purity. If the body is the source of appetite, weakness, and shame, then separating “me” from “my body” can feel like separating “me” from “my sins.”
• It promises a clean identity. If identity is an inner essence, then the body is just a presentation layer—helpful when it aligns with inner experience, oppressive when it doesn’t.

The problem is not that these longings are wrong. The problem is that dualism often answers them by making the body a theological second-class citizen.

A Christian Detour: When “Body Bad” Entered The Story

If body-self dualism feels “Christian,” that is usually because Western Christians inherited (and sometimes amplified) non-Christian stories about matter. The New Testament’s baseline is stubbornly embodied: creation is declared good; the Son of God takes flesh; salvation is accomplished through a wounded body; and the great hope is not escape but resurrection. When Paul contrasts “flesh” with “spirit,” he is not preaching against the body, but diagnosing a fallen orientation—the human tendency toward selfishness, ruled by disordered desire. In Greek, Paul uses sarx (“flesh”) and sōma (“body”) differently. Sarx, which Paul uses in contrast to spirit, references the fallen human condition. Sōma, to the contrary, he calls a “temple.” Later readers, translators, and preaching sometimes collapsed “flesh” into “body” as one concept, turning a moral diagnosis into a metaphysical one.

The earliest, sharpest “body bad” intrusion into Christian imagination came through gnostic and docetic currents in the second century and after. In those worlds, matter is a mistake (or a trap), salvation is the soul’s liberation from physicality, and Christ is reimagined as only seeming to be embodied. The mainstream church rejected these moves precisely because they unraveled the gospel: if the body is evil, the Incarnation becomes scandalous rather than glorious, and the resurrection becomes unnecessary or incoherent.

Two exaggerations then fed each other. First, critics of Christianity began to describe the faith as essentially hostile to the body, as though the tradition’s occasional rhetoric of renunciation were its center. Second, some Christians—especially in more anxious or moralistic moments—began to act as though holiness meant becoming less embodied: less needy, less affectable, less physical. Both exaggerations obscure the deeper continuity: historic Christianity has always carried an embodied core (incarnation, sacraments, resurrection), even when its surrounding culture tempted it toward a “spirit good / matter bad” shortcut.

By the time we reach the early modern period, this long tension has set the stage for something new. The scientific revolution increasingly described nature in mechanical terms, and the body began to look less like a mysterious living unity and more like a complex machine. Once the body is imagined as a mechanism, it becomes psychologically tempting to relocate the “real me” entirely inside—into consciousness, thought, and will. 

Descartes And The Modern “Split”

Body-self dualism has older roots than René Descartes. You can find strains of it in Plato’s suspicion of the body, in certain ascetic traditions, and in recurring “spirit good / matter bad” patterns that Christianity has had to repeatedly correct. But Descartes is pivotal because he gave the modern West a powerful, system-building version of the split—one that fit the emerging scientific imagination.

In the 17th century, Descartes attempted to rebuild knowledge on certainty. His famous method of doubt led him to a conclusion that seemed irrefutable: even if everything else is uncertain, I cannot doubt that I am thinking. From there comes the celebrated “cogito” (“I think, therefore I am”), and with it a defining move: the “I” is discovered first as a thinking thing.

Descartes then described reality in terms of two fundamentally different kinds of “substance,” mind and matter. 

In this picture, the body is a kind of machine in space—measurable, divisible, governed by mechanical laws—while the mind is non-spatial, indivisible, and known directly through introspection. The two interact, but they are not two aspects of one integrated being; they are two different types of being.

That conceptual architecture mattered historically because it did something culturally explosive: it allowed nature—and the body—to be studied as a mechanism without immediately threatening the idea of a soul. You could dissect muscles like gears and still speak of a “true self” that is invisible and inward. Whatever else one thinks of Descartes, his framework helped make modern science feel metaphysically safe. But it also made a divided human being feel metaphysically normal.

And what began as a philosophical solution became a cultural instinct. Over time, many people stopped reading Descartes while continuing to live inside his basic picture: I am an inner self piloting a body.

Why Dualism Keeps Getting More Popular

If Cartesian dualism were just an old theory in philosophy seminars, it wouldn’t matter much. But body-self dualism has only grown more culturally intuitive, because modern life supplies it with metaphors that feel obvious.

The body as hardware, the self as software. Industrial and technological societies train us to treat physical things as replaceable components. We upgrade devices; we swap parts; we outsource labor; we “hack” systems. It is a short step to imagining the body as hardware and the self as software—portable, copyable, and (in fantasies of mind-uploading) potentially immortal.

The medicalized gaze. Modern medicine brings genuine blessings, but it can encourage a way of speaking that quietly distances the person from the body: the body is the patient, the body has symptoms, the body is managed. This can be useful in crises—some psychological distance can reduce panic—but it can also reinforce the notion that the body is not truly “me.”

The curated digital self. Online, we learn to present an identity through text, images, avatars, and profiles. In digital space, the self feels less like a body and more like a brand, a voice, a “presence.” The body becomes either an obstacle (something you can’t fully control) or a raw material for self-construction (something you can endlessly edit, filter, and reframe).

The therapeutic slogan culture. Even healthy truths can be flattened into dualistic clichés. “You’re more than your appearance” can quietly mutate into “Your appearance is irrelevant to who you are.” “Listen to your body” can mutate into “You are separate from your body, and the body is a strange animal you manage.” A culture hungry for quick healing often grabs a phrase that works in one context and universalizes it unknowingly into metaphysics.

So dualism rises not only because people argue for it, but because people practice it—through technology, institutions, and habits of speech.

Popular art, meanwhile, rarely teaches philosophy directly, but it trains our imagination—especially about what a person is. Cartesian dualism, and the types of explorations its framework allows in fiction, have become part of our cultural vocabulary.

Consider how many beloved stories depend on the idea that the “real self” can be detached from the body:

• Body-swap comedies and dramas (“Freaky Friday” and its many relatives) treat the self as a transferable occupant.
• Virtual reality narratives (such as The Matrix) imagine that lived experience belongs primarily to the mind, while the body is either a battery or a pod-bound inconvenience.
• Mind-uploading and replaceable bodies (seen in various science-fiction worlds like Altered Carbon) portray bodies as “sleeves” you can change while the self persists as data.
• Ghost-in-the-machine stories (like Ghost in the Shell) press the question: if consciousness can live in different bodies—or in no body—what is a body for?
• Astral projection and disembodied heroism (common in superhero and fantasy genres) dramatize spiritual power as a kind of leaving-the-body skill.
• And for a generation raised on Scholastic book fair “Animorph” books, we saw a self seamlessly move between body forms, almost entirely intact.

None of these works is “bad,” and many are profound. These metaphors allow us to think about important issues in unique ways. The point is simpler: we are repeatedly entertained by narratives in which the self is detachable. It allows us to take a concept that is useful for dissecting ideas, and begin to assume it also has metaphysical credibility. These stories make dualism emotionally plausible. After enough repetitions, it becomes hard not to feel, at least subconsciously, that embodiment is optional—maybe even a burden to be overcome.

Art, in other words, takes the seed of an idea and transmits it until it seems obvious and inevitable. 

The Restored Gospel’s Anthropology: The Soul Is Embodied

At first glance, body-self dualism can sound like spiritual wisdom. It can motivate people to resist superficial judgment and to anchor dignity in something deeper than appearance. It can help someone endure pain: “This suffering is real, but it is not the whole of me.” It can even protect against despair in aging: “I am still me.”

There is a legitimate insight here: a human being is more than chemistry and biology. The gospel itself insists on meaning, agency, and eternal worth.

But dualism doesn’t stop at “more than.” It tends to become “other than”—and then “apart from.”

And that is where it begins to clash with Christianity at the root, because Christianity is not a religion of escape from embodiment. It is a religion of incarnation and resurrection.

As discussed above, classic Christianity already resists dualism more than many people realize. The story is not “souls trapped in bodies learn to float away.” The story is: God creates a material world and calls it good; God takes on flesh; God saves through a crucified body; God raises that body; God promises the resurrection of the dead.

The restored gospel presses this even further, not only by affirming bodily resurrection, but by giving a remarkably strong doctrine of what a “soul” is and why bodies matter eternally.

In Latter-day Saint scripture, the human being is not a spirit that happens to have a body. The scriptures define the human soul in a way that refuses the split: “The spirit and the body are the soul of man” (D&C 88:15).

That is not a minor phrasing choice. It means the “real me” is not just the spirit and not just the body, but the union.

And the Restoration goes further still, “All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure…” (D&C 131:7–8). This teaching directly undercuts the assumption that “spiritual” means “non-material” and therefore “more real.” In restored doctrine, spirit is not a ghostly opposite of matter. The universe is more continuous than Cartesian dualism imagines.

In the restored view, receiving a body is not a temporary inconvenience; it is a major purpose of mortality. It is tied to agency, growth, covenants, family, and joy. Doctrine and Covenants 93 teaches that a fullness of joy is connected to embodied union, “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal… spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy.” (D&C 93:33).

In other words, the body is not merely a testing ground you outgrow. It is part of the shape of eternal joy.

The heart of the gospel is not that Jesus proved the soul can survive death. Many religious and cultural beliefs at the time already believed that. The scandal and glory is that He rose bodily, and that this bodily resurrection is the pattern of our future. The victory is not the soul’s escape, but the defeat of physical death.

Restored scripture (like the Book of Mormon’s sustained emphasis on resurrection) treats the reuniting of body and spirit as essential to justice, mercy, and wholeness (see, for example, 2 Nephi 9’s teaching that resurrection overcomes the “awful monster” of death and hell).

From a restored perspective, then, body-self dualism is not merely a mistaken psychological metaphor. It is a rival story about what salvation is.

Theological Problems Dualism Introduces

Once body-self dualism becomes the default way we imagine the self, it creates a set of pressures inside our theology. These pressures often don’t announce themselves. They show up as confusions, imbalances, and quiet mismatches between what we say we believe and what we emotionally expect.

Here are several of the most serious.

It turns resurrection into an optional add-on. If the “real me” is my inner self and the body is just a vehicle, then resurrection can feel like a nice bonus rather than a climax of redemption. Death becomes a release: the soul is finally free. But in restored Christianity, death is an enemy, and resurrection is not decorative; it is part of the gospel itself.

Dualism makes it harder to feel why resurrection matters—not as theology on paper, but as hope in the bones.

It quietly slides toward a “spirit good / body bad” moral psychology. Many disciples already struggle with shame around appetite, sexuality, fatigue, and mental health. Dualism can legitimize that shame by teaching us to interpret bodily life as a lower realm.

The result is often a tragic pattern: people try to become holy by becoming less human—less needy, less vulnerable, less physical. But the gospel does not sanctify us by amputating our humanity. It sanctifies us by redeeming it. The body is not the villain of spiritual life. It is one of the main places spiritual life happens.

It makes ordinances feel oddly external. Restored worship is profoundly embodied: baptism, the sacrament, laying on of hands, temple ordinances—covenants enacted through physical signs. If the body is peripheral to the “real self,” ordinances can begin to feel like mere symbols performed on the outside, while the “real” spiritual work is purely internal.

But restored theology treats ordinances as more than outward theater. They are covenantal actions that involve the person as an embodied soul. Dualism makes that harder to grasp—and easier to neglect.

It can fracture discipleship into “spiritual” and “physical” compartments. A dualistic imagination encourages a split life. Scripture and prayer belong to the “real me.” Sleep, food, exercise, and sexuality belong to the “body.” Work with hands, service with time, care for health, and patience with limitations become second-tier concerns.

But the gospel aims at consecration, not compartmentalization. The command is not “give God your inner life while managing your body on the side.” It is “present your whole self”—a living sacrifice in the full, integrated sense.

It truncates the purpose of life. If a spirit alone constituted an entire self, why even come to earth from the pre-mortal life? The reasons exist, but are narrower, and can paint a picture of a God more manipulative than exalting.

It weakens a doctrine of divine embodied destiny. One of the Restoration’s most distinctive teachings is that God is not an abstract force and that exaltation is not absorption into a featureless spiritual ocean. Our destiny is personal, relational, covenantal—and, in Latter-day Saint teaching, inseparably tied to glorified embodiment and eternal family life.

If we become convinced that bodies are ultimately non-essential, we begin to lose the emotional logic of exaltation. “Eternal increase,” eternal relationships, eternal joy as something lived—all of this becomes harder to picture and therefore harder to desire.

How Dualism Can Shrink Our Spiritual Potential

Ultimately, dualism can keep us from our full potential. Here the danger is subtle: dualism can masquerade as spirituality while quietly reducing the scope of sanctification.

The gospel’s path is usually different: not disconnection, but redemption; not escape, but transformation; not “less embodied,” but “more whole.”

If the body is merely an instrument, then growth becomes a war of mind against flesh: the self issues orders and the body either obeys or betrays. That can produce either pride (“I have mastered myself”) or despair (“My body is my enemy”).

The restored gospel frames agency more relationally: spirit and body are meant to be unified under Christ, with desires refined, not erased; with weakness turned into humility and strength; with the whole soul learning holiness.

Charity is embodied love: meals delivered, hands held, burdens lifted, work done, presence offered. A dualistic spirituality can become thin—rich in ideas, poor in incarnation. But the Savior’s ministry was not primarily a set of correct abstractions. It was a life of bodily presence: touching lepers, weeping at graves, eating with outcasts, bleeding in Gethsemane, rising with wounds still visible.

If our picture of salvation does not make room for that kind of embodied love, it is not yet fully Christian.

A Better Alternative: Sacred, Covenantal Embodiment

Rejecting body-self dualism does not require us to deny spiritual life, inner depth, or transcendence. It requires us to tell a more Christian story about what the self is.

A Restoration-shaped alternative might be called sacred embodiment:

1. I am not a soul trapped in a body. I am an embodied soul: spirit and element together.
2. Pre-mortal spirits are incomplete waiting for and requiring earthly embodiment, and our help in providing it.
3. My body is not my enemy. It is a divine gift and a field of discipleship.
4. Holiness is not less physical. Holiness is more whole—body and spirit reconciled in Christ.
5. Resurrection is not a metaphor. It is God’s declaration that bodies matter forever.

This reorientation has practical consequences. It changes how we think about rest, health, sexuality, aging, disability, and even worship. It invites a spirituality that is not embarrassed by the body, and not obsessed with the body either, but grateful for the body as a site of covenant life.

It also reframes repentance. Repentance is not the inner self apologizing for what the body did. Repentance is the whole soul turning toward God—habits, hungers, thoughts, relationships, and physical practices included.

The Gospel Does Not Save Us From Bodies; It Saves Us As Embodied Persons

Body-self dualism did not become popular because people are foolish. It became popular because it offers relief: relief from pain, from shame, from mortality, from limitation. Descartes gave the modern world a conceptual map that made that relief feel intellectually respectable; modern technology and popular art have made it feel emotionally intuitive.

But the restored gospel invites us into a different kind of relief—not the relief of separation, but the relief of reconciliation. Not “my body doesn’t matter,” but “my body can be redeemed.” Not “salvation is escape,” but “salvation is resurrection.” Not “I am a ghost in a machine,” but “I am a soul, spirit, and body, created for a fullness of joy.”

In that light, body-self dualism is not just a harmless idea. It is a quiet counterfeit of hope. It offers transcendence without incarnation, survival without resurrection, spirituality without covenantal embodiment. And it is precisely there—where it seems most comforting—that it can most effectively shrink our faith.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is bigger. It is not afraid of matter. It is not embarrassed by flesh. It does not treat the body as an unfortunate container for the real self. It proclaims that in Christ, the whole self—spirit and body—can become holy.

The post The Hottest Theological Fight Isn’t Politics appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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For many lovers of classical music, Handel’s Messiah represents the pinnacle of both artistic and spiritual excellence. It is almost temple-like in its ability to create an intersection between the human and the Divine. Handel’s work has helped countless listeners to internalize the message of the Savior’s birth, Atonement, and Resurrection. 

Scripture is clear that inspiration is necessary to bear witness of the Savior. The Apostle Paul wrote that “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” Restoration Scripture adds the further insight that “you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.” Handel’s music, combined with the biblical texts that librettist Charles Jennens selected for the work, bears witness that Jesus is the Lord. I believe the scriptures when they say that “every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ.” My own faith in and desire to follow the Savior is strengthened whenever I listen to or sing the Messiah. Because the Messiah bears witness of Christ, I conclude that it was inspired by God. 

Some scholars have cast doubt on whether Handel’s  Messiah was divinely inspired because of what is known about the composition process. However, because of its inspired witness of Christ, I believe it would be more fruitful to reframe our idea of what it means for an artist to be inspired rather than rejecting inspiration altogether. A closer look at Handel’s process of composing the Messiah suggests that divine inspiration often draws on previous experience, comes “line upon line,” and may manifest as an enabling power. 

Preparation and Previous Experience

Handel’s  Messiah came at a pivotal point in Handel’s career. Four years earlier, he had been restored to health after a dangerous stroke, defying an initial diagnosis that he would never again play the organ or compose music. But after his stroke, he struggled to find success. Handel’s signature Italian operas were falling out of favor with his British audience. His personal debts were mounting, raising the threat of debtor’s prison and increasing his stress. Considering the pressure that Handel experienced during this time, he likely felt an increased dependence on the Lord. Despite his talents, he may have felt that he needed help from on High. It is possible that such a sense of urgency and “real intent” made it possible for him to receive inspiration. 

Handel had essentially mastered the composition process, including the common 18th-century practice of writing a large quantity of music in a relatively short time. Researcher Calvin Stapert noted that Handel’s pace of 24 days for composition “was more or less typical for Handel.” To Stapert, this meant Handel was not inspired in his composition. Stapert wrote: “Romantic notions notwithstanding, it cannot be taken as a sign of exceptional or, as some have believed, divine inspiration. Like most of the composers of his time, Handel was capable of turning out a prodigious amount of music in a relatively short span of time … He was following his normal work pattern of composing new works in the gap between concert seasons.”

But the fact that the composition timeline was typical for Handel does not mean he was not inspired. Although the rapid composition of the Messiah was typical of Handel, the finished product stands out from the rest of his work for its spiritual qualities. Shortly after composing the Messiah, he wrote another oratorio, Samson, in about the same amount of time. It is worth listening to (I particularly recommend the 2009 BBC Proms performance), but it has nowhere near the same depth and spiritual power as the Messiah. Something was different about the process of composing the Messiah. I believe that divine inspiration entered into Handel’s routine and elevated what he was able to create. Honing his creative process over the years prepared him for his most inspiring and inspired work. 

Handel drew on prior preparation not only in his composition speed, but also in the musical qualities of the Messiah. Since 18th-century composers like Handel needed to produce a great deal of music quickly, they frequently recycled music from their own earlier compositions or borrowed from others. This behavior was culturally acceptable at the time, partly because facility and craftsmanship were prized more than originality, and partly because many people didn’t notice. Recordings weren’t possible, and the idea of a classical repertoire of pieces played on a regular basis didn’t yet exist. (Messiah may actually be the beginning of the classical repertoire, since it is the first piece to be performed regularly year after year.)

Handel was no exception in his borrowing; he borrowed from his own previous work and from that of other composers. In his Messiah, for one example, he drew from a forgotten madrigal he had previously written to write a duet and chorus. He also used ready-made material: the main melody of “And with His Stripes” was used by both Bach and Mozart, leading one researcher to call it “public property.” The same researcher notes that the Pastoral Symphony “is based upon a bagpipe tune played at Christmas by the pifferari of Naples and Rome,” but Handel acknowledged this by his abbreviation pifa at the beginning of the movement. 

While some might argue that Handel’s borrowings rule out the idea of divine inspiration, I suggest they merely change our idea of how inspiration works. Inspiration is not always about receiving completely new ideas. The Savior spoke of the Holy Ghost’s ability to “bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Memory, discovery, and organization are all part of inspiration.

In Handel’s case, it appears that inspiration involved helping him to recall, select, and improve preexisting material. This may actually coincide with the understanding of the Creation process revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith. The Book of Abraham, for instance, redefines the Creation as “organizing” preexisting matter, rather than creating out of nothing. Handel’s recycling of prior works was not a passive copy-and-paste approach; in each case, he elevated the material. This is most clearly seen in the fact that one of the oratorio’s most beloved choruses, “For Unto Us a Child is Born,” is built out of material he had written for a forgotten Italian duet and a madrigal. The final result is not a similarly forgettable work but a masterpiece that offers spiritual nourishment to audiences all over the world. The borrowings and recyclings of prior work that were ordered to testify of the Savior attest to Handel’s inspiration, rather than disproving it. 

Line Upon Line 

Although the initial composition process took twenty-four days, Handel spent a great deal of time revising the Messiah. An editor of one version of the score, Watkins Shaw, notes that “no fewer than 11 movements … were subject to re-shaping or complete recomposition by Handel, some of them more than once, following original composition in 1741 and first performances in 1742.” Another researcher, Robert Manson Myers, notes that Handel “ultimately devoted more time and thought to Messiah than to any other single composition.”

The Messiah did not come all at once, fully formed and unchangeable. It came filtered through a mortal instrument through trial and error. The process accords with what scripture teaches about revelation: “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom⁠; for unto him that receiveth will I give more⁠.” Inspiration and creation do not happen all at once. Handel’s experience shows that the process takes time and progresses gradually. It often includes inspired revision. 

An Enabling Power

Handel’s inspiration process did not shortcut the time and effort necessary for the creative process. Instead, it was a force that lifted and sanctified his efforts. Elder David A. Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has spoken of Christ’s “strengthening and enabling power” that “strengthens us to do things we could never do on our own.” I believe that this divine power played a role for Handel in the process of composing the Messiah. 

For Dr. Nelson, the hand of heaven was not seen in doing something unfamiliar, but in performing work he was experienced in at an extraordinarily effective level. The Messiah occupies a similar place in Handel’s career. He was enabled to create his most accomplished, most beloved work because he set out to bear witness of Jesus Christ. Like Dr. Nelson, Handel gave the glory to God, not only through a chorus that literally sings those words, but by inscribing at the end of the score S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria—“To God Alone be the Glory”).

There is a frequently quoted account from a servant of Handel that the composer once said that while working on the “Hallelujah” chorus, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself seated on His throne, with His company of Angels.” While we should use caution with source verification, it suggests Handel understood he was under the influence of divine inspiration. Handel’s claim is modest. His language (“I did think I did see”) emphasizes the subjective nature of the spiritual experience he had. That composing the chorus was a spiritual experience is not hard to believe, because listening to and singing it is a spiritual experience. 

Perhaps inspiration, then, served both to enable Handel to create his best artistic work and to inject a powerful moral and spiritual influence into his work, breathing the Spirit into the work that Handel created. It is that Spirit that continues to animate the work and, after nearly three hundred years and despite trends of secularism, continues to move us to stand and sing “Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.”

The post The Divine Inspiration of Handel’s Messiah appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Danny Frost

President Dallin H. Oaks again turned to the topic of peacemaking—a key part of his teachings, as well as those of President Russell M. Nelson. The repeated prophetic calls for peacemaking suggest that this is one of the key issues of our time. Christians should know better than to indulge in the contempt and hostility that are all around us. 

I appreciated how President Oaks indicated that peacemaking often means doing several things well at once: showing love and compassion for those who are different from us even as we stand up for the truth as we understand it. President Oaks also emphasized that personal virtue must be at the core of enduring peace. He noted that missionaries act as peacemakers when they “preach repentance from personal corruption, greed, and oppression, because only by individual reformation can an entire society eventually rise above such evils.” 

Peacemaking can include many other things such as bishops’ efforts to help marriages and resolve personal conflicts, service to others, reducing suffering, increasing understanding between groups, and raising children (including foster children). Peacemakers heal and uplift. President Oaks’ closing words are a powerful invitation to be better peacemakers: “Let us follow Him by forgoing contention and by using the language and methods of peacemakers. In our families and other personal relationships, let us avoid what is harsh and hateful. Let us seek to be holy, like our Savior.” 

Charity and Enduring to the End

Anna Bryner

Elder David A. Bednar delivered a great insight about how “enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity.” He taught that “charity is the very essence of the end toward which we are enduring: becoming new creatures in Christ.” In other words, charity is not only a spiritual gift that will help us endure to the end, but the very substance of the kind of person we are to become: one who “suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

I thought Elder Bednar’s talk paired well with President Dallin H. Oaks’ talk about relating to one another as children of God. This is the practical work of charity—to allow Christ’s love and righteous desires to fill our hearts and transform the way we interact with others. Peacemaking can start in each of our hearts as we seek the spiritual gift of charity from the Father.

Faith Through the Highs and Lows

Lauren Yarro

President Emily Belle Freeman shared a powerful perspective that both our good days and our hard days are part of God’s plan. In her talk, she uses Peter’s story to show that faith isn’t built in one defining moment, but over time through both the highs and the lows of life. Peter had moments of bold testimony and moments of fear and failure, and he still became who the Lord needed him to be. President Freeman reminds us that Christ is not distant in our hardest moments. He is right there with us, strengthening us and reminding us that our worst days are not the end of our story.

I needed the reminder that both the best days and the worst days are shaping us into who the Lord needs us to become. She taught that holding onto the eternal truths and the promised blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ allows us to draw upon the power of God in our lives. Her closing reminder was that “joy is not the absence of sorrow in your life. It is the presence of Jesus Christ in your life.” 

Ministering in the Savior’s Way

Amanda Freebairn

This general conference was a reminder to me of the many storms the people around us are facing. Elder Ronald A. Rasband shared about the short life of his grandson who was born with chromosomal abnormalities. President Emily Belle Freeman explained that recently, during the excitement of planning her daughter’s wedding, her beloved husband found out his cancer had returned. Elder Thierry K. Motumbo told the story of losing four children. 

But along with these heartbreaking stories emerged a theme of love and ministering, and the impact ministering can have on the lives of those we minister to. 

Sister Kristen Yee shared that her father, who had been at one point emotionally abusive, began to heal through the Savior when a ministering couple invited him to attend the temple weekly. She also explained that “ministering by the Spirit invites the Spirit into our lives and the lives of those we minister to. I often find peace, clarity, healing and purpose when I minister. I find the Savior when I minister. This is by divine design.” 

Both President Dallin H. Oaks and Sister Yee testified that through the Savior, we can come to love in ways that we never thought possible. Elder Patrick Kearon said since his calling to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “I’ve learned that I can love even more…We don’t serve people we really love, rather, we come to love people as we serve them.” 

President D. Todd Christofferson taught that as we cultivate the pure love of Christ, lift and minister to others, and exercise devotion to the will of God, we can little by little enact change in the world.

“We tend to underestimate the influence of Christlike individuals in the world. But working one by one has always been Jesus’ approach to a changing society and establishing his kingdom. It is the aggregation of individual choices over time that forms and changes societies for good or ill. No one of us alone can change the world but each of us can have an influence in the world.”

The post Enduring in Charity: General Conference Round-Up appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, embodied the danger that can accompany misrepresentation and stereotyping. Reduced by society to “the Jew,” Shylock is seen as less than human, his depiction fraught with inaccuracy and hyperbole. This unjustly skewed representation of the Jewish people has reinforced antisemitic sentiment across the globe, the effects of which have lasted for generations and continue to this day in many parts of the world.

Throughout history, religious minorities have faced significant struggles due to erroneous beliefs perpetuated about them, including by media and popular discourse. While the United States was founded on principles of religious pluralism and equality, our current society yet reflects harmful gaps in religious literacy that fuel a lack of empathy for those who believe differently than most.

The American Families of Faith Project conducted in-depth interviews with 131 families belonging to religious minority communities (e.g., Jewish, Muslim, Latter-day Saint, Jehovah’s Witness, and other minority faith traditions) to identify the most salient struggles being faced by these families on a regular basis. The published study resulting from this work presented five primary themes that reinforce the need for meaningful reform in religious literacy, education, tolerance and interreligious cohesion in the United States.

Theme 1: Struggles Related to Difference and Minority Status

Among the minority families interviewed, over one-third identified their religious distinctiveness, including behaviors, clothing, and practices that diverge from social norms, as a primary source of tension within majority culture. Narratives involving children were described as particularly distressing for parents. Bekah (names changed to protect participants), a Jewish mother, described witnessing her daughters’ religious exclusion:

There have been some difficult times with the girls, every year. “Why are all the decorations for Christmas?” You know, just a lot of questions and irritation, and I understand their irritation and I’ve experienced it in the past, but I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I’m not irritated by it. I keep explaining to the girls that people are not doing this to be mean, people do not mean to be excluding other religions, they’re not trying to hurt you. This is [just] what they do to celebrate.

Although the pain of not belonging was a frequently shared experience, most families were unwilling to compromise their religious convictions, even when this meant becoming accustomed to and even expecting exclusion from social activities. Wafiyah, a Muslim mother, borrowed the words of her daughter:

Because I wear hijab [when I am out] in the community… I have to be different. I cannot be friends with everybody because their reaction to my hijab is different. I can only communicate with the friends that I have from childhood [because] they know me. Making strong relationships is hard in a new community.

These patterns suggest that, especially for children and adolescents, the struggle of being different has the potential to shape their sense of belonging and ability to connect with their community. Many adolescents in mainstream culture are unfamiliar with visible religious identifiers such as hijabs, yarmulkes, or saris, which can exacerbate religious exclusion. Conversely, if young people see positive representation of these religious and cultural identifiers in media, they may experience less fear associated with religious identifiers.

Theme 2: Struggles Related to Other Religious People

While many participants described struggles with those outside their faith, a second prominent theme involved tensions within religious communities. Angie, a convert to Islam from a Christian faith, shared:

When I was in the [X] church, I hit rock bottom when my parents divorced and then the minister was publicly humiliated because he was having affairs on his wife. That was my loss in trust, my trust was totally broken and my family life was shattered all at the same time.

I had no idea where to go. I wondered, how can these people lead others?… At that time I had hit rock bottom. I had God but I didn’t have a faith.

Angie’s recollection highlights a shared struggle among minorities, which is often overlooked: intrafaith relations, or struggles within one’s own faith community. These religious difficulties are complex, but may include feelings of betrayal, mistrust, exclusion, division, or taking offense. 

In a similar vein, Elijah, a Jewish father, explained a conflict he faced at his synagogue:

I profoundly disagree with institutional Judaism. For [my wife and me], Israel/Palestine is important. It’s actually caused friction between us and various Jewish friends of ours … in the synagogue. I will open my mouth and there will be people who are very upset at me. It’s a little interesting that we both feel … that it’s so important to have a synagogue, but in some ways we do not get along with the people in the synagogue.

Taken together, these stories reveal that while faith communities can be a source of great comfort for religious minority families, they can also be a cause of tension and deep divides. For minority families to flourish in the United States, there is progress to be made on an interfaith level as well as an intrafaith level.

Theme 3: Struggles Related to Misunderstanding and Ignorance

Echoing the damaging stereotype of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, many of the religious minority participants revealed that they experienced feelings of frustration due to misunderstanding, ignorance, and being inaccurately portrayed. Notably, many Muslim families alluded to the pain they have experienced due to misconceptions surrounding the events of 9/11 in 2001 and during the subsequent years. Baseema, a Muslim wife said, “After September 11th you [could] feel it … They … question sometime[s], not with words but with their eyes.”

Another Muslim mother, Aisha, explained, “People think that [after 9-11], “Oh, Muslims, they take this lightly.” We were hurt that people were hurt. So, I think we were more offended that … [many] thought [the terrorism] was a form of … Islamic activity … [instead of the acts of terrorists].”

These poignant accounts invite us to examine our own assumptions about others. As the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues, the danger of a single story lies in its reducing people or groups of humanity to one-dimensional stereotypes, rather than seeing them in multi-dimensional living reality.

Theme 4: Struggles Related to the Demands of Faith Community

The fourth theme, also found across participants from various minority faith traditions, centered on religious demands and expectations within one’s faith, many sharing that they often fall short of the high expectations despite their religious devotion. For example, Rose, a Latter-day Saint mother, explained:

Being a main member of the [congregation] carries a lot of responsibility. We are responsible to support everything. If [we] weren’t there [people ask],“Where were you?” There’s so much that I have to [do] and getting the three little girls [ready for church on top of that]. I really, really try. It’s hard, but I want to support everything and sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the responsibilities.

Rose’s reflection highlights a struggle that can be especially pronounced for religious minorities living in parts of the U.S. where few people share their faith or can offer support. Many also described the added pressure of needing to be exemplary representatives of their faith to those outside their community, further complicating this religious stressor.

Theme 5: Struggles Related to Animosity and Rejection

Without even being asked a related question, about one-eighth of the participants in the study spontaneously described being the victim of hatred, hostility, or rejection—experiences that left lasting impressions on those involved. Violent acts such as arson have disproportionately impacted Jewish synagogues, Black churches, and Muslim mosques (masjids) in the United States. Recent acts of hatred, including a 2024 attack on a Latter-day Saint church in Michigan reaffirm the existence of violent religious prejudice. Moreover, many families in the study reported experiencing acts of bigotry in one form or another. Ibrahim and Jala, a Muslim couple, a few months after 9/11, explained how popular media had been a cause of stress for them:

Ibrahim: It’s been really stressful for all Muslims. It’s tough to even watch the news anymore.

Jala: It’s so depressing.

Ibrahim: There is not one day that goes by without something negative about the Muslims. It’s been very stressful for all of us.

Their words reveal the distress felt by religious minorities who have navigated pervasive assumptions that their faith tradition is inherently violent. As a result, there is pressure to try to counteract false narratives. Another aspect of this theme was highlighted by a Christian father named Thomas, who spoke to the complexities that can arise when engaging with someone of another faith:

Our middle son, Jonathan… about five years ago . . . [he was] maybe going on about four [years old]. [Jonathan] was concerned for the salvation of this little neighbor friend… [who is] Hindu. His mother [also is] Hindu . . . but what happened was [Jonathan] tried to share his faith with him and said, “If you do not believe in God, you’re going to go to hell.” … His [friend’s] mother was very offended by that and now they do not—[well], it’s been five years and they do not play together [anymore]. That [has] hurt.

If this exchange and fallout were painful for Thomas and his son Jonathan, how much pain was experienced by the Hindu friend and his parents? There is significant room for additional learning, religious literacy, and neighborly compassion among us all.

Navigating struggles of difference can be painfully divisive for minority families. For many, it can be especially challenging to accept and respect the differing beliefs of others, when one’s own convictions are so deeply held. With greater empathy, our society can increase its capacity for awareness and sensitivity in avoiding damage and offense—and for humble repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation when damage is done, whether intended or not. This is the healing balm that our world is in greater need of now than ever before.

Hath Not a Jew Eyes?

During a pivotal moment in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock makes a powerful appeal to shared humanity while facing those who have wronged him:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

Diverse religious convictions may lead us to believe that we are too different to cultivate peace and view one another with empathy, but Shylock posits that we each grieve, suffer, love, and hope —things that make us more alike than we might think. We share so much in common—the things that make us human, many things that matter profoundly.

In examining the struggles experienced by religious minority families in the United States, the need for foundational change is undeniable. The question, then, is where do we begin? 

Both the participants and the researchers involved in the American Families of Faith Project suggest starting with small, intentional steps, such as: (1) asking respectful questions about someone’s beliefs or practices with the intent to listen and learn, (2) attending religious services or celebrations outside one’s own tradition to support a friend, or (3) cultivating friendship with someone of a different faith. While interreligious understanding will not occur overnight, small steps have the power to bridge divides.

As we become a society that listens rather than assumes, and reconciles rather than retaliates, we will begin to see religious minority families not as stereotypes but as people—each with a unique story to tell.

The post Strangers in Their Own Land appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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My father, now eighty-five years old, tells a story of being five years old and visiting his grandparents in Heber, Utah. One sunny summer afternoon, Dad wandered into his grandmother’s garden and began harvesting and eating onions, which he claims were almost as sweet as apples. 

When Grandma DeGraff came out and caught him, she let him know that his behavior was bad, even sinful. By the end of the lecture, Dad believed he was bad. 

He can’t remember how long he sat in the dirt, stunned, simmering in shame, and stinking of onions when his grandpa finally came out. Grandpa DeGraff said, “Steve, what you did was wrong. But I love you. There’s no one I’d rather give these onions to than you. All you have to do is ask.” Dad said, “Grandpa’s forgiveness brought me back into my humanity.” 

We know how good, joyful, and freeing receiving forgiveness feels. It connects us to the person who forgives us and can even help us feel more connected to God. 

But forgiving is not always easy. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” More recently, Sister Kristen Yee, Second Consuelor in the Relief Society General Presidency, taught this same truth: “Forgiving can be one of the most difficult things we ever do and one of the most divine things we ever experience.”

It is normal to struggle with forgiving. It is normal to want retribution, or revenge, when others sin—especially when their sins hurt us. 

Yet when Christ was on the cross, He opened the door for our forgiveness and repentance. In a simple moment that was pivotal in eternity, Christ forgave His crucifiers: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

This Easter, as we contemplate our Savior’s Atonement, we can learn learn at least seven lessons on the nature of forgiveness from Christ’s time on the cross.

Lesson One: We Worship a Loving and Forgiving God 

The first word Christ utters in the process of forgiving His crucifiers is “Father.” Christ previously showed us in the parable of the Prodigal Son how our Father responds to an imperfect child: “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”

There are no lectures in this offering of forgiveness; there is no delay. Christ tells us clearly in this parable that God forgives us lovingly and completely. When Christ reaches for that divine forgiveness at the moment of His own death, He knows the gift will be granted. Symbolized in Christ’s cross itself is a forever open-armed God—one who is willing to forgive us and is waiting to embrace us.  

Lesson Two: Even When We Forgive, We Might Still Experience Pain 

Even when we forgive, we might still experience pain, grief, or loss as a result of what has happened. When Christ forgave those actively hurting Him, the pain He felt did not immediately stop. So why should we forgive, knowing we might still experience the effect of the offense? 

Our pain might not be magically erased by forgiving, but forgiving can help us pivot. Elder Gerrit W. Gong has taught that, “Often condemnation focuses on the past. Forgiveness looks liberatingly to the future.” 

Lesson Three: Forgiveness puts Responsibility in the Right Places

During His ministry, Christ had forgiven sins Himself. But while on the cross, He asks God to do it: “Father, forgive them.” Christ gave their sins to God to manage.

We might be handed something painful, but it’s not our responsibility to hold onto that thing forever, to carry it, and wonder why our offender handed it to us in the first place. Elder David E. Sorenson said: “Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts.”

There’s a certain amount of relief in the fact that forgiveness is not conditional on our offender in any way. Forgiveness is a way of taking ourselves out of the equation with an offender: We get to work directly with Christ, and allow Christ to work with our offender.

Lesson Four: We Must Forgive Human Weakness

When Christ petitioned our Father for forgiveness of the people who were crucifying Him, He didn’t talk about their murderousness, He addressed their ignorance: “They know not what they do.” 

Our oldest son, Owen, was four years old when he let us know his feelings about not getting to have a family movie party one night. He left us a note on green construction paper: “I love you. But I’m still mad.” Forgiveness is what allows us to keep love in our hearts, even as we navigate the friction of daily life. 

Lesson Five: Through Forgiveness Our Pain Can Be Transformed  

In this life we will suffer. We are told this in the scriptures, and we have experienced plenty of it. German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand reminded us that we sometimes mistake “Christ’s transfiguration of all suffering for an elimination of all suffering.” Suffering is part of life, and yet through Christ we know that suffering is not meant to be our final destination. 

Christ’s suffering was not the end, but Christ had to experience death in order to be resurrected to a new life. Likewise, we have the promise that God can transform all of it—our pain, destruction, and mourning—not that the hard things will be erased from our lives but transformed. 

Isaiah tells us that beauty can rise from the ashes of our lives, that joy can come from our grief, and praise can come from heaviness. We don’t often quote the next verse in this Isaiah passage, but it conveys the fact that the most difficult things, the “desolations of generations,” the big things, even as big as “waste cities” shall be raised up through Jesus Christ.

Lesson Six: Forgiveness Should Become Part of Our Nature

Forgiveness is the only part of the Lord’s Prayer that Christ emphasizes through repetition. When He talks about our daily need of bread, forgiveness is mentioned as well. 

The immediacy of Christ’s forgiving those in the moment they were sinning against Him on the cross indicates that forgiveness was part of His very nature. I had a BYU Religion student write about how a forgiving nature could create a culture of love in her home. “I want to create a space where forgiveness is not withheld, not earned, not delayed—but simply given. I want my children and spouse to feel that mistakes are part of life, not the end of love.” 

Forgiveness is not a checklist we march through, but a mindset and a heart-set that can become part of who we are. We might even become so forgiving that we don’t look for offenses. Not picking something up in the first place means we won’t have to figure out how to set it down later. 

Lesson Seven: We Are Not Alone as We Forgive 

In the throes of His agony, Christ was not alone. He had heavenly help in Gethsemane and on Calvary when Christ asked His Father to forgive the people hurting Him. We are not alone in forgiving, either. 

Sister Yee has taught that Christ “does not ask us to [forgive] without His help, His love, His understanding. Through our covenants with the Lord, we can each receive the strengthening power, guidance, and the help we need to both forgive and to be forgiven.” 

“I stood there with coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

“Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes, ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’

“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. 

I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.” 

What Forgiveness Is Not

When offering forgiveness feels insurmountable, we may be assuming that we have to do more than Christ has actually asked us to do. Elder Neil L. Andersen wrote a useful list about what forgiveness is not. 

• Forgiveness is not failing to protect ourselves, our families, and others. 
• Forgiveness is not continuing in a relationship with someone who is not trustworthy. Christ’s response to those threatening to harm Him at Nazareth is instructive: He did not lecture, try to persuade, or call down lightning bolts. Christ simply “went his way” (30)—and never goes back. Forgiveness does not always include relational reconciliation. 
• Forgiveness is not condoning injustice. The late Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that Christ never called evil things good, and neither should we.
• Forgiveness is not dismissing the hurt or disgust we feel because of the actions of others. We should be patient with ourselves while we heal and progress toward forgiving.
• Forgiveness is not forgetting but remembering in peace. 

A Path to Joy

Elder Holland has explained that none of us have “traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.” The divine forgiveness that God offers to us is complete and it is joy-filled. 

God has His forgiving arms forever open to us, waiting to embrace us without delay. When we choose to forgive, like Christ did on the cross, God’s love can flow through us, and we open ourselves to connection with others and with God.  

The post Forgiveness: Seven Lessons from the Cross appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Imagine you are a first-century Jew at the time of Jesus. You saw the famed Rabbi of Galilee perform miracles. He multiplied food and raised the dead, miracles echoing Elijah and Elisha. You heard him teach doctrines that built upon the law of Moses, but he drew out principles that made the law much more challenging. You saw him ride into Jerusalem on a colt, cleanse the temple, and teach that he was not only the Messiah, but Deity himself. 

And then he was betrayed by his friend and follower, Judas (known in Hebrew as Judah), the namesake of his own people. And rather than take his place on the political throne of Israel, you witnessed this Son of David condemned by Jew and Gentile alike, then tormented, crucified, and placed in a tomb. 

What would you expect next if your only source of reference was the Hebrew Bible? Would you have recognized Jesus of Nazareth in the scriptures you studied? Could you have anticipated from scripture that this self-proclaimed Messiah would miraculously come back to life—forever?

As Easter approaches, perhaps we can feel more charity and empathy for the disciples’ confusion following Christ’s death. Their source of scripture was the Hebrew Bible, which we call the Old Testament. While the Nephites and potentially some ancient Israelites had explicit teachings about the Atonement and Resurrection, the Jews in Jesus’ day faced an open question. 

Despite being longer than the rest of the Latter-day Saint canon combined, the Old Testament has fewer explicit references to “the fundamental principles of our religion”: “the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, ‘that he died [for our sins], was buried, and rose again the third day.”

Yet while the Old Testament speaks less explicitly of Christ, shadows of His Atonement and Resurrection can be found in its pages. Some teachings of Christ may have been intentionally veiled in rituals and prophetic language. But just as the temple veil was rent at Jesus’s death, making clear that the way back to God was through Christ, the Spirit can lift the veil from our understanding, helping us see that the Easter message is implicit in the Old Testament’s pages. 

Why Isn’t the Resurrection Clearly Taught in the Old Testament?

Restoration scripture makes clear what the Old Testament does not: ancient prophets like Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, and others knew of Christ’s mission to some degree. This makes the relative absence of discussion about Christ’s suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection in the Old Testament puzzling. As I see it, scripture (particularly the Book of Mormon) provides three potential explanations. 

The first is that revelation occurs gradually: “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.” It may be that knowledge of Christ’s atonement, death, and resurrection was originally sparse, leading to less emphasis in earlier scripture. But our teachings about ancient prophets, if taken literally, are too clear about prophets’ knowledge of Christ’s atonement and resurrection for these doctrines to be considered only seedlings. This must be supplemented by other explanations.

The second possibility is that teachings of a suffering “Anointed One” were rejected, lost, or censored by those who compiled the texts. For example, the Book of Mormon cites Israelite prophets like Zenos, Zenock, and Neum—who aren’t in our canon elsewhere—that taught of Christ’s suffering, crucifixion, and burial. These prophets were stoned and cast out, and perhaps their teachings were likewise discarded.

Nephi also states that the Bible was altered before its international distribution: “they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious.” The editing and authorship history of the Old Testament is complex, and some books could have been crafted by an editor who did not know of or believe in Christ, despite prophets having taught of Him. 

A third possibility is that Old Testament teachings of Christ were veiled to the people by God’s prophets, or even veiled to prophets by God Himself, because of ancient Israel’s spiritual unpreparedness, or for some other divine purpose. Paul spoke of a “veil” that obscures understanding “in the reading of the old testament,” but that this “veil is done away in Christ.” The veiled message Paul speaks of likely came by giving Israel rituals that would resemble Christ’s sacrifice, as well as giving them sacred texts that veiled the mission of Christ or that could point to Him as a secondary, or higher, meaning. The true nature of Christ’s mission could only be gleaned by revelation.

Taken together, these explanations allow us to admit that explicit Old Testament references to Christ are sparse, but that Christ’s mission can still be found through the Spirit’s tutelage. Jesus taught that “the scriptures” of his day—meaning the Old Testament—“are they which testify of me” and commanded his audience to “search” them. With that imperative, I turn now to veiled Easter teachings of Christ found in the Old Testament for those with “eyes to see, and ears to hear.”

Ancient Israelite Prophecy of Christ’s Sacrifice

Abinadi, teaching about the Messiah’s divinity, condescension, atonement, and resurrection, claimed that “all the prophets who have prophesied ever since the world began [have] spoken more or less concerning these things.” Perhaps some of this teaching was censored, but much of it may have been inspired thematic and narrative parallels in scripture that constituted “more or less” a prophecy. As Nephi said, “all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him,” including parallels in sacred history, poetry, and even prophecies with other primary meanings. Jacob added a second witness that the Israelite scriptures “truly testify of Christ” and “that none of the prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ.”

Christ’s atoning sacrifice in Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary is mirrored in some Old Testament narratives. In the Akedah, God commands Abraham to bind and then offer a burnt sacrifice of “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.” This excruciating story, rife with philosophical complexity, does not thoroughly explain itself, but Jacob saw it as typifying Heavenly Father’s offering of His Only Begotten Son for our sins. In further parallels to Christ, Isaac rode a donkey to Mount Moriah, just as Christ rode a donkey for his triumphal entry to Jerusalem, and Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice to its site, just as Christ carried a wooden cross to Golgotha. When Isaac asked his father where the offering was, Abraham replied, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” Isaac was miraculously delivered, and a ram in the thicket was provided as a substitute, symbolizing how the Lamb of God would ultimately sacrifice in our place. 

In another example reminiscent of the crucifixion and resurrection, Moses is commanded to raise up a brass “serpent and set it upon a pole” for the Israelites to look upon for healing from fatal snake bites. As with the story of the Akedah, the Christian significance of the story is never explained in the Old Testament, but Christ Himself and Book of Mormon prophets interpret it as a veiled symbol of Jesus raised upon a cross to save us by having the faith to look to Him. 

Beyond narrative mirroring, Christ’s mission seems to be directly or indirectly described in isolated phrases and references. New Testament authors like Matthew felt comfortable declaring that Old Testament passages were “fulfilled” when they provided an inspired parallel, even if the context of the passage doesn’t indicate at all that it is messianic prophecy. I argue that we can generally feel comfortable accepting these parallels as well if we acknowledge that there might be a different primary meaning. 

Language echoing Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion is also scattered across the Psalms and connects Christ to his royal ancestor David. The Psalmist(s) describes betrayal by a “familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread”; being despised, mocked, and taunted about how “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him”; being surrounded by “the wicked,” after which “they pierced my hands and my feet”; being given “vinegar to drink”; crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”; having his clothing divided among a crowd; and being “poured out like water.” The context of some of these psalms suggests that the entire psalms were not necessarily messianic prophecy, yet Gospel authors understood them as being strongly implicated, and Psalm 22 in particular bears stunningly similar parallels.

Finally, there were prophets whose writings could be fairly classified as more direct prophecies of Christ’s sacrifice, most notably Isaiah. In particular, two of Isaiah’s four “Servant Songs” testify strongly of Christ, even if they applied to multiple people (the unnamed servant has variously been understood to be Jesus, Israel, Isaiah, Cyrus, and others). One of the Songs speaks of an unnamed servant who listened to God without rebelling, who gave his “back to the smiters,” and who did not hide his face “from shame and spitting.”

Isaiah’s fourth Servant Song, even though contested in interpretation, is by far the most reminiscent passage in the Old Testament of Christ’s atonement. It describes a lowly “servant” of God with “marred” appearance who has “no form nor comeliness [and] no beauty that we should desire him,” and who is “despised and rejected of man; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Although many prophets have been unpopular, the affliction this servant bears is for our griefs, our sorrows, our transgressions, and “the iniquity of us all.” The servant is given as an atoning “offering for sin” by which he will “justify many” and make “intercession for the transgressors.” In so doing he was “cut off out of the land of the living,” “made his grave with the wicked,” and “poured out his soul unto death.” And despite his death, he will be “exalted and extolled, and be very high,” will “prolong his days,” will “see his seed,” and will be divided “a portion with the great [and] spoil with the strong.” Even if there were other applications of this prophecy, it testifies beautifully of Christ’s mission and is perhaps the rarest gem of prophecy of Christ in the Old Testament.

Sacrifice 

In addition to prophecies,  the Old Testament practice of sacrifice foreshadows Christ’s sacrifice for us all. 

The Old Testament speaks openly of a victorious, reigning Messiah, but says little of a Messiah who suffers for sins. But that changes if we learn to see ancient animal sacrifice as a shadow of “that great and last sacrifice” that would satisfy the demands of justice for our sins. 

Though animal sacrifice is as old as Adam, the books of Moses codified its intricacies. With five distinct offerings—burnt offerings, peace (well-being) offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, and meat (grain) offerings—the Mosaic rules for sacrifice were complex. The sacrifices had mixed and overlapping purposes: atonement or expiation of sin, removal of ritual impurity, gratitude, memorial, obedience, or petition for deliverance. Animals of both genders and even non-animals were used for many offerings, but all offerings were food items, often with symbolically pleasing smells. Sometimes the offeror ate the sacrifice, other times the priests ate it, and burnt offerings were simply burnt for God.

Some special sacrifices were associated with holy days, such as the Day of Atonement or Passover, and some were performed on behalf of all of God’s people. The Passover sacrifice, in particular, involved the slaughter of a male lamb, whose blood saved the firstborn sons of Israel. And whatever other sacrifices were given, all firstborn animals were to be given to the Lord. 

We can see how these many purposes of sacrifice map onto Christ’s atonement and our own personal sacrifices. We see similarities to Christ describing himself as food and drink that must be ritually consumed by others. We especially connect the image of a male lamb of Passover to the Christian message because scripture calls Jesus the Lamb of God. In general, though, the Christian meaning of these sacrifices was hidden at the time. It is not clear from Leviticus that the Israelites were anticipating a final sacrifice. Leviticus merely taught the underlying principle that blood represents the sacredness of life, and “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” 

As we take the sacrament this Easter season, we symbolically consume Christ’s body—just as Israelites did with animal sacrifice—and are divinely fed. We also promise to give up our sins. As the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “Real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed.” We can also follow Christ’s example and the other purposes of sacrifice in sacrificing our own time and wills, obeying God, expressing gratitude, asking God for what we need, and being “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.” 

The Law of Moses

In addition to its sacrifice requirements, the Law of Moses foreshadowed Christ, who later declared not only that he fulfilled the law but that “I am the law.” As the Book of Hebrews teaches, “the law [of Moses] ha[s] a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things.” The law seemed to require revelation to see Christ shadowed in it. Abinadi and Benjamin both taught that the Israelites “did not all understand the law,” not because of low intellect, but because they “hardened their hearts.” This was certainly true of Sherem, who claimed Jacob was wrongly “converting” the law of Moses into worship of Christ. 

Nephite prophets saw Mosaic Law as creating a typological framework for an ultimate self-sacrifice to atone for all sins. Nephi taught that “for this end hath the law of Moses been given”: “proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ.” Abinadi taught that it was “a shadow of those things which are to come.” Amulek testified that “the whole meaning of the law, every whit” was to point to “that great and last sacrifice” of “the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal.” We, too, can acknowledge the complexity of the Law of Moses while affirming that it served as a type and shadow of Christ’s atonement to ancient Israelites.

The Old Testament and Resurrection

As for its teachings about the resurrection specifically, the Old Testament shows a plurality of views about the afterlife. Resurrection isn’t clearly taught in many of its books, especially the earlier ones. Jews in the days of Jesus were divided on whether it occurred. Pharisees, who accepted the later prophetic texts, believed in resurrection; Sadducees, who held only to the older books of Moses, did not. Zoramites like Zeezrom and Antionah, who demonstrate knowledge of the early Hebrew Bible books, are also puzzled by references to the resurrection. 

The Book of Daniel declares that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” But that book falls relatively late in the Old Testament, and the clarity of the doctrine is obscured as we move back in time—perhaps another veiled or censored teaching. Though there is some uncertainty about what he meant, Isaiah prophesied that our God “will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces;” and “O Lord. . . Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body [or “together their bodies”] shall they arise.”

Other than these passages, there are a few resurrection passages that are debated but possibly veiled or which might have a secondary meaning. Ezekiel prophesied that a valley of dry bones will come to life as normal people, primarily as a metaphor for the restoration of Israel, but perhaps also suggesting the possibility of resurrection. The Hebrew grammar is jumbled, but Job seems to say, with words not in Hebrew italicized, “though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet [from] my flesh shall I see God.” 

With these powerful images of resurrection available to him, Jesus, surprisingly, does not cite Daniel, Ezekiel, or Job when prophesying of his own resurrection. Instead, Jesus sees the most relevance in the story of Jonah (or Jonas in Greek): “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  We don’t instinctively think of Jonah being swallowed by a “great fish” as death, but Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish uses the language of death: “out of the belly of hell [Sheol] cried I, and thou heardest my voice.” He stayed there for three days before his deliverance.

Perhaps more importantly, God is the one who breathes life into humanity, and he saves Israel from death and bondage repeatedly. The Exodus is just one beautiful example of God delivering his people from bondage—a frequent metaphor for death in scripture. And God shows himself in the Old Testament to be a God of miracles. The same omnipotence that would allow God to part the Red Sea, stop the sun in the sky, shake the earth, obliterate cities, turn back armies, bring springs to life, and deliver his people is the same power required to perform the most stunning of all miracles: to raise from the dead.  

Christ is the Meaning

Finding Christ in the Old Testament happens the same way we develop a testimony of Christ in the first place. Nephi tells us that a key to understanding Isaiah, for example, is the “spirit of prophecy”—that is, the “testimony of Jesus” obtained by revelation. If we encounter Christ’s character in the course of our study, we have found him in the text. Peter, who recognized Christ as the promised Messiah, told Jesus, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” not because it was a logical imperative in scripture, but because our “Father which is in heaven” had “revealed it unto [him].” The Lord’s counsel for studying the Apocrypha also applies to the Old Testament: “whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom; And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited.” 

Christ is indeed “in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things.” Like the first-century Jews who needed the Spirit to understand Christ in their scripture, we, too, can seek the Spirit’s help in unveiling Christ in every part of our lives, however hidden He may seem. As we search the scriptures and apply “our hearts to understanding,” we can come to see what Jesus taught His apostles: that the Old Testament scriptures “are they which testify of me.”

As Christ “yielded up the ghost” on Calvary, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom,” a symbol of overcoming the barriers to God’s presence under the old covenant. As the Book of Hebrews teaches, we can now “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus . . . through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.” Just as the veil in the temple symbolized Christ’s broken body, the veil of the Old Testament is also rent by Christ Himself through revelation. 

Perhaps we can now better understand, with the scarcity of explicit references to Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, how confused Christ’s disciples must have been immediately after his death. For those on the road to Emmaus, this confusion was dispelled when Jesus, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets . . . expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself,” and why he “ought . . . to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory.” He was the veiled meaning all along.

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It is often easier to speak about the parts of life that unfold as we hoped. I could talk all day, every day about the many good things that have come to my life since my wife and I were married. But it can be difficult and awkward to talk about the things that go wrong. Although I love talking about my marriage, it is much more difficult for me to talk about another major life event—when I returned home early from my missionary service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after seven months. Speaking about my early return and everything associated with it just does not come easily. That difficulty comes largely from within: at some point, I came to see returning home early as a personal failure—something that should not have happened—and that belief made the subject unusually difficult to discuss.

But what if we took a different perspective? We often talk about all the wonderful personal growth that full-term returned missionaries had while serving, but why should growth that early-returned missionaries go through after they return be any different? Of course, not all outcomes are going to be positive. Coming home early from a mission is a very challenging experience that can set a soul on a catapulting track toward self-discovery and growth. As an early returner, and now as a Ph.D. student in psychology, I was able to get funding to do a study on what causes early returned missionaries to get on that track of growth. 

My Early Return and How It Led Me to This Study

Before turning to the study itself, some personal context may be helpful. These “positive outcomes” may not show up immediately, nor do I think it’s fair to expect oneself or a loved one to cope with such a dramatic life event so easily. In one of my favorite articles, “Bereavement: An Incomplete Rite of Passage,” the author explains that someone may never entirely “get over” the loss of a loved one — they may learn to generally deal with the loss, but their perception of the experience continually shifts and evolves. I feel the same way about my early mission return. When I came back, I was almost numb. A month later, I was feigning happiness. Two months later, I was questioning my faith. Three months later, I began searching for any identity other than “early-returned missionary” that I could affix to myself, yet each “identity” I attempted to develop was more fragile than the last. My grades at Brigham Young University also suffered.

There was only one other existing academic study on early-returned missionaries. I decided to follow its lead in interviewing each person in depth rather than using survey data. Although this process limited the number of people I could involve in the study, other studies on the use of interviews for niche topics find that researchers tend to reach a sufficient sample level at about 12 interviews. The prior study I mentioned included 12 early-returned male missionaries and had questions on mission experiences, early returns, and post-mission adjustment. I wanted to expand upon this research by including women and spending more time speaking about the identity development participants had gone through since their early return and their perceptions of their future. I also remained open to other salient themes that emerged from interviews. So, I recruited 20 early-returned missionaries to participate in this in-depth study — 9 men and 11 women. I would like to stress that this was a highly emotional experience for most people, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to interview such wonderful people about their experiences.

Identity transformation

First, every person mentioned feeling an identity transformation in some way. One participant shared:

Honestly, I think coming home from my mission is a really big thing. It really defined who I am as a person and my understanding of church member[s], because before I thought a church member had to be someone [who] grew up in the Church, that served a mission … things like that. Then I [understood] that a church member is someone that just tries their best to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And so that really [helped] me shape and understand the members of the Church in a broader sense and not just the typical Utah stereotypes. So, I think coming home from my mission definitely helped with that.

This sentiment resonated strongly with my own experience. Even as a missionary, I had felt that coming home early would be a condemnation for the rest of my life, rendering me always some degree of broken in church settings. Only after going through this process did I realize that it truly is impossible for anyone other than Christ to live a fully “perfect” life, and that joy comes in embracing my imperfections and Christ’s role in my redemption.

Hope for the future

Another finding was that 19 of the 20 participants mentioned an optimistic view of how their futures would develop, given their experiences as early-returned missionaries. Another participant shared:

It’s interesting because I feel less … fearful for the future because I’m like, I already have had something that has literally broken me down to lower than I thought I could be at, and I came out of it. So, it kind of gives me more confidence that whatever comes, I know I’ve been through the process before of only having God to rely on.

Personally, I feel the same way — I know that I can do all things through Christ because I have already been at my lowest, and He has lifted me up again.

Peacemaking and reconciliation

A third commonality, shown in 19 of 20 interviews, was that of peacemaking or some form of reconciliation. One early-returned missionary wrote the following in her journal while on the plane home from her mission, “My Heavenly Father is so wise in giving me an experience like this. It forces me to actually fully trust in Him, which I do. This is one of the first experiences in my life that I can’t fully plan out first.”

This was one of my favorite responses. Having a framework of trusting in God built from strongly needing to do so earlier in life can be so beneficial to one’s future. I’m aware that challenges lie in the future, both for me and this early-returned missionary, but trusting in God first above all else has provided a foundation for all of my decisions that will always yield the best outcome — even if I can’t always see it right then.

Empathy

Despite increased empathy for others not being directly referenced on the list of interview questions, the topic came up in 16 of the 20 interviews. One person said, “Had I not seen myself [at] such a low point in my life, then I wouldn’t be able to reach out to others in a similar state.”

This finding in particular is something I would love to explore deeper in future research. How amazing is it that our imperfections and difficult experiences can actually lead us to become more like Christ? Before my early return, I was of the mindset that early-returned missionaries could generally have stayed out if they had just tried harder. Only after returning early despite having given every ounce of dedication and effort to the Lord did I realize that I’d had it all wrong: I feel for people who are in similarly devastating circumstances. I wish I’d had that quality beforehand, but the empathy I developed is one of my most prized possessions, and I thank God for giving it to me.

Faith

A majority (14 out of 20) specifically mentioned having stronger faith in God or religion as a result of their early return during their interviews, while 4 specifically mentioned having weaker faith as a result of their early return. This strong majority of increased faith is encouraging. One person referring to their early return said:

Because of that, the steps I took afterward, it made me read the scriptures harder than I’ve ever read in my life, and it’s made me love just light, seeing people’s light, and the light of Christ in them. I feel like I’m able to see it so easily and I appreciate it so much because I’ve seen the darkness.

Faith is a lifelong journey, and mine has grown as I’ve appreciated the outcomes of my difficulties more and more. It really is amazing to see others appreciate the goodness of Christ even more after having some experience with darkness.

Perceptual change over time

A final theme referenced by the majority of interviewees (12 of 20) was that of perceptual change. One interviewee said, “I guess with more time that passes, I see it in a different way… So, I think it’ll always be in the back of my mind, or it’ll always be something I reference, just because it was very, very starkly different from any other experience I have in my life.”

It is hard to run away from such a formative experience, and I don’t believe it’s best to act like it didn’t happen. As with all difficulties in life, we tend to see our challenges differently with time, as we learn more about God’s love for us as individuals.

What Many Early-Returned Missionaries Still Need

There were more themes that came from these interviews, some of which included negative experiences, but those tended to be highly individual. What did seem to be uniform throughout the interviews was that these people wanted someone to talk to about their experience, but often didn’t feel that they could. One interviewee said that he didn’t have a single person to talk about his early return with — no member of his family would entertain the topic, and he didn’t feel like he could bring it up to his friends. The sense of loneliness this young man exuded was palpable.

Those close to early-returned missionaries can offer an invaluable gift: patient love and a willingness to listen without judgment. Early returners are changing and actively growing, just like you are. We have come a long way as a church community in normalizing the idea that those who might deviate from the normative experience are fully worthy of love and support, but I believe we can be even better, and in attempting to do so, can more fully serve as Christ would.

The post When a Mission Ends Early appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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There’s a kind of disappointment that doesn’t arrive as tragedy. It arrives as delay: the diagnosis that lingers, the job search that won’t resolve, the prayer that feels like it hits a ceiling. You keep doing the next right thing—and nothing budges.

“Are you having a 3½ Moment?” It sounds baffling—until you are in one.

A 3½ Moment is my name for a familiar stretch of discipleship when life feels stalled: you’re doing what you know is right, but the relief doesn’t come. The problem lingers, and hope starts to feel naïve. 

In scripture, God often teaches through symbols. As Elder Orson F. Whitney, an early apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, observed, “God teaches with symbols; it is his favorite method of teaching.” 

One of the Bible’s most familiar symbols is 7—wholeness and completion. But a lesser-known number appears in stories of drought, scattering, and delayed rescue: 3½, half of seven. It often functions as a literary signal that deliverance is delayed—but the delay has a limit. Here’s what that pattern can teach us about our hardest chapters, and four ways to keep faith until God brings your “7.”

Seven: Scripture’s Symbol of Completion

The Bible trains us to notice the symbol 7. God created the heavens and earth in six days, and “he rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). The number 7 appears throughout the Bible as one of the most common symbols in scripture.

In scripture, the number 7 often refers to wholeness, completion, and perfection. The symbol 7 teaches us to trust that God’s promises will be fulfilled. It also reminds us to obey to completion. Naaman’s story makes the point almost painfully: the sixth dip looks indistinguishable from the seventh. Partial obedience can look reasonable—until the miracle arrives one step later. Joshua’s armies would have suffered complete defeat had they circled Jericho for six days before battle. Seven often appears as a symbol for completing a work.

Three and a Half: When Deliverance is Delayed

In Daniel and Revelation, we see these 3½ measures show up in apocalyptic settings—visions of oppression, exile, and persecution. They mark a period that is real and painful, but also limited: evil is permitted a season, then God intervenes. That 3½ symbol can also have personal meaning to us as a metaphor for our discipleship—what it feels like to live inside a promised ending that hasn’t arrived yet.

Note that recognizing the symbolic meaning of numbers in scriptures is safe spiritual territory, as opposed to the speculative and tangential work of occult numerology. One caution: apocalyptic numbers are rarely a stopwatch for predicting outcomes, and they aren’t a guarantee that God will resolve a specific hardship on our preferred schedule. Their gift is different: they insist that evil and suffering are not ultimate, and that God sets limits we cannot always see from inside the storm. 

The symbol 3½ is often expressed in different but equivalent forms: 3½ years; 42 months; 1,260 days; “a time, times, and half a time”; or three and a half days. Revelation uses these equivalent measures to describe a bounded period of tribulation for God’s people—long enough to be terrifying, short enough to be survivable because God remains sovereign.

The number 3½ is half of 7. That gives us a clue as to its meaning. Read alongside seven (completion), 3½ can be heard as the ‘incomplete’ half, an unfinished story. The texts are speaking first about communal suffering and divine deliverance; I’m using their repeated timeframe as a devotional lens for individual seasons that feel unfinished.

On a personal level, 3½ reminds us that we live in a fallen world, with seasons of opposition and adversity, which will resolve because of 7. For some, that glorious conclusion may arrive beyond mortality; the certainty of “7” rests in Christ’s Resurrection even when present circumstances do not change. But that promise assures that for even the most stubborn problems of mortality, an amazing conclusion is promised.

When Life Feels Stuck at 3½

Symbolically, 3½ can represent our own hard times and challenges, but it carries the understanding that all things can be perfected and brought to a resolution by Jesus Christ. The symbol 3½ teaches us to have divine hope in the eventual 7, to complete our work of keeping God’s commandments (D&C 11:20) and to joyfully look forward to God completing His work (Moses 1:39).

In hard times, it may feel as though the gospel plan isn’t working for us because we don’t appear to be succeeding in ways that we expect. These are moments when cynicism feels most plausible, and most costly. Many hard times can feel like a 3½ Moment, but a 3½ Moment is not the end of the story. It is only half of seven, a limited period of adversity before divine deliverance. Because 3½ is connected to 7, we have the assurance that our suffering and problems are temporary, as we look to Jesus Christ.

President Russell M. Nelson, the late president of The Church of Jesus Christ, once described the discipline this way: “Our focus must be riveted on the Savior and His gospel. It is mentally rigorous to strive to look unto Him in every thought. But, when we do, our doubts and fears flee.” 

To have its intended meaning, the symbol of 3½ must be connected to the symbol of 7. Similarly, to fulfill its intended purposes, we benefit when we connect our hard times to Jesus Christ.

In my own prayers, I’ve learned to ask for something simpler than an explanation: a sentence I can live on. “I can’t see the end yet. Help me be faithful in the middle. Help me take the next step.”

Wendell’s 3½ Moment

Wendell Jones and I previously served together in a bishopric, a congregation’s leadership. In 2022, Wendell was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease has taken things from him in stages, but it hasn’t taken his posture toward life.

As he navigates this period, Wendell has a deep knowledge and testimony of the gospel plan that helps him maintain an eternal perspective about his life and his illness.

After his diagnosis, he logged miles on a two-wheeled bike to keep his strength. When that became unsafe, he switched to three wheels. Now he rides in a car—often in the passenger seat—so he can talk while someone else drives. It’s a small parable of discipleship: when one way of moving forward closes, you learn another.

My wife recently asked Wendell, “You are always so happy; how do you do it?” Wendell’s response was direct: “How could I not, when I think of everything that Jesus has done for me?”

Wendell has spent his adult life serving his parents and his large posterity. Now, in this season of life, he humbly allows them to serve him.

What Suffering Makes of Us

Alma 62:41 demonstrates the principle that the same difficulties will result in different outcomes. The Nephites had just finished a decade of war, witnessing and experiencing horrific atrocities. The Book of Mormon records that “because of the exceedingly great length of the war… many had become hardened… [and] many were softened because of their afflictions.” The same set of experiences led to opposite spiritual outcomes. What matters most in life is not the adversity faced, but the response.

There is nothing neutral with adversity. Adversity changes us, for better or worse.

Yet when hard times come, we may think:

• “What have I done to deserve this?”
• “Why is this happening to me, when I’m trying so hard to be good?”
• “Why is this problem lingering so long?”

The book of Alma teaches that “whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 36:3).

Expect Friction

How can difficult problems be a catalyst to make us better, not bitter? How can adversity become a 3½ Moment that is a stepping stone toward our 7, which is eternal life? I observed four practices in the example of Wendell, and in my own life. 

Author Dennis Wholey wrote, as shared by President Jeffrey R. Holland, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “Expecting a trouble-free life because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.”

Even Jesus was made “perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). Trials are not evidence that the plan is failing; often they are evidence that God’s plan for us is working.

Practice Gratitude Without Denial

I share a principle that has been meaningful to me. I’ve come to think of it as a kind of “eternal unfairness” principle. Each of us will be resurrected and can receive an immortal body, a gift made possible by the Atonement of Christ. We didn’t earn that. 

Jesus Christ bled “from every pore” (Mosiah 3:7; D&C 19:18) and suffered infinitely, so we have the gift of repentance and receive a remission of our sins. We didn’t earn that.

In Latter-day Saint belief, Jesus Christ, through the ordinances provided in temples, blesses us with eternal life and eternal families—an incomprehensible gift made possible as we receive the Atonement of Christ by making and keeping covenants. We didn’t earn that.

In things that matter most, remember: The deck is stacked—not against us, but in our favor! Life is truly “unfair” because of Jesus Christ. Aren’t we so grateful for it?

Let Trust Be Active

Elder Richard G. Scott, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught, “This life is an experience in profound trust—trust in Jesus Christ, trust in His teachings… To trust means to obey willingly without knowing the end from the beginning.” Trials can help us increase our trust in God: that He “shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain” (2 Nephi 2:2), and that “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world” (2 Nephi 26:24).

Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” we can ask, “Why is this happening for me?” What am I to learn? How can this problem help me increase my faith and trust in Jesus Christ? Nelson taught that we can “receive more faith by doing something that requires more faith.”

Turn Outward

Jesus taught by example that in times of adversity we should look outward and serve others. While on the cross, in His deepest agony and suffering, we see Jesus—astonishingly—arranging for the care of His mother:

“When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son. Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother” (John 19:26–27).

In times of adversity, our natural inclination is to focus inward. Instead, Jesus invites us to look outward to others, especially when we are experiencing personal challenges. This is a gospel paradox: “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:39). Elder David A. Bednar, also an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ, taught, “Character is demonstrated by looking and reaching outward when the natural and instinctive response is to be self-absorbed and turn inward.”

When those inevitable hard times come, we have a choice: we can be frustrated, grit our teeth, and suffer through it. Or we can see this problem that we would never choose as an opportunity. Your 3½ Moment does not define you, but it can refine you. Healing will come. All problems can be temporary on an eternal scale, as we strive to follow Jesus Christ. When you are in that 3½ Moment, remember: 7 is coming.

The post Your Hardest Season Might Be Exactly Half a Miracle appeared first on Public Square Magazine.