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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lesson One: We Worship a Loving and Forgiving God 

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

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

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

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

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

Lesson Three: Forgiveness puts Responsibility in the Right Places

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

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

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

Lesson Four: We Must Forgive Human Weakness

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

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

Lesson Five: Through Forgiveness Our Pain Can Be Transformed  

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

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

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

Lesson Six: Forgiveness Should Become Part of Our Nature

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

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

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

Lesson Seven: We Are Not Alone as We Forgive 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Forgiveness Is Not

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

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

A Path to Joy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite being longer than the rest of the Latter-day Saint canon combined, the Old Testament has fewer explicit references to “the fundamental principles of our religion”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ancient Israelite Prophecy of Christ’s Sacrifice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sacrifice 

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Law of Moses

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

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

The Old Testament and Resurrection

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

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

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

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

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

Christ is the Meaning

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

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

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

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

The post Unveiling Christ this Easter appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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As mental health therapy becomes an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary life, it becomes more important to stop seeing the practice as a monolith and recognize it as a bundle of distinct practices, philosophies, and goals. Sometimes these different approaches even directly contradict one another. 

Latter-day Saints understand the importance of caring for our mental health and often utilize mental health practitioners. But that doesn’t mean every approach is worth trying or comports with Christian principles.

Differentiation therapy, however, conflicts with the principles of Christianity broadly and the Restored Gospel specifically. In addition, despite the modality’s current popularity, there is little evidence that this approach works.  

What is Differentiation Therapy?

Differentiation therapy is a psychotherapeutic model advanced by David Schnarch. It is also sometimes called “crucible therapy.”

Schnarch posits that the purpose of our relationships is individual growth, and that the way to heal relationships is by focusing on our own needs, identity, and preferences separate from our partner. 

Schnarch first published his theories in the early 1990s. He built on the ideas of one of the early practitioners of family therapy, Murray Bowen. Bowen pioneered systemic therapy, a therapeutic approach that recognizes how our struggles are often found within the complex system of relationships in a family. Bowen articulated “self-differentiation,” the ability to recognize and define yourself as an individual within that system, as one of the items in tension in the family system. 

Schnarch focused and emphasized self-differentiation, recontextualizing this idea within the affective domain of marital intimacy, asserting that the path to greater eroticism, emotional fulfillment, and personal development lies not in interdependent vulnerability but in cultivating emotional autonomy and self-definition. He contends that genuine intimacy emerges when each spouse remains firmly rooted in a differentiated self, experiencing anxiety within the relationship that spurs individual growth, and resisting the urge to seek validation from the other. Schnarch’s framework is built on the maxim that relational maturity is contingent on one’s ability to “hold onto oneself,” particularly in the face of emotional intensity.

As Paul teaches in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.” Differentiation therapy doesn’t hold up to those standards.

For Christian or Latter-day Saint engagement, any therapeutic model must be assessed through two interdependent criteria: its empirical reliability and its theological coherence. Specifically, a model must conform to a theology that affirms the covenantal, sacramental, and grace-dependent character of human relationships. 

On both empirical and theological grounds, this model raises serious concerns. 

Similarities to the Gospel

Before diving into why differentiation marriage therapy doesn’t adhere to Christian theology, let’s first grant that there is much about the ideology that can appeal to those in our tradition. 

Crucible Therapy is so named because the idea is for us to improve ourselves like metal does in a crucible. This metaphor is familiar to Latter-day Saints, who have heard it consistently in General Conference addresses for decades.

We want to grow, which sometimes requires us to do (or endure) difficult things. Joseph Smith even described his time in Liberty Jail as a “crucible.”

Personal growth is a key component of the Latter-day Saint conception of life and the eternities, as we rely on the grace of Jesus Christ to become more like Him.  

And we view marriage as a key pathway to achieving that personal growth. Elder Richard G. Scott described the overarching theme of the “eternal blessings of marriage” as “trying to be like Jesus.”

Even the concept of self-differentiation itself is not opposed to the gospel. After all, in President Russell M. Nelson’s 2008 formulation, salvation is “an individual matter.” In each Latter-day Saint ordinance and covenant made from the first at baptism to the temple endowment, individuals participate independently.

The problem with differentiation therapy is not the ingredients, but rather the emphasis, proportions, and timing.

The Sacramental View of Marriage

Scripture and tradition present a vision of marriage not as a mere partnership but as a covenantal and ontological union. Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8 declare, “the two shall become one flesh,” articulating a unity that transcends sentiment or legal arrangement. This union is sacramental, reflecting the mystery of divine communion and typifying the nuptial relationship between Christ and the Church. 

Within Latter-day Saint theology, this union also echoes the oneness of the Godhead and extends to eternal dimensions. Eternal marriage is not a symbolic ideal but a sacred ordinance that enables joint participation in the divine nature. In this view, marital unity is achieved through consecrated covenant keeping and divine grace.

President Gordon B. Hinckley famously warned that “selfishness is the great destroyer of happy family life.” Christian ethics consistently portray the self not as autonomous but relationally constituted, and pride as the origin of spiritual alienation. Love entails the displacement of self-centeredness. Schnarch’s valorization of emotional self-sufficiency is in tension with Christ’s self-emptying love.

Schnarch does attempt to articulate an ideal of oneness near the end of his second book. He writes, “Holding onto yourself and becoming more differentiated actually leads to the loss of the self you’ve been holding onto.” In this, he articulates a goal shared by Christians. But Schnarch gets the order precisely backward. In teaching the Twelve Apostles, Jesus said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

The Rev. Lauren R.E. Larkin, an Episcopalian, notes that Schnarch’s model implies what I might describe as a form of psychological soteriology in which transformation is self-engineered and internally sourced. In contrast, Christian soteriology comes from the sacrifice of the self in our relationship with Christ, and that happy marriage comes from applying the same principle. 

Specific Theological and Pastoral Concerns

Schnarch’s philosophy is hardly the only one to be at odds with the principles of Christianity. But it warrants attention both because of its growth among those providing therapy for Latter-day Saints and the specific negative behavioral outcomes it can produce. 

Reframing of Selfishness as Growth

In Schnarch’s paradigm, behaviors that prioritize the self over marital unity are reframed as developmental milestones. This conceptual move risks legitimizing patterns of emotional disengagement or moral abdication that Scripture identifies as destructive.

Devaluation of Mutual Dependence

Christian marriage presupposes mutual reliance and covenantal solidarity. Emotional interdependence is not pathological but redemptive. By pathologizing need and elevating stoicism, Crucible Therapy undermines the logic and purpose of marriage within the Christian life.

Therapeutic Destabilization of the Vulnerable

The deliberate intensification of anxiety may compound harm in couples already contending with trauma or asymmetry. Without a framework of mercy, discernment, and accountability, this method risks exacerbating wounds rather than fostering healing.

Psychological Work as Identity Formation

Crucible Therapy reflects and clinically adopts a broader cultural trend: the belief that personal identity is best discovered through solitary psychological excavation. For Christians, our truest identity is revealed not in looking inward but in looking upward—to God—and outward—to others.

Undermining the Redemptive Power of Weakness

Differentiation therapy often frames strength in a relationship as the ability to withstand emotional storms alone. But Latter-day Saint theology teaches that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, and our spouses as a “help-meet” for those challenges. Schnarch ignores the redemptive capacity of dependence. 

Flattening the Eternal Narrative of Marriage

Perhaps most fundamentally, differentiation therapy assumes marriage is primarily a context for individual growth and erotic renewal. But for Latter-day Saints, marriage is the divine setting for exaltation. While it shares the desire for marriage to be a conduit for individual growth, the Latter-day Saint conception of marriage has a project much more lofty and eternal in mind. 

Secular therapies can’t be expected to fully integrate all gospel understanding. Still, we can avoid the ones whose explicit goals and practices set us toward different goals than those we are pursuing.

Toward a Christological Integration of Differentiation and Unity

The question of how to balance differentiation and unity—how to maintain personal identity while becoming “one” with another—is not merely a psychological puzzle but a theological one. For Christians, the life of Jesus Christ provides the supreme model for how distinctiveness and relational communion are held in perfect harmony. He is not only the exemplar of love but the embodiment of divine identity lived in full self-giving.

Throughout the New Testament, Christ’s actions and teachings demonstrate a perfect union of individual authority and relational surrender. In John 5:30, He declares, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge … because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” Here we see a Savior who is fully self-aware and fully self-sacrificing. His divine agency is never wielded for isolation but always for communion—first with His Father, and then with those He came to redeem.

The pre-mortal Christ likewise demonstrates an integrated identity in His dealings with Israel. In Exodus 3, He reveals Himself as “I AM,” an assertion of sovereign selfhood. Yet He repeatedly binds Himself in covenant to His people, dwelling with them, feeding them, and pleading for their return. His identity is never diluted, but His divine selfhood is always offered for relationship.

In 3 Nephi, the resurrected Lord descends among the Nephites. What does He do? He weeps. He heals. He prays for their unity, invoking the language of divine indwelling: “that they may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (3 Nephi 19:23). Here again, the goal is not emotional distance but sanctified closeness. Christ does not ask us to become strong by ourselves. He invites us to be made whole in Him. At no point is differentiation set against unity. Rather, disciples are expected to retain their agency and consecrate it—to grow, yes, but to grow together.

From this Christological lens, differentiation is not a prerequisite for unity, nor is unity a threat to identity. Instead, selfhood and love are co-eternal truths, fulfilled in covenant. The Savior does not command us to “hold onto ourselves” but to take up our cross. He does not sever our personhood; He sanctifies it in communion.

In Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we see the perfect integration of individuality and unity. 

Recommendations for Moving Forward

For Latter-day Saints looking at what kinds of marriage therapy are appropriate for them and their circumstances, I have a few pieces of advice. 

Not all therapists and therapeutic practices are created equal. As mental health resources are often in short supply, it can be tempting to visit the first person with a license and an opening. But it is worth being discerning, especially in a venue where we are opening up our hearts and minds to someone. 

While “Latter-day Saint therapists” can be helpful (if unnecessary) in that journey, be careful to understand whether your therapist merely understands the vocabulary of Latter-day Saints or is committed to helping you maintain your worldview.

Preserve your moral and spiritual lexicon. Grace is not a synonym for internal resilience. Sin is not a developmental stage we grow out of. 

Based on my experience, observations, and analysis, my advice is for Latter-day Saints to exercise considerable caution before engagin in differentiation therapy or working with clinicians who practice it. There are approaches that better align with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and which the evidence shows work better.

David Schnarch’s Crucible/Differentiation Marriage Therapy presents a psychologically articulate, but ultimately inadequate framework for relational transformation. Its emphasis on self-validation, emotional independence, and internal differentiation diverges from the best practices evidence shows work and the covenantal, grace-saturated vision of Christian marriage.

The post When Therapy Undermines Marriage: How Differentiation Fails the Christian Model appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Amanda Freebairn

There has been much discussion in the Christian world in recent weeks about Latter-day Saint Doctrine. This weekend, the two most senior apostles, President Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, made our core doctrines clear: We are children of loving Heavenly Parents who sent Their Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem the world. He “is our ultimate role model [and] we will be blessed if we model our lives after His teachings and self-sacrifice.” The Book of Mormon testifies of Him. Families are central to Their Plan of Salvation. We come to know the Savior “much more personally” through sacred ordinances, administered by priesthood authority that traces back in an “unbroken sequence back to Jesus Christ” Himself. How needed these simple and powerful truths are in our hurting world. 

Carol Rice

This conference impressed upon me the power of conviction and the principle that sustains it.

Both Sister Tracy Y. Browning’s and Elder Kevin G. Brown’s closing testimonies were unforgettable. She repeated “I know” again and again, more than six times, with a strength that was both unashamed and refreshing. Elder Brown used similar language when he closed with a fervent appeal:

“If you know, you know. I know that I know. We need more sure witnesses of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Get there! Seek it! It is urgent! This is the final dispensation—the dispensation of the fullness of times.”

In a world where faith is often whispered, their witness reminded me that knowledge born of testimony can and must be spoken.

Elder Soares then gave me a principle to learn better: serenity alongside conviction. He taught of temperance, explaining that it is a meaningful way to protect our souls against constant spiritual erosion. He promised that as we weave temperance into our actions and words, “a serene strength arises” in us. In recent days, I’ve observed this in those I admire, those “capable of restraining anger, nurturing patience, and treating others with tolerance, respect, and dignity, even (especially) when the winds of adversity blow fiercely.” I now have a focus for my aspirations.

Two other talks reminded us of one place where such conviction, alongside temperance, is especially needed. Elder Rasband and President Oaks testified of our family-centered gospel. Both affirmed that the doctrine of the family is not cultural but eternal. President Oaks reminded us gently that what our “children really want for dinner is time with us.” He shared tender stories of his own childhood and family life, where those realities were forged.

Conference as a whole was both a balm and a motivation. We heard bold testimonies, learned how to live them through principles like temperance, and were reminded to be ever hopeful in repentance and in the promises of eternal life made possible through our Savior.

CD Cunningham

In the shadow of the Michigan meetinghouse attack, the Saturday morning session turned resolutely to peacemaking—not as naïveté, but as covenant work that begins within. Elder Gary E. Stevenson opened by acknowledging those “mourning loss,” including the “hallowed chapel in Michigan,” and taught that real peace starts “in the most basic place—in our hearts,” then moves to homes and communities, inviting a one-week practice of contention-free homes, digital bridge-building, and repairing strained relationships. Elder Ronald M. Barcellos focused that lens even tighter: the Lord “looketh on the heart” and asks for a “broken heart and a contrite spirit,” offering, through Christ, to make “weak things become strong” as we turn to Him with real intent. He suggested spiritual “heart tests”—our focus, obedience, scripture-fed desire for revelation, and the words we speak—and prescribed daily discipleship that yields a “new heart.” Then, Elder Ulisses Soares supplied the stabilizing virtue that makes such peace durable: temperance—the Spirit-governed self-mastery that restrains anger and contention, harmonizes humility, faith, hope, and charity, and, like the reinforced foundations of the Salt Lake Temple, shores up our covenants against erosion.  Together, these messages answer violence with conversion: change your heart, then your home, and peace will ripple outward. In a week of grief, the call was not to harden, but to be healed—and to heal.

Danny Frost

Elder Uchtdorf provided a beautiful reminder of how gospel truth can be taught and learned. Part of his talk focused on how many of us feel less than others, imagining that “in the premortal existence on the day of the great gift and talent smorgasbord, [our] plate seemed awfully sparse especially compared to the stacked and overflowing plates of others.” He then went on to say this:

 “Oh, how I wish I could embrace you and help you understand this great truth. You are a blessed being of light, the spirit child of an infinite God. And you bear within you a potential beyond beyond your own capacity to imagine.”

 Elder Uchtdorf exudes love in a way that makes it easy to recognize and understand God’s love for us. Brent Top, former Dean of Religious Education at BYU, has written about how a hug from Elder Uchtdorf was a turning point in his service as a mission president: “Elder Uchtdorf’s expression of love at that moment was a monumentally transforming event for me, and I wanted my missionaries to feel something akin to what I felt from him.” A few years ago, my son also received a hug from Elder Uchtdorf, and watching that happen was one of the sweetest moments of my life. I was overwhelmed with a sense of Heavenly Father’s love for my son. What Elder Uchtdorf offered in this moment was not a statement of fact about God’s love, but instead an embodiment of what that love might look like in practice.

Gale Boyd

During Saturday’s sessions, I especially felt a call to repentance as a gentle, healing balm in our lives—as in a call from Elder Kearon to a new beginning that will bless our lives in many ways. In these supplications, we always hear that we can never drift too far or sink too low for Christ’s love to lift and redeem us. Elder Uchtdorf’s talk clarified that Christ has already done the hardest part in this journey, although we must act on faith to build the confidence to continue and endure. 

From Elder Kearon: “All of us can have a new beginning through, and because of, Jesus Christ. Even you. … This is the church of new beginnings! This is the church of fresh starts! … You can actually change things about yourself that have been wearing you down for years. You can start again through the might of the Master of new beginnings.” And, “We don’t have just one chance. These new beginnings can happen every day!”

From Elder Uchtdorf: “Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift, but receiving it is a conscious choice that requires a commitment of ‘might, mind, and strength’” (Moroni 10:32). … Simply put, discipleship takes self-discipline. And, “I urge and bless every member of the Church and all who desire to be part of it to trust the Savior enough to engage, patiently and diligently, in doing your part with all your heart — that your joy may be full and that, one day, you will receive all the Father has.”

Matthew Hildebrandt

In this conference, belonging was about genuine connection—feeling seen, supported, and spiritually rooted. Elder Gerrit W. Gong described the Savior’s Church as an “inn” where “no one sits alone,” urging us to create spaces of warmth and love that let people breathe and feel safe enough to grow.  Elder Peter M. Johnson shared how simple acts of presence can heal: a missionary companion who said nightly, “Elder Johnson, I love you,” helped him feel the Spirit again. Ministering “to the one,” he taught, lifts hearts and leads people back to the house of the Lord.  Elder William K. Jackson grounded that love in structure—leaders who “know names,” “count and account,” and make it “difficult to forget a soul.” Together, their messages remind us that belonging isn’t an abstract feeling; it’s practiced connection—seeing and naming one another, showing up with love, and walking each other toward Christ.

The post When Peacemaking Meets Tragedy: General Conference ‘25 appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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There are questions that create profound divisions among Christians. Some of these divisions become so deep that two Christians in the same congregation can be said to be living a completely different religion. For example, among Latter-day Saints, the question of whether or not to sustain the leadership of the church—and as President Henry B. Eyring taught, how strongly to define the word “sustain”—is one of those basic foundational questions that creates fundamentally different experiences of religion among people who sit in the same pews. And for the broader Christian world, one of the greatest divides is found in how believers respond to the gospel of John chapter 6. There, Christ provides a clear contrast between His mission and the world’s approaches to alleviating pain and poverty.

Christianity is experienced by believers internally, who then impact the world externally. The internal impacts of Christian faith are described in terms of repentance, inner rebirth, and transformation of our desires in the direction of goodness and holiness. With inner transformation, the Christian is then equipped to bless the external world with judgment, a scriptural concept that basically means to make the world right. Inner conversion leading to change in the world around us is the Christian order to follow for the transformation of society, and there are no shortcuts to the ideal society (“Zion”) that it produces.

They go on to associate Jesus with Moses, under whose leadership the children of Israel were given a constant supply of manna in the wilderness: “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” And there follows a demand: “Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.”

We read that the people saw Jesus as “the prophet who should come into the world” as a result of this similarity with Moses (v.14), and immediately they sought to “take Him by force, and make Him a king” (v.15). Jesus responded in ways that must have gone against the people’s mental conditioning: He refused to be a king, and He refused to perpetually feed them. With these choices, Jesus was only repeating His responses to the temptations in the wilderness, where Satan offered Him political power— “the kingdoms of the world”— and also recognition, “He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up…”.

And as with the temptations in the wilderness, Jesus’ choices in John chapter 6 should give us pause. Every reader would benefit from pondering what we would do in Jesus’ situation. With the power to eliminate all hunger forever by distributing an endless supply of food, would we do it? Or would we see, as Jesus did, reasons to refrain from doing so? With the ability to eliminate oppression by becoming a politically all-powerful king or queen, would we do it? Or would we see, as Jesus did, reasons to refrain from doing so? These questions that arise in John 6 are at the heart of much of modern political conflict.

In the wonderful series “The Chosen,” this conflict has been represented in the story of Judas. Viewers are given a portrait of Judas as a man who is extremely earnest, who feels deeply the pain of the world and sees in Jesus the possibility of immediate resolution for all of that pain.

In this dramatization of Judas, the creators of The Chosen are tapping into a deep current in the psyche, the current of our expectations toward God. When we feel some sympathy toward Judas in The Chosen and we relate to his desire to see the world made right as quickly as possible, we can understand people’s expectations of God and how those shape so much of the world around us.

Consider the views of German academic Bruno Bauer, one of the formative influences on the mind of Karl Marx. Similar to The Chosen’s portrayal of Judas, Bauer said of Jesus,

On earth, [Jesus] would be a thousand times more necessary and useful to man than in heaven, if what we say about him in good Jewish fashion is true, that God will give him the kingdoms of the world and through him restore peace to the whole earth. What reasonable reason can Christians give as to why God did not keep his word to the Lord Jesus? Why did he take him to heaven if he is to be a Lord on earth and to judge the dead and the living in the way we imagine? Why must the devil, whom he is supposed to have overcome, still rule the whole world more than 1700 years after his overcoming and leave the conqueror behind? Why did he (the Lord Jesus) not take the kingdom immediately after his resurrection, as his Father had promised him? What was the reason that he had to ascend to heaven and in the meantime let everything on earth go topsy-turvy?

Marxism and its twin ideology of fascism on the right emerged in societies that knew the Bible. In biblical texts like the book of Isaiah, we read of an ideal future world free of the kinds of conflict and pain that we now experience:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

Like The Chosen’s Judas, Bruno Bauer viewed Jesus as a failure: holding all the power to inaugurate this ideal world envisioned by Isaiah, Jesus frustratingly declined to do so. It is interesting to note that in his summer 1839 university studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Karl Marx took only one course, and it was a course on Isaiah taught by Bruno Bauer.

But are these horrors exclusive to the ideological left? Consider this statement:

If positive Christianity means love of one’s neighbour, i.e., the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of _____ has accomplished a prodigious work …

Not knowing the source of the quote, we might assume it to come from a Marxist luminary like Antonio Gramsci, who famously said that “socialism is precisely the religion that must kill Christianity.” But in reality, if we fill in the blank in the above quote, it is referring to “the people of National Socialist Germany.” The speaker claiming that German national socialism was superior to commonly lived Christianity was, in fact, Adolf Hitler, speaking in February 1939.

In a recent discussion on the Doctrine and Governance program, we observed how at the extremes of left and right, people work toward delusional visions of an ideal world; on the left, there is the vision of a classless society articulated by Marx, and on the right, the current vision is Christian nationalism, which imagines a king-figure imposing Christian righteousness upon the nation. Both of these delusions emerge in the swamps of social theory that form as people reject the Christ of John chapter 6.

By stark contrast, consider a recent devotional address given by Sharon Eubank at BYU-Idaho. There she repeated and answered an “accusation-question” that is commonly aimed toward the church:

I am occasionally asked, “Why doesn’t the Church spend more money on humanitarian work? Why doesn’t it stop building expensive temples and focus its resources on relieving the poor?” This is a legitimate question for the Church of Jesus Christ. But is it money that solves society’s ills? The world has poured two trillion dollars into addressing chronic issues in Africa. Why isn’t the situation better? Because money isn’t really the issue. Lasting progress comes through trusted relationships, infrastructure, reducing corruption, and the ability of people to work together. Money doesn’t necessarily create those things. They must be developed alongside the resources, and frankly, it is much harder work.

I will never discount the one thing this Church does that lifts entire communities in rapid development. It invites men and women of all social classes and backgrounds to enter sacred buildings and make the most binding and important promises of their mortal lives. In those buildings, they promise not to steal or lie, they promise to be faithful to their spouse and children. They vow they will seek the interest of their neighbors and be peacemakers and become devoted to the idea that we are all one family—all valued and alike unto God. If those promises made in holy temples are kept, it transforms society faster than any aid or development project ever could. The greatest charitable development on the planet is for people to bind themselves to their God and mean it. So, thank goodness the Church builds 335 temples and counting. It is the greatest poverty alleviation system in the world.

The quality of our viewpoint depends on what we are willing to see, and in Sharon Eubank’s role leading humanitarian efforts for the church, she has seen which assistance strategies actually help people, and which ones fail. She has seen how root causes are ignored when endless loaves and fishes are demanded of God or governments.

In confronting the root causes of humanity’s struggles, the Christ of John chapter 6 invites our conversion, the writing of God’s law upon our hearts. And the results of that process are exactly what Sharon Eubank described. As I noted in a recent article, it is no accident that Utah, the most templed region of the United States, consistently ranks at or near the top in annual surveys of upward mobility and income equality. The Zion society we yearn for is indeed available to us, but only on God’s terms, in God’s timing, through processes revealed by God’s ordained servants.

In her devotional, Sharon Eubank spoke to young, impressionable students who will eventually be exposed to utopian ideologies in the world, ideologies that always promise heaven yet end up creating hell. In the midst of all the voices pulling these students toward delusional extremes, Sharon Eubank modeled the example of the Christ of John chapter 6. She stood before her audience and, rather than promise them a life of endless free loaves and fishes, she loved them enough to ground them in God’s truth.

The post When God Refuses to Fix the World: The Politics of John 6 appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountains down.

Bryan Johnson wants to live forever. He’s not alone. From Silicon Valley biohackers to Saudi-funded biotech firms, the world’s wealthiest men are trying to outrun the grave. Their weapons are cold plunges, gene edits, transfusions, calorie counting, and near-religious adherence to lab results. Longevity clinics have sprung up from L.A. to Dubai. The language has shifted. People now talk about “biological age,” “epigenetic clocks,” and “lifespan escape velocity.” Death, once a certainty, is being rebranded as a failure of maintenance. They dream of endless decades. Of forever.

But forever is not a blank slate. It has a shape. And that shape is not beautiful.

J.R.R. Tolkien understood this long before the blood boys and cold plunges. He gave us characters who lived too long, not as an ideal, but as a warning. His most haunting case wasn’t an emperor or a god. Small, shriveled, and half-mad, this creature endured far beyond his natural years. Not because he deserved to, but because he was chained to something unnatural. The result wasn’t wisdom. It was ruin.

This is the unspoken danger of the longevity movement. When we talk about reversing age, we rarely ask what we’re becoming in the process. We treat time as neutral, as if more of it must be good. But there is a kind of life that corrodes as it stretches. And there is a kind of man who stops living long before he stops breathing.

We’ve met him before. His name was Gollum.

Gollum the Preserved

He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself.

~Gandalf, about Gollum and the Ring

Gollum didn’t thrive. He lingered. That’s all.

He had no greatness in him. No ambition. No strength. He was a frightened, petty creature who stumbled onto something too powerful, and it refused to let him go. The Ring extended his life, but not to elevate it. Only to use it. And so he remained, not as a man, but as a husk. Not aging, not dying, not changing. Preserved.

Preservation is not life, it’s suspension. Gollum wasn’t alive in any meaningful sense. His body withered. His voice broke into fragments. His mind splintered into quarrels. He was meat kept too long, sealed off from time, no longer rotting, but no longer whole. In the darkness, he stopped becoming. He just … persisted.

Gollum’s tragedy wasn’t that he died. It’s that he didn’t. He became smaller with every passing year, not because he was weak, but because he was no longer allowed to break. Yet mortality is not the end of the story. It’s the form that gives the story meaning.

He should have died. Instead, he lingered. And that was his curse.

The Object Becomes the Soul

We swears to serve the master of the Precious. We swears … on the Precious!

~Gollum, to Frodo and Sam

Gollum didn’t hold the Ring; the Ring held him. Over time, it stopped being a tool and became the axis of his identity. He no longer had desires of his own—he bent around the thing that sustained him until he was indistinguishable from it.

This is not an ancient problem but a modern one. Men who build their lives around supplements, routines, and trackers are no longer pursuing health. They’re outsourcing the self. The aura ring becomes a confession booth. The lab report becomes scripture. Their souls are managed through metrics until nothing left inside isn’t optimized.

Gollum once had a name: Sméagol—a person with history, guilt, and possibility. But the Ring erased all that and replaced relationships with fixation. He no longer lived to build, to love, to know. He lived to possess, and all possession inverts.

We see the same pattern in addiction. In obsession. In the man who lives for his fortune but no longer knows what to do with it. In the influencer who curates every image but can’t form a thought without applause. In the striver whose health is perfect but whose life is barren.

When life depends on an object, the soul eventually conforms to it. Gollum’s will, language, posture, and even his voice all twisted around the Ring. His desires didn’t serve his identity. They replaced it.

This is the true cost of dependency-based immortality. The longer you survive through something external, the less you exist apart from it.

The Mad Math of Eternal Time

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small, slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum.

Time without end doesn’t liberate. It erodes.

Gollum didn’t live in time; he sank in it. Years passed without structure, without company, without change. His mind folded in on itself, repeating old phrases, replaying old injuries, splitting into fragments that argued in circles. His long life didn’t bring wisdom. It brought decay without death.

We assume more time means more clarity. But time, without limits, becomes background noise. Without endings, we lose urgency. Without death, there is no reason to forgive or to act. There is only delay. Gollum didn’t plan or aspire. He reacted. He returned, always, to the moment he lost the Ring. That moment swallowed the future. All meaning collapsed into retrieval.

Tolkien gave Gollum a long life not to glorify him but to show what happens when time is unmoored from mortality. There is no arc, only repetition. No growth, only fixation. He was frozen in compulsion because there was no reason not to be.

The problem wasn’t that Gollum lived too long. The problem was that nothing meaningful could occur. His wound never healed because it was never allowed to close. And when the music of life has no final note, even the most beautiful themes lose their shape. Time, unchecked, becomes noise. And the soul, unstretched by struggle, folds in on itself.

The Death of Desire

We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees … We even forgot our name.

Gollum didn’t want the good, the true, or the beautiful. He wanted the Ring. And once that want took root, all other desires withered. Food meant nothing. Light hurt. Friendship confused him. He was not tempted by joy. He was terrified of anything that might threaten his obsession. The Ring promised life. In return, it consumed every other reason to live.

This is the cost of unnatural immortality. It doesn’t simply extend the body. It distorts the soul. When your life depends on a single object, everything else becomes noise. Desire shrinks to fit the terms of survival. Pleasure becomes a threat. Love becomes a risk. Even mercy feels like a trick.

You can already see the pattern emerging. Men who track every biomarker but feel nothing. Men who sacrifice relationships for regimes of control. Men who fear aging more than they fear irrelevance. They live to preserve their bodies. Yet their souls lose their salt. Passion is replaced with protocol. Risk is replaced with ritual. And desire is strangled by its own guardrails.

Gollum didn’t protect the Ring. The Ring consumed his capacity to want anything else. He wasn’t loyal. He was trapped. He wasn’t focused. He was hollow.

To be human is to dream and to desire beyond your means. To risk heartbreak. To hunger for something greater than safety. Immortality doesn’t allow for that. It demands narrowing, shielding, hoarding. But a life spent hoarding cannot hope. And without hope, desire dies.

That is the final degradation. And it wears Gollum’s face.

Mercy Is Better Than Immortality

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

~Gandalf, to Frodo about Gollum

In the end, Gollum didn’t find peace. He fell into fire, clutching the very thing that ruined him. But his death mattered. It closed a chapter. It made the story whole. And it only happened because someone showed him mercy.

Frodo spared him. Again and again. Not because Gollum deserved it, but because Gandalf had said something true: even the wise cannot see all ends. Mercy creates space for grace to act. It opens a future you can’t predict or control. And that virtue, in the end, is what destroyed the Ring. Not power. Not cunning. Mercy.

Immortality has no place for this. It sees no virtue in endings. It sees no glory in surrender. It replaces love with calculation and hope with protocol. But the soul is not a system. It needs more than time. It needs transcendence. That comes not from extending life, but from offering it to something higher.

Gollum’s final act was not heroic. It was selfish, compulsive, pathetic. But it mattered because someone else had chosen love over fear. That choice gave the story meaning. Immortality cannot offer that. It does not bend. It does not resolve. It only continues.

The moguls of Silicon Valley would do well to understand this: Life cannot be engineered. It must be lived, and to be lived, it must be allowed to end.

The post The Fantasy of Forever: The Danger Behind Biological Immortality appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In our polarized culture, it has become commonplace to demonize or ridicule anyone who holds a different perspective. Such an approach, however, is inconsistent with the Savior’s example and teachings. I was struck recently with the following guidance from a revelation given to Joseph Smith: 

He that speaketh⁠, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifieth⁠, the same is of God if he obey mine ordinances (Doctrine and Covenants 52:15). 

Do these traits characterize the media we consume? Do they characterize our own speech? 

As we ponder such vital questions, it is important not only to consider this verse in isolation and in the abstract. Concrete examples play an important role in helping us to define and visualize these traits. The Savior is the perfect example of these principles, as He is in all things. He acknowledged His dependence on the Father, taught the Father’s teachings, and did His will in all things. 

But what does that look like in the 21st century? Christ’s example remains relevant to us, but it can be hard to visualize how He might speak in our culture, the norms of which differ tremendously from those of the first-century Middle East. There is not always a clear or obvious answer to the question “What would Jesus do?” 

However, one of the messages of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that He has not left us with only ancient examples. He lives. He continues to call prophets and apostles. Through them, He gives us both teachings and examples that help us to come to know Him. Any of the Latter-day prophets and Apostles are excellent examples of the principles identified above.  

I have learned a great deal about them from President Jeffrey R. Holland. In the nearly thirty-one years in which he has served in the Quorum of the Twelve, he has given sixty sermons at General Conference. Studying the content of his sermons has helped me awaken to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Studying the style of his sermons has given me important insights into how I can apply the Savior’s teachings and example in the way I speak.   

President Holland’s speaking style is distinctive partly because of his agonistic tone. Agonistic comes from the Greek word, ἀγών, anglicized as “agon,” which means a struggle, contest, or conflict. We use this root in English when we refer to the main character of a story as a protagonist and the one who opposes him or her as the antagonist. In most of his sermons, President Holland sets up an antagonist that he battles with his words. I can identify an antagonist in forty-eight out of his sixty General Conference addresses. The sense of struggle makes for an exciting speaking style and probably contributes to the fact that his sermons are well-loved by many members of the Church, myself included. He has memorably taught and testified about battling against doubt, lust, sexual immorality, envy, feelings of being abandoned by God, existential meaninglessness, dismissive attitudes about mental health problems, perfectionism, apathy for the poor, the social trend of fatherlessness, unrealistic standards of beauty for women, and the idea that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not Christian. 

One of his repeated targets is rote religious practice, going through the motions without real or complete devotion, an attitude he battled in his second General Conference as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1995, in two different sermons about the Church’s programs for seeing to the needs of its members, one in 2016 and the other in 2018, and in his most recent General Conference address in April 2025. Variations on this theme show up throughout the years in addresses that rebuke a lack of focus on Christ, “comfortable Christianity,” and cynicism that prevents complete devotion. 

President Holland’s choices of antagonists are instructive. His antagonist is never a person or group of people, but always an attitude, misconception, or sin. His agonistic approach does not excite anger at external enemies. Rather, it encourages introspection that leads to personal reformation. He reminds people of the importance of their commitments and creates a sense of urgency. He presents a positive agon, one that builds up (“edifies”) rather than a destructive one that turns people against each other.

In fact, President Holland tends to avoid referring to Satan at all. Only in that 2011 sermon, “We Are All Enlisted,” does he use the name Satan in his own words. Any other time he has used that name in General Conference, it is embedded in a quotation from another source. In the rare times that he does reference the devil, President Holland prefers using the pre-mortal name Lucifer, or titles such as “the adversary,” “arch deceiver,” “the father of all lies,” and, most colorfully, the bilingual, “el diablo, the diabolical one, the father of lies and lust.” Other times, he refers to him in general terms, for example, “remember that there is a force in the universe determined to oppose every good thing you try to do.” He has never made Satan an antagonist. He merely warns of the adversary’s role in encouraging sin and negative attitudes and the consequences of succumbing to temptation. President Holland has never set himself up as a champion who engages the adversary in single combat. Such a stance would be prideful and would forget the fact that it is our Savior who eternally bruised the serpent’s head. In Latter-day Saint popular culture, however, we have sometimes assigned President Holland the role of champion, including in a meme that circulated a few years ago that says, “When Satan goes to sleep at night, he checks under his bed for Elder Holland.” While amusing, this meme presents a characterization of President Holland that he himself deliberately avoids. I believe that we should follow his example both in not presenting him in such a role and in not presuming it for ourselves. We cannot fight with Satan as we would fight with a mortal enemy. The true struggle is internal. We win only by practicing and teaching repentance, faith in Christ, and obedience to His laws and ordinances.  

While President Holland frequently wrestles with an antagonist, his tone is not typically combative. In twelve of his General Conference sermons, he totally avoids an agonistic approach. He has spoken on motherhood twice in General Conference, and both times he did not identify or battle an antagonist. It seems to me that, in this case, an agon with sin would have distracted from the powerful tribute to women and the Savior. Such reasoning also applies to what seems to me his most uncharacteristic sermon, “Songs Sung and Unsung.” A plea for unity, this message culminates with the following passage: 

And someday I hope a great global chorus will harmonize across all racial and ethnic lines, declaring that guns, slurs, and vitriol are not the way to deal with human conflict. The declarations of heaven cry out to us that the only way complex societal issues can ever be satisfactorily resolved is by loving God and keeping His commandments, thus opening the door to the one lasting, salvific way to love each other as neighbors. 

It makes sense to avoid even metaphorical conflict in a message about belonging that decries divisive rhetoric. President Holland knows when to tread lightly. 

Most of President Holland’s non-agonistic talks were given in the first half of his tenure in the Quorum of the Twelve. In the last fifteen years, when he has treaded lightly, he has done so by setting up an agon and at the same time deemphasizing it. I call this technique “soft-pedaling.” President Holland uses various techniques to soft-pedal, including introducing his antagonist by using subjective, personal rhetoric rather than absolute statements; presenting the antagonist by quoting or paraphrasing someone else (as he does by quoting Elder Neal A Maxwell with regard to “comfortable Christianity” in “Waiting on the Lord”), using images or stories that emphasize discussion rather than conflict, confrontation or struggle. 

The soft-pedaling technique that President Holland uses most often—in what I count as thirteen different sermons—is waiting to introduce his antagonist until after he has delivered over half of his sermon. Instead of building towards a powerful climax, such talks tend to focus on comfort and empathy. A characteristic example is “Because of Your Faith,” a moving tribute to the efforts of church members to provide Christlike service. Implicit in the sermon is an agon with the idea that the unsung service of ordinary church members is somehow inferior to that of visible leaders. President Holland introduces this idea over halfway through the sermon by expressing gratitude, “to the near-perfect elderly sister who almost apologetically whispered recently, “I have never been a leader of anything in the Church. I guess I’ve only been a helper,” I say, “Dear sister, God bless you and all the ‘helpers’ in the kingdom.” Some of us who are leaders hope someday to have the standing before God that you have already attained.” A more direct agonistic treatment may have led to a powerful climax that would have displayed President Holland’s speaking powers, but doing so would have detracted from the idea that the contributions of others are at least as valuable as his. The soft-pedaling allows him to focus on others and, therefore, corresponds with the rhetorical purpose. President Holland sets an example by not only matching the style of his sermons to the message of the Savior but by focusing on the needs of his audience in terms of both content and style.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, our central message is Him—His life, His teachings, and His redemptive mission. That message needs to be the central focus of both what we say and how we say it. We can learn much about how to do this by studying the sermons of President Holland. At their most fiercely agonistic, they follow the scriptural admonition to “rend that veil of unbelief” (Either 4:15), trying to remove the sins, attitudes, and misconceptions that prevent us from drawing closer to God. At their gentlest, they comfort and provide encouragement. But all his sermons focus on the Lord, Jesus Christ. His 1995 sermon, “This Do in Remembrance of Me,” has a passage that helped me in my teenage years develop faith in the Savior:

To those who stagger or stumble, He is there to steady and strengthen us. In the end, He is there to save us, and for all this, He gave His life. However dim our days may seem, they have been darker for the Savior of the world.

In fact, in a resurrected, otherwise perfected body, our Lord of this sacrament table has chosen to retain for the benefit of His disciples the wounds in His hands and His feet and His side —signs, if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and perfect; signs, if you will, that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn’t love you. It is the wounded Christ who is the captain of our soul—He who yet bears the scars of sacrifice, the lesions of love and humility and forgiveness.

Those wounds are what He invites young and old, then and now, to step forward and see and feel (see 3 Ne. 11:15⁠; 18:25⁠). Then we remember with Isaiah that it was for each of us that our Master was “despised and rejected …; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (⁠Isa. 53:3⁠).

I have come to know the Savior, and the quote above was one of the catalysts for that process. 

President Holland has never made his messages about himself. Like John the Baptist, his stance is, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). In a world filled with selfish self-promotion as well as heated diatribes, I want to better follow that example.

Here is a list of President Holland’s antagonists, listed by talk from most recent to earliest. Only talks given in General Conference after his call to the Quorum of the Twelve are included.

“As a Little Child” April 2025—Vanity/ Rote religious practice

“I am He” October 2024—a Dumbed-down version of the Savior

“Motions of a Hidden Fire” April 2024—No main antagonist

“Lifted Up Upon the Cross” October 2022—Divided between 1) the cross as a symbol of Christianity, and 2) Comfortable Christianity (Soft Pedaled)

“Fear Not, Believe Only” April 2022—Divided between: 1) Discouragement, and 2) Suicide (Soft Pedaled)

“The Greatest Possession” October 2021—Incomplete devotion (Soft Pedaled)

“Not as the World Giveth” April 2021—Kind of scattered, but he does have an agon with Compromising our covenants (Soft Pedaled)

“Waiting on the Lord” October 2020—Comfortable Christianity (Soft Pedaled)

“A Perfect Brightness of Hope” April 2020—”Religious Deficiencies” in the Latter Days (Soft Pedaled)

“The Message, the Meaning and the Multitude” October 2019—religious culture and practice without focus on the Savior.

“Behold The Lamb of God” April 2019—irreverence (Soft pedaled)

“The Ministry of Reconciliation” October 2018—contention

“Be with and Strengthen Them” April 2018—rote performance of duty (especially Home Teaching) 

“Be Ye Therefore Perfect—Eventually” October 2017—toxic perfectionism

“Songs Sung and Unsung” April 2017—None

“Emissaries to the Church” October 2016—rote performance of duty

“Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders Among You” April 2016—discouragement (rooted in something related to perfectionism) 

“Behold Thy Mother” October 2015—None

“Where Justice, Love and Mercy Meet” April 2015—existential meaninglessness

“Are We Not All Beggars?” October 2014—apathy for the poor. 

“The Cost—And the Blessings—of Discipleship” April 2014—comfortable Christianity

“Like a Broken Vessel” October 2013—mental health challenges/attitudes about mental health

“Lord, I Believe” April 2013—doubt

“The First Great Commandment” October 2012—looking back (to the former life, before conversion)

“The Laborers in the Vineyard” April 2012—misperceptions about the justice of God (based on 1) envy, 2) bitterness, 3) feeling that you are irredeemable) 

“We Are All Enlisted” October 2011—incomplete devotion

“An Ensign to the Nations” April 2011—comfortable Christianity (Soft Pedaled)

“Because of Your Faith” October 2010—the idea that the contribution of ordinary members is lesser (Soft Pedaled)

“Place No More for the Enemy of My Soul” April 2010—lust

“Safety for the Soul” October 2009—hearts failing in the last days, despair, and despondency

“None Were with Him” April 2009—feeling that God has abandoned you

“The Ministry of Angels” October 2008—fear, discouragement

“My Words…Never Cease” April 2008—the idea that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not Christian

“The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He has Sent” October 2007—the idea that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not Christian

“The Tongue of Angels” April 2007—unkind words. 

“Prophets in the Land Again” October 2006—no central antagonist (though a brief agon with 1) —the idea that the leaders of the Church are out of touch, and 2) the idea that it is possible to go too far away from the saving grace of God) 

“Broken Things to Mend” April 2006—the idea that we are broken beyond repair

“To Young Women” October 2005—unrealistic standards of beauty (Soft Pedaled)

“Our Most Distinguishing Feature” April 2005—the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers (Soft Pedaled)

“Prophets, Seers and Revelators” October 2004—none

“Abide in Me” April 2004—casual commitment (Soft-pedaled)

“The Grandeur of God” October 2003—misconceptions about the nature of God 

“A Prayer for the Children” April 2003—cynicism or skepticism, incomplete devotion

“Called to Serve” October 2002—none

“The Other Prodigal” April 2002—jealousy, envy

“Like a Watered Garden” October 2001—none

“Witnesses unto Me” April 2001—none

“Sanctify Yourselves” October 2000—amusement (Soft Pedaled)

“As Doves to Our Windows” April 2000—ingratitude

“An High Priest of Good Things to Come” October 1999—hopelessness

“The Hands of the Fathers” April 1999—fatherlessness

“Personal Purity” October 1998—sexual Immorality

“A Teacher Come from God” April 1998—uninspired teaching

“He Hath Filled the Hungry with Good Things” October 1997—spiritual emptiness, focus on temporal things

“Because She is a Mother” April 1997—none

“The Peaceable Things of the Kingdom” October 1996—none 

“A Handful of Meal and a Little Oil” April 1996—none

“This Do in Remembrance of Me” October 1995—taking the Sacrament lightly (rote religious practice) 

“Our Priesthood Legacy” April 1995—none

“Miracles of the Restoration” October 1994—none

The post When Prophets Speak Meekly and Still Pierce the Heart appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Joseph Smith often spoke of miraculous things the way others might speak of the weather. Details that would have sent people reeling were, for him, offered in passing. He described visions, angelic visitors, and heavenly councils with the ease of someone reporting familiar events. When asked about sacred mysteries, he didn’t pause to dramatize. He simply answered. In 1832, in the early spring dust of frontier Ohio, Joseph sat with a few companions and dictated a short theological text. It slipped in quietly, without an announcement. The document, later called A Sample of Pure Language, read more like a spiritual note passed across the room than a formal revelation. Because it wasn’t a revelation.

The topic began with a single question: “What is the name of God in the pure language?”  Joseph’s reply was immediate: “Awman. The Being which made all things in all its parts.” There was no preface, no citation. Just a name, resting between Joseph’s memory and revelation. The spelling later settled as Ahman, and that name began to ripple into hymns, into revelations, into sacred places. A second question followed: “What is the name of the Son of God?” Joseph responded: “The Son Awman, the greatest of all the parts of Awman, except Awman.” The document is compact and unfinished. It offers no grammatical rules, no dictionary, no syntax. But it leaves a pattern. Ahman. Son Ahman. Sons Ahman.

William W. Phelps recognized this. He referred to the document as a specimen of the pure language and copied it into a letter to his wife. Soon, he began to write hymns invoking the name Ahman and included it in editorial work on church publications (Church History Catalog, MS 8532). When preparing the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 78:20), Joseph inserted the phrase “saith Son Ahman.” It wasn’t in the original manuscript, but reflected his evolving vocabulary of Edenic language. For those familiar with the earlier version, the meaning was clear. The language of Eden had been quietly woven into formal scripture. (See Jensen, pp. 385-386.)

In 1838, Joseph declared a valley in Missouri to be Adam-ondi-Ahman, revealed to him by God. The name implied that Adam once stood there with Ahman. The structure mirrored Semitic naming traditions. The revelation gave no explicit definition, but the sense was immediately understood. Adam once stood in the presence of God in that very place. W. W. Phelps had already invoked the name in hymns. Orson Pratt, years later, affirmed what he had learned from the Prophet and the early brethren: that Ahman was a name by which God had been known to Adam. The valley became sacred for what had occurred there, but even more so for what was promised to come. It was understood as the place where the first covenant between heaven and earth had been made, and where that covenant would someday be fulfilled.

What started as a brief Q&A in an Ohio notebook grew into a network of names, rooted in the identity of God, spreading through doctrine, scripture, and song. And yet, the deeper structure of it all remained unspoken. Joseph never laid out the grammar of the pure language. What is left is a set of terms, offered plainly, but arranged with care. By the early 1840s, Joseph Smith entered a new season of instruction. In Nauvoo, he spoke more freely about the nature of God, the structure of eternity, and the roles of divine beings. Revelation came in stages. Some teachings were delivered from the pulpit, while others took shape in more intimate settings. One such setting was the Nauvoo Lyceum, a circle of trusted Saints who explored theology in dialogue with Joseph’s reflections. Joseph often used these moments to teach the process by which he himself received revelation. From these accumulated moments, Joseph began to articulate a divine hierarchy and establish structures that reflected it. Priesthood quorums, the Relief Society, and the vision of an earthly Zion all emerged from this process. They were designed to mirror the divine order of the Elohim as described in the councils of heaven. (See Psalm 82:1; “Nauvoo Lyceum Minutes”; Bushman, pp. 419-430; Flake, ch. 3.)

According to William P. McIntire, who recorded the moment in his journal, Joseph told the group: “The Great God has a name by which He will be called, which is Ahman.” And then he explained that when someone sought divine instruction, when one prayed, there was power in understanding God with a name as a being like Adam. God made mankind in His own image, Joseph said, and that knowledge could become a key to unlocking divine communication. It was a frame of reference. Ahman was the God who looked like Adam, and who still bore that familial connection in His title. Ahman is then a title reflecting the theological pattern Joseph Smith often taught in which the name of God shares a familial relationship with humanity.

Lorenzo Snow later expressed this pattern in a now-famous couplet: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.” Joseph confirmed this principle in his King Follett Discourse, teaching that God was once a mortal being and that mortals, through progression, could become like Him. The name Ahman thus aligns with Joseph’s understanding of revelation as relational. It echoed the belief that humans are not distant from the divine but are deeply connected to it across time, form, and potential.

The Hebrew Bible follows a similar pattern. Names like Daniel, Ezekiel, Elijah, and Adonijah embed divine titles, El, Yah, Adonai, within personal missions. Joseph Smith had no formal training in ancient onomastics, yet he intuited what many philologists later confirmed: sacred names carry layered, relational meaning (Alter, and Noegel). Some Latter-day Saint writers later linked Ahman with “Man of Holiness,” a divine title from the Book of Moses (McConkie, p. 22, and Stapley). The Son was then called “Son of Man,” meaning Son of the Man of Holiness, a theology of relationship encoded in language. For Joseph, the name simply belonged. He offered it without preface or explanation, as if it had always been there. And in a way, it had. This brief note, later titled A Sample of Pure Language, was not a revelation in the formal sense. But it became a spark. Ben Spackman describes revelation as a layered reality, glimpsed in visions, refined through translation, and shaped by years of reflection. That is what this was. A moment of clarity inside a much larger process. 

The name Ahman reflects how Joseph’s revelations often began. Rarely given in a grand vision, but with a question or phrase that opened space for inquiry. It was about being drawn into the pattern. For Joseph and the Saints, this small note became a theological key. It spurred conversations, inspired edits, clarified doctrines, and formed part of the sacred lexicon of Restoration scripture. The name itself is less a solution than an invitation to think relationally, to seek divine patterns, to follow meaning as it accumulates. Revelation, for Joseph, was not something dropped from heaven. It was something shaped by effort. The Restoration came word by word, name by name.

The post The Valley Where Adam Stood with God appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Here is the latest article in our Peacemaking Series. To read the last article: Disagreements Bring Balance: When Silence Isn’t Peace

Few moments are more defining than those shaped by deep personal betrayal. When recalling these moments, the body often reacts before the mind—muscles tighten, the stomach turns, and the memory returns with clarity. The pain may be lasting, the consequences irreversible. In such moments, two responses emerge side by side: anger and forgiveness—two gifts, one in each hand, and while both feel justified, only one can be given.

This is the essential tension at the heart of forgiveness: not a passive emotion, but an active, deliberate, sacred decision. Forgiveness is often couched in dramatic moments of intense pain and wrongdoing, but it also needs to find its way into everyday moments, like when a loved one or stranger says a careless word or performs a negligent action. These small moments of hurt, if unforgiven, can lead to a lifetime’s accumulation of tension and resentment. There is great power for both the offender and the offended in the words, I forgive you. While it is often assumed that forgiveness must be earned, Christian theology and research present a different view. Forgiveness is a gift extended not only to the offender, but also to release and heal the one who forgives.

What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t

Forgiveness is often misunderstood in its meaning and execution, carrying a wide range of meanings across individuals and cultures. Some may conclude it is unattainable before ever fully understanding what it entails. This word deserves a thoughtful unpacking before being dismissed. Clarifications of what forgiveness is and is not can be helpful. 

Forgiveness is not:

• Trusting the person who caused the wrong.
• Earned by the person who caused hurt.
• Forgetting what happened.
• Pretending the offense didn’t hurt.
• Letting the offender perpetuate the harm.
• Reconciliation, or prolonging a relationship.

Forgiveness is:

• A choice to act compassionately. 
• Beginning to feel compassion as you act compassionately.
• Given whether or not the other person shows remorse or change. 
• Something you do for you.
• A perpetual choice and not a single event.

Psychologist Everett Worthington––a leading expert on forgiveness whose research has informed much of the thinking in this article––identifies two forms of forgiveness: decisional and emotional. 

Decisional forgiveness is consciously choosing to forgive—often for our own well-being rather than for the benefit of the offender. 

Emotional forgiveness, by contrast, is when feelings of anger begin to soften into empathy and compassion.

While it is often believed emotions drive actions, research and experience suggest the opposite: choices and behaviors gradually shape feelings. Suggesting that often it may be required to act compassionately, before we feel compassion. Anger’s grip is hard and often shapes our journey with forgiveness. Anger can serve as an emotional strategy to overcome feelings of helplessness. However, as President Nelson taught, “anger never persuades,” and the sensation of control is really an illusion: change is up to the offender just as much as our decision to forgive is up to us.

Forgive For Your Own Sake

Worthington’s research shows forgiveness improves mental and physical health, lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and even boosts the immune system. Forgiveness may not change the offender—but it will change the forgiver.

When we decide to release resentment, we begin to, as one Church leader put it, “rise to a higher level of self-esteem and well-being” characterized by emotional clarity and peace. Choosing to forgive doesn’t deny the pain—it simply refuses to let that pain define our path forward.

Examples of Forgiveness

At one point in early Church history, tensions ran high among members. People were hurting each other, holding grudges, and struggling to move forward. In that setting, the Lord gave a clear, striking command: His followers “ought to forgive one another.” Then He added something sobering. While God alone could decide “whom to forgive,” His disciples were not given that same privilege of discretion. They were “required” to forgive “all.”

It isn’t a suggestion. It isn’t conditional. This is a divine directive for healing and unity. The Lord didn’t ask them to ignore justice—He asked them to make room for His mercy by letting go of their desire to carry the offense any further.

Why would the Lord ask something so hard? Perhaps it is because the Lord knows that holding onto hate keeps our minds dwelling on the past and the offender. Focusing on the offense leaves no room for contemplating and engaging with His healing grace and hope in the present.

Jesus, hanging on the cross, uttered the words while looking at His torturers, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” In that moment, Christ modeled the highest form of forgiveness: extending compassion without having received any apology, show of remorse, or change. He recognized His abusers’ ignorance toward the depths of His pain and the extent of their own sin. Often, offenses are committed in such a state.

Even when buried by regret—when the weight of wrong choices seems too great, or the damage too deep—there is still hope. Healing doesn’t require perfection, only a willingness to turn toward the Savior. His grace reaches to infinite depths. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland tenderly reminds us, “It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.” The same is true for those who have caused wrong. They, too, remain within the reach of divine love, and those who forgive become more like Christ when hoping for their healing. 

The REACH Method

So what is to be done when someone wants to forgive, but doesn’t know how or where to begin?

Start here. The Skyline Research Institute has published a series of short and playful videos focusing on tools and tactics for Peacemaking. These videos expound principles taught in President Nelson’s address “Peacemakers Needed” by complementing them with academic theories in psychology and conflict management. This current article is one in a series of articles published through Public Square, exploring the theories taught in each video more thoroughly.

The following video teaches principles of forgiveness from the perspective of a cat learning to forgive the dog who hurt them.

As shown in the video, these steps give a simple starting place for applying the divine and well-researched principles of forgiveness:

1. Name the Hurt.
Think of the person who hurt you. Let yourself feel the pain. Ask, “What specifically hurts me about this?” Is it betrayal? Injustice? Abandonment?

2. Imagine Speaking to Them.
What would you say if they were sitting before you? Get it all out—no filters. Write it in a letter (even if you never send it).

3. Switch Seats.
Now imagine being them. What might they say? What wounds might they carry? This doesn’t excuse them—it humanizes them.

4. Picture the Two Gifts.
In front of you are two gifts: your forgiveness and your anger. Which will you give them?

This process may need to be repeated many times—that’s okay. Forgiveness is rarely a one-time event. Like any habit, the choice to act with compassion must be practiced, especially in the face of discomfort. It may feel unnatural or insincere at first, but each time we choose kindness, the action becomes a little more familiar, a little more automatic. In any given situation, forgiveness is a muscle that strengthens with use. It’s a neural pathway that, with repetition, begins to favor hope, action, and healing over the depressing and well-worn track of rumination.

If the choice to act compassionately towards an aggressor feels out of reach, recognizing the need to forgive and its benefits is a good place to start. Even aiming for forgiveness softens your heart. Desire to want to forgive.

Based on his research, Worthington developed the REACH method:

• R – Recall the hurt.
• E – Empathize with the offender.
• A – Altruistic gift of forgiveness.
• C – Commit to forgive.
• H – Hold onto forgiveness when emotions rise again.

As the video showed, REACH is enacted step by step by recalling the hurt, imagining the offender’s pain, and choosing to give the “gift” of forgiveness. 

The Choice Is Ours

The reality of pain is undeniable, and its depth is often known only to the individual and God. Life frequently confronts people with shocking and disproportionate suffering, much of it undeserved. Such experiences are not uncommon, though they remain deeply personal and often isolating.

Forgiveness does not erase the past—but it reclaims the future. It is not about denying hurt, but about refusing to let that hurt decide who we become. In a world full of real wounds and imperfect people, forgiveness offers something radical: not control over others, but healing within ourselves. Though anger may offer the illusion of power, only forgiveness frees us from the grip of the past and opens the way to peace. 

As both research and revelation affirm, forgiveness is not just a moral ideal—it is a practiced, powerful, and divine pathway toward emotional, physical, and spiritual renewal. 

The invitation remains: choose the gift of forgiveness. Give it again and again.

The post You Don’t Need to Feel Forgiving to Forgive appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In the fall of each year, the Jewish people observe a holiday called Sukkot, or the Feast of the Tabernacles. This holiday commemorates the miraculous protection God provided to the Children of Israel during their 40-year journey to the promised land. During this week-long celebration, worshippers re-enact aspects of this monumental journey to varying degrees, in particular by worshipping inside a booth called a sukkah, which is intended to represent the tents in which the Children of Israel dwelt, and the cloud, which shadowed and protected the travelers by day. 

While observers typically strive to at least eat all of their meals in the sukkah (including certain symbolic foods), more orthodox observers try to spend as much time in the symbolic dwelling as possible, reciting prayers and reading the Torah. The week culminates with the end of the cycle of Torah reading for the year, after which the cycle immediately begins again. The Feast of the Tabernacles is a joyous holiday, intended both to remember the goodness of God to the Jewish people and to inspire practitioners to turn the spiritual insights of the season into spiritual growth and devotion over the coming year.

In a quite peculiar tradition sometimes disparagingly referred to as “pioneer LARPing,” we send thousands of teenagers into the wild each summer to re-enact the momentous journey of our ancestors across the plains to our own modern promised land, complete with costumes and working handcarts (albeit with much better footwear and supply chain operations). We are a “peculiar people,” and Trek is one quite peculiar example of that. 

For those not familiar with the practice, a Pioneer Trek reenactment is a large-scale camping and hiking activity for youth ages 14-18 put on by the Church at the local level. Typically, the youth dress in pioneer-style clothing, pack everything for the trip (except food) into a sleeping bag and a 5-gallon bucket, and divide into groups or “families” which each work together to pull their own hand carts with all their belongings for three to five days of hiking. During this time, they play pioneer era games, have religious devotionals, learn about real pioneers, and share family history.

Though there were a few instances of Pioneer Trek re-enactments beginning in the 60s, they first gained real popularity among the saints in the United States in 1997, the year of the Mormon Pioneer Trail Sesquicentennial Celebration. The idea quickly caught on, and suddenly, stakes all over the United States, as well as some in other countries, began routinely holding Treks for their youth. Today, most stakes in the United States, as well as many others internationally, hold Trek once every four years for all the youth in their area.

Although it is sometimes criticized as pointless, unnecessarily difficult, or too expensive, Trek is generally quite popular (as evidenced by the thousands of youth who sign up each year) and fulfills an important role in our religious culture. Like the exodus of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, the Latter-day Saint exodus to the Salt Lake Valley was a defining event in church history. Thousands of faithful saints trekked thousands of miles by wagon or handcart, facing trials that beggar comparison in the 21st-century United States. They left behind everything they knew, buried loved ones along the trail, and in some cases never even saw our own “promised land” in the Salt Lake Valley. For many years, most members of the Church could trace their ancestry directly back to the pioneers, and pioneer stories were told and retold as part of rich family histories.

Not by coincidence, the sudden surge in interest in Trek closely followed a huge surge of growth in the Church (between 1947 and 1997, the Church rapidly grew from about 1 million members to about 10 million). Within the span of a few decades, the Church suddenly had an enormous number of members who did not have direct pioneer heritage. The history of the pioneers achieved a new place within our culture—a way to connect us both to literal ancestors, pioneer stock or not, as well as to our spiritual forbears in the faith, regardless of actual ancestry. In this sense, Trek is another way in which the Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled, that the spirit of Elijah would “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.”

The Church’s official guide for Trek leaders states that the goal of Trek is to provide opportunities for youth to “strengthen testimonies, build unity, do family history, learn and appreciate Church history, feel gratitude for the sacrifices of the pioneers and the heritage they provided, appreciate their blessings more fully, seek and find guidance to overcome challenges, focus on serving and rescuing others, [and] learn core gospel principles.” In essence, those excellent goals are accomplished in a few days of hiking by teaching our youth resilience at two levels.

The second and even more important way that this experience teaches resilience is by teaching the reason for that resilience. Several studies have shown that storytelling and family history have a positive effect on identity formation by helping people find a secure place within a family narrative that extends beyond themselves. President Russell M. Nelson said, “When our hearts turn to our ancestors, something changes inside us. We feel part of something greater than ourselves.” 

By connecting their own personal experience of overcoming challenges to the experience of the pioneers, youth on Trek can make a connection between the strength their ancestors (literal, spiritual, or both) drew upon and what they can also draw upon when facing the difficulties of life. That strength is, of course, the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, as the central point of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In speaking of connecting to our pioneer ancestors, Elder Russell M. Ballard said, “I have a deep conviction that if we lose our ties to those who have gone before us, including our pioneer forefathers and mothers, we will lose a very precious treasure. I have spoken about “Faith in Every Footstep” in the past and will continue in the future because I know that rising generations must have the same kind of faith that the early Saints had in the Lord Jesus Christ and His restored gospel.” The stories of the pioneers are filled with ways in which they drew upon the hope and strength of the gospel, so newly restored, to persevere through incredible challenges and tragedies. 

President Dallin H. Oaks said, “It is not enough to study or reenact the accomplishments of our pioneers. We need to identify the great, eternal principles they applied to achieve all they achieved for our benefit and then apply those principles to the challenges of our day. In that way, we honor their pioneering efforts, and we also reaffirm our heritage and strengthen its capacity to bless our own posterity and “those millions of our Heavenly Father’s children who have yet to hear and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.” We are all pioneers in doing so.”

When young people are able to connect to their histories and see their place in a tradition of faith and courage, they are able to go forward in life with confidence, even if that confidence was discovered in the peculiar garb of a 19th century bonnet, a pair of suspenders, or a week in a modern tabernacle.

The post The Sacred Psychology of Pulling a Handcart appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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There is a difference between knowing things about Christ and knowing Him. I feel like I know Christ in the same way I know my favorite football player. I can tell you my favorite player’s stats. I can tell you what team he played on. I can tell you my favorite play of his. But do I know him? No. Does he know me? No. If I were to see him in a crowd, the chances of my walking by him and recognizing him are slim, and the chances of him recognizing me do not exist, because he has never seen me in his life. (It is Barry Sanders by the way—my favorite football player). 

What about Christ? If He were to see me in a crowd, I believe He would recognize me, but would I recognize Him? I don’t know. I know a lot about Him. I have read the scriptures. I have felt His spirit. So why do I feel like I do not know Him yet––I mean, really know Him (Matthew 19:20)? At times, I feel like I do not know Him at all.

I wonder, is this problem unique to me? Sometimes I feel like I am outside looking in on everyone else’s relationship with Him and concluding they all figured it out. But I am convinced of this less and less the more I think about it. I don’t know Christ as well as I would like to. But I am actively, desperately pursuing Him, as if my very life depends on it. 

Understanding Meekness

My favorite scripture in the New Testament is,

“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

The Lord describes Himself many times in scripture, but almost exclusively in the form of a title or testament to Himself: “I am the Lord,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the living bread,” “I am he that comforteth you,” “I am Jesus Christ,” and so forth. This is unique. This is among the few times the Lord describes Himself using a character trait in the first-person. (Only once else does He describe Himself like this in D&C 76:5 as “merciful and gracious.”) And yet, because He is perfect, He could have used any word. He could have said, “I am humble,” or “I am love”––as so many Christians today declare He is. But the Lord did not. He chose “I am meek.” To me, these are some of the most important words He uttered, because they are the words I can most easily connect to. For example, I cannot learn how to become the Living Bread—that is Christ’s job. But I can learn to be meek. And as I do, I will come to know Him. 

Pray As If He Is Listening

The greatest thing as a dad is not how much you teach your children, but how much you learn from them. I learned how to pray, I mean really pray, from my son. He is 5 now, but has prayed since about 3 years old. He is the only person I have ever heard pray for Christ. 

A stake president changed my perspective on prayer. Very seriously, he said, “I thought I knew how to pray before I became a stake president.” Convinced we saints do not know how to pray, he pointed out, at the rate and the content by which we pray, “we ought never to get sick.” He asked, “How many of you say this in your prayers, ‘Please bless the food that it may nourish and strengthen our bodies, that we may be strong and healthy.’?” A chuckle hovered around the room as everyone realized they likely said that very phrase at the breakfast table that morning. 

He challenged us to pray, to really pray. To stop “vain repetitions” as the Savior plainly asked, and to start praying from the heart (Matthew 6:7). To begin a prayer in silence, put away the “grocery list of demands,” and just listen for a change. I forgot that until years later when I witnessed my son, a 3-year-old boy, pray more fervently and sincerely than his 28-year-old father. My son humbled me (Matthew 18:3-5). He talks to Heavenly Father as if He is there and listening:

“Dear Heavenly Father,

How are you?

Please bless Jesus, He must be tired.

I miss you.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

How many hours have I wasted in meaningless prayer (Alma 33:11)? Those were opportunities to get to know God, which in turn would allow me to know Christ, for They are One (3 Nephi 11:27). I don’t know how to pray like my son—that beautiful, innocent boy. Perhaps I can start by praying as if God is listening.

Learning Who He Is Not

Strangely, I learned a lot about Christ from reading The Iliad. This 3000-year-old story about the Trojan War and Greek Gods helped clarify the character of Christ (D&C 88:118). In the second book, Zeus—the Father of the Greek Gods—is frustrated that the Greek and Trojan armies stopped fighting. Wanting the fighting to continue, Zeus convinces the Greek army general, Agamemnon, to continue the fighting by showing Agamemnon a vision of himself winning the war and obtaining great glory. However, Zeus lied. Agamemnon would suffer an ignominious death. Zeus needed the fighting to resume, and he could only do that by making Agamemnon think he was on Agamemnon’s side.

Reading that story, I sat back in my chair and chuckled. “Man,” I said, “can you imagine believing in a God who could lie to you?” Then the question turned serious: What if I believed in a God who could lie to me? What if Christ can lie? How could I truly trust Him? Do I believe in the character of Christ as I have come to learn it—both from others and as I have encountered it personally?  

Questions like these “arouse [my] faculties” (Alma 32:26-27). I have grown stronger because I have learned to approach tough and difficult questions “by faith” (D&C 88:118). I began a quest to discover what I do believe about Christ. I truly believe Christ will not and cannot lie to me (Titus 1:2). He is not a liar. He is trustworthy; someone who follows through on His word (2 Samuel 7:28). And, when I have put that to the test, He has never failed (D&C 82:8-10). I came to a better understanding of Christ’s “perfect character” by considering the things He is not (BD Faith). Perhaps, if you want to know who Christ is, you must first learn who He is not.

Spending Time With Him

My favorite restaurant is Macadoo’s in Lexington, Virginia, about 6 miles from where I completed my undergraduate education. While I love the food there (it has my favorite burger), that is not why it is my favorite. Today, I can still point out the table where my wife and I sat for our first date 9 years ago. We would have many more dates there, both before and after our marriage. I got to know the woman I would spend the rest of my life with in that restaurant.  

During the last few years on my journey of knowing Christ, I have often contrasted my experience of getting to know my wife with getting to know Christ. I have spent a lot of time with my wife, and I know her very well. But I have not spent as much time with Christ. 

About a year ago, my wife and I were called as temple ordinance workers in the Lubbock Temple. Spending time in the temple together has strengthened our marriage, increased my understanding of gospel principles, and confirmed to me the reality of the work we do as saints. I did not expect how much more I would come to know Christ as I spent time serving in the temple. The temple is the “House of the Lord” after all (Isaiah 2:2-3). I should have known I would encounter Him there, get to know Him, and become comfortable with Him (Malachi 3:1)––just as I did with my wife at Macadoo’s. 

One day in the temple—while working at a specific place, performing a certain ordinance––I kept making small mistakes that felt like they took away from the spirit of the ordinance. This particular ordinance requires both the worker and the patron to be in harmony with one another, as if you are dance partners, going back and forth until the ordinance is over. Not until the final patron did I finally perform my part of the “dance” in a way I felt acceptable. The patron and I were working in complete harmony (Matthew 18:20). As we flowed and connected, I suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling, and a voice popped into my head, “This is what it is to know Me.” 

Knowing Christ means to be in harmony with His will and feel connected to Him, to know what is expected of you and perform according to that expectation when the time comes (D&C 4:2-3), like dance partners moving and flowing with each other.  

We may not get to know Christ the ‘conventional’ way––the same way we get to know our spouse or friend. But, I don’t think He ever intended getting to know Him to be the ‘conventional’ way. Getting to know Him looks different. We come to know Him through the Spirit (Matthew 16:15-17). We may not know how to do that at first, so maybe we just start by sharing moments with him. Simply put—spend time with Him.

The Price to Know Him

I imagine my life 5 years from now. If at that point in my future I know Christ, I mean really know Christ, what would it have cost me? Would there be any price or sacrifice that would lead me to say, “That is too much”? I don’t think so. I would rather limp into the Celestial Kingdom knowing I paid the price to know Him than sprint into the Terrestrial Kingdom unscathed by the burdens of discipleship (Hebrews 12:1-3). I tire of feeling like I just know a lot about my Savior. I want to know Him as if I knew the sound of His voice and the curves of His face (Alma 5:14). I will come to a better understanding of meekness; to pray like He is actually listening; to learn who He is as I learn who He is not; and I will spend as much time as I can with Him. Then in the end it will all be worth it because “when he shall appear [I] shall be like him; for [I] shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, and 1 Corinthians 13:12).

The post Why Knowing Doctrine Isn’t the Same as Knowing Christ appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In 2023, the Utah Legislature expanded access to full-day kindergarten in Utah by passing HB 477. Kelsey, a mother of four whose two older children had already completed half-day kindergarten, didn’t initially think this amendment was necessary or important. Half-day kindergarten had worked just fine for Kelsey, who only works part-time and lives close to her children’s school. She enjoyed the extra time with her kids and had honestly felt a bit self-righteous about her willingness to absorb the minor inconveniences of half-day kindergarten. However, after talking with her daughter’s kindergarten teacher and some friends, she realized that full-day kindergarten was extremely beneficial for many families.

In The Family: A Proclamation to the World, church leaders have asked members and “responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society” (Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102).  Kelsey’s experience with HB 477 was a turning point for her with regard to what constitutes good policy. She realized that her personal experiences may not always be reliable metrics for what will help families and societies, and the best measures we can support are often those that broadly strengthen families while also allowing for individual preferences and circumstances. Our shared values as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly those outlined in the Family Proclamation, are also vital in our quest to understand and support good family policy. 

As Latter-day Saint values and behaviors have become outliers in Western culture, Latter-day Saints’ views on the family and the standards that protect it are increasingly held in derision. As a result, people with power seek to change laws and cultural norms to favor policies that harm rather than help the traditional family. In general, the press holds the same liberal views. Recent articles about Utah’s employment pattern bemoan the fact that so many Utah women work part-time compared to women in other states—with 36.4% of Utah women working part-time, compared to 28.7% nationally—and ignore the possibility that women with families might desire part-time work. Many “progressive” policies actively demean wifehood, motherhood, “old-fashioned” sexual standards, and even the value of men and fatherhood. 

Conservative policies not based on science or common sense also endanger women and families. Immigration policies that separate parents and children create both immediate and generational family trauma. Conflating contraception access with abortion or morality can restrict healthy family planning and ignores evidence that when contraception is widely available, elective abortions decrease. An ectopic pregnancy is a death sentence for both the mother and child—a medical emergency which many emergency doctors are concerned about treating in states with radically conservative abortion laws. Additionally, portraying the demise of the family as simply the result of a failing culture or poor individual choices ignores the economic difficulties that contribute to familial instability. 

In her book The Two-Parent Privilege, Melissa Kearney demonstrates that “marriage is the most reliable institution for delivering a high level of resources and long-term stability for children.” Yet 40% of American children currently do not live with married parents and are part of a demographic shift that primarily affects the most economically disadvantaged Americans. Marriage is now an economic metric in the United States, and college education has become one of the biggest precursors for marriage. While Kearney argues that marriage is vital to the stability and success of children, she also notes that “helping children [in America] will require … addressing the widespread economic and social challenges that hold back millions of adults—challenges including joblessness, mass incarceration, untreated mental illness, and the opioid epidemic, among others.”

Add to this the increasing pressure on youth, as Gen Z is more depressed than any generation before them. This is not only due to social media. The liberal sexual agenda pursued in Western countries introduces the idea that children deserve and can manage sexual autonomy, while children are also increasingly exposed to pornography. Currently, the UN is considering a treaty to combat cybercrimes that would actually allow child pornography if it is created by AI (though this would still be considered illegal in the US). This shocking allowance and unwillingness of the global community to fight or condemn porn is terrifying.

Additionally, according to Stanford sociology professor Michael Rosenfeld in Bloomberg, many young adults in the U.S. have given up on marriage and family, and have become even slower to develop “the ability to form and sustain romantic relationships.” These shifts—paired with dissatisfaction with dating apps, now one of the most common ways to meet someone—have disrupted the world of dating. As Pew Research Center found in 2020, “Fully half of single adults say they are not currently looking for a relationship or dates,” which creates an opportunity for companies like Replika, which offers lonely adults a relationship with an “AI companion who cares.”

Failing Societies Fail Families

While families in the United States face significant cultural and economic struggles, family disintegration is a global concern. Families from war-torn or economically struggling countries face particularly overwhelming challenges. Kelsey’s friend Luz* is a member of the Church from Honduras, a country where almost 80% of the population lives in extreme poverty and where gang violence and government corruption are rampant. Luz never knew her birth father, and after her stepfather abandoned her mother and her three younger half-brothers, Luz had to provide for her family as her mother slipped deeper into alcoholism and other destructive behaviors. Luz became a mother herself in her early twenties, feeling that it was the “only way to leave home and have a better future.” Her then-partner had completed his bachelor’s degree, something “that amazed me because I thought it was something very distant for me to achieve … [so] I felt that I had to settle for giving someone children who had achieved what I hadn’t.” Unfortunately, Luz’s relationship turned abusive, and while her ex still provides occasional child support, Luz is now a single mother.

Luz’s situation is not unique in Honduras. In Adrienne Pine’s book, Working Hard, Drinking Hard, she explores the high violence and poverty rates in Honduras. She notes that in recent decades, “Honduran women are increasingly taking on the role of primary wage earners of the household, yet they are still expected to fulfill ‘traditional roles, including child-rearing. In the face of a very changed family … [this] has led many Hondurans to argue that the ‘breakdown’ of the family, rather than the social and economic forces behind this transformation, is responsible for the growth of gangs” (33).

Pine’s conclusion demonstrates what we are missing as a global community when we dismiss the importance of the family to society. While Pine rightfully acknowledges the complex social and economic factors that Honduran families face, both things can be true: there are social and economic forces driving the destabilization of families, and the breakdown of the family also contributes to this societal instability. We do ourselves no favors by overlooking the family’s importance in society or when we oversimplify complex problems by ignoring the social and economic concerns that affect families. As Luz thoughtfully observes, 

… [the suffering in Honduras] is heartbreaking to witness, and there’s a deep sense of impotence in seeing people—especially children—suffer the consequences of something they had no control over. When the family unit weakens, people look for belonging and security elsewhere. While there are many factors contributing to societal unrest, I personally believe that strong, stable families provide a foundation that can prevent a lot of these issues … [and] strengthening families requires both structural changes and individual commitments. 

A Spiritual Problem

So, what are the structural changes and individual commitments we should support? What measures and policies effectively strengthen families? Currently, all OECD countries except Israel face population implosion because of declining childbirth. Many of these countries have been trying to pay women to have more babies, but even the most generous policies are not working. In Catherine Ruth Pakaluk’s book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, she examines why children are undervalued or not prioritized even in countries with welcoming family and childcare policies. She demonstrates that, despite popular notions that favorable government policies can bring about increased births, births and child-rearing need to be informed by beliefs that bearing children has greater purpose or worth: “Cash incentives and tax relief won’t persuade people to give up their lives [to have children]. People will do that for God, for their families, and for their future children.” While government policies supporting families are positive, people will only have children if they believe children and life are worthwhile—even divinely sanctioned. To enact policies that support the family, hearts must change to see the ultimate, shining value of families as the anchor of society.

Members of the Church would do well to bravely (it will take bravery!) lift the Proclamation as a standard for the world. At the very least, we can become involved in community efforts to strengthen the family with the Proclamation as our guiding light. We can help support church initiatives that strengthen families within the Church, as well as the Church’s global initiatives that look at broader economic challenges families face. We should also look for ways to research and support measures proffered by other governments and organizations. As Elder Oaks has reminded us, “Despite all that our Church does directly, most humanitarian service to the children of God worldwide is carried out by persons and organizations having no formal connection with our Church. And as Orson F. Whitney observed: “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. … It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people. As members of the restored Church, we need to be more aware and more appreciative of the service of others.” We also need to motivate ourselves and others in the Church to participate broadly in the community and be open to dialogue and problem-solving that transcend differences in religion, political party, and even personal family circumstances. 

Kelsey and her husband are monthly donors to The Fistula Foundation, an organization that helps women in the poorest areas of the world recover from devastating childbirth injuries that leave women incontinent, isolated, and sometimes infertile. Gale has taken many young adults into her home over the years as they have gone through rough patches, helping them mature into potential responsible spouses and parents themselves. As her family lived abroad for years, they encountered people who cited them as the only happy family they had ever met. These are small things, but they are still lights in a world where the family is struggling. What can you do?

In Doctrine and Covenants, Section 101:42–63, the Lord presents us with a parable, wherein the Lord of the vineyard instructs his workers to build a tower and set a watchman in place to protect the vineyard. Since it’s a time of peace, the workers never get around to finishing the tower, and the enemy breaks through the hedge and destroys the vineyard. Bemoaning the situation, the Lord of the vineyard says, “… the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer.” 

As Latter-day Saints, we have a vineyard, a hedge, a tower, and a watchman, while the world is becoming increasingly self-involved and blind. The world is inviting the destroyer into our countries, our states, our communities, our homes, and our families. The enemy is no longer afar off but is breaching the wall. Our personal abilities or means may be small, but we can all find ways to support measures and policies that strengthen the family.

The post The New Front Line in the Fight for the Family appeared first on Public Square Magazine.