Join us this weekend in celebrating the 200th anniversary of Moroni first appearing to Joseph Smith! We will be pleased to hear a presentation from our keynote speaker, Richard Bushman, on the evening of September 22 at 7:00 PM MDT, followed by a day of presentations on September 23. The entire event will be streamed free of charge on our YouTube channel. More information is available here.

The post Join us this weekend for a FREE virtual Book of Mormon conference with keynote speaker Richard Bushman appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Why do you believe in Levels of Heaven?

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the 3 kingdoms of Heaven. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

Quick announcement for you first: This coming weekend, Friday Sept 22 – Saturday Sept 23 is an online only conference put on by FAIR and the focus is evidence for the Book of Mormon. I am not presenting at this conference but I do get to help out a bit with introductions and questions which I am thrilled to death over because it means I get to hang out with some very smart people all day long. The Friday evening presentation is none other than Richard Bushman. On Saturday there are a number of speakers including Stephen Smoot – he’s the most up-to-date scholar on issues surrounding the Book of Abraham; a presentation by my 2 favorite Spencers – Spencer Marsh and Spencer Kraus – which I think has been jokingly titled, “Revealing the One True Spencer” but in reality is about 2 Nephi 19:1, which is rather a puzzling verse. Several good talks on archeology challenges and ancient artifacts. I’ll be there live with the speakers, but the conference is online only and you can stream it on the FAIR YouTube channel.

Okay, we’re going to talk about the levels of Heaven. Our jumping-off verse is 2 Corinthians 12:2:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.

And I’ve noticed that Latter-day Saints sometimes are confused about why Evangelicals don’t accept this idea, it’s in the Bible after all. I want to talk through how and why Evangelicals see this verse in 2 Corinthians the way they do, and then we’ll talk about some intersections with our faith and where you might go in conversation about this topic.

I don’t have research to point to that backs this up, but my sense is that if you asked most Evangelicals what Paul means by “the 3rd Heaven” they wouldn’t even understand the question. It’s considered an obscure verse that they generally don’t spend a lot of time on so the average Evangelical person might not even know it’s in scripture. But, for those who do, they have a very concrete (meaning physical) explanation for it – rather than a spiritual one. Which brings up a bigger question: Why do we – why does anyone – take some verses literally and some spiritually? Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use both techniques, but at different times and for different reasons. The cynical explanation is that the other group, the group that is opposite of you, does this at their own convenience only to fit their doctrine in. But I think it’s more complex than that. Both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals (as well as every other denominational group or religion out there) are heavily influenced by a set of interpretative rules called hermeneutics. The hermeneutic you use – here the choices are physical or spiritual, but there are lots of others – determines how you will interpret a passage. Let me make an analogy to help you understand.

In English, there is a proper order for adjectives in a sentence. An adjective is a descriptive word and if you string them together in the wrong order your sentence won’t sound right. However, if you ask almost any native English speaker to name that order, they can’t do it. I can’t do it. I had to look the order up for this talk to make sure I got it right – it’s a rule I follow, but don’t even know I’m following it. I just know it sounds right. The order is Quantity, Quality, Size, Age, Shape, Color Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin), and Purpose. A classic example of getting this order correct is the sentence, “I love that really big old green antique car.” If you’re a native speaker, this sounds right to your ears while, “I love that antique, green, old, big car,” just doesn’t sound right. You follow this rule without even knowing the rule exists. And hermeneutics are like this. Knowing when to read literally or physically and when to read spiritually is a rule that you follow without even knowing there is a rule. And Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use different rules. So when they interpret something, it doesn’t sound quite right to our ears – and vice versa.

What are the Evangelical rules for the interpretation of a verse like this one in 2 Cor? They interpret this verse literally by saying that the first heaven refers to the atmospheric where the birds live (and yes, this is how it’s normally phrased.). The second heaven is the area of the stars and planets. The third heaven is the dwelling place of God and Heaven. But why?

So, I think the tendency here is for Latter-day Saints to claim that Evangelicals get it wrong because they don’t have the Spirit and therefore can’t interpret correctly. But that’s not a very satisfying answer and it probably breeds more us-them than is good for anyone. So let me offer a couple different ways to understand what’s happening here.

First, you remember from past episodes that the Evangelical movement is not even 100 years old, and it really came of age alongside the Baby Boomers. It is very much a post-WW2 American invention. The cultural mix at the time was encouraging everyone to move into the modern world with all its conveniences. And they didn’t want to be seen as old fuddy-duddies. If you’re close to my age, our family lines probably play out in a similar fashion. My mother was born in the first wave of the baby boom, but her parents were both born in the 19-teens, and all 4 of her grandparents were born in the 1800’s. The Evangelical movement rose up with these baby boomers whose parents and grandparents seemed to be from an entirely different era. So they wanted an entirely different version of church than what their parents and grandparents had which was now out of fashion for being too fundamentalist and strict. They found what they were looking for in the Evangelical movement. The Evangelicals were a reaction to the fundamentalists who came before them.

But like with all reactionary movements, the very thing they’re reacting against often gets smuggled right in any way, and in this case, we’re talking about the temptation to interpret in an overly literal way. They will say things like, “The Bible is the literal word of God.” At face value, what that sentence means is that God’s message to use is found in this book. But what that gets morphed into is something like: everything in the Bible should be taken literally. This leaves you in a weird place if you read in Luke that Jesus says he gathers us like baby chicks under his wings because the rule of “everything should be taken literally” falls apart unless you want to regard Christ as some kind of giant cosmic chicken. So what has happened with Evangelicals is that their interpretative rule is something like: in order to take scripture seriously you have to take it literally whenever possible – and when it is not possible you must find the spiritual meaning instead. In other words, if it can be literal – it should be taken literally. Evangelicals will get a little squirmy if you try to say this plainly. When they ask, “Do you take the Bible literally?” what they’re really asking is, “Do you think the Bible is actually true?” The word “literal” here is morphing in meaning – it’s okay, words do that within the context of a culture. But it leaves Evangelicals with this sense of the literal meaning has to come first.

So, when they look at our verse about the third Heaven in 2 Corinthians their first impulse is to look for a literal meaning. Remember, these rules are often as invisible to people as the English rules of which order adjectives go in – everyone follows the rule, even though most people don’t know it exists. And, Evangelicals have a second interpretation rule here that reinforces the first: If another verse in the Bible mentions the same thing, it should be used to enhance the meaning of the verse in question. So, Evangelicals interpret the 1st Heaven to be where the atmosphere and the birds are and they back that up with a verse like Deut 28:12, “The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season.” And they see this as a perfectly valid explanation. Paul mentions a 3rd Heaven, implying that there are 1st and 2nd Heavens. Can we interpret this literally? Yes, and we have scriptures that do so, a literal interpretation works and therefore should be used.

Latter-day Saints have our own history of why things have been interpreted the way they have. And we face the same reality that Evangelicals do – many of the rules we use for interpretation are rather invisible to us, we just know what sounds right. My experience has been – and I’m sure some of you have had different experiences and I’d love to read about them in the comments – but my experience has been that the hermeneutics Latter-day Saints most often use is something called an emendatory (amendatory) hermeneutic which just means that we have been given additional information or clarity on what the Bible is talking about through either the Book of Mormon or our modern Prophets. In general, we would look at a verse like this one about the 3rd Heaven and easily be able to quote all kinds of modern revelation that help us know what “the 3rd Heaven” actually means. The challenge for Latter-day Saints comes in 2 directions. Either we’re overly quick to jump to, “this part of the Bible is clearly not translated correctly and I don’t have to do any study or work to try and tease out some meaning.” Or, we over-relate a Biblical passage to modern revelation – sometimes making connections that the Prophet himself (whichever one speaking) did not make. Latter-day Saints can also go a little too heavy on literal interpretation just like Evangelicals can simply because we’re impacted by history here too – the early half of the 20th century was dominated by more literal/fundamentalist thinking in our church too.

Okay, so how do you talk about this concept with your Evangelical friends? I have 2 thoughts.

First, Jesus doens’t use the phrase “levels of Heaven” or “Kingdoms of Heaven” but he does talk about varying degrees of reward in Heaven and makes it clear that certain things we do here on Earth will bring more reward, and certain things less reward. For example: Matthew 5 Jesus says there is a great reward for those who are persecuted. Meaning that the people who did not have to face persecution will not be rewarded in that way. Jesus is offering a compensatory reward for suffering faithfully for his name. In the very next chapter Jesus talks about how some folks really want to draw attention to the fact that they’re giving to the poor – Jesus tells us that these people have their reward in full already and this behavior will not get them further reward in Heaven. Romans 2 Paul tells us God will give to every man based on his deeds. In 1 Cor 3 Paul teaches that our works will be judged – some will burn up, and some will endure – those who produce works that endure will be rewarded. All this to say, pointing out that these passages (and many others) describe different degrees of reward and that might open up the conversation really nicely.

My second thought on how to talk with Evangelicals about this: Read the CS Lewis book, “The Great Divorce.” It’s fiction and a rather easy read. The audio book is only about 3 hours. Lewis was not a member of our faith, and at times actually had some rather snarky things to say about our faith, but in The Great Divorce, he sees the same truth we’re talking about. Here is the basic plot: It’s set in the afterlife and people from the lower kingdoms (here represented by a large, noisy city) are given a chance to go on a bus ride to the higher kingdoms. In the book the higher kingdoms are thought of as being closer to God – the countryside is closer to God than the city – and the great mountain is where God lives but its rather steep and hard to get to. However, God reigns over all 3 kingdoms. You might think that when the people from the lower kingdom get a glimpse of the country side and its fresh air that they might awaken their desire to progress. But they don’t. They complain that the color of the grass is such a vivid green it hurts their eyes and feels “too real” when they put their feet on it. They complain that living in the countryside requires too much of them and they want to get back on the bus and go home where it’s comfortable. The point here is that the people who spent their lives preparing to live closer to God are the ones who are best able to adapt to the higher kingdoms. You can’t climb the great mountain without some training. But in the book, progression is possible if you want it. Most people don’t. Lewis never intended this as a pro-LDS book by any means – and yet he is getting at some of the very things we’re saying about 3 Heavens. I actually read this book long before I investigated the church and it was an important thing for me to have on board in my brain as I learned how to adjust to a different way of thinking about eternity.

I hope this episode helps you think through some ways of how to understand your Evangelical friends and how to talk with them about the beautiful doctrine we have about Heaven in a way that they can actually hear.

Next week we’re talking about the phrase, “another gospel” in Galatians. Looking forward to seeing you then.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 2 Corinthians 8–13 appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

Imagine for yourself, for a moment, that a critic of the church stumbles across some quotes about the Adam-God theory.  “Brigham Young taught this, and seeing as he was a prophet, this must be what Mormons believe!” they reason to themselves.  They post these quotes on social media, proclaiming that “Mormons believe that Adam was God the Father!  Your leaders taught it, it’s what you profess to believe!”  However, what this critic did not know is that as early as 1897, we have records of church leaders stating that Brigham “no doubt expressed his personal opinion or views upon the subject,” supporting the idea that members of the church are under no obligation to support the notion that Adam was God the Father (1).  The critic doesn’t retreat from their position though, doubling down on how members of the church believe it.  At the end of the day, their bias led them to an incorrect conclusion about what members of the church believe.

For those who are well acquainted with criticisms of the church, I’m sure that you can recall with ease similar instances wherein bias led people to incorrect conclusions about our beliefs.  However, unlike most of the previous cognitive biases we’ve discussed, the bias outlined above can’t necessarily be learned by simply taking time to think about it.  It’s a little different, and has been classified by many researchers as being called The Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is what we’ll be discussing today.  Critical thinkers need to be aware of cognitive biases due to their possible impact on our daily decision-making and behavior, thus affecting our ability to arrive at conclusions and solve problems.  So today, we’re going to be going over the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s quasi-reverse bias (often referred to as Imposter Syndrome), and afterwards we’ll talk about what we can do to combat these biases.  Let’s get into it.

How Confidence Relates to Bias

Now, I need to lay some groundwork for the rest of the article to make sense.  It’s understood that confidence is related to bias in a few different ways.  For example, the Overconfidence Bias is understood to be “the tendency people have to be more confident in their own abilities.” (2)  This is demonstrated in a plethora of studies, such as one wherein it was shown that younger children rate their memory recall ability more highly than their older peers.(3)  This makes sense…we talked about how dominant emotions (such as high confidence) are associated with cognitive biases in our previous episode.  As we’ll soon see, however, the connection between confidence and bias goes a little deeper than that.  

So, a group of researchers set up a study where they had participants determine whether groups of dots moved left or right.  Sometimes the dots moved more noticeably in a given direction, and other times, the dots moved less noticeably in a given direction.  After the participants made decisions about what direction the groups of dots were moving, they were shown evidence that either confirmed their suspicions (when they guessed right), or went contrary to their suspicions (when they guessed wrong). They then used magnetoencephalography, which is just a fancy method of scanning brain activity, to see how areas of the brain related to confidence behaved throughout this process. At the end of the study, the researchers stated the following:

As hypothesized, we found that after high confidence (vs. low confidence) decisions, accumulation of neural evidence was facilitated if it was confirmatory, but largely abolished if it was disconfirmatory…In other words, our MEG analysis reveals that high confidence leads to post-decision accumulation becoming “blind” to disconfirmatory evidence. (4)

To translate that, it basically means that when the participants were super confident in their decisions, it led them to be blinded to evidence that went against their decisions.  If that sounds familiar, it should, because in our last episode this phenomena is described as being confirmation bias.  This study was super useful in being able to demonstrate how our confidence can relate to bias in ways that we may not expect, and it’s important to retain this in mind as we proceed talking about more confidence based biases.

However, I do want to caution against any inference that confidence is a bad thing, or that confidence indicates weakness in a position.  As we talked about in our article about epistemology, there are ways to be epistemically confident in something that leave us less susceptible to errors.  We don’t have to associate confidence with bad ideas, and in my opinion, we shouldn’t!  As we’ll discuss more later, a lack of confidence can lead to just as many, if not more problems in the long run.  Even so, critical thinkers should be aware of how certain biases related to confidence can affect our ability to make decisions, and solve problems.  As we’ll soon see, the effects of these kinds of biases can be long-lasting and far-reaching.

The Confidence Biases at Large

To begin explaining more concretely how bias and confidence may be related, an excellent place to start is to explore the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  The Dunning-Kruger Effect earned its name from a pair of psychologists named David Dunning and Justin Kruger.  They published a very famous paper in 1999 wherein they tested people on their social and intellectual skills.  Later, they tested the participants again, asking them to rate themselves on how well they actually did.  What did they find?  They found that those who scored on the bottom percentile rated themselves as being much more competent than they actually were (5).  Since that time, psychologists have referred to this effect as being the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it’s been a well-studied phenomenon ever since.

Those who are familiar with my previous article are familiar with the aspects that make up a cognitive bias.  While each cognitive bias is different, it usually stems from people focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (6).  Unfortunately for those who fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, one could make a convincing argument that they are victims to all four of these heuristics in seemingly negative ways.  First, they recognize the pattern that they’ve been able to accomplish tasks such as “deductive reasoning” before.  However, there’s no guarantee that because they’ve successfully done something before, that they’ll successfully do it again.  Next, they draw on the information that they already know, prioritizing this information, seemingly at the expense of other information.  However, this leads to other problems, seeing as the information that they are seemingly missing is often important, and may complicate the simplicity of the answers they’re looking for.  This becomes increasingly apparent as time goes on, but by the time that they realize it, a lot of the effects have already had long-lasting consequences.

To explain why this is, I first need to explain a common way that the Dunning-Kruger effect manifests itself.  Let’s use myself as a hypothetical example.  Arguably, I happen to be one of the few people right now doing a series on critical thinking in regards to LDS theology and history.  Let’s say that I suddenly get a lot of popularity for my discussion about critical thinking.  I suddenly gain thousands upon thousands of views on my videos, and chart a lot of internet traffic on my articles.  People start reaching out to me, asking me questions about obscure aspects of LDS history, which I may know less about.  I can tell you about the things I’ve studied (Epistemology, Evaluating sources, Logic, etc), but I’m less equipped to tell you about every single pioneer story ever recorded.  However, because I want to be successful, and because I want to make people happy, I start exploring other topics that I have less experience in.  Consequently, I begin saying more things that are wrong; but because I was right about some things, I have the confidence to keep persisting in my incorrect ideas.  However, any attempts to correct my incorrect ideas would fall on deaf ears, because I would be far too inexperienced to recognize how I was wrong.  This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in its purest form, and they (Dunning and Kruger) reported the principle in the following way:

Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. (7)

In the formal business world, this idea is referred to as The Peter Principle, which indicates that managers will “prioritize current job performance in promotion decisions at the expense of other observable characteristics that better predict managerial performance.” (8)  In other words, the managers look at what the employees do, and assume that their current performance will predict how well they will perform in a position that, in reality, would be too much for them.  It’s events like this that often lead to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the person being promoted (either formally, like in a business, or informally, such as on social media platforms), will suddenly begin to feel confident about their abilities, despite the often obvious lack of ability they may have in a given area.  The bias here is evident.  We’re recognizing patterns of our success.  We focus on the dominant and impactful ideas that agree with our own ideas.  We also ignore or downplay the issues that challenge our own ideas.  After all, if we were right before, who’s to say that we won’t be right again?  However, if we put that into syllogistic form, it falls apart rather quickly.

• P1:  I was able to solve/answer X problem using X method
• P2:  I am presented with Y problem
• Conclusion:  I will be able to solve Y problem using X method

The premises, in this instance, do not support the conclusion, and I hope you can do some research to find out what fallacy this is ;).  Proficiency in one area of study does not guarantee proficiency in another.  I’m sure that the reader can imagine a plethora of examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect being present at work, in politics, and of course, religious discussion.

Now, I certainly hope that I’ve stated things that are accurate and useful to critical thinkers, but regardless of how well-intentioned I may be, this does not change the fact that the internet as a whole is a breeding ground for the Dunning-Kruger effect in ways that have been previously unprecedented.  Normal, ordinary people with little to no formal training in a given field, are suddenly given power and influence over hundreds, if not thousands of people.  They can be proclaiming utter nonsense about a given topic, and not a single person will realize that they have no idea what they’re talking about. This is why critical thinking skills are as important as they are.  We need to be able to parse through information ourselves and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments at play.  If we don’t, then it becomes all the easier for us to fall victim to cognitive biases, and otherwise fallacious thinking.

Now, I will introduce one caveat here, just to cover my bases.  There is a bit of controversy right now regarding whether or not the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually a psychological bias.  There are some writers and researchers now who are advocating for the idea that the Dunning-Kruger effect is more statistical in nature. (9)  The question as to whether or not this is a psychological issue or a statistical issue is important to consider.  However, the authors of these articles don’t deny that these behavioral patterns exist.  Instead, they attribute it to other factors, such as the Overconfidence bias.  Whatever the underlying cause is (whether that be psychological, statistical, or otherwise), I think these patterns of behavior and thought are worth mentioning and analyzing.

Flipping the script

We’ve talked about how people who are low-achieving tend to rate themselves as being much more proficient than how they actually are.  However, that still leaves us with the question of how people who are proficient in their field of study view themselves.  Now, you’d initially think that people who are proficient in their fields would likewise rate themselves as being significantly better than their peers in their profession.  However, we actually find the opposite to be true.  High-achieving, competent people often rate themselves as being less competent than their peers. (11)  It’s my understanding that this doesn’t happen all the time, but one study estimated that it happens to about 70% of the population at least once in their lives. (12)  Some authors note that this is often cited in association with Dunning and Kruger, though those two psychologists never expressly talk about it in their studies. (13)  Even so, I do think that exploring this issue may prove to be useful.

The imposter effect, also known as Imposter Syndrome, was initially described by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, wherein it described that those who are extremely competent tend to downplay their abilities, feeling like they are less competent than they actually are. (14)  While this pair of researchers initially assumed that this phenomenon was exclusive to women, most researchers accept the idea that this effect is not exclusive to women. (15)  Some authors argue that it affects women more than men, while others suggest that Imposter Syndrome simply manifests differently among men and women. (16)  Regardless, this confidence problem inherent within the imposter effect contributes to the Dunning-Kruger effect, due to how the people who are less competent end up being given a larger platform due to the Peter Principle.  As demonstrated earlier, this can lead to a lot of problems within a short period of time.

The imposter effect can have some very negative effects on people and their performance. As you can imagine, it’s associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression. (17)  Those feelings are serious, and can cause problems in a variety of aspects in our lives, but something just as problematic is how the imposter effect can negatively impact critical thinkers in their quest to solve problems.  How so?  Well, let’s say that you have a brand new foreign-speaking missionary who’s afraid to speak up, because their trainer appears much more competent than them in terms of speaking, or even understanding the lesson content.  How about a bishop who resists a calling to become a stake president because he’s afraid that others will “discover his inadequacy.”  Examples of similar phenomena can be found outside of LDS culture, but you can probably already see the principle at play.  This can inhibit critical thinkers from making decisions that are genuinely going to solve problems.

That prompts the question though, how do we overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect and Imposter Syndrome?  Well, I think that the ways I mentioned in the last article are worth noting.  Slowing down, looking at things from a different perspective, and getting a multitude of opinions all may help decrease the effects and longevity of these effects.  However, I think it serves us to examine this from a more theological standpoint:  Both of these problems are resolved in a similar way.  True humility is the answer here.  To explain why, we first need to explore what humility is.  

Humility, in our theological context, is described as “recognizing our dependence on God.” (18)  I totally agree with that, and of course, an obvious application here is that humility would allow people to more easily admit when they don’t know something, hampering the effects of the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Why?  Because suddenly our eternal value doesn’t come from what we know, it comes from who we are.  Humility, when channeled in an appropriate way, can allow us to more easily admit when we are wrong.  If we really think about this, the imposter effect comes from basing our inherent value on the things we can do, instead of basing our value on who we are in relationship to God.

What about Imposter Syndrome though?  Surely that must be different, right?  Well, when we recognize that one of the most important aspects of our identity is that we are children of God, (19) it becomes much easier to recognize that we are not better than anyone else.  However, the opposite is also true:  no one is inherently better than us.  Instead of feeling like we’re letting people down, those who are truly humble recognize that even if there are imperfections in what they do, their imperfections do not make them less than other people.  Humility, in an ironic twist, decreases the fear that comes from failure.  When we realize that our true worth comes from our inherent, unalienable relationship with God, we open the door to true, enduring happiness.

Now, I’m not blind to the fact that humility exists in places outside the church.  General Christians, Atheists, as well as members of the church are all able to experience this kind of humility (though arguably for different reasons).  However, I bring this idea up for a few reasons.  First, obviously, I want to show how confidence and bias relate to each other, and likewise show a way that I think we can mitigate the effects of unhealthy confidence.  I want to show one of many ways of how looking at things from different perspectives can be useful.  This is the epitome of critical thinking:  the idea that we can bring together data of different types, analyze it, and then use it to help us solve problems.  This pattern is something that I hope everyone would try to emulate.  You don’t even need to be a member of the church to appreciate how this method of data analysis can be useful.  

In conclusion, I think that there are some important things to consider when we talk about how confidence can impact bias.  First, we need to know some of the mechanics behind how bias and confidence are related.  We also need to know some documented biases that relate to confidence, and we need to know how to fix them.  Again, I want to reiterate that certainty isn’t a bad thing, but like most things, it should be employed after careful consideration and restraint.  As we do so, it’ll be easier for us to arrive at correct conclusions, and eventually become the kinds of thinkers and believers God wants us to be.

References:

1. https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/80389221-debe-4168-89a6-9e2bd7709a5c/0/369; The quote part comes from Joseph F. Smith, a contemporary to Brigham Young, and a future prophet and leader of the church.  While this quote was said after Brigham died, other leaders, such as Orson Pratt, publicly denounced the doctrine while Brigham was still alive.  Later, after meeting with Brigham, Pratt apologized.  Pratt continued thereon to allow Brigham to have his opinion uninhibited, but stated that he would not teach the doctrine himself (link here).  Orson was counseled by the brethren on the matter, but was never once disciplined by the church for this position.  There are also points wherein Brigham himself was less dogmatic about the Adam-God theory, and you can read more about that here.
2. https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/overconfidence-bias 
3. Piehlmaier D. M. (2020). Overconfidence Among Young Decision-Makers: Assessing the Effectiveness of a Video Intervention and the Role of Gender, Age, Feedback, and Repetition. Scientific reports, 10(1), 3984. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61078-z 
4. Rollwage, M., Loosen, A., Hauser, T.U. et al. Confidence drives a neural confirmation bias. Nat Commun 11, 2634 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16278-6 
5. Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1121
6. Korteling, J. E., Brouwer, A. M., & Toet, A. (2018). A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1561. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01561
7. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect 
8. https://economics.harvard.edu/files/economics/files/ms28914.pdf
9. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real?fbclid=IwAR13aDSHXbp-X5vsEoOOxLLsQbKNpxt77CnIqto5TllpIdoRehSOK4cRW1Q 
10. https://dictionary.apa.org/impostor-phenomenon; see also https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.77.6.1121 
11. Gravois, J. (2007). You’re not fooling anyone. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(11), A1. Retrieved November 5, 2008 (link here, though there is a paywall to the full article)
12. Magnus, J. R., & Peresetsky, A. A. (2022). A Statistical Explanation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 840180. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840180; This is another one of those articles that tries to use statistics to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect.
13. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/202308/the-history-of-imposter-syndrome
14. Feigofsky S. (2022). Imposter Syndrome. HeartRhythm case reports, 8(12), 861–862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrcr.2022.11.001 (if that link doesn’t work, try this one).
15. https://online.utpb.edu/about-us/articles/psychology/exploring-imposter-syndrome-and-gender; See also https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucianapaulise/2023/03/08/75-of-women-executives-experience-imposter-syndrome-in-the-workplace/?sh=2da5b9576899;  The first talks about how women experience it more than men, the latter says otherwise.
16. https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2013/11/fraud; Some sources claim that this affects those who are considered demographic minorities differently than those who are not considered demographic minorities.  For example, one study suggests that for African Americans “impostor feelings are a stronger factor in mental health than perceived discrimination and possibly minority status stress” (link here).  As you can see, imposter syndrome can have repercussions that can affect a lot of discourse about minority populations.
17. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/gs/humble-humility?lang=eng 
18. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts/worldwide-devotional-for-young-adults/2022/05/12nelson?lang=eng

Further Study:

• “Why ignorance fails to recognize itself” Featuring David Dunning; This is pretty interesting, because one of the original researchers for which the “Dunning-Kruger” effect was named, explains more about his findings.  Definitely interesting to listen to.
• https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1989/04/beware-of-pride?lang=eng; This talk by Ezra Taft Benson shows how pride can be manifested in a few different ways, and is combatted most effectively by humility.
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585058: This gives a solid outline of the findings behind imposter syndrome, and likewise explores ways in which it manifests.

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 7: Confidence and Bias appeared first on FAIR.

by Matthew C. Godfrey

One of the seminal events of Wilford Woodruff’s life was his participation in the Camp of Israel (later known as Zion’s Camp) expedition in 1834. Wilford was recruited to participate in the camp after he had been a member of the Church for only a few weeks. The camp was the first time he got to meet individuals such as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball, and it taught him several lessons. Wilford transmitted these lessons to the Saints throughout his life, and they are teachings that can benefit Church members today as well.

Zion’s Camp Overview

Zion’s Camp had its roots in the expulsion of the Saints from Jackson County, Missouri, in the fall of 1833. In late October and early November, Jackson County citizens organized and violently attacked settlements of the Saints in the county. Ultimately, members were forced to flee into surrounding counties, the majority of them going to Clay County. In January 1834, the Missouri Saints sent Parley P. Pratt and Lyman Wight to Kirtland, Ohio, to inform Joseph Smith and other Church leaders of their plight.

At the February high council meeting where Pratt and Wight spoke, Joseph Smith declared his intent of “going to Zion to assist in redeeming it” and then “called for volunteers to go with him.”¹ That same day, a February 1834 revelation (section 103 in today’s Doctrine and Covenants) instructed Joseph to recruit up to five hundred men to go to the aid of Church members who had been expelled from Jackson County. The group would settle on land purchased in the county and vicinity and provide protection against any “enemies” that sought to drive the Saints from the “goodly land.”²

To fulfill these instructions, Joseph Smith and a contingent of men from Kirtland, Ohio, departed in May 1834; another contingent was recruited in Pontiac, Michigan Territory, by Hyrum Smith and Lyman Wight and joined the Kirtland group in June 1834 at the Allred settlement in Missouri. The camp totaled approximately 205 men and around twenty-five women and children. The march was at times grueling, with camp members walking as much as forty miles a day. Sometimes camp members did not have enough food or water, but for the most part, they had adequate provisions.

At other times, the expedition was threatened by individuals, most notably at Fishing River in Missouri where a storm prevented a mob from attacking the camp. At the end of June 1834, the camp was disbanded after a revelation stated that it was not yet time for Zion’s redemption (Section 105 in today’s Doctrine and Covenants). An outbreak of cholera hastened the camp’s dispersal and ended up killing thirteen participants and two other Church members.³ Joseph Smith led the expedition as the “Commander in Chief of the Armies of Israel.”⁴

 Wilford Woodruff’s Experiences

When the Lord instructed Joseph Smith and other Church leaders to recruit individuals for Zion’s Camp, Wilford Woodruff had been a member of the Church for just a few weeks. Wilford was baptized near Richland, New York, where he was living, by Zera Pulsipher on December 31, 1833, at the age of twenty-six. About two months after Wilford’s baptism, Joseph Smith and Parley P. Pratt left Kirtland for the eastern United States to recruit men for the expedition. On March 19, 1834, they separated. Joseph Smith returned to Kirtland while Parley continued his efforts in New York.

One of the places Parley visited was Richfield. Here he met Wilford and Wilford’s brother Azmon. Parley told them about the proposed expedition to Missouri. According to Wilford, Parley said “it was the will of the Lord that the yong men & middle aged what could be spared should go up to Zion.”⁵ However, Azmon and Wilford had only recently purchased a farm in Richland, and they were concerned about leaving it just as spring was coming. Wilford expressed his concern to Parley, who responded that it was Wilford’s “duty to try to prepare [himself] and go up to Zion.”⁶ Wilford and Azmon were at a crossroads. Would they do what Parley said was God’s will or would they stay on their farm?

Wilford chose to go while Azmon chose to stay—and Wilford did not look back. “I used evry exertion,” he stated, “to settle my accounts arange my affairs and prepare myself to join my Brethren to go to Missourie.”⁷ He later remembered that after Parley had preached about the necessity of helping the Saints in Missouri, he knew that he had to go. “My feelings were such,” Wilford recalled, “that if all the gold in the world had been presented to me, I could not have been hired to stay at home.”⁸

Having made the decision to go, Wilford traveled with Harry Brown and Warren Ingalls to Kirtland, where they arrived on the night of April 25. “There,” Wilford declared, “for the first time I had a view of our beloved Brother Joseph Smith the Prophet & Seer which God hath raised up in these last days through whom the saints receieve Revelations from time to time.”⁹ Wilford’s opinion of Joseph only increased as he became better acquainted with him—something that happened easily since Wilford stayed with Joseph the week he was in Kirtland.

On May 1, 1834, Wilford left with the first company of the expedition, consisting of about twenty men and four baggage wagons, one of which was Wilford’s. They traveled to New Portage, Ohio, that first day, where they waited for the rest of the group to join them a few days later. Then the expedition set out across Ohio for Missouri.

While on the journey, Wilford experienced all of the hardships and good times of Zion’s Camp, including the long days of walking, the cholera outbreak, the uncovering of a skeleton in a burial mound that became known as Zelph, and the Fishing River storm.¹⁰ He considered his experiences as important to his spiritual growth and tried to educate the Saints about Zion’s Camp for the rest of his life.

One of the Church’s most diligent recordkeepers in the nineteenth century, Wilford provided several accounts of Zion’s Camp. One account came in his journal. This was not something he kept contemporaneously while he was on the expedition, but he wrote a summary of his experiences probably in late 1834 or early 1835, although he inserted some details later than that. This account provides some good details about the camp, especially about the cholera epidemic.¹¹

In 1882, Wilford composed a history of the expedition titled “The History and Travels of Zion’s Camp,” based on several sources, including the manuscript history of the Church and his own memory and writings. This 124-page manuscript, written from Joseph Smith’s perspective, contains a daily account of the expedition’s travels, as well as copies of pertinent correspondence.¹² Wilford also occasionally related episodes from Zion’s Camp in his discourses to the Saints. A few of these appear in Journal of Discourses. Many of these recollections focused on how the expedition allowed Wilford to interact with Joseph Smith. These interactions convinced him that Joseph was a prophet of God.

Another account came in Leaves from My Journal, the third installment of George Q. Cannon’s “Faith Promoting Series.” Cannon published Leaves from My Journal in 1882. It was a condensed version of Wilford’s autobiographical writings from the 1850s and 1860s and contained examples of Wilford listening to the Spirit throughout his life, as well as his testimony of the Restored Gospel. This history contains several stories about Wilford’s experiences in Zion’s Camp, including details about his impressions of Joseph Smith.¹³

In all of these accounts, Wilford portrayed Zion’s Camp as one of the most important events in his life pertaining to his spiritual growth. He came to know that God was with the Saints just as he had been with the children of Israel in Old Testament times. He saw the Lord intervening on behalf of the camp. His experiences clearly solidified Wilford’s testimony of the Restored Gospel. “Had I not gone up with Zion’s Camp,” he once declared at a time when he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “I should not have been here today.”¹⁴

Lessons from Wilford’s Experiences with Zion’s Camp

Wilford learned many lessons from his time in Zion’s Camp. One of these is that the Saints in the latter days were not that different from the children of Israel in the Old Testament. In some of his accounts, Wilford compared Zion’s Camp to the children of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. For example, after the expedition reached New Portage, Ohio, and set up camp, Wilford “went to the top of the hill and looked down upon the camp of Israel.” After praying on the hill, “I rejoiced and praised the Lord that I had lived to see some of the tents of Israel pitched, and a company gathered by the commandment of God to go up and help redeem Zion.”¹⁵

Wilford also equated the Fishing River storm to the Lord destroying the armies of Pharaoh in the Red Sea. “The Lord delivered Israel in the days of Moses by dividing the Red Sea, so they went over dry shod,” he explained. “The Lord delivered Zion’s Camp from their enemies on the 19th of June, 1834, by piling up the waters in Fishing River forty feet in one night, so our enemies could not cross. He also sent a great hail-storm which broke them up and sent them seeking for shelter.”¹⁶

In addition, Wilford believed that Zion’s Camp was similar to the journeys of Book of Mormon peoples, specifically the Jaredites. “Every night before retireing to rest,” he explained in his history of Zion’s Camp, “at the sound of the trumpet we bowed before the Lord, in the several tents; and presented our thank and offerings with prayer and supplications.” Each morning, he stated, “every man was again on his knees before the Lord, imploring his blessings for the day.” In this way, he declared, “our journey was like the ancient Jaredites pitching our tents by the way.”¹⁷

Wilford’s connection of the camp with ancient Israel and the Jaredites showed him that we are all the covenant children of God, who interacts with us in the same ways that he interacted with the children of Israel or Book of Mormon peoples. This gave Wilford—and can give us—the confidence that we are just as important in the Lord’s eyes as those people of scripture were. And the events of our lives can be as significant for those who follow as the accounts of God’s people in the scriptures are for us today.

Wilford also learned about the necessity of sacrifice in developing spirituality through his Zion’s Camp experiences. His willingness to leave his and his brother’s farm behind to do his duty to the Lord was one example of this sacrifice—and it had a great impact on Wilford’s life. It is interesting to think about why Wilford became one of the Church’s great leaders—even the prophet of God—while his brother Azmon struggled with his testimony for much of his life. There are certainly many reasons for this—matters of faith are complicated things—but Wilford’s willingness to sacrifice for the Gospel, expressed early in his Church membership, was one factor.¹⁸

While on the expedition, Wilford had other experiences that taught him the importance of sacrifice. One of these came after the cholera epidemic broke out among camp members. When the expedition arrived in Clay County, Missouri, Wilford and his group went to the residence of Church member John Burk. He had an extra room in his house that he said Wilford’s company could have if they would clean it. “Fearing some other company would get it first,” Wilford remembered, the group “left all other business and went to work, cleaning out the room, and immediately spread down our blankets, so as to hold a right to the room.” However, not long after, several men suffering from cholera “were brought in and laid upon our beds. None of us ever used those blankets again, for they were buried with the dead.” Wilford concluded, “We gained nothing but experience by being selfish, and we lost our bedding.”¹⁹

Wilford then explained the lesson that he learned from this, one that he believed was especially important to youth: “Whenever you are blessed with any good thing, be willing to share it with others. By cultivating these principles while you are young, you will lay a foundation to do much good through your lives, and you will be beloved and respected of the Lord and all good men.”²⁰

Another key lesson Wilford learned from Zion’s Camp was how much God was interested in His life. There were several examples of divine intervention throughout the expedition, but none more pronounced than what happened to the group at Fishing River. While the expedition was camped there, a small contingent of men threatened that the Saints would “see hell enough before morning.” After the men left, “a small black cloud appeared in the northwest and it began to unroll itself like a scroll.” In just a few minutes, Wilford stated, “the whole heavens were covered with a pall as black as ink,” and a gigantic thunderstorm hit “with wind, rain, thunder, lightning and hail.” Observing the storm, Joseph Smith, according to Wilford, declared, “Boys, there is some meaning in this—God is in the storm.”

The rain and hail, together with a drastic rise in the river, prevented any mob from attacking the camp. “It was reported,” Wilford related, “that the Captain of the company” hoping to fight the expedition “said that it was a d—d strange thing that they could do nothing against the d—d Mormons but what there must be a d—d hail storm or some other d—d thing to hinder them from doing anything.” Yet, Wilford continued, the captain “did not feel disposed to acknowledge that God was fighting our battles.”²¹ To Wilford, that lesson was obvious—God was with the camp and helped it in its time of need. God’s interest in the camp—and in Wilford personally—was a great lesson that remained with Wilford for the rest of his life.

Wilford was also grateful that Zion’s Camp allowed him to interact with Joseph Smith and observe the Prophet closely. For a recently baptized member, this deepened his testimony of Joseph as a prophet. “I went up to Missouri in Zion’s Camp; I saw the Prophet every day, and I knew he was a Prophet of God,” he stated to a group of Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1862.²² On another occasion, he explained that Zion’s Camp provided him with “an experience that we never could have gained in any other way.” He continued, “We had the privilege of beholding the face of the prophet, and we had the privilege of traveling a thousand miles with him, and seeing the workings of the Spirit of God with him, and the revelations of Jesus Christ unto him and the fulfillment of those revelations.”²³

Wilford concluded that Zion’s Camp showed him that in Joseph’s “public and private career he carried with him the Spirit of the Almighty.” Indeed, Joseph “manifested a greatness of soul which I had never seen in any other man.”²⁴ We may not have the opportunity to interact with the Prophet every day like Wilford, but we can observe his teachings and see “the workings of the Spirit of God with him.” As we do so, our testimonies of the prophet can deepen just as Wilford’s did.

Finally, Wilford’s experiences with Zion’s Camp—and his careful chronicling of them—teaches us the importance of keeping records. We can benefit spiritually from Wilford’s accounts of the expedition because he was willing to keep such records. It is sometimes difficult to find the time to write in a journal or compose a brief history of our lives, but doing so will bless the lives of those who follow. In 2007, President Henry B. Eyring counseled Church members to “find a way” to preserve experiences that demonstrated God’s love and His hand in our lives. These would then become cherished records to buoy us up when we “need to remember how much God loves us and how much we need Him.”²⁵

Wilford found a way to record his experiences, and if we can also find a way, our experiences can have just as much of a spiritual impact on those who follow as Wilford’s have on us. We can be a blessing and strength to those that come after us as well.

Endnotes

1. Minutes, February 24, 1834, josephsmithpapers.org/minutes/1834-02-24.
2. Revelation, February 24, 1834 [D&C 103:20, 24–26], josephsmithpapers.org/revelation/1834-02-24.
3. Matthew C. Godfrey, “‘The Redemption of Zion Must Needs Come by Power’: Insights into the Camp of Israel Expedition, 1834,” BYU Studies Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2014): 126–127.
4. Minutes, February 24, 1834, josephsmithpapers.org/minutes/1834-02-24.
5. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 11, 1834, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal/1834-04-11.
6. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 11, 1834, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal/1834-04-11.
7. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 11, 1834, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal/1834-04-11.
8. Wilford Woodruff, “Early Events of the Church, Etc.,” Journal of Discourses 7:98.
9. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 25, 1834, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal/1834-04-25.
10. For more information about the expedition’s travels, see Matthew C. Godfrey, “The Camp of Israel’s March to Missouri,” in Zion’s Camp, 1834: March of Faith, ed. Matthew C. Godfrey (Sandy, UT: History of the Saints, 2018), 33–65, and Alexander L. Baugh, “The Camp of Israel in Clay County, Missouri,” in ibid., 67–101.
11. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, p. 1, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal.
12. “History – The History of Zion’s Camp,” p. 1, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/the-history-of-zions-camp.
13. “Leaves From My Journal,” p. 1, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/leaves-from-my-journal.
14. Wilford Woodruff, “The Holy Ghost—Laboring in Faith—The Kingdom of God—Patriarchal Marriage,” Journal of Discourses 13:156.
15. “Leaves From My Journal,” p. 17, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/leaves-from-my-journal.
16. “Leaves From My Journal,” p. 18, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/leaves-from-my-journal.
17. “History – The History of Zion’s Camp,” p. 7, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/the-history-of-zions-camp.
18. Thomas G. Alexander explores this question—as well as Wilford’s experiences in Zion’s Camp—in his excellent article “Wilford Woodruff and Zion’s Camp: Baptism by Fire and the Spiritual Confirmation of a Future Prophet,” BYU Studies 39, no. 1 (2000): 130–146.
19. “Leaves From My Journal,” p. 18, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/leaves-from-my-journal.
20. “Leaves From My Journal,” p. 19, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/leaves-from-my-journal.
21. “History – The History of Zion’s Camp,” pp. 62–64, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/the-history-of-zions-camp.
22. Wilford Woodruff, “Fulfilment of Prophecy—Power of the Gospel—Consistency of Its Principles,” Journal of Discourses 10:9.
23. Wilford Woodruff, “The Holy Ghost—Laboring in Faith—The Kingdom of God—Patriarchal Marriage,” Journal of Discourses 13:162.
24. Wilford Woodruff, “Early Events of the Church,” Journal of Discourses 7:98.
25. President Henry B. Eyring, “O Remember, Remember,” Ensign, ChurchofJesusChrist.org/ensign.

Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers and senior managing historian for outreach and engagement with the Church History Department. He holds a PhD in American and public history from Washington State University. He previously served as managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers and was the lead historian on three volumes of the Documents series. He has authored or coedited several books and articles, including Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (2007); The Earth Shall Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (2018); Zion’s Camp 1834: March of Faith (2018); and Know Brother Joseph: New Perspectives on Joseph Smith’s Life and Character (2019). He serves as an Advisor to the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project.

The mission of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation is to digitally preserve and publish Wilford Woodruff’s eyewitness account of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thousands of transcribed pages are available at wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/documents, including Wilford’s journals, missionary records, dreams and visions, autobiographies, and histories.

The post Sacrifice and Obedience: Lessons from Zion’s Camp appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Obedient in Everything

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about obedience. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

I do love to tell you about things that are going on just in case you don’t know. This coming weekend, Sept 15-16, is a conference in Salt Lake, at the Conference Center and it’s regarding the completion of the Joseph Smith Papers. The conference is free and you can come in person, or watch online. Each session will be focused on a different aspect of the world during the time of Joseph Smith. Which is really cool because you can think about what the social and economic forces are at play behind the scenes of the beginning of the church. So there’s a session on what it was like for women and families during that era, or what race, ethnicity, and politics were like then. There’s a session on how they handled conflict and one on finances. And lots more. If you’re into historical stuff like I am, you will be sure to enjoy it.

Okay, we’re going to talk about the concept of obedience. And our jumping-off verse is 2 Corinthians 2:9 which says:

Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything.

So, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. What we call 2 Cor is thought to actually be his 4th letter to them, and as you can see in the letter, things are not exactly going well. They’ve gotten themselves into some very precarious situations, and Paul is trying to help them out. But he’s also apparently a bit worried that they’re not going to listen – as evidenced by the fact that this is his 4th letter and things have gotten worse over time. So he starts out the letter with a reminder about obedience. Which leads us to an interesting question….What does the phrase, “you should be obedient in everything” bring up for Evangelicals that’s different than what it brings up for Latter-day Saints? In church we sing, “We love to obey thy command.” And that’s good. I actually really like that song. But Evangelicals get a bit weird around this sentiment and it’s not because they don’t want to obey the commands of God. They do. They interpret them a bit differently than we do, but on the whole, they are interested in obeying God. The problem, which actually is illustrated rather well in this song, is that those “commands” often come through human leaders. That song, “We Thank Thee oh God For a Prophet,” is praise directed toward God for a variety of different blessings, including the blessing of having a Prophet.

We’ve touched on this briefly in the past, but there are some variations on this topic. They’re not as much based on the different denominations or groups, but on where you fall in the authority structure of that group. Here’s an example: The average pew-sitting Evangelical will likely never be in the position to promise obedience to a human leader. They do have membership agreements that they agree to when joining a certain church, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But in general, they are assuaged into obedience based on what the individual or family will get out of that obedience. For example, the church starts some new program they want everyone to participate in. The church leadership will use various marketing techniques to help the people see the need for this thing they’re offering and then willingly participate. That’s mostly what it’s like for the pew-sitting person, no matter what version of Evangelicalism they’re following. But you will see far more variety regarding how leaders in those churches are dealt with.

Latter-day Saints, I think you’ve vaguely familiar with this, but I’ll go over it just to be sure. Church leadership in the Evangelical world is almost all done by paid employees. Those employees fall into 3 categories. First category, ordained pastoral staff. These are people who went to Divinity School and have been through an ordination process. This is a long-term career kind of position. They intend to spend their life serving a group of people by teaching them. When you think of someone who says, “I’m a pastor,” this is what you’re thinking of. Second category, non-ordained pastoral staff. These are folks who maybe are in the process of finishing their pastoral education or those for whom that level of education was simply out of reach. They might have a title like, “youth pastor” or “children’s pastor” I was a children’s pastor for a lot of years at a great church in California. And this is the category I was in. Sometimes people in this category are called “youth director” instead of “youth pastor” depending on the rules of the church, but they function identically. The third category are folks who have been hired because they possess a skill that the church needs in order to run – someone to work on printed materials; someone to keep the grounds; someone to keep the books, etc. Mostly these are people who could be doing the same work somewhere else, but work for a church instead. Our church hires lots and lots of people in these categories – people who make the website and LDS Tools work; people who know how to manage a warehouse, etc. But in theory, these people could take their skills and work for any other employer as well. So, in talking about obedience, Category 2 (non-ordained pastoral staff) and 3 (skilled professionals) are mostly compelled to obedience in their work environment by human resources, or an employee manual, or a board that oversees their work. But the Category 1 people, those who have a formal education and are ordained, might also have a different level of requirement for obedience. In the denomination where I was ordained the ordination service included what is called the Oath of Conformity and the Oath of Canonical Obedience which is a lot of words just to say: You promise to do what the Bishop tells you to do. But my experience is on one end of the spectrum – not every ordained leader is asked to take an oath for conformity and obedience. And in some places, the pastor almost ordains himself and decides to start a church all on his own, and he only answers to himself. So you can see, sometimes obedience is required at higher levels, but that is a tiny, tiny percentage of people. Most Evangelicals won’t even come across any kind of wording like that unless they’re paying attention to the process of how people get ordained. But what Evangelicals have been frequently asked to do is sign a membership agreement. But some interesting exceptions have popped up and there’s history here.

A membership agreement is traditionally exactly what it sounds like: an individual signs something to say they agree with the doctrine of a particular church, that document probably says something about the expectation that they participate in the life of the church and that they obey the scriptures. There would probably be something about what might happen if a person becomes apostate. Eventually – think 1960s – 1980s – those begun to be seen as too legalistic, too controlling. Churches mostly moved away from specifics into something that just sort of signs the person up for membership without there being any requirements – or even more likely, they did away with membership all together.

Around the year 2000, many Evangelical churches started to think about church membership differently. There was a huge resurgence of Calvinist or Reformed churches during that era. The vibe of these churches was very slick, urban, young. In the past on this show I’ve told you the history of Mars Hill Church in Seattle – which at one point was the largest church in America – before it blew up in spectacular fashion. But MH is the epitome of this time in Evangelical history. These are the folks who wanted to say – with good motives, I think – but it’s going to sound really weird to your Latter-day Saint ears….they wanted to say that God hates humans and thinks we’re disgusting worms, but the faithful response to this is to kind of take it like a man. Any softening of that was seen as weak faith. These Reformed churches revitalized the practice of church membership – and then they took it to ridiculous lengths.

Instead of being a simple statement between a church and a member about their beliefs, it started to morph into a legal document or contract. What had happened was churches that were trying to practice some form of church discipline – that is keeping members accountable for their behavior – were getting sued by the people they were trying to discipline for defamation of character. Let me read you a quote from an attorney familiar with the story,

When a church begins the process of exercising formal, biblical discipline, it will often receive a letter from the member’s attorney threatening to sue the church for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Many church leaders who would not back down have found themselves forced into court, subjected to days of humiliating cross-examina­tion, and shocked to see juries penalize their churches with six-figure damages awards. This trend was triggered by the Guinn case in 1984, which resulted in a $400,000 judgment against a church and its leaders, and has continued to grow for twenty-five years.

So Evangelical churches have, more and more, reframed the idea of church membership. On one side they’ve completely given up the idea and said, “we just want you to come and learn and be with us – but we make no demands of obedience on you.” OR, they’ve gone the other direction and morphed their membership agreement into a legal contract, sometimes even requiring members to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding all church issues. I’d don’t have a study to point to that says this, but my own estimate is that probably 60% of churches have very low-key membership, or none at all. There are no expectations placed on people who attend. They’re treated like customers that the staff needs to keep happy. In your town if you have some slick megachurch that goes by the name,”The Rock Church” or “The Well” or “Elevation Church” this is very likely the model they’re using – church members are customers and customer service is the highest priority. And probably 40% that are trying some kind of membership agreement, which may or may not include phrasing about obedience. The ones that do contain words about obedience are probably leaning toward the legal contract side of things.

There are rare churches that have done extra sneaky things. Mars Hill in Seattle, for example, drafted their membership agreement so that in all reality, the church only had 3 members. Despite having 40,000 (or something) attending on Sundays, those people were not members. The membership contract they signed said they are members in name only, and have no right to anything – the 3 members of the church (the senior pastor and his top 2 board members) are the ultimate authority and the ones who must be obeyed above all else, and the only ones who will decide what happens, and attendees have no ability to influence that at all ever. There are other similar things. So, frankly, Evangelicals are not stupid people – they hear about stories like this and get suspicious that membership is a trick, and revert back to their hyper-independence of wanting a relationship to just be between them and God where no one else has the right to say anything about obedience.

So, all that to say, the word “obedience” is really loaded for Evangelicals. It’s either become a dirty word and been eliminated except in the most basic sense of obeying scripture – or it’s been hyped up into the realm of contracts and law. It’s probably going to take another 20 years, probably more, before they can find a sensible stance on it again.

Let’s briefly contrast this with what we believe in our church. We came to this Earth, in part, to prove our willingness to obey a Father that we can no longer see. It’s Abraham 3:25 “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” We covenant to obey the Law of Obedience, but it’s not blind obedience. At one point in my investigation of the church I had a true fear that having a Prophet actually meant that some guy I never knew could tell me what to do, and I’d have no choice but to do it. But the Law of Obedience is not God legally forcing us to comply with his dominance, it is him inviting us to come unto him. And then we get to make any choice we want – all those choices have consequences. There are no consequence-free choices in any aspect of life. But our obedience is not compelled – it is seen as a voluntary act of faith. We see – at least on our best days – that obedience is something that leads to happiness. Evangelicals have had a rough go on this topic and that word is going to bring up a lot of division (some of which we haven’t even covered here) and it’s not a word most of them would associate with “happiness.” I highly recommend to you the Youtube channel called Temple Light where my friend Jasmine talks through all things Temple in a direct way. Her episode called, “The Law of Obedience” would be a great video to watch after this one (and she’s more efficient than I am and can make her point in 10 min where it takes me 25) But that video will help you to think about why obedience has been played out in our church the way it has.

Next week we’re talking about the 3 levels of Heaven and why Evangelicals think we’re crazy to think such a thing, and how they think about it instead. See you then.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 2 Corinthians 1–7 appeared first on FAIR.

By Lyndie Jackson

The “Asking Big Questions” series is made in cooperation with the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project.

While it is relatively easy to stay in contact and communicate with people across the globe, creating and maintaining deep personal relationships takes time and effort. Similarly, the Savior is always close to us, waiting for us with open arms, but it takes more than checking in now and then to develop a deep personal relationship with Him.

Why We Need a Personal Relationship with Christ

Wilford Woodruff urged, “I would here exhort all the Latter day Saints who hear me this day to study well the position you are in, and search your hearts and see if we are in the favour of the Lord our God, and then let us increase continually in faith, in hope, in righteousness, and in every virtuous principle . . . in order to prove us as the friends of God.”1

Speaking of being the friends of God, Elder James E. Faust (1920–2007) said, “Having such a relationship can unchain the divinity within us, and nothing can make a greater difference in our lives as we come to know and understand our divine relationship with God.”2

By drawing closer to Christ, we can unlock our divinity, reach our potential, and be strengthened to become as God is.

CONTINUED HERE

The post Asking Big Questions: How Can I Develop a Stronger Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ? appeared first on FAIR.

By Maddie Christensen

The “Asking Big Questions” series is made in cooperation with the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project.

In today’s tumultuous world it can be difficult to make decisions and know what is right. As Latter-day Saints, we have the gift of the Holy Ghost to help us. Through the Holy Ghost, we can know the truth of all things (Moroni 10:5).

Wilford Woodruff was a great example of recognizing spiritual promptings and acting on them. He once shared:

While on my way east I put my carriage into the yard of one of the brethren in Indiana, and Brother Orson Hyde set his wagon by the side of mine, and not more than two feet from it.

Dominicus Carter, of Provo, and my wife and four children were with me. My wife, one child and I went to bed in the carriage, the rest sleeping in the house.

I had been in bed but a short time when a voice said to me: “Get up, and move your carriage.” It was not thunder, lightning or an earthquake, but the still, small voice of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost.

I told my wife I must get up and move my carriage. She asked: “What for?” I told her I did not know, only the Spirit told me to do it.

CONTINUED HERE

The post Asking Big Questions: How Can I Recognize the Spirit? appeared first on FAIR.

Please join us for this event commemorating the day in 1827 when the prophet Joseph Smith received the gold plates from Moroni from which the Book of Mormon was translated. We will be pleased to hear a presentation from our keynote speaker, Richard Bushman, on the evening of September 22 at 7:00 PM MDT, followed by a day of presentations on September 23. The entire event will be streamed free of charge on our YouTube channel. More information is available here.

The post Join us September 22-23 for a FREE virtual Book of Mormon conference with keynote speaker Richard Bushman appeared first on FAIR.

This post will be the last in the section about race and the Priesthood restriction. I apologize for not getting this up sooner. My offline life has been a little crazy this summer, and I just didn’t have the time to do this post justice until today. It’s an important topic, and I wanted to make sure I was able to treat it with the respect it deserves.

The bulk of the conversation this week is about the idea that the prophets can never lead the Church astray:

• Follow the Prophet 

The Church reminds us to give strict obedience to the prophet because he speaks for God and is incapable of misconduct.

No, the Church absolutely does teach either of those things. If you run a search on the Church’s website for the phrase “strict obedience,” do you know what you find? A whole bunch of scriptures, talks, and lesson manuals advising strict obedience to the commandments of God and the covenants we make with Him. I went through several pages of search results and didn’t find a single entry teaching strict obedience to the prophets.

For my entire lifetime, multiple prophets and apostles have counseled us to pray over their words for confirmation from God that they’re speaking the truth. In fact, when I wrote my response to the CES Letter last year, I spent a decent chunk of one post listing multiple quotes by Brigham Young, saying that he fearedthat the Saints would trust him without bothering to ask the Spirit for confirmation that he was teaching them correct doctrine. Here are some of the things he had to say about blindly trusting your leaders:

• “Ladies and gentlemen, I exhort you to think for yourselves, and read your Bibles for yourselves, get the Holy Spirit for yourselves, and pray for yourselves.” (Source)
• “What a pity it would be if we were led by one man to utter destruction! Are you afraid of this? I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually.” (Source)
• “I do not wish any Latter–day Saint in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied. I wish them to know for themselves and understand for themselves, for this would strengthen the faith that is within them. Suppose that the people were heedless, that they manifested no concern with regard to the things of the kingdom of God, but threw the whole burden upon the leaders of the people, saying, ‘If the brethren who take charge of matters are satisfied, we are,’ this is not pleasing in the sight of the Lord.” (Source)
• “The First Presidency have of right a great influence over this people; and if we should get out of the way and lead this people to destruction, what a pity it would be! How can you know whether we lead you correctly or not? Can you know by any other power than that of the Holy Ghost? I have uniformly exhorted the people to obtain this living witness each for themselves; then no man on earth can lead them astray.” (Source)
• “It is your privilege and duty to live so that you know when the word of the Lord is spoken to you and when the mind of the Lord is revealed to you. I say it is your duty to live so as to know and understand all these things. Suppose I were to teach you a false doctrine, how are you to know it if you do not possess the Spirit of God? As it is written, ‘The things of God knoweth no man but by the Spirit of God.’” (Source)
• “… [B]e faithful, live so that the Spirit of the Lord will abide within you, then you can judge for yourselves. I have often said to the Latter-day Saints—’Live so that you will know whether I teach you truth or not.’ Suppose you are careless and unconcerned, and give way to the spirit of the world, and I am led, likewise, to preach the things of this world and to accept things that are not of God, how easy it would be for me to lead you astray! But I say to you, live so that you will know for yourselves whether I tell the truth or not. That is the way we want all Saints to live. Will you do it? Yes, I hope you will, every one of you.” (Source)
• “Now, let me ask the Latter-day Saints, you who are here in this house this day, how do you know that your humble servant is really, honestly, guiding and counseling you aright, and directing the affairs of the kingdom aright? … [H]ow do you know but I am teaching false doctrine? How do you know that I am not counseling you wrong? How do you know but I will lead you to destruction? And this is what I wish to urge upon you—live so that you can discern between the truth and error, between light and darkness, between the things of God and those not of God, for by the revelations of the Lord, and these alone, can you and I understand the things of God.” (Source)
• “… ‘How are you going to know about the will and commands of heaven?’ By the Spirit of revelation; that is the only way you can know. How do I know but what I am doing wrong? How do I know but what we will take a course for our utter ruin? I sometimes say to my brethren, ‘I have been your dictator for twenty-seven years—over a quarter of a century I have dictated this people; that ought to be some evidence that my course is onward and upward.’ But how do you know that I may not yet do wrong? How do you know but I will bring in false doctrine and teach the people lies that they may be damned? Sisters can you tell the difference? I can say this for the Latter-day Saints, and I will say it to their praise and my satisfaction, if I were to preach false doctrine here, it would not be an hour after the people got out, before it would begin to fly from one to another, and they would remark, ‘I do not quite like that! It does not look exactly right! What did Brother Brigham mean? That did not sound quite right, it was not exactly the thing!’ All these observations would be made by the people, yes, even by the sisters. It would not sit well on the stomach … [i]t would not sit well on the mind, for you are seeking after the things of God; you have started out for life and salvation, and with all their ignorance, wickedness and failings, the majority of this people are doing just as well as they know how; and I will defy any man to preach false doctrine without being detected; and we need not go to the Elders of Israel, the children who have been born in these mountains possess enough of the Spirit to detect it. But be careful that you do not lose it! Live so that you will know the moment the Spirit of the Almighty is grieved within you.” (Source)
• “How often has it been taught that if you depend entirely upon the voice, judgment and sagacity of those appointed to lead you, and neglect to enjoy the Spirit for yourselves, how easily you may be led into error, and finally be cast off to the left hand?” (Source)

(And, just as a quick caveat, most of those were taken from the Journal of Discourses, so be careful about accepting them as word-for-word quotes.)

So, because of multiple statements just like these ones described here, I reject Faulk’s framing here. The prophets themselves tell us they’re fallible and that they want us to seek their confirmation from the Spirit that what they’re teaching us is true.

In fact, when President Spencer W. Kimball heard that Sister Elaine Cannon had taught the young women of the Church that when the prophet speaks, “the debate is over,” he was so alarmed that he met with her the very next day and asked her not to say things like that again. She explained what she actually meant, but he worried that people would think they wanted to take away their agency, because that wasn’t at all true.

Remember, it was Lucifer’s plan to leave us as choiceless automatons who did everything we were told to do. God’s plan was one of free will. And because we do have free will, none of us mortal humans are free from making the occasional error.

Faulk then quotes some statements about prophets never leading the Church astray:

1. “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.” (President Wilford Woodruff, General Conference, October 1890) 

2. “Keep your eye on the Prophet, for the Lord will never permit his Prophet to lead this Church astray.” (President Ezra Taft Benson, General Conference, October 1966) 

3. “Follow your leaders who have been duly ordained and have been publicly sustained, and you will not be led astray. (Elder Boyd K. Packer, General Conference, October 1992) 

4. “Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, Follow the prophet; don’t go astray. Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, Follow the prophet; he knows the way.” (Children’s Songbook)

This quote was initially taken from Official Declaration 1, the Manifesto officially ending plural marriage in the Church.

However, it was a teaching that actually originated with Joseph Smith. In a 2014 post on the Ether’s Cave blog, Matthew Roper cited multiple accounts of people remembering Joseph and also Oliver Cowdery teaching that by following the majority of the church membership and the majority of the Twelve, who kept the records of the Church, a person would never be led astray into apostasy.

President James E. Faust elaborated that this is because the Twelve hold the Priesthood keys.

And in an excellent devotional given to students at Ensign College last year, Keith Erekson said:

“In its complete original context, Wilford Woodruff’s teaching emphasized that the prophet would not … lead people ‘astray from the oracles [or revelations] of God and from their duty.’ Prophets will not lead us away from their true witness of Jesus Christ, from His revelations or from the path, however hard it may be, to follow Him.

If you follow these thoughts to their natural conclusion, you arrive at President Woodruff’s statement in the Manifesto. If the main body of the Church was ever led too far astray, the Priesthood keys would be lost and removed from the Earth just like they were back during the Great Apostasy. Because the Lord has promised us that the Priesthood would never again be taken from the Earth, this means that the prophet and the majority of the apostles can’t lead us astray.

So, as you can see, the way that Faulk presents that line is not the way that the Church treats it. It’s not that prophets can never make a mistake. It’s that prophets can never lead the Church into such deep apostasy that the Priesthood keys will again be removed from the Earth.

In that same devotional cited above, Erekson also taught some wrong assumptions people have about prophets, which I think is worth repeating here. This is a bit long, but I thought it was important to share because we see all of these things throughout this letter:

Erekson asked his listeners what expectations they might have about prophets, how those expectations might be influenced by their upbringing and culture, and if they are assuming things that are incorrect. 

“Admitting the errors in our own thinking is sometimes the most difficult part of understanding Church history because it takes humility to change our expectations and assumptions after we learn they are incorrect.” … Many oversimplify living prophets to a simple binary of being inspired or uninspired…. 

Many cultures have models of prophets. For some, a prophet is a sphinx, riddler or soothsayer who speaks in anonymous riddles. For others, a prophet is a “lone voice who speaks out against all evil and oppression” and denounces every wrong. Another model is that of a cable news pundit who pins the blame for tragedies on the sins of an enemy group, offering harsh condemnations.

Some Latter-day Saints come to expect prophets to act like these models. “Then, if prophets speak too clearly in favor of vaccination, or if they fail to stand with or against the internet’s outrage of the day, or if they offer kindness instead of criticism of refugees, some turn away in rage like Naaman,” Erekson said. 

Another unhelpful expectation is a distrust in a person who is influenced by culture. Every human is shaped by the language, customs, knowledge and experiences of individuals, families and societies, making it impossible for anyone — including prophets — to not be influenced by culture…. 

“Prophets do not urge us to follow or imitate them, but to follow and imitate the Savior,” Erekson said.“Stated another way, the prophets do not teach us to follow them, but to ‘hear Him’!” … 

Why do prophets need the grace of Christ? “For the same reasons that you and I depend on His grace — to forgive our sins, succor our infirmities, mitigate our shortcomings, expand our capabilities, turn weaknesses into strengths,” Erekson said. 

Prophets make mistakes and they disagree. In extreme cases, their differing perspectives can lead to disputes. “Most of the time,” Erekson said, “the differences of opinion serve to bring all perspectives on issues into the discussion.” 

The only person to ever live a mistake-free life was Jesus Christ. Prophets are aware of their own shortcomings, Erekson said, citing Moses who worried over his speaking inadequacies, Moroni who felt the same about his writing, and Joseph Smith who published his errors and divine rebukes. … Simply citing the many instances of when prophets disagreed, made mistakes or were tricked is incomplete, Erekson said, “without understanding that prophets serve ‘through the … grace of [our] Lord Jesus Christ.’ His grace is sufficient to bring them to unanimity, refine their souls and succor them.” 

Prophets don’t know everything about the future. “While it is true that God reveals some of His secrets to prophets, and that some prophets including Moses, Enoch and Nephi received sweeping visions, that does not mean that every prophet knows everything about everything,” Erekson said. The things they do know are not always spelled out for them. 

“As the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Lord, they do not simply open their mouths and the word of God flows out,” he said. “Sometimes revelation has come as dictated wording, but prophets also receive inspiration, feelings and impressions that they must put into words and actions. Sometimes they explore paths that don’t work out.” … 

Prophets work to be inspired of the Holy Ghost because they don’t know everything, and they gain light and truth from the Lord line upon line…

“We should rightly expect prophets to be called through the will of God and the grace of Jesus Christ and receive ongoing guidance through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,” Erekson said. “As we do so, we can, like Naaman, shed incorrect expectations and assumptions about prophets that both impede our ability to be blessed and prompt divisive anger.”

There are a lot of incorrect assumptions given about prophets and their roles and abilities in this section of the LFMW. We need to be able to spot them and to know how to challenge them, because if we don’t ward against this kind of manipulation, it’ll eventually infect our minds. It’s how we sway from righteous teachings and beliefs into unrighteous ones.

Today the Church says the past leaders were in error because their statements were just “theories”.

Not exactly. Church leaders today say that those statements were theories because they were speculative statements based on opinion and ignorance rather than revelation. They may have thought at the time that they were preaching revealed doctrine, but we know today that they were not.

It’s okay to make mistakes and to be wrong occasionally. Most of us know what it feels like to receive personal revelation from God. He doesn’t often appear to us in person and dictate word-for-word what we record in our journals. He points us in the right direction and nudges along, and He gives us inspiration and understanding, but He also often gives us the basics and lets us figure out the details. It’s how we learn and grow, by stretching ourselves and discovering how to recognize His direction. Sometimes, we get those details wrong, because we’re still learning how to recognize His voice and what He’s saying to us.

It works the same way for our prophets. They may occasionally hear God’s voice or meet with the Savior face to face, but most of the time, their spiritual experiences are just like ours. They need to figure out what their impressions and directions mean, the same way we do. Sometimes, that involves trial and error. Sometimes, it means making the wrong choice before correcting their mistake and making the right one. Sometimes, it means relying on assumptions and inferences that turn out to be incorrect once more light has been shed.

We’ve all been there. We know what it’s like. We know that we’re not perfect and that sometimes, we get things wrong even when we’re trying our hardest to get it right. So, we need to grant our prophets and apostles that same level of understanding and grace. They’re trying their hardest to get it right, too. And you know what? They usually do get it right.

But expecting perfection from fallen, mortal men is an exercise in futility. Why do we insist on holding our prophets and apostles to an impossible standard that even God Himself doesn’t hold them to?

When I ask this question, the response I usually get is, “They’re prophets of God. They’re supposed to be better/smarter/wiser/more attuned to the Spirit than the rest of us.”

Well, where did they ever get that idea? Have they ever even read the Old Testament? Those prophets surely made their fair share of errors.

Yes, there are many areas in which President Nelson is more knowledgeable than I am. He knows considerably more than I do about the way the human body works, particularly the heart and lungs. He also has nearly 60 more years of experience in recognizing and following the Spirit than I do. He has a lot to teach me.

But if I don’t allow him the chance to be human and to make mistakes sometimes, I do both of us a huge disservice. It holds him to an impossible standard he can’t possibly live up to. For me, it weakens my capacity for charity and gives me a distorted view of not only the Priesthood keys but also personal and prophetic revelation, and even the Atonement itself.

Another common refrain is, “What do you expect when the Church teaches us songs like ‘Follow the Prophet, he knows the way’?”

What we expect is that when we teach kids simple, black-and-white concepts, their understanding will expand and deepen as they grow older.

For example, we teach kids not to talk to strangers, but as they get older, we expect them to realize that sometimes, they have to converse with strangers. When you buy something at the store, you usually have to talk to the cashier. When your internet goes down, you have to talk to the guy who comes out to fix it. When you take your car in for repairs, you have to speak to the mechanics. You have to speak to strangers in job interviews. Some of us have to engage with customers at work. Etc.

We teach children by degrees, the same way that the Spirit teaches us. We give them basic concepts when they’re young, and as their maturity and understanding grows, so does the way we discuss these topics.

So, if your thinking on this particular topic hasn’t grown or expanded since you were four years old and singing simplistic songs in Primary, that’s a problem. You should probably talk to somebody about that, because that isn’t normal cognitive function.

Applying the idea that the priesthood ban on blacks was just a theory also doesn’t make much sense when considering what Pres. David O. McKay stated, “…discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back into the beginning with God.”

This is dishonest framing with a cherry-picked and cropped quote. If you read the full statement, a very different picture of President McKay’s words appears. I’ll quote the relevant portion here:

From the beginning of this dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding Presidents of the Church have taught that Negroes, while spirit children of a common Father, and the progeny of our earthly parents Adam and Eve, were not yet to receive the priesthood, for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which he has not made fully known to man. 

Our living prophet, President David O. McKay, has said, “The seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back to the beginning with God… 

“Revelation assures us that this plan antedates man’s mortal existence, extending back to man’s preexistent state.” 

President McKay has also said, “Sometime in God’s eternal plan, the Negro will be given the right to hold the priesthood.” 

Until God reveals his will in this matter, to him whom we sustain as a prophet, we are bound by that same will. Priesthood, when it is conferred on any man comes as a blessing from God, not of men. 

We feel nothing but love, compassion, and the deepest appreciation for the rich talents, endowments, and the earnest strivings of our Negro brothers and sisters. We are eager to share with men of all races the blessings of the gospel. We have no racially segregated congregations. 

Were we the leaders of an enterprise created by ourselves and operated only according to our own earthly wisdom, it would be a simple thing to act according to popular will. But we believe that this work is directed by God and that the conferring of the priesthood must await his revelation. To do otherwise would be to deny the very premise on which the Church is established…. 

We join with those throughout the world who pry that all of the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ may in the due time of the Lord become available to men of faith everywhere. Until that time comes we must trust in God, in his wisdom, and in his tender mercy.

They were in error regarding the Priesthood restriction coming from the days of Joseph Smith, but these are not the words of hateful racists trying to hold Black people down. They believed they were following the direction of God, and we can’t say for certain that they weren’t.

Brigham Young said that this was ordained/decreed by the Lord and that he could not change it until the Lord Himself did. We don’t know if that belief came from a direct revelation or not, because Brigham believed that all knowledge or belief was revelation from God, whether it actually was or not. That muddies the water and makes it very difficult for us to figure out exactly what happened.

It does seem clear that however it began, the Lord did need to reverse it by revelation. Remember, President McKay told a room full of witnesses that he prayed for it repeatedly until the Lord told him to stop asking because, while it would change someday, it wouldn’t be under his tenure.

After that experience, I think the First Presidency was justified in saying in the statement above that it needed to be changed by revelation and that they couldn’t do it themselves. Whether that was just the Savior using a man-made policy for His own purposes or not, I don’t know.

I can’t say that the Priesthood restriction came about because of a revelation, and I can’t say that it didn’t come about because of a revelation. There’s conflicting, unclear information. What I can say for certain is that before 1978, multiple prophets believed it came from revelation and that the Lord would not allow them to change it.

If prophets claim to speak the will of Heavenly Father when their words can be later disavowed, then how was it that they were prophets at all?

What makes someone a prophet is not their ability to reason, to be infallible, or to always say everything exactly the way God would say it. A prophet is a prophet because he was called of God and holds all of the Priesthood keys to direct God’s church on Earth.

Part of a prophet’s job is to correct misunderstandings that have crept in—even if those misunderstandings came from a prior prophet who shared information that he believed was true before more light and knowledge was given to clarify the situation.

Prophets preach the Gospel according to their own understanding of the scriptures and their personal revelation. They go into their new calling the same way we all do, with our prior knowledge and beliefs backing us up. They aren’t suddenly gifted with infinite knowledge and wisdom when they’re set apart.

We can trust that these are men who love the Lord and are doing their utmost best to serve Him the very best they can. We can’t trust them to be perfect in all they say or do or think, but we can trust that they take their callings seriously and are doing the very best they can with the knowledge and light they have.

I trust them, and that’s why I’m willing to follow them. I don’t do it blindly, but I choose to do it, even knowing that they may make an occasional mistake.

This completely undermines the ‘prophet will never lead us astray’ principle.

No, it doesn’t, because “the prophet will never lead us astray” does not mean “the prophet will never make a mistake about anything.”

As we discussed above, that statement was regarding Priesthood keys and prophets leading the Church into widespread apostasy to the point where those keys were taken again from the Earth.

What doctrines currently attributed to God by today’s prophet can be discredited as just “theories” by future general authorities?

I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? That’s the beauty of a church led by modern-day prophets and ongoing revelation. As more revelation comes to light, older beliefs are clarified and corrected or deepened, depending on the situation.

We’re not members of a church that clings to revelation given to a specific group of people 5,000 years ago pertaining to their specific circumstances. Universal truths are still taught in every dispensation, but for revelation specific to our society and world today, we look to our current-day prophet. We don’t look to prophets who have been dead for decades, centuries, or millennia.

That’s a feature of our church, not a bug. If new light, knowledge, and understanding wasn’t waiting to come into the world, we wouldn’t have needed a single prophet since Adam.

It’s weird that Faulk is pushing the idea that revelation shouldn’t change over time. Do you see how manipulative that is? If he can cement that idea into your head, and you think about it for even two seconds, you start wondering what the point is of having prophets at all. Don’t fall into that trap. You’re smarter than that.

God sends us prophets because He still has much, much more to teach us. We just need to open ourselves up to embrace it. If we refuse to listen to our current prophets because we prefer the teachings of dead ones, He won’t give us any new revelation. If we don’t read the scriptures we already have, He won’t give us the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon or any other records He has waiting in the wings for us. If we won’t embrace His way of teaching us line by line, He won’t continue to teach us anything.

I’m not personally willing to give that up for Thomas Faulk or Jeremy Runnells, or any of the other ex-Mormon “prophets” out there. I prefer to listen to real ones.

Sarah Allen is relatively new in her affiliation with FAIR. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.

The post Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 23: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [D] appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Baptism for the Dead (Part 2)

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about baptism for the dead. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

Since we talk about Come Follow Me stuff on this channel I do want to make you aware of a new resource for next year. Dr. Grant Hardy has a new book, The Annotated Book of Mormon. And it is delicious. It’s much closer to a study Bible, but with the Book of Mormon, than I’ve seen before. It includes the entire text of the BoM but has Hardy’s notes embedded on the same page – at least in the physical book. There is a Kindle edition, but it makes the book much harder to use because you have to click about 4 times to actually see the footnotes and get back to your page. The notes are the whole point of this book. And you can just access those much easier in the physical form. I teach Gospel Doctrine in my ward and picked this up to help me prepare for next year. It’s very good.

One other resources you should know about that is coming up. FAIR is hosting an online-only conference specifically focused on just the Book of Mormon. Richard Bushman will be presenting along with many others. Details are available here.

Okay, We talked about baptism for the dead on a past episode in a more general way, but today we’ll get down to some specifics of why this one bothers Evangelicals so much. We’ll use 1 Cor 15:29-32 as our jumping-off point:

Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

So, Evangelicals have an interesting dilemma with this verse about baptism for the dead. Evangelicals generally have a view of the Bible called inerrancy – this means that they see the Bible as being free from error. So, here they have a verse talking about baptism for the dead, they believe the Bible is without error, but they won’t accept the idea of baptism for the dead. But they have to figure out some way to explain this verse. I’m going to lay out the most popular arguments for you as best as I can.

One way they deal with this is to basically say, “Who knows?” One Evangelical leader says it this way, “The phrase ‘baptism for the dead’ is so obscure and perplexing, the meaning so uncertain, and the variety of interpretations so numerous that it seems wise to say it seems impossible to know what the phrase means.” And in one sense, that’s a fair answer – if you don’t know what something means you should say so.

A slightly more sophisticated explanation goes like this: The baptism Paul is using “dead” here in a metaphorical sense. He’s not talking about actual dead people, but rather those who are “dead in sin.” Baptism for the dead is then re-cast as just regular baptism. Another possible option that they put on the table is really a rather odd one, and you have to torture the sentence structure a bit to make it work. But this argument says that “baptism for the dead” actually means “baptism because of the dead.” The idea being that those who had already died had strong testimonies and they were still inspiring currently alive people to get baptized themselves. It doesn’t really work in the structure of the argument, but it’s one of the ways they talk about this. A slight variation on this is that Paul is talking about the martyrs who bravely faced death in the 1st century and were inspiring others to be faithful to Christ.

A slightly less tortured explanation says that the dead who were being baptized for had already decided to trust in Christ, they had just not been baptized yet. So after they die, their friends or family symbolically get baptized for them – but it’s more like a family member finishing a mountain hike on behalf of a loved one who died while trying to complete that hike. Everyone knows that this kind of “on behalf of” isn’t really the person finishing it – it’s just a comforting ritual for the people who are still alive.

The final argument that they use is something like: there is one mention of this practice one time in the Bible so its not enough to build a doctrine on. And they’re partly right, this passage is the only time it is mentioned in the Bible. But the Bible is not the only history we have access to.
1 Cor was written about 55 AD – fast forward to 393 AD (350 years later – longer than the United States has been a country) and it’s still being practiced. No new Bible texts are being written at this time, so we don’t have that, but we do have writings of all kinds from the churches in various locations. We’ll look at one of them: Egypt. We call the Christians there Coptic Christians. The word ‘Coptic’ is derived from the Greek word that means “Egyptian.”

It was Hugh Nibley who put much of this work together initially. He traces through the Coptic writings and shows dozens of Coptic writings talking about baptism for the dead. But eventually other Christians radically distance themselves from the practice. How did this all happen?

In the early Christian world there are lots of competing ideas in various places and their method for deciding who was correct happened through a series of formal councils. Some of these were considered major councils – where there would have been leaders representing all the different areas where faith was being practiced. But some of them were minor councils, and not everyone attended. One such council was called, “The fourth canon of the Synod of Hippo,” it was held in 393AD and in that council, they declared, “The Eucharist shall not be given to dead bodies, nor baptism conferred upon them.” The ruling was confirmed four years later in the sixth canon of the Third Council of Carthage. However, the Coptic Christians were not represented at either council, so they didn’t feel particularly bound to the decisions being made there. Nibly complies all kinds of references to baptism for the dead in their church. Eventually, the Coptic Church split away from the Roman Church in 451, just 50 or so years after this event. It’s not the only reason they split off, but it’s in the mix.

All this to say, Evangelicals use a wide variety of arguments to try to make that verse mean something other than what it means. However, if you asked most of them why they think baptism for the dead is wrong you will probably get something like: Baptism isn’t necessary, only faith is necessary. They tend to think that baptism – even of the living – is just a nice symbolic way of expressing that you belong to Christ. Kind of like finishing the hike where a deceased relative died is a nice symbolic way to help them finish their journey. Most of the time they’re not just rejecting baptism for the dead, they’re side-lining all baptism, even for the living. At best, it’s a nice thing, but it’s not required to be a Christian. At worst it’s an insult to Christ because it’s saying that something needs to be added to his work on the cross.

And I think a lot of Latter-day Saints get stuck here because it’s hard to understand why they see it they way they do. I want to suggest one way to talk about why baptism is so important to our faith just straight out of the Bible. We have a lot of great verses about baptism in our other scriptures – but those are scriptures Evangelicals wont accept, so they might not get you very far. But in the Bible we get this great conversation on baptism in 1 Peter 3. Peter makes the argument that baptism is like Noah’s ark. He says, “After being made alive, [that is Christ] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits [understood as people who have died]— to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Peter then goes on to say, just a couple verses later in Chapter 4, “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.” It’s easy for the modern-reader to make hard lines between chapters, but Paul didn’t write in chapters – those were added later. Take Peter’s argument as a whole and we get something like: Christ wanted even the dead to be saved, baptism is how this happens, and for this reason the gospel is preached to the dead. You can’t separate faith and baptism as only belonging to the living here. Your Evangelical friends or family members might not immediately jump up and accept the idea after this, but it does move the conversation into a wider collection of verses in the New Testament – which is something that helps Evangelicals feel like you are taking scripture seriously.

Okay, that’s all I have for you today. Come back next week and we’ll talk some more.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 14–16 appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

Someone I know, who is a very vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, once got into an argument with me about concepts behind gender.  I did everything I could to understand where they were coming from, seeing as this is a complex topic with differing perspectives.  However, they were trying to convince me (among other things) that gender is a social construct.  Having studied the issue, I pushed against their ideas, arguing that gender is more complicated than that and it certainly isn’t a mere social construct.  However, despite my best efforts, my research and perspectives fell on deaf ears.  Instead, my friend seemed to cling to the ideas of the people she agreed with.  I’ll be sure to go over LGBTQ+ perspectives another day.  However, my purpose in telling this story is to show an example of what researchers and psychologists call cognitive bias, which we’ll discuss today.

A few episodes ago, I explained logical fallacies – errors during logical reasoning – that can lead to incorrect conclusions.  Today, we’ll be talking about the equivalent of that, but in regards to psychological bias that we sometimes employ.  Cognitive biases are “errors in thinking that affect people’s decision-making in virtually every situation” (1).  Unlike logical fallacies, cognitive biases are negative brain processes (usually coming from intuition) that can affect our thoughts and lead us to wrong conclusions.  In other words, logical fallacies relate to arguments in the way that cognitive biases relate to intuitive brain processes.  Critical thinkers must recognize cognitive biases in their thinking in order to more objectively analyze the data they interact with and make more informed decisions.  Today, we’ll be going over where cognitive biases come from, explore some examples of cognitive biases, and then explore some principles that can help us avoid them.  Let’s take a look.

Heuristics:  The Brain’s “Easy Way Out”

Before we explore examples of cognitive biases, we must first understand where they come from.  Most documented cognitive biases come from “mental shortcuts” in our minds.  Psychologists call these shortcuts “heuristics.”  One group of researchers described heuristics in the following way:

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort. While heuristics can reduce the burden of decision-making and free up limited cognitive resources, they can also be costly when they lead individuals to miss critical information or act on unjust biases. (2)

Heuristics help us make decisions and arrive at conclusions easily and quickly.  Heuristics take information that seems familiar and draws a connection to something we’ve observed in the past.  These shortcuts often lead to good results… except when they don’t.

How heuristics can sometimes be misleading can be shown in some basic examples.  For instance, consider this video below:

If you’re like me, you initially see a series of dots moving around in a circle.  However, that’s not REALLY what’s going on.  It’s a series of points lighting up and growing dimmer in a specific pattern.  Our brains provide the illusion that it’s a circular-moving line of dots.  This example is one of many optical illusions that employ heuristics (3).  Another example of a heuristic is the “inattentional blindness” phenomenon.  Here’s another video example of a cognitive bias stemming from a heuristic (4).

In both instances, our brains are either making connections based on information that isn’t present or ignoring information that is present.  The accepted psychological theory states these intuitive (and I use that term very deliberately in light of my previous article) heuristics came from evolutionary processes and natural selection (5).  In other words, we’ve inherited instincts from our ancestors that protected us, enhancing our chances of survival.  This detail will be important later.

It almost goes without saying that this power of heuristics is nothing short of incredible, and one thing that I do want to stress here is that pattern recognition isn’t a bad thing.  I’ll be discussing how drawing inappropriate patterns can lead us to jump to conclusions, but not all heuristically-based decisions are bad ones.  One pair of researchers noted that “for many decisions, the assumptions of rational models are not met, and it is an empirical (after the fact) rather than an a priori (before the fact) issue how well cognitive heuristics function in an uncertain world” (6, parentheses added).  In other words, we often don’t know how well our heuristically-based decisions worked until after the fact.  However, they sometimes have unintended consequences that can cause problems in our thinking, as we’ll soon see.

Cognitive Bias:  Bad Processes, Worse Outcomes

There are multiple types of Cognitive Biases, each with observable patterns, chiefly focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (7).  I’ll be sure to link a more comprehensive list of cognitive biases below, as we won’t be able to discuss each one today.  However, we’ll cover some of the most important ones today, which may help outline some principles to help overcome cognitive biases.

The Anchoring Bias is “the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions” (8).  When we see information and don’t critically think about it, we tend to allow that source to color how we see other sources of information.  For example, imagine someone learning from their parents that “the Mormons are just a cult.”  From then on, they cling to that information, allowing it to color how they discuss the church with the missionaries.  The problem with this kind of heuristic is evident:  It inhibits valuable analysis and thought.  It hyper-prioritizes information we already know at the expense of additional information that may relate to the issue.  

The Fundamental Attribution Error is the “tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the situational explanations.” (9).  In other words, we tend to associate certain attributes as being a part of personality rather than just being due to the surrounding circumstances.  An example of this is found in the hypothetical example of Member #1 and Member #2.  Member #2 is in a hurry and comes across as rude and impatient to Member #1.  Member #1 is offended at his impatience and then classifies Member #2 as an impatient person.  In reality, he’s in a hurry to get home to take care of his sick family.  As you can see, the situation was mostly governing Member #2’s behavior, not necessarily his personality as a whole.  Our heuristics focus on the dominant information in front of us and jump to conclusions as a result.

The Availability Bias indicates “The more available and relevant information there is, the more likely the event is judged to be” (10).  Put another way, we tend to prioritize more available information, even if it doesn’t tell the complete story.  For instance, there is a lot more critical information about the church than positive information about the church in places such as social media, where people talk about bad experiences they had in the church.  That information is often more accessible, and more advertised, than information about how members of the church end up being more generous (11), more pro-social (12), and have overall higher well-being (13) than most other populations of people.  This isn’t to say that it’s a contest.  However, it goes to show that there is evidence to go against the idea that church members aren’t happy, but it’s less available, so fewer people outside the church know about it.  This bias manifests from the intuition’s dismissal of seemingly absent or irrelevant information.

The Bias blind-spot Bias states “that most people believe they are less biased than their peers” (14).  In other words, we’re often able to point out other people’s biases more easily than notice our own biases.  Consider these statements (based on actual statements by critics)

• “You can get unbiased information about the church from books like Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer”
• “You can get the REAL Mormon history from *Insert critic here*”

The problem with these statements comes from appealing to an idea of purity that doesn’t really exist.  There is no such thing as “unbiased” sources.  As you can see, it’s easier for people to ignore bias in favor of what they believe, because our mental heuristics tend to lean in favor of the information we already know.

Confirmation Bias is characterized by “seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs” (15).  This can also be described as only looking for things that support your opinion.  Examples of this can be found in critics of the church only associating with people who agree with their assessments about church history while ignoring or dismissing organizations such as FAIR.  This, however, is problematic seeing as it once again prioritizes what people already believe at the expense of data that contradicts it.  This bias is prevalent (even among members), so watch for it.

The Framing Bias “refers to the observation that the manner in which data is presented can affect decision making” (16).  The way that information is initially presented to us can affect how we process that information and can lead us to incorrect conclusions (i.e. we make a decision based on how the issue was framed).  For example, “You belong to a manipulative cult” differs greatly from “You belong to a high-demand religion.”  (Lots of high demand groups exist, whether they be secular like the Navy Seals, or religious such as nuns, etc.)  This heuristic pulls on the idea that our brains focus on dominant, impactful data.  “Cult” is a very charged word often used with a negative connotation, so hearing it leads to conclusions that may or may not be accurate.  After all, depending on how you use the word, you could describe all religions as cults.

The Hindsight Bias is “the tendency, after an event has occurred, to overestimate the extent to which the outcome could have been foreseen.” (17).  This one is a little more well-known through the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20”, but its status as a cognitive bias is well-deserved.  This is often used against prophets and the mistakes they make.  It may be easier for us to say “How could Brigham Young have said X thing, isn’t it obvious that wasn’t true!?”  However, this just shows our bias…we have more information than Brigham Young did, and we’ve been able to draw patterns and make connections in ways that Brigham Young may not have been able to.  However, in such discussions, we have to remember that we are all human, we all make mistakes.  I try to be as charitable to people (past or present) as I imagine Jesus would be charitable towards me during Judgement Day.

Loss/Regret Aversion Bias was put by one researcher as “an expression of fear” (18).  Fear of what?  Well, fear of regret, pain, and loss.  This can manifest itself in a few different ways.  Perhaps a member is scared to take a serious look at church history because they’re afraid of losing their testimony.  Perhaps a critic of the church is scared of regretting their decision to leave the church, and so they double down on their criticisms.  These fears, even if somewhat justified, can impede our ability to understand the world around us.  Our brains tend to focus on dominant information and – let’s be honest with ourselves – we remember our failures.  Our mistakes/failures present themselves as very dominant information in our minds (19).  Keep this in mind as you’re making decisions.

The Stereotyping Bias is probably more familiar to most people.  A more technical definition of “stereotype” is “[the] category-based beliefs about a group that also involve affective–evaluative loading and behavioral tendencies” (20).  In other words, we put people with certain characteristics in a category in our minds, based on patterns we see.  For example, a critic might say something like “Mormons are raised to be bigoted and judgemental.”  Among other things, this is a stereotype placed on us by other people (21).  However, this bias comes from people’s tendency to over correlate data, that is, it’s easy for us to categorize other people into “being a certain way,” sometimes even if we don’t realize it.

Finally, in a similar vein, we have the In-group Bias, which is described as the willingness of members of a group to “treat their own group superior than others” (22).  In other words, we’re willing to hold those we don’t like to a higher standard than those we do like.  For example, I’ve seen instances where critics of church tend to give the benefit of the doubt to other critics, but not with those who defend the church.  When members of the church didn’t know something, it’s because we’re “ignorant,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find a member of that same community who would call another critic “ignorant.”  You’re far more likely to find them saying that the lay-members are ignorant than you are to find them saying that a member of their own ranks is ignorant.  Again, this kind of practice goes back to how people focus on dominant information, and for many people who have left the church, there are a lot of criticisms that are dominant in their minds.

Now, before I move on, I’d like to make one disclaimer:  I am not saying that those who have left the church are more susceptible to cognitive biases than those who have not left the church.  With just as much ease, I can find several instances where members of the church employ the same kinds of cognitive errors.  However, I do think that these examples of cognitive biases can demonstrate some of the ways that cognitive biases can affect how we interpret information, and consequently affect how members and non-members can be treated in negative ways.  It will always be in our best interest to avoid unnecessarily ostracizing other people.  See if you can identify cognitive biases in yourself, make note of which ones tend to cause you the most amount of trouble, and see if you can find ways to correct them.  As you’ll soon see, the first step to being able to combat cognitive biases is to identify them, and I hope that these examples can help you do that.

How to improve

That prompts the question:  How can we avoid cognitive biases?  There are a lot of sources out there that you can find that provide insights as to how you can prevent (or at least diminish) cognitive biases from affecting your life.  However, we won’t be able to go over all of them today, and even if I could, the ways that those practices can be applied vary from person to person.  Instead, I’ll cover a few principles that I think can help mitigate the effects of cognitive biases in our lives.  Hopefully that will provide insight as to what you can do to reduce the effect of cognitive biases, at least a little bit.

Right off the bat, it’s helpful to slow down the decision making process when possible.  As mentioned before, heuristics are basically “mental shortcuts” that help us make decisions quickly without spending too much time and energy thinking about it.  However, if we don’t need to make decisions quickly, then there’s no reason to take the shortcut.  Take some time to do research, and to “study it out in your mind” (23).  By taking more time, you’ll be more likely to avoid impulsive decisions.  If you’re able to, allow your intuition to be supported by other epistemic sources such as reason.

So, what should we do while we’re taking this “time out,” so to speak?  Before we can answer that, let’s take a step back for a moment.  We know that cognitive biases come from heuristics, which help us make decisions quickly.  It stands to reason, then, that in order to limit the cognitive biases we’re employing, we have to first recognize what heuristics are at play.  Asking yourself questions like “Am I focusing on some information at the expense of other information?” or “is there some kind of information that I’m missing?” can be helpful when analyzing what biases are at play.  By reviewing the presuppositions we have, it’s easier to see how our intuition may be helping us, or hurting us.

It’s also important to look at the issue from different perspectives.  Being able to seek further information, as well as receive feedback, may help reduce the effects of cognitive biases (24).  When you find something that confuses you, don’t just take the critics’ word for it, look at what FAIR has to offer, or consult other experts in different areas.  Not only is there likely to be information that you didn’t know (thus helping your intuition recognize true patterns and adjust to dominant information), but it can also be nice to analyze issues from people with different perspectives (25).  It’s also easier to verify your information too, so this practice of looking at what other people have to say can be useful in fact-checking your data, which is always going to be useful for critical thinkers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, heuristics can be a widely versatile tool that can help us resolve problems in powerful ways.  However, just like any tool, it can be misused, and can sometimes get in the way of our ability to arrive at correct conclusions and solve problems.  Cognitive biases come in many shapes and sizes, but they don’t have to define our thought processes.  There are good ways to avoid allowing these mental shortcuts to disrupt our analyses.  It’s imperative to recognize that these cognitive biases will never truly disappear.  They will always be a part of us, and no one is impervious to their influence (26).  Again, heuristics are important…even if we could ignore them we don’t have the time or energy to function well in this modern world without them.  Instead, it serves us to be patient with ourselves as we root out what we consider to be good and bad.  As we analyze where our intuition can sometimes lead us astray, it will become easier for us as critical thinkers to solve problems, and avoid common pitfalls that inhibit good reasoning.  In short, learning how (and how not) to use heuristics can help us improve how we learn, how we use our agency, and eventually help us become the kind of thinkers and believers I think God wants us to be.

References:

1. https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/cognitive-bias
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/heuristics
3. https://www.ics.uci.edu/~majumder/vispercep/chap4notes.pdf
4. https://www.simplypsychology.org/inattentional-blindness.html
5. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-unconscious/202001/how-the-unconscious-works
6. Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic decision making. Annual review of psychology, 62, 451–482. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346
7. Korteling, J. E., Brouwer, A. M., & Toet, A. (2018). A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1561. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01561
8. https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/the-drawbacks-of-goals/
9. https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2020/12/01/lesson-10-overcoming-the-fundamental-attribution-error/; a more charitable view of this cognitive bias can be found here https://www.mit.edu/~k2smith/pdf/WalkerSmithVul_2015_FAE.pdf 
10. https://dictionary.apa.org/availability-heuristic
11. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-research-shows-mormons-are-generous-and-active-helping-others
12. https://www.whyy.org/wp-content/uploads/planphilly/assets_1/http-planphilly-com-sites-planphilly-com-files-cnaan_lds_giving-pdf.original.pdf
13. https://news.gallup.com/poll/152732/religious-higher-wellbeing-across-faiths.aspx; Not that things like “happiness” are a contest. 
14. https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/282373/The-Bias-Blind-Spot.pdf
15. Nickerson, R. S. (1998a). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175 
16. Robinson, J. D. (2016). Using blind reviews to address biases in medical malpractice. Blinding as a Solution to Bias, 181–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-802460-7.00012-7  
17. https://dictionary.apa.org/hindsight-bias
18. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201803/what-is-loss-aversion
19. Huang, S., Stanley, M.L. & De Brigard, F. The phenomenology of remembering our moral transgressions. Mem Cogn 48, 277–286 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-01009-0 ; This is especially true for moral failures.
20. Fiske, S. T., & Tablante, C. B. (2015). Stereotyping: Processes and content. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Vol. 1. Attitudes and social cognition (pp. 457–507). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14341-015
21. Derek Westra’s talk “Whistleblowers in the last days” goes over how the media portrays stereotypes, and sometimes falsehoods, about members of the church.  It’s accessible online for free at this link here (you’ll need to log in first).
22. Abbink, K., & Harris, D. (2019). In-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in naturally occurring groups. PloS one, 14(9), e0221616. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221616
23. D&C 9:8
24. Bojke L, Soares M, Claxton K, et al. Developing a reference protocol for structured expert elicitation in health-care decision-making: a mixed-methods study. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2021 Jun. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 25.37.) Chapter 6, Reviewing the evidence: heuristics and biases. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571047/ 
25. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/talking-through-problems 
26. https://markmanson.net/cognitive-biases-that-hurt-relationships

Further Study:

• Berthet, V., & de Gardelle, V. (2023). The heuristics-and-biases inventory: An open-source tool to explore individual differences in rationality. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1145246. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1145246; This is a more comprehensive, open list of cognitive biases noted by several different authors/researchers.  Feel free to explore them at your leisure.
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/glebtsipursky/2023/04/15/12-strategies-to-defeat-cognitive-biases-and-boost-your-bottom-line/?sh=4c022a8650a6; Another great article on how to reduce cognitive biases that appears to be well-sourced.
• Kunkler, K. S., & Roy, T. (2023). Reducing the impact of cognitive bias in decision making: Practical actions for forensic science practitioners. Forensic science international. Synergy, 7, 100341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2023.100341; This article discusses multiple more practical ways to reduce cognitive biases from a more technical standpoint.  While this focuses primarily on scientists, it has some useful ideas that might be translated into other aspects of life.

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 6: Cognitive Biases appeared first on FAIR.

This year’s conference was well-attended with the venue full to capacity and many more participating via online streaming. Topics were wide-ranging, such as portrayals of the Church in the media, DNA and the Book of Mormon, abuse in the church, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the accuracy of the Journal of Discourses, and the necessity of horror in the gospel. One reviewer on a recent Interpreter radio show said, “I’ve attended this for a number of years and this was probably one of the best conferences… [the talks] just got – if anything – better as the conference went on.”

The conference opened with a presentation by Dan Peterson, which was a break in tradition, since he has been the closing speaker for the entire 25 year history of the conference. But this was because there were surprises in store for him. After he concluded, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from FAIR, and a book published in his honor by Interpreter. And then many of the presentations that followed are part of the book. More details about the book are in an earlier post on this blog.

Jennifer Roach was the recipient of this year’s John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award. She has been doing a weekly podcast to go along with this year’s Come, Follow Me readings, comparing Evangelical beliefs about the New Testament with those of Latter-day Saints. She has also done a lot of research on abuse in the church, which was instrumental in creating a page on the topic for the FAIR website. She also spoke about abuse in her conference presentation.

Dan Peterson wrote summaries of each day of the conference on his blog:

• https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/08/from-the-floor.html
• https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/08/day-two-with-isaiah.html
• https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/08/the-last-day.html

There was some coverage in the Deseret News, both before and after the conference:

• https://www.deseret.com/2023/7/31/23811671/apologists-cs-lewis-plato-apologia-fair-latter-day-saints
• https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2023/8/23/23843036/byu-education-week-fair-conference-declining-faith-misconception

And, as mentioned earlier, there was a nice review in the 3rd segment of the Interpreter radio show on August 20.

• https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-august-20-2023/

Cassandra Hedelius has started making videos summarizing some of the conference talks:

• Martin Harris, gold plates, ‘spiritual sight’: FAIR conference 2023 summary
• BYU Pathway building Zion, eradicating poverty: FAIR conference 2023 summary

We have also started releasing a full presentation every 2 weeks on our YouTube channel:

• Understanding History Backwards (Dan Peterson)
• Shedding Light on the Complexities: Understanding Abuse within the LDS Church (Jennifer Roach)

And you can watch the full conference (currently it’s still mostly in half-day video segments from the live streaming recording) after free registration in our bookstore.

The post What happened at the FAIR Conference this year? appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Men and Women

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the interdependence of women and men. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

In a past episode, we talked about the role of women in both groups -there are some similarities and some significant differences. So I don’t want to rehash that part. But what I want to talk about has more to do with the way both groups see the interdependence of men and women. We’ll use 1 Cor 11:11 as our jumping-off point:

Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

I’ll start by saying neither group denies this verse. You’d be very hard-pressed to find an Evangelical who is going to write off any of Paul’s words and Latter-day Saints certainly embrace this idea as well. The difference is in how each group plays this out. And really, the short summary of that, is that Latter-day Saints generally think in a more communal mind-set than Evangelicals do. Let me give you an easy example.

I like to listen to audiobooks while I’m doing things around the house and lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with books on the history of the Western states, especially as it comes to water issues. So I’ve been listening to a classic in that genre called, “Cadelic Desert.” The early part of this book is about the history of the irrigation system in the West and the author is explaining the challenges and extraordinary effort required to bring water to the right places. The thing that caught my attention is that as he goes through this though is that he says, in many different ways, the “Mormons” figured out irrigation systems early on because they were a tight-knit society where the communal good could be more easily be put ahead of the individual good. Now, that doesn’t always work out, and certainly worked out easier in the 1910’s and 1920’s that this author was referring to.

So today what I want to talk about is some of the factors that cause Evangelicals to think about the individual and the community slightly differently than Latter-day Saints do. And then we’ll apply those thoughts to the concept of how gender roles play out differently for each.

We’ll start with some history. The Evangelicals are really influenced here by their desire to react against the Methodists. When the Evangelical movement begins – think early Billy Grayham, 1960’s – the largest player in the Protestant world in the United States are the Methodists. Today you can find Methodist churches all across the spectrum from very conservative to extremely liberal. But back then, Methodism mostly meant, “Your grandmother’s church.” There’s a lot of cultural upheaval at this time, rules in society are changing, and the early Evangelicals want to attend churches that feel like they’re keeping up with the times. In some ways, the early Evangelicals are in “reactionary identity” – meaning that they’re doing what teenagers sometimes do: first decide what they don’t want to be, and usually it’s, “I don’t want to be like my parents.” In their early days, Evangelicals were in this reactionary-identity mode of, “I don’t know what I am yet, but I’m not a fuddy-duddy grandma church.” So their initial starting place is: We want to be opposite of what is currently happening.

And really, they start with the most basic question: How does one enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ? For a very long time, the answer is: Well, not the way my parents did it. And how their parents did it, in the Methodist churches of that time, was infant baptism. Now, Methodists don’t conceptualize infant baptism the same as Catholics do, and I don’t want to get into the weeds of what that’s all about, but suffice it to say that the early Evangelicals were very clear on not wanting anything that seemed too old-fashioned, so they reject the Methodist practice. But every movement, especially a brand new one, needs allies and mentors, and the early Evangelicals found that support in the Southern Baptists. Why are they called “Baptists”? Because they believe in credobaptism, which basically means the individual person should be old enough to make a decision about baptism on their own. The opposite of that is pedobaptism, which is the fancy word for “infant baptism.” So it’s not even that the early Evangelicals were theologically set on credobaptism, they just knew they didn’t want pedobaptism. But that move sets them into an alliance with the Baptist churches – which are nothing if not independent. If you’ve been a Latter-day Saint your entire life this might take a moment to wrap your mind around, but Baptists are technically not considered a denomination. A denomination has some kind of central authority, the member-churches must follow certain rules and policies, as well as receive direction and over-sight from the central authority. Baptists conceptualize themselves as a “convention,” that is a group of like-minded churches that want to associate with each other – but who operate entirely independently and have very little responsibility to their headquarters. And if they want out, they can easily leave. Historically they disagree with each other on just about everything and for the most part that is not a problem. Though you might have heard in the news this year, one of the largest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, Saddleback Church in Southern California, left the Convention over disagreements about the role of women.

But when the early relationship with the Baptists only gets them so far. By the time the late 1960’s come around the Evangelicals are trying to reach the hippie flower children and want to even further distance themselves from the “grandma church” culture (as they saw it – grandmas hold the churches of the world together, truth be told) so they start to remove the concept of baptism at all. It takes decades for this move to fully take effect, but today baptism has been sidelined in many Evangelical churches. It’s seen as an optional thing you might do if you feel led to do so, but it’s not necessary for salvation by any means.

This creates a problem for them though – if you’re not going to teach people to, as the New Testament says, “believe and be baptized” then how are people to identify themselves as believers? They invent something that today is called, “the sinner’s prayer” where they ask Jesus to be their “personal Lord and Savior.” Do you catch that word, “personal” – we’re talking today about individualism and community, how that has developed, and what it means for women and men. That phrase, “personal savior” comes to symbolize their entire stance toward their faith – it is a relationship that is entirely between you and God and no one else really gets a say in it. So from very early on in their history, Evangelicals are shaped by this idea that their faith is theirs alone, no one else can do it for them. And to this day that is a strong value for them. In 2020 a book came out called, “Jesus and John Wayner,” which is a critique of the Evangelical impulse toward rugged individualism.
Latter-day Saints on the other hand have spent most of the last 200 years being in a different situation. Because of the situation the early Latter-day Saints found themselves in, they didn’t have the luxury of straying too far away from the main group – they needed each other in order to survive. So from the very outset, Latter-day Saints are being formed as a people who rely on each other, sometimes for very basic survival. And though this is not as true as it used to be, you still see it play out in television and movies. A few weeks back at the FAIR conference Derek Westra gave a talk about this and how Latter-day Saints are portrayed in the media. Derek works for the church in the communications department and his job is to keep tabs on how our church is portrayed in the media. He showed example after example of recent shows and movies that portray Latter-day Saints as insular, afraid of outsiders, and as “not allowed” to reach books that are not printed by the church. The kind of communalism that I’m talking about is probably lower now than it has been in 200 years, but it’s still significant enough that outsiders see it and exaggerate it for entertainment.

Let me give you one more example of how Latter-day Saints have been shaped by a communal mindset. In contrast to, “you must ask Jesus to be your personal Lord and Savior,” Latter-day Saints have been formed by these words, “How are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah.” We are formed not by a reactionary identity but by trying to link the entire human family together. It’s the opposite of Western Individualism or John Wayne Christianity. This is kind of a dumb analogy, but Evangelicalism is like team gymnastics. You’ve seen the Olympics, each team is made up of a certain number of athletes, and each athlete contributes their individual score to a group total. No gymnast can do anything to help the others. She is responsible entirely for her own performance which is then added to the group total. But no one helps her. Contrast that with baseball (or softball, or kick ball) if the bases are loaded and you’re up, you know what your job is – get your friends home. They can’t progress without your effort.
And that brings up to the interdependence of men and women. One of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked by friends outside of our church is something like: Has it been hard for you to “lower your status” as a woman? Or, “What does it feel like to now be in a church where women have no voice?” And sometimes I don’t even know how to answer that question because the context is so entirely different. Before I was baptized into our church, it’s true, I had some opportunities that I don’t have now. I was ordained, for example. That is not open to me now. I’m 100% fine with that, and let me explain why. If I were a gymnast and I were told, “You’re not allowed to do any of the coolest tricks,” I’d be upset for myself and for my team, “If I can’t do the coolest tricks, how will I ever contribute a high score to our team’s total?” It would be insulting because I know I can do more and I’m being artificially held back. But when you’re playing a team sport like baseball the whole thing is set up so that certain people are in certain positions for reasons. The pitcher isn’t placed there because he’s bad at catching, he’s placed there because he can pitch. The outfielder isn’t there because he’s bad at being a catcher – he’s there to play his role for reasons and without him the game would be lost. So, if I have a choice – and I do – between being just an individual and trying to get the highest score I can all on my own, and being part of a team where we’re meant to help each other get home, I know which one I choose.

Okay, that’s all the time we have for this week. Next week we’re talking about prophecy and how all of that works for both groups. I will see you then.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 8–13 appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Satan and Jesus are brothers?

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about an issue that baffles Evangelicals to their core: Jesus and Satan as brothers.. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

So, we’re in 1 Corinthians now, and in chapter 1 we get a lot of talk about unity, acting as one in Christ, that we are all brothers and sisters. I don’t have a specific verse that really sums this up in a tidy way, so I’m just using the overall theme here. There is a lot of corruption and immorality happening in the church in Corinth and Paul is writing to them to basically tell them to get it together. You may know this but Paul basically has 2 modes that go something like this. We see the first mode in the opening of this letter. Paul says, “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints….” But there is another side of Paul that he gets to pretty quickly here and it’s all, “For the love of God, could you little freaks act normal for 5 min?” And this is what we get a lot of in both 1 and 2 Corinthians. And for good reasons. But with both of these modes what he is doing is trying to inspire them to be better than they have been, and treating each other like actual brothers and sisters is a big part of that here.

Now, Latter-day Saints, when I say, “God is the Father of us all,” you nod your head and hear no issue with that. You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, Jennifer, skip past the part I already know. God is the Father of all.” But, let me tell you how it gets a little weird for Evangelicals. They would put a huge asterisk next to the word “all” and in the footnote would be something like, “Well, God is the Father of all humans who choose to belong to him. But not really the Father of ALL.” We’ve talked before on this show about how Evangelicals see God as an entirely different species from humans, so he’s not actually their Father in the way Latter-day Saints think about. And the question that comes up here sometimes from Evangelicals is something like, “Wait. You think God is the Father of both Jesus and Satan?” A lot of Latter-day Saints would respond with, “Umm, yeah, of course. He is the Father of all.” I want to explain to you how and why Evangelicals hear it differently and we’re going to do that by talking about a very old little film called The God Makers.

If you are close to my age, or older, you probably already know what this is. But if not, the brief summary is that it was the most popular anti-mormon propaganda of its day. It’s a movie that was put out in the early 1980’s. It runs about an hour long. You can watch it on Youtube if you really want to. Sometimes its under the title, “Banned Mormon Cartoon!” It was very popular with Evangelicals in the 1980’s. Most of you know I grew up in an Evangelical church and my church showed that film as frequently as they could. We watched it during the church service sometimes, and they would have Sunday School classes where they’d watch it and talk more in-depth about it. The reason I bring up this movie is that it is one of the big sources of twisting truth just enough so that our beliefs seem very unreasonable. It was the CES Letter of its day. As an aside, I will tell you that the author of the movie, and the book by the same name, is from Washington State. When I joined the church 4 years ago I was actually living in the same stake where he had spent most of his life, and where he wrote that book. Which I just found to be incredibly ironic – here I am, this lifelong Evangelical who had received a lot of my early information about the church from this terrible little film, I move into Ed’s neighborhood, and join the church. I just find that amusing. Anyway..

One of the themes in that movie is this idea that Jesus and Satan are brothers. And Evangelicals are scandalized by this. Even though that movie is from 40 years ago – and I’d be surprised if there are any Evangelical churches that are still using it – the slant that he put on it stuck in the Evangelical imagination because of what that means for them. Let me try to explain how they hear it…

One popular Evangelical apologist says it like this, “the biblical witness is clear and convincing: Jesus Christ is the eternal Creator God. Paul explicitly teaches that Jesus is the creator of all.” Now, Latter-day Saints, I know that your brain is going, “Yeah…but what does that have to do with this?” Because Latter-day Saints also believe Jesus is the eternal creator God. He was there at the creation of the world. In Evangelical-speak what they’re trying to say is that 1) Satan is a created being 2) Jesus is the Creator God 3) How can Jesus both create Satan AND be his brother?

The first time I read through Mosiah and got to 5:7 I was puzzled by what I was reading. Here is the verse, “because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.” I really only understood how to read that through Trinitarian eyes. My thinking was something like: Jesus is the Son, but he and the Father are the same, so he is the Father also. But this is not a Trinitarian statement. In Evangelical thinking Creator and Father are identical. When Jesus is functioning as Creator (something Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals do not disagree on) Evangelicals see that as him being “the same substance” as the Father. So they get upset about the idea that Jesus and Satan could be brothers because it drags Satan into the Trinity. To them…brothers are equals (as in “we’re all brothers and sisters”) so to say that Jesus and Satan are brothers is to say that Satan is equal to Jesus. We talked in the early episodes of this series that one of the best characteristics of Evangelicals is that they’re passionately protective about getting Jesus theologically correct. And that deserves respect. But what they can’t quite see here is how extra-biblical teaching from the 4th century obscures the picture. In the 4th Century God the Father and Jesus Christ are said to be made of “the same substance” homioousias is the word there, they no longer know how to make sense of the fact that God the Father is still the Father of all – including Jesus, including every created thing, including Satan, including you and me. But the “same substance” issue obscures how they see Jesus. If you’d like more on this part of the topic I recommend an article by my friend and colleague Ben Spackman called, “Covenants and Kinship: Jesus as the Father.” He gets into more of the technicalities there than we have time for here.

So, all of that to say, when an Evangelical says, “You believe Jesus and Stan are brothers,” it’s intended as a critique. What they mean is: You have an improper view of Jesus. This is at least part of where the phrase, “You worship a different Jesus,” comes from.

Let me pivot a bit and use a different, less philosophical argument. In the Bible, both Jesus and Satan are called, “The bright and morning star.” The name “Lucifer” is a Latin word literally meaning “morning start.” And we know that Jesus is called the morning star a number of times in the New Testament. Both of them are given this title. Another example from the Bible….both Jesus and Satan are called a lion. Satan is a lion who seeks to devour believers, and Jesus is called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. So, they’re both stars, they’re both lions. They’re also both called sons.

If you ask any Evangelical they will be very clear with you: They are not confused when Satan is called a lion, and when Jesus is called a lion. They understand that just because the concept of lion can be applied to both of them does not make them equals. They also easily understand this with the “morning star” phrase – though that one is a bit more obscure and you’d have to have an Evangelical who has studied a bit to get deep into that example. But for those who know about it, they’re not confused about Jesus and Satan being different, even though the term “morning star” is applied to both. The term “son of God” is applied to both Jesus Christ – and to humans. In the book of Job “Sons of God” sometimes means angels, sometimes it means devils, and sometimes it means humans. But no one is confused that 3 different groups are being referred to here.

But it’s a trigger for them to hear that Jesus and Satan are brothers – despite all these other examples where they’re fully adept at language and can see words used in different ways – when they hear “Jesus and Satan are brothers” they really only hear “Jesus and Satan are equals.” We’ve talked a number of times in this series about the “species” problem. Latter-day Saints see God, angels, devils, and humans as all the same species. While Evangelicals see 3 different species there.

So, how do you get out of this corner with them? This isn’t the one and only answer, but here is my suggestion. Go back to the beginning. Non Latter-day-Saint-Christians don’t have the same understanding of the pre-mortal council that we do. But helping them understand that story might be a good direction to help them understand what we’re actually saying about God being the Father of All, Jesus still being the eternal Creator God, and how all of us from Jesus to Satan, to you and me, are all children of Heavenly Father. At least part of the point that teaching is making is that we are all God’s children – and we are given the ability to make choices. Jesus chooses to serve and save all the rest of us not by force, but by allowing us to make a choice. Satan wants to take away choice. Evangelicals want to know that Jesus and Satan are as different as night and day, and the conversation about what happened even before this world was created might help them see what you believe about that in a different way.

Alright, come back next week, we’ll be at the end of 1 Corninithians and we’re going to take about Paul’s great verse regarding men and women needing each other and how that plays out differently in both groups. See you then!

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 Corinthians 1–7 appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

In my life, I’ve found that everyone has a specific philosophy that they live by, whether they realize it or not.  Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the philosophical branch of epistemology.  Epistemology, while sounding complicated and boring to some, is just the fancy way of saying “the study of knowledge.” Consider the following:

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things? These questions, and so the field of epistemology, is as old as philosophy itself. (1)

As we can see, this is a pretty deep topic, and I doubt I could cover everything about epistemology in this article.  For example, a branch of epistemology touches on whether or not it’s even possible to know anything, and we’re not going to be getting into that.  However, we will be going over the branch of epistemology that covers “how do we know what we know,” or in other words, “where do we learn what we know.”  Why does this matter?  Critical thinkers need to establish an epistemology so that they can develop levels of confidence about the validity of certain information.  With that confidence, it becomes easier for us to make decisions in light of the evidence, and solve problems.  In this article, we’re going to be explaining some terms, then go over some sources from which we can learn, and then explore how these concepts can relate to LDS theology.  Hopefully, that will help explain this complex issue in a useful way.

Knowledge & Certainty

Now, a brief definition of terms is warranted here.  Knowledge is a tricky thing to define, and there is a lot of discussion about how every epistemology fails to account for something at some point (2).  However, this does not mean that all epistemologies are created equal, and there are good ways to establish confidence about an idea regardless.  For this article, when I use the term “knowledge,” I’m going to be borrowing from philosophy professor Michael Huemer’s definition of it as outlined in his book Understanding Knowledge.  Michael Huemer suggests that there are four things that we need to have knowledge, which is referred to as the “defeasibility theory of knowledge.”  It’s outlined in his book in the following way:

1. Belief: You have to believe that it’s true
2. Truth: it must agree with reality
3. Justification: there has to be a reason for you to believe it
4. There can’t be any proposition that, if added, would remove the justification for believing it (3)

This model, as with all models, has some presuppositions.  It presupposes that objective truth exists, and that it is indeed knowable through specific processes.  (Whether or not it does exist is another discussion; but to be fair, claiming the opposite would in itself be a claim of objective truth, so denying objective truth is a self-defeating proposition, and in my opinion, should be avoided.)  In short though, at least for this article, knowledge is an idea/conceptualization of something that meets those four criteria.  Otherwise, at least from this perspective, that idea is only classified as a belief, and not necessarily knowledge.

Now, this is where things get tricky because according to this model, knowledge is differentiated from certainty.  There are a few kinds of certainty defined by philosophers out there, but I’m mostly going off of the idea of “absolute certainty:” that is, the idea that we can know something without any kind of doubt whatsoever.  Absolute certainty, as I see it, implies the idea that we are 100% confident that something is true.  However, we can’t be 100% certain about anything, because even if we were to identify a way for us to be 100% certain about something, it would by necessity employ circular reasoning of some kind (4).  Consider this illustrative argument:

P1:  X Method teaches us how to be 100% certain about something

P2: This argument follows X Method

Conclusion:  We can be 100% certain that X Method works

The problem there is apparent:  the argument presupposes that X Method is true, and begs the question why it is true.  It’s the same thing as saying “We can be 100% certain of X Method because X Method states we can be 100% certain of X Method”, an argument we recognize as fallacious.  It’s worth noting too that absolute certainty is often associated with “psychological certainty”, and it can be had about beliefs just as much as it can be had about knowledge.  Consider the following:

Psychological certainty, for its part, is generally regarded as being non-factive. For example, John can be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris even if it is not raining in Paris. In addition, psychological certainty does not require that a subject be in a favorable epistemic position. John can have no reason to believe that it is raining in Paris, and yet, be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris. (5)

In other words, the confidence we feel about something provides no strength to our ideas.  With this in mind, absolute certainty is as worthless as it is impossible to obtain.  So, does that mean that we can’t have any confidence about anything?  Well, no, it just means that we can’t be 100% certain about anything.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t develop confidence in an idea at all.  The goal of epistemology is to provide a system of learning that can help us be confident about our ideas, an “epistemic certainty” if you will (6).  It is for this reason that I and others have no problem saying statements like “I know the church is true” when we bear our testimonies.  We’re not saying that we have absolute certainty that the church is true: rather, we’re saying that we have a high degree of confidence (due to the Spirit) that the church is true and that our testimonies are based on the prerequisites for “knowledge” described above.

The Umbrella Model

When we “Learn” something, I’m referring to two kinds of processes by which a piece of information ends up in our brain.  The first kind of learning comes from a more concrete psychological perspective, where learning is characterized by terms such as Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, and Observational Learning.  Using sensations and perceptions, we’re able to receive signals from the outside world and translate them into thoughts (7).  Those thoughts are then put into our brains, and we have them at our disposal (though the mechanism by which this occurs is still lost on neuroscientists and psychologists).  The second form of learning is more abstract and has to do with consciously or unconsciously processing the information we’ve taken in (8).  I mention this because I classify my epistemology as being under these two umbrella categories: internal to the mind, and external to the mind.  Consider the following diagram.

This is a diagram of epistemology that I think suits the purposes and needs of all people, including LDS critical thinkers.  

Under the external umbrella, I’ve allocated each of the things that I reserve as being primarily focused outside of the self.  In other words, this is the umbrella where we have outside information being put into our minds.  Behavioral consequences or outcomes, for instance, happen outside of the body, and must be observed (and I have yet to find other things to put under this umbrella, as you’ll soon see).  When I use the term “observe” or “observation,” I’m not just referring to using your eyes; rather, I’m referring to the full spectrum of sensation and perception.  For example, if I were to take a bite of an apple, that’s an outcome of a behavior that I would observe and internalize through sensation/perception (9).  It’s worth noting that the scientific method falls into this sub-category.  Some basic examples of this include the following:

1. We look in the sky and see a bird flapping its wings.  We observe the outcome of that behavior: that bird can fly.
2. I reach my hand out and accidentally touch a hot stove.  I observe the outcome of that behavior:  my hand gets burned.
3. We, against our better judgment, bite into a raw tomato.  We observe the outcome of that behavior:  That tomato tastes terrible.

In the same realm as behavior outcome, we have communication or testimony.  Communication is unique among behavior outcomes in the sense that it is the only way for us to understand ideas that other people have in their minds, and the only way for others to understand the ideas in our minds (10). Some basic examples of this include the following:

1. My mom tells me she loves me.  I observed the outcome of that behavior:  I now have the idea communicated to me that my mother loves me
2. Someone scrunches up their face, furrows their eyebrows, and is yelling.  I observe the outcome of that behavior:  I have the idea communicated to me that they’re upset.
3. My sister hugs me.  I observed the outcome of that behavior:  I now have the idea communicated to me that she cares about me.

As you can see, with communication, there is a bit of clarification that needs to happen, and a bit of cultural background and knowledge is required.  However, I wouldn’t put it outside of the external umbrella, as it is still very clearly the result of behavior outside of yourself.  However, that specific behavior seems to be subject to more complex, internal processes (more on that in a moment).

As for the internal methods of having ideas put into our minds, we turn to both the processes of reasoning and intuition.  The internal umbrella is characterized by our brains processing or adding information in our minds, (mostly) independent from their surroundings.  This is where I place Reason and Intuition as epistemic sources.  Now, I’ve already done two articles that explore logic, logical fallacies, and reasoning, so I won’t go into too much detail here.  However, suffice it to say that reason is the process of arriving at specific conclusions based on specific premises, analyzing the strength of ideas to arrive at new ideas.  An additional note I will add here is that these premises can be arrived at by any source of information, but reason allows us to arrive at new conclusions/ideas.  Intuition though is a bit harder to explain, and it has a kind of slippery definition.  Roughly speaking, it’s all the ideas that arrive in our head that don’t come from conscious reasoning (11).  Consider the following characterization of intuition, and how it differs from Insight:

Based on these examples, both phenomena – intuition and insight – may be conceived of as non-analytical thought processes that result in certain behavior that is not based on an exclusively deliberate and stepwise search for a solution. Non-analytical thought means a thought process in which no deliberate deduction takes place: individuals are not engaged in the consecutive testing of the obvious and/or typical routes to solutions that define deliberate analysis. Instead, intuitions are characterized by the decision maker feeling out the solution without an available, tangible explanation for it; insights are characterized by the fact that the solution suddenly and unexpectedly pops into the mind of the decision maker or problem solver being instantaneously self-evident. (12) 

There is a bit of debate as to where intuition comes from, but its ability to recognize patterns, its overall efficiency, and its impact on morality are all worth noting (13).  Some basic examples of intuition include the following:

1. A surge of nervousness rushes through you as you enter a dangerous situation.  You know that you’re in danger.
2. You make a decision quickly, but can’t explain why.  It just “felt” right.
3. You have a feeling in your ‘gut’ that you should listen to the missionaries and what they have to say.

As you look at the chart, there seems to be some kind of connection between each of the sources of information.  Intuition and Reason seem to rely on outside information often to recognize patterns, establish arguments, and arrive at conclusions/ideas.  Consequently, we see Intuition and Reason classify certain events a certain way, manipulating the authority they have as being stronger or weaker, thus affecting how we learn from external sources.  I can cite an example of this concerning a historical figure in the church.  

Those familiar with LDS history are familiar with the figure John C. Bennett.  Bennett was a friend to Joseph Smith and the mayor of Nauvoo for a brief period.  However, Bennett was cut off when Joseph found out that, among other things, Bennett was using his position (as well as rumors of plural marriage in Nauvoo) to trick women into sleeping with him (14).  From that point on, Bennett became a bitter, hostile critic of the church, making all kinds of claims against Joseph Smith and the saints (with varying degrees of veracity).  Here’s how one author described Bennett’s allegations against Joseph.

Bennett was touring the nation with a lurid, book-length exposé, charging Mormon leaders with “infidelity, deism, atheism; lying deception, blasphemy; debauchery, lasciviousness, bestiality; madness, fraud, plunder; larceny, burglary, robbery, perjury; fornication, adultery, rape, incest; arson, treason, and murder.” He said Smith and his followers “out-heroded Herod, and out-deviled the devil, slandered God Almighty, Jesus Christ, and the holy angels, and even the devil himself.”(15)

That’s quite the list of allegations, and the critical thinker will rightfully begin to question whether or not those claims are legitimate.  Some people think so, others not (myself included), but that debate in and of itself isn’t the issue.  The point I’m trying to make is that when we as critical thinkers read things like that, we are aware that our internal reasoning, or our intuition about Joseph Smith, affects how we view John C. Bennett.  Perhaps intuition suggests that Bennett may be acting out of rage, or perhaps we reason that there’s more going on in the story.  Whatever the case may be, our internal processes affect how we interpret external sources.  More on that in a moment.

This explores another important facet of epistemology: that is, that epistemology  shifts somewhat depending on the topic.  I’m not saying that it  changes without any standard; rather, I’m saying that outcomes of behaviors (both communication and otherwise), intuition, and reason all play different roles in different scenarios, and that what we give priority to needs to shift to be effective.  Why is that?  Because we only have so much information to work with for a given topic!  For example, as in math, reason may be more helpful than communication in some scenarios.  There are only so many people who talk about math, and the conceptualization of math is a purely internal, reason-based process done in our minds.  For historical analysis, while reason may be useful, communication is often more important when it comes to arriving at conclusions.  Communication provides more (hopefully accurate) details about past events, and the thought processes of the people who lived through them than reason does.  As critical thinkers, we need to apply the right sources of information for the right kind of job…and this is especially true when it comes to religious belief.

Epistemic Regress and the Spirit

This is where things get tricky though, because we begin running into a problem.  While the external umbrella sources are vital, most of the brunt work done in epistemology is done under the internal umbrella sources.  It doesn’t matter how many testimonies or behavior outcomes exist around somebody, if the internal sources are in charge of processing the information, they ultimately have epistemic superiority over the sources in the external umbrella.  But let’s say that we’re analyzing a complex topic such as “morality”…which one is better:  Reason or Intuition?  One may initially suppose that “reason” is the ultimate source.  However, we run into a problem there because reason requires an infinite number of premises to be acknowledged valid.  Consider the following:

Arguments are our model for how these reasons go–we offer some premises and show how they support a conclusion.  Of course, arbitrary premises won’t do, so you’ve got to have some reason for holding them as opposed to some others.  Every premise, then, is a conclusion in need of an argument, and for arguments to be acceptable, we’ve got to do due diligence on the premises.  This, however, leads to a disturbing pattern–for every premise we turn into a conclusion, we end up with at least one other premise in need of another argument.  Pretty soon, even the simplest arguments are going to get very, very complicated. (16)

This dilemma is referred to by philosophers as the epistemic regress problem.  However, before we can more fully explore the implications of epistemic regress, we have to explore some of the ways people have tried to solve it.

There are a few philosophical systems out there that attempt to resolve the problem (epistemic foundationalism, coherentism, infinitism, etc.). While there are notable differences between them, there is good evidence to support that they all derive their strength from a singular principle:  metaphysical grounding (17).  Metaphysical grounding tackles the question of “what grounds what,” or “what is the foundation or basis of something” (18).  Consider the following:

Metaphysical ground is supposed to be a distinctive metaphysical kind of determination. It is or underwrites constitutive explanations. These explanations answer questions asking in virtue of what something is so. For example, suppose that an act is pious just in case it is loved by the gods. Following Socrates, one might still ask whether an act is pious because the gods love it or whether it is loved by the gods because it is pious. This may be interpreted as a question of ground. (19)

In other words, epistemologists seem to converge on the idea that the true basis of something is grounded on a fundamental principle (either that or they just embrace skepticism).  After all, how can we expect to learn about topics like morality if we can’t identify the sources by which things like morality are learned from?  However, that leads us back to our question:  What is the ultimate source of knowledge about something like morality?  What’s the foundation of morality?  This is where I think Christianity, and specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really begins to shine.  

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that the foundation of everything good comes from God (20).  We also believe that every person is given the ability to discern what is right and wrong through the Light of Christ, which is described as being “in all things” (21).  This is where I believe that our moral intuitions come from (at least in part), though as we mentioned earlier, intuitions are affected by other aspects of our surroundings all the time.  I see the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost interacting with the above-outlined epistemology in a few different ways:

1. It suggests that the light of Christ is interwoven within every one of the sources of epistemology (though it’s arguably manifested most through intuition), helping us classify things as being morally “right” and “wrong”
2. The Holy Ghost uses these sources together to testify of Jesus Christ and to help us believe that he is the Savior and Redeemer of the world.
3. By enhancing our understanding of these sources, it becomes easier for us to recognize the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost in the natural world.

This has all kinds of fascinating implications for what we find above.  If this is how the Light of Christ/Holy Ghost works, what does that imply for our souls?  Do they interact with intuition in a similar way to help us choose?  Or is there more than meets the eye?  As it stands, it’s impossible to say, but this umbrella model of understanding epistemology accommodates LDS theology rather well.

Now, there is one more thing that I’ll mention here, and it has to do with the grounding example found above.  Many people wonder whether something (let’s call it X) is good because God does X; or whether God does X because it is good.  Other people phrase the question in terms of “is God subject to laws, or does God make the laws?”  I find such discussions somewhat pointless (being a rather practical person), and a part of me thinks it’s a distinction without a difference.  There is room in LDS theology for people to disagree on this issue.  Regardless of your opinion, the point remains:  by grounding our moral epistemologies on God, we claim that we can learn about an objective moral standard and that through a relationship with him, we will continue to learn more about that standard.  Either way, God helps you gain access to that information.  A belief in God also helps add insight to a centuries-old philosophical problem, which is always a plus.

Conclusion

In conclusion, epistemology is an important topic with a complex history.   I hope that by discussing this topic, critical thinkers can be more equipped to answer questions and recognize where they’re getting their information from.  By doing so, critical thinkers can arrive at better conclusions more often.  LDS critical thinkers can also benefit from these ideas by being able to answer questions like “Do I know the church is true?” or “What are the sources of truth I can rely on?”  We all have a lot to gain from studying epistemology, and I hope that by educating people about it, we can make a positive difference in the world.

References:

1. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/philosophy/research/themes/epistemology
2. Huemer, M. (2022). Understanding Knowledge. M Huemer.
3. Ibid
4. With this statement, I’m referring to a certainty that isn’t the philosophical concept of “objective certainty” or “propositional certainty”.  Objective certainty states that something MUST be true given the premises (this relates to deductive reasoning, which I’ve discussed here).  However, I’m referring to ideas outside of this realm of certainty…the realm that deals with history, theology, and the vast majority of human experience.
5. https://iep.utm.edu/certainty/
6. Reed, Baron, “Certainty”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/certainty/>.
7. Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2020). Psychology (13th ed.). Worth Publishers. It’s worth noting that this is where many psychologists arrive at the realm of determinism.  If all behavior is just X action + Y Environment → Sensation/Perception → Z result, then it becomes easy to believe in determinism.  For a deeper dive into how this psychological view contrasts with LDS Theology, I recommend this article here (noting a more negative view of Determinism from a psychological perspective).  For a more favorable view of (soft-)determinism concerning LDS theology, I recommend Tarik D. LaCour’s content here.
8. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-know-your-brain;  The National Institute of Health does an excellent job in outlining the consensus of what psychologists and neuroscientists have determined is associated with brain function (they associate “reason” with the electrical signals fired in the Frontal Lobe).  However, and you’ll find this universally, very few if any of the medical and psychological studies on the brain can explain why human brains “reason”.  Determinism is the closest thing I’ve been able to find to an explanation, but as you can imagine, this prompts the question as to whether or not concepts such as “reason” or “moral responsibility” are possible to begin with.
9. https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/34/overview
10. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/some-assembly-required/201702/the-4-primary-principles-communication; This explores some principles behind communication as a way to transfer ideas/information.
11. https://dictionary.apa.org/intuition, note though that a growing body of literature is starting to reject the dichotomy between intuition and reason, such as this resource here
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5020639/
13. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2022-fair-conference/moral-intuitions-and-persuasion; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201912/8-truths-about-intuition;  Note how both of these sources talk about how our moral intuitions shift over time according to our experiences, upbringing, etc.
14. Hales, S. A., Goldberg, J., Larson, M. L., Maki, E. P., Harper, S. C., & Farnes, S. (2018). Saints: The story of the church of jesus christ in the latter days. (L. S. Edgington & N. N. Waite, Eds.) (Vol. 1). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.; see also Bushman, R. L., & Woodworth, J. (2007). Joseph Smith: Rough stone rolling. Vintage Books. 
15. Ulrich, L. T. (2017). A house full of females: Family and faith in 19th-century Mormon Diaries (First). Alfred A. Knopf. 
16.  Aikin, S. F. (2010). Epistemology and the regress problem. Routledge. 
17. Siscoe, R.W. Grounding and the Epistemic Regress Problem. Erkenn (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00561-7
18. Bliss, Ricki and Kelly Trogdon, “Metaphysical Grounding”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/grounding/>.
19. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0389.xml
20. Moroni 7:12
21. D&C 88:13

Further Study:

• https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023; Steve Densley discusses how we can understand “knowledge”, and explores how we can “prove that the church is true.  It’s the very last talk of the very last session of the Fair Conference, and you can find it for free at this link (you’ll need to create an account first though)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23yprWj_yAI;  Jeffrey Thayne is an LDS psychologist who does an excellent job outlining how our moral intuitions are affected by our surroundings, and what the implications are for this are for LDS theology and practice.  I cited him above, but I recommend him here too.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wCVhhzmSlU; Another video you can use to study up on some of the issues found in epistemology.  Very neutral philosophy channel in general.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo484enDccA; This is another introduction to epistemology, and Huemer’s book.  It’s pretty good, and I appreciated how it was explained here (this guy is an atheist, but tends to be pretty fair)

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 5: Epistemology appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: The Problem of Suffering

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the role of suffering. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

Our jumping-off point today is Romans 8:17:

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

And we’re going to talk about how suffering is viewed differently by Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. Let me give you an overview of the Evangelical view, some of the history of how they got there and what it means for them on the practical level. At the end we’ll briefly compare it to the Latter-day Saint view.

Before I do that though – we’re in Romans. There is so much here in these chapters, and we’re going through it so fast. If you’re not confident in your ability to really follow Paul’s argument through this book please take advantage of the Come Follow Me resources that are available to you. My favorite to really break it down for you are the Scripture Central shows (previously Book of Mormon central.) They’ve got 3 or 4 different shows and they will talk you through it. We’re doing something quite different here and it’s not intended to teach you the content of the book of Romans, or any book really. But the books we will go through from now until the end of the year in the New Testament really deserve your careful consideration. Moving on.

As always, there is not one singular Evangelical point of view. I’ll try to give you the version of it that is pretty much right down the middle. A really good example of this view is heard in what one popular Bible teacher recently said, “In answer to the question of why God allows suffering, I don’t know. My ‘I don’t know’ answer to the question of why God allows suffering may not feel very theological. However, it does point to a truth that we sometimes forget. God’s ways and purposes are higher than ours, and we won’t always figure them out.”

And according to a Pew Research study in 2021 over 80% of Evangelicals say that the main reason suffering happens is random, “sometimes bad things happen.” When pressed for a reason beyond that 75% say that suffering is mostly because that person made bad choices and is suffering the consequences of their own actions. What I want you to get a sense of is that overall, for them, suffering is a glitch in God’s plan. Not a feature of that plan. In the same Pew study slightly over half of them see suffering as a punishment from God and almost 70% say that suffering comes directly from Satan and is opposed to God’s plan. Suffering is a glitch, not a feature.

Let me give you an example by talking through their view on the Garden of Eden.

When they hear the Eden story they focus on the idea that God created this perfect garden, and gave clear rules for living there that he expected them to follow. He gave them free will to disobey, but it was never in his plan for them to do so. Staying in the garden was Plan A and when Eve messed it up, God had to figure out how to fix the problem she caused.

If you remember back to our episode on atonement theories, you can really see how this plays out. The two most popular theories for Evangelicals are Substitutionary Atonement and Christus Victor. Sub Atonement uses a courtroom metaphor where God is the judge who condemns humanity, but Jesus offers to take the place of God’s wrath instead. And Christus Victor is a battle metaphor where Eve’s sin unleashes Satan into the world, and Christ has to fight him in order to save humanity. I think you can see, both of those are reactionary. God had a perfect plan (the garden) that he intended to keep going forever. Side-note: Evangelicals don’t read “and they discovered their nakedness” the same way we do. Latter-day Saints read that and understand that prior to this moment Adam and Eve were not able to procreate. Evangelicals read that differently and believe that life could have gone on forever and in theory, you and I could be living in the Garden today if only Eve hadn’t messed everything up. So, God creates this perfect Garden and wants humanity to live in it forever. And somehow, unexpectedly, Eve ruins the plan, and God must figure out how to solve the problem she has created. God must react to Eve’s choice.

What does this have to do with suffering? In the Evangelical view, suffering is a problem that must be solved. The only role it has in God’s plan is either, “Well, sometimes bad things happen,” or “That person is experiencing the consequences of their own dumb choice.” So in the Garden, Eve’s actions were not motivated to obey all of Heavenly Father’s commands, they were motivated solely by her wanting to be rebellious. Now, both Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints agree that Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden because of their own actions. The difference is that Latter-day Saints believe they had a bigger motive than just rebellion in the mix.

In the Evangelical view, Adam and Eve needed to suffer through living in the lone and dreary world because they had been bad, and this was their consequence. But the consequences were still not enough, and Jesus had to cover the cost for them in a reactionary way because of their mistake.

So you can see that underneath the question of, “Why is there suffering in the world?” is something like, “Is suffering a problem God had to unexpectedly react to?” Or was Jesus the plan from the beginning? Before the creation of the world did God already know he would send Jesus for our sins? Latter-day Saint friends I know you’re at home thinking, “Yes, of course, Jesus was the plan from the beginning!” But Evangelicals don’t see it that way. For them, there was no forethought of God saying, “We will provide for them a savior.” It was a crisis that had to be solved.

I’m going to pivot a tiny bit and talk about another aspect of suffering which is sometimes called The Problem of Evil. It goes something like this: If we are God’s children, and he actually loves us, how could he let ____ happen? How could he let my child die? How could he allow my friend to die of cancer? How could there be all these children suffering from abuse? And these are fair questions that deserve answers. Evangelicals answer the problem of evil very differently than Latter-day Saints do, at least at the theological level. Let me say, in the Evangelical world, they are very comfortable making a distinction between the theological answer to something, and the pastoral answer to something. Theological answers are allowed to sound cold and sometimes harsh, which pastoral answers are given in such a way that allows the one suffering to find some comfort. I’ll give you an example. My dad died when I was 12. The church I attended vigorously taught that anyone who didn’t make a profession of faith in the way they defined it would go straight to Hell. I had been taught this since childhood and even at 12 I knew what the theological answer was. But when I was actually in a situation where something terrible happened, I heard much softer answers, much more pastoral answers. Things like, “You don’t know what he actually felt in his heart.” Or, “Maybe he placed his trust in Christ at the very last second.” There’s not tons of comfort in those, but they’re better than outright saying, “Well, your father is being tortured in Hell right now.” But the theological answer to the problem of evil comes in a few different forms. I’ll briefly talk through 3 of them.

One, Evangelicals will sometimes say that suffering is God’s judgment against evil-doers. They will cite various scriptures, often from the Old Testament, to say that God uses bad circumstances to punish his children. Fair enough. But not a very satisfying answer if you’re 12 and just lost your dad. Second, this theory is sometimes called the, “soul-building” solution which says that God lets evil happen so that he can bring about better character in his children. Also, fair enough, and they can certainly provide scriptures to base that on. But – and not to make this all about me, but it’s just a good example – tell that to a 12-year-old who just lost her dad. That doesn’t get you very far. The third version is sometimes called, “God’s megaphone.” In this version pain and suffering are a way for God to loudly get our attention and focus back on him. Okay. But tell that to a child with cancer. It’s nonsensical.

The thing that all these theories have in common is that the premise is that God could go against the laws of nature if he wanted to. Again, not untrue, but these theories create another problem because the idea is that suffering should be considered unexpected and that God’s job is to help us avoid suffering whenever possible. It’s asking God to step outside of the very laws of nature, that he set up, and act in a way opposed to his own laws.

Latter-day Saints solve this problem slightly differently, and to me, this should be obvious by now, in a more satisfying way. Evangelicals are asking the question, “Why didn’t God transcend nature to help me avoid pain?” While Latter-day Saints are asking, “How is God operating within the bounds of nature in this situation?” God is using the natural world – including the parts of that world that make us suffer – to help us understand for ourselves what is good and what is not. In the Latter-day Saint view God is not the author or evil, but he’s also not going to prevent suffering or evil as it exists in the natural world. Elder Maxwell once said that trying to understand suffering without seeing the whole plan of salvation is like trying to understand a 3-act play by only watching the 2nd act. If you don’t know what came before, and what is going to happen at the end, the middle is a confusing mess. Latter-day Saints believe that we came from God, and will return to him. The whole point of coming to Earth is to learn and grow. We could have stayed in Heaven with God, and probably been quite happy – but we had to leave Heaven (had to leave Eden) to come to learn some things for ourselves. Evangelicals believe that humans only come into existence when they’re born, and not before. They miss the information given in Act 1 of the play. In Act 2, here on this Earth, we experience many terrible things. I do, and you do too. But the reason we’re here is to see if we will choose to hold true to what we knew before we got here. For Evangelicals Act 2 can be a time when they’re really confused and mad that God is not acting in ways outside of the world that he set up for us. They don’t understand why the play is set up the way it is – so they want the author of the play to change the story. But if they knew about Act 1, they’d know why the story is playing out the way it is. And when you miss Act 1, and misunderstand why God is not acting in certain ways in Act 2, it’s really hard to understand why Act 3 (eternity) is set up the way we believe it is.

Now, I will tell you, Evangelicals – many of them, most of them – are trying to stay faithful to what they know to be true, in the midst of lots of suffering, and doing the best they can. But the frustration of the problem of evil, or the problem of suffering is closer to the surface for them, and more frustrating for them than it might be for Latter-day Saints.

Well, that was a lot. Suffering is a huge topic and we’ll actually come back to this in a future episode, but I hope this gives you enough to start to see the differences in how we think about these things, and maybe gives you some ideas about how to talk about our hope based on the knowledge we have. Come back next week, we’re going to do one of the most common Evangelical questions: How are Jesus and Satan brothers? It will be fun. See you then.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Romans 7–16 appeared first on FAIR.

I was hoping to get this done before the FAIR Conference this past week, but life got in the way so I’m a little late. It was absolutely lovely to meet so many of you in person! I finally got the chance to meet so many friends I’ve only ever met online before, and that was a real treat for me. I also picked up some new books, including one I’ve cited essays from on multiple occasions, so that makes me happy.

There were some fantastic presentations that I will 100% be citing in the future, and I learned a lot, which is always fun for me. Those of us sitting in the back right corner completely geeked out over a few of the presentations, and I can’t wait for the full transcripts and notes to be available. A friend called it “Nerdfest 2023” and he wasn’t wrong, but it was a great time.

One of the scheduled guests had a medical emergency and couldn’t speak—I hear she’s going to be okay, thankfully—and they filled her slot with an impromptu Book of Mormon panel featuring the amazing Mark Wright, Brant Gardner, and Kerry Hull. It was a real highlight seeing those scholars all together like that, even though I’m also sorry we missed the original presentation.

And lastly, I wanted to offer my sincere congratulations to both Dan Peterson for his lifetime achievement award and to Jennifer Roach for being 2023’s recipient of the John Taylor: Defender of the Faith award. Both are very well-deserved and couldn’t happen to more lovely people.

Anyway, we’re still on the difficult topic of race and the Priesthood. The scholarship surrounding this subject has grown by leaps and bounds since the 1960s and ‘70s, but there are still some big questions we don’t have the answers to yet. Some people—including some of my friends—are pretty comfortable making bold declarations on this topic, but I’m not one of them. I don’t like making definitive statements about what happened when I don’t believe the evidence is clear enough to justify making definitive statements. So, I’ll make those clear, unambiguous statements when I feel like the evidence can corroborate what I’m saying, and I’ll refrain from making them when I feel like the evidence is unclear.

This week, the two sub-headings are on slavery among the Saints, and the Church’s stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, two topics that I do feel comfortable making strong statements about.

Obviously, like the rest of you, I think that slavery is an appalling institution, and I really struggle with the fact that there were some members—including some apostles—who owned slaves. I don’t understand how you could read the Book of Mormon and come away with the belief that that’s okay. However, I do also think that the leaders of the Church were in a difficult situation with regard to this issue when they arrived in Utah territory. And as I’ve said, I’m not in a position to judge because I don’t know their hearts and minds, and I didn’t grow up in their society.

Anyone who has studied even a tiny bit of US history can tell you that slavery was the main hot-button political issue between approximately 1820-1870. It was a prominent issue before that as well, but it was the main political focus during the early years of the Church. It’s one of the primary reasons that led the to the trouble in Missouri, as Missourians incorrectly believed the Saints were trying to organize a slave rebellion.

In fact, slavery was such a contentious issue in and around Missouri, Congress had to create a special piece of legislation called the Missouri Compromise before allowing Missouri to join the Union as a state. One of the by-products of that Compromise was that the US government began adding new states in an alternating fashion, one slave state followed by one free state, so as not to tip the balance of power in Congress.

This was an obvious factor in Utah Territory’s government, as they had to consider what it would mean for a future bid for statehood.

Another factor they had to consider was that slave-holders had joined the Church and headed West to join the rest of the Saints. This left an open question of the legality of holding slaves in the new territory. While the numbers of slave-holders and slaves were never large, they were still prominent enough that the question would need to be addressed one way or the other. They couldn’t just ignore the issue and hope it’d go away.

The morality of slavery was already leading to large splits in the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian sects, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was trying to hold itself together after the recent murder of its leader and a forced migration westward. The Church had already just recently fractured twice: once over the Kirtland Safety Society, and once when a minority of members opted to stay behind and leave the Church rather than follow the rest of the Saints to the Rocky Mountains. The Church wasn’t in a position yet where it was strong enough to endure another split over the question of slavery. And, unfortunately, many of the members believed that while the ill treatment of slaves was abhorrent, slavery itself was an institution created by God that they had no right to end without divine decree.

The final major complication was that the Native American tribes in the Utah Territory were engaged in a bustling slave trade into Mexico. There is at least one account of some of these slave traders murdering a young slave child in front of the newly arrived Latter-day Saints after they refused to buy the child from them.

After incidents such as those, local LDS leaders started encouraging the members to buy Native American slaves to save their lives, and also to hold the foreign trade at bay by keeping it local. I don’t fully understand the logic behind the latter policy, but it was something Brigham Young preferred so he could keep an eye on it. Some of the Native slaves were adopted as foster children into the families, while many others unfortunately were used as indentured servants.

Utah is the only state/territory in the Union where Native American slavery was legal, and in fact, it was one of several reasons why statehood was delayed. It can be difficult to understand how they didn’t see anything wrong with this, but they were born and raised in a society where that was unfortunately both typical and justified in popular rhetoric.

Slavery in Utah was a different animal than slavery in the South was. There were two laws governing slavery in the territory, one for African-American slaves, and one for Native American slaves.

There were some differences between the two laws, but they were both designed to eventually eliminate slavery altogether. Slaves had to come into the territory willingly and couldn’t be sold or forced to move out of the territory if they didn’t want to leave. Education was required for all slaves. If masters slept with their slaves, even if it was consensual, or they neglected to feed, clothe, or shelter them, or if they abused the slaves, the contracts were null and void and the slaves were to be freed. There were also fines and potential prison sentences for masters if they violated their contracts in any way. There were legal recourses for the slaves and term limits on the slavery imposed, which was very different from Southern slavery. It was more akin to indentured servitude.

Unfortunately, some people did abuse these laws and looked for loopholes, and some of the slaves were treated very badly. The intent, however, was to be better than those in the South and to eventually eliminate the practice entirely.

So, with all of that background in mind, let’s look at what the LFMW has to say about slavery among the Saints:

7. Slavery 

Seeing California as an abundant supply source for Utah, in 1851, President Brigham Young sent a company of 437 saints, lead by Apostles Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich, to settle in Rancho San Bernardino, California. This company included a large number of slaves. 

“As respects [to] slavery in the territory, we were assured that there was little of it there, yet it is there. Some slaves had been liberated by their owners since they were taken to Utah; others still remain slaves. But the most of those who take slaves there pass over with them in a little while to San Bernardino, a Mormon settlement in California … How many slaves are now held there they could not say, but the number relatively was by no means small. A single person had taken between forty and fifty, and many had gone in with smaller numbers.” (The Latter Day Saints’ Millennial Star, 1855, vol.17, p.63)

This is indeed what the report says. While slavery was illegal in California under the Compromise of 1850, the residents of San Bernardino tended to ignore that law. Latter-day Saints were among those who continued to hold slaves in the area.

Again, this is a difficult mindset to understand. Civil disobedience certainly has its place in society, but to engage in it in favor of slavery is just incomprehensible to us living in our day and age. I’m glad I don’t have to be the one to judge, because I don’t personally know how to weigh those attitudes against the good someone does.

8. Civil Rights 

In February of 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination according to race, religion, or sex. Four years later, Rev. Martin Luther King was martyred for his role as a leader in the movement. After his death, black preachers continued to call for full integration of blacks into white restrooms, buses, schools, jobs, and neighborhoods. 

As a church claiming to be led by Jesus Christ himself, I would expect it to be on the front line in the fight for equal rights for all people.

Now, this is an interesting statement, and I’d want to ask Thomas Faulk why he’d expect that.

One of the reasons the Children of Israel didn’t all recognize the Savior for who He was is because He wasn’t fighting for the civil rights of the Jewish people. He wasn’t leading a military revolt against the Romans to free His people, or anything of the kind. Instead, He taught them to render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s, making a clear delineation between the kingdom of men and the kingdom of God. He taught them to turn the other cheek and ignore offenses made against them. He even continued a form of segregation, refusing to teach the Gospel or even to heal people from other communities, instead only preaching to the Jews. It wasn’t until after His death and resurrection that He allowed spreading the Gospel to the rest of the world.

For all of my critics, no, I’m not saying that I think segregation is a good thing. I’m very much in favor of civil rights for all people. What I’m saying is that we need to stop assigning our own thoughts and beliefs to the Savior. This is a big problem in our society today, and we need to be careful that we’re not putting words in His mouth.

While of course the Savior expects us to treat all people with love and charity, He did not push openly to change secular law. And, as difficult as it may be, treating all people with love and charity also means treating people with intolerant views of others with that same love and charity.

I don’t personally blame our prior leaders for not wanting to draw the attention of the federal government, because that had never gone well for them in the past. Our leaders were continuing the same approach they’d held since the 1800s: focusing on building up the kingdom of God and leaving civil matters to local and federal authorities. They were rendering unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s.

Eventually, they realized that by not speaking up, they were giving people the wrong idea and decided to reassess their strategy.

Instead the Church did nothing; in fact, they actually tried to prevent it.

Not exactly. Some members of the Church did nothing, and other members tried to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But actions of individual members, even those high up in the leadership of the Church, are not the actions of the Church itself. The Church issued a statement in General Conference in 1963, read by Hugh B. Brown, supporting civil rights for all citizens.

In January 1964, member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, Delbert L. Stapley, wrote to LDS Michigan Governor, George Romney. Governor Romney would later campaign to be President of the United States, as did his son, Mit Romeny [sic]. In his letter, Elder Stapley urged Governor Romney not to support the Civil Rights Act as it would bring the integration of blacks into society.

Yes, he did. You can read the full letter here. However, this is a personal letter written by an individual. He even says in the letter that he wasn’t writing it in his official capacity as an apostle:

After listening to your talk on Civil Rights, I am very much concerned. Several others have expressed the same concern to me. It does not altogether harmonize with my own understandings regarding this subject; therefore, I thought to drop you a note—not in my official Church position, but as a personal friend. Only President McKay can speak for the Church.

This was one friend writing a letter to another, and he took pains to clearly say that he was speaking as an individual, not as a Church leader.

Faulk then quotes another portion of Stapley’s letter:

“I am sure you know that the Prophet Joseph Smith, in connection with the Negro problem of this country, proposed to Congress that they sell public lands and buy up the Negro slaves and transport them back to Africa from whence they came. I am sure the Prophet, with his vision and understanding, foresaw the problems we are faced with today with this race, which caused him to promote this program. 

When I reflect upon the Prophet’s statements and remember what happened to three of our nation’s presidents who were very active in the Negro cause, I am sobered by their demise. They went contrary to the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith unwittingly, no doubt, but nevertheless, the prophecy of Joseph Smith, “those who are determined to pursue a course, which shows an opposition, and a feverish restlessness against the decrees of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own good, that God can do His own work, without the aid of those who are not dictated by His counsel,” has and will continue to be fulfilled.” (Delbert L. Stapley, Letter to Gov. George Romney, January 23, 1964. https://archive.org/stream/DelbertStapleyLetter/delbert_stapley_Letter#page/n0/mode/2up) 

In this letter Elder Stapley warned Governor Romney that support for civil rights was against the will of the Lord as revealed through Joseph Smith. Stapley further cautioned that punishments are in store for those who seek equality in such ways. As evidence for such dire warnings, Stapley wrote that three U. S. Presidents who had fought for equality and civil rights met an untimely death – Lincoln and Kennedy by assassination and Grant by cancer.

Yes, he did. It’s not a good letter, but it also wasn’t written on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve. This is not the official Church position on the legislation; it is one man’s opinion.

I don’t personally know much about Elder Stapley or his personal views beyond this one letter, so I’m not going to comment on any of that. I’ll just say that I disagree with his views on this matter, and I don’t believe that any of the current leadership of the Church would have any problem with me saying so.

President Ezra Taft Benson gave a talk in general conference after the passing of the Civil Rights Act and before the Church changed its stance on the issue:

Nope. The Church had already publicly announced that it supported civil rights for all citizens four years before this conference address was given.

“There is no doubt that the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America. (President Ezra Taft Benson, Trust Not in the Arm of Flesh, General Conference, Ensign, October 1967)

Anyone who knows anything about our latter-day prophets knows that back in the 1960s President Benson was very outspoken on his views against Communism. It is well-known that he was a member of the John Birch Society, which, among other things, spread the view that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist who was working to agitate racial tension in order to fracture American society.

There is some good counsel in this talk, but there’s also a lot of over-the-top rhetoric that would not fly in General Conference today. There’s a reason we’re counseled against hyper-partisanship and extreme political opinions these days.

Again, President Benson was allowed his personal political opinions, even if many of us today would raise our eyebrows at those opinions. This was not the official position of the Church. In fact, in January of 1963, the Church had issued a statement distancing itself from the John Birch Society. 

That is two statements in 1963 alone refuting these claims of Thomas Faulk.

He continues:

The Civil Rights Act brought equal treatment for all people in this country and ended legal segregation. To refer to it as “the so-called civil rights movement” is to belittle its great significance.

I agree, but I also acknowledge that other people are allowed to hold different opinions on that matter.

Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia and to refer to someone or something as communist during this time was a very derogatory statement.

It wasn’t just a derogatory statement, it was in effect a charge of crimes against the United States government. And it wasn’t just President Benson who believed this. The FBI had a file on Reverend King over this same issue, as Benson may well have known as a member of President Eisenhower’s cabinet.

President Benson does not sound like the Lord’s prophet bringing a message of love.

He wasn’t “the Lord’s prophet” at the time, and wouldn’t be for another 18 years. People can grow and change. It’s the entire point of the Atonement, to effect a mighty change of heart and become better, more godly people. I wouldn’t deny anyone the right to utilize the Atonement, let alone an apostle of God.

It seems that the basis of these prejudice doctrines may have began with the culture of racism held by early general authorities and perpetuated by the following leaders until the direction the nation was moving forced the hand of the Church.

Again, this is inaccurate. These are not “doctrines,” they are opinions held by individuals. And nobody “forced the hand of the Church.”

Under the First Amendment, in the United States churches are mostly allowed to run themselves as they see fit. The government did not force our church to accept civil rights legislation, and neither did outside forces.

While public pressure can sometimes encourage our leaders to reconsider certain public policies, it cannot force them to do so. Revelation does not happen in a vacuum, which means that guidance often comes in answer to questions we ask Heavenly Father. It works the same way for the prophets and apostles, so speaking up can hold a degree of influence in that regard.

But, as we’ve also seen on multiple occasions, the Lord works on His own timetable. If He does not agree that the time is right for a change, no change will be made.

Our church largely stayed away from social issues during the 20^th Century, but as soon as the NAACP requested a meeting with Church leaders and discussed this issue with them, those leaders issued a statement in support of civil rights for all. That was the beginning of a very long working relationship between the NAACP and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which President Nelson is still continuing today.

Distancing Itself From the Past 

Published in 2013 on LDS.org is an article named, Race and the Priesthood. 

“Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.” (Race and the Priesthood, December 6, 2013. https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng) 

This latest manifesto is shocking for the rejection of teachings by past prophets as just “theories.”

Only if you don’t believe in modern prophets and on-going revelation, which we do. Also, calling it a “manifesto,” while technically true under the definition of the word, is hyperbolic. It’s a loaded term in today’s society, meant to encourage thoughts of terrorists and criminals.

On matters where God was silent, well-meaning but wrong individuals, including past leaders, came up with explanations that ultimately proved to be incorrect. Those explanations were passed down from one generation to the next in ignorance, with younger generations believing they were the result of revelation when they weren’t.

When more information regarding this came to light, current leaders recognized that it was in fact not due to revelation, but instead due to personal belief and oral tradition. Upon that realization, they stated this information clearly.

That’s a good thing, you guys. It’s not an area for criticism. Correcting past mistakes and outdated teachings is exactly what prophets are supposed to do.

Contained in this quote from the article, the Church blatantly contradicts itself when disavowing:

Again, it’s not a contradiction, it’s a clarification that those teachings were never based on revelation.

1. “…that black skin is a sign of disfavor or curse…” 

“A curse was placed upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so while time endures. Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with a black skin and have been denied the privilege of Priesthood and the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain.” (President Joseph Fielding Smith) 

2. “…that it reflects actions in a premortal life…” 

“The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality.” (President George Albert Smith) 

3. “… that mixed-race marriages are a sin…” 

“If the white man belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot.” (President Brigham Young) 

4. “…that blacks…are inferior in any way to anyone else…” 

“…some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.” (President Brigham Young)

We’ve already discussed each of these quotes in detail in prior installments, so I’m not going to go through them all again.

I will just say that it’s incredibly odd to me that Faulk expects Church leaders to continue allowing untrue beliefs to flourish among the Church membership instead of correcting them. He’s essentially arguing that the Church should never correct past teachings, even when new information comes to light showing that those teachings are not true.

What’s even the point of having modern-day prophets, if they don’t speak to our day and age and instead, just continue repeating teachings of 200 years ago? Why have an open canon, if circumstances don’t change and society never grows? Why pray for personal revelation, if all of the information we need has already been stated before?

What a weird position to take.

With this article, the Church disavows 4 points of doctrine that have been in place for 150 years and invalidates the words of the prophets by calling their teachings just “theories.”

Nope. With that essay, the Church outlined all of the information we have on the subject and explained that prior leaders had passed along what they believed was revelation, but was actually just explanations given in the absence of revelation. Opinion was passed down as fact by people who didn’t know better.

Today, we do know better, and the Church wants to make sure every member knows that.

Teachings by past prophets are valuable when they’re based on revelation and the scriptures. Teachings by past prophets are not valuable when they’re based on hearsay and speculation.

Each of those past prophets and apostles taught many true, important things that we still uphold today. The Gospel Topics Essay doesn’t invalidate their teachings on any of those truths. It simply points out that on this topic, they were wrong.

Why would anyone want to belong to a church that doesn’t correct past mistakes and instead, clings to past teachings even when everyone knows they’re wrong? I sure don’t want to belong to a church like that, and I doubt any of you do, either. 

Sarah Allen is relatively new in her affiliation with FAIR. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.

The post Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 22: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [C] appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: How Do ‘Works’ Work?

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about more about grace and works. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

Before I get started I just have to say….It was so fun to meet so many of you at the FAIR conference last week. So many of you have lived lives of long-term faithfulness to this gospel and yet you are kind enough to embrace a newcomer like me. I have never once felt unwelcome or unloved in this church – and to me that is a testament to the gospel. We have all these people who have just lived lives of patient faithfulness and it shows up in all parts of who they are. And, you know, I’ve got to do a lot of really cool things in our church over the last few years, and sometimes people are surprised that I’ve been in the church less than 5 years. But, I will tell you what, almost all of that has been through people I met at FAIR. I’m so grateful. My understanding is that the talks will be available online sometime this week. I gave a talk on my research into how the church handles sexual abuse on Friday afternoon and I encourage you to take a listen when it’s available. It’s totally outside of the scope of what we’re doing here – so I’m not going to recap any of it – but if that topic interests (or worries!) you at all, find my talk and take a listen. I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you this, but also so incredibly proud – every year FAIR gives out an award called the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award to a person who has made a significant effort toward the work of apologetics and this year they gave it to me. I’ve read the list of recipients from years past – I consider many of them friends and all of them colleagues in the Gospel. It’s a huge honor to be listed with them. And I feel so grateful for being honored like that.

Okay, so today we’re going to talk about grace and works. This is the third of, I think, 6 times we will address it – each time from a slightly different angle. Today’s scripture jumping off point is Roamans 3:23-24:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Now, I don’t know any Latter-day Saints who read that verse and say, “No, absolutely not. This is not how it works.” And in recent years there have been a number of General Conference talks and other teachings about the importance of grace. If we were just tracing Latter-day thought on this topic there isn’t very much interesting in the way of debate. We believe Paul when he says we are saved by grace. Which is part of why conversation about grace gets difficult with Evangelicals. The traditional line would be something like, “You guys don’t believe in grace.” And Latter-day Saints get confused and say, “No, I’m pretty sure we do…” Sometimes they can quote statements from the past that are not part of our teachings to “prove” we don’t believe in grace. And the conversation goes downhill from there.

Evangelicals here are very similar to other Protestants – and there is history here. We have to go all the way back to the 5th century and talk about Pelagius. He wrote about how to be a Christian while the Roman Empire is disintegrating. He came from Briton to Rome and is actually the first known British author. He was condemned as a heretic in 418 in a complicated series of trial that were trying to hold him responsible for things he said – as well as things that were said in his name. This might sound like ancient history but even in 2018 there was a major book, 400 pages, called The Myth of Pelagianism, so its still alive and well in theological circles. Anyway, the main charge against Pelagius is that he denies grace – while the opposite camp Augustinianism says that grace is all you need. What happened was Pelagius is a British Monk and he travels to Rome. While living there he observes the lax moral standards of the Christians living there. Sometimes this period is called “Late Antiquity” and during this century there are lots of wars between the Goths and Byzantines. It’s essentially the last vestiges of the Roman Empire as it once was and morals have mostly collapsed in all of society, including among the Christians. So, Pelagius shows up, sees the moral decay, and starts to preach and teach that people need to use their will to choose to do things as God would have them do. Neither the political leaders nor the religious leaders like what he is saying – and there was a lot of moral corruption in the Catholic church at that time – so they have him declared a heretic. They actually find him guilty at 3 different trials – one while he was alive, and then after he died they were still so mad at him that they had 2 more trials and found him guilty again, even though he was already dead.

Now, Pelagius was actually wrong about plenty of things, and I’m not here to defend him. Im telling you all of this because this is the history that is playing in the background. Many – maybe most – Evangelicals are not going to know this history in specifics. But they have been handed down a tradition for 1600 years that says they shouldn’t ever say anything except that grace is all one needs and putting out effort toward good works doesn’t really matter.

Evangelicals also went through a repeat of history in the 20th century on this. I covered this in one of my earlier episodes but Evangelicals used to be called Neo-Fundamentalists. The term fundamentalist was coined in the 1920’s around the time of the Scopes Monkey Trials which had to do with the increasing acceptance of evolution in science. But by the 1940’s the fundamentalist movement had really fallen apart. And after WW2 there were a number of younger leaders who had grown up in the fundamentalist heyday who wanted to revive the enthusiasm of those days. They initially call themselves neo-fundamentalists, then later neo-evangelicals, and then later they drop the neo and just call themselves evangelicals.

And what this early group of Evangelicals really wanted was to not be seen as they saw their grandparent’s generation -as a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who had all kinds of rules for church that had to be followed. Billy Graham rises in fame during this period in part because of this cultural mix – people who were interested in the saving grace of the gospel, but none of the rules for behavior. They wanted people to preach to them that Jesus would save them – without also telling them that their behavior needed to reflect the fact that they had been saved. It was kind of late-Rome all over again. And while those details are probably too many decades past for most current Evangelicals to know, the culture they have is steeped in this.

So, whether they know it or not, Evangelicals have been taught that grace is good and works are bad. Never mind that the New Testament teaches over and over about what kinds of behaviors Christians should have. “Works” is a trigger word for them – its not based in the Bible, it’s based on their own history. I’m not saying that as an insult, but rather as a way to maybe help you think through other ways to talk about this stuff. If they’re using the word “works” with you, you now know what they mean by it. You might be able to shift the conversation toward a different way of saying the same thing out of respect for the amount of baggage that word carries for them.

Latter-day Saints are sometimes told by Evangelicals that we must “pray to accept Jesus into our hearts” and not rely on grace at all. But if you tell an Evangelical that you absolutely have Jesus in your heart they will tell you that you have the wrong Jesus so it doesn’t count. In other words, you must have the absolutely correct understanding of Jesus and if you err even a tiny bit, the whole thing doesn’t count. How are you to gain this perfect understanding of Jesus? You must be taught by the right kind of teacher and accept their teaching before your prayer will be accepted. The whole thing is based on the actions – or works – of the individual. If the correct actions, the correct beliefs, the correct prayer do not take place then the person is denied salvation. If this weren’t true they would easily accept us as Christians too, but they generally don’t because we have not done their version of works. They can’t see it as works, but that’s what it is.

Here is my suggestion if you want to have this conversation with an Evangelical loved one….skip the works/grace language. It’s so culturally and historically loaded that it’s really hard to get to the actual meaning of what’s being said. The reality is that both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals believe grace is important, and believe works are important. They don’t necessarily see their works as “bad” works – they see our works as “bad” and it’s all just a muddle. Maybe instead try to talk about all of this in their language. If you wanted the video from last week about testimonies this is a good place to start. When an Evangelical gives their “testimony” they’re telling you the story of what their life was like before they found Jesus, how they put their trust in him, and how their life is different now. If you can “borrow” that language it might put them more at ease to see that you too are a believer in Christ who might have something to offer them. I actually had a conversation last week with someone who didn’t know I’m a Latter-day Saint and he was going on about “those Mormons” when he stopped himself and said, “you know, I’m sure that at least some of them must know about Jesus and love him – how could you not love Jesus if you really knew him?” And I thought that was a beautiful bridge because as it turns out there are an awful lot of members of our Church who know and love Jesus.

Well, that is what I have for you this week. If you’re interested go check out the FAIR Conference videos this week. Would love to hear what you think – there’s a little bit of something for every level of geeky interest. Come back next week and we’ll do some more.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Romans 1–6 appeared first on FAIR.

We are delighted to announce the publication of a book of essays in honor of renowned Latter-day Saint scholar and apologist, Daniel C. Peterson, for his remarkable work and dedication in defending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book is entitled Steadfast in Defense of Faith and was published by The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books. The book was presented to Dr. Peterson at the 2023 FAIR Conference, where he was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement, Defender of the Faith award by FAIR President, Scott Gordon.

The book was edited by former mission companion Stephen D. Ricks as well as friends and associates Shirley Ricks and Louis Midgley. It includes essays by such well-known scholars and friends of Professor Peterson as John Gee, Ralph C. Hancock, Noel B. Reynolds, Royal Skousen, Thomas G. Alexander, Donald W. Parry, S. Kent Brown, John W. Welch, Richard L. Bushman, and many others.

Throughout his career, Dr. Peterson has devoted his time, knowledge, and passion to promoting faith, addressing challenging issues, and providing much-needed context to the beliefs and history of the Church. Through his writings, lectures, and leadership Daniel C. Peterson has played a vital role in fostering understanding and unity among Latter-day Saints, as well as others interested in learning about the faith. His commitment to scholarship and faithfulness are truly exemplary, and his remarkable ability to blend intellectual rigor with good humor and compassion have touched the lives of many.

As a distinguished professor emeritus of Islamic Studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University, he founded the University’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. Dr. Peterson has highlighted the importance of religious studies, helping bridge the gap between faith traditions and cultivating an atmosphere of respect and understanding. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007).

He is also the founder and president of the Interpreter Foundation, which provides resources and scholarship for Latter-day Saints seeking answers to questions about the Church and its doctrine. He was formerly the chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

In recognition of his invaluable contributions, we invite all members and friends of the Church to join us as we celebrate Daniel C. Peterson’s legacy and honor his unwavering commitment to the gospel. As we reflect on his work, we are reminded of the blessings we receive when we seek to understand our faith, ask challenging questions, and remain grounded in our love for the Savior, Jesus Christ. Together, let us express our deepest gratitude and admiration for Dr. Daniel C. Peterson and his continued testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

To place an order and for more information on the book Steadfast in Defense of Faith, please visit https://fairlatterdaysaints.org/store/.

The post Celebrating the Contributions of Daniel C. Peterson in Defending the Latter-day Saint Faith appeared first on FAIR.

Evangelical Questions: Do Evangelicals have “a testimony”?

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about testimonies. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.

Okay, so today we’re going to talk about scripture as a concept. We get our jumping-off verse from Acts 22:1:

Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.

And really this is just one example from the Book of Acts of people bearing their testimonies. And you might not realize this, but Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use the word, “testimony” in rather different ways. Let me talk you through some of the variations.

We’ll start in a general sense. Evangelicals very much have the concept of having a testimony, but they use it in a very specific way. “Bearing one’s testimony” for an Evangelical usually follows a formula (all groups actually follow a bit of a formula, its just different depending on the group) but the Evangelical formula follows 3 steps that are….Before; How; Since. They talk through what their lives were like before they came to Christ, how it is that they came to trust Christ, and what their life has been like since. If you’re like me the immediate question that comes to mind is about how that works for children who were born into their church.

There will be some slight variation here, but the thing you have to understand is that Evangelical children are understood to be born into the world as sinners. From the second they are born they are headed toward eternal separation from God unless they make a profession of faith. That’s the theology. In practice it works out a bit softer – they have an understanding of the “age of accountability” which is said to be anywhere from age 8 to age 15 (the higher end of this range happens in churches where confirmation is practiced.) So if a child dies before the age of accountability people will comfort each other by talking about this concept – but at the same time, Evangelicals fall exactly in line with the broader Protestant theology that says anyone who has not made a public profession of faith will be damned to hell for all eternity. This is one of the reasons the practice of infant baptism, or pedobaptism, developed. Most Evangelicals don’t practice paedobaptism, but those who do see it in a similar same way that Latter-day Saints see the status of a child born in the covenant – they have a level of protection while they are young and unable to reach up to God. Infant baptism is seen as God reaching down to them before they are able to reach up to him. Catholics (and EO and a few others) are doing something different in paedobaptism, but Evangelicals are basically conferring to their child the same idea that we confer to all children under age 8.

So when an Evangelical learns to give a testimony, and they were born into a church family, it usually says something like: I was born into a church family and didn’t even realize I needed to do something about my faith, but at age 8 (or similar age) I learned that I should invite Jesus into my heart so I did. And now I am much happier and I know I’m going to Heaven when I die. Before, How, Since. Obviously, the people who convert to Evangelicalism later in life have a wider variety of stories depending on their circumstances.

But that’s pretty much where “bearing your testimony” ends for them. It is almost exclusively about how they came to faith and got saved from Hell. An Evangelical is just never going to say, “I have a testimony of the Bible,” or “I have a testimony that this church is true.” That’s not what testimonies are about for them. For them a testimony is the simple story of how they came to know Christ and be adopted as God’s child. This is an aside, but for them the word “adopt” is a huge theme – they don’t see themselves as being born as “children of God” they see themselves with the Devil as their true father, but God adopts them into his family despite how wretched they are. It’s more complicated than that, and I’ve got 2 previous episodes on this topic, so I’ll leave it at that for now. In summary, Evangelical testimonies are about how they “got saved.”

Latter-day Saints on the other hand are likely to say they have a testimony of all kinds of different aspects of faith. And we are taught, pretty consistently, that bearing one’s testimony should be focused on Christ – but we use all kinds of different tools to do that. You might hear someone say, “I have a testimony of repentance and how it lets me see Christ more in my life.”

Also, the mechanism of what a testimony is supposed to be doing is vastly different. For Evangelicals it’s mostly just a public (or semi-public) telling of how they came to be saved (“saved” from hell) and the function is to participate in a public declaration of faith.

Latter-day Saints come at it differently because a different mechanism is being used. For LDS a testimony is talking about how a belief was solidified through the exercise of faith. It’s faith-in-action that results in a deeper faith – called a testimony. For example, a person has faith that God really cares about them. And that faith is good, but maybe a little shaky sometimes. The person goes through an experience where they must put action into that faith – they must act on the fact that God cares about them in this example – and at the end of the process, their belief is built stronger. This is gaining a testimony of something. Their belief is made stronger through the process of trusting in what God has already revealed to them.

And something you will never hear Evangelicals say is, “I don’t really have a testimony of…..this or that.” They’re not going to say, “I don’t know that I really have a testimony of tithing right now.” Or, “My son really needs to develop his testimony of repentance.” For Evangelicals you either have a testimony that you’ve been saved, or you don’t.

How testimonies are expressed is also really different. Evangelicals will express their testimony almost exclusively for trying to convert other people. That’s the whole point – so that the other person can be saved from Hell too. But Latter-day Saints express a testimony for different reasons – certainly missionary work is in there, but we express testimonies in front of our families and loved ones so that they can know how we feel and that more faith and trust in God can be inspired in them too. Evangelicals have very limited opportunities to express a testimony publicly – their worship services just don’t make room for it. While Latter-day Saints are given the opportunity to do so in the church service every few weeks.

Now, Latter-day Saint friends, I know….Fast and Testimony meeting can be a grab-bag where you never know what you’re going to get. And I’m sure everyone listening can think of times where Fast and Testimony meeting got weird. My best 2 examples of this are…1) The time when the police had to be called in the middle of F&T meeting. But that was not nearly as interesting as my very first F&T meeting when I was investigating the church where a very old man went to the podium and talked about how disappointed he was that polygamy has not come back. I was sitting with a friend who just reached over and grabbed my hand and said, “We can talk about this later.” So, yeah, it goes weird sometimes. But I wouldn’t get rid of the practice if I could – and that is because of the mechanism that is driving it. We are able to see how putting faith into action works to bring us closer to Christ. And while we love reading about that in the scriptures, we’re still human and need to see how that is worked out in the lives of other human beings. That does something for us that is encouraging and inspires us toward our own acts of faith.

My biggest goal in telling you all of this, Latter-day Saint friends, is to help you understand that you’re using the word “testimony” differently than Evangelicals use it. “I bear my testimony that….” makes no sense to them. I’m not saying you should avoid that phrase, I actually was really drawn in by that phrase when I was investigating the church. I’m just saying that it might help to have some language for understanding how Evangelicals use that word, and how we’re using it differently. Because the concept of putting faith into action – which results in more faith and a closer relationship with Christ – that’s pretty compelling. But you have to be able to explain what you’re doing to them. If you say, “I have a testimony of having a Prophet to lead our church,” your Evangelical friend is going to mishear that as, “I believe our Prophet is how you gain salvation,” because for them baring a testimony really is only about talking about how you obtained salvation – which isn’t even really a category we talk in.

Shorter episode today – but it’s summer. So. I know some of you are coming to the FAIR conference this week, or you’ll be listening online. Still time to register for online streaming if you want. I think in-person registration is closed by now because they needed to get a head-count for meals. But if you will be there in person please be sure to find me and say Hi. I’d love to meet you. Next week the Come Follow Me readings move into Romans. And I could do a year’s worth of these episodes just on Romans alone. But it will fly by and we’ll just grab the most relevant stuff. See you then.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 22–28 appeared first on FAIR.