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I served as the Primary music leader for many years, and over time, I watched as the children clearly indicated with their smiles and enthusiasm which Primary songs were among their favorites. It is no surprise that the kids cherish Janice Kapp Perry’s A Child’s Prayer.

Adult members love this Primary song too, perhaps because the lyrics express the fragility of our faith.  As the devout Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor points out, in our secular world, religious faith is continually “cross-pressured;” that is, non-believing scientific materialists frequently call the veracity of our religious beliefs into question.

A Child’s Prayer begins with two sobering rhetorical questions:  

Heavenly Father, are you really there?
And do you hear and answer every child’s prayer?

The first stanza concludes with a hopeful tone:

Some say that heaven is far away,
But I feel it close around me as I pray.

As with the Primary children, in reaching toward heaven in this way, all our prayers, at least in some measure, constitute an attempt to confirm that God is really there.

Let’s review the concept of prayer and the central role that prayer plays in the life of a Latter-day Saint. Let’s consider what kinds of prayer there are. What do the scriptures teach us about how to pray?  And perhaps most importantly, what does it mean for a prayer to be answered?

Although we often think of prayer generically, prayer takes many forms. Prayers of thanksgiving, such as the blessings we say over our food, constitute the more quotidian types of prayer. Liturgical prayers, the most formal category, are recited in rote form as part of our worship services.  Liturgical prayers project a mystical quality, reminding us of the miracles we are contemplating. That we recount rote prayers at baptisms, the temple endowment, and the blessing of the sacrament reinforces our belief that God is mindful of these ordinances, having set forth specific language for us to hear in connection with them, that “they may always have His spirit to be with them” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:76-79).

All these varieties of prayer are familiar to us, but it is petitionary prayer, perhaps, that is our most common conception of prayer. These are prayers in which we petition Heavenly Father for specific blessings, hoping that He will grant us the righteous desire of our hearts. Pleading for a loved one to be healed of a serious illness, asking for success with a new job application, or imploring for a successful pregnancy—all these are examples of petitionary prayers.

Many of our petitionary prayers are not answered in the way we would hope. Consider the countless millions of prayers offered up in times of deep human despair that appear to go unanswered. Prayers from Auschwitz, Poland, during World War II, and from the New Orleans slave auction in the Antebellum South are chilling examples. Our beliefs assure us that God hears such prayers, but He often seems to answer them in ways we do not expect and cannot understand. This is why it is important to consider what it means for a prayer to be answered.

The scriptures clearly outline the methods, contours, and boundary conditions of prayer. Alma taught us to “counsel with the Lord in all thy doings” (Alma 37:39); his colleague Amulek reminded us that Alma’s admonition extends to prayer over temporal things: “Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks …” and “… Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them” (Alma 34:20 & 24). We learn from Enos that sometimes it is necessary to spar spiritually with our Father in Heaven. Enos recorded, “I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God” (Enos 1).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul helps us understand that sometimes in our extremity, we are bruised and battered, finding ourselves speechless at the hour of prayer. In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that in such times of despair: “… we know not what we should pray for … but the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). Sometimes we commune with God by opening our hearts to Him without saying a word, with “groanings that cannot be uttered.”

The Epistle of James succinctly summarizes what the scriptures teach about prayer: The “fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much” (James 5:16).

Examples from the scriptures of first prayers are especially instructive. Joseph Smith’s initial foray into praying out loud was truly remarkable. From the “boy’s first uttered prayer,” we learn that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that a restoration of the gospel was at hand. Joseph Smith’s first prayer was surely among the most important prayers ever formed by the tongue of man. Following the boy prophet’s example, we should take to heart the admonition that “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God” (James 1:5).

The inaugural prayer of King Lamoni’s Father, recorded in the Book of Mormon, is another poignant example of a first prayer. Upon introduction to the gospel by Aaron, one of the missionary sons of Mosiah, the powerful and worldly king articulates his very first prayer. In truly striking humility, he prays that “if there is a God,” as Aaron had assured him, “I will give away all my sins to know thee” (Alma 22:18). In this fascinating pronouncement, the ancient American king summarizes the ultimate purpose of prayer: to know God and thereby give away all our sins. How ironic to have a heathen, Lamanite king teach us so eloquently on this point of doctrine. Sometimes burgeoning faith is faith in its purest form.  

A unique feature of personal prayer relates to the intrinsic honesty that inevitably accompanies this private dialogue with God. When we kneel in secret prayer before the all-seeing eye of God, no pretense or deception is possible. We are completely exposed in the naked reality of our imperfections. Knowing this, our private prayers take on a no-nonsense quality that is perhaps unparalleled in other arenas of human discourse.

The 19th-century American author and literary critic Mark Twain famously emphasized this truism about prayer in his iconic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At a key juncture in the story, Huck considers promising God that, going forward, he will change his wicked ways and do the right thing. But being honest with himself, he ultimately concludes that his commitment is not earnest and that he cannot deceive God in any case.  

“I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing,” Huck says, “… but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out” (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

The context of this scene is complex; Huckleberry was already doing “the right thing.” But he made the essential point nonetheless. That we cannot pray a lie means that our dialogue with God can cut to the chase and be brutally honest and sometimes painfully authentic.

This humble quest to live a holy life, as reflected in the aspirations of The Lord’s Prayer, stands in stark contrast to the puffed-up confidence in the arm of flesh we see in our secular world. The militant atheists of our day point a scornful, derisive finger at those who pray, asserting that prayer is a silly, superstitious act, likening prayer to black magic or a sorcerer’s spell. In these criticisms, these sanctimonious nay-sayers of prayer unwittingly reveal a key element at the foundation of true prayer.  The spells of black magic in literature and legend typically involve a deal with the devil, in which the petitioner agrees to sell his soul in exchange for fortune, power, or fame.  

True prayer, in stark contrast, necessarily requires a promise on the part of the petitioner to live a holier life, one that is more full of love and honor, compassion and sacrifice. Rather than selling one’s soul as in black magic, true prayer is an effort to perfect it. In this sense, prayer is indeed magical. Perhaps this is the main reason that the Book of Mormon reminds us that the “evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray” (2 Nephi 32:8). The adversary seeks to prevent the soul-perfecting magic of prayer from happening.

So what does it mean for a prayer to be answered? There are, of course, many responses to this thought-provoking question. There is no doubt that many petitionary prayers are answered as we hope.  The God we worship is a loving God. We sometimes receive, as the Psalmist refers to them, “tender mercies” (Psalms 25:6), and as did the Old Testament’s Gideon, “dry fleeces” on the dew-soaked ground (Judges 6:39).

Our God “is a God of miracles” (2 Nephi 27:23). He will sometimes do great works among us, as He did when he delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego from Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace (Daniel 3).  But many times the hoped-for blessings do not materialize, and the fiery furnace burns on—when the loved one’s illness is not cured, the hoped-for job offer does not come, the longed-for pregnancy is not realized. These are the times when answering the question “What does it mean for a prayer to be answered?” takes on special significance. Among the many answers that one could offer, perhaps chief among them is that a prayer is answered when a soul is transformed through prayer.

The prayers we say over our food simply illustrate this assertion. When we say a blessing before our meals, we don’t think that something miraculous happens to the food. The miracle is taking place in our hearts. Through a brief prayer over “our daily bread,” we acknowledge the bounty of the earth, this life as a gift, that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). When said earnestly, such a prayer changes us a little for the better, reminding us that “man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4).

Let’s return now to the Primary children and their beloved song, A Child’s Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I remember now

Something that Jesus told disciples long ago:

“Suffer the children to come to me.”

Father, in prayer I’m coming now to thee.

Pray, he is there;

Speak, he is list’ning.

You are his child;

His love now surrounds you.

He hears your prayer;

He loves the children.

Of such is the kingdom, the kingdom of heav’n.

God’s ways are often inscrutable to His creatures, but we can be reassured that He hears our prayers and answers them in ways that always bless us over the long haul. Earnest prayer transforms us. Speak, He is listening.

The post Heavenly Father, Are You Really There? On What It Means for a Prayer to Be Answered 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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Have you ever wondered why your faith sometimes feels boring, distant, or even disconnected from real life?

Almost as if it stopped breathing? Sure, it may look polished on the outside—reverent language, familiar rituals—but inside, it feels hollow, breathless. Where’s the fire? Where’s the passion that once burned hot in your soul? 

I think about this a lot. And I believe the problem isn’t necessarily your faith, not exactly. Perhaps it’s the version of God you were handed down from European Christianity: flawless, yes, but distant, unmoving,  untouchable. Beautiful, yes, but cold, or at least seeming uninvolved. What if that version of God doesn’t come from scripture? What if it comes from philosophy? And what if the God of scripture isn’t breathless at all? What if He walks, weeps, and speaks—and still calls your name?

Maybe faith feels dry not because it’s untrue, but because something vital is missing: a God who is present and breathing. But what if the God we’ve inherited isn’t the God of scripture, but the God of Greek philosophy (Hopkins), a God who is abstract and breathless? My purpose today is to trace how Christianity drifted from a relational, covenantal, embodied God to an abstract, breathless idea, and how the Restoration calls us back to fire, presence, and breath. 

When Faith was Fire

The God of Abraham is the God who walks in gardens and dines in tents. He speaks from burning bushes and thunders from mountaintops. Yet, He whispers in stillness, too. He is near. He hears the cries of slaves, sees the tears of barren women, and calls shepherds, wanderers, and prophets. He makes covenants sealed with sacrifice, smoke, and fire. His faithfulness isn’t distant; it’s fierce and generational, extending mercy to generations of those who love Him. He is not just spirit. He appears. He wrestles. He rejoices. He weeps. He binds. He is not merely King. He is Bridegroom. Father. Redeemer. Friend. His laws are not rules imposed from afar, but the terms of a relationship written on hearts. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph Smith. A God not of distance, but of nearness. A God who dwells with us. A God who calls us to adventure!

When Faith Lost Its Fire

Somewhere along the way, God stopped speaking and started “being.” The God who once walked in gardens, whispered in dreams, and thundered on mountaintops was slowly replaced by a principle—eternal, unmoved, and untouched. Greek philosophers, like Plato, taught that truth and perfection meant being above change, above feeling, above relationship, above anything material or physical. To them, the highest truth is abstract and unchanging, like a flawless idea, and not a living person. Philo of Alexandria took those ideals and fused them with Hebrew scripture, reframing the God of Abraham as the Logos—rational, remote, and impersonal (Runia, 1986). Over time, this vision took hold. God became less someone to walk with and more something to explain, intellectually. We didn’t mean to lose Him; we just began to prefer concept over covenant. He stopped being the God who hears and responds, and started becoming the God who simply “is.” (See Elder Holland’s “The Only True God and Jesus Christ whom He has Sent”; Also Elder Maxwell’s explanation of the Hellenization of Christianity in “From the Beginning.”) 

When God became a concept instead of a presence, worship began to hollow out. Church became ritual: beautiful, yes; majestic, yes; but often cold. We stand and sit at the right times, recite the right words, sing the hymns, and bow our heads. But sometimes, we leave wondering if anyone on either end is truly listening. Prayer, once a conversation with a living God, becomes a kind of performance. We worry more about saying the “right” thing than pouring out our real hearts. We filter our words for acceptability, not vulnerability. Even commandments, which were once invitations into deeper covenant, start to feel like items on a spiritual to-do list, items to worship. And the routine feels like this: obey, report, repeat. Instead of being drawn into God’s presence, we measure our worth by how well we keep score with, and report on, the commandments.

And yet, I believe something inside us aches for more. We long not just to follow rules, but also to feel known (1 Corinthians 13:12). We don’t just want to be obedient. We want to be held. But in a system where God is perfect but untouchable, holy but inaccessible, it’s easy to lose that hope. The truth is, when we turn God into a concept, we don’t just lose warmth, we also lose relationship. We keep the worshipful words but miss out on the voice that draws us near to God. Faith becomes less like a fire in the bones and more like a principle to memorize. And deep down, many of us feel it: it’s breathless.

To see how far we’ve drifted, look at the contrast: two very different visions of God—one abstract and distant, the other relational and near.

In the above table, you may notice that you can replace the words “The Conceptual God of Plato” with the words “Principle,” or “Laws of Nature,” or “Christianity’s version of Deity in the Trinity,” and the concepts explained under this title remain the same. That is because a portion of our culture has embraced Platonism as our form of truth. We may thus become tempted to worship this Platonic truth. The downside to this type of worship is a faith that feels platonic; and like a platonic relationship, our relationship with God feels hollow. This isn’t a critique of sincere Christian belief or the deep love many Christians have for God. Rather, it’s a reminder that theology is often shaped by the cultural and intellectual forces of its time. My aim isn’t to dismiss Christian tradition but to point out that the Restoration invites us to recover a more relational, embodied view of God. 

When Breath Was Restored

What happened in a quiet grove in 1820 was more than a revelation. It was a return of the breathing God. Let me take you back: It is a quiet spring morning. A teenage boy, confused by the religious noise around him, walks into a grove of trees—not to start a revolution, but simply to plead for his soul. The earth is still damp from winter. With awkward faith and a heart full of yearning, Joseph Smith kneels to pray. And heaven breathes again. Light pierces through the trees, brighter than the sun, descending gently until it rests upon him. In that moment, two glorified Beings are standing before him. They call him by name. They answer his prayer. This is not metaphor. It is encounter. This is not abstraction. It is relationship. Joseph sees with his eyes and hears with his ears. God has a face, a voice, and a body. This isn’t a footnote in theology; it is a rebuke of centuries of silence. It shatters the idea of a distant, untouchable God and reintroduces the God who walks, speaks, weeps, and calls.

When Fire was Restored

The God of Joseph Smith reveals Himself to be personal. From this vantage point, doctrine and principles become means to helping the children of God connect with Him. What is an intimate encounter becomes a relatable truth. Truth as person. The Restoration doesn’t just give us new scripture. It gives us back a God who is present and invested. The God who appeared to Joseph is not an abstraction; He is Father. He is personal. He is faithful, not in the sense of being unchangeable by constraint, but in being unwavering in love, yet responsive in relationship. He listens, teaches, corrects, and comforts. This God is not intangible. He is embodied. He has a glorified, tangible body, as seen and testified to in both ancient and modern scripture. He appears, speaks, blesses, and even wrestles (Genesis 32). He is emotional: He rejoices in our growth, grieves in our rebellion, weeps at our suffering, and shows mercy. As President Russell M. Nelson testified, “Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son want you back home with Them! …They will do anything within Their power that does not violate your agency or Their laws to help you come back” (original emphasis). His laws are not distant principles to which He submits; they are extensions of His character: relational, covenantal, and purposeful. He is not merely the Lawgiver; He is the Covenant-Keeper. He does not stand distant from creation; He enters it. He does not float in abstract perfection; He binds Himself to imperfect people, again and again, with grace and patience.

This is the God of Joseph—not a god of the philosophers, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who breathes, who speaks, who suffers, and who saves. The God who does not merely exist above all things, but who is “through all things”, and “in all things”, the very light of truth and life (Doctrine and Covenants 88: 6-13; there you notice nature is not governed by laws of nature, but by the light of Christ coming from the presence of God). It is this relational, covenantal, embodied God that the restoration calls us to remember and to worship anew. For example, in Genesis 18, Abraham’s negotiation with God over Sodom’s fate directly contradicts the philosophical concept of an impassive deity. Rather than an untouchable, unchangeable God beyond space and relationship, we see a divine willingness to engage in dialogue, consider human appeals, and adjust judgment based on our intercession. Indeed, as Abraham boldly negotiates from fifty righteous people down to just ten, God responds each time with patience and flexibility. This scriptural account reveals a God who is present, responsive to prayer, emotionally engaged, and who operates through covenant relationship rather than abstract principles, showing divine power through compassionate condescension rather than detached perfection.

In truth, the restoration calls us to trade aesthetic form for fire, to move from verbal precision to presence. In this restored gospel, truth is not an abstract concept floating above us; it’s a voice that speaks, calls, and answers. The Atonement is not a cosmic force we tap into, it’s Jesus Christ Himself, kneeling in a garden, bleeding from every pore, reaching for us with nail-scarred hands. Obedience is no longer a transaction to earn favor, it’s a covenant, a relationship that binds us to a God who already loves us, already chose us, and walks beside us. And everything changes. Reading scripture becomes less about mining for principles and more about meeting a living God in the text. Prayer stops being a ritual and starts becoming a conversation. Forgiveness stops being a moral ideal and becomes an act of healing a relationship. Love ceases to be a virtue we aim for and becomes a way of binding ourselves to one another and to Him. The Restoration invites us to more than abstract faith—it invites us to communion with the divine. It is thus not about being good enough for God, but it’s about belonging to Him. As Elder Christofferson said, “In the end, it is the blessing of a close and abiding relationship with the Father and the Son that we seek.”

So where’s the fire? Maybe it’s not gone, just buried. Buried under quiet disappointments, unanswered prayers, and Sunday routines that feel more like obligation than encounter. Buried under the pressure to perform, to be perfect, to check every box, and to pretend we’re fine. But fire doesn’t need to be created from scratch; it only needs to be rekindled. The Restoration invites us to a return. A return to the God who feels, who speaks, who weeps, and who walks with His people. The same God who walked in Eden, who made covenants with Abraham, who sat by wells and called out to fishermen and tax collectors. He’s still calling. He hasn’t changed. Maybe we have. Maybe we’ve traded intimacy for intellect, mystery for management, presence for performance. But even now, He invites us to come back, to walk with Him.

The God of Hagar still sees. The God of Hannah still listens. The God of Elijah still whispers. The God of Joseph Smith still answers prayers, even when the words come out uncertain. What He wants is not our polish, but our presence. Not flawless prayers, but open hearts. Not public perfection, but quiet surrender. He wants to dwell with us, not someday, but now. Faith doesn’t have to be breathless. It doesn’t have to be cold. It doesn’t have to be a thing you carry alone. So let faith become less about checking the boxes and more about experiencing the flame. Let it be less about reciting and more about responding. Let it be alive again, not because you master a system, but because you hear Him speak. Because you feel Him weep. Because you find Him walking beside you in the ordinary places—at the kitchen table, on your drive home, in the quiet after everyone else is asleep.

God walks through silence, yet burns in flame,
And in the hush between heartbeats,

He calls your name.

The post The God Who Ceased to Breathe: Restoring the Fire of Faith 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 strange word at the center of the Hebrew Bible. A word so often translated as “God,” even though, quite literally, it means “gods.” A word that carries the weight of centuries, even though its form is suspiciously plural. That word is Elohim. At first glance, it sounds simple. Just a name for God. But names, especially in scripture, are never just names. They are mirrors of meaning, and Elohim reflects something more complicated than it lets on. It is a plural noun, the kind one would expect to describe a pantheon. And yet, nearly every time it appears, it points to just one being (Gesenius, §124g; see also Waltke & O’Connor, §7.4.3b).

So why did a people so famously committed to monotheism choose a word that so clearly belonged to the world of many gods? That question has never stopped echoing. Scholars have tried to make it neat. Some call it a grammatical flourish, a kind of plural of majesty (Ibid). Others say it is a relic from before the line between one God and many was drawn (Smith, p. 32–49). Still others suggest something bolder. That Elohim holds a memory, half-erased, of divine duality. A definition that includes both male and female (Barker, pp. 39–65). This essay builds on those frameworks using a Latter-day Saint hermeneutic of restoration, approaching linguistic remnants like Elohim not only as historical curiosities but as echoes of a divine family structure.

The Shape of the Word

So what do we do with a word that ends in “im”—the Hebrew marker for plural masculines—and yet behaves as if it were singular? It is tempting to wave it off. To call Elohim a quirk of ancient grammar. Some words, like mayim for water or shamayim for sky, are plural in form but singular in meaning. Maybe Elohim is one of those (Gesenius, §124g; see also Waltke & O’Connor, §7.4.3b). That would make a tidy explanation, and it has often been used to support later Christian ideas like the Trinity. But the ancient authors weren’t Trinitarians. That concept wouldn’t emerge for centuries. If this were truly a case of singularity hidden inside plurality, we would expect consistency across Hebrew scripture. Instead, what we see are moments that speak of more than one, distinct in person, unified in action.

The word Elohim begins with El, the Semitic root for “god.” It’s seen everywhere—Hebrew, Ugaritic, Akkadian (Cross, pp. 7-15). A simple root, just two or three letters, became the definition of the divine. While Elim (e.g., Exodus 15:11) represents the regular morphological plural of El, the form Elohim, derived from Eloah, emerges as the dominant theological term, perhaps precisely because its structure encodes a deeper multiplicity. That is the pattern found with malachim (angels) and seraphim (seraphs). Clean. Predictable. Elohim, though, breaks the mold. It adds an unexpected vowel, a long “o.” And that “o” doesn’t fit the normal plural rules. Scholars have proposed different explanations. Some suggest Ugaritic influence, others point to the singular form Eloah, a word that ends with “ah,” the same feminine suffix found in Torah and Shekhinah (Frymer-Kensky, pp. 20–27). A masculine plural built from a feminine root (Smith, p. 45). A linguistic hybrid.

Which means Elohim might just mean more than “gods.” In linguistics, we call this etymological layering. A memory held in the shape of a word. A blending of divine gender. A grammar with theological consequences (Smith, ch. 3). This becomes clearer when looking at the verbs. In the Hebrew Bible, Elohim takes singular verbs. Elohim created, Elohim spoke, Elohim called (Genesis 1:1; Exodus 6:2; Deuteronomy 5:6). As if the word wants to sound plural, but act singular. Or maybe contains both.

That tension didn’t go unnoticed. Wilhelm Gesenius called it a plural of majesty, a way of signaling fullness, not number (Gesenius, §124g; see also Waltke & O’Connor, §7.4.3b). Like mayim doesn’t mean many waters. Or shamayim doesn’t mean multiple skies. Perhaps Elohim isn’t meant to count. It’s meant to encompass. Still, that explanation only goes so far. Because Elohim isn’t just an abstract noun. It carries memory. There are places in the Hebrew Bible where the plural leaks through. Places where the verbs stop agreeing. Where Elohim behaves like a “they.” The language doesn’t forget what it used to mean.

It is not just a name. It is the record of a transition. From a world of gods to a theology of one God. From a divine family to a single throne. From “they” to “He.” But the language still remembers.

A Word Shared Among the Gods

To really understand the mystery of Elohim, Israel has to be left behind. For a moment, step out of Jerusalem and look to its neighbors. Ugarit. Phoenicia. Babylon. In those ancient languages, the names for God form a pattern, a family of sounds, of roots, of divine names that speak to something older and broader than a single theology. When we line up the terms for “god” and “gods” across related Semitic languages, the shared grammar and divine plurality become hard to ignore, as shown in the table below (Smith, pp. 41-45, and Cross, pp. 13-15).

Table 1: Terms for “God” in Various Semitic Languages

For Latter-day Saints, this sounds familiar. Joseph Smith restored a vision not of a lonely God, but of a divine council—a family of heavenly beings who stood in order, with purpose (see Doctrine and Covenants 121:32, and Abraham 3:22–26). He wasn’t inventing this. He was restoring something that had been remembered dimly and had been written out sharply.

The restoration by Joseph Smith didn’t return to the theology of the Second Temple period. It reached back farther, before the edits, before the reforms of Josiah, before the sacred feminine was silenced. He didn’t restore monotheism; he restored the Father co-presiding with the Mother and their only begotten son Jesus Christ. Back to the First Temple age, when the divine family still stood intact. It can be seen in the shape of Ugarit. The high god was El. His consort was Asherah. Together they bore seventy children, each assigned a nation to rule (Smith, pp. 41-55). This divine pairing is further corroborated by archaeological finds such as the inscriptions from Kuntillet ʿAjrud, which reference “Yahweh and his Asherah”. They are a tangible witness to the male and female divine dyad present in early Israelite religion (Meshel, pp. 20–23). The Divine Pair, Their son, and that number, seventy, would echo into the Bible. So would the structure.

In Deuteronomy 32, there is a telling change. The original Hebrew said the nations were divided “according to the sons of God.” But later scribes changed it. While the Hebrew Bible doesn’t explicitly name Yahweh as the son of El, the linguistic structure and surrounding traditions (including Deut 32:8’s earliest versions) suggest a divine hierarchy that resonates with Latter-day Saint cosmology (Smith, p. 33; see also Joshua 22:22). The Masoretic text now reads “sons of Israel” (Tov, pp. 115–117). The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the earlier version—which means at some point, someone made a choice. They erased the divine family and replaced it with a national God.

Joseph Smith called that kind of editing a loss. An intentional erasure of heaven’s order from the record of earth. And his work recovered theology and restored memory. The divine family, Father, Mother, and their children, was the structure from the beginning (Smith, pp. 370–371). Hear the echoes across the Semitic world as shown in the table below. In Phoenician: ʾl and ʾlm. In Aramaic: Elah and Elahin. In Arabic: Ilah and Aliha. Even in the Qur’an, plural pronouns appear when God speaks. These are linguistic fossils teaching the lost truth from the beginning (Sáenz-Badillos, pp. 33–38). Elohim belonged to a time when divine plurality was the norm. Later rulers reframed it. “Who is like you among the gods, O Yahweh?” That line from Exodus demonstrates the existence of other gods. It asserts Yahweh’s supremacy among them (see Exodus 15:11; also Psalm 82). In the Latter-day Saint view, this fits beautifully. Jesus Christ, as Yahweh, stands above all the elohim, the spirit, children of God, as the Firstborn. The one appointed. Above him are the Eternal Father and Mother. We find ourselves below Him, as the children. The elohim He rules over are us.

Table: Scriptural and Archaeological Evidence for Male–Female Divine Pairs in Ugaritic and Early Israelite Traditions

It’s a stunning structure—one title, three identities. First, the Heavenly Parents. Second, Yahweh the Son. Third, the divine children, still becoming. This theology is a name that tells a story. A family name, layered and alive (Givens, pp. 61-65).

When One God Speaks in the Grammar of Many

It’s one thing for a word to be plural in form. It’s another for it to behave that way. Most of the time, Elohim acts singular. The verbs align. Created. Spoke. Called. It follows the grammar of one. But every so often, the mask slips. Genesis 1:26 is one of those moments: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The verbs shift. The pronouns are plural. Genesis 5 repeats the pattern: “Male and female created they them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam.” The creation of humanity was not a solo act. It was shared.

It is seen again in Genesis 20:13. Abraham speaks of Elohim causing him to wander, but the verb is hitʿu, plural. Not “he caused,” but “they caused.” And in Genesis 35:7, Jacob builds an altar because Elohim revealed themselves to him. The verb is niglu—they appeared. The grammar tells a different story. A divine duo. These are not mistakes. Ancient Hebrew doesn’t slip like that by accident. The moments when Elohim takes plural verbs happen at narrative peaks. Abraham’s exile. Jacob’s altar. These are moments when the veil thins and the plurality breaks through.

Joseph Smith had these patterns revealed to him. He taught that the divine was not a lone God. Heaven, he said, was organized. A Father and a Mother. A Son and their children (Smith, pp. 370–371). Modern readers may miss the duality because Hebrew doesn’t have a grammatical dual for verbs. But Arabic does. And in the Qur’an, God speaks in the dual. We created. We revealed. Not many gods. A unified two (Neuwirth, pp. 222–224). Angelika Neuwirth discusses divine plurality in Qur’anic grammar, noting that the use of the plural or dual forms such as khalaqna (“We created”) and anzalna (“We revealed”) reflects a liturgical and rhetorical convention with theological resonance. While not indicating polytheism, these forms suggest divine complexity and dual agency.

The Hebrew scriptures still carry these seams. In 2 Samuel 7:23, the verb halekhu, they went, is tied to Elohim. In Deuteronomy 5:26, the phrase Elohim ḥayyim, the living God, uses a plural form. In Psalm 58, Elohim is paired with shoftim, judges, again plural. These moments are rare, but they matter (Ricoeur, pp. 1-37). Over time, later translators tried to smooth it all out. The Septuagint uses ho theos, a clean, singular God. But Hebrew never quite cooperated. The verbs flicker. The nouns wobble. But the memory remains.

Elohim is not just a name. It is a record—a word that carries within it the echo of a divine council, a heavenly pair, and a family learning to become (Barker, pp. 26–45). 

The Marriage Hidden in the Name

There is more than just plurality hidden in the name Elohim. There is pattern. There is union. Some words hold their history in plain sight. Others bury it in form and sound. Elohim does both. It looks masculine and plural, but it carries inside it a feminine root, Eloah. That kind of linguistic pairing happens when language remembers something its speakers are starting to forget. And that something is marriage.

In the ancient world, divinity was often imagined as a pair. El and Elat. Baal and Asherah. Heaven and Earth. These are active agents, joined in purpose, distinct in role. Latter-day Saints have a phrase for this: eternal companions. The idea that divinity exists in relationship. That God’s image is found in the union. The scriptures hint at this again and again. Genesis 1:27 says that humankind was created in God’s image, male and female. Not separately, but together. That is the pattern. Not uniformity, but complement. Not hierarchy, but balance.

Most traditional theology stops short of calling God both male and female. It names God above gender or beyond it. But the restored gospel gives a different lens. Joseph Smith taught that there is no God without the union of a male and a female (Snow, Discourse 26). That is the structure. A relationship. Not sameness. Not collapse. But difference, bound in covenant. That is what Elohim preserves. A name that holds both halves of heaven. It is modeled in temple worship, reflected in scripture, and confirmed in prophetic teaching. The idea that male and female together form the divine image is the restoration (Doctrine and Covenants 132:19–20; Moses 2:27). 

You can hear it in the resonance of the name. You can see it in the grammar. And once you notice the pattern, it shows up everywhere. A text refusing to let theology forget what it once knew.

The post The Divine Echo: What the Word ‘Elohim’ Still Remembers appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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When I was nineteen, I thought I understood what a mission would be like. I had seen the videos, heard the stories, and imagined the glow of faithful, fulfilling service. But a few weeks into the field, I was already disoriented. It was harder than I’d ever expected—physically, emotionally, spiritually. That uncomfortable realization—that reality wasn’t what I expected—turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my life.

I now recognize that moment as a kind of Garden of Eden experience: a step out of innocence, into awareness. Into a world where nothing was automatic anymore. And it’s the kind of transition we all make—sometimes in faith, sometimes in relationships, and sometimes in the middle of a quiet Sunday School class.

The Garden of Eden is a story that evokes a number of questions. In considering that story, we sometimes get hung up on particulars like the exact location of the garden; the relationship between the fall and death; God’s language around male-female relationships; and more. These questions can be interesting, but they are peripheral to the intentions of the story. In the story of the Garden of Eden, believers are presented with a model for how we develop as human beings.

Psychologists have long recognized that human development unfolds in stages. Erik Erikson, for example, mapped out a series of life phases—each with a key challenge that can lead either to growth or regression. Others, like Lawrence Kohlberg and James Fowler, explored how our moral reasoning and faith mature over time. While each model differs, they all affirm the same truth: healthy development requires that we move through periods of disorientation, adjustment, and deeper understanding.

I suggest that the Garden of Eden story is the best possible framework for understanding how we develop, and it is relevant across all areas of our lives. The basic contours of the story are

1. A time of innocence, where participation in a system feels automatic;

2. An awakening to awareness that reality is more than what we previously understood, in ways that are beyond our current ability to process well; and

3. Decisions in the direction of growth and development to function well in reality, or in the direction of maladaptive coping strategies that keep us from functioning well in reality.

As an example, I look back on my experience as a missionary. I grew up in a time when the Church was producing emotionally satisfying audiovisual materials to promote gospel concepts. Among those materials was a 1990 video called “Labor of Love,” which depicted missionary service as a clean and comfortable series of positive experiences. With that as a reference point, I entered missionary service in Brazil in 1993, and quickly found myself shocked and overwhelmed by missionary life that was stressful, frustrating, and physically exhausting. Before I entered the mission field, my future mission experience had only existed in theory, informed by positive stories that had been told to me. My commitment to my mission had been automatic, but now I had new information that led to daily decision points of actively choosing. I was no longer in the garden, where problems and challenges and irony (the “thorns and thistles” described to Adam and Eve by God) exist only in theory.

This process of leaving the garden and then facing these choices is one we face in church callings, but also many other areas of life: marriage, child-rearing, university studies, military service, career, and more. For most of our significant life experiences, there is a process of bringing to the experience an automatic commitment based on our paradigm of what the experience will be; then seeing differences between reality and our paradigm; then facing developmental crossroads in how we choose to respond.

In the Garden of Eden story, there is another aspect of awareness that greatly determines whether our departure from a garden of life experience becomes developmentally positive or negative. In restoration scripture, we read “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they had been naked…”. In other words, they had become aware that there was a gap in their understanding of themselves and the world around them.

The way that we become aware of these gaps in our perspective matters. Our restoration understanding of Adam and Eve’s new awareness of their nakedness is that it was presented to them as something shameful. To represent Satan as a serpent in the garden is an excellent teaching tool, because his objective was to poison Adam and Eve using the venom of shame as they made their transition to new awareness. In his narrative, their nakedness meant that they were lacking and deficient. And worse, it was God who had allowed them to live in the garden in ignorance of that shameful situation. This was the venom of the accusing serpent in the garden.

I do not mean to suggest here that shame is always a bad thing to experience. I know of a number of situations where a sense of shame has been the catalyst for positive personal transformation. In some cases, shame is the only thing that will lead a person to reverse from a destructive path they have chosen. But when facing a common Garden of Eden-like developmental crossroads—the simple experience of being awakened to gaps in our paradigm and expectations—shame is not helpful or appropriate.

“Your mission experience is not what you envisioned, and that means one or both of two possibilities: you are stupid and clueless and live in a fantasy world, or you were deceived by people who gave you the wrong impression of the missionary experience.”

Or,

“Your mission experience is not what you envisioned, but making adjustments to our paradigms and expectations for our life experiences is normal. There is tremendous growth available to us in the process, and in your mission experience, the Savior is eager to lead you through that process over time.”

The first message reflects the patterns of shaming that are found in much of the critical messaging from disaffected members and former members of the Church. In critical spaces, a simple developmental crossroads, like my becoming aware of the humanity and shortcomings of prominent people in scripture and church history, is framed in shame: the difficulty of making adjustments to my paradigm is a sign that I am deficient or I have been wronged. I’m hurting, so obviously it’s my fault or someone else’s fault. Either I or the Church needs to be blamed and shamed. When our loved ones leave the covenant path and isolate themselves defensively, that is a good indicator that they have internalized narratives of shame. Letting go of that poison will allow them to reconnect with us and, in some cases, resume spiritual development. But that can be a long process of returning to their developmental crossroads and making a different choice.

How does this apply to our gospel questioning? It is clear that not all questions are equal. Some are designed to keep people developmentally stuck. In critical spaces, gospel questioning is infused with shaming, accusatory venom. Consider the form of each of these “questions”:

“Obviously, good people do x. So, why do church leaders do y?” (an accusation/insinuation disguised as a question)

“I’m totally open to accepting the Church’s teachings, as soon as unresolvable brain teaser x is resolved to my satisfaction. How do you resolve x?” (a false commitment presented as a question)

“I’m not really willing to apply myself to do the work to understand issue x in depth. So, can you explain it to me in a way that meets all my expectations, validates me, and fits within my worldview?” (an impossible demand presented as a question)

None of these are really questions. They are shaming, dishonesty, and entitlement presented in the form of questions. Sadly, some online spaces reinforce patterns of questioning that are less about curiosity and more about blame.

“I have studied x, y, z materials on this gospel topic. Are these the best possible resources, or are there some I’m missing? My understanding is _____. Is that accurate, or is there a better way to understand this concept?”

“Are there aspects of my worldview, my life experiences, or my personality that are causing me to see this issue the way I do? Are there other emotional or cognitive lenses through which I can examine this information that would open up new possible understandings?”

Here, questioning comes from genuine openness and curiosity. There is no sense of shame over a lack of understanding. I come to my questioning with a positive view that with new resources, there might be a need to make further adjustments to thinking, and that is okay. It is a normal process of spiritual and intellectual growth. And if someone is not engaged in that same process of seeking, it does not mean that they are deficient in any way, or that they are being “kept in the dark,” or any number of other grievance narratives that are inappropriately applied to normal human experience.

This is the developmental crossroads of gospel questioning. Without an awareness of the choices available to us, we can be led to narrow and cynical biases and undertake our gospel questioning like a fearful, wounded animal. With awareness, we can approach our gospel questioning with the bias of charity, free of the poison of shame.

And to be biased by charity is what it means to be truly open-minded.

In our own gospel wrestling, may we choose that bias of charity. It doesn’t just help us grow—it keeps us connected to one another, and to the God who waits for us outside the garden, ready to walk with us again.

The post What the Garden of Eden Teaches About Gospel Questions appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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The recent viral video “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists” cameos an unbelieving Gen Z-er debating the inconsistencies in God’s ways. As the young man in the hot seat—Ian—supposes, God commands genocide in Deuteronomy 7 and 20, the death of children in Numbers 31, and condones slavery and abuse in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25. “Is all of this in line with Christian ethics?” he asks Jordan Peterson. “Do you think that God is by his very essence perfect? … Does a flawless thing change? Does a flawless thing reveal more and better information over time? Or would a flawless thing say, ‘here is what’s good—here is the absolute good thing to do in all circumstances in time’?”

I’ve attended many hours of Relief Society in young single adult wards. In classes discussing chastity, identity, or the roles of men and women, many express concerns about “The Family Proclamation” being outdated, misinterpreted, and too entrenched in cultural norms. The lines “gender is an essential characteristic” and “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children” tend to put worry lines on some young Gen Z faces. Other topics like the Word of Wisdom and repentance bring about similar reactions: old people are stuck in their ways, and the world is a different, more enlightened place now.

Even now, changes consistently occur in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The last ten years brought updates to home teaching, priesthood structure, garments, the temple recommend interview questions, the For the Strength of Youth Guide, and Come Follow Me. “We’re witnesses to a process of restoration,” President Nelson said in 2018. “If you think the Church has been fully restored, you’re just seeing the beginning.”

How can the restoration of the Church be ongoing, and yet God stays the same? “I don’t know how a God who’s outside of time is revealing different things at different times,” Ian concluded to Peterson. “That just seems incoherent to me.”

There are certainly gruesome events in the Bible, but there are also enlightening patterns of revelation in the Old and New Testaments. Throughout scripture, God gives laws to people based on their understanding of His ways. Just as you wouldn’t expect a child to know how to budget money and handle millions of dollars, God doesn’t reveal the full weight of His truth all at once, especially to a bull-headed person.

In the Book of Mormon, Alma teaches that God only grants a “portion” of His word unto the children of men “according to the heed and diligence which they give unto Him.” This is a merciful law (see Luke 12, D&C 82, and 2 Nephi 9). God speaks to us according to our “understanding,” otherwise we would be accountable for things we don’t yet have the bandwidth to comprehend.

The law of Moses, “the lesser law” or “preparatory gospel,” was appointed unto the Jews because they were a “stiffnecked people.” Moses received laws, commandments, ordinances, and covenants on tablets from the Lord on Mount Sinai. When he returned from the mountain, he found the children of Israel worshiping the golden calf. Moses was, understandably, extremely upset. He broke the tablets and destroyed the calf. The Israelites were not “worthy” to receive all that was written on the tablets, so instead, they received the law of Moses with performances and ordinances which they were required to observe “strictly.” 

When Jesus Christ came to the earth, He did not ‘get rid of’ the old law. He said Himself, I come not “to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Something happened between the “stiffneckedness” of the Israelites and the time when “they shall all know me”––as mentioned in Jeremiah. Jesus Christ came in the “fullness“ of time: the time was ‘full’ for the Savior to teach the people a new, higher law. This law is written “on their hearts” instead of the rigid text (Jeremiah 31). Instead of sacrificing an animal, the Savior instituted a new system where believers sacrifice a “broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Nephi 9). The law of sacrifice wasn’t “done away” with, but the implementation and understanding of that law changed based on the capacity of the people in that generation.

God reveals new truths as generations progress. As illustrated by the examples in the Old and New Testaments, God not only speaks to His children according to their understanding, He––in His mercy––allows people to live according to that understanding. He didn’t give up on the Israelites when they consistently forgot Him; He gave them a law they could follow, even if it was more prescribed and strict.

If the ancients are attached to limited understandings, what is our responsibility to them? The Israelites’ attitude” seems to be an extreme example of the ‘What-have-you-done-for-me-lately?’ syndrome,” Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes in his book Jewish Literacy. He asks, “What makes us so sure we would be any different?” (Telushkin, p. 44).

This is an important question: what does make us so sure we’d be different?

Most of us don’t practice race-based slavery anymore, although other forms of slavery are rampant. Women have the right to vote in some areas of the world. Most of us aren’t engaged in bloody battles on a daily basis. We started as hunter-gatherers, and now we have the capability of traveling by plane at the speed of sound. But aren’t we just as “prone to leave the God we love”? We are all plagued with the “natural man” and in a “carnal and fallen” state. And yet, the generations do improve. Rabbi Telushkin explains that the old, enslaved generation must die off so a new generation can be “conceived in freedom,” suggesting the next generation would be different from their parents (Telushkin, p. 51).

Young people may know or embrace certain things about our progressing world that old people cannot or do not. But, scriptures often caution against putting yourself above those who came before you. “There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother,” Proverbs 30 reads. “There is a generation that is pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.” At least a dozen of my friends have left the Church, resent the way they were raised, and have totally lost respect for their parents. Perhaps this is why one in three Gen Zers and millennials do not want to have children. The Lord gave us “honor thy father and thy mother” as one of the ten commandments. This applies to every parent, awful or awesome.

As painful as it often is, God allows people to live according to what they understand while encouraging them to always understand more. He gives “line upon line, precept upon precept,” and for those who hearken unto His precepts, they will “receive more.” It would be unconscionable to expect a newborn to walk, or a caveman to understand the internet and be trusted with an iPhone. Instead of desiring to do away with old laws and customs, like ancient patterns outlined in the Family Proclamation, we can follow the Savior’s example by becoming fulfillments of our parents and grandparents, and great-great-grandparents’ efforts and knowledge: “Go forward and not backward.”

In answer to Ian’s question: a flawless thing does not change, but God––who is flawless and unchanging––reveals more and better information over time because humans are always changing. Revelation from God looks different from generation to generation. But that doesn’t mean past revelations and generations are obsolete, outdated, or unimportant now: we have simply been blessed with new understandings of them.

“Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause?”

The post How Can an Unchanging God Keep Updating His Church? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Approaching the Easter season, I reminisce about the Easter religious rituals from my Catholic childhood and their impact: how they prepared me to receive God’s restoration, and a deep desire to make Easter more meaningful in my life today.

I was raised in a good home as a practicing Catholic. I went to mass each Sunday, CCD each Tuesday evening (religious education for children and youth), and regularly partook in the sacrament of confession to a parish priest. At age 7, I was given the sacrament of First Holy Communion, and at 14, the sacrament of Confirmation, to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic tradition. I selected a confirmation or “new” name for myself to be received as part of that sacrament. In our daily life we regularly prayed together as a family, occasionally saying a rosary as well. My Mom often encouraged me to do both of those things on my own. Our Father, Hail Mary, and Grace before meals were regular prayers I said alone and with family. Christmas, with its preceding four-week Advent celebration looking forward to Christmas Eve mass and then Christmas day gifts, was always joyful and exciting. We lived in Northern Virginia for about 8 years of my childhood and would attend midnight mass as a family at the National Shrine in Washington, D.C. I have wonderful memories of those years.

A strong focus each year of my youth as a Catholic was Easter and the preceding “Holy Week.” The Lent season starts with Ash Wednesday beginning a 40-day period of contemplation, simplifying, and fasting, and concludes on Holy Thursday. During this time, it is traditional to “give up” something of our worldly pleasures––in addition to not eating between meals and not eating meat on Fridays––in order to experience sacrifice on a personal level as we focus on Jesus’ sacrifice for us. As a child, I would usually choose something like chocolate or television to give up. Sundays were a “free” day where we could still partake of the thing we’d given up, which eased the difficulty of missing out on something I loved for what seemed like an eternity in the life of a young girl.

After enacting the entry, we would then present what is referred to as the “passion narrative” from the four Gospels in the New Testament. The priest would be Jesus, someone would be Pontius Pilate, and the congregation would be the crowd chanting, “Crucify Him!”. 

We would also go to church on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and sometimes other days that week. The Good Friday services usually included reviewing the “Stations of the Cross.” Most Catholic churches have a series of 14 scenes depicting the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. The congregation would follow the priest to each depiction as the description was read.

When I was 12, we moved back to our home state of California, where I attended Mater Dei (Latin for Mother of God) Catholic High School, developing my faith even more. After two years at college in Orange County, I transferred to Utah State University in Logan. While I was completely fulfilled and content with my faith at the time, most of my new friends were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we would have some wonderful conversations about faith and our beliefs. On Ash Wednesdays, I would come to class with ashes on my forehead, and it sparked some thoughtful and respectful questions from my friends.

At the time, the Catholic church in town was a small and beautiful chapel on campus with dark wood inside and a Tudor-style brick exterior. I have profound memories of my first Holy Thursday service there and how deeply I felt the power of that day, that night, and what was to come. That is a sacred memory for me. The following day, Good Friday, it was raining. It was grey and bleak and such a perfect backdrop for me to spend the day thinking about Jesus on the cross at Calvary. Good experiences … At the same time, I feel hope … in the restored Gospel’s focus on the risen Christ

Over the years, I had some friends, whom I deeply loved and trusted, share with me their beliefs in the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We had many back-and-forth conversations about the nature of the Godhead, the full depth and breadth of the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the authority of the Priesthood. I witnessed miracles, sought revelation, and badgered and begged my God for answers and guidance to my confusion and questions. I didn’t get them the way I wanted, but I knew He was there and with me on this journey. These conversations brought me to a point of believing some of the new things I was being taught but not quite feeling ready to fully embrace the restored Gospel, be baptized into a new church, and accept the personal and family challenges that would entail. I stopped attending mass but always kept Holy Week and Easter sacred in my mind and heart.

Years later, at age 37, after taking the missionary discussions four times and having many refining experiences, I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And for a few years, I felt an emptiness around Holy Week as my LDS friends carried on as normal. I knew it was supposed to be held sacred in my heart, so I would study the four Gospel accounts of that week in the New Testament on my own and try to keep the week simpler where I could, as I had in my youth. Eventually I realized the most appropriate place for me to be on Good Friday was in the temple. I would celebrate the sacrifice and mighty atonement of my Lord by being in His house, doing His work, and helping His children move forward.

A few years ago, I noticed a trend … my friends wanted to know more about Holy Week. They would have a Passover dinner or focus on those same New Testament accounts of the days leading up to Easter. They were hungry for more. There were books being written about how to increase one’s understanding of Easter and deepen the experience of the season. In 2023 the Church announced our worship services on Easter would only include Sacrament Meeting, and Elder Stevenson from the General Conference pulpit proclaimed we needed to refocus on Easter and its surrounding events. He challenged us to make this as important a season in our homes as we do Christmas.

As I spend time in the temple on Good Friday, I still struggle sometimes with a yearning from my youth to be more somber on this day. Inside me are deep contrasts: a dimly lit, dark wood chapel of over 30 years ago where the congregation chanted in song, “Watch and pray …” against the bright light, pure whiteness, and cheerful countenances found in the temple today. It can bring some loneliness, but I don’t want it to be like any other temple session––I don’t feel cheerful. So I think of how lonely my Savior felt in that Garden … on that Cross … and I know I am not alone. I know He appreciates my efforts to remember Him. To know Him.

I loved growing up Catholic. When I think back on those years, I have nothing but gratitude for my mom’s encouragement and support in having a relationship with God. Prioritizing my relationship with my Father in Heaven over rituals and beliefs has allowed me to personalize my faith journey and be more intentional about worship, especially at Easter.  I see the flecks of truth in my childhood experiences of Catholic sacraments, taking a new name, and choosing––even embracing––sacrifice for what it is, sacred. At the same time, I feel the hope that is more evident in the restored Gospel’s focus on the risen Christ and joyful anticipation of His return.

This year will mark ten years since the passing of my Dad, and just last week, I sat with a dear pet as she left this mortal life. So as Easter draws nearer, I can more fully appreciate the depths of Good Friday’s despair by understanding that Holy Saturday may have been a day of quiet sadness on this side of the veil, but it was a day of glorious work and teaching on the other. When I ache that my family and many of my friends and I don’t agree with each other on some very sacred things, I can find peace knowing there are so many things on which we can focus where we do meet each other in holy places of understanding and growth. And ultimately my hope lies in a deeper understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ—from Thursday to Sunday—as the path home for me and also for everyone I love. My Catholic youth has given me precious roots for my personal tree of knowledge and faith to withstand the winds and grow stronger in the light of the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The post Easter’s Meaningfulness: Where the Rosary Meets the Restoration appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding. And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known; And inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; … And inasmuch as they were humble they might be made strong, and blessed from on high, and receive knowledge from time to time.

God meets man where he is, in his weakness, in his current cultural understanding and language, and then seeks to teach him more. 

From the beginning of the Restoration, one of the most significant doctrines and truths that God has strived to unravel from false traditions and uninspired interpretations of the Bible is a correct understanding of women and their role in “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.” Since the Fall, bias against women has become humanity’s oldest prejudice.

Understanding women’s role in the gospel and God’s kingdom was of great interest and concern to President Boyd K. Packer. It was a point of deep personal study and reflection for him. He believed that women and the Relief Society were akin to a rising sun. He said, “the light and the power that emanates [from them] will increase, not decrease.” It became clear from his teachings that one of the ways the Church would come out of obscurity was as the women came out of obscurity.

President Kimball’s similar prophecy is more commonly known: “Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because … women of the Church are seen as distinct and different” [italics added]. When this prophecy was given in 1979, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook were unimaginable. President Kimball never would have guessed the scope of reach or the nuanced technology that would facilitate the prophesied visibility of women in the Church. 

The Washington Post recently went so far as to dub “2024 the Year of the Mormon Women.” LDS Women are, as prophesied, coming out of obscurity. While the image of LDS women portrayed in pop culture and social media is varied and sometimes controversial, they are definitely more seen, and their influence is undeniable.

An article reporting the story was published in the Salt Lake Tribune in November 2023, followed by an op-ed in February 2024 written by the Bay Area Stake YW’s president. These articles made the situation public and sparked much debate on social media platforms and podcasts. It brought to light that a handful of congregations scattered throughout the U.S. and Europe currently have women leaders sitting on the stand. The literal increase of women’s visibility through sitting on the stand has once again brought the question of women and their role in the Church to the forefront. 

Elder Dallin H. Oaks once said, 

We live in a day when there are many political, legal, and social pressures for changes that confuse gender and homogenize the differences between men and women. … We do not oppose all changes in the treatment of men and women, since some changes in laws or customs simply correct old wrongs that were never grounded in eternal principles. 

But how do we rightly discern which social pressures correct old wrongs and which ones confuse eternal principles? Sister Eliza R. Snow captured the essence of such debates: 

The status of women is one of the questions of the day. Socially and politically, it forces itself upon the attention of the world. Some … refuse to concede that a woman is entitled to the enjoyment of any rights other than those which the whims, fancies, or justice, as the case may be, of men may choose to grant her. … Others, again, not only recognize that a woman’s status should be improved but are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assuming for her a separate and opposing existence…. These are two extremes, and between them is the ‘golden mean.’

Finding that ‘golden mean’ is still the challenge of our day. Just as the Lord gave his servants power to bring His Church out of obscurity and darkness, He likewise gave them power to bring women out of obscurity. President George Albert Smith described the moment the Prophet Joseph turned the key for women in 1842 as “the emancipation of womankind … for all the world, and from generation to generation the number of women who can enjoy the blessings of religious liberty and civil liberty has been increasing.” But bringing women out of obscurity is both a literal and figurative process. Understanding the significant role of women in the Church and the power God has given them has come in conjunction with them becoming more visible. However, if women are seen but not comprehended, the result may be increased competition rather than greater cooperation, as evidenced in other spheres. 

Therefore, it’s paramount to understand what has been revealed. Women were always meant to have a place in the Church, working side by side with their brothers to save souls. Sister Eliza R. Snow related that Joseph Smith taught the women that the Relief Society was an integral part of the Restoration and is, therefore, more than just an organization led by women. It is a society equal in weight and significance to a quorum, for covenant women patterned after the order of the priesthood. Sister Snow declared, “Although the name may be of modern date, the institution is of ancient origin. We were told by our martyred prophet that the same organization existed in the church anciently.” In the ancient church, women journeyed with Jesus and the Twelve Apostles. Christ invited Mary and Martha to become His disciples, and they actively participated in his ministry along with other women like Johanna, Susanna, Tabitha, and Phebe. Following Christ’s resurrection, “women continued to be faithful disciples (and) met and prayed together with the Apostles.”

Likewise, President Russell M. Nelson has pleaded with women to come out of obscurity and play a more active role in leadership in the Church and the home. 

My dear sisters, … we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils. We need each married sister to speak as ‘a contributing and full partner’ as you unite with your husband in governing your family. 

Furthermore, the recent changes President Nelson has made to the temple ordinances have helped increase the visibility of women figuratively and literally and have helped make a woman’s direct covenantal relationship with God brilliantly clear. 

President Nelson further expanded the scope of priesthood doctrinally by inviting women to consider how scriptures that traditionally were thought to pertain only to holders of the priesthood also pertain to covenant-keeping women (i.e., Sections 84 and 107). Women were even invited in general conference to memorize the oath and covenant of the priesthood, something only previously assumed to concern men.  

Certainly, in the past decade, we have become more accustomed to speaking in terms of women having priesthood power, authority, and responsibilities. This has led to an increased understanding of women of God and their potential to lead and contribute.  However, I am unsure if we have found the ‘golden mean’ yet because, culturally, our values are based on the world’s measuring stick rather than God’s. 

God’s Value System

Culturally, we have been led to adopt the value system of the world, which is based on competition and scarcity. As a result, we have been persuaded to believe that those people with the most visibility or recognition must be valued more. Like the world, we think in terms of exclusivity as best. We set ourselves apart by emphasizing those unique things that make us different from each other rather than those that make us similar. The value system of a telestial world asserts that “if everyone is special, then no one is special.” 

However, God works under a very different value system, one President Nelson has tried to help us understand. When he ranked the most important identifiers he values in order, he said: 

First, I am a child of God—a son of God—then a son of the covenant, then a disciple of Jesus Christ and a devoted member of His restored Church. Next would come my honored titles as a husband and father.

Notice how he ranks his most valued label with the most shared, universal label of us all—a child of God. His labels then become gradually more exclusive. 

Most of us do the opposite. We rank our labels, usually beginning with those that are the most exclusive or distinct—those that set us apart as different and unique from others around us. Perhaps this is one of Satan’s most subtle strategies of dividing us. If we view titles, church callings, or labels of most exclusivity as best, we relate to one another from a space of scarcity and singularity. But if we rank our best labels in terms of those most inclusive and encompassing, we begin from a space of abundance and equality. There is a remarkable and profound difference in where each will lead. Scarcity leads to competition, which leads to winners and losers, fear and pride, the haves and the have-nots. On the other hand, abundance leads to cooperation, celebrating unique talents and interests, and seeing what each can give to the whole. Beginning at this point of inclusion, as children of God, may not appear very significant at first, but when we look at where it leads, we see the outcome is the difference between heaven and hell.

In our current church culture, we are still wrestling with overcoming the damning mindset of competition and scarcity, especially in terms of church callings and supposed positions of power and leadership. We apply the world’s value system when we attach greater importance to those who hold Church callings of the most visibility or prominence. Callings have become a way of validating one’s worthiness, spirituality, or importance, but Christ never taught this.

Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Who is great in the eyes of God? A minister. What is the most common calling in the Church? A minister. Do we see what Christ is trying to teach about his character and values? God gives his best to as many of his children as possible. His economy is completely opposite ours. The greatest is the least. The servant is the leader. Christ warned that those in His day could not accept or understand His doctrines because “they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” If Church members choose to measure power and influence with the same value system the world uses, we will likewise be blind to all God wants us to see and understand. 

As we consider the increasing visibility of women in the Church and pop culture, we would do well to consider which value system we are using to measure success. The Washington Post ranked 2024 a breakout year for Mormon Women because, from a worldly value system, the number of “followers” is in the millions, and search inquiries with the words “Mormon women” on Google were more than ever recorded. Is this what President Kimball prophesied? Is this the “coming out of obscurity” that President Packer felt would be important to bringing the entire Church out of obscurity? Perhaps in part, but coming out of obscurity has more to do with both women and men finally learning to value what God values, love what Christ loves, and see as They see.

Christ strived to help all his disciples see that true power does not come from position but from godliness. Christ elevated women in his day, consequently bringing them out of obscurity because he recognized a divine kinship with women—that women do physically what Christ does spiritually. Women have been endowed with the power and gifts to be life-givers, nurturers, teachers, healers, comforters, and willing servants who wipe away tears, clothe spirit in flesh and flesh in swaddling linen, and feed the hungry before feeding themselves. If we could see with Godly eyes, we would see that women naturally have access to the most tremendous power in the universe. If we could see as Christ taught his disciples to see with Godly eyes—that the least is actually the greatest, and that sacrifice, not might, rends veils, and that donning an apron and washing feet is the work Christ did and wants us to do—the scales of darkness would fall. Women and their value would come out of obscurity.

When Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society, he told them their objective was “not only to relieve the poor but to save souls.” He further explained, “The turning of the key, the creation of the [Relief] society itself, opened to women their place and responsibility in the organization of the church.” As the Doctrine and Covenants preface relates, the Restoration would come through a process of trial and error and faith. The restoration of the doctrine of women and their relationship to God’s power and priesthood began to emerge from obscurity when Joseph Smith first turned his prophetic keys on their behalf and seems to have accelerated in the past decade through the prophetic keys of President Nelson and others.

So, how do we obtain this “interdependency of men and women in accomplishing God’s work”? We must first recognize God’s immense trust and power in women and then seek to bring their voices and strengths out of obscurity—not so women can be more seen than men, but so their gifts and contributions can be more enjoyed and realized. This is not a time of women usurping men and their stewardships but taking their different but equal place alongside them. Getting men and women working and counseling better together, not just sitting together, will be key to bringing about Zion. 

When the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, he did so with men and women leaders and a key holder who guided them both. Micah 6:4 reads: “For I brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” This trifecta is now reflected in the harmony and cooperative responsibilities of the Bishop, Elders Quorum, and Relief Society presidents. 

President Kimball prophesied about women’s significant role in the last days. President Eyring said that women have been given the “spiritual capacity to nurture others and … qualify them to live in a Zion society.” In many ways, our day resembles the days of Enoch. God is again working through his prophet to prepare a Zion people, and since women will play a key role in that preparation, we must include them more in the Work. As we do so, we will understand more completely how the blessings of the priesthood are liberal to all, that presiding and leadership have nothing to do with personal glory, but God’s glory, and that Jesus Christ continues to invite us to learn to love as He loves and value what He values. As men and women unite in following His supreme example as the servant leader, they will unlock the synergistic power God personifies and the Divine Oneness possible when men and women unite their gifts, not in competition but in cooperation, not in scarcity but abundance, not in opposition but in harmony, and at last arrive at the ‘golden mean’ and Zion, being of one heart and one mind.

The post Women of the Restoration: Influence Beyond the Stand appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Book-length fulfillment of this prophecy began a decade later as Eber D. Howe published Mormonism Unveiled (1), followed by hundreds of antagonistic broadsides, pamphlets, and publications by others containing basically similar messages—across 190-plus years. 

Among all these Church-hostile publications, it appears that none experienced a more rapid or broader public distribution and impact than what is now known as The CES Letter, authored by Jeremy Runnells—which soared across the Internet in 2013. Scholars familiar with its content, however, immediately recognized that few, if any, of its accusations were new, and most had already been repeatedly refuted. In fact, a large part of the essay, further analysis confirms, reflects a condensed version of writings and concepts that the author borrowed or rephrased from other long-time, prominent anti-Latter-day Saint writers.

We observe at least four forces that converged in 2013 to create an ideal atmosphere and opportunity for such an antagonistic 75-page publication to easily fill cyberspace with its anti-Christ, anti-Restoration allegations. This perfect storm resulted from:

1. The expanding popularity of the Internet and the establishment of PDF as a document standard—within a society still naive to its full implications. 

2. The disbanding at Brigham Young University (BYU) of the Foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 2010 and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s subsequent pivot away from the day-to-day defense of the Church. 

3. The lack of easily accessible and comprehensive discussions of subjects like those raised in The CES Letter, now available in the Gospel Topic Essays, that thoughtfully explain many complicated and sometimes controversial issues. 

4. The CES Letter’s clever wrapping of a set of concise arguments against the faith in a personal story—that being a supposed search for truth and subsequent betrayal by the Church—all contained within a compact, easy-to-distribute PDF document. (This fourth dynamic was discovered to be false and documented at length in Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess’s Were These Ever the Sincere Questions of an Earnest Truth Seeker?)

1. The Expanding Popularity of the Internet and the Establishment of PDF as a Document Standard.

The World Wide Web rapidly expanded in popularity and accessibility during the 2000s. By 2013, nearly three-fourths of the inhabitants in developed countries had access. 

During this same period, electronic publishing technology also expanded, thus allowing for the rapid distribution of electronic books and articles in ways previously unimaginable. Critical to this development was a computer program that produced a fixed-page-layout file format that could be opened in a variety of computer operating systems without losing its book-like qualities—including pagination.

In 1993, Adobe Systems led the programming competition with its Portable Document Format (PDF). After guarding it as intellectual property for fifteen years, Adobe displayed shrewd business logic in 2008 by offering the PDF as an open format (PDF 1.7)—allowing software developers worldwide to develop and provide tools for the creation, modification, viewing, and printing of PDF files if they adhered to Adobe’s original PDF specifications. 

Also, in 2008, Adobe offered its Reader 2.0 as a free download. This enabled web designers and authors to offer their publications as PDF downloads with an accompanying link to the free PDF viewer. Readers could easily download both the app and the book or article and view the original text as it was designed to be read.

Advanced distribution capability. Soon other free PDF viewers became available, and popular Internet search engines incorporated them into their browsers (2).

A new world began to emerge, empowering individual authors and content creators to distribute their views instantly, in increasingly persuasive ways, across a mammoth distribution channel: the World Wide Web. 

The reality is that before the early 2010s, it would have been difficult to widely distribute any computerized books or extensive articles such as The CES Letter. Documents circulated as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect files would have been susceptible to formatting changes when the files were opened, as well as alteration from other readers.  

Facebook and Reddit as catalysts. Another online dynamic occurred simultaneously with the PDF expansion: the increasing popularity of Facebook. The year he introduced his CES Letter, Jeremy Runnells expanded his online footprint by creating a “CESLetter” Facebook page. Begun in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook social networking service had over 1.3 billion users by 2014. It was a natural fit for Runnells since people familiar with Facebook would likely understand how to download a PDF file and viewer. So, he advertised his essay on the platform, with a link to a separate location where a PDF version of the document could be downloaded. He also used Reddit, another forum social network, to provide updates regarding his personal saga with the Church.

The rapid growth of Reddit contributed to the spread of Runnells’ letter. By the 2010s, Reddit was expanding its footprint on the internet—with 46 million users by 2012 and 90 million by 2013—exceeding 174 million users in 2014. Through a Church-hostile Reddit pseudonym —Kolobot—the author attached drafts of his essay, promoted it, attacked critics, crowdsourced material for responses to rebuttals of his essay, and advertised his website.

2. The disbanding at Brigham Young University of The Foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 2010 and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s subsequent pivot away from the day-to-day defense of the Church. 

The second factor catalyzing this perfect storm involved the dissolution of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) at BYU. Organized by Dr. John W. Welch in 1979, FARMS consisted of an informal collaboration of academics devoted to Latter-day Saint historical scholarship. 

But this foundation later became more institutional. In 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints formally invited FARMS to join Brigham Young University—stating: “FARMS represents the efforts of sincere and dedicated scholars. It has grown to provide strong support and defense of the Church on a professional basis.”(3) Yet less than a decade afterward, there was a significant change, as the entity was subsumed by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship (NAMI) and effectively disbanded.  

“Those guys were warriors.” Prior to this, FARMS’ association with BYU (sponsored and funded by the Church, during the 2000s) gave these advocates of the faith much-needed backing and resources that contributed to an ever more effective defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Those guys were warriors,” remarked one prominent Church defender—a common sentiment. It seemed that whenever any new book or conspicuous article appeared on the scene attacking the Church, FARMS was there, with effective and credible scholarship, sourcing, and writings to document and defend the truth.

The effectiveness of this concentrated defense of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a strong professional, academic, and faith foundation was powerfully illustrated in the aftermath of Grant Palmer’s 2003 anti-Latter-day Saint book: An Insiders View of Mormon Origins. This volume was released on the market with great fanfare by Signature Books (known for its longtime publication of works that criticize the core doctrines and principles of the Church, the policies revealed through modern prophets, and the history of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ).

The FARMS Review—a twice-yearly journal comprised of peer-reviewed articles from many faithful scholars defending the Church—took notice.  

On June 1, 2004, four separate reviews of Mr. Palmer’s book were simultaneously published in the journal’s “Review of Books.” All of these “heavy hitter” reviewers possessed PhDs, several of them in history. All had significant academic experience and fluency with the subject material and the specific areas of attack Palmer made upon the Church of Jesus Christ—demonstrated by the strength of their reviews: 

• Dr. Stephen C. Harper’s Trustworthy History? incisively demonstrated the manipulation of data and evidence Mr. Palmer engaged in to support his Church-hostile thesis while highlighting significant scholars, topics, and sources the critic had selectively ignored. In his well-referenced critique, this historian summarized Palmer’s book as “a pitiful failure to write credible history” through a failure to “obey rules of historical methodology,” concluding that the work was “not trustworthy history.”
• Dr. Davis Bitton’s The Charge of a Man with a Broken Lance (But Look What He Doesn’t Tell Us) remarked on Palmer’s claim to be an “insider” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While “wearing the toga of a retired institute director” Palmer had “lived a life of deceit for many years” by remaining affiliated with the Church’s education system while he was a closet doubter. Bitton also revealed that Palmer “presents information as his own that is straight out of previous anti-[Latter-day Saint] works” (including Jerald and Sandra Tanner), “publish[es] them within the covers of a newly minted book,” and thereby “tries to shock the reader”—while ignoring incredible amounts of scholarly work disproving his claims. 
• Prying into Palmer by Dr. Louis C. Midgley focused on evidence that “Insider’s Guide” is actually based on a previous work from Palmer written over a decade earlier under the pseudonym “Paul Pry Jr” and titled New York Mormonism—a work that was not “the product of original research, but instead, a compendium of anti-[Latter-day Saint] arguments … infatuated with … many of the affidavits in E.D. Howe’s notorious Mormonism Unveiled (1834), all of which [Palmer] wove together with opinions drawn from some marginal contemporary critics of the faith.” Midgley’s review then laid waste Palmer’s bizarre theories about the origin of the Book of Mormon.  
• A One-sided View of Mormon Origins by Dr. Mark Ashurst-McGee effectively refutes every major section of Palmer’s book and summarizes it as “a piece of disingenuous advertising.” The book, he argues, “intends to present Palmer as a seasoned gospel teacher who will shepherd those who wish to learn more about the origins of their faith” but then seeks to “discredit the integrity of the foundational claims upon which the faith of the Saints rests.” McGee again reveals that the book “fails to follow the basic standards for historical methodology.”

Six months later, on January 1, 2005, the FARMS Review released a fifth review of Palmer’s book: Asked and Answered: A Response to Grant H. Palmer, by Dr. James B. Allen—focusing on Palmer’s individual criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Allen references several scholarly studies that counter much of the author’s attack while demonstrating the ancient text’s truthfulness. He also effectively takes apart the author’s odd theories surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. 

This barrage of academic artillery in five separate academic reviews effectively illustrated the shallowness of one anti-Latter-day Saint book—leaving it essentially impotent. Over subsequent years, Grant Palmer’s book was generally ineffective in persuading others to leave the faith or remain away from it—except among some of the more uninformed or already hardened detractors of the Church. Its faith-draining influence, over time, became a blip. 

What if FARMS had been around when The CES Letter was written? Imagine what likely would have happened with the 75-page CES Letter had the same FARMS weaponry still been in place in the spring of 2013. We can easily see each of the essay’s seven or eight areas of attack upon the faith answered by a separate academic scholar—all released simultaneously. Then each of these potential refutations would likely be followed by its author’s comments or interviews, online discussions, and further dissemination. 

The impact of such FARMS activity might have been substantial in reducing the widespread and corrosive effects of Jeremy Runnells’ writings.

In the years following the release of Runnells’ letter, it’s true that several major refutations were eventually published, including FAIR’s initial online response in 2013, (4) Bamboozled by the CES Letter by Michael R. Ash (2015), A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter by Jim Bennet (2018), and Sarah Allen’s The CES Letter Rebuttal (2021-2022). Allen’s voluminous work not only painstakingly refuted the entire contents of Runnells’ writings but also exposed the manipulation techniques and background deception of the essay. Yet this series of responses was sporadic and irregular—lacking the concentrated efficiency and cohesion for which FARMS was known.  

Different emphasis from scholars. Clearly, not every Latter-day Saint scholar has an appetite for raising their voice in a defensive posture concerning the faith—with some scholars feeling little interest in defending the Church generally or at all. Among those who do show such a willingness, there are varying levels of engagement—ranging from those who write things about the faith while mainly leaving it to others to repackage them to be of use to everyday members, to those scholars who identify current, specific claims against the Church from specific authors and refute those particular claims on a day-to-day or real-time basis.

Never shying away from controversial subjects or defending the Church’s official and unofficial positions, scholars at FARMS were consistently among the most actively engaged in the most relevant issues and conflicts.

A vacuum begins. Nevertheless, in the years after disbanding FARMS in 2010, BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute (NAMI) unfortunately also chose to discontinue this level of day-to-day Church defense—even taking the step of removing archived FARMS articles from its website.

Yet among all the podcast notes, titles, and publications of the Maxwell Institute available between 2013 and 2015—right when the popularity of The CES Letter ballooned—we could not identify any addressing the specific issues raised in Runnells’ essay.   

Hesitation among some believing academics. The reluctance of any believing scholar to actively defend the Church is perhaps understandable. Religious authors who write for a religious audience can explore ideas in the relative comfort of a mutually accepted paradigm regarding the supernatural. But when religious authors advance narratives that defend the reality of the supernatural before a more pluralistic audience, they risk professional disrespect, ad hominem attacks from activist naturalists, and public notoriety (positive from believers and negative from secularists). 

In short, defending the Church’s truth claims positions the scholarly defender against critical voices who, for the most part, have received broad popularity and society-wide endorsement. Even at Church-owned universities, performing extensive apologetic work may be less advantageous to tenure advancement than publishing articles in respected secular peer-review journals or authoring books printed by prestigious university presses.

More recently, scholars at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute have expanded the definition of “apologetics” to include scholarship that anticipates believers’ questions and responds accordingly. “Good traditional apologetics,” according to this expanded definition, “leaves neither the Book of Mormon nor ancient history in the state it found them. It transforms both in the name of faith, seeking insight and understanding.”

While good things are afoot at Maxwell and other faith defense organizations like Scripture Central, and FAIR, this relative vacuum during the early 2010’s may have contributed to some unfortunate effects. 

Over subsequent years, youth and young adults oftentimes starkly confronted the claims of The CES Letter, along with other online church attacks contained in the writings and podcasts of other prominent church critics—absent the scholarly strength FARMS could have provided. Soon after FARMS was dissolved, the Church of Jesus Christ essentially lost its primary institutionally-supported defense organization—leaving FAIR and other good organizations, such as The Interpreter Foundation (begun in 2012), to soldier on to try to make up the difference.

3. The lack of easily accessible and comprehensive discussions of subjects like those raised in The CES Letter, now available in the Gospel Topic Essays, that thoughtfully explain many complicated and sometimes controversial issues.

During the first 170 years of the existence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leaders largely led the Church’s narrative. When most members learned religious teachings and doctrines from official sources like the scriptures, manuals, and books written by believers, critics often struggled to obtain an audience among the Latter-day Saints using the media of the times.

By the 2000s, the rise of the Internet impacted the Church’s communications with its members and conveyance of its message—with critics’ vigorous criticisms and negative evaluations over the web impacting the faith and necessitating an adjustment in educational efforts.

General caution and care. There are at least two good reasons for care and caution in how Church history is shared: 

• Milk before meat. Even before the Church was organized, the Lord Jesus Christ warned Joseph Smith not to give “meaty” doctrines to those who could only tolerate milk, “lest they perish” (D&C 19:22; see also 1 Cor. 3:2). Due to the fledgling faith of some learners, the revelation emphasized that certain more complicated principles and practices should only be taught under the right conditions. Members’ natural hesitancy on complex and controversial matters was exploited by some online, who accused the faith of a lack of transparency.    
• Limited teaching time. A second factor is the limited amount of time and opportunities the Church has to teach the membership the core gospel of Jesus Christ. Within relatively short Sunday meetings, there is an understandable prioritizing of core doctrine that results in a curriculum of scripture, doctrine, and history that builds faith yet naturally makes the controversies and other complex subjects secondary.

Gradual release of additional resources. During this rise of critical voices on the Internet, many documents in the Church’s vast archives had yet to be cataloged, analyzed, and used to clarify various aspects of Church history. 

The Joseph Smith Papers project (formalized in 2008 and completed in 2023) provided additional human resources to inventory pertinent archival data, and voluminous numbers of new documents were added to the official catalog. However, for some time, such content remained largely unknown to researchers, church leaders, and members. For example, as independent scholar Don Bradley researched the subject of plural marriage in 2009, Church historians occasionally directed him to recently cataloged manuscripts dealing with that sensitive subject. In several cases, Bradley appeared to be the first external researcher to evaluate their contents. Today the Church’s documentary holdings are freely offered to the public and often as digital downloads. Josephsmithpapers.org is a treasure trove of easily accessible historical information. 

Years before The CES Letter was released, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognized the need to expand the Church’s resources to members, specifically to produce “straightforward, in-depth essays” on a number of more complicated topics. So the Church commissioned historians and other scholars to gather accurate information from many different sources and publications and place it in the Gospel Topics section of ChurchofJesusChrist.org. The first of these essays was released in the fall of 2013, just six months after Runnells’ letter was made public. Between 2013 and 2015, thirteen Gospel Topic Essays were added to the Church’s official website. Surely this was an inspired development, coinciding with Runnells’ aggressive marketing of his writings during those same years.

Certainly, an earlier introduction to the Church’s essays may have inoculated members of the Church from the antagonistic “CES Letter”—with adequate time to absorb their contents well before Runnells’ essay’ first became public. Lacking such prior understanding, it’s easier for a believer to be unsettled by an antagonist’s ‘gotcha’ question—“Did you know X…” “Why do you think Y happened?”—in a way that leads to doubt.    

4. The CES Letter’s clever wrapping of a set of concise arguments against the faith in a personal story—a supposed search for truth and subsequent Church betrayal—all contained within a compact, easy-to-distribute PDF document.  

As already noted, this fourth dynamic that contributed to the wide dissemination of Runnells’ essay—the false nature of the origin and purpose of his letter—was outlined in detail in Michael Peterson’s analysis with Jacob Hess, “Were These Ever the Sincere Questions of an Earnest Truth Seeker?”

After reviewing the overwhelming evidence documented there, they concluded: 

“Unmistakably, across thousands of affected readers, it was this shiny wrapper of an “earnest questioner” that gave the so-called letter its broadcastable power, functioning as a compelling personal and online brand. For many, it was simply too hard to resist the allure of Runnells’ professed need to get “faith crisis” questions answered by the Church, followed by the presumed heartbreak of official Church silence in response.

From the scope of the actual online record, it is patently obvious that Jeremy Runnells constructed his so-called “CES Letter” not to get personal “questions” and “concerns” answered—his pretense—but as a device to rocket ship his carefully planned, full-throated public attack upon the faith of those who believe in Jesus Christ and His restored Church. 

While intentionally preparing his faith-attacking essay to be disseminated over the web and through email (from its beginning), he was long past any sincere inquiry stage of religious doubt.”  

The Improbability of Another Perfect Storm

In the years following the release of The CES Letter, additional copycat letters followed and became available online. These authors may have expected their refined antagonistic offerings to supplant, or at least replicate, The CES Letter’s reach. Yet additional technology shifts and more easily available faithful resources caused the perfect storm to lift—The CES Letter’s homemade rocket launch to stratospheric levels, its dominance and widespread notoriety not only faded but now increasingly looks unlikely to recur. 

Moreover, the information technologies employed to defend the Church’s truth claims have dramatically diversified and expanded. For example, the Church’s history is open to anyone to research using literally tens of thousands of pages of full-text primary sources available at the Church History Library and Joseph Smith Papers Project websites. How’s that for transparency?

Independent Defenders

There is still more positive change in the air. Although no institutionally sponsored organization has adopted FARMS’s comprehensive everyday efforts to defend the Church regarding specific accusations, several independent 501(c)(3) corporations have appeared or expanded their efforts to fill the gap. Their work not only defends the faith but tends to be devotional and inoculative. 

Specifically, at least five organizations have demonstrated a willingness to actively defend the Church’s teachings and doctrines: FAIR, the Interpreter Foundation, the More Good Foundation (including Saints Unscripted and Public Square Magazine), Scripture Central (including Book of Mormon Central and Pearl of Great Price Central), and the B. H. Roberts Foundation (Mormonr). In particular, Saints Unscripted and B. H. Roberts Foundation give youth and young adults interesting and concise material and persuasive advocacy in defense of the Church. 

Besides these organizations, increasing numbers of other websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels provide useful dialogue and insights for those encountering The CES Letter and other anti-Latter-day Saint claims, including The Stick of Joseph, Thoughtful Faith, Ward Radio, and Let’s Get Real with Stephen Jones.  Within the Church, hundreds, if not thousands, of believers have taken to heart the instruction, “It becometh every man [and woman] who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (D&C 88:81). As these members of the Church recognize the deceptions, half-truths, and misrepresentations promoted by critics, they share their own cautions and witness of Jesus Christ with those who will listen. 

Other channels and podcasts strengthen faith by profiling inspiring stories of those who have returned to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after stepping away for a season, such as the Comeback Podcast, Called to Share, and Faith Matters.

The good news is this: the days are largely over when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and defenders of the faith need ever be caught again in a reactive state or behind their quick-footed online adversaries. There is far too much current, easy access to voluminous, reliable sources defending the faith of Christ for that to happen. 

Though the claims in Runnells’ essay, as noted, have now been exhaustively and directly refuted many times—with content largely echoing accusations that had been repeatedly addressed in the past by Latter-day Saint scholars. Upon its initial release, however, that alluring doubt bomb just happened to be in the right place at the right time, where random but synergistic forces increased its impact far beyond the significance of its message. 

The internet “icon” ultimately faded. By rising in popularity so quickly, The CES Letter morphed into the world of antagonistic iconography, becoming, for some detractors a symbol of imagined anti-Latter-day Saint domination. One of the stranger things we witness even today is some who still stubbornly cling to Runnells’ essay and the background storylines behind it, fruitlessly attempting its defense—perhaps partly because upon that shaky foundation, they based or reinforced their decision to step away from the faith.  

Our observation, in summary, is that the “perfect storm” dynamics that enabled Runnells’ “CES letter” to go viral have changed fundamentally. The Church defense community today is better positioned than ever to truly fulfill the charge given to us all by President Jeffery R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “to define, document, and defend the faith.” (7)

Then one day in the future, when the truth of God has indeed “penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear,” the world will know that Joseph Smith spoke the truth when despite the ominous possibilities he foresaw (“persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame”), he nonetheless testified that “no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing” and declared that “the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent … till the purposes of God shall be accomplished.”

Resources:

1. The term “Mormonism,” employed by antagonists as a substitute name for the restored Church of Jesus Christ, was “invented in the 1830’s by bitter detractors, as Michael wrote earlier, and “used in the same way the word ‘Nazarenes’ labeled the members of the ancient church of Christ—hurled forth as an epithet, a denigration, a sometime demonization, and consistently employed for the same purposes by their successor critics for over 190 years, even to this day.”

2. For example, the Google Chrome browser added a PDF viewer in late 2010. Microsoft Internet Explorer (final version 11 released in 2013) never included a PDF viewer, but add-on viewers were allowed. Microsoft Edge’s first release in 2015 included its own PDF viewer. Google Chrome version 6.0.472 was released September 2, 2010 (https://google.fandom.com/wiki/Chrome_version_history)—though the PDF reader needed to be manually chosen as the default position or it would not load on startup.

3. See “Farms Joins BYU Community,” Y Magazine, Spring 1998 Issue.

4. FAIR stands for “Faithful Answers, Informed Response, and is a nonprofit organization devoted to sharing the gospel and defending the restored Church of Jesus Christ, through its websites, books, and conferences. FAIR’s writers have accomplished remarkable work, considering they are all volunteers. Most are not academic historians with advanced degrees, but lay writers. These church defenders might be characterized as a modestly funded, scattered collection of researchers who all have day jobs, church callings, and families. They use their precious discretionary hours refuting attacks against both the Church and believers.

5. “Seven Questions for MSR editor Spencer Fluhman,” (March 27, 2013) at https://mi.byu.edu/seven-questions-for-spencer-fluhman/.

6. For instance, they discuss at least three helpful factors in considering the Church’s early practice of plural marriage. First, it has scriptural and biblical roots. Second, it is a spiritual principle. Third, it has been initiated or discontinued at the Lord Jesus Christ’s discretion. When these elements are understood, as well as its true history and practice, along with the family solidarity and other benefits within the early modern Church, then the topic need not be a stumbling block to faith and testimony.

7. The Second Half of the Second Century Address,” BYU, August 23, 2021.

The post Doubt in the Digital Age: How a Perfect Storm of Random Forces Inflated the CES Letter Beyond Its Merits appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In 2021, a Redditor wrote, “The CES Letter inspired me to change my entire life for the better.” 

Jeremy Runnells, the letter’s author, was an online marketer. He grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and said that in his youth he read only faithful Church sources. Yet as an adult he came across things that led him to a number of questions about the scriptures and leaders of his church. By his telling, however, when he sought to get these genuine concerns answered, he was only met with silence.

After Runnells shared this tale with the world, he became a popular figure on church-antagonistic podcasts and an online celebrity. His journey took off so far that his work even appeared in Spider-Man comic art. 

Most of the people who were attracted to Runnells responded to this story, and only after to the specific questions. As YouTube commenter Miss Syrinxie explained to her audience, Runnells didn’t intend to write an exposé of the Church. He “had legitimate questions that he was seeking answers to. Why couldn’t anyone just honestly answer his questions? Obviously, it’s because no one has the answers.”

There was only one problem. That story isn’t true. Runnells made almost the entire thing up. 

This is confirmed by a new analysis that Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess published last week: “Were these ever the sincere questions of an earnest truth seeker?” The investigation outlines ten different lines of evidence demonstrating the true origin of the letter.

When the CES letter was first published in April 2013, Runnells wrote that it was a list of sincere religious questions that originated from reading Church-approved sources, and which he sent to a director of a Latter-day Saint institute in the hope of finding answers to his questions to restore his faith. Yet, as demonstrated in this review of the available evidence, Runnells wasn’t sincere in posing these questions at all. This was a pretense intended to manipulate his audience into giving him more credence than he deserved. 

In fact, in July of 2012—many months prior to the letter being published—Runnells created a new Reddit account with the username u/kolobot that openly attacked the faith. The engagement of this user over the nine months before the first publication of the CES Letter tells a very different story about the origin of the letter.

By October 2012, Runnells was attempting through this anonymous profile to generate viral content with a letter to to a senior church leader. This letter, published on October 10, 2012, was titled “An Open Letter to Quentin L. Cook.” However, it was not widely read. In it, however, he runs down many of the matters he addresses in his future CES Letter. But in this letter, he stated the issues as assertions rather than questions. 

He also stated in this letter that by this point, he considered himself an “apostate soul” and that this came about because of what he had “found on the evil internet.”According to his own account, Runnells’ disaffection from his faith began back in February 2012, when he began to read the Church-hostile apologetics of Grant Palmer, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, and material on the website MormonThink—all influential critics of Latter-day Saint beliefs. 

It was primarily these sources that seeded his concerns. He even lifted language directly from Palmer’s book “Insiders Guide to Mormon Origins.”  In November of 2012, Runnells’s anonymous u/kolobot username admitted that he had “left the church a few months ago.”

Runnells also added a “flair” to his Reddit username that read, “I’m on a tapir.” The tapir is a deeply embedded meme in anti-Latter-day Saint circles. His use of the tapir meme meant that by this time, he was familiar with questions about the authenticity of The Book of Mormon and had rejected the answers already provided by the Church and many faithful scholars to those questions. 

After being out of the Church for at least six months, Runnells reached out to the r/exmormon community, asking for rebuttals to an argument that The Book of Abraham, a volume of Latter-day Saint scripture, was historical.

In January 2013, Runnells began advocating for people to leave his former faith on Reddit.

By March of 2013, Jeremy Runnells was not asking sincere questions he wanted an answer to—if he ever was. He had made a determination about his beliefs, had declared he had left, and was looking for help in undermining arguments that addressed his concerns so he could persuade others to leave.

Runnells’ path is certainly his own. Many people leave the faith traditions they grew up in, a trend that was prominent during Runnells’ departure from the faith but that has begun to decline. But as a professional marketer, and after his October letter didn’t gain traction, he likely knew that the familiar beats of his actual story didn’t have the pizzazz to go viral and encourage others to leave the Church as he wanted.

In March, his grandfather, a Latter-day Saint, had grown concerned about the status of Runnells’ faith. By this point, Runnells had already publicly disavowed his faith, but only under the online pseudonym.

His grandfather had a friend of his reach out to Runnells, a man who happened to be a Church institute director. He emailed him to ask about his disaffection. This circumstance provided Runnells with his opportunity. He could leverage the situation by using his communication with the CES director to give his essay a cloak of credibility, while creating a uniquely sympathetic narrative about his disaffiliation distinct from the actual timeline. 

So Runnells, still under his pseudonym, reached out again to the r/exmormon community with a first draft, asking them for feedback and advice about the letter. When confronted about this public discrepancy later, Runnells claimed that he was only looking for “grammar” and “fact” correction. The record of these conversations, however, suggests more substantive suggestions that he integrated into his work. 

Before the letter was released, it was already recognized in this online community of dissidents as a ruse. One Church-antagonistic Redditor responded, “This is a mini-thesis,” but added, “I love how this reads as a legit letter.” Runnells thanked the commenter.

The letter he wrote had a biting, dismissive tone, and he knew before publication that he was engaging in “machine-gunning,” a rhetorical technique of overwhelming the listener with accusations.

In writing the letter, Runnells knew the CES director would read it, but just days after release, he admitted to friendly sources that he “didn’t write this for the CES guy.” Later that year, again to a friendly audience, he admitted the letter was written for TBMs—an acronym meaning either True Believing Mormons or Totally Brainwashed Mormons. And in 2015, after formally withdrawing his membership to avoid excommunication, he said, “The target audience is the fence-sitters.”

After finishing the letter, he published it first on Reddit with instructions “to give to your TBM loved ones” before even sending it to the CES director. 

Whatever you believe about the substance of Runnells’ accusations, the history of the letter is clear—this was not a sincere search for answers but a savvy, calculated effort to undermine faith. 

Simply put, the popular narrative that Runnells has promoted, both in the letter and on the website devoted to distributing it, that the letter to the CES director was written by someone who still identified as a church member, had discovered these questions largely through sources Latter-day Saints accept, and was only shared publicly after he failed to receive answers to his questions is a fabrication.

Only days after sending the letter, Runnells personally coordinated with Tom Phillips to publish the letter on Phillips’ Church-antagonistic website, MormonThink.

In the days after the publication of his letter, many Latter-day Saints taken in by his narrative began to answer his questions since his story appeared to be sincere. In writing answers to the questions, Michael Ash wrote, “I don’t doubt that the author of the CES Letter is sincere … with sincere hopes of helping other people get out of the same situation.”

Similarly, Jonathan Cannon wrote that the essay came from Runnells’ “real, lived experience.” And Jim Bennett said, “I think Jeremy Runnells is an honorable, good guy … And I think [he] came to his position from a place of integrity.”

Each of these respondents gave Runnells the benefit of the doubt that the story around the letter was true. He misled them—as he did so many others. 

Despite Runnells claiming he was looking for answers, and despite the fact that those providing them were giving him the benefit of the doubt, doing so in good faith, Runnells responded with personal attacks and threats, in one case deriding their “pompous arrogance” and threatening to kick their “a**.” 

In the years since, Runnells has continued to promote his letter. While today it is still titled and formatted as a letter, 43% of the material in it today was never sent to the CES director to see or respond to. He continues to display high-quality designs and a logo and has even translated the letter into several other languages after claiming that he never intended to disseminate it.  

Much time and attention have been given to addressing the questions that Runnells poses. But something else was never addressed, because it wasn’t even in people’s awareness. As this investigation confirmed, the foundational story of the letter itself, the story that has so effectively convinced readers to give serious attention to what this man insisted were his sincere “questions,” was simply never true. 

In an August 9, 2024, presentation examining the new evidence, acclaimed historian Steven C. Harper concluded, “The author was not an honest truth seeker. As many many people have done, I took for granted that he was who he said he was. … I was one of many, who knows how many thousands, who read the CES letter and wanted to wrap my arms around Jeremy Runnels and say, ‘man that sucks, I wish that stupid CES guy had been better to you.’ And that’s just not what happened. That’s not the truth.”

Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess’s in-depth investigation into the history of the CES Letter is available linking here to the substack Publishing Peace. An updated version was released August 13.

Editor’s Note: The article has been updated to reflect an update to reference the publication date of the latest version of the article. 

The post The True Origins of the CES Letter appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Only a matter of weeks before his death, the Prophet Joseph stated: 

We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles. . . . The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That which has a beginning may have an end (emphasis added). 

This was a consistent and persistent theme in the teachings of President Lorenzo Snow, the fifth President of the Church. “I believe that we are the sons and daughters of God,” he observed, “and that He has bestowed upon us the capacity for infinite wisdom and knowledge, because He has given us a portion of Himself. We are told that we were made in His own image, and we find that there is a character of immortality in the soul of man.” “We have divinity within ourselves,” he stated on another occasion; “we have immortality within ourselves; our spiritual organism is immortal; . . . [W]e will live from all eternity to all eternity.”

Latter-day prophets have taught that we lived with our Heavenly Parents in a family setting before we came into this life. We were taught and schooled by Them, instructed and prepared to come to earth and take a physical body. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained: 

When the time arrived for us to be advanced in the scale of our existence and pass through this [mortal] probation, councils were held, and the spirit children were instructed in matters pertaining to conditions of mortal life, and the reason for such an existence. 

The Father’s plan of salvation was presented to us, and we must have had extended conversations about such matters as what earth life would be like, the importance of a physical body, the reality and evil intent of Lucifer and his diabolical hosts, and what would be required of us in terms of receiving and accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ, with its accompanying covenants and ordinances. 

Today, we find ourselves on earth, seeing, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “through a glass darkly,” or, as the Revised English Bible renders it, “we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror.” The memories of our first estate and our premortal family relationships are blocked temporarily from our conscious minds. But we were once a part of the immediate family of God and were taught and nurtured in a family setting for what may have been eons of time. The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches: “In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life.” Consequently, each of us comes to earth with yearnings for closeness, for belonging, for tenderness and affection, for love and happiness; all of these were an integral part of our lives as premortal spirits. 

We have been taught by latter-day prophets that the family is the most important unit in time or eternity. It is in the family that loving relationships are formed, personalities are shaped, values are established, consciences are awakened, Christian qualities and attributes are developed, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His gospel are planted in the human heart. And it is in the family that the greatest fulfillment in this life is to be found. 

It is so easy in this busy and exceedingly complex world to be distracted, to begin to focus on means rather than ends, to labor in secondary rather than primary causes. To the extent that we, as members of the Lord’s Restored Church, continually strive to maintain the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we will be led to focus more and more on those matters that are eternally relevant. President M. Russell Ballard declared: 

In my ministry, I have learned what matters most is our relationships with Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, our families, and our neighbors, and allowing the Spirit of the Lord to guide us in those relationships so we can testify of the things that matter most and last longest.

President Joseph F. Smith taught that 

Our knowledge of persons and things before we came here, combined with the divinity awakened in our souls through obedience to the gospel, powerfully affects, in my opinion, all our likes and dislikes and guides our preferences in the course of this life, provided we give careful heed to the admonitions of the Spirit. All those salient truths, which come so forcibly to the head and heart seem but the awakening of the memories of the spirit (emphasis added). 

 A classic example of these “spirit memories” is the kind of vague homesickness we occasionally feel, a longing for another time and place. “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy,” C. S. Lewis stated, “the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

President Russell M. Nelson taught that what we refer to as “the spirit of Elijah” is no more nor less than “the Holy Ghost bearing testimony of the divine nature of the family.” The closer we draw to that Holy Spirit and the more we strive to keep it with us at all times, the clearer will be our views on life here and the sharper will be our focus on things hereafter. As we go into the House of the Lord and are endowed with power from on high, then as we enter into the highest and holiest of all priesthood ordinances in the temple—the new and everlasting covenant of marriage—we begin the formation of an eternal family, a union that transcends time and brings us even closer to that eternal family we left behind when we came into mortality. Moses wrote that the same Priesthood that was in the beginning—a family order of priesthood government—“shall be in the end of the world also.” And as it is with the Holy Priesthood, so it will be with the eternal family unit, for “the course of the Lord is one eternal round.”

The post The Family: The Past, The Present, The Future appeared first on Public Square Magazine.