Choosing Faith

Two years ago, Charles Lawson, a member of the church in the UK, became troubled after watching many young people around him grow up and out of the church. Prompted to delve further into the reasons why, he found himself embarking on a faith journey of his own, tackling the hard questions facing the rising LDS generation. 

The result of his searching is a new book entitled "The Millennial Shot: A Spiritual Inoculation for the Modern Latter-day Saint", which explores the top ten causes for the millennial generation leaving the church. 

While his book doesn’t profess to have all the answers, it does provide context and faith promoting insights to better understand certain issues, policies and practices which can trouble so many of us. Charles Lawson is a husband, father of six and convert to the church. In his spare time he enjoys dragging his family on canoeing and hiking trips which often turn out to be much longer than anyone anticipated.  

To find out more about his book, click here: 

https://www.millennialshot.com/ 

https://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Shot-Inoculation-Latter-day-Inoculations-ebook/dp/B0B5FLLXFP

At age 38, Sulueti Kama, after caring for a number of other people’s children over the years, realised she may not be able to have children biologically. With a strong testimony of the power of praying to the Lord in His holy temple, Sulu and her husband travelled to Tonga, the nearest temple at the time, to petition the Lord for a child. What unfolded next is nothing short of miraculous.

The church of jesus christ of latter-day saints has a wondrous, inspiring, and sometimes puzzling history. While there are numerous miraculous events which testify of the restored gospel, and are the core pillars of many saints’ testimonies, other events can be more challenging to wrap our heads around.

No one understands the complexities of history better than Elder LeGrand Curtis Jr, the current Church historian and recorder, who joins me today to explore how reading stories of  saints from the past can actually strengthen, rather than shake, our faith.

If you were to meet Mia Skipwith now, you might be tempted to assume that with her warm heart and loving demeanour, she’s been a member of the church her whole life. However Mia did not grow up in a safe, nurturing home, nor did she have a knowledge of a Father in Heaven who loved her. But despite suffering through a childhood of abuse, and feeling utterly alone, Mia has defied the odds and found a life of peace through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In this episode Mia joins me to trace her miraculous journey over the last thirty years, which has involved escaping her family environment, navigating foster care, tackling trauma, meeting the missionaries, adjusting to life in the gospel as a single mother, and learning how the Atonement of Jesus Christ and forgiving those who wronged her could heal all her ‘broken bits’.

Just a quick content warning, while we don’t go into details, this episode does reference various forms of childhood abuse.

After a poignant line in her patriarchal blessing, Kasey Davidson, a Brisbane mother of four, grew up knowing that motherhood would bring some extra challenges. 

Little did she realise that marrying her future husband would form a rare combination of genetics and result in their first three children were born with Albanism. She definitely didn’t anticipate her eldest later developing a form of cancer. 

In this episode Kasey joins me to share what it’s like having children with Albanism, how her family navigated the turmoil and rigmarole of cancer, and how throughout it all, prayers to heaven were always answered.

Dr Juliet Chevalier-Watts, a Senior Lecturer and Doctor of Law at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, is not your average atheist. Juliet specialises in charity and trusts law, and despite having no religious belief herself, has recently fallen down the rabbit hole of religious law. 

Her latest project seeks to uncover the financial and sociological value that religions play in our societies, and despite many calling for the removal of laws which protect religious bodies, her research is revealing that in fact, modern societies need religion just as much as ever.

By 325 AD, a number of ideas about the nature of God and Jesus Christ had emerged in the early Christian church, which led Roman emperor Constantine to convene a council in Nicaea to attain theological consensus. Since then, the Nicene Creed is often relied upon as the basis for modern Christian thinking, and can be a point of division between members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Christians.

Keith Thompson, Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, has researched this in depth. In this episode he joins me to discuss his recent book ‘Trinity and Monotheism’, which traces the evolution of the Trinity doctrine. As someone who frequently works with people of other faiths, Professor Thompson suggests that just like Constantine, who was willing to accommodate a number of differences in Christian belief, perhaps we need not be so divided when it comes to this doctrine.

Divorce is not something that Kate Mathieson, a 27-year-old Gold Coast girl, had ever envisioned for her life. However, a few years ago she married a man in the Brisbane temple, and after the magic of the wedding faded and her husband’s behaviour drastically changed, she began to realise that things weren’t quite right. 

Eventually, emotional abuse tactics, addiction struggles and a faith crisis culminated in an ultimatum that left Kate with a stark choice - her husband, or her faith.

Patrice Tipoki has been a part of the entertainment industry since she was a girl, performing cultural shows with her family as a child and her first musical The King and I at age 7. 

After graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Patrice went on to play a number of dream roles such as Nala in The Lion King, Elphaba in Wicked, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and Fantine in Les Misérables, for which she received a Helpmann Award nomination for best female actor. 

In this episode Patrice shares what it’s like to have a career in the arts and how her faith in God has influenced her life.