The article has ignited a strong response on social media. Some have called the article anti-therapy. Many have claimed that therapists are neutral and do not impose their ideas on their clients.

Therapy has taken on an outsized role in our culture very quickly. But in many ways, it remains a very under-explored arena. And, naturally, most of those who do research in this space are themselves therapists. It was an area I wanted to know more about. So, in 2022, I spent over 100 hours interviewing more than 50 Latter-day Saint and former Latter-day Saint therapy clients about their experiences to better understand the client side of therapy. I sought out perspectives from individuals who worked with religious and non-religious therapists throughout the United States. The interviews were intimate and insightful, yielding many observations about how clients feel about the therapeutic process. 

That being said, I have noticed a stark difference between how my interviewees described the therapy experience and how therapists themselves describe it. There seems to be a gap between what therapists think they are doing and how their clients experience what is happening. And this does not seem to be limited to poorly trained or unethical therapists. 

I believe these conversations have given me some insights into the client experience and how bias operates that may be missing in the critiques of those pushing back on the Deseret News piece.

Most People Experience Their Therapist Giving Them Advice

Many therapists insist that they do not give advice in therapy sessions. But most of the clients I spoke to experienced the opposite. 

I would characterize most people’s experience in therapy as their therapist telling them that what they were doing in their lives was good, that they were on the right side of any conflicts they were in, and that they would be happier if they made minor adjustments. 

Those adjustments were usually in the direction the clients were already inclined to pursue. So therapists might simply see themselves as merely helping clients talk themselves into a position. But the clients saw these therapists as trained, neutral third parties agreeing with their position.

Of the people I interviewed who believed their therapists gave them advice, many said their therapists had told them during intake not to interpret their takeaways as endorsed by the therapist. Others said their therapists frequently stated during sessions that they did not necessarily agree with or endorse the course of action the client had chosen. 

A handful of those who believed their therapists gave them advice also said their therapists made disclaimers that they were not giving advice. I remember one man I interviewed who held this view. When he mentioned the disclaimer, I pushed him to explain why he believed his therapist was giving him advice, even though his therapist had explicitly told him the opposite. The man shrugged and said, “Come on,” as if the answer were very obvious. He explained that the therapist’s disclaimer sounded legalistic and was intended only to protect the therapist, not to reflect the therapist’s actual feelings. 

One effect I saw repeated in many of my conversations was that clients intensified their conflicts. They left therapy further convinced they were in the right because their therapist advised them to either continue what they were doing or intensify a course of action they were already inclined to take. 

Who Believes Their Therapist Is Neutral?

Among those I spoke with, there was much broader disagreement about whether their therapists were neutral, with quite a few saying they did not know.

Among those I spoke to who said their therapist was neutral, there was a common pattern in their experience of therapy. They had a major conflict in their life (such as divorce, faith transition, parent-child conflict) and made substantial changes in their life near or during therapy. They were also much more likely to believe that their therapist was giving them advice that aligned with the path they were pursuing.

I found it interesting that many people said they were unsure whether their therapists were neutral. And those who said they did not know didn’t fall into the same pattern as those who said their therapist was neutral.

Among the people I interviewed, there was a pretty strong gender divide, with men more likely to believe their therapists were biased than women. 

The most common pattern involved individuals with conservative social, religious, or political values who believed their therapist did not share their values. Surprisingly, this was common even among those who sought out Latter-day Saint counselors, although I spoke to quite a few people outside Utah who sought out generically “Christian” counselors, and none of them reported this experience.

Even though these individuals believed their therapist was biased against their worldview, most still felt they benefited from therapy but simply had to account for their therapists’ biases. Interestingly, these individuals often said that the discussion itself was ultimately valuable, even though the advice their therapists gave them was less valuable.

How Bias Functions in the Therapy Room

In my conversations with therapists, they often use the phrase “client-guided therapy.” Therapists seem to view their clients as having the power in the interaction and their own role as simply guiding clients in the direction those clients choose.

Among the clients I spoke to, almost no one viewed therapy this way. They saw their therapists as having almost all of the power in the space. They believed or hoped that their therapists had either the answers or the tools to help them address what was troubling them. 

Many of the people I spoke to said they felt directed by the therapist, through nonverbal signals, into which areas of their lives the therapist wanted to discuss. One client mentioned that whenever she complained about her parents, the therapist would sit up and lean in. This individual was a teenager forced into therapy by her parents. She was trying to manipulate the therapist so she could quickly get out of therapy, and she found that responding to those nonverbal cues made it much more likely to get a good report from the therapist to her parents. 

Most participants, of course, were not trying to manipulate their therapists. But they also described similar responses when they discussed parents, childhood trauma, and religion. Several told me they consciously recognized these signals and believed it was their therapists’ way of communicating which issues they should discuss to get to the root of their problems. Almost none of them resented their therapists for doing this or saw it as a harmful practice. 

One of the people who described her therapist as neutral also told me that the first time she mentioned her religion, the therapist’s follow-up question was “When did your religion first make you feel guilty?”

As you might expect, people overwhelmingly reported that their therapists asked questions aimed at finding problems. But my conversations suggest that the combination of therapy’s problem-focused framework, paired with therapists’ specific areas of interest, leads many clients to find problems in those areas at elevated rates. Most of those who reported their therapist being interested in those areas of their life believed the actual problem that needed fixing was in those areas. 

When I used a word other than boundary, I did get a handful of people who described limits around what they would discuss with their therapists: Two women explained to their therapists early on that they had no problems with their spouses, and had no interest in exploring those relationships; one client said something similar about her mother; and one said the same thing about her faith. Still, only a small minority specifically directed their therapist away from parts of their lives they believed were working. 

If the clients do not make their value systems explicit, therapists have no framework for their questions. When interviewees described their early therapy sessions, they reported being asked questions which often presupposed a value system grounded in Rogerian humanism and expressive individualism—most commonly, questions aimed at identifying what was preventing the client from expressing their most authentic selves.

So it’s not that therapists retreated to a truly neutral position (if such a thing exists); there appears to be a default value setting that therapists revert to when they are not directed otherwise by their clients. Questions from this worldview appeared among the questions asked to every person I interviewed, regardless of whether they believed their therapist was neutral or not. While I don’t personally believe those worldviews are inherently antagonistic to parental relationships or religion, there is also no legitimate therapeutic reason to replace a client’s value system with those worldviews. 

I have not had nearly the same breadth of conversation with therapists as I have had with clients. But I suspect it’s these mechanisms that allow therapists to honestly say they are neutral and don’t direct their clients, even as their clients report a very different experience. 

Although many people see therapy as “settled science,” there is relatively little research that supports the kinds of therapy most people engage in. Therapy has significant potential, and it has done much good for many people that I spoke to. These conversations I have had with therapy clients should not be taken as anti-therapy, but instead as useful insights that therapists can integrate into their work. The field is still largely exploratory. Asking these kinds of questions and looking for how therapy impacts other arenas of life is exactly what good researchers and journalists should be doing. You can believe that therapy is a net good for society, and still believe that, given its incredible influence in our lives and its rapid ascent in our culture, therapy deserves more attention and critique, not less. 

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Note: This piece is the first in a three-part series that reviews the best available science on the connections between religiosity and health. Part 1 discusses mental health; Part 2 discusses physical health; and Part 3 discusses social-relational health.

Memes like “God is dead” and “Science is real” have become T-shirt banners of contemporary secularism. These statements make an implicit claim: the more seriously we take science, the less seriously we should take religion. But when the bantering subsides, one serious empirical question remains:  What does the best science reveal about whether religion helps or harms us as individuals and as a nation?

Medicine and social science recently reached a landmark with the publication of “The Handbook of Religion and Health,” a Duke and Harvard University collaboration. Described as “stunningly ambitious” by former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, the text included only the most rigorous 5% of studies conducted on religion and health (about 2,800 out of 60,000). 

The bad news is that the volume contains 1,100 oversized pages with small font. The good news is that our multidisciplinary team from BYU and Duke University recently mined these pages and completed three condensed reports on “Religion and Mental Health,” “Religion and Physical Health,” and “Religion and Social Health,” so that you can see the grand scope of the 1,100-page volume without requiring an optometrist visit. 

Our Research Team

Our team brought together four disciplinary vantage points. These were medicine, where mental illness bleeds into physical illness; the criminal justice system, where untreated depression, addiction, and isolation harden into costly incarceration; family and human development, where anxiety and trauma reverberate across families long before clinicians intervene; and the workplace, where poorly handled stress and isolation diminish productivity. Each of us wanted to know what the best science revealed about whether religious involvement helped or harmed mental health—or both.

What the Science Reveals

Following the lead of the Duke–Harvard team, our BYU–Duke team divided the best studies into nine mental health foci:

1. Bipolar Disorder
2. Schizophrenia (and other psychoses)
3. Coping with stress
4. Depression
5. Anxiety
6. Personality Traits & Disorders
7. Positive Emotion
8. Suicide
9. Addiction & Substance Abuse

Each scientific study that made the cut for rigor (the top 5%) was examined by the Duke-Harvard team to see if the core findings indicated:

(1) a positive association between higher religiosity/religious involvement and improved mental health;

(2) a negative association that showed that higher religiosity/religious involvement was connected with decreased mental health; or

(3) mixed or complex findings.

Our team revisited these same studies, using the Duke-Harvard system to categorize the core findings. We then tallied the studies by whether the study showed a positive, negative, or mixed relationship between the aspect of mental health and religious involvement. Across the nine mental health phenomena, here is the breakdown of studies:

Our report indicates that the limited findings on religiosity and bipolar disorder is mixed, with a slight tilt toward negative findings. Research on schizophrenia and other psychoses shows a similar pattern. Religion may not be helpful with more severe, biologically-based psychoses, although the number of studies is small and inconclusive.

By contrast, the high-quality studies consistently suggest a link between religious involvement and better mental health across seven mental health phenomena. The positive-to-negative study ratios were approximately 7:1 for depression and anxiety, 4:1 for personality traits and disorders, 11:1 for suicide, 12:1 for coping with stress, 26:1 for positive emotion, and 43:1 for substance abuse and addiction. 

It is important to clarify that correlation is not causation. However, the handbook authors note that “there is now relatively strong evidence for at least some of the association between religious service attendance and lower suicide rates being causal.”

Indeed, research conducted at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has used advanced statistical methods to analyze longitudinal data in ways that strengthen causal inference. Although randomized controlled trials remain the gold standard for identifying causal effects, these newer methods can, under appropriate assumptions, provide evidence that approaches the strength of causal conclusions.

Taken together, the best available evidence indicates that religious beliefs, practices, and participation in faith communities are linked to improved mental health outcomes far more often than to adverse outcomes.

Across the mental health domains summarized above, 961 empirical studies found beneficial associations between religious involvement and mental health. Only 101 studies found adverse associations—an overall positive-to-negative ratio of nearly 10:1. In many of the studies reporting adverse associations, the key finding involved what a leading psychologist of religion Kenneth Pargament has called “negative religious coping,” for example, framing stressors as punishments from God.

Except in the cases of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia—where findings are mixed—religiosity in the best studies to date tends to be significantly correlated with positive outcomes across most mental and psychological health phenomena. In the case of some phenomena—including suicide, coping with stress, substance abuse and addiction, and positive emotion—the scientific case for religion as a correlate of health is overwhelming. As we will see in two subsequent reports in this three-part series, religiosity not only correlates with desirable mental and psychological health outcomes; it has also been repeatedly correlated with significant positive outcomes in physical health and social-relational health domains.

The Threshold Effect: How Much Religion Does It Take?

A close look at the best science on the religion–health connection suggests a “threshold effect.” In other words, the benefits of religion appear to be concentrated among those with sustained, high engagement. Hundreds of studies link religious involvement to better mental health, elevated physical health (including lower cancer rates), and significantly longer lifespan. Family-level gains have also been documented, including greater marital stability, higher marital quality and satisfaction, and stronger parent-child relationships. 

However, only individuals with “significant commitment to their faith” seem to attain the threshold “where measurable benefits are discernible and often substantive.” Occasional attendees do not enjoy the same benefits. In practice, the threshold is at least weekly service attendance, with associated health benefits observed from adolescence into older adulthood and across racial and ethnic groups and faith traditions.

Across the strongest studies on mental health, religious involvement is most powerfully associated with healthier coping with stress, lower rates of depression and anxiety, markedly lower rates of substance abuse, and substantially reduced suicidality.

To restate, addiction and suicide—two of the most devastating drivers of family breakdown and criminal justice involvement—are domains where the positive influence of religion is strongest. Of the 271 of the best studies on the connection between religion and substance abuse, 256 (94%) found a correlation between religion and significantly reduced substance abuse. Regarding rising suicide rates in the U.S., Harvard’s Tyler VanderWeele has linked 40% of this tragic increase to declining church attendance.

Our team’s hope is fourfold. First, we hope that some who are currently below the threshold of religious participation will consider becoming more involved in their faith communities. Greater involvement may increase their likelihood of receiving significant benefits and contributing to the well-being of others

Second, we hope that persons of “threshold-level” faith will find increased reason for devotion to their sacred communities of care. We hope that these foundational members of diverse faith communities will continue to contribute their time, money, energy, and selves with a heightened awareness of the associated benefits and blessings.  

Third, we hope that people will recognize the tremendous public and personal good that religion offers. We hope they will foster enlightened pluralism in which religious individuals and groups can both produce and receive many established benefits.

Fourth—and perhaps most of all—we hope that those who are already deeply aware of the benefits and blessings of lasting fellowship in a religious community will seek to extend that warm and welcoming concern to all—including those with differing beliefs. May we remember the two-fold wisdom of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who observed, “Religion is at its best when it relies on the strength of…example. It is at its worst when it seeks to impose truth by force.”

The post The Mental Health Case for Religion appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A keystone, as President Ezra Taft Benson reminded the Church, is not decorative. It is structural. Remove it, and the arch collapses. Keep it, and the whole structure holds—quietly, invisibly, doing its work precisely because everything else depends upon it. Though the keystone metaphor is an architectural one, its implications are existential.

Most Latter-day Saints readily affirm that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. Clearly, the Book of Mormon anchors testimony, clarifies doctrine, and centers the life and mission of Jesus Christ. But what if its role extends further? What if the keystone is not only spiritual, but intellectual? What if the Book of Mormon does not merely sustain religious life but also challenges, reorients, and even overturns many of the assumptions we take for granted in our daily lives?

As a psychology professor (Edwin) who has been laboring in the field for the better part of forty years, I frequently find myself confronting these sorts of questions, both on a personal and a professional level. Seldom does a day go by that I don’t find myself considering the very real possibility that the Book of Mormon might also be a keystone for our thinking—for how we understand the human person, suffering, responsibility, healing, and the meaning of moral life. Further, I find myself wondering what it means to participate in an academic discipline that is constructed atop assumptions that the Book of Mormon quietly, persistently, and fundamentally contradicts.

Turning Things Upside Down

The Restoration has always carried with it a disruptive claim: revelation does not merely supplement human knowledge but can challenge and reorder it. The Book of Mormon itself describes a “turning of things upside down,” a phrase that captures the unsettling possibility that what we think we know may, in fact, be fundamentally mistaken.

In modern psychology, certain assumptions have become so pervasive that they are rarely questioned. They form the background against which theories are built and practices justified. Among these, three stand out: naturalism, determinism, and moral relativism. Though seldom explicitly discussed in the mainstream literature of the discipline, each of these ideas has profoundly shaped how psychologists tend to understand human behavior, suffering, and healing. However, when viewed through the lens of the Book of Mormon, each becomes deeply contestable.

To take the Book of Mormon seriously as a keystone for our thinking, then, is not merely to add a religious gloss to existing scholarly or professional frameworks and theories. It is to ask whether the foundations of such things themselves are even sound.

The Quiet Reign of Naturalism

At the heart of modern psychology lies a commitment—often implicit—to naturalism. Simply put, naturalism holds that all events, including human thoughts and behaviors, can be explained in terms of natural processes governed by natural laws. Applied to scientific methods, it does not necessarily deny God’s existence; it simply brackets God out of the conversation. Scientific explanations proceed “as if” divine action is irrelevant.

This posture is often presented as value neutral. By avoiding theological commitments, many psychologists believe they are able to remain objective, reliant only on empirical and universally accessible data. This stance is often defended under the banner of what is known as methodological naturalism. Many believe this approach to science allows them to “set God aside” by suspending the question of His existence and involvement in the world to maintain neutrality in their research.

Ironically, modern psychology’s attempt to explain human behavior and experience without reference to God actually embodies a theological claim—not explicitly, but functionally. It suggests that divine action, if it even exists, is not necessary for adequately understanding the world. God becomes, at best, a distant architect or a symbolic comfort. At worst, He becomes irrelevant.

The Book of Mormon’s Disruptive God

The Book of Mormon, by contrast, knows nothing of a passive deity.

In fact, it offers a radically different vision. God is not shown to be absent but active, not distant but intimately involved. He speaks, directs, intervenes, and sustains. He is not merely the origin of the world but the One who sustains, enlightens, and sanctifies its ongoing life. As Alma teaches, “all things denote that there is a God,” and not a passive one. Creation itself is a continuous expression of divine will.

This difference is not trivial. It reshapes the entire framework within which human behavior is understood. If God is actively involved in the world—and in the lives of individuals—then any account of human experience that excludes Him is, at best, incomplete, at worst, life-alteringly misunderstood.

More importantly, the Book of Mormon presents a God who does not merely observe but who actively participates. In Christ, He descends into the human condition, experiencing pain, temptation, and sorrow so that He may “succor his people according to their infirmities.” This is not a God who can be relegated to the margins of our lives and identities. This is a God whose involvement is central to understanding suffering and healing.

The God we meet in the Book of Mormon is not a background assumption or an optional metaphysical add-on. He is the active source of life, light, order, and meaning. He commands the earth to move—and it moves. He enters history. He speaks. He judges. He redeems. He suffers.

This vision of God does not sit comfortably alongside a psychology that treats divine action as, at best, irrelevant. If God is as the Book of Mormon describes Him, then any account of human life that systematically excludes Him is not neutral—it is false.

Determinism and the Vanishing Human

Psychology, patterned after the natural sciences, has adopted a conceptual framework in which to be “scientific” is to assume that human behavior, like planetary motion or chemical reactions, is governed by universal laws that we can discover, understand, and study. To appeal to divine action, moral agency, or spiritual causation is not merely unfashionable—it is intellectually disqualifying.

Naturalism’s most consequential psychological offspring is determinism: the belief that human behavior is the necessary result of prior causes. Choice becomes an illusion. Freedom becomes a feeling. Moral responsibility becomes a social convention.

Psychologists routinely insist that without determinism, scientific explanation (and, thus, real understanding) collapses. After all, if we can’t explain why people are depressed, anxious, self-destructive, or obsessive, how can we ‘fix’ them? Indeed, looking at human behavior through a lens of determinism and causal forces provides a degree of safety and certainty for altering or controlling human behavior. If people are free, on the other hand, as psychologist Gary W. Heiman asserts, then “behavior truly would be chaotic, because the only explanation for every behavior would be ‘because he or she wanted to’.” Thus, he continues, “we reject the idea that free will plays a role” of any sort in human actions. 

But this framing presents a false dilemma. Either human action is mechanically determined or it is irrational noise. Either we are puppets or we are accidents. What disappears in this binary is the possibility that human beings are agents—persons who act meaningfully within contexts without being reducible to them.

The Book of Mormon refuses this reduction at every turn.

Lehi’s famous distinction between “things to act” and “things to be acted upon” is not poetic flourish. It is philosophical anthropology. To be human is not merely to respond to forces, but to initiate action—to choose between genuine alternatives with real moral weight.

This is not randomness. It is responsibility.

Agency, in the Book of Mormon, is not a marginal feature of personhood. It is the hinge upon which salvation, sin, repentance, and redemption all turn. Without agency, moral language collapses, covenant becomes incoherent, and judgment becomes unjust.

A psychology that cannot account for agency cannot account for the human being the Book of Mormon describes.

Meaning, Nihilism, and Moral Evasion

Unfortunately, once determinism takes hold, meaning soon follows it out the door. If every thought, feeling, and action is the inevitable outcome of forces beyond one’s control, then nothing we do could truly have any meaning. For our actions to have meaning, in the strictest sense of the word, it must be genuinely possible for them to be otherwise than they are. If nothing we do could possibly have been otherwise, then does anything we do really matter? Only because we can forgive another does holding a grudge against them become a sin rather than simply a reflexive response.

Likewise, God’s engagement with His people truly matters because He does have the option to do otherwise but continues to be involved intimately in the lives of His children. The possibilities available to us in life are what offer us real meaning. Indeed, God’s gift of agency is what gives man the opportunity to have meaningful lives. 

But, when we implicitly–or explicitly–subscribe to tenets of determinism, meaningful options become unavailable to us. Events simply happen. Moral distinctions dissolve into descriptions. Praise and blame become sentimental relics of a more primitive belief system. 

This is why determinism so often travels with moral relativism. If behavior is produced rather than chosen, then moral evaluation becomes either unfair or incoherent. At best, morality becomes a useful fiction—an evolutionary adaptation or social convenience. At worst, it becomes a tool of power.

Psychology, in this form, does not merely explain behavior. It quietly absolves it of all moral content, purpose, and worth. Moral language is replaced with therapeutic language. Problems are framed in terms of dysfunction rather than wrongdoing, adjustment rather than repentance. Under the umbrella of determinism, we would be punishing people and criminalizing behaviors over which they do not actually have control and do not actually play any real participatory role. To make a moral judgment of a person’s behavior when they have no control over that behavior would be akin to mistreating someone based only on the color of their skin, something which is also outside of personal control. The goal of much morally relativized psychotherapy, then, is to alleviate individual distress by the most efficient means available, rather than help patients discern and orient themselves toward that which is true, worthy of moral praise, and spiritually fulfilling.

The Book of Mormon, again, stands for judgment.

Its pages are saturated with moral claims—warnings, invitations, rebukes, and promises. Sin is not redefined as maladaptive coping. Repentance is not reframed as cognitive restructuring. Good and evil are not negotiated away as cultural constructs. In fact, they are real, binding, and consequential. However, the Book of Mormon does recognize complexity, context, and suffering in its exploration of all aspects of distress, not only the kind that can be wrought by sin. Even within those contexts, though, it does insist that moral agency is real and that moral distinctions matter. Indeed, moral reality and moral expectation don’t disappear simply because life is unfair. One could even say that they matter more in such a reality. 

Further, Lehi teaches that humans are “enticed by the one or the other,” suggesting a world in which good and evil are not arbitrary but real alternatives. Moroni adds that “the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil.” Conscience is not merely a social product; it is a divine endowment.

Therapy, Suffering, and the Missing Christ

These teachings have profound implications for psychology and psychotherapy. If moral knowledge is, at least in part, divinely given, then purely naturalistic accounts of morality are not only insufficient, they are woefully misleading. If choices have real consequences—both temporal and eternal—then therapeutic approaches that ignore moral dimensions miss something essential.

Modern therapeutic culture often treats moral language as dangerous—judgmental, oppressive, unscientific. Healing is pursued through adjustment because suffering is merely a technical problem, and therapists become the scientific experts uniquely situated to objectively manage human problems. Simply identify the variables producing particular forms of distress and then modify them to produce more pleasant outcomes. 

The Book of Mormon, in contrast, offers a different grammar of healing.

It does not deny the reality of pain, trauma, or affliction. It does not claim that all suffering is the direct result of sin. But it insists—unapologetically—that Christ’s atoning life, death, and resurrection are relevant to all forms of human suffering. This is not to suggest that God’s involvement in human affairs is the only matter that matters. Rather, it is only to say that our understanding of what does matter will be hopelessly incomplete if God’s participation and involvement in our lives is minimized, ignored, or dismissed. 

Again, this does not mean that therapy can only be helpful if we explicitly explore Christ and His gospel teachings with our patients. There are, after all, many who seek therapeutic services who do not believe in Christ and may well not be receptive to such conversations. Instead, what we are suggesting here is that we should never reduce fundamental truths and, by extension, moral reality, to independent, relative, or self-determined values. By bringing the question of truth and moral reality into therapy as orienting concerns, we bring Christ into the consulting room, even if we may not be talking about Him specifically.

Rethinking the “Natural Man”

Some Latter-day Saints attempt a compromise. They suggest that secular psychology studies the “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19)—the fallen, unredeemed aspect of human nature, while the gospel addresses matters of personal faith and spiritual belief. Each has its independent domain. On this view, psychological theories are not wrong, just incomplete. They capture part of the picture but miss the transformative potential of grace.

Unfortunately, this move misreads King Benjamin.

The “natural man” spoken of in Mosiah 3 is not a biologically determined creature reacting helplessly to environmental stimuli, an organism constantly and unavoidably seeking after its own pleasure. Rather, as King Benjamin teaches, the “natural man” is an “enemy to God” not because he is selfish and sinful by nature, but because of the moral choices he makes—because he yields not to the Spirit and does not put off sinful desires, because he chooses not to become a “saint.” These are verbs of agency, not inevitability.

Thus, insofar as it denies moral agency as fundamental to human nature, secular psychology does not even get the “natural man” right. By mischaracterizing human nature, secular psychology is espousing the self-justifying perspective of the “natural man”—one that reduces human beings to objects and, thereby, obscures their fundamentally moral, spiritual, and relational nature. In offering such an account of humanity, it provides ammunition to support the very rebellion against God that the Book of Mormon diagnoses: the attempt to escape moral responsibility by denying moral agency, meaning, and purpose.

In the end, it seems that one of the first choices the “natural man” seeks to make is to deny any capacity to make meaningful, moral choices. Once that choice is made, the next step is to establish an entire intellectual enterprise to provide all the research and theories necessary to confirm that denial and justify continued rebellion against God.

Keystone Remembered: Toward a More Faithful Science

What might a psychology informed by the Book of Mormon look like in practice?

First, it would take seriously the reality of divine involvement. Therapy would not be confined to human-to-human interaction but would recognize the possibility of God’s participation in healing. Prayer, revelation, and spiritual practices would not be peripheral but potentially central for those who desire to explore those things explicitly in session. And, for those who do not subscribe to any kind of Christian perspective, any truth brought into session reflects Christ, whether or not we use His name. Truth must be spoken, but it must also be spoken in a language that can be heard and understood. 

Third, it would reintroduce moral language. Not in a judgmental or simplistic way, but in a way that acknowledges that some forms of suffering are connected to choices—and that healing may involve repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Finally, it would center Christ. The Book of Mormon teaches that Christ’s Atonement is relevant to all forms of suffering. He not only redeems from sin but succors in pain. A therapist who takes this seriously would not sideline Christ. Rather, in taking the Book of Mormon seriously, the therapist would strive to continually consider how the Savior’s life and sacrifice intersect with the client’s experience and needs, as well as how best to minister to the client in a language and manner the client can understand and accept.

None of this, however, requires rejecting psychology wholesale. The empirical insights, therapeutic techniques, and research findings of modern psychology are valuable. But they must be examined, not assumed. They must be sifted, not simply adopted.

If the Book of Mormon is truly the keystone, then its significance cannot be confined to the chapel. It must extend into the classroom, the clinic, and the research lab. It must shape not only how we worship but how we think. This does not mean that the Book of Mormon replaces all other sources of knowledge. But it does mean that it has something to say—something essential—to every domain concerned with human life.

In the end, the question is not whether the Book of Mormon is relevant to psychology. It is whether we are willing to let it be. To do so is to risk having our assumptions overturned. But it is also to open the possibility of seeing more clearly—of coming nearer not only to God, as Joseph Smith promised, but also to ourselves.

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Though body dissatisfaction can often seem like an isolated and unique experience, countless individuals struggle to love their bodies. As a gift from God and a vital part of His plan, the body is one of Satan’s most prominent targets. He may make individuals feel alone in their trials, but body image issues are widespread. 

Approximately 0.28% to 2.8% of the U.S. population will experience an eating disorder at some point in their lives, and numerous others may resort to disordered eating (e.g. diets or unhealthy eating behaviors that don’t fully qualify as an eating disorder). Additionally, about 75% of people are dissatisfied with their body size. Often in religious settings, the faithful are taught from a young age that their bodies are temples and are gifts from God, but still some struggle to love their bodies and wish to change them. 

Love 

President Jeffrey R. Holland taught “The first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength.”

Many of these research participants expressed sentiments of being able to love their bodies because they knew that God loved them. As Ashley, a young female participant from Utah, said, “Heavenly Father loves me because I’m myself and not some image in a picture.” Likewise, Olivia, a young adult who grew up outside of Utah, shared, “Just because someone else is skinny, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t value me or love me or care about me. The doctrine has played a major part in my healing process or processes.” 

In addition to feeling loved by our Heavenly Parents, several of the members brought up their relationship with Jesus Christ, and knowing that He died for their sins also helped them to love their bodies more. Olivia expressed, “The Atonement of Jesus Christ, that is something that has always helped, especially when I’m feeling my lowest.” Whitney, a young participant who grew up outside the United States, also shared:  

It’s hard for me. There are people [who] would be like, ‘Oh yeah, …Christ knows how you’re feeling.’ I’m like, ‘But how could he know what …a 19-year-old girl is feeling when she hates her body?’ [Because] I just feel like it’s such a different experience for everybody. But also, it just felt like there’s no way anybody else could know what this is like. And I think of just coming to like, develop that relationship. Like He understood…where I was mentally. Maybe he never hated His body … But He cared about my struggles and He understood my mental difficulties that I was having in every aspect. Not just about my body.   

Knowing that their Heavenly Parents loved them and Christ had atoned for them helped these members to find peace and work on accepting their bodies. 

Purpose 

In addition to knowing they were loved, many brought up the idea that knowing that God had given them their bodies and had a plan for them gave them purpose and helped them in their relationship with their body. Sophie, a middle-aged female participant who grew up internationally, observed:  

It gives me perspective in the sense that my body was an essential part of the plan of happiness, like I completely understand this and that always brings me appreciation that I know that I chose to come here to receive a body and that was my choice.  

For several participants, God’s plan helped them have a long-term or eternal perspective on life, their bodies, and what was most important. Sophie continued:  

I’m still far from where I would like to be in terms of being completely happy with my body. But typically, when I can envision this kind of truth, it gives me a perspective that my bra size really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. 

Lastly, Cristin, a middle-aged participant from Utah, described how she was able to find deeper meaning and purpose during a low point in her eating disorder:  

There’s something deeper … that I’m not put on this Earth just to be this physical being. Because I felt so low, that you get to that point where you like it’s not worth it anymore, if this is all that it is. That I don’t want to have to go through this all the time. It’s exhausting. So if it’s just restriction and isolation and avoiding food and avoiding people, so I don’t have to deal with that, there’s gotta be more to life than that. And that’s really helped me in a way, see that there was more to life than the physical and that deepened my faith.  

Because these participants knew that God loved them and had a plan for them, this helped them as they healed from their eating disorder and learned to love their bodies. 

Perfection

Though many were able to cling to knowing that God loved them and had a plan for them during their recovery, others also brought up a sometimes unspoken pressure to look and be perfect. Various women shared how they had to gain a better understanding of what it meant to become perfect as they recovered. Naomi, a younger participant who grew up outside of Utah, shared: 

I think we have a culture of comparison, and I don’t think that has anything to do with doctrine. … I know that’s not what God wants us to be doing. But because we’re all striving to live better lives and just to improve ourselves spiritually, I think that can just kind of bleed into other areas … I think it’s because we are taught to improve ourselves and to repent and to be the best that we can, to be closer to God. And I think maybe people interpret that as like, how am I appearing to other people? And maybe misinterpreting it a little bit.

Similarly, Ellie, a middle-aged participant who grew up outside of Utah, explained, “Obviously, we have doctrine on becoming perfect, but it’s the act of making improvements, right? Rather than, I think what a lot of people see as the definition of being perfect without flaw.” 

Though these participants had started their journey of recovery, many have not. Just as these participants did, members of The Church of Jesus Christ struggling with body image should focus on beliefs such as that Heavenly Father created our bodies and loves each individual as they are, our bodies are an essential part of the Plan of Salvation, and we are working on progression, not perfection. All of these teachings can be vital in supporting individuals in forming a healthy body image. 

Additionally, acceptance could be fostered through artwork that represents a variety of body types, skin colors, and abilities. Lastly, this could entail creating a nonjudgmental environment and opportunities within one’s congregations, quorums, classes, or families to openly discuss body image, media pressures, health, appearances, ability, why God made each of us uniquely, and how that knowledge may influence the way we see those around us and our own body. This is important for both men and women to discuss. For as President Holland has noted,

There is no universal optimum size … I plead with you young women [and all] to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not!

Ultimately, God made every individual unique and wants all to be invited to come, join, and be loved. We are all created in His image. And in that shared truth lies the beginning of healing—knowing that, as unique children of loving heavenly parents, through Christ we are enough, and we can be made whole.

The post In His Image: How Faith Can Heal Our Relationship with Our Bodies appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In not bringing these aspects of their experience into session, it is thought that the individual is only conveying ‘parts’ to the counselor instead of the ‘whole,’ which, in turn, can negatively affect the therapeutic process. Often when the therapist brings attention to a certain cultural aspect, the individual can open up and can feel “this is okay to talk about.” That is why a counselor is encouraged to broach. It is said that: 

A therapist who is broaching is aware of cross-cultural similarities and differences and the workings of power in the therapy dyad and makes deliberate efforts to demonstrate this understanding to the client, which includes explicit discussion in sessions [emphasis added].

My particular university was very focused on developing culturally competent counselors. Most of my classes emphasized the importance of incorporating the client’s experience in developing positive rapport and facilitating good therapeutic treatment. The mantra I heard throughout my counseling education is, “If you are not culturally competent, you should not be a counselor.” 

However, mainstream therapeutic practice has often come up short when it comes to broaching one particular part of culture and identity: religion. Religion is a huge part of many people’s lives, and many clients want their beliefs to be understood and respected within a therapeutic space. This is actually a reasonable expectation.

1. Understanding basic belief systems, major world religions, agnosticism, and atheism.

2. Recognizing that the client’s beliefs (or absence of beliefs) are central to their worldview and have influence over their psychological well-being. 

3. Knowing your own limitations as a clinician in understanding a client’s religion and spiritual experience. 

4. Recognizing and using spiritual or religious concepts consistent with the client’s worldview or perspective. 

5. Understanding religious themes and contexts and addressing these when therapeutically relevant and counseling with reliable religious resources when necessary. 

Living and working as a therapist in Utah, I can say that these spiritual and religious competencies matter, even beyond the Latter-day Saint population. 

Why Broaching Matters For You

Now you may be wondering why I feel the need to educate you on broaching. Fair question. 

It is because these competencies are important to you as a religious individual who may potentially engage in therapy. Therapists should be competent in exploring religion within therapeutic settings. In fact, it is an expectation. And you should feel like you can bring Jesus into therapy with you in a meaningful way. In fact, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, we are encouraged to do so. 

I can pinpoint the moment the attitudes around mental health began to shift more within the Latter-day Saint community. In 2013, Elder Holland gave his conference talk, Like a Broken Vessel, and it had a rippling effect on how we saw and continue to see mental health experiences. In this impactful talk, he stated: 

… these afflictions are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor. 

In contrast to much of the casual, misinformed dialogue around mental health experiences back in 2013, Elder Holland even encouraged us to seek out professional help for these types of struggles and difficulties. He refuted the ideas from previous years and decades, which painted struggling individuals as lazy, broken, or entitled. Elder Holland expressed hope and advice later in his talk: 

If things continue to be debilitating, seek the advice of reputable people with certified training, professional skills, and good values. Be honest with them about your history and your struggles.

As a therapist and as someone who has engaged in their own therapy, I can attest to the positive benefits that can come from seeking that kind of help. Certainly, we can recognize the divine inspiration that Elder Holland received, which led many people to get the help they needed when they might have otherwise hesitated.

However, psychology and therapy are generally secular disciplines, and sometimes professionals do not always understand or appreciate different values in their clients, even if they may think they do. In the ASERVIC guidelines addressed earlier in this article, professionals are encouraged to know their limitations and to be aware of their own biases. Indeed, if professionals and individuals seeking services are not cognizant of the reality of bias in therapy, it can lead to recommendations that are not aligned with clients’ values. Sometimes, individuals may feel that they need to do what their therapist recommends, even if it is against their values, in order to get better.

Indeed, among many examples, I once heard an account of a client who was encouraged to have a trial “open relationship” to help their monogamous relationship. Additionally, someone else I knew was encouraged to view their pornography use as a productive coping skill even when they personally wanted to stop watching it due to their religious values. These are certainly not the only ways in which values can be disregarded or misunderstood.

In this spirit we can look at the next line in Elder Holland’s talk that may be easy to overlook. He said: 

Prayerfully and responsibly consider the counsel they give and the solutions they prescribe [emphasis added].

We have not been encouraged to listen to counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, or psychologists without critically thinking about the treatments and skills they prescribe. Indeed, we have been encouraged to bring God into the process and study it out in our own minds. To do that, it may be beneficial to find a therapist who is willing and capable of talking about God and who will allow you to bring Jesus to therapy. It can feel like two separate experiences, but it does not have to be. 

If you find a good therapist, though, this does not always mean that you will be on the same page or that you will not need to talk about differences in perspectives. There were several times in my own therapeutic experience when my therapist and I talked about how my beliefs were misunderstood and misinterpreted, but they were willing and able to meet me there. That is the important thing.

Ultimately, though, I want to empower individuals to bring their values, their religion, and their beliefs into therapy. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ, we fundamentally believe that all change is wrought through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are taught that “it is only in and through the Grace of God that ye are saved” and “without a Savior to redeem and reform us, there is little hope of lasting improvement in humanity.” He provides us with ways to help us heal and to bring us closer to Him. Therapy can be an avenue to do that if we find the right therapist and we approach it with the right intent. 

Healing with Jesus and healing in therapy do not have to be two separate entities. You do not need to keep your beliefs, your values, and your religions apart from your experience in therapy. You have the right to bring these values and find a professional who can navigate that terrain with you.

The post Can Therapy Be Faith-Friendly? Why Bringing Jesus into Counseling Might Not Meet Your Spiritual Needs appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Feeling validated about one’s self or having one’s choices affirmed is not inherently a bad thing. Certainly, we can all resonate with wanting to have our feelings and points of view confirmed by others. For example, perhaps an extreme one, women who have experienced physical abuse often seek and need validation from others that what they are experiencing is actually abuse. I (Brianna) once had a client who came to a session after her husband had physically assaulted her, and she had called the police. She was worried that she had done the wrong thing, had maybe overreacted, or was actually the one at fault. In this case, however, it was important to validate that her physical safety was important and that she had done the right thing.

Existing in echo chambers can steadily move us away from reality and confine us in a space that is not actually healthy or helpful. We lose the ability to challenge our own beliefs and consider different points of view when we are unequivocally validated in the beliefs we hold. Particularly when our choices are destructive to others or ourselves, what we need may not be validation but rather challenge and correction. If we only ever hear our own thoughts and ideas repeated back to us in an affirming way, we can quickly lose touch with reality. An echo chamber allows us to inhabit a world entirely of our own making, a world created in our own image and reflecting back to us only ourselves. As such, the danger of an echo chamber lies in the way it encourages us to be like Narcissus, a figure of ancient Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.   

To understand better how echo chamber therapy can impede our happiness and growth, we need to take a look at how modern therapeutic practice developed and how it fails to provide what we need to reach our highest potential. We will see that our Heavenly Father wants us to grow and develop and that, often, this growth requires us to change, repent, and improve. True love and concern for people do not affirm them in whatever they happen to be doing but instead challenge us to become who we truly can be—the sort of person our Heavenly Father intended us to become all along. 

Echo Chambers & Person-Centered Therapy

Carl Rogers is considered a “father” of modern psychotherapy with his theory of “person-centered therapy.” His ideas and therapeutic approach have played—and continue to play—a particularly influential role in how therapists are trained today. Indeed, he is one of the top 12 most cited psychologists of all time. Although you may never have read or heard about Carl Rogers specifically, there’s a very good chance that you have heard the phrase “unconditional positive regard” or “unconditional love” somewhere, perhaps in an introduction to psychology course or even in casual conversation with friends.

Carl Rogers […] argued that to facilitate genuine psychological and emotional healing therapists must establish a particular kind of empathic relationship with their clients, one based on the therapist’s unconditional acceptance of the client, regardless of what the client says or does or feels. 

Most American psychotherapy training programs tend to emphasize person-centered therapeutic modalities as a basic building block in counseling education. Everything beneficial in the therapeutic relationship, it is often said, is rooted in and built up from the therapist’s use of unconditional positive regard in approaching the client.

Rogers himself argued that in order for the individual to be fully free to be themselves in therapy, the therapist must create an environment of unconditional acceptance and radical tolerance or, to use a more recently popularized term, a safe space. 

On a surface level, the creation of safe spaces does not seem like a bad idea. And, as Gantt and Thayne also note: 

… helping an individual to feel safe in expressing his or her hidden thoughts and feelings is a valuable and important endeavor, especially in a therapeutic setting where genuine empathy and openness are vital. 

These professionals further articulate that to criticize Rogers is not to criticize empathy, understanding, and openness as a whole. While Rogers has been particularly influential in defining what empathy means for psychologists, his way of facilitating openness and authenticity is not the only one. Nor would we argue that it is the best way as a therapist. 

What Rogers misses (and what many of his followers miss) is the difference between the ability to exercise judgment or discernment about events or behaviors in a client’s life and judging a person’s value or intent. There is simply no avoiding this issue, though. Helpful interpersonal feedback requires judgment and discernment about whether the client is living a good, functional, or healthy life. 

Skeptical? Try this quick thought experiment: 

Imagine that the ‘worst’ person that you know is getting therapy. The therapist provides validation for every thought, feeling, and action that person has ever had or done—including those that have hurt you or other people. 

Certainly, this is not a very comfortable thought. Validating sins and misdeeds does not help the person in the wrong want to change, and it is cheapened when it is applied by default to everything another feels or does.

Rebukes, chastenings, reprimands, commandments, instructions, parental advice, attempts at persuasion are all fundamentally and inescapably at odds with the notion of a “safe space.” 

But “safe spaces” may not actually be what is best for us. In order to understand the truth about love, healing, and happiness, we should first look to those who do it perfectly—Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ—and understand the meaning and purpose of our lives. 

The Plan of Happiness & Our Divine Purpose

The Plan of Salvation is, indeed, a plan of happiness. But to understand what this really means, we must understand happiness. It is common in our modern, secular world to define happiness ecumenically as an agreeable psychological state. According to this understanding, people are happy as long as they enjoy what they are doing and are achieving what they desire. But this approach has obvious problems, ones that have been noted at least since the beginnings of the Western intellectual tradition—for example, by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and many others. If we enjoy doing evil, does this make us happy or merely more miserable because we do not appreciate the significance of our actions? As the philosopher and psychologist William James observed: “If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.” People and society often flaunt the commandments of God and experience ‘happiness,’ but Alma is correct when he states, “wickedness never was happiness.”

If we leave the word “happiness” as the world would define it, then we may miss the purpose of our lives. Life is not about preventing the vindictive judgment of a vengeful God, rather, it is about who we become. As Elder Christofferson has said, “God’s purpose is that we, His children, may be able to experience ultimate joy, to be with Him eternally, and to become even as He is.”

However, if we ‘think celestial,’ as President Nelson has counseled us to do, we can see that we must follow the commandments of God, make covenants in the temple, and live our lives trying to be more like Christ if we want to become people who will want to stand in the presence of God. Through these commandments, covenants, and efforts, Heavenly Father shows us the manner of heaven through our experience by becoming as He is. This goes beyond “check-list” religious practices. The very act of becoming is the ultimate joy, happiness, and purpose of life. 

How Does God Love Us? 

So as we think about God, His plan, and how He loves us, let us consider a different thought experiment. In another article written here at Public Square Magazine, Kylie Burdge and I (Brianna) comment: 

Imagine a parent looking at their 8-year-old child saying, “I love you totally and completely, so please do not feel any need to grow and change.” While it is true that we love our children as they are, does that love for them mean that we never want them to change or grow or progress? From a Christian view, those desires would not really be loving because they inherently limit the experiences and ultimate happiness that we want for children […] Their perspective would be forever limited. In fact, there is an aspect in which we intuitively recognize that there is something wrong with a parent who wants their child to stay as they are forever. 

Good parents know that their children need to grow and change. Sometimes this tutelage includes reprimands, instructions, advice, and chastenings—though always motivated by and grounded in selfless love. After all, the scriptures say: “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.” Lest we forget, these guidelines for love are almost the exact opposite of how we would define a contemporary “safe space.”

So how does the Lord provide chastisement? 

Doctrine and Covenants sheds some light on His purposes: “Whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you” [emphasis added]. Elder Christofferson further adds, “The fruit of God’s chastisement is repentance leading to righteousness.” 

God’s intent with chastisement, or correction, is to help us become as He is. We agreed to His plan from the beginning and clearly had the desire to live as He does. Indeed, in this respect, He is a bit older and wiser in the ways of life and truth. Within this context, repentance is simply a reflection of how we change and how we grow into new people over time through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Chastisement and correction from a Godly perspective is loving because it helps us realize who we are and who we can become.

Love and Therapy

How does this apply to therapy and echo chambers? First, we should be clear that therapists are neither parents to their clients nor gods. They are just people. However, by exploring and embracing the love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for us, we can expand our vision of what healing and growth look like.

However, the reality is that therapists are imperfect, and they may not always make the best observations or challenges in the right way. You don’t have to take everything your therapist says at face value and apply it exactly in your life. Rather, a therapist can provide opportunities for growth by having productive dialogue around the context of your life and possible areas of improvement. You want to find the right therapist for you, not the perfect therapist. 

Ultimately, though, you have a better opportunity to grow and progress if you find an environment where you can feel lovingly and fairly challenged. In these constructive confrontations, you have an increased opportunity to learn the truth about your experiences and the people in your life. As Jesus taught, “the truth shall make you free” and you will never learn the truth in an echo chamber.

The post When Safe Spaces Aren’t Safe: How Unconditional Acceptance Can Stifle Growth appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

We may not want to admit it, but many of us are like this fat gray cat. We don’t do harm; we don’t do much good—we get by.  

I recently listened to an interesting YouTube video where the presenter asked, “Do we live in a pathologically mediocre society where people are thin and flimsy, aggregates of human qualities rather than actual human beings?”  He went on to make his case that most of us are mediocre. He quoted Kierkegaard, who said, “Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is wretched; for it lacks passion.”  

I think he is right. Occasionally I will meet someone who is truly Alive—it is rare enough to make an impression. But otherwise, we seem mostly to be getting by like this fat gray cat. We move about, we seem occupied, but underlying boredom and apathy haunt our busyness.

Why are we mediocre?

G.K. Chesterton would argue that the cause of our wretchedness is a lack of wonder: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

At the beginning of the story, he holds a pistol to the head of Professor Eames, a man famous for his lectures on pessimism. His ideology sees pessimism as the one true philosophy—life is not worth living. However, the shock of being nearly murdered by Innocent Smith forces Professor Eames to realize that life is, in fact, precious. He wakes up to Life and discards his cynicism. 

Innocent Smith finds that to stay “Alive,” he must continually re-enchant his life with wonder. He wanders the world so he may return to his home with a rekindled appreciation. He has affairs with numerous women who all turn out to be his own wife. He breaks into his own home like a robber so he can view his possessions with envy. His behavior is disconcerting to most people who encounter him. However, others, in seeing his vitality and joy, awaken to the mediocrity and ingratitude of their lives.

When accused of insanity because of his continual breach of norms, Innocent Smith corrects our notion of madness, “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”

Professor Eames encourages him to keep his gun and use it to awaken others from their self-deceit and mediocrity. Smith declares, “I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him—only to bring him to life.”

Be a Holy Fool

Manalive follows the theme of many works of great literature, which depict a character, a holy fool or unlikely hero, who seems slow, idealistic, silly, or backward to others—yet who we discover is the one character who truly sees the world as it should be seen. Some books with this holy fool include—Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, Diamond in At the Back of the North Wind, Don Quixote, Pollyanna, and Despereaux in The Tale of Despereaux.

We are commanded to become like little children, and children are “holy fools.” They stare in wonder at the caterpillar crossing the road. They are enchanted by a snowstorm. They beg to push the button on the elevator. They will trade all their savings for one gummy bear.

“What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

My youngest daughter, 6, is one of the most dramatic people I know. She bounces between extreme excitement and boiling anger. I am the “best mother in the entire world,” or I have “never done anything nice for her, EVER!” I have had many discussions with her about showing proper respect and controlling her emotions—but at the same time, I am glad she is passionate. I never want my teaching on manners and self-control to stamp out her wild and wondrous nature. 

Our modern pharmaceutical mindset would cause many to want to “cure” the bipolar tendencies of such a changing nature. If Mozart, Van Gogh, Tesla, Poe, and Newton were born today, they would likely be medicated out of their eccentricities, as well as their geniuses. Truth, goodness, and beauty are not tame and controllable; they are wild and free. Often I find myself in a room of adults and discover that everyone seems bored—we are “all politeness” and no excitement—we have been tamed. 

Robert Boyle, the Father of modern Chemistry, explains that in childhood, we can see most clearly, that we are our most true selves. We are not yet bored by the miracle of everyday living. He writes: 

We must try to recover the candour and wonder of the child—the unspoilt realism and objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, we must try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new, if only by seeing it as unnatural. Things that may well be familiar so long as familiarity breeds affection had much better become unfamiliar when familiarity breeds contempt. We must invoke the most wild and soaring sort of imagination—the imagination that can see what is there.

Awake

In the Bible, many scriptures begin with the plea to Awake! God seems to be pleading with us like our 1st-period high school teacher would—care, act, see, listen!

Thessalonians 4:6 says, “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake.”

Sleep is a coping mechanism. We have all awoken to a gloomy, rainy day, pulled the sheets over our heads, and gone back to sleep. Childhood trauma, unresolved grief, and chronic adversity can cause us to determine that to live, and to feel, will only lead to more suffering. When we live in fear of pain and loss, we may go out into this gloomy life, but we won’t risk being hurt as we once were. So we push down our vitality, our passion, our wonder—we get by. 

Years ago, I became acquainted with a young mother who, because of trauma from her childhood, had decided that caring about things had led to too much suffering. I could never get her engaged in more than shallow conversations; she would never show joy or sorrow. Her children were similar to their mother, as is often the case. She had wrapped her broken heart in a blanket of apathy. She did not feel the pain of disappointment and sorrow, but her range of emotion had narrowed so that love and joy also eluded her. 

Thankfully she began speaking to a trusted friend who helped her see the importance of letting herself feel what needs to be felt and finding herself protected in the arms of her Heavenly Father. She summoned the one virtue that can most aid us in this awakening—in pushing the covers off and waking up—Courage. She changed. She let herself become vulnerable. Her children begin to feel the vitality of their mother’s unmuted love. Pain came, and then it went—for she now knew her God. 

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one … But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  ~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Rejoice

Our brains are wired to see the negative before the positive. This is a protective mechanism—our brains want us to notice the snake and not be distracted by the beautiful roses. That’s good because we want to avoid snakes, but we need to rise above it. We need to allow our souls, who still recognize the safe arms of God, to override our brain’s negative tilt. We need to willfully smell the roses. We need to overemphasize the good to compensate. Healthy cultures and people dance, they have feasts, they have days of celebration, they worship—and they are enlivened and ready to face the rain and gloom.

Life is for rejoicing, for action, for victory—with a good mix of suffering thrown in to keep us grateful for the joyful interludes. We live in a universe full of wonders. 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

     Life is but an empty dream!—

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

     And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

     And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

     Was not spoken of the soul.

~Excerpt from Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To avoid becoming a mediocre, dreary, predictable, “tame” person, we must shake off the dust of our own numbing ingratitude and truly appreciate the everyday wonders before us. The love of a spouse is a miracle. The song of a bird is a miracle. The taste of a mango is a miracle.

“The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

If we succeed in truly Living, we will likely seem strange to those around us, as the holy fools in literature are strange to all but the most humble. “Living” men and women change the way they view the world. They reject the drudgery of materialism. They believe in things that others have grown cynical about, such as love, sacrifice, and faith. They fight and forgive. They glory and praise.

Living Below Our Birthright

We are meant to be Awake and Alive, even if everyone else is dull and asleep. Kierkegaard continues his commentary on the passionless ordinary man to point out that we are living far below our potential: 

Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace … The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm, it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God.

Christ would compare our propensity to mediocrity to the temperature of lukewarm water. He Himself suggests it is better to run hot, for at least then you have actively chosen your fate. The passionately-wrong are, if they are open, more easily turned in the opposite direction. A speeding vehicle can easily do a donut and face the other way. A slow and steady truck—weighed down by habit and custom—is much more difficult to shift. Saul became Paul in an instant as he rushed to imprison Christians in Damascus. The more measured and compromising Sadducees were witnesses to miracles, yet their weight of tradition, pride, and prejudice made them unchangeable. 

We are beings of eternal destiny. What a tragedy it is to be a fat gray cat in human form. 

C.S. Lewis gave us a glimpse of what we may be in his famous quote from The Weight of Glory: 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. 

How do we develop and become this goddess? How can we reignite this wonder? That fat gray cat is a product of his environment and has been trained to be mediocre, and mediocre he will stay—he can’t grow back his claws, he can’t regain his killer instinct. But we retain a wild and free will, buried and dusty though it may be. We can shake off the dust. We can discover again the wildness of life and allow it to flow through our lives. As we begin to recognize our need for wonder and gratitude and the need to recognize miracles and be a miracle in the lives of others—we can learn to LIVE AGAIN.

The post Living In a World of Declawed Souls appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Conceptualizing Our Own Experience

With mental illness on the rise, phrases like “I can’t just pray away my depression” or “I did not choose to feel this way” are increasingly common, reflecting a struggle with mental health and spiritual practice. People may feel betrayed when religious actions do not seem to alleviate their mental distress. This leads to a faulty assumption that God operates like a vending machine, providing relief in exchange for piety. However, this mindset proves inadequate.

Some then adopt a medical model, viewing their mental health issues as pathologies. Jacob Hess observed that, for these individuals, the focus becomes managing and coping rather than seeking deeper healing. While initially comforting, this model can limit hope and change. Caught between “praying our struggles away” and “I have a disease,” many find themselves grappling with a mix of environmental and genetic factors to explain their experiences.

Asking Not Amiss

The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi emphasizes this point, “Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss.” We often categorize questions as ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ and church leaders advise against asking questions with known answers. What does that look like, then, when we question things like career or mental health that typically depend on the context of our lives?

Perhaps, asking ‘not amiss’ means posing questions in a way that allows for an answer. During trials, if we merely ask God to remove our difficulties, we may limit His ability to respond. This approach assumes a closed positionality and that Heavenly Father should work according to our timeline. The question “Can you take this away?” is restrictive, suggesting that if He doesn’t remove the problem or provide an answer, He is not listening or lacks power.

However, seeking help in more engaging ways can lead to better, more insightful personal revelation. By asking genuine, open questions, we involve ourselves in the process of change and create space for divine guidance.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ and Mental Health 

In discussing mental health, Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reminds us that we live in a fallen world where our pursuit of godliness is tested. A Savior, the Redeemer, was promised to lift us triumphantly over those tests and trials through our faith. He states, “It is only an appreciation of this divine love that will make our own lesser suffering first bearable, then understandable, and finally redemptive.”

We can mistakenly treat Christ’s atonement and divine love like a magic pill to fix our circumstances or as an ultimate coping skill. Although Christ does provide support, the atonement is significantly more than that. The late Bruce R. McConkie, also an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ, notes, “The atonement of Christ is the most basic and fundamental doctrine of the gospel, and it is the least understood.” By asking closed-ended questions, we limit our understanding and healing. We can miss that the Atonement is a powerful process of engagement and change.

The Atonement, or ‘at-one-ment,’ allows us to be ‘at one’ with Jesus Christ. In other languages, reconciliation—meaning “to sit with”—is used to describe it. Instead of viewing the Atonement as something we use, we should see it as an intentional collaboration with Christ. Rather than asking for a trial to be removed, we can seek His peace, strength, and guidance.

Christ strengthens and directs us as we act. He “sits with us,” granting strength, wisdom, and love as we invite Him into our lives. However, our agency allows us to choose whether to turn to Him. Some things, even within the context of mental illness, are up to us.

Mental Health and Moral Agency

Agency is central to the faith of members of the Church of Jesus Christ. In their doctrine, Satan was cast down to preserve our agentic nature. However, when discussing agency and mental health, many mistakenly equate it to ‘choice.’ Insinuating that someone in despair ‘chose’ their feelings is not entirely accurate and can be unintentionally hurtful. Agency extends beyond choice, especially in the context of mental health, encompassing a holistic ‘way-of-being’ in the world. Dr. Edwin Gantt and Dr. Jeffrey Thayne state that “human action is always agentic,” even as we engage with prior events, meanings, and relationships.

One way to understand agency is by comparing it to functional fitness, which includes everyday physical activities that promote overall health. Sometimes we engage in these activities consciously, while other times, we do so unconsciously. When experiencing pain, it often results from long-term misuse of the body before pain manifests. Addressing symptoms is important, but finding the root causes is also essential for true healing.

Asking Different Questions and Changing Our Own Experience

During my husband Blake’s time on BYU’s hockey team, I often found myself sending up pleas for a miracle breakaway goal to win close games like any sports fan in a tight game. Yet, I didn’t pray for them to have productive practices, to form team cohesion, or to spend more time working on their umbrella power play, which sorely needed the work. Similarly, we might ask a loving God for help during our own figurative third periods instead of asking for his help with the life choices leading to those moments. By focusing on the symptoms, we may overlook the opportunity to engage with Heavenly Father in all aspects of our lives.

God invites us to pray for the capability of a championship performance rather than relying on last-minute miracles, even if I fully believe He is capable of performing them. Suffering can teach us valuable life lessons. What if we prayed to see our experiences more clearly, for Christ to ‘sit with us,’ to recognize our contributions to our situation, or to find the right people to help us? These open-ended questions allow God to guide us more effectively.

Elder Holland said in a BYU devotional: “As you labor to know him, and to know that he knows you … you will indeed find that ‘he shall give his angel charge concerning thee and in their hands, they shall bear thee up’ (Matthew 4:6). It may not come quickly … But there is purpose in the time it takes.”

Mental distress is complex and personal. Finding different ways to engage with our experiences doesn’t negate their reality. We can experience hope and change through Christ if we allow His love and healing into our lives. Healing may take time, but trusting in Him will lead to greater light and knowledge as we seek the right questions to ask our Heavenly Father, who is always eager to help us on our journey.

The post Beyond Coping: A New Approach to Mental Health Healing appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

 “Why do men like pornography so much?”

 Based on years of scholarly research and public engagement, I believe the answer is simple: Pornography produces quick, reliable orgasms without the vulnerability that comes with intimacy. Men can experience sexual pleasure while staying in control. Or, more accurately, the appearance of control. More on that at the end.

Explicit Material Intensifies the Detachment

The feminist critique of pornography—the basis for my writing and speaking on the subject—focuses on the harm to women, psychological and physical, in the production of sexually explicit material; the sexist and racist images that dominate the pornography market; and the influence those images have on consumers’ sexual imaginations.

 In the time I’ve been studying the pornography industry, some things have changed. Most obvious is the technologies—from magazines and movies, the industry moved to home videos and the internet. Pornography became more accessible and affordable. Other trends are equally obvious: In those three decades, the women in pornography have been asked to perform increasingly more intense and dangerous sex acts; the cruel and degrading nature of the images has intensified; and more girls and women are using pornography, which once had been almost exclusively a male pursuit.

 One thing remains the same for the still mostly male consumers: Pornography appears to provide sexual pleasure without the risks that come with intimacy.

When we are sexual with another person, we open ourselves up to intense emotions that can’t be predicted or easily controlled. In a culture that trains us to stay in control, many men believe sexual intimacy is a potential threat to that sense of power. Pornography provides the illusion of a sexual experience without risk. But it comes with costs.

Behind women’s question about men’s love of pornography is often an experience of male partners who seem remote or disconnected in lovemaking. Sometimes that’s a problem independent of pornography, but men’s habitual use of sexually explicit material intensifies the detachment. I’ve talked to many women after these presentations, and that struggle with men who detach rather than engage emotionally during sex was a common theme. To make it more difficult, some of those habitual users also initiate sexual acts that female partners find uncomfortable or painful—the kind of “rough sex” that is standard fare in pornography.

 The feminist critique doesn’t rest on judgments about people’s sexual desire but on the negative consequences for the women used in producing pornography and used by men who consume pornography. The critique doesn’t pretend that the end of pornography would eliminate men’s sexual exploitation of women. But in a pornography-saturated culture, it would be folly to ignore the role of that particular media genre in our lives.

 The feminist critique focuses on the harm to women, which is appropriate for that movement. But the feminists I have worked with are also aware of the downside of pornography for men. That doesn’t mean that all heterosexual men have the same experience or that gay men’s experiences are exactly the same. But based on formal interviews and informal conversations with hundreds of men, I believe there is a pattern in men’s distress over pornography use.

Human Vulnerability 

 There’s a second trap in which many men get caught: their habitual use of pornography starts to control them. I’ve listened to many men talk about the pain of realizing how pornography has colonized their sexual imagination. Men have told me they can’t have sex with a partner without thinking of pornography. In extreme cases, men who use pornography compulsively experience erectile dysfunction with partners. But no matter how much they realize the downside, many men cannot stop masturbating to pornography. Whether or not pornography is officially classified as an addiction—and I think it should be—some men cannot get out of an addictive-like cycle.

 My only advice to such men is that if they try to cope with their distress alone, they will fail. The only way out of that cycle of arousal and regret is to give up the illusion of control. Therapy can help when counselors understand the destructive dynamics of pornography. Talking openly and honestly with other men is important. For me, the feminist critique of pornography and male dominance more generally was essential to seeing a different way of living. Opening up to a therapist, to other men, to feminists—all require that we open up to the vulnerability, which is part of being human.

Related Articles 

• The Misguided Self: How Individualism Fuels Compulsive Pornography Use
• Whose Body Will Save Us from The Pain Inside?
• A Christian Virtue Approach to Compulsive Pornography Use

The post Lost in a Sea of Pixels: Men, Pornography, and the Illusion of Control appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Then her living nightmare got much worse. She noticed at school that the boys were looking at their mobile phones, acting strangely, and then looking at her. What she didn’t know then was that one of the older boys who raped her had made a video of the rape. He had uploaded the video to a website called Pornhub, where it was being viewed by thousands of visitors.

We at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation have filed a class action lawsuit against Pornhub in federal court on behalf of the thousands of minors, like Jane and Sarah, whose images have been uploaded to Pornhub and monetized.

The numbers are staggering. A New York Times  investigation called the proliferation of child sexual abuse material an “almost unfathomable” increase in criminality: from 600,000 images reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2008 to 60 million in 2018. Further, reports increased by 35 percent between 2020 and 2021.

How can these horrible things occur, and why aren’t law enforcement agencies prosecuting Pornhub? Here is the truly distressing part. Three years ago, there were 7 million videos uploaded to Pornhub alone. That’s 19,000 videos per day. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of online platforms like Pornhub on the internet. Anyone, regardless of intent or motive, can upload hardcore pornographic videos to these platforms, including rape videos and child sexual abuse material, more commonly known as child pornography. These platforms operate like criminal enterprises. They do not require that the participants shown in the videos (like Jane and Sarah) be 18 or older. They don’t seem to care. They do not require the consent of the person shown in the video. This isn’t even an after-thought, as they often refuse to delete the videos from their sites when requested to do so by persons who never consented to the uploading in the first place or who were minors when the images were made. Though they make enormous sums of money from viewers and advertisers in the United States, most of these sex trafficking websites are registered in foreign countries and are hard to sue.

But it’s not just the hard-core pornography websites that are profiting from child sexual abuse and the trafficking of its victims. Platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, Snapchat, and others also have child sexual abuse material on their sites and monetize it. Indeed, all of these named online platforms are defendants in lawsuits alleging their culpability in violating sex trafficking and child sexual abuse laws.

We represent two boys who were groomed by an apparent pedophile online when they were both 13. Their child sexual abuse images were uploaded to Twitter, where they were viewed, tweeted, and retweeted thousands of times. There were hundreds of downloads. The boys and their families contacted Twitter and demanded that the images be removed. Twitter responded by stating, in writing, that it had viewed the images; they did not violate Twitter policies and would not be removed. It was only with the help of an official from the Department of Homeland Security, who contacted Twitter directly, that Twitter deleted the sexually explicit images of the boys from its site. But the damage had been done.

Why do these platforms think they can get away with this? Well, there is a federal law that went on the books in 1997, ironically named the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Rather than promoting “decency,” it did the opposite. Section 230 of that law purports to give online platforms absolute immunity from third-party content uploaded to the sites. The platforms even claim it immunizes them from liability when monetizing uploaded rape videos and child pornography. These platforms have used CDA 230 as a shield protecting them from the consequences of their bad behavior since its enactment.

In response, Congress passed two laws in 2018 called FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) and SESTA (“Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act). The National Center on Sexual Exploitation was instrumental in passing these laws. FOSTA-SESTA essentially removes CDA 230 immunity when online platforms such as Pornhub and Twitter engage in a venture with sex traffickers or benefit from sex trafficking.

Our class action case against Pornhub is moving forward. As in our Twitter case, the federal district court judge rejected Pornhub’s claim of immunity under CDA 230. In a first-in-the-nation ruling, the federal court held that there could be no immunity for disseminating child sexual abuse material on the internet or anywhere else, as Pornhub has done.

One wonders why companies like Twitter and Pornhub allow their platforms to be used to disseminate child sexual abuse material. There is big money in it through advertising and paywalls. And, at least for Twitter, as long as the public generally remains ignorant of its business practice, there is no reputational risk.

Immediately after the publication of a December 2020 New York Times article called “The Children of Pornhub,” Pornhub deleted over 11 million videos from its site. This article was an exposé on the immense volume of child sexual abuse material on the Pornhub site. The fact that Pornhub knew exactly which 11 million videos to delete is telling. Prior to the article, there had been countless complaints to the site about child sexual abuse material with no action taken.

Twitter likes to promote that it has a “no tolerance policy” for child sexual abuse material. The reality is that there are thousands of child sexual abuse images bought, sold, and traded on Twitter every single day. Its “no tolerance policy” is a complete sham. Indeed, in its pleadings in federal court, it is asserting the position that it can do business with sex traffickers without losing its federal immunity. We will soon see what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals thinks of that argument.

Eventually, it will take a conclusive ruling from the United States Supreme Court that CDA 230 provides no immunity for platforms like Twitter and Pornhub, both of which allow sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material on their sites. In the meantime, children like Jane and Sarah will continue to be victimized, and Pornhub and Twitter will continue to rake in profits from their images.

In the meantime, we will continue to pursue justice for survivors and work to hold online pornography companies to account.

The post The Horrifying Reality of Child Porn and its Enablers appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Religion provides unique opportunities for reflection and escape through practices like prayer, scripture study, and worship services—and even extended escape such as the upcoming General Conference.

In a world that often worships busyness and multitasking, if we don’t carve out time for developing our spiritual core, we will soon find it waning. By embracing religious practices, we can find moments of stillness and connection that can enhance our overall well-being and quality of life.

The Benefits of Reflection and Escape

Reflection is the process of examining our thoughts, feelings, actions, and experiences to gain insight, learning, and meaning. Escape is the act of withdrawing from the stressors and pressures of everyday life to find peace, relaxation, and joy. Both reflection and escape have many benefits for our physical, mental, emotional, and social health.

According to research, reflection gives the brain an opportunity to pause amidst the chaos, untangle and sort through observations and experiences, consider multiple possible interpretations, and create meaning. This meaning becomes learning, which can then inform future mindsets and actions. Reflection can also help us improve our self-awareness, which can lead to better decision-making and performance, increased empathy, reduced stress, enhanced creativity, and greater happiness.

Escape can also have positive effects on our well-being. According to studies, spending time alone or in silence can help us promote self-awareness, reduce stress, improve memory, boost immunity, lower blood pressure, increase happiness, and foster creativity. Escape can also help us reconnect with ourselves, our values, our passions, and our purpose.

The Challenges of Finding Time for Reflection and Escape

Despite the benefits of reflection and escape, many people struggle to find time for them in their lives. Some of the challenges they face include:

• Busy schedules: Many people have hectic lifestyles that leave them little room for leisure, hobbies, or rest.
• Constant distractions: Many people are constantly exposed to noise, media, notifications, and other stimuli that compete for their attention and prevent them from focusing on their inner thoughts or feelings.
• Pressure to be productive: Many people feel guilty or anxious about taking time off or doing nothing. They may believe that they have to be always working or achieving something. They may also face expectations from others (such as family, friends, employers, or themselves (such as goals) that make them feel obligated or compelled to keep busy.

These challenges are partly influenced by cultural trends that devalue or discourage reflection and escape, such as:

• The cult of busyness: This is the idea that being busy is a sign of success, intelligence, or importance. It creates a sense of urgency or competition that makes people feel like they have to do more or do it faster.
• The myth of multitasking: This is the belief that doing multiple things at once is more efficient, effective, or desirable. It leads people to divide their attention or switch between tasks without fully engaging with any of them.
• The fear of missing out: This is the anxiety that one might miss something important, interesting, or fun. It drives people to constantly check their devices, social media accounts, or news sources, even when they are supposed to be relaxing or reflecting.

The Role of Religion in Providing Opportunities for Reflection and Escape

One way that people can overcome these challenges and find time for reflection and escape is through religion. Religion can provide opportunities for reflection and escape through various practices, such as:

• Prayer: Prayer is a form of communication with God or a higher power that allows people to express their gratitude, requests, confessions, praises, or questions. It  can help people reflect on their lives, their relationship with God, their values, and their goals. It can also help them escape their worries, fears, or troubles and find peace, comfort, or guidance.

• Scripture study: Scripture study is the practice of reading and studying sacred texts that contain the teachings and revelations of God or a higher power. It can help people reflect on their faith, their understanding of God, their morals, and their actions. It can also help them escape from the distractions and temptations of the world and find wisdom, inspiration, or direction.
• Worship services: Worship services are gatherings of believers who come together to worship God or a higher power through various forms such as singing, listening to sermons, participating in rituals, or sharing testimonies. They can help people reflect on their community, their role in God’s plan, their gratitude, and their commitment. They can also help them escape their isolation, loneliness, or stress and find joy, fellowship, or support.

The Unique Benefits of Religious Reflection and Escape

Religious reflection and escape differ from secular practices such as mindfulness or meditation in several ways. One of the main differences is that religious reflection and escape involve a connection with God or a higher power, who is seen as a source of love, grace, mercy, and truth. This connection can provide spiritual benefits that go beyond the physical or mental benefits of secular practices.

It may seem obvious, but taking time to be religious increases our faith. Religious reflection and escape can strengthen one’s faith in God or a higher power by increasing one’s awareness of His presence, His power, His goodness, His will, His promises, His guidance, His forgiveness, and His love Faith can help one overcome doubts, fears, trials, temptations, or challenges. Faith is more than commitment to your religious idealogy; it’s an attribute that contributes to strong mental health. 

Taking opportunities to reflect on the spiritual can give you an increased understanding of God which helps people be more confident. Religious reflection and escape can deepen one’s understanding of God or a higher power by increasing one’s knowledge of His attributes, His works, His ways, His purposes, His commands, His expectations, His gifts, and His plans. Understanding can help one appreciate God more, trust Him more, obey Him more, serve Him more, praise Him more, and glorify Him more.

Religious reflection and escape can reveal one’s purpose and meaning in life by increasing one’s alignment with God’s plan for oneself, for others, for the world, and for eternity. Purpose and meaning can help one find fulfillment, happiness, hope, motivation, direction, and resilience.

And lastly, when we take time to be religious not in a silo, but as part of a broader religious community, it can affirm one’s belonging and identity as a child of God or a follower of a higher power by increasing one’s recognition of His love, His grace, His mercy, His acceptance, His adoption, His calling, and His inheritance. This is true even when we are partaking in the same event virtually, such as general conference. Belonging and identity can help one feel valued, loved, secure, confident, worthy, and unique.

Religious reflection and escape are practices that can enhance one’s mental health by providing physical, mental, and spiritual benefits. They can help people reflect on various aspects of their lives and faith and escape from various sources of stress and negativity. They can also help people connect with God or a higher power, who can provide them with faith, understanding, purpose, meaning, belonging, and identity. A religious escape can ultimately improve our happiness, well-being, and quality of life.

The post Religious Retreat Recharges Your Mind, Body, and Soul appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

There’s one major exception. For the category of beliefs where there is an immediate, objective outcome then—in that case—what people believe and what is true will fall quickly into general correspondence. It’s very expensive to have fanciful, bizarre beliefs about everyday things like which side of the road you should drive on, or what happens if you spill boiling water on yourself, or how the people in your day-to-day life are going to react to your behavior. From everyday physics to our mental models of other human beings, practical beliefs are constrained by feedback to be relatively accurate.

But there is a vast range of beliefs that don’t have any obvious and direct consequences for us. Do people still discipline their beliefs in these categories to conform to reason and evidence? No, they most certainly do not.

Walker Wright covered this in his series of posts on voter ignorance. He summarized the economic literature that explains not only the basic fact that voters are astoundingly ignorant on topics ranging from economics to the basic workings of the American government, but also explained why this is so. In a nutshell: learning is expensive (in time and effort even if not in money) and the statistical value of casting a single informed vote is very low. So, according to the basic assumption of rational self-interest, why bother studying to try and learn the truth? By and large, most Americans don’t.

In the second piece of the series, Wright cited Bryan Caplan who said, “Since delusional political beliefs are free, the voter consumes until he reaches his “satiation point,” believing whatever makes him feel best.” What Caplan means by “free” in this context is that there’s no penalty to being wrong about your political beliefs. 

If you’re fundamentally mistaken in your belief about how gravity works (in a practical, everyday sense) you’re going to hurt yourself. Delusional practical beliefs are expensive. But if you’re fundamentally mistaken in your belief about politics (or religion, or history, or science if you’re not a scientist, etc.), nobody is going to make you suffer for it. In that sense, the belief is free.

Wright also cited Arthur Brooks, who explicitly tied the American penchant for extreme (and ignorant) political beliefs to religion. “Not real religion,” Brooks clarified, “but rather, a secular substitute in which they believe with perfect certainty in the correctness of their political dogmas. People want to hold the truth; questioning is uncomfortable.”

The assertion that “questioning is uncomfortable” is a common one. It’s also an empirically verified one. In 2006, researchers at NYU’s Center for Experimental Social Sciences conducted a subtle experiment to prove that people crave certainty . . . even when that certainty provides no practical benefit whatsoever. 

In the experiment, participants got to take home twenty dollars if they picked which of two boxes held the money. They were told that one specific box was either 60% or 100% likely to contain the money (which meant they should obviously pick that box, since in either case it was more likely to have the money in it).

However, before making their choice, they could pay a small fee to be told exactly how much more likely that particular box was to hold the money—e.g., whether it was 60% or 100% likely. Since the best choice was already obvious, this extra information wouldn’t—or shouldn’t—be influential or decisive, but about 80% of the participants paid the fee anyway.

Various permutations of the experiment were conducted to try and rule out alternative explanations, such as participants failing to really grasp the irrelevance of the knowledge or minimizing the effort of thinking through the problem. In the end, the researchers were left with the same conclusion Brooks and so many others have drawn. In their words, people just like “to feel confident.”

So we have two important insights into how and why humans form beliefs. 

First, beliefs are instrumental. That is, beliefs are tools. You use them to get something. One common way beliefs are used is to build an accurate picture of the world around us. That use—something we often take for granted as the sole purpose of belief—is actually just one among many. Especially when we move outside of simple, straight-forward practical scenarios, correspondence with reality is no longer as useful and people are free to seek other uses from their beliefs. 

What does this look like in practice? What use can you get out of beliefs that are fanciful or even delusional? Well, adopting the beliefs of the people around you—no matter what they are—is a great way to fit in socially. Beliefs become a kind of social glue to hold cliques together. They’re also a kind of social signal, not just to find and solidify your ties with like-minded individuals, but to broadcast high status. Unnecessarily complex beliefs with layer upon layer of nuance are the intellectual equivalent of peacock feathers: they tell everyone that you have the kind of higher education that is a proxy for elite social status in America.

You’re also free to adopt beliefs that paint yourself and your friends in the best light possible. For instance, you can adopt a narrative where you’re the enlightened, brave heroes standing for justice and truth against forces of evil and ignorance. Who cares if it’s an accurate self-image when it’s such a flattering one? 

Or, to spin things around, you can believe things about the outside world that comfort you. Now, the term “conspiracy theory” is becoming controversial, since it’s useful to label unpopular beliefs that way to discredit them, but when it comes to the classic idea that mysterious forces are suppressing knowledge that the Earth is flat or the Moon landings were faked or the like—you might wonder what aspect of conspiracy theories is comforting. The idea of unstoppable, hidden forces pulling the strings behind the scenes sounds like the opposite of comforting, right?

But there is one major aspect to these theories that is indeed comforting: they entail a vision of the world that is ordered and comprehensible. For many people, the pessimism of conspiracy theories is more than offset by the comfort of believing in a world that is predictably ordered instead of chaotic. What’s more, conspiracy theorists often believe that they have privileged insight into how everything really works. 

Even the impotent fatalism of most conspiracy theories has a benefit. Since there’s typically little you can do to effectively fight “them” you don’t actually have to do anything about the bad things happening around you. Conspiracy theories thus offer an ordered universe, special understanding, and little responsibility. Of course people believe them.

So the first of our two insights is that whenever they can get away with it, people will adopt self-deceiving beliefs that paint a flattering picture of themselves and a comforting picture of the world around them.

The second insight is that, having chosen their comforting beliefs, people will go on to invest these oh-so-very-useful beliefs with manufactured certainty. They won’t believe these fairy tales a little; they will believe them a lot. When beliefs are about abstract or theoretical subjects where there is no direct, undeniable feedback for error and overconfidence, people unconsciously gravitate towards a set of beliefs that are comfortable and a degree of certainty in those beliefs that is absolute.  

This explanation—as far as I’ve laid it out so far—is actually a little too powerful. If things were really this bad, then every country in the world would be mired in paralyzing, toxic partisanship all the time. And yet we have a sense, as Americans, that things are worse now than they were ten or twenty or thirty years ago. That partisanship and tribalism, while perennial aspects of the human experience, are getting notably worse now than they have been at other times. What gives? I have a theory.

As we noted earlier, instrumental beliefs play a key role in the formation of tightly knit social cliques defined by their common adherence to a set of ideological orthodoxies. The unanimity of the group on a narrow range of issues creates an illusion of greater, universal unity. Everyone seems to be of “one heart and one mind.” Presto: you have an imitation Zion community.

Within this knockoff Zion, no one needs to worry about being wrong anymore. The mutually reinforcing certainty creates freedom from doubt and second-guessing. Everyone in the group proceeds directly past faith to perfect knowledge, and—once your knowledge is perfect—”your faith is dormant.” (Alma 32:34) This is convenient since faith requires constant effort and attention. Perfect knowledge is easier.

There’s more, however. The members of these groups often consider themselves to be anxiously engaged in important, vital work. Fighting injustice, standing for liberty, etc. This, too, fits with our conception of salvation: you have entered a rest from doubt or care, but there is still much work to do that is fulfilling and meaningful. 

Of course, in reality, the “work” these groups are engaged in is not real. It’s just slacktivism. Barney Frank summed this dynamic up in an interview for The New Yorker: 

I have a rule that I have tried to propagate among my friends on the Left. If you care deeply about a cause and you are then engaged on behalf of that cause in an activity that makes you feel very good and very brave and you’re really in solidarity with all your friends, and you’re enjoying it, you’re probably not advancing the cause very much, because you’re spending all your time with people you agree with cheering each other on and not engaging.

This is what you get for your instrumental beliefs: dogmatically unified cliques where everyone is free from error and all are involved in rewarding, heroic struggles for righteous causes. It’s not the real salvation promised by Christianity, but it’s clearly an imitation of it. 

This explains why this particular set of dysfunctions—always latent in any society—is surging in America here and now. Secularism and skepticism have proven much better at tearing down the old beliefs and conventions and traditions that went before than they have at erecting anything to take their place. As traditional religions decline, they leave in their wake a host of unmet needs that are still shaped and conditioned by the expectations and promises of the now-receding faiths.

What’s worse, these unmet needs are no longer situated in a context of hope that fosters patience. Within a Christian context, expectations for certain knowledge and perfect unity were understood to be a part of a long-unfolding process that would inevitably reach fulfillment both personally and communally, but not necessarily right now. 

Paul provided an example of this in his first Epistle to the Corinthians: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” So Christianity gave both the expectations that define our conception of salvation, and the hope for their eventual fulfillment. In the wake of Christianity the expectation remains, but not the hope. And if the hope departs, then so too must the patience. 

That is the context in which so many have decided to stop waiting and hoping for the real thing (they no longer believe in it anyway) and instead settle for an imitation that, for all its flaws, they can have today.  

Why wait if there’s nothing to wait for? Accept some particular man-made philosophy as the absolute truth now, and you can enter into a reassuring rest with your fellow counterfeit saints. You won’t actually accomplish anything, of course, but it will feel great.

In the coming essays, I will explore how the brittle fragility of counterfeit salvation leads to extremism, warps and weakens even faith in things that are true, and differs dramatically from genuine conviction.

The post Certainty is a Counterfeit Salvation appeared first on Public Square Magazine.