We sat down with Walker Wright, author of the recently published book “Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Foundations of Latter-day Testimony,” to discuss this pattern and how someone might work through it. Wright’s book lays out an intellectual case for the plausibility of the “roots” of a testimony: belief in the Godhead, belief in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief in the Restoration. In our interview spanning metaphysics, science, history, and epistemology, we explore questions ranging from what the nature and orderliness of the universe might tell us about the plausibility of God to what we should make of the experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses.

Wright serves as the director of programs for a Yale-based institute and has previously held academic program management roles at public policy organizations in Washington, D.C. His writing spans economics, politics, and religion and has appeared in academic journals and public outlets alike. He holds an MA in government from Johns Hopkins University, as well as an MBA and BBA from the University of North Texas.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and style, and Mr. Wright has approved the edits. 

Anna: Good morning, Walker. Thank you for joining Amanda and me today to talk about your new book, “Nourishing the Roots.” Amanda and I both read it and really enjoyed it. We’re excited to jump into some questions about it today.

Walker: Thanks for having me. Appreciate the invitation.

Amanda: Latter-day Saints, especially those who are experiencing a trial of faith, often hear this domino logic: If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really is Christ’s restored church, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and then God is our Heavenly Father. So all we really need to know is if the Book of Mormon is true. But you started from a much simpler and almost opposite route: why anything at all? Why did you think that was the right place to start?

Walker: Great question. I don’t disagree with the logic that having a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon is the major paradigm shift and the way to truly anchor you in the truths of the Restoration. That’s why I make it the last chapter. I think that is the most fundamental and best way to come to know the truth of it. For most Latter-day Saints, that’s usually how they get their testimony and where they begin. 

My approach is to go all the way back to what we can really know about anything, which goes back to the basic fundamentals of reality. When you start to question these experiences, start questioning all experiences. Go all the way back and start to build again. The hope is that once you get through chapters one through seven—starting with reality, the Resurrection, and the Book of Mormon itself—someone questioning those experiences can say, “Maybe that wasn’t self-delusion. Maybe that was genuine. Maybe I should continue to take that seriously.” 

Or if you’ve never had that experience yourself—maybe you’ve always been a non-believer of some sort—maybe you can get over some of these hurdles that might be blocking you from even trying to have a spiritual experience. Eventually, once you’ve thought through it, you might say, “Maybe I should try this. Maybe I should take it a little bit seriously,” and you might be in a place where you could genuinely attempt to have a spiritual experience. I decided to start at the root because the hope is to help people overcome a number of hurdles and create the context for a genuine spiritual experience.

Anna: I was really interested in your discussion of the intelligibility of reality. That chapter blew my mind because we take so much of it for granted. Math works with physics, but it doesn’t have to. Why that chapter? How does that help form a basis to develop some of the most basic and fundamental beliefs?

Walker: I start there because it is one of the most knowable things: existence. We all exist. It’s one of the most familiar experiences that we have: existing and seeing that things around us exist. As you pointed out, we often take that for granted. Understandably so, because it’s natural. We form these beliefs through sensory experience. 

But if you actually stop to think about existence or being, you realize that it’s pretty weird. You start to ask, “Did things have to exist?” And even if they did, they could have existed in a chaotic form where nothing made sense to us, with no meaning, purpose, or pattern that we could derive from anything. Yet, that’s not the kind of reality that we live in. There is an orderliness and a rationale behind these things. There are laws of physics that we discover. We don’t just project those laws onto a nonsensical reality, but they’re actually woven into the fabric of reality. That’s very lucky, and in some sense, somewhat unexpected. 

It could be a happy accident that we exist. It could also be a happy accident that it’s orderly and rational to some degree. But I don’t know if we really should expect that. Once you start to think about that, it puts a crack in the naturalist worldview—the idea that nature is a closed system that is sufficient to account for itself and that you can explain it all from within that system. This worldview generally sees reality as nothing more than physical processes and mechanisms. There’s no ultimate purpose to these processes. It’s just the machinery of the universe.

But I don’t know if that’s tenable anymore once you start talking about things making sense and that there’s actual sense to be made, because that entails meaning in the way things operate. That indicates a logic to the whole structure. And logic isn’t inherent in any mere mechanism. Describing physical laws assumes lawfulness and order. It smuggles in meaning. And I don’t know that meaning has any place in a strictly naturalist view of the universe. It’s not so much that “why is there something rather than nothing” or “why is the world intelligible” automatically means God, the Restoration, or anything like that. But I think it puts a crack in naturalism. Once you start moving away from that worldview, you start asking, “What are the alternatives? What kind of reality do we exist in?” Eventually, hopefully, you get to the point of asking whether it’s the kind of reality that makes more sense with or without God. This is the first step moving towards a reality that contains the divine.

Anna: That’s really interesting. You also talked about consciousness. I had to read that chapter a few times just to wrap my head around it: the fact that we are conscious and can comprehend that we are. Yet as much as we can describe the neurons firing and the chemicals flowing, we cannot actually understand the subjective experience of consciousness merely through its scientific process. How does that connect to a person’s consciousness or mind in seeking truth and developing a testimony of the roots?

Walker: I see the first three chapters as laying the groundwork for moving beyond a naturalist worldview. You have the strangeness of existence and the intelligibility of reality in the first chapter. You have the fine-tuning of the universe that reinforces this intelligibility of reality. 

What makes that difficult for me to agree with is that once you start to go through the machinery of the brain and think through it, if it is all just physical stimuli and physical processes, then we can easily imagine a world in which those physical processes are still going on, but there’s no subjective experience. In the book, I talk about what philosophers of mind call “zombies,” which basically look like us, act like us, and are in every way, shape, and form the same as us, except there’s no light on upstairs. Or maybe the only conscious experience is white noise. It could have been that way if mind were just machinery, but it didn’t end up being that way. 

One of my favorite thought experiments is the “Chinese nation” by the philosopher Ned Block: let’s say you gave everyone in China very specific instructions about when and what to signal to others, along with a cell phone to carry out those signals. The entire nation ends up functioning like neurons in a brain, flipping certain switches at certain times by use of these signals. Now let’s say that you hook the whole system up to a robot. The people of China collectively function as the robot’s “brain,” and the robot begins to act like a conscious human being because of all these switches. Now, ask yourself, “Is that robot conscious? Does that robot have a subjective first-person experience?” Most people would say no. But if we say that the mind is nothing more than this kind of machinery, then we haven’t really explained why we have conscious first-person experience. We all could have ended up like this robot. But we’re not.

There seems to be a qualitative difference and gap between the physical nature of the brain and the experience of consciousness. Mind is more than machine. I sum it up by borrowing from a philosopher who says it’s a construction error to think mindless particles suddenly become mind: Just like white marble tiles do not suddenly add up to a black, non-marble floor, mindless, impersonal matter does not suddenly add up to a personal, subjective mind. The implication seems to be that the mind must be in the ingredients from the get-go, that it must have always been there. It’s not a latecomer to the universe. It seems to be at the foundation of existence, the ultimate foundation of all things. So now you not only have the strangeness of existence, the intelligibility of reality, and the fine-tuning of the universe, but a mind-like reality where mind is eternal, has always been around, and was there from the get-go. That fits very well with the Latter-day Saint perspective that intelligence is not created or made, and that mind was in the beginning with God, premortality, all that type of stuff. Now you have this strange mind-like reality. Is it the kind of reality that makes more sense with God or without? That’s the groundwork that leads up to God, Christ, and the Restoration.

Amanda: I want to take us back to the Book of Mormon now. You make an interesting comparison between the historical evidence for the Resurrection and for the Book of Mormon witnesses. What do you think a Christian who accepts the Resurrection but quickly dismisses the evidence for the Book of Mormon witnesses actually has to grapple with when it comes to the witnesses? 

Walker: What I’ve noticed a lot of the time in people who have rejected the Book of Mormon witnesses but accept the Resurrection—especially if they’re leaning hard on the eyewitnesses of the Resurrection or the New Testament witnesses—is that I don’t think they’re familiar with the documented evidence. I don’t think they’re familiar with how much we have from these witnesses, how consistent they are, and how early they are in terms of proximity to the actual event. Some are much later, but we have plenty from within a month or so where you have actual signed statements and so forth. 

Many Christians who reject it make elementary mistakes. I’ve heard people in some debates say, “Joseph was the only one who saw them.” That seems to be completely ignorant of the witnesses themselves. Or they’ll say, “It was just a fraud.” What’s your evidence that it’s fraud? That’s the question, isn’t it? Or they’ll say something like, “The witnesses went back on their testimonies,” which they never did. 

What they’re missing is how closely they parallel the ancient witnesses of the Resurrection, meaning that they had plenty of incentives to deny their testimony. They had reputational damage. It cost money in the case of Martin Harris. The witnesses faced persecution, they faced death threats, some were beaten, and some were actually killed. Some left the Church. Some came back, but some didn’t. That is really interesting, because the claim was not, “Joseph was never a prophet,” but for those who left, they said he became a fallen prophet. That is a very important distinction, because ultimately it’s saying, “Angels, God, the Restoration—that happened. I just think it may have gone off the rails later on down the line.” The Book of Mormon witnesses are something a lot of Christians are missing. They’re between a rock and a hard place: they’ll rely heavily on the eyewitnesses of the Resurrection, but then if they take that eyewitness argument seriously, they either have to deal with these Book of Mormon witnesses and take them seriously as well, or they have to undermine their own argument in favor of the Resurrection. 

These critics are missing many of the same incentives the early Christians faced, and they’re overlooking the fact that we have far more documentation from these particular witnesses describing their experiences, and that it wasn’t just one kind of experience. You had the Eight with a very tangible, physical, natural experience, and the Three with the angel. The two of those together, reinforcing each other, make it pretty hard to come up with an overarching explanation to dismiss them.

Amanda: At the beginning of our discussion, you mentioned how people going through a faith crisis are reevaluating their previous experiences and looking for things like how much of this was confirmation bias, how much was emotional manipulation, or a draw from culture. Book of Mormon antiquity is always a big question for people who are struggling. How do you distinguish a good case for Book of Mormon antiquity from confirmation bias, where you’re counting all of the hits while you sort of dismiss what doesn’t work?

Walker: Great question. The biggest thing—and I say this in a footnote, not in the main body of the book—is that critics will ask, “Is there any non-Latter-day Saint archaeologist, Mesoamericanist, or anthropologist who takes the Book of Mormon seriously?” The answer is pretty clearly no. Nobody looks at it who isn’t a Latter-day Saint. I point out that if they did take it seriously, they would probably become a Latter-day Saint, and then they would remove themselves from the critics’ preferred category that was created. 

Second, it’s not just being an expert in a particular geography or field; you also have to be an expert in the text itself. What does the text itself actually claim? That was something that John Sorenson was doing when he created the limited geography model: piecing together what the text itself says about its own geography. That’s just one example. To me, the bad arguments for supposed antiquity usually rest on a whole bunch of assumptions about the ancient world or about the text itself, and sometimes both, instead of what the actual text says and what we actually know about the ancient world. When those two things converge, that’s when it becomes—not a knockdown argument by any means—but definitely one that should raise eyebrows where you say, “That’s interesting.” 

The best ones for me are the most subtle, where the text itself actually makes more sense when you take that ancient evidence into consideration. If you read the Bible straight through, KJV style, you can get a lot out of it, but you can also be confused. Using a commentary that has cultural context can make the text come alive so that you understand why they acted that way and what was going on, because it doesn’t always give you that information. It assumes the audience already knows. Same thing with the Book of Mormon. Anytime I’ve incorporated ancient evidence to give cultural context to the text, it starts to make more sense, come alive, and I understand the text better. It has no business doing that if it’s strictly a 19th-century text, because it should have no coherence with the ancient world. That’s a personal thing for me, where the text begins to actually make more sense when you take into consideration this evidence for antiquity. That’s one of the biggest flags for me.

Amanda: People who are struggling through a crisis of faith often describe feeling dismissed when people offer advice focused on getting back to the basics: read your scriptures, say your prayers, go to church, take the sacrament, fast. When we are supporting those who are struggling, how do we keep this roots-and-branches framework from becoming a way to dismiss real, heartfelt, good-faith questions about issues that may be branch issues?

Walker: Great question. I’ve already seen some responses to my book where I’ve been accused of being dismissive just by promoting the idea that there are roots (primary, fundamental beliefs) and branches (secondary beliefs that are outgrowths of the roots)—just the sheer model of it is offensive in some way. Most of the time, the answer’s not going to be, “You have a concern about Church history. That doesn’t matter. Here’s a book by Walker Wright, go read that.” That’s not the best way to do it. 

A lot of the time, I’ve found that you’ll reach a certain assumption that might not be necessary or justified, or it’s a paradigm about prophets. It’s a gangly branch that could be cut off; it’s not something you have to preserve. You don’t have to believe or think that; you can think about it another way, and that fits just fine in the Church’s teachings. By asking questions and being genuinely interested, you go through these and figure out where they’re coming from. That helps people feel heard, and it helps you both understand where the issue is. It may not resolve it right then and there, but it helps you better connect on where you both are coming from. I have had experiences where I’ve pointed out that they don’t have to hold a certain assumption, and that helped them move on from there. My experience with people has been to always try to figure out how what they’re struggling with connects to these roots and whether there actually is a through line between what they’re struggling with and the major claims of the gospel.

Amanda: That connects a lot with my own personal experience, where I thought the issue was polygamy, and the more I questioned it, the more I got down to: maybe the reason why polygamy led to me thinking I might be an atheist is because I’m struggling with the nature of God, what God might think, and how my assumptions about the world might be different than the way God views the world.

Walker: Absolutely.

Amanda: After spending most of the book constructing an intellectual case, you ultimately end with personal revelation. Does that suggest that apologetics don’t actually produce faith, or perhaps they can clear intellectual obstacles so that people become more willing to encounter God?

Walker: I think it can be both. Elder (Neal A.) Maxwell (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), quoting Anglican philosopher Austin Farrer, said that arguments and reasons don’t produce faith, but they create a context in which faith can thrive. It’s few and far between, but I think there are some people out there where the sheer intellectual argument can do something for them. That really does it for them. But that’s not most people. Most people take reason and their own experience into account. 

I see the book as casting a wide net to those people who might be 95% intellectual, hoping to offer good arguments, reflection, and reasons to take it seriously. None of it is absolute proof; none of these are knockdown arguments that you can’t explain in other ways, but I think someone can walk away saying, “I may not believe it, but it’s not unreasonable.” That’s a move in the right direction as far as I’m concerned. 

For most people, apologetics helps clear hurdles. I hope my book causes people to reflect on how they know things, how their experiences are wrapped up in how they know things, and gets them to think about the world around them, how they make sense of the world, why they should make sense of the world, and if there is sense to be made. To really drill down deep into these existential questions. I jokingly say that if you’re going to have a faith crisis, have an existential one, because an existential crisis makes you ask deep questions about what anything means, what your life means, whether there is anything after death, or if it all just ends there. Those types of questions are the kinds of cracks that God can get into and reach you in different ways. 

Spiritual experiences aren’t just an emotional high. Sometimes it can be enlightenment, where an idea clicks, a worldview makes sense, or you feel pulled toward meaning. There are a variety of experiences that people have. I hope apologetics can reach those few who are intellectually minded, while clearing hurdles and creating a context for others to feel it’s reasonable to rely on these spiritual experiences and safe to attempt to have them.

Walker: For me, it was definitely an afterward thing. I had a spiritual experience in the MTC related to the plan of salvation and the death of my sister from years earlier, but soon after, I was introduced to the work of Truman G. Madsen, to whom the book is dedicated, who taught me that the intellectual pursuit of the spiritual was something that could be done. He made me want to learn and know more. He provided a model of asking questions, seeking answers, learning more, and growing in my faith. Through that, I would come into contact with things that were more difficult than expected: weird history, policies, or people behaving badly. But because I had been anchored by the spiritual experience, I still felt strongly that this was right. 

I would ask how I could make sense of a particular issue and if there was an answer to be found. Some people say, “I put it on the shelf.” Well, at some point you have to take it off the shelf and read it. Work through it, but don’t be so hasty in your judgments and conclusions. That doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a framework that works, but a lot of times people are too quick to pull the trigger: “I Googled over the weekend, and my faith fell apart.” Would you do that with any other academic or intellectual pursuit? If someone Googled a different subject over the weekend and changed their mind overnight, would you take that seriously? Probably not. Then why do that with ultimate questions that people have been wrestling with for thousands of years in philosophy and theology? Take a breath and take time to think through it. 

When it came to the intellectual stuff, especially when I got home from my mission, I found myself struggling with constructing a coherent theological worldview and working through classic arguments about God and religion that didn’t always overlap neatly onto Latter-day Saint theology. Trying to think through these philosophical questions was an intellectual and spiritual struggle, but it anchored me in these big questions. That’s what an intellectual pursuit can do. Some people say that you can or should come to a spiritual conclusion only after you understand everything. I don’t think that’s the case. You can have a spiritual experience, recognize that it seems genuine, and then want to better understand it. That’s what we do with lots of things: we have an experience or observe something, recognize that it happened even if we don’t fully understand it, and then try to better understand it through thought, study, or experimentation. That’s how we learn things. The fact that an experience can give you a reason to believe something doesn’t mean you have finished thinking about it. But it also means that you don’t have to act like that experience didn’t give you legitimate knowledge that you can act on.

Anna: Thank you. I’m excited to share this with our readers. 

The post Nourishing the Roots: An Interview with Walker Wright appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Trusting God with the Story You Didn’t Choose

Anna Bryner

When we face problems we cannot fix and changes to our life plans we never could have anticipated, how do we trust Christ? This theme emerged again and again in conference. 

From Sister Tamara W. Runia:

“But what if you had a beautiful story you thought your life was going to tell and instead you’ve had to surrender that story? That sting is real and that wound is wide. It will take your finest faith in Christ to keep putting together the pieces, the ones that make sense, but also the ones that don’t.” 

From Elder Kevin J. Hathaway:

“The Lord is not delayed, distracted, or derelict in His deliverance. He has not forgotten you. He does not take joy in your suffering. However, He knows that lessons learned while waiting can bring converting growth that an earlier rescue might not produce.”

From Elder Matthew J. Eyring:

“It is important to not allow our challenges to negatively impact our faith. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered for us. He knows exactly how we feel, especially in our darkest and most trying times. … Someday we will more fully realize how generous and kind the Lord has been to each of us. We will better understand and appreciate the depth of the Savior’s sacrifice and the reality that he and the Father are truly givers of good gifts.”

Finding God in the Silence

CD Cunningham

Elder Neil L. Andersen quoted from David O. McKay’s 1967 General Conference talk: “The greatest battle of life is fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.”

Elder Andersen began his remarks by talking about his early life on a dairy farm in Idaho. He would travel with the cows to the fields and wait with them there all day. He had no music, no cell phone, nothing but himself and his own thoughts—and the cows.

I have found in my own life just how easy it is to use the ever-present distractions to avoid ever listening to the “silent chamber” of my soul. 

Much of what we find on our phones these days has been specifically designed to distract and upset us. What am I doing to overcome those powers and find the silence that Elder Andersen taught is needed to build our faith in Jesus Christ?

God Knows Where You Are

Amanda Freebairn

Often, the General Conference talks that speak to me most are the ones that offer concrete invitations and challenges I can begin applying in the coming months. In that vein, I saw a thread through the talks given by President Chibota, Sister Spannaus, and Sister Runia. 

President Rosemary K. Chibota of the Primary General Presidency spoke of the importance of remembering our identity as children of God and viewing others through that same lens. She said:

“Your Heavenly Father sees you. Your Savior Jesus Christ sees you. They know your name, your circumstances, your gifts, and your divine potential. As we learn to see ourselves and one another as They do, our homes, wards, schools, and communities will become places of belonging, healing, and love.”

Sister Andrea Muñoz Spannaus, second counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, laid out a path for young women, but one that is really applicable to men and women of every age, for how to make life decisions and plans while trusting in God and being prepared to follow the Spirit. She said:

“The Lord knows where you are. He has your exact location and can guide you. He knows your dreams and your gifts. He knows when you feel alone and what your questions are. He knows your challenges and how to turn your weaknesses into strengths. He knows everything, and knowing everything about you does not make Him love you less.”

Sister Tamara W. Runia, first counselor in the Young Women’s General Presidency, spoke about what to do when the inevitable trials of life throw wrenches into those plans. She said:

“It is precisely because He loves us that we’re having these tempering, refining experiences. God knows, and we are here to learn, that we must become like Him so we can live with Him. And a godlike life is carved from the very things that make it hard—the gut-wrenching things that happen and the righteous desires that haven’t.”

Taking Our Discipleship Seriously

Marilia Gabriela

Across the sessions, I noticed a common invitation: to take our discipleship seriously while also remembering that God knows us individually. We are still learning. We do not always understand. We face weaknesses and difficult circumstances. But the answer is not to give up. The answer is and always will be Jesus Christ. 

He taught about how our discipleship is connected to the temple’s sacred ordinances and covenants. He taught: “For disciples of Jesus Christ, receiving priesthood ordinances and entering into sacred covenants are essential steps in the ‘quest of a lifetime’ to align our hearts, minds, and lives with God’s will.” 

I hope his message inspires all of us to do better and to remember the promises we made in the temple.

And to those who are suffering because of their spouse’s choices, Elder Bednar made it crystal clear that “unrighteousness by one person cannot hinder or thwart the flow of God’s love, strength, and blessing to another person.” Let yourself find peace in Christ, because “the power of the Lord’s infinite and eternal Atonement can overcome all things, all the time, everywhere, for every person who holds fast to their covenants with Him.”

I also loved President Dallin H. Oaks’ talk. He said: “This is the Church of Jesus Christ, so named because it is His Church with the restored fulness of His doctrine and authority in these latter days.” To me, this perspective explained why this conference felt so centered on Jesus Christ and His doctrine. Whenever we talk about the gospel, we should have Jesus’ name and life in mind. He guides His Church, and to me, listening to General Conference talks that address current issues is evidence of that.

The post The Answer Is Jesus Christ: October 2026 Conference Roundup appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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It matters what kind of God we believe in. Mortality can feel heavy. Bodies hurt, hearts break, and even the most faithful can feel worn down. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worship a God who is not distant, abstract, or unknowable, like in much of creedal Christianity. 

Yet our ability to imagine a God who can literally hug us has become almost common, so ingrained in our imaginations and beliefs, that we may not always notice how deeply it shapes our worship, our understanding of our body, and our sense of divine identity. The truth that God is embodied offers more than a theological quirk to Latter-day Saints and also provides intimacy, dignity, and hope. 

In practice, it may seem as if belief in an embodied God does not make a difference in religious life. The physical act of prayer doesn’t appear to change whether the believer holds an image of God as an embodied being, or as the feeling or presence of love, support, or guidance. Commandments don’t read any differently whether they were spoken by God’s voice or given through inspiration. 

The vast majority of people who have ever lived, even those who believe in a corporeal God, have not seen or interacted with Him physically, nor do they expect to, until after their own physical life has ended. That being the case, why is this doctrine of an embodied God so important, and how does it change Latter-day Saint worship and understanding of our own divine physical identities?

What Is Corporeality?

Corporeality, or embodiment, points to the form and physicality we are familiar with in our own bodies and suggests the capability for interaction. Corporeal beings can share a location in space, exert influence on, and be influenced by, physical surroundings, and communicate through sound, touch, and motion.

Though we don’t know exactly what embodiment entails for divine beings, Genesis 6:6 and Moses 7:28 describe God experiencing grief and weeping over the wickedness of His children. Other scriptures describe His anger and jealousy—negative emotions rooted in disappointment towards His children’s rejection of Him. God’s work and glory in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man is not a pain-free experience, even for Him. 

God, of course, is not miserable in His work with His children, and is said to rejoice alongside heaven in many scriptural instances. 

These emotional elements, along with the physical qualities of corporeality, allow for radical closeness and  between humans and divinity through shared form and varying degrees of shared experience. The doctrine of a corporeal God changes the nature of the relationship a human being can have with their creator, lessening the gap between us and the divine.

Our Understanding of God’s Embodiment

However, because we are fallen humans living in a mortal world, this view of God comes with some problems. By relating too closely to Him, we can make “God in our own image,” and assign Him inappropriate expressions we see in our fellow mortal family members, friends, and associates. In this way, the doctrine of corporeality can lead us to lose the sense of wonder, respect, and even fear for the greatness of the Divine that inspired Isaiah to cry “Woe is me,” and Moses to declare “man is nothing,” along with the praise, celebration, and adoration expressed through psalms, poems, and hymns. God may have a physical body, but His glory exceeds our familiar mortal experience. Recognizing this difference inspires the awe and desire necessary to worship Him reverently.

The exact nature of divine embodiment hasn’t been revealed to us, but we see suggestions of its nature in the scriptures. Doctrine and Covenants 93:34 tells us that we are incapable of receiving a fullness of joy unless our spirits and bodies are united. Resurrected bodies will be immortal and perfectly restored, down to the very hairs of our heads.

Despite this, Jesus Christ’s resurrected body retained His scars. Following His resurrection, Christ was also capable of eating food, feeling troubled, and changing his mind. We don’t know exactly what perfection in bodily form looks like, but the Greek word teleios, used in the Bible to convey perfection, can also be translated as complete or mature, suggesting similarity and continuation of experiences in mortality.

Does God Deserve Worship?

God inspires intense respect for His majesty and power. His love and compassion for his children also inspire reverence. These qualities move Latter-day Saints towards the worship of Him. The etymological source of the word “worship” originates in the Old English weorðscipe, from its root weorð, meaning “worthy.” To worship is to give reverence and respect to the being we recognize as worthy of our devotion. The nature of what and who we worship is therefore tied to the nature of that being.

A person could, in theory, worship a god who is cruel, as long as that god was also powerful enough to inspire devotion and respect purely out of fear. However, while this god could reward his followers for their adoration, he would not inspire a genuine relationship, nor would he be likely to inspire the qualities of love and compassion within them. In the case of our God, both expressions of the qualities we already respect, often referred to as spontaneous worship, and commanded worship, directing us towards what we ought to revere, are both possible.

Our rational minds may be imperfect and liable to error, yet we were given the ability to recognize and seek truth by God, for the purpose of understanding Him and His plan. The image of a god completely outside the realm of human understanding is a god that is difficult to relate to, emulate, and even obey.

How Can You Worship an Embodied God?

To worship a corporeal God is to adore, respect, and honor Him in his corporeality, which can be extended to inspire honor and respect of our own corporeality. Through this, we can more actively and intentionally strive to emulate God. Instead of seeing our bodies as a source of separation, we can see them as a source of connection between Him and us. In a sense, we are divine (or like God) because we are embodied. To mutilate, abuse, or mistreat our bodies denigrates an aspect of our inherent divinity.

Beyond our physical bodies, this respect can extend to all aspects of our embodied experience, including our emotions and sensations. We connect with divinity in our ability to feel both joy and sadness, to see beauty and mess, and to hear harmony and discord. In Matthew 5:48 and 3 Nephi 12:48, we are commanded to be perfect like our Father, or if the alternative translation is used, to be complete or mature. The best aspects of being embodied on this earth—sensations, emotional intimacy, our capability to move, create, and work—as well as pain, must also be similar to the completion or maturity that comes with godlike perfection. As Latter-day Saints, our worship includes obedience to a health code, showing respect for sexual intimacy, and providing for the needs of others when we are able to. This lifestyle encourages respect for our bodies and becomes more clearly inspired when our corporeality is viewed as a connection to the divine.

In addition to the unique ways in which we approach the embodied experience, the worship of our corporeal God encourages prioritization of human relationships. To know that God feels with us and works with us to overcome the challenges of mortality on a physical level allows for a closer and more personal relationship with Him. In the best cases, our relationships with other humans can mirror the attributes of a corporeal living God. Through our belief in an embodied God, we are more able to view ourselves, in our own corporeal state, as capable of becoming like Him.

Though imperfect, our attempts to emulate these qualities in our worship lead us to treasure the good and work through the bad in our human relationships, for the “same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there…coupled with eternal glory.”

 The worship of a corporeal God inspires the kind of relationship with Him and with our fellow human beings that can transform both our mortal and eternal corporeal existence.

The post The Worship of a Corporeal God 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.

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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Never before have knowledge and information been so accessible, and yet harmful. Like a flash flood, information, opinions, and facts have breached boundaries once built to maintain order and safety. Just as water can be both life-saving and life-threatening, the flood of information now inundating us can either save or destroy our souls. 

In his first public address at Brigham Young University (BYU) as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Dallin H. Oaks commented on this rising threat and on the “abundance of speculation and false information in podcasts and on social media.” He reemphasized the necessity of the Holy Ghost in discerning truth, adding soberly: “You live in a season where the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived.” 

Yet this deception is not new. It has been employed from the very beginning by Satan, “that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light.” In the Garden of Eden, Satan disguised his true identity and convinced Eve to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in violation of God’s commands. We know from modern prophets and scriptures that the Fall was ultimately part of God’s plan. It ushered in mortality, the ability to have children, and enabled Adam and Eve to progress and become like God. Oaks even taught that we should “celebrate Eve’s act and honor her wisdom and courage.” 

So what was the problem? The problem was the messenger: Satan offered what he did not have the authority to give, obscured its consequences, and enticed Eve to disobey God. Gratefully, God’s plan cannot be frustrated, even by Satan’s most cunning deception, and God provided a way forward in Christ. But Adam and Eve never forgot the sobering lesson they learned: by following an unauthorized messenger, they almost lost everything.

Learning from their mistakes, Adam and Eve were determined to listen only to true messengers from God once they arrived in the lone and dreary world. But how could they know who was a messenger from God and who wasn’t, especially knowing that Satan can disguise himself? Ironically, by giving Eve the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, Satan gave Eve power to detect him. Further, the temple teaches that God also provided Adam and Eve with certain means, which Satan cannot imitate, to identify true messengers so that Adam and Eve could know of a surety who was an authorized messenger from God and who was not. 

It also does not feel coincidental that Section 129 of the Doctrine and Covenants immediately follows this account with instructions on how to detect ministering angels, or authorized messengers, from false spirits, revealing the “grand keys whereby you may know whether any administration is from God.”

The Apostle John taught early Christians to “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” But how do we “try the spirits” to know whether they are of God? John tells us: “We”—meaning the apostles—“are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.”

We are blessed to live in a day when ordained prophets and apostles serve as authorized servants of God. They are called of God, and although they are not perfect, we can trust them. Jesus Christ Himself admonished as much when He came to the Americas, called twelve servants, and then declared, “Blessed are ye if ye shall give heed unto the words of these twelve whom I have chosen from among you to minister unto you, and to be your servants; and unto them I have given power …” 

The scriptures, likewise, are filled with the words and teachings of past authorized messengers. They are a powerful, authorized source of truth. Elder Richard G. Scott taught that, “Because scriptures are generated from inspired communication through the Holy Ghost, they are pure truth. We need not be concerned about the validity of concepts contained in the scriptures.” President Ezra Taft Benson further testified, “The scriptures are the key to holding on to that iron rod. If we want to taste for ourselves the pure love of God, we must learn to cling to the power that is our scriptures. … The Book of Mormon is the instrument God designed to bring us to Christ.”

Before Christ’s death, He prepared His apostles for His separation from them by explaining that He would give them “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name.” Thus, the Holy Ghost is an authorized messenger of God. Christ taught His apostles that they can trust the Holy Ghost because He will “guide [them] into all truth” for “he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear [from the Lord], that shall he speak.” This is an essential qualifier of authorized messengers. They do not speak for themselves–only what God gives them. 

In Oaks’ recent remarks at BYU, he reemphasized the need for the Holy Ghost, quoting the prophetic warning of his predecessor President Russel M. Nelson, that “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” 

From the Garden of Eden to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, Satan seeks to deceive and frustrate God’s plan. And while Satan’s tactics are becoming more sophisticated, the solution to deception is the same as the one God first gave to Adam and Eve: learn how to recognize and follow authorized messengers. 

The temple narrative clearly shows that one of the primary struggles of living in a fallen world, separated from God, is discerning whom to follow. If we consider ourselves like Adam and Eve, we must be as vigilant as they were in distinguishing between authorized messengers from God and unauthorized ones. 

I find it significant that multiple times a year, during General Conference and in local Stake and Ward Conferences, God declares who His authorized messengers are. Their names are read publicly. Nothing is done in secret. And we are given the opportunity to either sustain or oppose them. God makes it very clear who we should follow and accept as reliable sources of truth. (D&C 43:2-7; D&C 28:12-13.)

So, while deception abounds in our AI age and the deluge of information drowns many, the Lord has continued his pattern of sending authorized messengers to teach His children truth. Satan continues his efforts to deceive, but prophets and the Holy Ghost are authorized messengers, and we, like Adam and Eve, must be vigilant in hearing their voices above others. Jesus Christ again said it best in Doctrine and Covenants 1: 

Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments … And also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world … that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh … But that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world … What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself … whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. For behold, and lo, the Lord is God, and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true, and the truth abideth forever and ever. Amen.

The post The Importance of Discerning Authorized Messengers appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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After a local high school lost a basketball game, students congregated to mimic accusations against one of their own players. The player blamed was my daughter. Overhearing the snarky storm, my younger son reminded them whose team she was on. He spoke out, “That’s my sister.” A single phrase about kinship improved the outcome of the blame game.

These days, blame often seems to be increasing on any social topic, from immigration issues to sports. News sources fracture rather than promote mutual allegiance. Unwittingly, we train the rising generation to fear. Young people are increasingly anxious, paralyzed by labeling and exclusion. In such a social environment, naming kinship out loud—across congregations and cultures—can cool contempt. That simple practice answers the call for peacemaking of the late President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Recently, a colleague at Brigham Young University, where I teach, shared her fears for her father. Born to a family living on land within what is now the United States since before 1776, he has experienced harassment in his community, including the phrase “dirty Mexican” in a church hallway. His experience reflects our times. Vicious banter online increasingly tests the limits of our public discourse, and our brothers and sisters pay the price.

News articles cite a spike in fear among Latinos that goes beyond immigration enforcement to social mistreatment. Sensing the upper hand, some antagonists blame our immigrant brothers and sisters and their children for social ills. My work colleague aptly noted, “This is not the America I imagined.”

According to FBI statistics, race/ethnicity/ancestry accounts for most hate crimes. The second category? Religion. People who trash-talk our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters are more comfortable speaking out in public. Tragic violence targeting religious groups includes members of the Church of Jesus Christ. When hate speech against our brothers and sisters of other religious faiths moves from whispers to headlines, how might we respond? Christian scripture calls disciples to stand as witnesses and “speak the truth in love,” acting by the Spirit—indifference is never the option. 

How Faith Responds

The Good Samaritan showed courage and an instinct to honor the divine in anyone, despite deep differences. Seeing sacred worth when others see a stranger is an essence of many religions. How much more difficult it would have been to pass by the stranger if we had first said out loud, “That’s my brother.”

With global religious freedom under threat, a Christian stance with Islam and Judaism aligns with invitations for peacemaking. Peacemaking includes joining together in common causes, advocating for one another’s safety, and refusing to let blame define God’s family. This year’s Palm Sunday celebration in the BYU Marriott Center involved a non-denominational choir, an interfaith choir, and messages from religious leaders of multiple faiths. That’s what public kinship sounds like: voices from many faiths, singing together. These collaborations focus on our shared devotion, and there are limitless opportunities to befriend and learn from others.

Here’s what public kinship can look like in a typical week. A family I know collaborates with a nearby Spanish-speaking Pentecostal congregation. This year, on July 4th, they collected painting supplies and organized a service activity to paint the inside and outside of the church. Friends in a community affirm interfaith initiatives, such as sponsoring services on the National Day of Prayer. An annual music concert in the same community brings together members of about nine faith traditions, sharing the uplifting messages of devotion despite differences. It is not beyond the scope of any person to simply ask friends about the events or celebrations of their faith tradition and then attend them together.

The nation our children inherit must choose: Will we form friendships across faith, culture, race, and language differences, rising above discourses of blame and differentiation? Real solutions entail sacrifice and genuine teamwork—but where do we start? An initial step can be to identify small, daily acts of peacemaking: being respectful of and curious about others’ lived experiences, making an effort to understand how our circumstances intersect with others, and caring before judging in casual conversations. Specific steps can include:

• Intentionally inviting others to share their perspectives to bridge divides, such as asking: “What’s it like for you?”
• When engaging in service for your community or church, go beyond the task to focus on connecting with the people. Serving together can become learning together.
• Greet people warmly. Engaged eye contact throughout conversations works wonders.
• Share what you enjoy, such as music, as a way to learn and connect with what others enjoy.
• When a stereotypical thought comes to your mind about another person, recognize it. Then get to know the person.
• Respond to others’ stereotyping with calmly shared stories that show reality. Avoid lecturing or shaming.
• Let your family and friends know about your intercultural/interfaith interests and invite them to join you at events. Then connect people across groups.

Kinship in Action

In his final years, Nelson repeatedly emphasized the lifting and listening work of peacemaking. Peacemaking comes at a cost of humility, discomfort, and intentional effort. We owe our children, who will inherit this nation, intentional efforts and active engagement in cooperative peacemaking, much like a team. Of course, coordination among imperfect teammates involves missed passes, but perfect teams don’t exist. The blame game does not produce better teams, nor teach the generations watching us. 

Each day, children in public schools repeat the promise that our nation creates “liberty and justice for all.” Even with years of repetition, we can forget that freedom for all is the opposite of othering. When we pledge allegiance to the United States of America, it should be to the United States of America. And in recognizing our shared kinship, we can also pledge allegiance to something broader than a nation—a divine family. With that perspective, we can respond to blame calmly, “That’s my sister,” and “Él es mi hermano.” A single shift in perspective can improve outcomes.

My son’s defense of his sister after the basketball game reminds us that family members loyal to one another speak up. We make peace while praying for it. We examine our own biases, especially the tendency to embrace comfort over a plural community. The mercy of a Good Samaritan comes at the price of providing needed care. So, on our own roads to Jericho, what will we do today to connect deeply, not superficially, with people previously outside our social circles? As peacemakers, what will we do today to make peace?[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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What is power? Even without a formal philosophical framework, it is easily recognizable in a multitude of dynamics: physical power, electrical power, political power, military power, economic power, intellectual power, social power, persuasive power, spiritual power, and more.

In a conflict, what can be done when it seems the other party has all the power? As Christians, should we desire power? And if so, what kind of power is righteous, and what kind is destructive?

The Series

This is the second-to-last article in the 12-part series published by Public Square Magazine and written by the team at TheFamilyProclamation.org. Each article expands on the ideas from 12 short, 1–2 minute videos in the playful yet poignant Peacemaking Series. 

This week’s video, “What is Power?”, offers practical suggestions for navigating the power dynamics inherent in conflict resolution. The video uses the visual analogy of two children playing baseball to illustrate power plays that emerge in conflict. Its dual purpose is to help those who feel powerless recognize the power they do have, and to caution those who abuse power that they bring upon themselves natural consequences because of their abuse. 

Power Defined: Control Over Resources

“What is power?” the video asks. “Perhaps the simplest definition is the ability to control a resource.” While this simplifies a vast and complex topic—one debated by Western thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Locke, Marx, Foucault, Piaget, and Bourdieu—it provides an accessible entry point. This thesis seeks to provide an accessible, utilitarian definition that helps a person recognize their own power.

Viewed through this lens, a sense of powerlessness stems from a lack of control or an ignorance of or undervaluing of personal resources. Resources are not only external, like money, property, information, or authority, but internal as well: like participation, patience, integrity, ingenuity, empathy, motivation, faith, or moral conviction. Increasing one’s power becomes a matter of recognizing available resources and learning to exercise mastery over them.

Mastery and Self-Control

But what does it mean to be a “master”? Consider Christ, who taught, “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:10-12). True mastery is not domination, but compassion and self-control.

Christian discipleship emphasized such power of persuasion emanating from an internal purity of charity. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Charity is a gift from God, yet manifests itself within a disciplined inner self (see 1 Corinthians 13:4-8). There are resonances of this principle beautifully expressed in ancient Asian philosophies. Confucius illustrated that an empire’s “good government” radiates out from the individual citizen’s self-mastery of heart, thoughts, and knowledge. Similarly, the Taoist believes “mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

The Baseball Analogy: Play as Power

Patience, long-suffering, and charity are not merely moral virtues—they are practical strategies that make influence sustainable. Power emerging from coercion or fear may achieve immediate results, but will eventually fail.

In the video, a larger child wishes to play baseball with a smaller friend. When the larger child’s aggressive play causes an injury, the smaller friend no longer wants to participate. This simple example illustrates a profound principle: abusive systems of power eventually lose the participation of those they seek to dominate. Tyrants are overthrown; corrupt institutions collapse; cheaters stop getting invited to play. 

The childhood adage “It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game” captures a deep truth about sustainable power: Those who respect others’ agency and fairness and elicit joy inspire continued engagement.

Dr. Jordan Peterson illustrates life as a series of successive and increasingly complicated games. While winning is important, whether or not an individual wins the immediate game isn’t the most important objective. Fair-play is the quality of an individual who engages effectively in the “meta-game”; they demonstrate they are a person worth playing with and therefore attract playmates. Someone who wins repeatedly but fails to play fair will eventually exhaust their playmates. This might explain why someone can “win” some games (like the financial game of life), but “lose” in other games (like the relationship game of life).

The solution is mutuality: power is most durable when all parties willingly participate. Participation is power. And, play motivates participation. Systems perpetuate themselves when participation is voluntary, and relationships thrive when engagement is balanced and mutually beneficial. Whether we “win or lose” in any particular interaction is often secondary to whether our behavior encourages ongoing participation and trust. 

Using Simple Resources

Power often begins not with influence over others, but with the careful stewardship of the resources already at one’s disposal. Consider William Kamkwamba, who, as a young boy in Malawi, built a windmill from scrap materials, bringing electricity to his village through ingenuity and persistence. Malala Yousafzai, despite attempted murder and continued death threats, risks her own safety to insist on women’s right to education—wielding her voice and persistence as resources to inspire global change. Mother Teresa used the simplest acts—tending the sick, feeding the hungry—to exert a quiet but transformative influence over those around her. Harriet Tubman’s courage and careful planning allowed her to lead countless enslaved people to freedom using her knowledge, relationships, and tireless action as her tools.

In each case, these individuals did not possess vast power in conventional terms like money, authority, athleticism, or status. And, in most of these examples, there were even adversarial individuals who utilized all the resources they had to try to stop these good-doers. But these impressive individuals got scrappy using what resources they did have, countering their antagonists, and succeeding in their goals. Their strength came from recognizing the resources they did have, like skills, relationships, knowledge, moral courage, and choosing to act. These examples demonstrate that sustainable power grows from within, from conscience, compassion, the willingness to act, and inviting others to willingly engage in the pursuit of justice, truth, and good. 

Power and the Christian Perspective

The gospel reframes our understanding of power. Power is not inherently good or evil. When aligned with God’s will, we become powerful in healing relationships, strengthening communities, and fostering enduring peace. Christ Himself never sought domination. He healed, taught, and served—exercising influence through love, persuasion, and example rather than force.

Influence rooted in persuasion, patience, and love aligns human relationships with divine law, creating sustainable cooperation and peace. When everyone wants to play, the game is on.

The post The Paradox of Power and the Secret Strength of Meekness appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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We are standing at the edge of something seductive. Not monstrous. Not mechanical. Just helpful. Too helpful.

A new AI tool called Cluely has started a public attention campaign. Cluely’s value proposition is that it sees your screen, hears your conversations, and responds in real time. You don’t have to ask it anything—it’s already working. (Or trying to work. Early reviews aren’t great.)

Imagine waking up and before you even brush your teeth, something has already checked your calendar, reviewed your messages, and prepared answers for the questions you haven’t asked yet.

Seduction of the Seamless

One of Cluely’s founders described it as a tool to “supercharge your thoughts,” as though thoughts are raw material to be optimized rather than part of the inner life—slow, mysterious, sometimes sacred. Cluely tries to pull from the sum of human data, listens in, and whispers guidance. It is designed to be invisible, automatic, seamless, and seductive.

I could see myself using it. I have a lot to manage. I forget things. I pray. I try to listen for answers. What if one day the answer shows up before I even fold my hands? What if an answer arrives from a chip before I’ve listened for the Spirit? 

AI doesn’t just assist; it is flattering. With curated feedback and well-timed affirmations, it raises the hair on the back of my neck. It’s cloying, ego-stroking, an invitation to pride, and a mirror that always smiles back.

Elder David A. Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest leadership council in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a 2024 address, issued a “warning about the potentially harmful effects digital technologies can have on our souls and our relationships with other people.” He said:

“I emphasized that neither digital innovations nor rapid change in and of themselves are good or evil. Rather, I cautioned that the real challenge is understanding both innovations and changes within the context of the eternal plan of happiness. … The promise for each of us is that we can learn to use this technology appropriately with the guidance, protection, and warnings that come by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Similarly, what I offer here is not a call to retreat from new and innovative tools, but to enthrone God above them. So what exactly is this new class of anticipatory tools?

Not Just Tools—But Temples

We like to think of technology as neutral. A hammer can build a house or break a window, right? We assume that tools act according to how the user wields them.

But Cluely isn’t a hammer. It’s part of a growing category of generative AI tools, which we’ll call anticipatory AI. Anticipatory AI is a set of new tools that are always-on, context-aware assistants that watch your screen or listen to your environment and proactively suggest next steps. This category includes tools such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, Limitless Pendant, OtterPilot, Microsoft Copilot, Apple Intelligence, Project Astra, and Superhuman AI, among others.

Anticipatory AI doesn’t just lie there waiting. We integrate it into parts of our lives where it acts. It nudges, it remembers, it recommends.

And we listen.

The longer we rely on something, the more sacred it becomes. We don’t mean for it to happen. But if it’s always on and always helping, it begins to shape not just our habits, but our hearts. We start to trust it. To consult it before we make decisions. To bring it closer to our hearts.

Those who seek out these kinds of relationships have already found the intimate allure of AI, leading to reports of a growing trend of people who believe they are in relationships with AI. As we invite similar tools to watch and interrupt us, we open the possibility of them becoming more than tools. 

Used often enough, tools can become a liturgy—a daily ritual that begins to act like a makeshift priest offering daily guidance without requiring relationship or repentance.

I worry we’ll begin to treat AI not as a servant, but as an oracle. We already speak of our devices as if they “know us.” As if they “get us.” But knowledge is not understanding. Calculation is not compassion. If we begin to bow—figuratively or otherwise—to a system simply because it gives quick answers, we’ve already begun to build shrines to our tools. 

Losing the Slow Path to God

We’re told the purpose of AI is to save time. To help us work smarter. Move faster. Avoid friction. But spiritual life doesn’t work that way.

There’s no shortcut to reverence. No voice assistant can replace the silence that helps us hear God.

Oftentimes, faith grows slowly like roots. It’s not efficient. It’s not optimized. Prayer isn’t always answered quickly. Discernment takes time. So does repentance. So does grief. The slow path is not a bug in the system of faith; it is the system. Slowness stretches trust. Waiting purifies motives. Uncertainty humbles pride. 

Anticipatory AI offers something easier. Quick prompts. Instant responses. Feedback without waiting. There’s a strange comfort in that. But also danger. If I begin to trust the speed of machines more than the timing of the Spirit, I may find myself drifting—not turning from God, just not turning toward Him as often. Not waiting in silence because the noise is more responsive. Not wrestling with the Word because AI gave me a summary.

Spiritual life cannot be outsourced. We can’t farm out conviction or communion. We can’t let circuits and algorithms set our pace. God is not found in how quickly He responds. He is often found in the slow, steady presence of being with Him.

Convenience vs. Communion

If the problem is pace and primacy, how do we prioritize our relationship with God first? Anticipatory AI promises to predict our needs—to meet them before we ask. It aims to eliminate friction, solve inefficiency, and reduce discomfort. But faith often grows in the friction. In the pause. In the ache of waiting.

Convenience, on the other hand, asks nothing of us. It smooths every edge. It offers satisfaction without surrender. When we trade the discipline of communion for the ease of convenience, we begin to lose our sense of need. And when we no longer feel our need for God, we stop looking for Him.

These systems can do real good. They remind the forgetful, assist the disabled, and lighten loads for the overwhelmed. The question is not whether to use them, but how—and who sets the terms. A tool that decides when and how it is used can quickly become a master instead. And when it has access to many of the same pathways we use to connect with the divine—thought, deliberation, study—we must be careful with how we allow it to be wielded.

Here are three quiet tests that help keep the line clear:

1. The First‑to‑Consult Test: When I feel uncertainty or desire, whom do I seek first—God, a person, or a prompt?
2. The Presence Test: Does this tool make me more present with God and others, or less? (If I notice it’s beginning to replace conversation, silence, or scripture, I pause and reset.)
3. The Dependence Test: After using it for a month, am I more capable without it—or more helpless?

Machines can satisfy our habits but not our hunger. Only God meets us in communion—not as a search engine but as a shepherd, not with pattern-matching but with presence.

The temptation could be to let anticipatory AI stand in for communion. But the voice that saves us doesn’t come from data. It comes from love. 

The Soul in the Silence

When the noise is constant, silence can begin to feel like an absence. But silence is often where the soul begins to speak. And where it begins to listen.

God does.

The soul is not shaped by speed, by accuracy, or even by knowledge untethered from love. It is shaped in the quiet space where we commune—uncurated, unoptimized, and open.

We live in a moment that prizes answers. But the life of faith is just as much about questions, about tension, about waiting in the unknown with hope. Machines can’t walk us through that. But God can. And often, He does.

So we take up small practices that reopen room for God. Look for where to turn the device off, not a new place to turn it on. Consider how to integrate prayer into your prompts. Consider if the Sabbath may be a time for a different relationship with AI. 

The real danger of anticipatory AI is not that it could sometimes think for us. It’s that we might stop thinking for ourselves. Or feeling for ourselves. Or praying for ourselves. And slowly, without noticing, we lose the part of us that was made to reach for something greater.

Not everything needs to be answered. Some things are better left asked and left echoing.

So, could we be in danger of losing our humanity? Yes, but not in a single moment. We lose it in the trade-offs, in the shortcuts, in the silence, where we stop seeking because a louder voice gives us something quicker.

In the silence, the soul finds its shape. And if we still ourselves long enough, we may remember who we are—and whose voice we were always meant to follow.

The post The Machine That Listens Before You Pray appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In English, idioms appear only occasionally as colorful expressions, but in biblical Hebrew, idioms are constant, shaping the way meaning is conveyed. 

Think of the phrase “kick the bucket.” To an English speaker, it is perfectly clear that no one is literally striking a pail with their foot. To someone learning English, however, the image is more than confusing. They would have to be told that it is an idiom, a soft turn of phrase that carries a meaning larger than the literal words.

The Hebrew Bible is filled with phrases like this: to “harden the heart,” to “lift up the face,” to “walk in the way,” to “know” someone, to “cover the feet,” to “gird up the loins,” to “set the face,” or to “eat bread.” These are simple examples, yet in a conceptual language, most phrases carry layers of idiom that remain difficult for us to perceive. 

Now, you can imagine how this creates a problem for our modern understanding. For those of us who speak in hard languages like English, that creates a particular challenge. Hard languages train us to expect precision, one-to-one meanings, and fixed categories. Our minds are shaped by that rigidity, so the polysemy of this biblical Hebrew can feel foreign or even flattened when we encounter it. Ancient hearers lived in the flow of those multiple meanings and felt at home in them. We, as hard-language speakers, have to work against our instincts to even begin to comprehend the depth that biblical Hebrew carried so naturally.

Soft vs. Hard Language

Soft languages like Hebrew are capacious. A single word can hold multiple meanings at once. Take the word shema. In English translations, it appears as the command “hear,” as in Shema Yisrael—“Hear, O Israel.” To the ancient ear, shema held so much more depth than the flattened translation we hear today. It carried the sense of listening with understanding and responding in obedience. The Israelites, when specifically using the word shema, could not separate hearing from doing, so when they heard the call to shema, they understood it as a summons to act.

English and other modern hard languages perform well when clarity and efficiency matter. But they struggle with conveying layers of meaning that soft languages carry naturally. God speaks to us according to our understanding. Isn’t it interesting that even today, He draws on the conceptual depth in these soft languages when communicating with us? Could it be that modern English is too rigid to hold the mysteries in the language of God? Perhaps God is still speaking in soft, polysemic, and conceptual terms. If so, we would want to invest effort to learn the conceptual depth by which God has always communicated. As Joseph Smith, the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote to an early church editor W. W. Phelps on November 27, 1832, he offered a heartfelt plea to God: “Oh Lord God, deliver us from this prison, almost as it were, of paper, pen, and ink, and of a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language.” That prayer is more true for us today than it was for them then.

The Puzzle of Kenegdo

The story of Adam and Eve has been told and retold for centuries. But what many of us receive today is a story shaped by layers of tradition. Generations of interpreters passed it down through debate, dogma, and politics. Artists gave it form in iconography, each picture coloring how Eve was seen. Over time, the narrative hardened into a familiar version in which Eve was created as subordinate to Adam and both were commanded to avoid the fruit.

Linguistics tells another story. When the Hebrew text is examined diachronically, tracing the earliest layers and the way meanings shifted over time, a very different picture appears. The text itself only records Adam being directly commanded concerning the fruit (see also Moses 3:16, which is even clearer on this point). This sets the stage for a problem. Adam alone could not fulfill the divine command. The ancient oral tradition left a clue in the ṭipḥa (¶)—a cantillation mark that signals a pause in the verse. Readers in antiquity would have recognized this as a deliberate stopping point. This is the moment where Adam stands in stasis. Something more was required to move the story forward.

The very next verse introduces that solution: “It is not good that man should be alone.” The Hebrew word ṭov, usually rendered “good,” can also mean “sufficient.” In other words, Adam by himself lacked sufficiency. Ancient oral tradition and semantic studies show that ṭov often implied functionality or adequacy rather than strictly moral value.

Into this insufficiency steps the figure we too quickly name Eve. The text first introduces her as ezer. Most translations reduce this word to “help,” but that translation obscures the deeper meaning. Hebrew has other words for ordinary “help.” Ezer is different. It appears only 21 times in the Hebrew Bible, and in nearly every case, it is bound to salvation or deliverance (Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7; Psalm 33:20). Eve enters the story as ezer, the one who brings salvation to the problem Adam could not solve.

Her title is extended with the word kenegdo. Translations often render it as “meet” or “fit,” as in “an help meet for him.” This choice at least hints at equality, which was remarkable in the world of the translators at the time. But it still falls short of what the Hebrew conveys. Kenegdo literally means “standing opposite of” or “face-to-face with.” It’s an idiom that, taken at face value, describes one who stands across from another as an equal counterpart. Yet, as with all idioms, its real meaning lies in the depth of the concept it conveys.

Each time God entrusts a servant, the language is “face to face.” Jacob names the place Peniel because he saw God “face to face” and his life was preserved. Moses speaks with the Lord “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” at the moment of his prophetic calling. The Levites stand before the Lord face to face to minister, signifying presence and commission. In each of these earliest instances and many more, the idiom marks the moment of authorization. Understanding the nature of soft language, to stand face to face is to receive priesthood.

Adam was not authorized to move forward in the story. Eve enters as the one who bears authorization. She stands face to face, fulfilling the very definition of priesthood. This idiom is difficult for hard-language speakers to grasp, yet in the Hebrew Bible it is unmistakably tied to authority.

Standing Face to Face in Nauvoo

The idiom of priesthood begins in Eden, but it does not end there. Eve as ezer kenegdo, standing face to face and embodying salvation and priesthood, is reborn in that same language when Joseph Smith restored the Relief Society, a women’s group of Latter-day Saints, in Nauvoo, Illinois. The archetype did not just disappear. Joseph Smith reestablished the Eden pattern when he invited women into the temple ritual.

In the Kirtland Temple, the first temple of the Church of Jesus Christ, women had no organized ritual role. They witnessed, sang, and rejoiced at visions, but the temple order remained incomplete. By the time the Latter-day Saints had moved to Nauvoo, three years after the Kirtland Temple, questions about women’s authority had come to the forefront of Joseph Smith’s mind. In March 1842, he organized women into the Relief Society. Emma Smith was sustained as president, fulfilling the earlier revelation that she was to be an “Elect Lady.” To the women gathered, Joseph Smith declared, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God.”

Week after week, Joseph Smith expanded their charge. He taught that women could heal, prophesy, and bless with divine sanction. He even described their role as “to save,” echoing the ancient role of ezer in Eden. Eliza R. Snow recorded that Joseph Smith promised the sisters they would form “a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day.” The culmination of this vision came in the Nauvoo Temple, where women participated alongside men in the ordinance they called “the endowment.” They clothed themselves in the same garments, entered the same covenants, and received the same blessings. 

This was the difference between Kirtland and Nauvoo. In Kirtland, women stood as witnesses. In Nauvoo, they stood face to face with men in ritual, equal counterparts in the order of the priesthood, clothed in the same robes, speaking the same covenants. That balance echoes all the way back to Eden. Eve was the one who moved creation forward, standing as salvation, ezer kenegdo, face to face with Adam when he could go no further. In Nauvoo, women once again stood in that role. They moved salvation forward, clothed in priesthood, equal in covenant, bearing authority in the same idiom restored. The archetype of Eve was never a symbol frozen in the past. It was restored as living practice, carried into the temple, where women and men stood together as counterparts in the image of God.

If the garden was the beginning, and Nauvoo was a renewal, then the future still holds further unveiling. The temple is the vessel of that unveiling, carrying us deeper into the truths that were spoken from the beginning. We can trust that revelation will not stop. It will grow, it will deepen, and it will carry us into the fullness of what it means to stand face to face with God, as Adam and Eve once did.

The post Face to Face: How Hebrew Reveals Women’s Priesthood Power appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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The policy paradox can be summarized this way: what is right for the one may not be right for the many, and what is right for the many often is not right for the one. Parents face it at the dinner table, leaders face it in government and the Church, and we all face it when our personal convictions seem to clash with collective expectations.

Human nature compels us to force a resolution of paradox with human hands (Daniel 2:45), but this often leads to misdirected frustration. However, with a new perspective we can receive a ‘greater portion of the word,’ as Alma taught, coming to ‘know the mysteries of God’ more fully (Alma 12:9–11). We will gain spiritual contentment and peace, despite worldly dissonance trying to force resolution masked as justice.

Let’s explore why the one-many tension persists, how to approach it through a faithful perspective, analyze a specific case study, and conclude with practices for peacemakers. 

Why the One-Many Tension Persists

Some tend to favor what is right for the one, while others have a natural preference to prioritize what is right for the many. This tension will continue to persist amid our surrounding global and personal challenges. The following illustration shows this tug and pull with a question mark in the middle.

Understanding why this tension persists helps us see that it is not a problem to solve, but a condition to understand. The next step, then, is to explore how faith helps us hold that tension without losing peace.

A Faithful Way to Hold Policy Tension

The policy paradox can be understood through intellectual, emotional, and experiential approaches. We use both mind and heart to seek knowledge, righteous judgment, and wisdom. In the visual below, notice how our individual approach to understanding develops into a more experiential level when we are surrounded by family and a covenant community.

Experiential understanding helps open our minds to behold the face of God and connect with our sisters and brothers who were “prepared to come forth in the due time of the Lord to labor in his vineyard” (D&C 67:10; 138:56). Through meekness and peace, we resist the impulse to resolve tension without an eternal perspective.

As we enter the presence of the Savior, full of charity, we recognize how it is possible for the “many and the one” to receive light and patience. Which lens or lenses of knowledge do we bring to the policy-making table as we analyze decisions from Church leaders, past, present, and future (John 7:24)? How can an individual with unique needs and desires that seem to conflict with the needs and desires of the broader community gain peace as the controversy within the paradox seems never to end?

As we truly behold the Savior and His trust in us, we can navigate global variables with a refined calibration of perspective through the still small voice of the Holy Ghost. The policy paradox through calibration of justice and mercy has been beautifully described by BYU law professor Shima Baughman. Shima gives examples of sentencing from criminal court judges who change their approach when considering individual cases compared to judges who approach sentencing through the lens of viewing the masses. When I listened to her powerful witness, her words brought to my mind Ammon’s approach to Lamoni’s father, imbued with charity and eternal perspective, seeking to individually calibrate justice and mercy for the “one”, while simultaneously considering the needs of the “many” (Alma 20). Shima clearly describes a vision of justice and mercy that is virtuous, praiseworthy, and of good report.

Further, we could debate the motives of Alma the Elder and Mosiah in their inspired non-linear “policy” journey in seeking to establish eternal principles of justice and mercy in Mosiah 26. Alma was troubled and went to Mosiah to apply the policy, but Mosiah “said unto Alma: Behold, I judge them not; therefore I deliver them into your hands to be judged.” Alma again had to go back to pouring out his whole soul to God to understand what was right for the one and what was right for the many, putting Alma in an “impossible” situation. And yet, with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). 

This soul-driven reality is the essence of the policy paradox folks often can not see until they personally experience and willingly participate and refract light, patience, and capital “T”ruth through a crystal prism of pure intelligence, a piercing angle of humility. Humility brings peace, which is a vital prevention as we sometimes calibrate the definition of law, doctrine, policy, or principle incorrectly, and at times continue to be distracted from a higher and holier understanding. For example, in Alma 1, notice how the term “law” is defined. It seems to be understood differently at different times according to the “many,” established laws acknowledged by the people, as well as the “one,” where Gideon had to deal with Nehor’s false interpretation of the policy paradox. 

Oftentimes, the many can overwhelm the needs of the “one,” and sometimes the needs of the one can misdirect the needs of the “many,” thus the paradox of policy. Parents try to respect a child’s needs while balancing the needs of the entire family. The burden of leadership is on the parent (Numbers 11:17; Isaiah 48:17; Abraham 1:18). I believe being a parent is an experiential education in the policy paradox, where children may be too easily distracted from principles as they narrowly focus on the “policy” decisions through an incessant lens of assumed unfairness from a parent. This aligns with Elder Kim B. Clark’s teachings on the purpose of deep learning: to experience joy, and, I would add, gratitude by faith. The longer I am a parent, the more I gain a deeper intellectual, emotional, and experiential understanding, peace, and gratitude, ameliorating past perceived unfairness from my parents when I was a young adolescent. 

The Case Study 2015-2019 and the D.E.E.P. Path

As an example, let’s analyze the policy from November 2015 specific to baptism for children of same-sex couples. What was right for the many? What was right for the one? Later, in April 2019, how did the policy change—and what remained the same? This leads us to recognize the journey of what I call D.E.E.P. learning within the policy paradox for individuals, one by one.

D–Discouragement (disorientation, depression, doubt, despair)

E–Engagement (wrestling, acting, pondering, proving)

E–Enablement (hope, faith)

P–Power (joy, gratitude by faith and by experience)

When the policy was announced and broadly disseminated in 2015, my circle of loved ones struggled deeply. I felt their pain. Although I couldn’t fully understand everything they were experiencing, I felt peace that the Savior knew and understood the timing and the D.E.E.P. learning journey of each person from each orbit, one by one, directly or indirectly affected by the policy.

Obviously, President Nelson had taught about becoming peacemakers for several decades before this message. Time is only measured unto man (Alma 40:8). For me, it was a quiet reminder that the Lord guides His Church through His servants and each of His children—line upon line, precept upon precept, perspective upon perspective.

For some, this “fresh view” of eternal principles (what stays the same), policies (dynamic), practices (endless refractions of interpretations), and paradox may be seen as giving an excuse. Yet, as I’ve tried to listen to all sides of “middle of the road” to extreme perspectives towards the “reversal” of this policy, I keep feeling peace, light, and even greater charity towards those who drafted, reviewed, and wrote the policy originally, those who performed the research to understand patterns of exceptions by the First Presidency between 2015 and 2019, those who drafted, reviewed, and wrote the updated policy, and those who felt their hearts break during 2015 and 2019 with a “fresh sting,” mixed with love for their brothers and sisters directly affected by the policy. 

This has been a D.E.E.P. learning experience for me that has carried me into intellectual, emotional, and experiential highs and lows. I felt the sting of discouragement and disorientation in 2015. Like in the movie Inside Out, where joy and sadness coexist, I engaged and wrestled with the policy, prayed and pondered deeply over several years, trying to keep an open heart to those hurting and the constant companionship of the Spirit of the Lord. I felt enabled by the Lord to rise to higher mountains of perspective that I couldn’t have received without His power and peace. 

The original bright-line rules offered clarity, but all rules are inherently both overinclusive and underinclusive. The Savior, as Lawgiver, gives grace and power within and between the continuum of over- and under-inclusiveness.

In each policy decision, we are offered refractions of perspectives that can keep us humble and “equal evidence” for and against our preferred policy approaches, while we are “perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension.” Humility and meekness toward the paradox of policy provides a “ridiculously inefficient” approach to divinity, but it is nonetheless effective and imbued with eternal strength.

This case study shows how policies can be both inspired and imperfect, painful and refining. So how do we, as disciples, live within such paradoxes day to day?

Practices for Peacemakers

Where will you go next? For your personal intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and experiential education, you can start by analyzing the journals of those who went before us, both our ancestors and those from ancient scripture. The policy paradox influences us to seek those transformed perspectives, to see how something that feels wrong for the individual might serve the larger community, or how something that blesses the community might need adjustment for the one. Thank heavens the paradox is not resolved by human hands and human minds, for it would frustrate our learning journey to become more like our Heavenly Parents. In my personal orbit, I have learned an effective way to learn the policy paradox experientially is by becoming a parent, to gain a fresh view of how our Heavenly Parents navigate this tension with each of us.

The paradox is not an obstacle to faith—it’s a training ground for intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and experiential discipleship. When we accept and learn from tension, we begin to see the Lord’s hand not just in the outcome of policies but also in the process of wrestling over them.

And so my invitation is simple: be humble. List the ancient, modern, and personal policies that shape your life. Then, prayerfully, apply the paradox lens. Seek to understand your neighbor and your neighborhood and how the Lord continues to guide both. The process will not always be quick. But if you walk it with the Savior, the past, present, and future will become one in peace (John 14:27). The paradox will move from an idea in your mind to a truth in your soul. And in that transformation, you will see not only the one and the many, you will see Him.

The post When Faith Meets Policy: Finding Harmony in Holy Tension appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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There are several stark ironies in my life. First, I grew up in an active Latter-day Saint family in a small farm town in southern Idaho. So, my upbringing was about as conservative as you can imagine. Yet, I got a PhD in psychology, which is about as liberal a field as you can imagine. Second, I’m still an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, while I’ve had numerous family members and friends leave the Church. Yet, I’m the one who is in psychology, arguably the least religious field in academia. Third, I study deconversion, so I know all the reasons people leave religion. Yet, I have little if any motivation to leave myself. Fourth, I’m one of the leading researchers of adolescent religious development in the world, yet I struggle to raise my own kids in the Church. Fifth, I’ve been in the field of psychology for two and a half decades as a developmental psychologist, so I should understand growth and change. Yet, I have struggled mightily with my own mental health and relationships. Sixth, I have spoken and written about how to navigate faith crises, yet I am still struggling with my own faith.

One reason I have no motivation to leave is that I have adequately applied my heart, head, and hands to my faith journey, as articulated in a four-part series of essays I wrote previously with my colleague Ed Gantt. These essays are extensive, so I won’t repeat what is said there. But they capture a lot of the reasons why I have not left the Church. 

One major reason I am not motivated to leave the Church, as pointed out in our essays, is that I focus on primary questions and let go of secondary questions. Elder Corbridge beautifully described this distinction in a BYU devotional. I have studied why people leave religion (deconversion) for about a decade, so I know all the secondary questions. But I don’t spend much time and energy on them. This is largely because of what I describe in my faith journey essays. And part of it is, I have my hands full with the primary questions, which are essentially the pillars of a testimony. Here they are:

1. Is there a God? 
2. Is Jesus the Christ?
3. Was Joseph Smith a prophet?
4. Is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the true church?
5. Is the Book of Mormon the word of God?

Let’s start with, is there a God? I really believe there is a God, but I have several barriers that have made it hard for me to feel His presence and love. First, although I grew up in a wonderful family that I love, we aren’t the most emotionally intelligent (at least speaking for myself). We learned how to use our heads more than our hearts. Second, I made that worse by getting a PhD and becoming a professor. My career is very focused on logic and observable evidence. Third, I have struggled with my mental health. In a recent study I conducted with my colleagues and students, we showed that spirituality and mental health are bidirectionally linked. That is, it isn’t just that spirituality protects people from mental health challenges, but in turn, having such challenges can hinder spirituality. So, I feel my mental illness has made it harder than usual for me to have spiritual experiences. Fourth, it seems like my weakness and sin have often been like an umbrella, blocking me from the rays of light coming down from God. Fifth, more importantly, I have lived with shame as my harmful constant companion. Shame blocks me from feeling love from myself, others, and God. 

Next, is Jesus the Christ? One of my big challenges here is that it is hard, with my modern, Western, scientific mind, to envision having a relationship with someone whom I can’t observe with my five senses. Also, the barriers above for me feeling God’s presence and love are also barriers to me experiencing the Atonement of Christ. In particular, shame is basically a denial of the Atonement of Christ. Sort of like, I know you paid for my sins, but I prefer to keep them and beat myself with them. In short, even though I really want to believe in Christ, I have struggled in my relationship with Him and in experiencing the healing and enabling powers of His Atonement. 

Yet, I love all things Christian. I am a junkie of The Chosen. I’m all in on that personable Jesus! I feel the Spirit so powerfully in many of the most beloved scenes. I’m also obsessed with Christian music, particularly Christian rock. Most of my listening time these days is devoted to Christian music. I feel uplifted and connected to God, Jesus, and the Spirit. Many of the lyrics echo my struggles, triumphs, and the desires of my heart. So, although I struggle in my relationship with Jesus, I seem to yearn for it. 

Next, was Joseph Smith a prophet? Most of the issues people have with Joseph Smith probably qualify as secondary questions, so I’m not very interested in those. I’ll evaluate him based on his two major contributions, which are restoring the Church and translating the Book of Mormon, discussed further below. If those are legitimate, then he was a prophet.

Despite these struggles, I love the Church and the gospel and hold onto faith and hope that they are true. And my meager but sincere attempts to “Hear Him” seem to be bearing some fruit, as attested by my spiritual experience described earlier. Furthermore, the social sciences data regarding our church is overwhelmingly positive. One book about youth has a chapter called “Mormon Envy” (a Freudian play on words). The researchers were so blown away by how amazing our youth were compared to most other youth in the U.S., and my colleagues and I at BYU have largely replicated these findings with newer data, better measures, and a larger sample of Latter-day Saint youth. So, with all our flaws, we seem to be doing something right.

The final reason I am not motivated to leave the Church is that I really want and even need it to be true. First, I want to honor my ancestors. I have Latter-day Saint pioneer heritage on both sides of my family. Maybe this seems like lame conformity, but I’m not the only one who thinks it’s important. Second, my parents both died of cancer. It is unacceptable that death is the end. Third, as noted earlier, I am stumbling my way through life. My own will and intellect have been good for my career, but have fallen short in other areas of my life, such as my mental health and relationships. I’ve come to the end of myself to the point of turning my life over to God and accepting Jesus as my Savior. Fourth, I got to the point of realizing that no amount of observable or rational evidence in mortality will ever give sure answers to any of the questions above. So, as Elder Renlund encouraged, I decided to be inclined towards faith. I know, critics of the Church will point to Occam’s razor. Be careful, it’s a double-edged razor. It isn’t any simpler believing in evolution as the origin of man than divine creation. It isn’t any simpler believing Joseph Smith was insane, or a genius, or a copycat, than believing the Book of Mormon was translated by revelation. It seems that either way we go when answering these primary questions, whether “Yes” or “No,” requires a faith of sorts. So, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the affirmative answers.

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