Sisters in Scriptures Podcast

Well, I’m with Jill. I love this month, I love this season, I love that it lends itself to reading a cozy book by a cozy fire. And that’s my first thought today is, have you ever read a book that has moved you or entertained you or touched something in you so much that you just have this, just, a desire to tell everybody about it? You just kind of go on this little missionary moment thing where you just are bearing your testimony to everybody about how they need to read this book, and it’s the best thing you’ve ever read, and I’ve had plenty of these moments. There’s been so many amazing books that I’ve read that I just want to share with everyone. In fact, if I read on my Kindle, I can just highlight certain quotes or paragraphs in the book, and so I went back and I found one from a book that I read a couple of years ago that I absolutely loved, and so I’m going to share it with you.

This is from Theo of Golden that was written by Alan Levi, and this is the quote. And this is what the pair subsequently recalled when they spoke of their seven-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Our hearts burned within us. Their hearts burned within them. Father Lundy allowed the phrase to linger in silence for a few seconds before he resumed. All, we all walk roads of various descriptions in life. The long and winding road, the road to ruin, easy street, the road less traveled. Along the way, there are questions, there’s news, there are concerns and fears and uncertainties that furrow our brows, trouble our souls, and break our hearts. Death terrifies many of us, but God in his sublime goodness has always sent others, mysterious others, to walk with us, prophets, preachers, friends, teachers, artists, storytellers, wives and husbands, children, songbirds and rivers, even hardship and loss, to help us see clearly. They are ones who make our hearts burn within us, who call us out of our indifference, our lethargy, our death and defeat. They call us to be fully alive, or at least more alive than we were before we met them. I mean, how beautiful is that? Are there certain books that cause us, that cause you to be more alive than you were before you met them?

Well, Nephi certainly thinks so. I can only imagine that with the trauma and the stress and the distress that he’s felt related to his family situation, that he has gone to those brass plates over and over again, searching for some sort of relief. Nephi is in pain. Ryan Sharp, who’s a BYU professor, pointed out that there’s one fairly relatable reason that might have led Nephi to pour over those brass plates. He said, in the absence of other consolations, physical comfort, familial solace, social and intellectual novelty, the words of Christ are sweet in his belly, and Nephi feasts on them without restraint.

Another person that delights in scripture is Elder Scott. And he gave one of these reasons that he reads scripture. He said, scripture can calm an agitated soul, giving peace and hope and a restoration of confidence in one’s ability to overcome the challenges of life. They have potent power to heal emotional challenges when there is faith in the Savior. Who doesn’t want potent power in their life? I think Nephi definitely was searching for that potent power, something to heal some emotional wounds in him.

Let’s look at 2 Nephi chapter 11. Verse 1 says, “I, Nephi, write more the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words.” What’s the word that comes to your mind when you think of Isaiah? Is it delight? Nephi is definitely having this moment here, and he is wanting to share it with everyone. He wants to shout it from the rooftops. He really, really wants us to delight in Isaiah. So I started thinking, what is it that brings you delight? What brings me delight? Is there something that I just want to share with everyone, something that I really delight in? Do you delight in trail running? Do you delight in making sourdough bread? I started thinking of the last time I felt great delight, and I think it was when I was getting ready to sit down and listen to a prophet and apostles and our leaders teach us and inspire us and counsel us at General Conference. Just felt this delight.

I asked my oldest daughter this question. I asked her what brought her delight, and it had been a morning for her. There’d been some tears that morning, some from her two-year-old and some from her. And so I was maybe just a little bit surprised when she said the thing that brought her the greatest delight was motherhood. She said, “I know people look at this, at me with five kids and one on the way, and they think that looks hard. And it is,” she said, “it is hard, but maybe it’s in that hard that carves out the space for more joy and more delight,” which got me thinking it’s probably really difficult to delight in anything unless we’ve really invested a certain amount of time or effort. Maybe the delight comes exactly because it’s hard. It’s the effort made in mining that the gems are uncovered.

Made me think about this article that was in The Atlantic magazine. It’s a cover article. It was written by Rose Horowitz. She is a Yale graduate. She’s only 26 years old. The title of the article was “The End of Reading.” And maybe you know where this is going. She said, basically, there’s been this huge cultural shift in the way that we think about reading. Americans feel as though reading for pleasure is outdated. It doesn’t really suit their lifestyle. It doesn’t fit in their day-to-day life anymore. She said only about 16% of Americans say they read for pleasure on any given day. The nuance here is that reading as a pastime isn’t going away. In fact, book sales are up from a decade ago, but it’s just become really niche. In fact, about twenty percent of the adults who read make up for more than eighty percent of all of the books that are being read or bought. Her argument is that it’s not that we’re not reading. We read plenty. In fact, we probably read more words now than ever before with our emails and our text messages and the comments and the articles and papers that we’re going over. But it’s not the words that we’re reading, it’s what we’re reading and how we’re reading. She reports that the New York Times bestsellers today have sentences that are about one third shorter than they were a century ago. One third.

There was a symposium at BYU called “The Wonder of Scripture,” and in it, Tyler Gardner, who’s a BYU professor, he said, “If we don’t really value reading, are we able to value the scriptures?” He worries that the value that we place on those sacred texts directly relates to how we value reading. Then he went on to describe what he calls deep reading. This is where he said the problem is. Deep reading, he said, is the process through which the reader moves, harvesting information from the text, applying background knowledge, creating connections to our best thoughts and feelings, making critical conclusions and then arriving at insight, the uncharted leap into a cognitive space where we may upon occasion glimpse whole new thoughts. This is problematic, he said, not just because reading is awesome, but because a mind trained in deep reading is a mind cultivated for personal inspiration.

Nephi really wants us to engage in these texts. He wants us to have a love of not just reading, but deep reading. Why? Why? What is the end goal? I think that he wants us to love the word, lowercase word, but he also knows that it is the lowercase word that is going to draw us to the Word with an uppercase W. To our Savior Jesus Christ. And this is so important to him, and I think we’re going to see why.

Turn to 2 Nephi chapter 11 verse 4. Nephi describes this fourfold pleasure that he finds in Isaiah’s words. He said, “Behold, my soul delighteth in proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ, for this end hath the law of Moses been given, and all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world unto man are the typifying of him. And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers. Yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and power, and mercy, in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death. And my soul delighteth in proving unto my people that save Christ should come, all men must perish. For if there be no Christ, there be no God. And if there be no God, we are not. For there could have been no creation, but there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fullness of his own time.”

Twice in here, Nephi tells us that something that he delights in about Isaiah is his ability to prove something to us. Where is the proof? What’s the proof? Can we have proof on the written page with the written word? Is that proof enough? Where’s the tangible evidence? Do we need tangible evidence? How does he think he’s going to prove to us that Christ will come and that he is our savior?

I remember hearing about this woman talking about this missionary experience that she had with a friend. And she told the friend about Joseph Smith and the plates, these brass plates being recovered from a mountain, and how he took these brass plates, and with God’s help, he was able to translate these plates. And she said her friend was right there with her. And her friend said, “Yeah, okay, I love this. I can get behind this.” And she said, “Okay, so where are the brass plates now? Are they in a museum? Like, where can I go to see these brass plates?” And the friend had to turn to her and say, “Well, here’s the thing. We don’t have them.” So, where’s the proof? Where’s your evidence?

I remember years ago attending this scripture class taught by Tina Peterson. Tina, when she was thirteen years old, decided that she wanted to learn the languages that the scriptures had been originally written in. So she decided to learn, among other languages, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, and can read the scriptures in each of those languages. All I can remember thinking is that that was not what I was thinking when I was thirteen years old. But in this particular lesson, which I will never forget, she told us about a Hebrew word that she wanted to teach us, two Hebrew words, gnosis and epignosis. And in order to teach us about the difference between the two, she brought up two different women to the front. She asked them if they knew anything about Jerusalem. They both said they did. They both shared common facts that they knew. One woman said that she could tell you about the geography, certain events that had taken place, especially recently. The other one said very similar things. And then when Tina asked them how they knew these things, the first woman said that she knew because she’d read something online. She’d seen the news in a video. And when she asked the other woman how she knew these things, she said, “Because I was there. I’ve been, I experienced it. I know firsthand.”

Tina’s diagnosis is the general awareness or discovery of a concept. It has intellectual and factual data, whereas epignosis is precise, correct, or experiential knowledge. It requires a relationship with or direct experience of the object being known. It is evidentiary knowledge. It is proof. It’s proof.

Turn to chapter 11, verse 8. “I, Nephi, write more the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words, for I will liken his words unto my people, and I will send them forth unto all my children, for he verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him, and my brother Jacob also has seen him, as I have seen him. Wherefore, I will send their words forth unto my children to prove unto them that my words are true. Wherefore, by the words of three God hath said, I will establish my word. Nevertheless, God sendeth more witnesses, and proveth all his words.”

When I read that last part, this is how I heard it. God send more witnesses. Prove all your words. Send more witnesses. Isaiah has seen the Lord. Nephi has seen the Lord. They are both companions and conversation partners in this. The impact of epignosis is that you are changed. You can’t ever go back to the way you were before you had, where you just had an intellectual knowledge of something. Both Nephi and Isaiah and Jacob are adding their witnesses, and in doing so are inviting us to have our own personal encounter with God, and to be one more to add our witness of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Okay, we’re now in chapter 12. And I love how these chapters are organized. Second Nephi chapters 12 through 15 coordinate with Isaiah 2 through 5. Chapter 16 is Isaiah’s commission or calling from the Lord to be the prophet of God. So why didn’t they put that first? Why don’t we start out with Isaiah’s calling as a prophet and then go into what’s going on? I thought about it, and I thought maybe the delay in introducing Isaiah’s commission is so that we can kind of reflect on all the problems that Judah and Israel are experiencing right now. And then we can learn how the Lord’s going to intervene. So it’s the Lord kind of setting this up. Isaiah 2 through 5 paints this pretty bleak picture of Israel and Judah’s distance from God. We get to see about how the poor are suffering, the corruption of justice, worldliness, and pride. And then all of this is interrupted just occasionally with a little bit about how the Lord is going to come and the covenant people will be cleansed and prepared to fulfill their responsibility. And then you get to see that although there’s, you know, all these problems, all these issues going on, it’s pretty terrible. Destruction, exile are looming on the horizon. It’s coming. It’s clear that the Lord says there is always a way. There’s always a way because God’s promises and his graceful purposes always come to pass. God always keeps his promise.

So here we go. We’re in 2 Nephi 12:8. “And now I write some of the words of Isaiah that whoso of my people shall see these words may lift up their hearts and rejoice,” which seems a little ironic considering what we just learned these chapters are. You’re going to lift up your hearts and rejoice because no matter how bad things seem, the Lord always provides a way back to him. So now these are the words, and ye may liken them unto all men. I read that and just felt gratitude. It felt a little bit like permission to me, that we can liken them unto us. I think that Nephi would say that there is a lot of value in studying the historical context. It’s important for you to understand how to read Isaiah. There’s a lot of guides and tools for you to learn allegory and symbolism and his prose and his chiasmus and all the things. That’s important. But so is understanding symbolism. And Isaiah uses a lot of symbolism. And symbolism can be a vehicle for us to be able to take that and figure out how that applies directly to our own lives. It can relate to us personally now through the symbolism, as if the Lord is speaking directly to you.

So chapter 12, verse 2. “And it shall come to pass in the last days,” today, these last days, “when the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” And then he goes on to say, and this will be a time of peace. What does the mountain of the Lord’s house refer to? All nations are going to flow unto it. Unto what? The Lord’s house is a temple. Are there any temples in the mountains? Are there temples in the Wasatch Mountains? Do we have a temple in the Wasatch Mountains that are bringing all nations unto it? This is a place of peace and becomes this epicenter of peace, and they’ve said this about temples throughout the world, that when you place a temple in a location, it becomes an epicenter of peace. That country is changed, and that nation is changed, and temples will change the world.

So we have, in the spring of 2024, they refurbished the plaza in Temple Square. And they featured the international flags of countries where the church is recognized. And then they unveiled this plaque that’s right here in this photo. And on the plaque are the words, “and it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.” What happens next year? Next year, during the Salt Lake City Temple open house, they’re expecting between three to five million visitors over a six-month period of time. And then in 2034, Salt Lake City is going to be the home of the Winter Olympics, and thousands of dignitaries and visitors and athletes from around the world will flow unto this place. This is definitely one manifestation of this prophecy of Isaiah being fulfilled. And then we can take it and we can zoom in. What does a mountain symbolize for you personally? Where is your mountain of the Lord? Is a mountain a place that can separate you from the world? That can give you perspective because you’re away from the world? They’re beautiful. They encourage reflection. They turn our hearts to God. They put us in a position to receive revelation and inspiration. To get to the top of any mountain, you need some sort of physical ability to get to the top of your spiritual mountain. You might need a little spiritual fitness as well. Moses and other prophets went to the mountain. What did they do in the mountain? They had encounters with God. What opportunity do we have when we go to the mountain?

The second picture on the right is a picture of my brother. I have this among hundreds of other pictures that look a lot like this. He spends a lot of time at the top of a mountain. And I think that for Eric, mountains are the place where he goes in search of peace, in search of renewal, and even though he hasn’t said, a place where he connects with the divine, but at least where the divine can connect with him.

So we get to pause for just a minute, enjoy the sweetness about the mountain of the Lord’s house and being taught, because then we go into chapter 12, verse 5, and this is what we read. “Yea, come, for ye have all gone astray, every one to his wicked ways.” So now I get to introduce you to my new favorite poetic writing style of Isaiah. You probably all are familiar with this, but this is the first time that I really understood this. And I think that my kids might tell you that there’s some similarities in this writing style with the way that I would kind of deliver counsel to them when they were teenagers, and that is that you take this concept, and then you find another way to say it. And you repeat the concept in a new way, and then you keep doing this over and over again, just in case they didn’t catch it the first time, and then you can repeat it, and maybe they’ll catch it the second or third time that you say it. And this is very similar to Isaiah.

He says, this is verse 6, “Therefore, O Lord, thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east.” These people are not from there. “And they hearken unto soothsayers like the Philistines,” also not from there. “And they please themselves in the children of strangers,” people not from there. “Their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures. Their land is full of horses.” Then we repeat it. “No, neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land is full of idols,” repeat it. “They worship the work of their own hands, that which their fingers have made, and the mean man boweth not down,” repeat it, “and the great man humbleth himself not. Therefore forgive him not.”

These people are not keeping good company. They’re not surrounding themselves with other believers. Their associations are introducing them to darkness and temptation. They’re incredibly materialistic. They’re acquiring more and more possessions, and they’re so enamored with those possessions that they’re starting to worship them. It’s making them full of resentment, full of themselves, full of pride. The great man won’t humble himself, therefore forgive him not. I can’t forgive you because you have repented, and why haven’t you repented? You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. This is pride speaking. Obviously, Isaiah feels that this is a root cause of their wickedness, because he repeats these phrases over and over again.

Verse 11, “And it came to pass that the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down.” Verse 12, “Yea, upon the proud and the lofty, and upon everyone who is lifted up, and he shall be brought low.” Verse 17, “And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be made low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols he shall utterly abolish.” Beware of pride, beware of pride, beware of pride.

When President Benson gave his landmark talk on pride, he started with these words, “I earnestly seek an interest in your faith and prayers, as I strive to bring forth light on this Book of Mormon message. The sin of pride. This message has been weighing heavily on my soul for some time, and I know the Lord wants this message delivered now.” I have to wonder if we have any more need for this message now than we did then. You get the sense that this is weighing heavily on Isaiah’s soul. The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. They pit their perceptions of the truth against God’s great knowledge, their abilities against God’s priesthood power, and their accomplishments against his mighty works. And then he goes on to say, our enmity towards God takes on many labels. Rebellion, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren’t interested in changing their opinions to agree with God. The proud make every man or woman their adversary by pitting their intellects or their opinion or their possessions or their families against others. And Isaiah wants to know this. If you think you know better, if your opposition to God puts you in a position of thinking that you know more than God, then what is your source of knowledge and intellect? Where are you going for your information, if not to God?

So verse 22, this is what he’s wondering. Are you going to man? He said it in verse 22, “Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?” Who are you putting your trust in? Are you putting your trust in men, in someone whose breath is given to him by God? You think that you have any control over whether you live or you die? The very breath that you breathe is a gift from God, and you’re going to trust man over God?

Verse 13, “For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah, the stay and the staff, the whole staff of bread, the whole stay of water,” all of your supply and support, “the mighty man, the man of war.” Here we go. Here’s our list of who’s going. The judge, the prophet, the prudent, the ancient, the captain of fifty, the honorable man, the counselor, the cunning artificer, the eloquent orator, pretty much any leader that has any sort of real intelligence or stability or wisdom or discernment, gone. And instead, who do you have to lead you? Verse 4. “And I will give children unto them to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” And my people, “children are their oppressors,” this is verse 12, “and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” All the stable, capable leaders are gone, immature, irresponsible leaders take over. Does this feel relatable at all? They will cause you to make mistakes, and they will cause you to leave your covenantal path. Who do we follow, then? Who are we following? Where is our source of knowledge and direction?

I keep asking this question, the language around social media feels pretty convicting here, because you choose to follow certain people on social media, and those people promote or encourage certain ways of thinking or believing. And many of those people who have accrued a certain number of followers become influencers. And that is exactly their goal, is to influence you into thinking or believing or buying a certain thing or a certain way. And then those followers who are following the influencers now become influencers that are in their own way when they choose to interact with the posts with commenting or liking. Social media has the ability to turn an individual’s opinion into a perceived truth. Simply because thousands or maybe even millions of people repeat it. But let’s be clear. The number of people that believe something tells us how widely a belief is shared, but it does not tell us whether or not that belief is true.

A peer-reviewed study in 2025 that was titled “Going Viral: Sharing of Misinformation by Social Media Influencers,” says this, the researchers essentially demonstrated that the social environment surrounding a post can influence how people evaluate its credibility. And then a separate 2025 study presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics conference found this. The majority, these are researchers and medical professionals, found that a majority of the medical and parenting videos that they examined contained misinformation. So what becomes the result of this? I think we find a little bit of it in chapter 13, verse 5. “And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor. The child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable. For Jerusalem is ruined,” verse 8, “and Judah is fallen, because their tongues and their doings have been against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory. The show of their countenance doth witness against them, and doth declare their sin to be even as Sodom, and they cannot hide it. Woe unto their souls, for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.” You, they can’t even hide it anymore. They just, they look evil. They look like they’re not living righteously. And you’re rewarding evil unto yourself.

Our access of this information puts us in this really precarious position. There’s no question that children and babes in age and maturity are being chosen by people to lead, to have influence, but we have our agency and how we’re going to use it, and how are we going to use it to discern. President Nelson taught, Tony, if you’ve heard this before, in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.

Verse 11. “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that follow strong drink, continue to the night, and neither consider the operation of his hands.” Verse 13. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge, and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.” Why are they in captivity? They have no knowledge, and they’re experiencing a famine. What kind of famine? A spiritual famine. So we have this kind of role reversal, and it’s kind of like, no wonder God is sending prophets. He wants us to increase our knowledge. No wonder Jesus himself says that in order to know the truth, it’s the only way you’re gonna be free. And the opposite is true. If the truth sets you free, then the lack of knowledge is what brings captivity. I’m locked in this prison of my own ignorance, and I don’t have a key. Guess who does? Prophets. And God is calling prophets. And we’re going to see this in the very next chapter, that in order to send this good news of redemption, it is the way out of our ignorance.

Verse 18, “Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope.” There’s this idea that you’re carrying around this heavy load. You feel it, you know it, you’re connected to it by your vanity. But the inner imagery is that it’s really heavy, you’re worn down, but you’re not going to let go of it. You’re just going to drag it along. Why will you let go of it? Just open your hands, he’s saying. Acknowledge that this is heavy, but in order to let go of it, you first have to acknowledge that you’re the one carrying it, that you kind of brought it onto yourself, that you kind of need help in overcoming this.

Verse 19, “Let him make speed, hasten his work, that we might see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we might know it.” And then he repeats it. If you’re really a God, show us a sign, prove it. If you want us to choose differently, give us a good reason. In verse 20, he says, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. That put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter, woe unto the wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” Can you think of any examples in these latter days where there is something in the world today that is called good that is evil, or evil that is good? How do we even know the difference anymore? And how do people determine whether or not what they’re doing is good or evil? I think if you were to ask somebody that you felt was doing evil, if they were doing evil, they would definitely say no. So how do we discern what’s good and evil if everybody thinks they’re doing good? I don’t think Isaiah is talking about blatant evil here. Sometimes I get the feeling that it’s almost hard to tell what’s real or not real anymore.

Talking about this with a couple of my kids, there are so many things now that we partake of that are fake. We have fake food. We have substitutes for certain, for sugar. I just learned that Pringles potato chips don’t even have potatoes in them. And Chick-fil-A’s ice dream can’t be called ice cream because it’s not real ice cream. We wear clothes with synthetic fibers, don’t even have real cotton, real wool in them. We have fake grass in a house in St. George. We have fake money, cryptocurrency. We have singles ward bishops that are expressing concerns over some of their singles who are struggling with artificial relationships with AI girlfriends. We have a lot of popular video games where you can create your own fake world, complete with neighbors and friends and possessions. Sometimes I worry that Satan’s up there just excited to convince us to partake of more and more fake things because then he kind of gets to use us as pawns in this, like, weird utopian, you know, fake video game that he’s controlling from this other universe.

Recently I came across this article that was titled “How to Resist the Normalization of Family Dysfunction.” And when I heard, after studying this lesson, kind of what I heard was how to recognize darkness or evil masquerading as light. And the article was sparked by an ad for this Alexa type device called HomeView. And the beef wasn’t really with the device as much as it was with the ad. And I have debated whether or not to play this for you, but I am going to go ahead and play the ad. This is the HomeView ad. I’m not trying to sell anybody anything. And it’s only, it’s three minutes long, I think, so I’ll go ahead and play it.

[Ad plays]

Speaker 0: So it’s a cutting edge device that’s meant to what? Solve problems. Did you feel like it solved problems? Did you feel like it brought order from chaos? Did you feel like it brought a sense of harmony or peace because it was able to solve some of those problems that add to that? They, the daughter removes something from the schedule, the mom adds one without the dad knowing, private conversations are held that no one has access to, music’s turned on, turned off, the family isn’t united on what they want, each family member uses HomeView how they want, it really does nothing to deliver solutions. In fact, it does everything to just exacerbate. Later on. And the problem is we can relate, right? It’s relatable. I mean, I saw it and I just, I mean, it was entertaining, it was amusing, and there’s a lot of it that is relatable. But the author of this article said that she thinks maybe that is our first problem, is that we as a culture are putting a lot of emphasis on the need and the desire for us to be relatable. That’s what we want more than anything now. We want to be viewed as somebody that gets it, right? But if you’re relatable, sometimes it gets in the way of renewal. And is that in some way substituting dark for light?

So the author made this observation. She said, women want commiseration, but they don’t want change. It doesn’t matter how much commiseration has been offered, there’s never enough of it. And if you try to draw it to an end, you’re mean and unrelatable, which is the worst possible thing you can be. But if you’re relatable, nothing can be renewed. And if all you want is relatability. Christ did not come just so he could relate to us. Where’s the end of that? He came to renew, restore, and to heal all things. The gospel of Jesus Christ, or the law, as Isaiah keeps referring to it, is our mountaintop perspective. It allows us to have a vision and clear direction. This Apple family has no clear direction. There’s no leader. And if there is a leader, it’s the mom, but she’s incredibly stressed out. She’s feeling a lot of panic and overwhelm, and getting out of the door is the only priority. There’s no mission, there’s no direction, aside from what she offers. There’s no time for discussion around the table, no one eats together, there’s no time to answer a call from the grandparents, who are irritating, who are cutting into their routine. Remember the scripture from chapter 13, verse 5, “the people shall be oppressed, everyone by his neighbor, and the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient. And the base against the honorable,” quit permitting verbal destruction, and honor your imperfect elders. Let us not confuse darkness for light. Without a vision, the people perish, says Proverbs, and this is as true for families as it is for kingdoms. But sometimes it’s really hard to see it when you are in it. So where can you go to get greater perspective? Where is your mountain where you can connect with God and receive greater light?

Chapter 14, verse 5. “And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For upon all the glory of Zion shall be a defense, and there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and a covert from storm and from rain.” What does a cloud remind you of? Does it remind you of the children of Israel, the Lord, and the tabernacle in a cloud? And the smoke, what can smoke symbolize? Smoke that just can go anywhere and be everywhere can symbolize the spirit, or our prayers ascending to heaven, the shining of a flaming fire. How did the Lord appear to the Israelites at night? The appearance of fire, to light, to enlighten us, to direct us, to give us purpose and direction. All this for a defense in our homes. Do we have our homes with the cloud, with the smoke, and with a flaming fire by night? So that our homes can be a defense, they can be a shadow. In the daytime from the heat, and they can be a place of refuge and a covering from the storms. Is that what our homes are? Is that what this Apple family’s home was?

My daughter told me this would happen, and I can’t. My son sent me this picture of his three kids sitting around a dining table. It might not look like much to you, but to me, it is a picture of a hope realized. In this picture, I see three kids who are experiencing a certain amount of peace. There’s homework being done, dinner was served, it’s being cleared from the table, there are placemats. There seems to be a certain amount of a covering, of a protection, of a refuge. This table in this picture was my son’s first purchase as a single father. It is a tabernacle and an altar. The purchase was a financial sacrifice. But my son felt an incredibly strong need to create a gathering spot where he could, with his children, have a place to gather and connect with each other. This to me is a picture of a father who is trying his best to create upon his own dwelling place, a place of refuge, a place of safety from the storm and from the rain. And sometimes the best place to start is with a table.

How do we persevere amidst all of this wickedness, all of the woes and the worldliness and the sins of omission, all at the expense of the poor seeking for our might and laying up horses and chariots, all the worldly wealth that we’re trying to lay up? The first part of Isaiah tells us how we get into this mess. The second part tells us how we’re going to get out of it. And then we get Isaiah’s commission. So we have, for, chapter 16 of Isaiah. And you know how they always say the book is better than the movie? I mean, this is definitely one of those situations where you just really don’t want to be limited by anything you’ve seen. You just want to let your imagination just soar here. So let me read part of this to you and just picture whatever you can in your mind.

“I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. And it stood, above it stood the seraphim, each one had six wings, with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is unto me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips. I am not worthy.” Have you heard this from any other prophet? “I am but a lad. I am slow of speech.” Here’s Isaiah. “I am not worthy.” Are we, do we ever feel, I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m not knowledgeable enough to accept any sort of calling from the Lord? And he says, “I dwell in the midst of people who are unclean. None of us are worthy. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Then flew one of the seraphim, which angels, unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. What happens on the altar? Sacrifice happens on altars. Where do you find what happens when there is a sacrifice that has been offered? It burns, and what’s left? Burning coals. Who was sacrificed on this altar? And he took that burning coal, and verse 7, “and he laid it upon my mouth and said, Lo, this has touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.” Whose sacrifice would have purged or cleansed his sins and taken away his iniquity? You have to wonder, was it a little bit painful, a burning coal set on his lips? Can our cleansing and purging be a little painful or a little uncomfortable?

And then, verse 8, “Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then, after all this, his “I am undone, I am not worthy,” this is what Isaiah says. “Here am I, send me.” Isaiah stands in the presence of God, feeling very insecure, very unworthy. His experience, then he experiences God’s purging, cleansing, transforming power, and atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is changed.

Do you remember Tamara Runia’s conference address last April, titled “Shine Through, Let His Radiance Shine Through You”? And she talked about the transforming power of an encounter with and a connection to God. In it she said, it’s all about the joining of hearts. Our human heart with his divine heart. Think about it, she says. We feel love from God, and it causes us to have love for God. In other words, it creates this vertical relationship with God. Then the byproduct of that relationship is charity, which is a desire to turn sideways, to look horizontally, and to love outwardly, to love like him, to love others. First we go up, and then we go out, and what did we just form? This is a cruciform way of living. A prayer I offer regularly for my children is, “Heavenly Father, may my children be so filled with your love that it overflows out of them and into the lives of others.”

When we put ourselves in proximity to God, when we read or engage in ancient texts, when we go to the mountain of the house of the Lord, when we attend FSY or girls camp, or we go on a mission, or we accept the calling, or we work in the temple, we set ourselves up to be able to have an encounter with God. And then we become on fire for the Lord. Isaiah changed, he was on fire for the Lord. “Here am I, send me,” let me serve the mission, let me accept the calling, take the steps towards sobriety. Say, “I’m sorry,” release resentment. Because when you encounter God and it changes you, it also changes the trajectory of your posterity, right? Generational bonds of sin and weakness are broken, and I personally cannot think of anything that I want more for my posterity than for them to not have to carry the weight of my sins and my weaknesses.

Verse 9 says, “And he said, Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but they understood not, and see ye indeed, but they perceived not.” Then said I, “Lord, how long?” Isaiah is saying, you’re telling me that I’m going to preach repentance to the people, I’m going to teach these people, and they’re not going to see, and they’re not going to hear, and they’re not going to listen to me? And the Lord says, yes. And Isaiah says, well, how long is it going to be like this? And the Lord says in verse 11, “until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man,” till there’s nothing left.

Isaiah’s just had this incredible encounter with God. He’s on fire for the Lord, but he’s about to reenter that long and dreary world. And he’s faced with the reality of his own weaknesses, his own sins, and the weaknesses and sins of others. “Here I am, Lord, send me,” and then you have to leave your temple experience, your temple session. You have to go back to your health challenges or your teens that are struggling. “Here I am, Lord, send me,” and then you return home from your mission. “Here I am, Lord, send me,” and then you leave girls camp or FSY, or the accident happens, or your husband relapses. You go back down the mountain. You reenter the long and dreary world, and the temptation is to think, all is lost. You get discouraged. And you start to feel as though life is a little less sparkly than it was that moment that you had that encounter. It feels a little flat.

Kerry Molstein said in his book, “Did we really think we would finish?” And that is the point. Verse 13, “but yet there shall be a tenth, and they shall return.” He’s saying, I don’t need everyone. There’s going to be a remnant. Keep going. There will be a tenth. There will be a portion. And they will give up, they will return. So don’t give up. Over and over again, we read, “because my arm is outstretched still.” Doesn’t matter how bad things get. It doesn’t matter how wicked. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes, how many times you have to start over again. The Lord’s arm is outstretched still. There will be a righteous remnant. It will be this group of the stalwart, the faithful, the unshaken, that God will perform his marvelous work and a wonder to gather the rest of the family back home into the covenant, into the tabernacle, into the covering from the storm. And you, in the last days, you are this remnant.

And would you discover who he is? Would you learn how to communicate with him? And do as Isaiah did. Would you feel his power? Would you become filled with his love? And would you, more than anything, become a witness, a witness of God? Put yourself in proximity to God, to his power, and become a witness, which is my prayer for myself and for each of us, and I make these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Transcript of Presentation: Our Brains and the Modern World
Presenter: Chuck Rich (neurosurgeon)
Length: ~64 minutes

[Chuck Rich]:
Thanks. It’s great to communicate with so many familiar faces, and it’s hard to have our kids out of this age group, ’cause it was so fun. We used to give us excuses to see all the neighbors and be involved in all the activities, so I’m really excited to talk about our brains today.

As they said, I’m Chuck Rich, and I grew up around here. I went to Highland High School, and I grew up in Salt Lake, then left after high school to go away to college and medical school and residency, where I married my wife Tiffany, who’s back there. We live over on Olympus Drive. I have three boys—I don’t know if any of you know any of them—but Colson and Christian and Will, and they’ve loved this state and the activities, so I’m sure you guys are all having a great experience as well.

But Tiffany, I’m kind of front row seat with some of the other parents I see here watching what it’s like to grow up today in this world. And it got me thinking over the last decade or more of raising my own kids, why is it so hard? What is going on that makes it so hard, I think, for people to handle this world.

And it struck me one day. I was reading another article, and they were referring to a lot of the parts of our brain as our Neanderthal brain, or our caveman brain. I was thinking about that, and it got me thinking that, yeah, our brains really haven’t changed a whole lot. Certainly not in the last hundreds of years or millennia, or thousands of years. They may have changed over how God created us all over hundreds of thousands of years, but they certainly aren’t changing much recently, and yet our world is changing so much.

And I kind of came up with this idea or this thought that our brains really are not made for this modern world. And I think it has ramifications, repercussions that I hope we can talk about and have a discussion.

I kind of wish I would have changed out of my suit for my other ward that I serve right now in a bishopric, because I’d rather have it be just a casual discussion, and those that know me, I’m usually in my scrubs, so that would have felt more comfortable. But anyway, so if anyone ever wants to stop in the middle and ask a question, or if you want to save it till the end, that’s fine too.

One of the things I want to talk about is the reality of like, or I want to talk about reality, and that, and I guess what I mean then is that Jacob in 4:13 tells us about things as they really are and of things as they really will be. And Neal A. Maxwell had a great talk and he had a book that I read, maybe as old as some of you. I was heard in high school I read it, and it really struck me, it really hit me, this idea of what are things really like?

And yet, even at that time and subsequently in all my neuroscience training, I started realizing, I started thinking a lot about, what does that really mean, things as they really are? Because it’s certainly not things as they really are in the physical universe, because our interaction with this entire world and this universe comes through the interface of our brain. In this mortal realm, our spirits are not really directly connecting with God, or directly connecting with really anything. It all comes through our spirit, our brain. Does that make sense?

And as a result, this may be a closer representation of what reality is on a physical scale, meaning we do not hear all the frequencies of sound, right? Our dogs can hear high-pitched frequencies, whales hear really low frequencies. We don’t hear but a very small fraction. We also don’t see most of the spectrum of light of this world at all. We don’t smell the molecules of smell that my dog smells. We certainly don’t sense that we’re on this globe hurtling through space at a thousand miles an hour and rotating all at the same time, and we have this illusion that we’re just sort of sitting here on this solid terra firma Earth, right? We don’t feel gravity. Other one I used to try and dunk and I couldn’t—we just do, I just feel gravity. But generally we kind of accept this as normal and as reality.

But I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s wildly not the real, any reality on a physical scale. So I think what Jacob was teaching and what Neal A. Maxwell’s talk was about is what is the purpose of all this? What is really going on? What is the reality of why we’re here, where we’re going, and what are we supposed to be accomplishing while we’re here? So, if that makes sense, I’m gonna go to the next thing.

Because when we’re here in this neighborhood, we’re walking around, hanging out in the ground, skateboarding, we’re going to school, trying to figure out what sport you like, and you’re looking up at Mount Olympus the whole time, and it really struck me like, why is it this way? Why did God create the world and our brains in such a way that this is all we get? This beautiful view of Mount Olympus and pleasant temperatures, not the freezing cold of the outer darkness universe, or not the heat of being near the sun. We’re in this little small sliver of distance from the sun, and that we don’t burn up, but we don’t freeze to death. Everything just seems to be so perfectly positioned that it was, again, a testimony to me that God created this world and our brains for a purpose, and we all know that we’ve all been taught in church that we’re here to learn about Him, to become like Him, to have our faith tested, to grow, to make mistakes, to improve. And so He had to create an environment or a laboratory or this earth that would accomplish that. And the reality of the physical universe doesn’t really help us get there. But that reality is real, and it even extends to our bodies, our brains. The physical sciences behind our emotions, and if we don’t get those things, we’re missing part of the secret of doing well here in this test, in this order of life, because we’re not aware of what’s going on to us. Does that make sense?

You know, it teaches that all things that are out there’s a God, yea, even the earth and all things that are upon the face of it. I have a lot of friends. One of my best friends, his name’s Dennis Porter, so if you ever want to read a really interesting book on the brain, it’s called Gray Matters, and it’s on the national bestseller list, New York Times bestseller list, and we went to college together, med school together, and residency together, and neurosurgery. We spent about 15 years straight together, and he is a world-famous pioneering neurosurgeon and has a great lab. He writes also. I’m a local community, you know, kind of a country doc neurosurgeon, very different. And he’s a really brilliant guy, and this book is fascinating, it’s called Gray Matters. If anyone’s interested as an adjunct to this, he really is on the forefront of neuroscience and thinking about it. But he very much believes that this world all came about through a big bang, through happenstance, and that we put all the meaning on it. Any what we do is what creates meaning. But there isn’t really a purpose or meaning behind it.

Well, to me, I look out at the world just like Alma, and I see all the cosmic stars and forces and dark matter and energy, and then we have this little blue orb Earth in the middle of all, nothing else like it. And it to me is a very strong testimony that there is a purpose here. And why do I bring that up? Again, if we’re made this way, if our bodies and our brains are made this way, what was God hoping or wanting for us through this brain that is his only conduit to reach our spirit, okay?

I just got to back up a little bit, and I’ll go over this quickly, but in order to really put this in some context, and I want to have the disclaimer that everything I’m saying today is my own thoughts and things I’ve read. I’m certainly not speaking from the church. Don’t ever get that mistake, and I think they’ll ever put me in that position. And I’m not even speaking for all their neuroscientists. This is just sort of how I’ve distilled down a couple realities that I gained a testimony when I was very young, and I had some experiences that made it impossible for me not to reconcile what I know to be true spiritually with what I learned about the school, or about the brain, or about the body, or science. And I’m stuck in this position where I can’t, like my friend, just say, I’m just all in on the spirit, on the science side, because I know some things. In my world, I know some things to be true, and this is kind of dumb, but when I talk to you, I don’t want you to go away not knowing that I have a firm testimony, and it may not be any different or any more spectacular than yours.

But when I was a little kid, I lived up Newton, Massachusetts, my dad was a resident, and I was four, I think, and some neighbors had caught a bullfrog, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And every day I’d go out looking for bullfrogs. And I remember one day walking in the back door of our house and being so frustrated, slamming the door, and I couldn’t find a bullfrog, and remembering that for like one of the very earliest memories I have of going to nursery at church and them teaching us about prayer. And so I thought, I should go back outside, and I should pray. So I went outside, snelled by these little cement stairs down by our, walked down basement, and I said a prayer that I could find a bullfrog. I got up, looked around, and there was a bullfrog there. And I so clearly remember this, and I was like, well, I don’t look a little bit. So I went and looked around the first bush, and there was the biggest bullfrog you’ve ever seen. I could barely, I couldn’t get my hands around it. That’s why I saw this picture. I couldn’t, I just remember walking like this with my fingers not touching the end of the house, calling for my mom, and she didn’t hear me. So it started to squirm, so I went out and put it in a pail that I had prepared for my bullfrog that got. And I ran inside, found my mom, bring it back out, bullfrog was gone. I don’t know if my family still believes to this day that this happened, but I knew it happened, and I knew that that parent had something to do with it. Of course, that’s four.

But later, I remember another crazy, like, just little thing, may not be any different than you guys and your testimonies that are just developing, but I remember going skiing with my dad. He used to take me out of school a lot. Wasn’t very worried about my grades. I got very good grades. I did well on all my tests, and what he was worried about was my friends. He was worried about some of my influences in my life. So he used to take me out of school like every Friday and go skiing just to kind of talk to me and see what’s up. It was during junior high. And I remember one day we went up skiing, and when we came back to the car, it was snowing hard, and he didn’t have his key to the car. He’d lost his keys. And he was mad at me. He said, you stay here. I’m going to run back to the, to where we bought the tickets. I took my wallet out, maybe it dropped out there. And I remember sitting there, and I had something I wanted to do with my friends that night, Friday night. And I remember thinking, I need to get, oh my gosh, however you get home. And I thought, I’m going to say a prayer. I took the deal down, filled that parking lot back up. I got that set of prayer, we could find these keys. And once again, I thought, I better go look. And now, between then and this time, there may be been a few, you know, spiritual experience in my life, but not a lot. I was sort of distracted by sports and everything else. And I knelt down and I thought, I got to go, and I walked the opposite way from where my dad went, and I walked and I went behind one car, I looked down right behind the rear tire, and his key was there. And I was sort of, once again, convinced that someone was listening to me.

And then, later, I went away to college. I had a great year. I went back to Harvard. I had a blast. I played basketball. I was going to go back. I wasn’t going to go on a mission because I wanted to play, and I had these great roommates. I was going to go through my four years with them, and but on my table at my nightstand in July, supposed to report school to basketball middle of August, on my table nightstand was my, this old Book of Mormon paperback, where the inside was the inscription from my bishopric when I got baptized. And I had never seen that book before. I don’t know if they gave it to me when I got baptized, but I had certainly never seen it before, and I picked that book up and started reading it, and I read most of the night, and I just deeply remembered feeling spirit of the room, and maybe even the presence of angels, but just something telling me that all this early life stuff when I was too immature and too just spiritually blind to really get what’s going on, was somehow tied to this. And that when Christ is our savior and that he did appear to the Nephites and all this stuff. So, turn life upside down, call your friends, call your roommates, call coach, go off on a mission. So, and again, when I know these things to be true, I grant that I can’t prove a lot of things I’m saying today, but I believe that God created our brains to help us have joy in this world and to have a great experience and learn from people.

And like C.S. Lewis, it’s kind of turned into this, one of my favorite quotes is that, you know, I believe in this gospel, in this church, in Christ, as I believe that the sun has risen, not just because I can see the sun and the horizon, but because by it, I see everything else because of the light it provides. And that’s how I feel.

So I remember another time, another frog story. I’m back at Harvard Med, well, first year in my neurobiology class, and this guy starts telling me, he’s a neurobiologist, he studies frogs because it’s got such a rudimentary nervous system. And he tells us how there’s a frog sitting there in a swamp, and it’s just this little swamp off the side of the road. There are trucks going by, there are airplanes flying overhead, there are people conducting complex business and everything all walking around, there are people jogging. That frog in the reeds by that pond, all it knows is that, is it something to eat, or is something’s going to kill me? What’s the temperature? Is it time to seek shelter? Is it day or night? And it only sees in black and white. That’s that frog’s entire world. And I remember reading him so strongly with the spirit saying that our brains are a little like the frog’s brain compared to God. And realizing that I’m running around here doing all these things I think are so important, caught up in my own world, that maybe God has a bigger perspective for me than I can have for myself. Just like anyone walking by that pond has a better idea of what reality is than that frog does. But to that frog, that’s its whole reality. And the only reason why that frog has that reality, and we have ours, is the difference in our brains. Well, our spirits too, our children. You know what I mean? That’s how they get their input, right?

So when you look at these brains, here’s the skull, it’s kind of weird. Think this, this thing carrying this thing is our brain, and it interacts through that. But the brains, wildly complicated, it’s the hardest thing to understand in the world, everybody says. And believe me, I don’t think I understand it. I just have kind of learned how to be a carpenter or a plumber around it. But the things I have learned that everybody knows is, it’s divided up into different areas that handle different things. You could probably read it from where you are, but back in our occipital lobes, we can, it’s where we handle vision. Our left temporal lobe is mostly memory and speech and language patterns. And this area up here is our movement and touch behind it. But the frontal lobes are where we think and where we process. And it’s all connected, don’t get me wrong, but they definitely have different places.

And the other thing is that on a more microscopic level, you also have all these neurons that are interconnected, and they have synapses, and they have transmitters. And somehow all this biology, all this physicality is what our spirit has to work through. Now again, my premise is that this is true, that you guys are over here, and what you believe, or what I believe, about this gospel, or about there being a God, or about that we are not just specks of dust, and like, you know, cell bags of fluid floating around, that we actually have a purpose, then somehow that’s interacting through this complex brain structure.

And when I was going back into childhood, my dad gave me that book, The Three-Pound Universe, when I was in sixth grade. And I remember reading it, I don’t know how much I remembered or understood, but it definitely got me thinking about this idea that why is it called a three-pound universe? That weighs about three pounds, your brain. And like this thing says, if you have that many neurons, which we all have, and each one is connected at least a thousand times, then the connections in our brain are more than all the stars in the galaxy that we know. And so in reality, our universe is, the whole universe is, in our brain, and everything we see and do and feel is through our brains. There’s no external reality to that until one day we die and our spirit separates, and then we will see another reality that’s different than this. This is my viewpoint.

So, in our brain, I talk about these transmitters. Now, some of these guys may have heard about, but the point here is that God wants us on this earth, wants us walking on Holladay, having a good high school experience, playing sports. Wants to be part of our family. Well, he gave us transmitters to help us do that. And you have dopamine, which is supposed to teach us alertness and excitement and reward. And it, and then you have norepinephrine, which is that fight or flight response. And then you have serotonin, which is kind of like well-being and everything’s doing good. And I guess the message I want to keep going here is that once again, all that we’re doing in this life has to work through this to learn. And our world has drastically changed how it affects these mechanisms compared to even us very young parents in the room compared to our grandparents. No, but it’s not very many decades before that our world, the world is very different than what you guys are dealing with.

So, one of the other big messages is that the way this was all set up originally was that you went through hard, you did something hard, and then you got a reward for it in your brain. You did something good, and you got a reward for it. But somehow, neuroscience and industry and video games and food and drugs have learned hacks to give us the same jolt of feeling good without any of the hard work or any of the good. Just the flood of dopamine. Does that make sense?

So, again, when you talk about serotonin, acts that are building, promoting, non-addictive, that make you grateful, that’s serotonin. Short-term pleasure, the rat hitting the button for his cocaine hit in the cage. That’s a dopamine. See the difference? And the weird thing of most of all is that no matter how much dopamine you get, it’s never enough. I mean, like categorically never enough.

So what do we, how do we, how are we supposed to stimulate dopamine in this life? We’re supposed to get it by eating something good and healthy for us because we’re really, really hungry and then we eat it and then we, it gives us pleasure while we’re tasting it, eating it, and afterward the serotonin comes in and you feel good. Pleasure, like sure, some things feel great, you know, sun on your face, a wave you catch, the feeling of like cold water jumping in the—I mean, these are all things that release dopamine back in the day before you were bombarded by dopamine stimulation through all the artificial means today.

Being attracted to someone, starting a family, it has dopamine. But again, it alone has no long-term satisfaction. Sex alone, through dopamine, it has no long-term feelings of anything, of peace, belonging, family, well-being. It just doesn’t. It’s a short-term thing like the rat hitting the button. And again, not to get, exercise back in the day and today, back and release dopamine, new experiences. Why would God want us to have new experiences? Any ideas? To learn, to learn. If you didn’t ever go try something new, you’d never learn anything else. And to travel over that horizon, to do something different, that releases dopamine. It’s a novelty thing. But you then have to get there and do something worth it. We all know that if you just go on a trip, it feels good for a minute, but it doesn’t do anything unless you actually learn something there. But it entices you to go do something.

So again, these are all these things you can kind of read through it. The dopamine gives you this excitement, a reward, and then it tells you to do it again. It doesn’t, it’s not like you did it once and it’s enough. It says do it again. And then it gives you a focus of like, what do I got to do to get that feeling again? Which is very different than feeling good. Does that, you get that feeling? And then, like you said, exercise, sunlight, little things, sleeping well. This is about how we used to regulate our dopamine. It’s really not these artificial sources like junk food, your Jolly Rancher and your Slurpee and your Cheetos and then some porn. Some drugs and scrolling on your phone. That wasn’t available to me, or wasn’t available to my grandpa. It just wasn’t. And now it is. And just don’t ever mistake dopamine for happiness. It’s not the same thing.

So I have a good friend in this neighborhood, for one day, but we have another friend who’s not a believer, and we had a big argument for a time about the church, and this, that, and what’s true, what’s not true. And finally he was fed up, and he just said, you know what, Lon, I’m tired of talking about this. Why don’t you just choose your miracle and I’ll choose mine? You’re choosing the miracle that some big bang happened that went through some particle soup that then went through atoms first forming, then went through this dark age that lasted about 12 billion years, and all this dark energy and all this stuff happened, and then today, and then somehow out of all of that, these little creatures started climbing out of the primordial soup of water and turned into this, into a dinosaur, into this, and then all of a sudden we have, you know, Michael Jordan playing basketball. Or Einstein, you know, deciphering the universe. And all on the, all chose the other miracle that God did it. You have to, every time you, if you choose that miracle, every single day you have to choose another miracle that it keeps happening, that it keeps sustaining, that it keeps going. All I have to do is choose this one miracle that God’s in charge, and now I can go pay attention to the more important things in life. I couldn’t have agreed more. I get it. I’m choosing one of two possibilities, and so are you. You believe it happened one of these two ways, there really is no other in between.

The other thing I want to say is because these are the two realities in this world, if you think you can overcome what I’m trying to talk all over here about the way your brain works, if you think you can overcome it, you’re crazy. If you think you’re the exception, if you think you’re the one that can look at pornography or try a little crack, smoke a little meth, no, I’m kidding, but, or eat the wrong foods or whatever, whatever it is, if you think you can do that and still be okay, if it was evolution, you’re battling millions of years of evolutionary forces that created your brain as it is, and you’re not bucking that trend. You’re just not winning that game. Reality always wins. And if God created you, I’d even put it to you that there’s less chance that you could overcome that than if it was evolution, because God is much bigger, the idea of God is much bigger than even evolution.

Once again, we have these Neanderthal brains, and I want to point out that the difference in what God is, why we aren’t Neanderthals, why we’re humans, and why we’re the children of God, is because of this. This greater crown here of the frontal lobe, because it’s in the frontal lobe where I think our spirit mostly connects and can guide our judgment and our actions and our desires and what we choose to think about and what we choose to do with our time. It’s the executive functions. All the other stuff is just hardwired. Our vision, our hearing, our balance, our coordination, our sleep-wake cycle, our appetites, those reward cycles of dopamine and serotonin, those things. We’re not that much different from the animals, or the monkeys in those other areas. This area where we really are wildly worlds apart, and that’s because we’re children of God and he made us in his image and he wanted us to have some way to think like him and act like him and make choices in this life, okay?

So, quick thought, the only part of participation I’m going to ask from you all today. Think about your answers. Grandpa, what did they used to do with their time? What stories were, what’d they do? What’d they like to do? Anyone? Fish. Fish. They go fishing. What else? My niece liked to ride horses. So what do you tell me about? Anything else? They’d hunt, right? They’d farm. They’d gather food. What did they want? What were their desires? My grandpa, he wanted to go see the ocean. Never seen it. You get to see it all the time. They, easy get there, you can look on the internet, whatever. Very simple things. He won’t, and then what about, what needs did they have? Food, water, shelter, right? Very basic things that we still have, but where they’re, how they’re met differently. How’d they used to get places? Did they jump in their car and drive down the road to their friend’s house? Mark, what did your dad do when he wanted to go someplace when he was a little kid? Walk. Walk. Right. Like me. There’s not that long in the past when humans didn’t even have bikes. They walked, they rode a horse, or they rode a mule, or they rode a camel, or something. And believe me, that’s a lot more work than it seems.

Part of our problem today is everything that they used to do, they lived in families, they lived in a little community, they pretty much knew everybody. In almost every place around the world, people lived in one spot, they didn’t travel very far, and they pretty much kind of knew who they were and where their place in this world is. Today, what do we do? We turn on a tap like a god and get all the water we want. We call Uber Eats, we go through a drive-thru, we deal with traffic, like we get everywhere by our cars, we don’t walk hardly anywhere, we play video games, and alternate realities and worlds that no one could have ever thought of before, and our brains stimulated in ways that it has never been stimulated. In the history of mankind, all of God’s children, except you guys, didn’t do this. So I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s not, I don’t think it’s what he intended to have our brains overstimulated. And we live in these huge cities where you feel different, and I don’t think it’s, our brain feels that we don’t know who, where we belong. And it makes us fearful, it makes us worried, and I think it percolates even into big schools, and you just don’t know who your clan is. Who is my group? And that’s what, we get that feeling of belonging, we all want that. Well, just so you all know, you guys are the guinea pigs. You guys are the computer-aged guinea pigs that had a phone. Have a phone and have access to all the information in the world. Your brains are stimulated.

I think we’re all coming to agree, and I assume you guys are too, that even though it may have the intent of bringing people together, it usually makes people feel socially isolated. You have too much information, too much entertainment, too little work, too little exercise, and you have addictive foods, whereas in the past, people had to work for their, they had to plant their food, harvest their food, prepare their food, and by the time they ate, they’d already expended more calories than they are, than they’re going to consume, and they had already developed a hunger and appetite, and food tasted great. Now, we take that strawberry that used to be just so good. When you first had strawberry, when I was a little kid, I remember having strawberry before there was a strawberry Slurpee, or before there was a strawberry Jolly Rancher, or a strawberry Sour Patch Kid. And somehow, strawberry went to the nth degree of refinement or excessiveness, and they’re not even similar, the taste, right? But that, but our brain was made to eat a strawberry. And then you bombard it with this other stuff, is it any wonder why the strawberry doesn’t produce the same response if you get so addicted to junk food that you, that’s all your brain is expecting, that degree of release from the sugar and from everything else. And all this stuff results in things being, feeling like they’re out of control, you’re disconnected from your friends, you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed, and you wonder why. Well, in my opinion, it’s because our brain is not keeping up with all this being fed. It’s overstimulated.

This Dr. Anna Lemke, I heard give a talk at Stanford, she has some really, really interesting research on addiction. And I’m bringing that up now because I’ll talk about a little more in a second, but you guys are the target audience for addictions. They always think about the old crackhead on the street or the old grandpa drinking, smoking cigarettes. They got addicted when they were kids. It’s really rare to get addicted to something when you’re older. It’s not impossible, but it’s rare. And I’ll tell you why in a second. But addiction has to do with two things, how much dopamine there is and how much it’s released. Well, the things I’m mentioning before, the way God designed our brain, you were supposed to get a dopamine release when you’d watch the sunset and you saw the ocean for the first time, or you rode a wave, or you saw your friend, or you held a hand of a baby, back in those 90s days, or you kissed her on the cheek and felt, saw Star, you know, saw skyrockets and fireworks like Bobby Brady did when I used to watch the 80s Brady Bunch back then. Well, they’ve created drugs that attack the part of your brain so strongly that the amount of dopamine that’s released is so overwhelming. Hundreds of times more dopamine than anything that our grandparents used to ever, could have ever done. The best food they could ever eat, the most powerful alcohol they could ever, I mean, none of it even comes close. So, and then it was not even just how, what you have. Now you have crack, you have cocaine, you have meth, and then they’ve decided, hey, instead of just smoking it, why don’t you snort it, or why don’t you inject it in your veins? Because we have hypodermic needles, which no one had until the 20th century. So none of this stuff was possible, and this last few generations are being bombarded with this.

The last thing I want to bring up with this really quickly is that this whole pain and pleasure thing, the problem is, is that our body wants to be in balance, and if you have too much dopamine, when the dopamine’s not being hit, you’re gonna go into a way deep deficit, and you’re gonna be depressed, and you’re gonna feel lonely, and you’re gonna feel weird, and you’re gonna feel like something’s not right, and until you take that drug of choice, whether it’s drugs, or it’s scrolling, or it’s shopping, or, but there must be an opposition to all things, and that’s the way God created us.

And when you guys are teenagers, when you were kids, you’d follow your mom around, you’d do everything she told you, and you’d learn all this stuff, and then you go to school, you’re the nicest, the best students, you’d sit there and listen to your teacher and do your homework, and then all of a sudden you turn into teenagers. All you wanna do is go, jump off cliffs, or ride your bike too fast, or do flips on a trampoline, or whatever. All the other risky behaviors I won’t mention. And so during that time, you’re, we have this thing in the brain that, for whatever reason, God designed us so that dopamine’s least more potently than it was when you were a little kid or when you’re older. Why? Why would you want to do that? Well, he has to give you a big reward, and it’s like excitement. Back in the day, it was so you’d go learn for yourself, like you said. Go try something new. Take the risk to go in on a date, because boy, holding that hand is so exciting. Work, get a job, leave home, start a family. Back in the day, you’d go hunt for your food and take on those risks. Well, anyway, what happens during this time is when you’re a kid, you don’t have any connections. You start experiencing the world, and you get a million, so many dense synaptic connections. And when you’re a teenager, all of a sudden they start falling away, calls this synaptic pruning. And why? It’s because what you learn here is largely people telling you what to know, what to do, what to believe. Don’t touch that pot, it’ll burn you. Don’t climb on that wall, you’ll fall. Don’t take that jump and do a backflip, you’re gonna break your neck. Then you turn a teenager, and all those warning things go away, and why did God do this? Well, he didn’t mean it so you go do the backflip. But he did mean it that you learn for yourself. You learn what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, what’s not true, you know, what’s accurate, what you’re interested in, but it makes you relearn it. And during that time, the dopamine is really strongly being put out to reward you to tell you to go do this.

Now, this is known that in the natural animal world, these cubs stay with their bear, their mom till like three years old. Then all of a sudden at three, they’re glad to leave. Whereas before that, they were afraid of everything. They wanted, they would go hunt on their own. They certainly weren’t fighting. They were playing around and rolling around and being bear cubs. And then around two and a half to three years old, they all leave mom and they go off in the world and are willing, mom actually pushes them away. They go off, they start having fights. They start hunting their own food and why. Their brain does the same thing. All those fear judgment connections that were because mom told me, mom growled at me, dad growls at me in my house and told me not to do this. Well, now those fall away and the bears go out and learn it on their own. And if they didn’t have that unbelievable drive to go seek something new, to find a mate, have their own cubs, to get in fights, whatever that excitement was, they wouldn’t do it. They just stay with mom forever. And that’s what’s happening to you guys, whether you know it or not.

Now I’m a brain surgeon and sounds impressive, but I have a lot of students come operate with me, and the only thing I tell them is that there’s one rule in brain surgery when you come watch me is that you can’t tell everybody how simple it is. Because we really don’t have the technology, we are not as, we do not know how to fix our brains. What we can do is go and take a tumor out, or if someone falls and has a blood clot, or if they fall and they break their skull, I can go in there and know what not to do to mess you up and put it back together as best possible. But I’m not going in there fixing your neurons or rewiring your brain. And what’s interesting is that you guys are doing that every day. I don’t know if you ever thought about that, but you guys are your own brain surgeon. You guys are doing self-brain surgery every second, every moment of every day.

There are these phrases in neuroscience, the brain takes its shape for what it rests upon. Well, obviously your brain is not resting upon anything, but it is like jello. If you took it out on the table, it would rest, it would take the shape of whatever it’s resting upon. What it means, of course, is whatever you’re focused on, that is shaping your brain. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Hebb’s law, it’s called. Well, if you do a pathway, like trying to learn to play the violin or play the piano or shoot a free throw, write cursive, whatever it is you’re trying to learn, those neurons that fire together pretty soon get wired together and it becomes automated. I had a very misspent youth. I could sit in my basement and shoot 10 out of 10 free throws all day long without ever playing basketball anymore because of just a very misspent youth and hardwired basketball shooting ability. I can’t run anymore because I could stand there and shoot a basketball. Well, similarly, everything you guys are doing with your time, everything you’re doing with your bodies, everything you’re doing with your mind is wiring that. So you guys, whether you know it or not, are your own brain circuit.

And I guess there are a few points here I wanted to bring up and just have you think about. You and your mind or your spirit is not the same thing as your brain. It’s the thing that through which your spirit has to work. Second, your brain, your spirit can control your body and your brain, but similarly, because we’re in this mortal world, and it’s a fallen world, your body and how it feels, the pain you’re experiencing, the cold you’re experiencing, or your brain, the habits it has, the fears it has, that can also affect your spirit. Believe it or not, some thoughts arise from your spirit, and I believe strongly some thoughts arise from your brain. And the ones that arise from your brain are often the ones that are automatic, that you have trained your brain to think, or your environment has trained you to think. But those are different than what you think yourself, and learning to distinguish those two things is a little bit about what it means to learn to listen to the spirit, Holy Ghost spirit, and to really listen to yourself and know thyself, like the spirit, the scriptures say, because the brain wants to automate tasks because it takes too much energy to hardwire, rewire, think it up, make it up every time it’s the whole reinventing the wheel. It’s going to automate anything you do a lot, like playing piano or shooting free throws. So whether you like it or not, you’re doing this, and this is going on all the time, whether you’re taking control of it or not. And when it happens passively or by outside forces, you feel stuck, you feel anxious. I think it’s what I saw in my own kids, sometimes feeling out of control.

When you’ve had tough experience in your life, it can make you shrink back and not be willing to try new things, because you had a bad experience. You can go on years later and look back and think, wow, all the friends I had, all the activities I used to do, I used to dance, I used to play the piano, I used to do all these, and now my life has been reduced down to going to and from school or to and from work and eating same thing every night and watching the same dumb TV show. And it’s so different than the life of your childhood and your teenager when you’re learning so much. But this is what happens. And these feelings can really cause us to be so sad and depressed. When you look around and you think, I’m not living the life I wanted to, then we turn to try and anesthetize ourselves. Now, when I do brain surgery, I’m allowed to anesthetize you. I take Keith Lerner over there and I say, put him to sleep, make this guy numb so I can take his head apart and put it back together, and he won’t know and won’t be so mad at me. But when you’re doing your own self brain surgery, I’ll guarantee you one thing. If you try and numb it up or anesthetize yourself to that process, it won’t work. So when you can’t dream scroll, you can’t just reflexively go shopping because you just, you’re bored and tired or you’re sad. You can’t seek out your Panda Express and a donut every day. You can’t just watch TV and reruns of Housewives of some various crazy city. You have to face, if you do that, you’re just going to face the pain the next day. To be a good brain surgeon on yourself, you can’t anesthetize yourself. And all these things that are part of this modern world do that. And in the past, there really was almost nothing. There was weak wine. That was it.

So in John 10:10, he tells us, the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. How is this both possible? How is it this world is so hard on us, and it’s hurting you guys, and bombarding you, and industry, and the food scientists, the people trying to destroy you, and steal your money, and to kill you, eventually, through drugs, and alcohol, and smoking, and all the stuff, and yet Christ came that you might have life more abundantly. Well, the answer is, and this is a little so complicated, I want to make a slide. I’m just saying, simply put, when you get into quantum physics, and superposition theory, the idea is that an electron, the most basic particle of your brain, that turns into the electricity, that turns into the chemistry, that turns into the biology, turns into your thoughts that you perceive. When we study this, they know for a fact that electron can look like it’s in more than one place at one time, but the minute it’s looked upon or observed in that spot, it all collapses down to, well, that’s where it is. Now, this sounds kind of crazy, but this is what’s happening with us. Whatever emotion you focus on, whatever task you focus on, whatever thoughts you entertain and encourage is the reality you’re creating, both in this world and in your brain and automating it and setting up patterns of thought and behavior.

In second Corinthians, I think this is why the apostles understood some of this. They didn’t know that they’re smarter than the brain, the neuroscientists at Harvard who are sitting there in a little rat petri dish trying to figure out the frog, trying to figure out, you know, that there’s nothing behind this other than just molecules. They’re saying, no, you have a spirit. The apostles knew that we tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Take your thoughts captive, make them obedient to you, your own spirit, your own light of Christ, your own conscience, and make it something that points to Christ, that makes you more like Christ. Again, the renewing of your mind that you might prove what is good. It’s done every day, whether for the good or for the bad. When you go do brain surgery, it takes a lot of hard work. It was a very long residency, and it was a lot of study. I don’t know how terribly smart anyone one person has to do, but you have to be really diligent. It takes a long time. But you know what, what more important than my study and my hard work and 15 years in kind of a lot of libraries was having good teachers. Well, in self-brain surgery, it’s even more important, because if you don’t get taught the right things to think, the right things to believe, the right things to do, you’re going to go off the rails also, because everyone’s performing brain surgery, but as you all know, there are some kids that the influences in their lives are causing them to do brain surgery on themselves. That’s like having a bad brain surgeon. And the last thing you want is a bad brain surgeon. You want to do the only, do no harm. Well, think about the prophets your friends, your parents, and what they tell you. I guarantee you, nine times out of ten, I mean, nine times, nine out of ninety-nine times, listen to them, not what the world’s telling you.

So lastly, as a brain surgeon, protect your brain. It’s the only thing you got to work with your, with the spirit. Wear a helmet. I have so many kids get head injuries, and they’re, it’s never the same. Too many concussions, too many, you have a bad head injury, you’re, that spirit does not have a full experience here in this life. Avoid alcohol, drugs, all those kind of things. They’re toxic. They kill your brain cells, and it’s not a joke, it’s, they just do, and we all, well, I know burnouts, I know people that were normal in junior high, and they do not have normal competencies now. And lastly, your brain needs nutrition, and your brain needs sleep, and somehow we’ve lost both. We have poor nutrition, and we stay up all way too late, and we get, you know, we just, we’re off. And we can have the mind of Christ if we do those things.

And I guess the last thing I want to say is that this brain surgery thing, I could go on and on about the, if you have questions, I’m sorry, I ran a little over time, but there are studies that prove the things that repair your brain or that you do self-brain surgery, every one of them aligns with the Holy Gospel principles, repentance, gratitude, serving others, working hard, getting outside, prayer, meditation, and exercising faith or hope in something bigger than yourself. And those are the things that heal people’s brains, and it’s been proven, but they call other things. A gratitude journal. But it works, because this is how God created us, and he taught us the gospel, and he sent Christ here to save us, and he gave us prophets, he gave us parents, and communities to teach us these things, and if you do it, you guys will create amazing brains that will be able to stand the forces of this world. But if you’re not aware of what’s trying to be done to your brains, it’s hard to protect yourself from it. So seek out the life of your great-grandparents. Walk more, talk to someone face-to-face, not even on the phone, let alone texting. Eat real food, maybe not a lot, mostly plants. How about, you know, exercise every day, set big goals, seek novelty, seek new experiences, and you do those things, and you’re gonna have a wonderful life, and avoid all these pitfalls that the world’s throwing at you. And, anybody have questions? Brain surgery questions?

[Audience Member 1]:
I got a question for Jack. Churchill, on one of your slides talked about how some thoughts come from, enter your brain and some come from the spirit. Yeah. Is there any way to distinguish them?

[Chuck Rich]:
I think it takes a lot of work, and I’m not perfect at it. I’m sure I’m not. But I do think that what I’m getting at mostly there is that we get automated thoughts. We have one time that we walk down the hall and someone says something that we think, we’re pretty sure they said something derogatory or mean about us, right? Next time you walk down the hall and you see two people talking and you think they’re saying something about me, that is, that is no way that’s your spirit telling you that. That’s an automated thought of fear and protection that our brain has from years ago when we saw the tiger in the grass and the tiger could kill us so we didn’t, we almost didn’t see it. So the next time we’re seeing tigers everywhere because we don’t want to get killed, or our friend got killed that day and we didn’t. And those leftover automated mechanisms are what I think promote a lot of these thoughts. I got a little thing in the mail the other day from the IRS, and I am terrible with my tax. I mean, I pay them, but it’s always like the last minute, I’m always calling an accountant to help me, and my first thought was not, wow, I maybe got a refund. My first thought was, oh my gosh, I’m going to get audited. Well, that’s just a fear reaction, that’s not a thought reaction. That’s not like, but the spirit is what makes you think about things that import and what matters in this world. And all the other stuff is noise, and our brains have become very good at feeding us ideas, and be wary about what you think. Really give it a hard look and a test, a scientific test. Is there really basis to this, what I’m thinking right now? And even if it is, can I change that? You know? Can I think of something else, something better for me and for those around me? Because if you, if the idea is that we don’t, can’t control our thoughts, well then, I don’t know what, how we have a test in this life. Because it really is through our brain and our thoughts that we change the one thing that connects with our spirit. So, anything else?

[Audience Member 2]:
You, then, JJ. So my thought was right on the same line, because I’ve learned it’s like really helped deeply make space through my thoughts and then like how I feel about myself. And it is almost shot, well, I would appreciate if you making that note, but some thoughts come just up automatically, don’t they? Because some of it, I will believe, like deeply believe that, no, I know that thought’s real. Oh, should we talk to the beginning? We talked about like our perception of reality and let’s believe reality. And I made this challenge to myself one time, that every thought that I had, that maybe wasn’t the most constructive, or helpful or hopeful, like didn’t bring alive Christ into my next action, I made myself challenged to ask if that thought was true or real. And I started with people who were close to me, because I was like, oh, I’ll be pretty confident I’m right. Like, not the stranger in the Holocaust being that right. I felt like my sister was being offensive, and I was shocked five for five times in a row. I was wrong. And so my, the power of the brain, it is shocking. So I appreciate you saying that, because those thoughts do come wired from things in childhood that are meant to preserve you. But as I got older, it felt like it was betraying me, so I had to, like, slow it down. I don’t know. They control. Yeah.

[Chuck Rich]:
[Acknowledges.]

[Audience Member 3]:
Just question on for these guys, like, phone addiction, video game addiction, I mean, I know that’s addiction is probably a strong word.

[Chuck Rich]:
Well, okay, again, like that one that I alluded to quickly is she, one of her subjects that she talked about and she showed video of was a guy who was addicted to game videos. I mean, he had the whole setup in his college dorm. He had like six screens that the pictures they showed. He had a headset. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it, you know, and he played games all the time. I mean, 14, 16 hours a day. And it was only Stanford kids, super smart, sleep three hours, get his work done, play games. All around the world, I guess, through these things. And he was getting so depressed and so hopeless, and life had no meaning. This kid that was a superstar to get to Stanford now had nothing, and unless he played video games, he felt horrible, I’m like a loser. Well, her point was that when he plays these video games, these lights are going off, he’s getting rewarded, he kills this person, or he does this thing, or he gets this reward. It’s this constant dopamine hit that they have figured it out. They, these are not just random people who run those companies. They are neuroscientists who are figuring out how to tweak your certain centers of your brain to make you addicted to their game. And she made him understand that every time the dopamine was that high for that long, it went way, way into a negative after. Because we have something called homeostasis in our body and opposition in all things, and this is not how it was supposed to be. She said that you have to lean into something hard and something that hurts or is painful to do to get the dopamine. Because your body’s going to react to your pain or your discomfort or your hard work, and also your homeostasis elevate your baseline levels of dopamine. Isn’t that fascinating? You go to work hard, you go do your chores, you study all day, when you’re done with that, you don’t have to do anything to get a hit of dopamine. The body just raised. You feel better. Your serotonin goes up. Conversely, you do dopamine and ser- stuff all day long, all day long, all day long, seek the easy path, seek the serotonin, nice fluffy pillow, and your stuffed dog, and you watch TV and eat junk food all day. That’s creating those feelings, but it’s not real, and then your serotonin also goes way down because you didn’t do anything of import. You didn’t do anything of any lasting value. You created no long-term means as a body, as a person. Does that make sense? So when that, when you look at your phones, you think you’re having just fun, but you’re rewiring your brain to need that to feel normal. And no one wants to admit it, but video games, food, sugar, carbohydrates, shopping, internet, TV, and our phones and social media, all they are is a drug that is hitting dopamine. No one wants to call them that, but that’s what’s happening to your brain. Cause your brain was not made when they had these things. Your brain was made when all they had was the farm and bad food. But it was driving you to go do those things. It was driving you to go marry that girl or that guy down the road that wasn’t that attractive, but at least he showed up and worked the farm. But that dopamine, that drive was so strong you went and did it. One day, you get on your phone and you swipe on hinge or whatever it’s called, whatever. Ridiculous. But it’s what’s happening and your brain is not meant for that and it goes really bad really quickly.

[Audience Member 3]:
So what do you do to like get out of that? You’re in that loop.

[Chuck Rich]:
Well, like I said, all it takes, this is the secret of brain, this is the self-brain surgery. All it takes is redirecting your thought to one other thing and you are straightening that thought. You put the phone down, you go outside on a walk, your brain is now, because what happens in this pruning, it’s like the, it’s like the, you drive around Utah and you see big highways and then off the side you see this like old beaten road that’s in disuse. Asphalt’s cracking or it’s a dirt road or something. That used to be the main road. And if you leave these other pathways alone, all those snapped connections go away. They do, they just fall away. But if you don’t, but you have to let go of them. So this student I was talking about that was a gamer, she made him stop playing games for three weeks straight in her lab. And he, it was supposedly the most, one of the most miserable times of his life. He could read books, he could sleep, she’d bring him food, he could exercise, he had weights, but he couldn’t be on a computer or play a game. And after three weeks, he was talking, he said that my entire world had changed. I noticed things differently, I felt calm, I felt peace, I was interested in calling my friends, I wondered what my mom was doing, I hadn’t talked to her in three months. Because his mind has become so wired to that addiction. So the point is, is that all you have to do, and this is where I really believe the judgment comes in. This is the spirit. You all have your own spirit. You have free of the seed. It’s being hijacked by these things, but it’s not gone. And when you pray to God for help, that spirit, I think, and his spirit will come in and help you jumpstart, override those negative connections. If you make the choice, that’s what you want to do, and you follow through. You do it, and you turn to something better every day. With you and your friends, you choose better things. Those, the conversations you have, the thoughts you have, the thoughts you entertain, it will create those connections. And that’s why we all know some amazing people, many amazing people in this neighborhood, who are just as pure as day, and they have, they’re so fun, they’re so happy, because they just feed themselves their thoughts, good thoughts all the time. And it’s all within your reach. You all know people like this, and it’s not like going to come, have to become a, like, a star musician or athlete or something where it takes years and years and years of practice. I promise you, because when I see my, summer of my, my freshman year, after freshman year, whatever, I missed them, I was a derelict and a sinner and not, you know, just completely focusing on the wrong things in July, and October, when I was in the MTC, I was a totally different person. And that, that’s the atonement. And all it takes is that willingness to say, I’m not going back to that, whether it’s basketball or pornography or drinking or drugs or parties or social media and texting and posting that, all that, you just turn it away and do something else with your time, and it’ll take a few weeks. It may take a couple of months, I promise you. Your brain will rewire so quickly and start that path to becoming like the mind of Christ and the life that God intended for you. So, any other questions? I know it’s been a long time. Yeah.

[Audience Member 4]:
That’s really quick. And with that, I’ll be the natural man and come back and I’ll say it again. Right. Delete Instagram, but you might be downloading it. How do you overcome like that feeling of failure and fall back at?

[Chuck Rich]:
You know all this stuff better than I do. That’s not, that’s not a glitch. That’s not, that’s the plan. That, everybody does that. I got back from my mission. I made mistakes. I repented after I met, I mean, you have these highs and lows. It doesn’t matter. It’s the point is that if your spirit wants to be like God and want to turn to them and repent, you will, and you will help people. And everyone of you have the choice to not do that. Everyone of you have the choice to say, no, I don’t want to do that. But I promise you that if you just believe, don’t, let me give you a phrase. I’ve got a kind of bright son, Christian, and he has the greatest daughter. He said, I spent most of my life trying to decide if I believed in God. And then I knew I believed in God. But he found out that the more important question is, do I believe God? There are a lot of people who say they believe in God, but they must not believe God because they don’t believe they exist. So, jump past the question of do you believe in God. You’re not worthy. See, you’re his, do you believe him? He’s told you over, I’ll forgive you forever. All you got to do is turn to me again. And your brain will rewire and you’ll turn to him and you’ll feel happiness and joy that you’re not going to get through dopamine hits and through doom scrolling. So when you say, like, oh shoot, I did this, what are your alternatives? Keep doing it, feeling miserable and become a leader and have a horrible life, which is inevitable. Or turn back to God to start doing worthwhile things and take in all that’s so wonderful in this life. For instance, you know, like this, and it’s so great that I’ll be able to make a slideshow in a few hours after church and stuff, you know. Used to take weeks for me to make my slideshow for high, high school assemblies and go get the slides developed and… Anyway, point is, the world’s going forward, and it doesn’t have to be all bad if you’re just willing to turn to Christ and to God. And I leave you this testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Transcript of Presentation: Our Brains and the Modern World
Presenter: Chuck Rich (neurosurgeon)
Length: ~64 minutes

[Chuck Rich]:
Thanks. It’s great to communicate with so many familiar faces, and it’s hard to have our kids out of this age group, ’cause it was so fun. We used to give us excuses to see all the neighbors and be involved in all the activities, so I’m really excited to talk about our brains today.

As they said, I’m Chuck Rich, and I grew up around here. I went to Highland High School, and I grew up in Salt Lake, then left after high school to go away to college and medical school and residency, where I married my wife Tiffany, who’s back there. We live over on Olympus Drive. I have three boys—I don’t know if any of you know any of them—but Colson and Christian and Will, and they’ve loved this state and the activities, so I’m sure you guys are all having a great experience as well.

But Tiffany, I’m kind of front row seat with some of the other parents I see here watching what it’s like to grow up today in this world. And it got me thinking over the last decade or more of raising my own kids, why is it so hard? What is going on that makes it so hard, I think, for people to handle this world.

And it struck me one day. I was reading another article, and they were referring to a lot of the parts of our brain as our Neanderthal brain, or our caveman brain. I was thinking about that, and it got me thinking that, yeah, our brains really haven’t changed a whole lot. Certainly not in the last hundreds of years or millennia, or thousands of years. They may have changed over how God created us all over hundreds of thousands of years, but they certainly aren’t changing much recently, and yet our world is changing so much.

And I kind of came up with this idea or this thought that our brains really are not made for this modern world. And I think it has ramifications, repercussions that I hope we can talk about and have a discussion.

I kind of wish I would have changed out of my suit for my other ward that I serve right now in a bishopric, because I’d rather have it be just a casual discussion, and those that know me, I’m usually in my scrubs, so that would have felt more comfortable. But anyway, so if anyone ever wants to stop in the middle and ask a question, or if you want to save it till the end, that’s fine too.

One of the things I want to talk about is the reality of like, or I want to talk about reality, and that, and I guess what I mean then is that Jacob in 4:13 tells us about things as they really are and of things as they really will be. And Neal A. Maxwell had a great talk and he had a book that I read, maybe as old as some of you. I was heard in high school I read it, and it really struck me, it really hit me, this idea of what are things really like?

And yet, even at that time and subsequently in all my neuroscience training, I started realizing, I started thinking a lot about, what does that really mean, things as they really are? Because it’s certainly not things as they really are in the physical universe, because our interaction with this entire world and this universe comes through the interface of our brain. In this mortal realm, our spirits are not really directly connecting with God, or directly connecting with really anything. It all comes through our spirit, our brain. Does that make sense?

And as a result, this may be a closer representation of what reality is on a physical scale, meaning we do not hear all the frequencies of sound, right? Our dogs can hear high-pitched frequencies, whales hear really low frequencies. We don’t hear but a very small fraction. We also don’t see most of the spectrum of light of this world at all. We don’t smell the molecules of smell that my dog smells. We certainly don’t sense that we’re on this globe hurtling through space at a thousand miles an hour and rotating all at the same time, and we have this illusion that we’re just sort of sitting here on this solid terra firma Earth, right? We don’t feel gravity. Other one I used to try and dunk and I couldn’t—we just do, I just feel gravity. But generally we kind of accept this as normal and as reality.

But I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s wildly not the real, any reality on a physical scale. So I think what Jacob was teaching and what Neal A. Maxwell’s talk was about is what is the purpose of all this? What is really going on? What is the reality of why we’re here, where we’re going, and what are we supposed to be accomplishing while we’re here? So, if that makes sense, I’m gonna go to the next thing.

Because when we’re here in this neighborhood, we’re walking around, hanging out in the ground, skateboarding, we’re going to school, trying to figure out what sport you like, and you’re looking up at Mount Olympus the whole time, and it really struck me like, why is it this way? Why did God create the world and our brains in such a way that this is all we get? This beautiful view of Mount Olympus and pleasant temperatures, not the freezing cold of the outer darkness universe, or not the heat of being near the sun. We’re in this little small sliver of distance from the sun, and that we don’t burn up, but we don’t freeze to death. Everything just seems to be so perfectly positioned that it was, again, a testimony to me that God created this world and our brains for a purpose, and we all know that we’ve all been taught in church that we’re here to learn about Him, to become like Him, to have our faith tested, to grow, to make mistakes, to improve. And so He had to create an environment or a laboratory or this earth that would accomplish that. And the reality of the physical universe doesn’t really help us get there. But that reality is real, and it even extends to our bodies, our brains. The physical sciences behind our emotions, and if we don’t get those things, we’re missing part of the secret of doing well here in this test, in this order of life, because we’re not aware of what’s going on to us. Does that make sense?

You know, it teaches that all things that are out there’s a God, yea, even the earth and all things that are upon the face of it. I have a lot of friends. One of my best friends, his name’s Dennis Porter, so if you ever want to read a really interesting book on the brain, it’s called Gray Matters, and it’s on the national bestseller list, New York Times bestseller list, and we went to college together, med school together, and residency together, and neurosurgery. We spent about 15 years straight together, and he is a world-famous pioneering neurosurgeon and has a great lab. He writes also. I’m a local community, you know, kind of a country doc neurosurgeon, very different. And he’s a really brilliant guy, and this book is fascinating, it’s called Gray Matters. If anyone’s interested as an adjunct to this, he really is on the forefront of neuroscience and thinking about it. But he very much believes that this world all came about through a big bang, through happenstance, and that we put all the meaning on it. Any what we do is what creates meaning. But there isn’t really a purpose or meaning behind it.

Well, to me, I look out at the world just like Alma, and I see all the cosmic stars and forces and dark matter and energy, and then we have this little blue orb Earth in the middle of all, nothing else like it. And it to me is a very strong testimony that there is a purpose here. And why do I bring that up? Again, if we’re made this way, if our bodies and our brains are made this way, what was God hoping or wanting for us through this brain that is his only conduit to reach our spirit, okay?

I just got to back up a little bit, and I’ll go over this quickly, but in order to really put this in some context, and I want to have the disclaimer that everything I’m saying today is my own thoughts and things I’ve read. I’m certainly not speaking from the church. Don’t ever get that mistake, and I think they’ll ever put me in that position. And I’m not even speaking for all their neuroscientists. This is just sort of how I’ve distilled down a couple realities that I gained a testimony when I was very young, and I had some experiences that made it impossible for me not to reconcile what I know to be true spiritually with what I learned about the school, or about the brain, or about the body, or science. And I’m stuck in this position where I can’t, like my friend, just say, I’m just all in on the spirit, on the science side, because I know some things. In my world, I know some things to be true, and this is kind of dumb, but when I talk to you, I don’t want you to go away not knowing that I have a firm testimony, and it may not be any different or any more spectacular than yours.

But when I was a little kid, I lived up Newton, Massachusetts, my dad was a resident, and I was four, I think, and some neighbors had caught a bullfrog, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And every day I’d go out looking for bullfrogs. And I remember one day walking in the back door of our house and being so frustrated, slamming the door, and I couldn’t find a bullfrog, and remembering that for like one of the very earliest memories I have of going to nursery at church and them teaching us about prayer. And so I thought, I should go back outside, and I should pray. So I went outside, snelled by these little cement stairs down by our, walked down basement, and I said a prayer that I could find a bullfrog. I got up, looked around, and there was a bullfrog there. And I so clearly remember this, and I was like, well, I don’t look a little bit. So I went and looked around the first bush, and there was the biggest bullfrog you’ve ever seen. I could barely, I couldn’t get my hands around it. That’s why I saw this picture. I couldn’t, I just remember walking like this with my fingers not touching the end of the house, calling for my mom, and she didn’t hear me. So it started to squirm, so I went out and put it in a pail that I had prepared for my bullfrog that got. And I ran inside, found my mom, bring it back out, bullfrog was gone. I don’t know if my family still believes to this day that this happened, but I knew it happened, and I knew that that parent had something to do with it. Of course, that’s four.

But later, I remember another crazy, like, just little thing, may not be any different than you guys and your testimonies that are just developing, but I remember going skiing with my dad. He used to take me out of school a lot. Wasn’t very worried about my grades. I got very good grades. I did well on all my tests, and what he was worried about was my friends. He was worried about some of my influences in my life. So he used to take me out of school like every Friday and go skiing just to kind of talk to me and see what’s up. It was during junior high. And I remember one day we went up skiing, and when we came back to the car, it was snowing hard, and he didn’t have his key to the car. He’d lost his keys. And he was mad at me. He said, you stay here. I’m going to run back to the, to where we bought the tickets. I took my wallet out, maybe it dropped out there. And I remember sitting there, and I had something I wanted to do with my friends that night, Friday night. And I remember thinking, I need to get, oh my gosh, however you get home. And I thought, I’m going to say a prayer. I took the deal down, filled that parking lot back up. I got that set of prayer, we could find these keys. And once again, I thought, I better go look. And now, between then and this time, there may be been a few, you know, spiritual experience in my life, but not a lot. I was sort of distracted by sports and everything else. And I knelt down and I thought, I got to go, and I walked the opposite way from where my dad went, and I walked and I went behind one car, I looked down right behind the rear tire, and his key was there. And I was sort of, once again, convinced that someone was listening to me.

And then, later, I went away to college. I had a great year. I went back to Harvard. I had a blast. I played basketball. I was going to go back. I wasn’t going to go on a mission because I wanted to play, and I had these great roommates. I was going to go through my four years with them, and but on my table at my nightstand in July, supposed to report school to basketball middle of August, on my table nightstand was my, this old Book of Mormon paperback, where the inside was the inscription from my bishopric when I got baptized. And I had never seen that book before. I don’t know if they gave it to me when I got baptized, but I had certainly never seen it before, and I picked that book up and started reading it, and I read most of the night, and I just deeply remembered feeling spirit of the room, and maybe even the presence of angels, but just something telling me that all this early life stuff when I was too immature and too just spiritually blind to really get what’s going on, was somehow tied to this. And that when Christ is our savior and that he did appear to the Nephites and all this stuff. So, turn life upside down, call your friends, call your roommates, call coach, go off on a mission. So, and again, when I know these things to be true, I grant that I can’t prove a lot of things I’m saying today, but I believe that God created our brains to help us have joy in this world and to have a great experience and learn from people.

And like C.S. Lewis, it’s kind of turned into this, one of my favorite quotes is that, you know, I believe in this gospel, in this church, in Christ, as I believe that the sun has risen, not just because I can see the sun and the horizon, but because by it, I see everything else because of the light it provides. And that’s how I feel.

So I remember another time, another frog story. I’m back at Harvard Med, well, first year in my neurobiology class, and this guy starts telling me, he’s a neurobiologist, he studies frogs because it’s got such a rudimentary nervous system. And he tells us how there’s a frog sitting there in a swamp, and it’s just this little swamp off the side of the road. There are trucks going by, there are airplanes flying overhead, there are people conducting complex business and everything all walking around, there are people jogging. That frog in the reeds by that pond, all it knows is that, is it something to eat, or is something’s going to kill me? What’s the temperature? Is it time to seek shelter? Is it day or night? And it only sees in black and white. That’s that frog’s entire world. And I remember reading him so strongly with the spirit saying that our brains are a little like the frog’s brain compared to God. And realizing that I’m running around here doing all these things I think are so important, caught up in my own world, that maybe God has a bigger perspective for me than I can have for myself. Just like anyone walking by that pond has a better idea of what reality is than that frog does. But to that frog, that’s its whole reality. And the only reason why that frog has that reality, and we have ours, is the difference in our brains. Well, our spirits too, our children. You know what I mean? That’s how they get their input, right?

So when you look at these brains, here’s the skull, it’s kind of weird. Think this, this thing carrying this thing is our brain, and it interacts through that. But the brains, wildly complicated, it’s the hardest thing to understand in the world, everybody says. And believe me, I don’t think I understand it. I just have kind of learned how to be a carpenter or a plumber around it. But the things I have learned that everybody knows is, it’s divided up into different areas that handle different things. You could probably read it from where you are, but back in our occipital lobes, we can, it’s where we handle vision. Our left temporal lobe is mostly memory and speech and language patterns. And this area up here is our movement and touch behind it. But the frontal lobes are where we think and where we process. And it’s all connected, don’t get me wrong, but they definitely have different places.

And the other thing is that on a more microscopic level, you also have all these neurons that are interconnected, and they have synapses, and they have transmitters. And somehow all this biology, all this physicality is what our spirit has to work through. Now again, my premise is that this is true, that you guys are over here, and what you believe, or what I believe, about this gospel, or about there being a God, or about that we are not just specks of dust, and like, you know, cell bags of fluid floating around, that we actually have a purpose, then somehow that’s interacting through this complex brain structure.

And when I was going back into childhood, my dad gave me that book, The Three-Pound Universe, when I was in sixth grade. And I remember reading it, I don’t know how much I remembered or understood, but it definitely got me thinking about this idea that why is it called a three-pound universe? That weighs about three pounds, your brain. And like this thing says, if you have that many neurons, which we all have, and each one is connected at least a thousand times, then the connections in our brain are more than all the stars in the galaxy that we know. And so in reality, our universe is, the whole universe is, in our brain, and everything we see and do and feel is through our brains. There’s no external reality to that until one day we die and our spirit separates, and then we will see another reality that’s different than this. This is my viewpoint.

So, in our brain, I talk about these transmitters. Now, some of these guys may have heard about, but the point here is that God wants us on this earth, wants us walking on Holladay, having a good high school experience, playing sports. Wants to be part of our family. Well, he gave us transmitters to help us do that. And you have dopamine, which is supposed to teach us alertness and excitement and reward. And it, and then you have norepinephrine, which is that fight or flight response. And then you have serotonin, which is kind of like well-being and everything’s doing good. And I guess the message I want to keep going here is that once again, all that we’re doing in this life has to work through this to learn. And our world has drastically changed how it affects these mechanisms compared to even us very young parents in the room compared to our grandparents. No, but it’s not very many decades before that our world, the world is very different than what you guys are dealing with.

So, one of the other big messages is that the way this was all set up originally was that you went through hard, you did something hard, and then you got a reward for it in your brain. You did something good, and you got a reward for it. But somehow, neuroscience and industry and video games and food and drugs have learned hacks to give us the same jolt of feeling good without any of the hard work or any of the good. Just the flood of dopamine. Does that make sense?

So, again, when you talk about serotonin, acts that are building, promoting, non-addictive, that make you grateful, that’s serotonin. Short-term pleasure, the rat hitting the button for his cocaine hit in the cage. That’s a dopamine. See the difference? And the weird thing of most of all is that no matter how much dopamine you get, it’s never enough. I mean, like categorically never enough.

So what do we, how do we, how are we supposed to stimulate dopamine in this life? We’re supposed to get it by eating something good and healthy for us because we’re really, really hungry and then we eat it and then we, it gives us pleasure while we’re tasting it, eating it, and afterward the serotonin comes in and you feel good. Pleasure, like sure, some things feel great, you know, sun on your face, a wave you catch, the feeling of like cold water jumping in the—I mean, these are all things that release dopamine back in the day before you were bombarded by dopamine stimulation through all the artificial means today.

Being attracted to someone, starting a family, it has dopamine. But again, it alone has no long-term satisfaction. Sex alone, through dopamine, it has no long-term feelings of anything, of peace, belonging, family, well-being. It just doesn’t. It’s a short-term thing like the rat hitting the button. And again, not to get, exercise back in the day and today, back and release dopamine, new experiences. Why would God want us to have new experiences? Any ideas? To learn, to learn. If you didn’t ever go try something new, you’d never learn anything else. And to travel over that horizon, to do something different, that releases dopamine. It’s a novelty thing. But you then have to get there and do something worth it. We all know that if you just go on a trip, it feels good for a minute, but it doesn’t do anything unless you actually learn something there. But it entices you to go do something.

So again, these are all these things you can kind of read through it. The dopamine gives you this excitement, a reward, and then it tells you to do it again. It doesn’t, it’s not like you did it once and it’s enough. It says do it again. And then it gives you a focus of like, what do I got to do to get that feeling again? Which is very different than feeling good. Does that, you get that feeling? And then, like you said, exercise, sunlight, little things, sleeping well. This is about how we used to regulate our dopamine. It’s really not these artificial sources like junk food, your Jolly Rancher and your Slurpee and your Cheetos and then some porn. Some drugs and scrolling on your phone. That wasn’t available to me, or wasn’t available to my grandpa. It just wasn’t. And now it is. And just don’t ever mistake dopamine for happiness. It’s not the same thing.

So I have a good friend in this neighborhood, for one day, but we have another friend who’s not a believer, and we had a big argument for a time about the church, and this, that, and what’s true, what’s not true. And finally he was fed up, and he just said, you know what, Lon, I’m tired of talking about this. Why don’t you just choose your miracle and I’ll choose mine? You’re choosing the miracle that some big bang happened that went through some particle soup that then went through atoms first forming, then went through this dark age that lasted about 12 billion years, and all this dark energy and all this stuff happened, and then today, and then somehow out of all of that, these little creatures started climbing out of the primordial soup of water and turned into this, into a dinosaur, into this, and then all of a sudden we have, you know, Michael Jordan playing basketball. Or Einstein, you know, deciphering the universe. And all on the, all chose the other miracle that God did it. You have to, every time you, if you choose that miracle, every single day you have to choose another miracle that it keeps happening, that it keeps sustaining, that it keeps going. All I have to do is choose this one miracle that God’s in charge, and now I can go pay attention to the more important things in life. I couldn’t have agreed more. I get it. I’m choosing one of two possibilities, and so are you. You believe it happened one of these two ways, there really is no other in between.

The other thing I want to say is because these are the two realities in this world, if you think you can overcome what I’m trying to talk all over here about the way your brain works, if you think you can overcome it, you’re crazy. If you think you’re the exception, if you think you’re the one that can look at pornography or try a little crack, smoke a little meth, no, I’m kidding, but, or eat the wrong foods or whatever, whatever it is, if you think you can do that and still be okay, if it was evolution, you’re battling millions of years of evolutionary forces that created your brain as it is, and you’re not bucking that trend. You’re just not winning that game. Reality always wins. And if God created you, I’d even put it to you that there’s less chance that you could overcome that than if it was evolution, because God is much bigger, the idea of God is much bigger than even evolution.

Once again, we have these Neanderthal brains, and I want to point out that the difference in what God is, why we aren’t Neanderthals, why we’re humans, and why we’re the children of God, is because of this. This greater crown here of the frontal lobe, because it’s in the frontal lobe where I think our spirit mostly connects and can guide our judgment and our actions and our desires and what we choose to think about and what we choose to do with our time. It’s the executive functions. All the other stuff is just hardwired. Our vision, our hearing, our balance, our coordination, our sleep-wake cycle, our appetites, those reward cycles of dopamine and serotonin, those things. We’re not that much different from the animals, or the monkeys in those other areas. This area where we really are wildly worlds apart, and that’s because we’re children of God and he made us in his image and he wanted us to have some way to think like him and act like him and make choices in this life, okay?

So, quick thought, the only part of participation I’m going to ask from you all today. Think about your answers. Grandpa, what did they used to do with their time? What stories were, what’d they do? What’d they like to do? Anyone? Fish. Fish. They go fishing. What else? My niece liked to ride horses. So what do you tell me about? Anything else? They’d hunt, right? They’d farm. They’d gather food. What did they want? What were their desires? My grandpa, he wanted to go see the ocean. Never seen it. You get to see it all the time. They, easy get there, you can look on the internet, whatever. Very simple things. He won’t, and then what about, what needs did they have? Food, water, shelter, right? Very basic things that we still have, but where they’re, how they’re met differently. How’d they used to get places? Did they jump in their car and drive down the road to their friend’s house? Mark, what did your dad do when he wanted to go someplace when he was a little kid? Walk. Walk. Right. Like me. There’s not that long in the past when humans didn’t even have bikes. They walked, they rode a horse, or they rode a mule, or they rode a camel, or something. And believe me, that’s a lot more work than it seems.

Part of our problem today is everything that they used to do, they lived in families, they lived in a little community, they pretty much knew everybody. In almost every place around the world, people lived in one spot, they didn’t travel very far, and they pretty much kind of knew who they were and where their place in this world is. Today, what do we do? We turn on a tap like a god and get all the water we want. We call Uber Eats, we go through a drive-thru, we deal with traffic, like we get everywhere by our cars, we don’t walk hardly anywhere, we play video games, and alternate realities and worlds that no one could have ever thought of before, and our brains stimulated in ways that it has never been stimulated. In the history of mankind, all of God’s children, except you guys, didn’t do this. So I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s not, I don’t think it’s what he intended to have our brains overstimulated. And we live in these huge cities where you feel different, and I don’t think it’s, our brain feels that we don’t know who, where we belong. And it makes us fearful, it makes us worried, and I think it percolates even into big schools, and you just don’t know who your clan is. Who is my group? And that’s what, we get that feeling of belonging, we all want that. Well, just so you all know, you guys are the guinea pigs. You guys are the computer-aged guinea pigs that had a phone. Have a phone and have access to all the information in the world. Your brains are stimulated.

I think we’re all coming to agree, and I assume you guys are too, that even though it may have the intent of bringing people together, it usually makes people feel socially isolated. You have too much information, too much entertainment, too little work, too little exercise, and you have addictive foods, whereas in the past, people had to work for their, they had to plant their food, harvest their food, prepare their food, and by the time they ate, they’d already expended more calories than they are, than they’re going to consume, and they had already developed a hunger and appetite, and food tasted great. Now, we take that strawberry that used to be just so good. When you first had strawberry, when I was a little kid, I remember having strawberry before there was a strawberry Slurpee, or before there was a strawberry Jolly Rancher, or a strawberry Sour Patch Kid. And somehow, strawberry went to the nth degree of refinement or excessiveness, and they’re not even similar, the taste, right? But that, but our brain was made to eat a strawberry. And then you bombard it with this other stuff, is it any wonder why the strawberry doesn’t produce the same response if you get so addicted to junk food that you, that’s all your brain is expecting, that degree of release from the sugar and from everything else. And all this stuff results in things being, feeling like they’re out of control, you’re disconnected from your friends, you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed, and you wonder why. Well, in my opinion, it’s because our brain is not keeping up with all this being fed. It’s overstimulated.

This Dr. Anna Lemke, I heard give a talk at Stanford, she has some really, really interesting research on addiction. And I’m bringing that up now because I’ll talk about a little more in a second, but you guys are the target audience for addictions. They always think about the old crackhead on the street or the old grandpa drinking, smoking cigarettes. They got addicted when they were kids. It’s really rare to get addicted to something when you’re older. It’s not impossible, but it’s rare. And I’ll tell you why in a second. But addiction has to do with two things, how much dopamine there is and how much it’s released. Well, the things I’m mentioning before, the way God designed our brain, you were supposed to get a dopamine release when you’d watch the sunset and you saw the ocean for the first time, or you rode a wave, or you saw your friend, or you held a hand of a baby, back in those 90s days, or you kissed her on the cheek and felt, saw Star, you know, saw skyrockets and fireworks like Bobby Brady did when I used to watch the 80s Brady Bunch back then. Well, they’ve created drugs that attack the part of your brain so strongly that the amount of dopamine that’s released is so overwhelming. Hundreds of times more dopamine than anything that our grandparents used to ever, could have ever done. The best food they could ever eat, the most powerful alcohol they could ever, I mean, none of it even comes close. So, and then it was not even just how, what you have. Now you have crack, you have cocaine, you have meth, and then they’ve decided, hey, instead of just smoking it, why don’t you snort it, or why don’t you inject it in your veins? Because we have hypodermic needles, which no one had until the 20th century. So none of this stuff was possible, and this last few generations are being bombarded with this.

The last thing I want to bring up with this really quickly is that this whole pain and pleasure thing, the problem is, is that our body wants to be in balance, and if you have too much dopamine, when the dopamine’s not being hit, you’re gonna go into a way deep deficit, and you’re gonna be depressed, and you’re gonna feel lonely, and you’re gonna feel weird, and you’re gonna feel like something’s not right, and until you take that drug of choice, whether it’s drugs, or it’s scrolling, or it’s shopping, or, but there must be an opposition to all things, and that’s the way God created us.

And when you guys are teenagers, when you were kids, you’d follow your mom around, you’d do everything she told you, and you’d learn all this stuff, and then you go to school, you’re the nicest, the best students, you’d sit there and listen to your teacher and do your homework, and then all of a sudden you turn into teenagers. All you wanna do is go, jump off cliffs, or ride your bike too fast, or do flips on a trampoline, or whatever. All the other risky behaviors I won’t mention. And so during that time, you’re, we have this thing in the brain that, for whatever reason, God designed us so that dopamine’s least more potently than it was when you were a little kid or when you’re older. Why? Why would you want to do that? Well, he has to give you a big reward, and it’s like excitement. Back in the day, it was so you’d go learn for yourself, like you said. Go try something new. Take the risk to go in on a date, because boy, holding that hand is so exciting. Work, get a job, leave home, start a family. Back in the day, you’d go hunt for your food and take on those risks. Well, anyway, what happens during this time is when you’re a kid, you don’t have any connections. You start experiencing the world, and you get a million, so many dense synaptic connections. And when you’re a teenager, all of a sudden they start falling away, calls this synaptic pruning. And why? It’s because what you learn here is largely people telling you what to know, what to do, what to believe. Don’t touch that pot, it’ll burn you. Don’t climb on that wall, you’ll fall. Don’t take that jump and do a backflip, you’re gonna break your neck. Then you turn a teenager, and all those warning things go away, and why did God do this? Well, he didn’t mean it so you go do the backflip. But he did mean it that you learn for yourself. You learn what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, what’s not true, you know, what’s accurate, what you’re interested in, but it makes you relearn it. And during that time, the dopamine is really strongly being put out to reward you to tell you to go do this.

Now, this is known that in the natural animal world, these cubs stay with their bear, their mom till like three years old. Then all of a sudden at three, they’re glad to leave. Whereas before that, they were afraid of everything. They wanted, they would go hunt on their own. They certainly weren’t fighting. They were playing around and rolling around and being bear cubs. And then around two and a half to three years old, they all leave mom and they go off in the world and are willing, mom actually pushes them away. They go off, they start having fights. They start hunting their own food and why. Their brain does the same thing. All those fear judgment connections that were because mom told me, mom growled at me, dad growls at me in my house and told me not to do this. Well, now those fall away and the bears go out and learn it on their own. And if they didn’t have that unbelievable drive to go seek something new, to find a mate, have their own cubs, to get in fights, whatever that excitement was, they wouldn’t do it. They just stay with mom forever. And that’s what’s happening to you guys, whether you know it or not.

Now I’m a brain surgeon and sounds impressive, but I have a lot of students come operate with me, and the only thing I tell them is that there’s one rule in brain surgery when you come watch me is that you can’t tell everybody how simple it is. Because we really don’t have the technology, we are not as, we do not know how to fix our brains. What we can do is go and take a tumor out, or if someone falls and has a blood clot, or if they fall and they break their skull, I can go in there and know what not to do to mess you up and put it back together as best possible. But I’m not going in there fixing your neurons or rewiring your brain. And what’s interesting is that you guys are doing that every day. I don’t know if you ever thought about that, but you guys are your own brain surgeon. You guys are doing self-brain surgery every second, every moment of every day.

There are these phrases in neuroscience, the brain takes its shape for what it rests upon. Well, obviously your brain is not resting upon anything, but it is like jello. If you took it out on the table, it would rest, it would take the shape of whatever it’s resting upon. What it means, of course, is whatever you’re focused on, that is shaping your brain. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Hebb’s law, it’s called. Well, if you do a pathway, like trying to learn to play the violin or play the piano or shoot a free throw, write cursive, whatever it is you’re trying to learn, those neurons that fire together pretty soon get wired together and it becomes automated. I had a very misspent youth. I could sit in my basement and shoot 10 out of 10 free throws all day long without ever playing basketball anymore because of just a very misspent youth and hardwired basketball shooting ability. I can’t run anymore because I could stand there and shoot a basketball. Well, similarly, everything you guys are doing with your time, everything you’re doing with your bodies, everything you’re doing with your mind is wiring that. So you guys, whether you know it or not, are your own brain circuit.

And I guess there are a few points here I wanted to bring up and just have you think about. You and your mind or your spirit is not the same thing as your brain. It’s the thing that through which your spirit has to work. Second, your brain, your spirit can control your body and your brain, but similarly, because we’re in this mortal world, and it’s a fallen world, your body and how it feels, the pain you’re experiencing, the cold you’re experiencing, or your brain, the habits it has, the fears it has, that can also affect your spirit. Believe it or not, some thoughts arise from your spirit, and I believe strongly some thoughts arise from your brain. And the ones that arise from your brain are often the ones that are automatic, that you have trained your brain to think, or your environment has trained you to think. But those are different than what you think yourself, and learning to distinguish those two things is a little bit about what it means to learn to listen to the spirit, Holy Ghost spirit, and to really listen to yourself and know thyself, like the spirit, the scriptures say, because the brain wants to automate tasks because it takes too much energy to hardwire, rewire, think it up, make it up every time it’s the whole reinventing the wheel. It’s going to automate anything you do a lot, like playing piano or shooting free throws. So whether you like it or not, you’re doing this, and this is going on all the time, whether you’re taking control of it or not. And when it happens passively or by outside forces, you feel stuck, you feel anxious. I think it’s what I saw in my own kids, sometimes feeling out of control.

When you’ve had tough experience in your life, it can make you shrink back and not be willing to try new things, because you had a bad experience. You can go on years later and look back and think, wow, all the friends I had, all the activities I used to do, I used to dance, I used to play the piano, I used to do all these, and now my life has been reduced down to going to and from school or to and from work and eating same thing every night and watching the same dumb TV show. And it’s so different than the life of your childhood and your teenager when you’re learning so much. But this is what happens. And these feelings can really cause us to be so sad and depressed. When you look around and you think, I’m not living the life I wanted to, then we turn to try and anesthetize ourselves. Now, when I do brain surgery, I’m allowed to anesthetize you. I take Keith Lerner over there and I say, put him to sleep, make this guy numb so I can take his head apart and put it back together, and he won’t know and won’t be so mad at me. But when you’re doing your own self brain surgery, I’ll guarantee you one thing. If you try and numb it up or anesthetize yourself to that process, it won’t work. So when you can’t dream scroll, you can’t just reflexively go shopping because you just, you’re bored and tired or you’re sad. You can’t seek out your Panda Express and a donut every day. You can’t just watch TV and reruns of Housewives of some various crazy city. You have to face, if you do that, you’re just going to face the pain the next day. To be a good brain surgeon on yourself, you can’t anesthetize yourself. And all these things that are part of this modern world do that. And in the past, there really was almost nothing. There was weak wine. That was it.

So in John 10:10, he tells us, the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. How is this both possible? How is it this world is so hard on us, and it’s hurting you guys, and bombarding you, and industry, and the food scientists, the people trying to destroy you, and steal your money, and to kill you, eventually, through drugs, and alcohol, and smoking, and all the stuff, and yet Christ came that you might have life more abundantly. Well, the answer is, and this is a little so complicated, I want to make a slide. I’m just saying, simply put, when you get into quantum physics, and superposition theory, the idea is that an electron, the most basic particle of your brain, that turns into the electricity, that turns into the chemistry, that turns into the biology, turns into your thoughts that you perceive. When we study this, they know for a fact that electron can look like it’s in more than one place at one time, but the minute it’s looked upon or observed in that spot, it all collapses down to, well, that’s where it is. Now, this sounds kind of crazy, but this is what’s happening with us. Whatever emotion you focus on, whatever task you focus on, whatever thoughts you entertain and encourage is the reality you’re creating, both in this world and in your brain and automating it and setting up patterns of thought and behavior.

In second Corinthians, I think this is why the apostles understood some of this. They didn’t know that they’re smarter than the brain, the neuroscientists at Harvard who are sitting there in a little rat petri dish trying to figure out the frog, trying to figure out, you know, that there’s nothing behind this other than just molecules. They’re saying, no, you have a spirit. The apostles knew that we tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Take your thoughts captive, make them obedient to you, your own spirit, your own light of Christ, your own conscience, and make it something that points to Christ, that makes you more like Christ. Again, the renewing of your mind that you might prove what is good. It’s done every day, whether for the good or for the bad. When you go do brain surgery, it takes a lot of hard work. It was a very long residency, and it was a lot of study. I don’t know how terribly smart anyone one person has to do, but you have to be really diligent. It takes a long time. But you know what, what more important than my study and my hard work and 15 years in kind of a lot of libraries was having good teachers. Well, in self-brain surgery, it’s even more important, because if you don’t get taught the right things to think, the right things to believe, the right things to do, you’re going to go off the rails also, because everyone’s performing brain surgery, but as you all know, there are some kids that the influences in their lives are causing them to do brain surgery on themselves. That’s like having a bad brain surgeon. And the last thing you want is a bad brain surgeon. You want to do the only, do no harm. Well, think about the prophets your friends, your parents, and what they tell you. I guarantee you, nine times out of ten, I mean, nine times, nine out of ninety-nine times, listen to them, not what the world’s telling you.

So lastly, as a brain surgeon, protect your brain. It’s the only thing you got to work with your, with the spirit. Wear a helmet. I have so many kids get head injuries, and they’re, it’s never the same. Too many concussions, too many, you have a bad head injury, you’re, that spirit does not have a full experience here in this life. Avoid alcohol, drugs, all those kind of things. They’re toxic. They kill your brain cells, and it’s not a joke, it’s, they just do, and we all, well, I know burnouts, I know people that were normal in junior high, and they do not have normal competencies now. And lastly, your brain needs nutrition, and your brain needs sleep, and somehow we’ve lost both. We have poor nutrition, and we stay up all way too late, and we get, you know, we just, we’re off. And we can have the mind of Christ if we do those things.

And I guess the last thing I want to say is that this brain surgery thing, I could go on and on about the, if you have questions, I’m sorry, I ran a little over time, but there are studies that prove the things that repair your brain or that you do self-brain surgery, every one of them aligns with the Holy Gospel principles, repentance, gratitude, serving others, working hard, getting outside, prayer, meditation, and exercising faith or hope in something bigger than yourself. And those are the things that heal people’s brains, and it’s been proven, but they call other things. A gratitude journal. But it works, because this is how God created us, and he taught us the gospel, and he sent Christ here to save us, and he gave us prophets, he gave us parents, and communities to teach us these things, and if you do it, you guys will create amazing brains that will be able to stand the forces of this world. But if you’re not aware of what’s trying to be done to your brains, it’s hard to protect yourself from it. So seek out the life of your great-grandparents. Walk more, talk to someone face-to-face, not even on the phone, let alone texting. Eat real food, maybe not a lot, mostly plants. How about, you know, exercise every day, set big goals, seek novelty, seek new experiences, and you do those things, and you’re gonna have a wonderful life, and avoid all these pitfalls that the world’s throwing at you. And, anybody have questions? Brain surgery questions?

[Audience Member 1]:
I got a question for Jack. Churchill, on one of your slides talked about how some thoughts come from, enter your brain and some come from the spirit. Yeah. Is there any way to distinguish them?

[Chuck Rich]:
I think it takes a lot of work, and I’m not perfect at it. I’m sure I’m not. But I do think that what I’m getting at mostly there is that we get automated thoughts. We have one time that we walk down the hall and someone says something that we think, we’re pretty sure they said something derogatory or mean about us, right? Next time you walk down the hall and you see two people talking and you think they’re saying something about me, that is, that is no way that’s your spirit telling you that. That’s an automated thought of fear and protection that our brain has from years ago when we saw the tiger in the grass and the tiger could kill us so we didn’t, we almost didn’t see it. So the next time we’re seeing tigers everywhere because we don’t want to get killed, or our friend got killed that day and we didn’t. And those leftover automated mechanisms are what I think promote a lot of these thoughts. I got a little thing in the mail the other day from the IRS, and I am terrible with my tax. I mean, I pay them, but it’s always like the last minute, I’m always calling an accountant to help me, and my first thought was not, wow, I maybe got a refund. My first thought was, oh my gosh, I’m going to get audited. Well, that’s just a fear reaction, that’s not a thought reaction. That’s not like, but the spirit is what makes you think about things that import and what matters in this world. And all the other stuff is noise, and our brains have become very good at feeding us ideas, and be wary about what you think. Really give it a hard look and a test, a scientific test. Is there really basis to this, what I’m thinking right now? And even if it is, can I change that? You know? Can I think of something else, something better for me and for those around me? Because if you, if the idea is that we don’t, can’t control our thoughts, well then, I don’t know what, how we have a test in this life. Because it really is through our brain and our thoughts that we change the one thing that connects with our spirit. So, anything else?

[Audience Member 2]:
You, then, JJ. So my thought was right on the same line, because I’ve learned it’s like really helped deeply make space through my thoughts and then like how I feel about myself. And it is almost shot, well, I would appreciate if you making that note, but some thoughts come just up automatically, don’t they? Because some of it, I will believe, like deeply believe that, no, I know that thought’s real. Oh, should we talk to the beginning? We talked about like our perception of reality and let’s believe reality. And I made this challenge to myself one time, that every thought that I had, that maybe wasn’t the most constructive, or helpful or hopeful, like didn’t bring alive Christ into my next action, I made myself challenged to ask if that thought was true or real. And I started with people who were close to me, because I was like, oh, I’ll be pretty confident I’m right. Like, not the stranger in the Holocaust being that right. I felt like my sister was being offensive, and I was shocked five for five times in a row. I was wrong. And so my, the power of the brain, it is shocking. So I appreciate you saying that, because those thoughts do come wired from things in childhood that are meant to preserve you. But as I got older, it felt like it was betraying me, so I had to, like, slow it down. I don’t know. They control. Yeah.

[Chuck Rich]:
[Acknowledges.]

[Audience Member 3]:
Just question on for these guys, like, phone addiction, video game addiction, I mean, I know that’s addiction is probably a strong word.

[Chuck Rich]:
Well, okay, again, like that one that I alluded to quickly is she, one of her subjects that she talked about and she showed video of was a guy who was addicted to game videos. I mean, he had the whole setup in his college dorm. He had like six screens that the pictures they showed. He had a headset. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it, you know, and he played games all the time. I mean, 14, 16 hours a day. And it was only Stanford kids, super smart, sleep three hours, get his work done, play games. All around the world, I guess, through these things. And he was getting so depressed and so hopeless, and life had no meaning. This kid that was a superstar to get to Stanford now had nothing, and unless he played video games, he felt horrible, I’m like a loser. Well, her point was that when he plays these video games, these lights are going off, he’s getting rewarded, he kills this person, or he does this thing, or he gets this reward. It’s this constant dopamine hit that they have figured it out. They, these are not just random people who run those companies. They are neuroscientists who are figuring out how to tweak your certain centers of your brain to make you addicted to their game. And she made him understand that every time the dopamine was that high for that long, it went way, way into a negative after. Because we have something called homeostasis in our body and opposition in all things, and this is not how it was supposed to be. She said that you have to lean into something hard and something that hurts or is painful to do to get the dopamine. Because your body’s going to react to your pain or your discomfort or your hard work, and also your homeostasis elevate your baseline levels of dopamine. Isn’t that fascinating? You go to work hard, you go do your chores, you study all day, when you’re done with that, you don’t have to do anything to get a hit of dopamine. The body just raised. You feel better. Your serotonin goes up. Conversely, you do dopamine and ser- stuff all day long, all day long, all day long, seek the easy path, seek the serotonin, nice fluffy pillow, and your stuffed dog, and you watch TV and eat junk food all day. That’s creating those feelings, but it’s not real, and then your serotonin also goes way down because you didn’t do anything of import. You didn’t do anything of any lasting value. You created no long-term means as a body, as a person. Does that make sense? So when that, when you look at your phones, you think you’re having just fun, but you’re rewiring your brain to need that to feel normal. And no one wants to admit it, but video games, food, sugar, carbohydrates, shopping, internet, TV, and our phones and social media, all they are is a drug that is hitting dopamine. No one wants to call them that, but that’s what’s happening to your brain. Cause your brain was not made when they had these things. Your brain was made when all they had was the farm and bad food. But it was driving you to go do those things. It was driving you to go marry that girl or that guy down the road that wasn’t that attractive, but at least he showed up and worked the farm. But that dopamine, that drive was so strong you went and did it. One day, you get on your phone and you swipe on hinge or whatever it’s called, whatever. Ridiculous. But it’s what’s happening and your brain is not meant for that and it goes really bad really quickly.

[Audience Member 3]:
So what do you do to like get out of that? You’re in that loop.

[Chuck Rich]:
Well, like I said, all it takes, this is the secret of brain, this is the self-brain surgery. All it takes is redirecting your thought to one other thing and you are straightening that thought. You put the phone down, you go outside on a walk, your brain is now, because what happens in this pruning, it’s like the, it’s like the, you drive around Utah and you see big highways and then off the side you see this like old beaten road that’s in disuse. Asphalt’s cracking or it’s a dirt road or something. That used to be the main road. And if you leave these other pathways alone, all those snapped connections go away. They do, they just fall away. But if you don’t, but you have to let go of them. So this student I was talking about that was a gamer, she made him stop playing games for three weeks straight in her lab. And he, it was supposedly the most, one of the most miserable times of his life. He could read books, he could sleep, she’d bring him food, he could exercise, he had weights, but he couldn’t be on a computer or play a game. And after three weeks, he was talking, he said that my entire world had changed. I noticed things differently, I felt calm, I felt peace, I was interested in calling my friends, I wondered what my mom was doing, I hadn’t talked to her in three months. Because his mind has become so wired to that addiction. So the point is, is that all you have to do, and this is where I really believe the judgment comes in. This is the spirit. You all have your own spirit. You have free of the seed. It’s being hijacked by these things, but it’s not gone. And when you pray to God for help, that spirit, I think, and his spirit will come in and help you jumpstart, override those negative connections. If you make the choice, that’s what you want to do, and you follow through. You do it, and you turn to something better every day. With you and your friends, you choose better things. Those, the conversations you have, the thoughts you have, the thoughts you entertain, it will create those connections. And that’s why we all know some amazing people, many amazing people in this neighborhood, who are just as pure as day, and they have, they’re so fun, they’re so happy, because they just feed themselves their thoughts, good thoughts all the time. And it’s all within your reach. You all know people like this, and it’s not like going to come, have to become a, like, a star musician or athlete or something where it takes years and years and years of practice. I promise you, because when I see my, summer of my, my freshman year, after freshman year, whatever, I missed them, I was a derelict and a sinner and not, you know, just completely focusing on the wrong things in July, and October, when I was in the MTC, I was a totally different person. And that, that’s the atonement. And all it takes is that willingness to say, I’m not going back to that, whether it’s basketball or pornography or drinking or drugs or parties or social media and texting and posting that, all that, you just turn it away and do something else with your time, and it’ll take a few weeks. It may take a couple of months, I promise you. Your brain will rewire so quickly and start that path to becoming like the mind of Christ and the life that God intended for you. So, any other questions? I know it’s been a long time. Yeah.

[Audience Member 4]:
That’s really quick. And with that, I’ll be the natural man and come back and I’ll say it again. Right. Delete Instagram, but you might be downloading it. How do you overcome like that feeling of failure and fall back at?

[Chuck Rich]:
You know all this stuff better than I do. That’s not, that’s not a glitch. That’s not, that’s the plan. That, everybody does that. I got back from my mission. I made mistakes. I repented after I met, I mean, you have these highs and lows. It doesn’t matter. It’s the point is that if your spirit wants to be like God and want to turn to them and repent, you will, and you will help people. And everyone of you have the choice to not do that. Everyone of you have the choice to say, no, I don’t want to do that. But I promise you that if you just believe, don’t, let me give you a phrase. I’ve got a kind of bright son, Christian, and he has the greatest daughter. He said, I spent most of my life trying to decide if I believed in God. And then I knew I believed in God. But he found out that the more important question is, do I believe God? There are a lot of people who say they believe in God, but they must not believe God because they don’t believe they exist. So, jump past the question of do you believe in God. You’re not worthy. See, you’re his, do you believe him? He’s told you over, I’ll forgive you forever. All you got to do is turn to me again. And your brain will rewire and you’ll turn to him and you’ll feel happiness and joy that you’re not going to get through dopamine hits and through doom scrolling. So when you say, like, oh shoot, I did this, what are your alternatives? Keep doing it, feeling miserable and become a leader and have a horrible life, which is inevitable. Or turn back to God to start doing worthwhile things and take in all that’s so wonderful in this life. For instance, you know, like this, and it’s so great that I’ll be able to make a slideshow in a few hours after church and stuff, you know. Used to take weeks for me to make my slideshow for high, high school assemblies and go get the slides developed and… Anyway, point is, the world’s going forward, and it doesn’t have to be all bad if you’re just willing to turn to Christ and to God. And I leave you this testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please note that the presentation, recording, and transcript are for personal use only.

[Speaker – Introducer]:
Thank you, Brother Hal. I want to introduce Rich with us. He is a pediatrician, and we’re excited for his presentation. Just so you know, Rich Greenberg was on the High Council with me for four years. I think I can trust him today. We had a great time on the High Council. I think the world of Rich, and I hope that you will gain inspiration from him. We will have some time at the end for questions and answers. I’ll turn it over to you, Rich.

[Dr. Rich Greenberg]:
Thank you. Thanks, Jim, for the beautiful prayer to bring the spirit, and thank you, Rob and President Wagner. Let’s go ahead and get started. Today we’ll be talking about the hidden dangers of the digital world.

By way of disclosures, I have no financial disclosures. A bit about my background: I worked as a pediatric doc up at Primary Children’s for about a decade, and I currently work as a general pediatrician in Draper for the past seventeen years. I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I do treat youth with depression, anxiety, suicide, addiction, and pornography on a very regular basis.

The objectives of today’s talk: define the prevalence of the use of cell phones and media; discuss the negative associations of the excessive use of cell phones and social media, including but not limited to anxiety, depression, suicide, and pornography; examine some potential solutions; and initiate a discussion with this group regarding these topics. There will be time for questions at the end.

In all sincerity, hopefully not offend anyone, and I mean that honestly. I think in our culture, we don’t have enough open and honest discussions about hard topics, and these are hard topics that we’re going to talk about today. There are very specific things that we need to address that you don’t usually hear from the pulpit. For better or for worse, maybe Rob made a mistake. He knows me—my personality is such that I will not shy away from talking about topics that may be challenging when I think they’re really important, especially with regard to our youth.

To that end, I’ve had more angst about giving this presentation than any presentation I can remember. I’ve presented at national and international medical meetings and many church talks, but I’ve had a lot of anxiety about this, hoping not to offend anyone, because we’ll talk about sensitive things. I will do my best to talk about it in a very professional and medical-based way, but if I do offend anyone, I truly am sorry.

I will say that there’s many people in this audience that I love and respect, and so also some pressure—the idea of disappointing or doing something that may be not looked upon in a positive way weighs heavily on me. So I fasted, I thought about this a lot, I spent a lot of time, and I prayed a lot about what to put into this, so I hope it goes well.

First and foremost, I believe and know that there is hope through Jesus Christ. To that end, I believe that we must first identify that problems exist and define the scope and severity of the problem. Understanding the grand scale of the problem can often lead to despair, but I think there’s a double-edged coin there—that understanding the problems and its specifics allows us key information that can help lead to a solution.

If I can paraphrase one of my favorite scriptures, 1 Nephi 3:7, the Lord giveth no commandment unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he desireth for them. I.e., brothers and sisters, there is hope, and we will talk about that today.

Before we get started, I want to tell you what I believe about our youth. I love our youth. I have spent over 25 years in my career dedicating myself towards the protection of the safety and welfare of children and youth, and I think they are truly amazing. They’re strong, and they’re resilient, as well, in many ways, inspirational. But let’s be honest, they are under attack. And I hope together we can discover today the details of how they’re being targeted and how to help them succeed.

So let’s talk about our dependence on cell phones and internet and media. Almost all Americans own a cell phone, and over ninety percent own a smartphone. The average American spends about five hours a day on a smartphone, and our teens spend over nine hours a day on media. Ninety-six percent of teens go online daily, and almost half are online what they would consider almost constantly. Of the time teens spend online, about fifty-five percent of the time is for social media.

Does this mean we’re addicted? Well, sixty-one percent of adults in a survey consider themselves addicted to their cell phone. In a different survey, a third of Americans would rather give up sex for a year than their cell phone. Fifty-five percent would rather give up eating out, forty-five percent would rather give up vacations, a third would be willing to stop seeing friends in person rather than giving up their cell phone, and almost half would work extra days each week to keep their cell phone. Let’s remember, it wasn’t that long ago that we survived and thrived without cell phones. The average person checks their phone almost 150 times a day. That’s the average.

There is an addictive quality to receiving texts, calls, and social media notifications. Cell phones have become more important than people. [Brief joke involving a phone call from his wife.] Hopefully that’s the last bad joke you’ll have to endure from me, and I appreciate my wife playing along, but that’s just hopefully one example of showing that cell phones have become more important than people and our interactions with them.

So why does this all matter? This addiction has led to the increase in several problems in our society: poor communication and being easily distracted; an increase in depression, anxiety, social isolation, and suicide; interference with intimacy and relationships; cyberbullying; pornography; and gambling, as well as others.

Let’s start with poor communication and distraction. Technology has a negative effect on both the quality and quantity of face-to-face communication. Texting, email, social media has significantly replaced in-person and on-the-phone communication. Studies show when children use digital communication extensively, it can curtail face-to-face experiences, which is necessary for them to develop and master important social skills.

Over three quarters of parents report the use of media devices during their most recent family meal. About the same, three quarters of high school teachers say that students being distracted by their cell phones is a major problem in their classroom. Among teachers, almost forty percent report that social media and device overuse directly derive underdeveloped social skills, and over eighty percent of teachers note widespread concentration issues. Studies show simply having a mobile phone present during a meaningful conversation lowers ratings of trust, perceived partner empathy, and relationship quality, as well as making participants rate their interaction less fulfilling.

Let’s dive into mental health issues. And this is just a quick overview. This could easily have been a four-hour plus presentation and conversation and discussion, but I’m just trying to hit the highlights so we can go over the main points.

Let’s look at some of the numbers. Here in Utah, in a 2023 survey, over forty percent of youth felt sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks. This is almost a ten-point increase from data gathered in 2017. In a US study, ages twelve to seventeen, about fifteen to eighteen percent of youth in those age ranges reported suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the past year. That was 2024 data, and that’s up from eleven percent from the years combined 2005 to 2014.

So why the increase? Why is this happening? Why in greater rates? The pressure and stress on our youth today is immensely greater than decades ago, immensely greater. Teens have a strong need and desire to fit in and be accepted, but what they see on social media is the portrayal of a perfect life for that person and their family.

But are the use of cell phones, social media, and internet really the cause of the rise in mental health issues? Well, let’s remember this number, that smartphone ownership amongst youth became very prevalent between the years of 2011 and 2012, and let’s look at the data.

[References graph of percent of major depressive episodes in the past twelve months by age group, focusing on ages 12–17, showing relatively steady rates from 2009–2011, then skyrocketing after 2011–2012.]

Let’s examine also suicide rates. [References graph of suicide rates amongst US youth and young adults ages 10–24, relatively stable 2001–2010, then skyrocketing after 2011–2012.]

But an association of increasing rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide from 2011–12 and beyond, along with the fact that smartphone use became commonplace, is not proof of causation. So let’s look at studies. There are several studies; I only have time to just go over one that has a nice graph here.

[References graph of proportion of adolescents with depression or low psychological well-being by hours per day of media or smartphone use. Girls (red) show sharp negative impact after about 30 minutes; boys (blue) after about 2 hours; overall (green). Study capped at greater than 7 hours; notes average teen spends over 9 hours.]

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages ten to twenty-four in the United States, as well as here in Utah. More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, chronic lung disease combined. This is a real problem that we’re facing in our society. When I worked in the ER I saw several attempted suicides, as well as unfortunately some successful ones, and I’ve even had one of my own patients commit suicide, and it’s absolutely devastating.

So parents, grandparents, talk to your kids about how they’re truly feeling. In our clinic, we screen all patients nine and above at every checkup for depression and anxiety. I will tell you it’s rather common to see very significant scores on the depression and anxiety screeners that parents had no idea about. Don’t just assume, since your child is doing well in school, has friends, and is doing well in their sports and activities, that their mental health is okay. Open up to your children and share with them your mental health struggles, as we’ve all had them, so that they may feel more comfortable and willing to share their own true feelings. And we’ll talk more about things to help later on.

So let’s turn now to interference with intimacy and relationships. Over half of partnered adults say that their romantic partner is often or sometimes distracted by their cell phone during a conversation. Thankfully, I’m not one of those—and probably gonna take heat from my wife for even saying that. So, it does happen to us.

Almost one in three teens experience digital dating abuse or harassment. In a specific study, thirty percent of teens in relationships say they receive text messages ten, twenty, thirty times an hour from a partner, keeping tabs on them, asking where they are, what they’re doing, and who they’re with. And in that study, between seventy to eighty percent of their parents had no idea that this abusive behavior was going on.

Almost twenty-five percent of teens in relationships report communicating with their boyfriend or girlfriend and receiving hourly check-ins between midnight and five AM. Over two-thirds of teens say that boyfriends or girlfriends sharing private or embarrassing pictures or videos on cell phones or computers is a serious problem.

Data from a study earlier this year showed that thirty-three percent, almost thirty-two percent, reported having received a sext or a sexually explicit text, and almost twenty-five percent said they had sent one. Compare that to the data given in 2019—you can see almost a ten-point increase in both of those numbers. As scary as that is, look at the next line: percentage of minors who’ve shown their own, shared their own genitals via text—ages nine to twelve years, six percent. Staggering. Ages thirteen to seventeen, one in five, twenty percent. This is sobering.

Cyberbullying—that’s using digital media to communicate false, embarrassing, or hostile information about another person. Almost half of youth ages thirteen to seventeen have been the victims of cyberbullying. We haven’t even really addressed a lot of the hard stuff yet, and you can start to see the layers of pressure and stress and why it is so hard on our youth today.

Gambling. About a third of boys age eleven to seventeen report gambling in the past year, and you can look at the specifics of age. Younger boys age eleven, it was about thirty-two percent, and almost half of boys age seventeen have reported gambling.

Gaming—this probably comes to no surprise, our teenagers game. Teens age thirteen to seventeen, about eighty-five percent play video games, over forty percent play daily, and you can look at the statistics specifically yourself, but it’s no surprise that boys play more than girls, but girls definitely play video games as well.

Sleep. This is something that I don’t think that we talk enough about and put enough importance on. Cell phone and media use leads to slower sleep onset, less REM sleep, and shorter sleep duration. Sleep is key for growth, emotional health, and physical health. For kids aged eleven to twelve, they should get a minimum of nine to twelve hours per day, and teenagers thirteen to eighteen should get eight to ten hours at minimum a day. Studies show nearly three quarters of high school students do not sleep enough on school nights. Don’t worry, that’s just five out of every seven nights for most of the year.

So let’s take a breath here, because I know I’m laying on a lot of hard topics, and we’re going to get into the harder stuff. So this is a slide here to remind us that Christ is there, and there’s hope in Christ. He is reaching out to us, and I believe that there is hope with this, but I don’t want to get so overwhelmed that we’re not going to deal with this, because we are, but this is just a reminder that Christ is watching over us.

So let’s switch gears to pornography and sexual issues. Pornography is what I consider a highly addictive drug. My list—this is according to Rich Greenberg, not anywhere else will you find online—but what I consider in my experience to be the most addictive substances, quote unquote, in order would be nicotine, then pornography, then heroin, and I truly mean that. It is dangerous and has significant risks, so we need to educate ourselves and our youth.

The fact that we need to have these in-depth, serious discussions with our young children is nothing other than disgusting, but if we don’t, the world, i.e., the internet, friends, et cetera, will.

Why is it so common? First and foremost, there is easy access. It is everywhere, and we’ll get into the specifics of that. And second, there is a natural desire. I often like to educate parents who are having teens going through this when they ask me specifics. Compare offering of drugs versus pornography. Imagine you had a fourteen-year-old son, and I said to him, I would like you to start using cocaine. Their initial reaction would be, absolutely not. They have no inherent desire to start doing so. They’ve heard their whole life that it’s bad for them, and unless they start hanging out with other people that are doing those dangerous drugs and are subject to peer pressure, the likelihood that that happens is on the lower end. Now compare this to pornography. They have a natural desire and curiosity as they go through puberty to have an affinity for that, and so that’s very different when people don’t understand, well, why are they doing it so much? Let’s talk about that.

Scenarios that I like to share with families. Picture a toddler in a room a few feet high filled with marshmallows. Left unchecked, they would eat until they were sick. Or a person in the desert who hasn’t had anything to drink for three days, and all of a sudden they’re given endless water and lemonade, they would drink excessively. Our youth, brothers and sisters, are hungry, i.e., they have a natural desire to understand sexual issues, and we’ve given them a world filled with virtual marshmallows and lemonade, i.e., the internet, and unlimited access to it, and then we’re surprised when they eat and drink some of it.

Let’s look at the stats. Data from 2023 show that almost three quarters of teens aged thirteen to seventeen have watched pornography online. Over half reported seeing it by the age of thirteen, fifteen percent by the age of ten, and the average age of viewing pornography is twelve. Some people, I think, here in our culture may say, well, this is national data, maybe this doesn’t apply to Utah, maybe this doesn’t apply to our LDS culture. I can say I practice medicine in a pediatric practice in Draper, in a very similar socioeconomic neighborhood as far as cultural and religious backgrounds, very similar to where we live here in Holladay, and I would say that this number of seventy-three percent is either on or maybe a little bit low.

When kids are asked why they watch pornography, forty-five percent say that they felt online pornography gives them helpful information about sex. Sixty percent of students say that they watch pornography in order to learn more about sex and gaps in their sexual education, and although three quarters admitted that pornography creates unrealistic expectations.

And again, as I said earlier, I don’t want you to view this and feel like weight and pressure, like, oh my gosh. I want you to view this in a manner of understanding all the specifics. We’re already going through this problem. Our youth are going through this problem. So let’s understand it so that we can use the specifics to help us fix it.

Two thirds of teens feel okay about the amount of pornography that they watch, although half report feeling guilty or ashamed after watching it. And I can tell you in my professional practice, I think that number of fifty percent is grossly underestimated. I think it’s closer to ninety percent of youth who are watching pornography feel absolutely shame about it.

Staggering: youth aged thirteen to seventeen, more than half say they have viewed violent pornography, including scenes of rape, choking, or having someone in pain. Of those viewing pornography, we typically think it’s all boys. The studies will show, different studies will show that it’s about a third girls and two thirds boys. Again, in my practice, I find that it’s a higher proportion of boys versus girls, but it’s definitely not only the boys.

The vast majority of teens watching pornography are masturbating during watching it, and one small study, ninety-eight percent. And I don’t say that to be crude. I say that because I think it’s important for us to understand that our youth are not just watching it to learn about sex and satisfying their curiosity about sex. In addition, because this is happening, they’re receiving sexual gratification. And that is key, I think, to understanding why pornography is so challenging, is so difficult for them to overcome and has this almost snowball effect of difficulty for them to get over it. It’s so easy and it conditions them to have a positive along with it.

Where do people watch pornography? Pretty much everywhere. Twitter, forty percent; dedicated pornography sites, thirty-seven percent; Instagram, thirty-three percent; Snapchat, thirty-two percent; search engines, thirty percent. This adds up to obviously more than a hundred because people watch it in more than one location. Ninety percent of pornography is watched on mobile devices, but I can tell you from my professional practice, I usually ask kids when I interview them and able to counsel them privately, I like to know where they’re watching it to keep educated. And I can tell you anywhere there is internet, they are watching it, including phones, tablets, computers, TVs, gaming systems—Xbox, PlayStation. You think, well, okay, I’m going to give my son two hours alone in the basement to watch or to play video games. That may not all that’s what’s happening down there. So, it happens everywhere, unfortunately.

Where does it take place physically? At home, at church, at school, sports events, friends’ houses, cars, et cetera.

It’s not just our youth. Different studies: one study of over fourteen hundred US adults, over ninety percent of men and over sixty percent of women report having watched pornography in the past month. In other studies, eighty-seven percent of men and almost thirty percent of women view it weekly, and in other studies, it’s about seventy percent men and thirty percent women. Irregardless of what the exact prevalence is, this is common amongst not only youth, but adults.

So why is it so harmful? What are the risks of pornography? Adolescent pornography is significantly associated with earlier sexual debut, increased casual sexual behavior, increased sexual aggression both as perpetrators and victims, and negative condom attitudes. Youth pornography is associated with increased rates of depression, anxiety, increased risk of teen pregnancy, child sex abuse, sexual trafficking, and a distorted view of relationships between men and women, as well as erectile dysfunction, both now in their youth as well as in their future. I’ve actually had two or three patients who presented to me with a desire to have sexual relations with their teenage partner and were unable to, and my first question was, you’re watching pornography, and they said, how did you know? And I said, that’s the reason why it’s happening. And chronic pornography use can lead to erectile dysfunction in the future when they’re married, which can be obviously devastating.

A large literature review out of the UK showed four key themes of harmful attitudes and behaviors associated with the use of pornography: one, viewing women as sex objects; number two, shaping men’s sexual expectations of women, i.e., expecting sex to be as watched on pornography, including violence, unrealistic scenarios, and multiple partners; and third and fourth, most scary is an acceptance and perpetration of sexual aggression towards women associated with pornography.

Women should be revered and honored just as Heavenly Father views them. Pornography teaches boys and men that women are objects for their pleasure rather than the beautiful spiritual beings that should be treated with the utmost respect and love. This is a hard, hard thing to talk about for me because I know how lucky I am to have a special wife and how beautiful and special she is to me. So this is scary to think that my son or other boys would have this view of women. And this view is in direct opposition to our belief in our culture of the sacred equal role of women and the divine nature of eternal families.

Let’s view some statistics on sex. This is a busy slide, and we’re just gonna view the top line there that has that red outlined box on it. So this is the percentage in the United States of high school students who have ever had sex. We can see there’s a positive trend, actually. In 2013, it was almost half, and in 2023, that number had gone down to thirty-two. So that’s actually a good thing. Unfortunately, I think the reason for this is because of so much pornography, so I’m not sure that that’s actually a positive, but that’s the statistics as they are, so still relatively common.

A study locally done at Utah State University in 2022 showed that twenty percent of students reported having sex in middle school or high school here locally, and over a third said that they had had non-penetrative sex, so touching and so forth.

Oral sex. What do you think about oral sex? Do they consider it sex? Very scary. In 2007, data showed that only twenty percent of youth would say that oral sex is considered sex. And if you compare that from data around 2000, that number had gone the wrong way by half. Oral sex is the most common form of sexual behavior amongst our adolescents. Nationally, in 2023 data, youth age fifteen to nineteen reported forty-four percent had participated in oral sex. And we see that that number had gone down again, and it was about sixty percent in 2018 data. So again, positive that it’s going down, but unfortunately the reason it’s going down is because of pornography, in my opinion.

So are our kids who are having sex doing it safely? We see a negative association when we looked at this other line again, the red text box, of a US study looking at rates of condom use during the last sexual intercourse. We see in 2013 it was almost sixty percent, and ten years later there’s a ten-point decrease of people who report condom use. In that Utah State University study that I referenced earlier, thirty percent of those who had reported having sex in middle school or high school reported using no form of protection. And as more evidence, there’s a large European study that showed the proportion of sexually active adolescents who use a condom at last intercourse decreased from 2014 to 2020 about ten points for boys and about six points for girls, which is very scary considering the potential ramifications of not only unwanted teen pregnancies, but also of very serious diseases, including genital warts and cancers that can be potentially serious and deadly for our youth.

So what has all of this done to our families? Youth, and to much degree adults, can fulfill all their needs and desires with the use of a cell phone and internet while never leaving their room, negating the need for human interaction, fulfilling all social needs, sexual needs, et cetera, by themselves. It’s easy for this to lead to isolation, anxiety, and depression. In my opinion, one of, if not the biggest issues attacking our family is what we’re talking about today. We in our culture understand the importance of families, both earthly and eternally. These issues degrade personal interactions between spouses, parents, and children. They have replaced in many ways opportunities for true and meaningful interaction.

So let’s go over some solutions, some dos and don’ts.

Do go home and hug your children and tell them how much you love them. Do counsel with your spouse and family about how to approach these issues. Every child and situation needs an individualized plan, even though basic tenets apply to all. Do pray about how to approach your children regarding these issues. Do fast and attend the temple to gain insight about these topics.

Some don’ts. Do not go home and take away all your children’s devices and all access to the internet and social media tonight, and I’m serious. We’ll talk more about that. Do not go home today and accuse your children of watching pornography. But if you find out that they are watching it, don’t shame them. They’re already doing it to themselves. They need love, support, and help, not shame.

Let’s talk about some solutions. In this last general conference, Elder Fowler said something that struck me that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forget. He was talking about a conversation with his children, and he was showing them pictures when they were younger, and he said, as of the date of this picture, what had you done to earn our love? They lowered their eyes and said nothing. I asked them to look up and said, you were right. You did nothing to earn our love. By that same token, there is nothing you can ever do that will unearn or remove that love from you. You did not earn it. You cannot lose it. It is yours forever. Then in a beautiful way, he related that how our Heavenly Father and Savior feel about us. We did not earn their love and our Savior’s sacrifice, but they will never stop loving us.

We need to strike a balance, brothers and sisters. Our youth rely on social media for communication with peers and society, in schools, et cetera. Taking away all of this can lead to social isolation and depression. I will share with you a personal example. My son, Zach, who’s twenty-four, so it wasn’t that very long ago, he was a senior at Skyline High. He had a cell phone at that point, but I refused to allow him to have any social media. He was such a good egg, he followed it, but he was unhappy about it, and he became very isolated and started to become depressed. And the bottom line was that all of his friends with going to parties and different activities were no longer inviting each other by a text. He came to me and said, Dad, I don’t think my friends like me anymore. And I said, why? And he said, well, they’re doing all these things and they’re not including me. And it turns out that all of the invites were coming over social media. The last straw was he missed his senior breakfast at Skyline High because the high school only publicized it over social media, and I finally gave in and gave him social media despite my hesitancy because of these fears. So we can’t just take it all away and pretend like they’re going to be able to function. Okay, we have to strike a balance.

As adults, we need to lead by example. We need to use our devices and media less if we expect our kids to. We need to monitor our children’s devices and social media, and I feel very strongly about this. This is not about doing it in a distrustful way. You should not do it in secret ways and not let your children know. I think you should be open and honest with your children and say, I’m not accusing you, but like other things, I’m your parent, I own that phone, and I want you to be safe, and there are a lot of dangers out there, so I’m not accusing you of anything, but I need to view it. Because if you don’t, even if you do, you probably won’t see everything, but if you don’t, you’ll miss out on important things. I think personally this is no different than giving them other rules and making sure we follow through with them, such as a curfew or chores. Show me a parent who hasn’t given a curfew at midnight and then check to make sure your kid followed it, or given them a chore and follow through to make sure that they actually did it.

This is something way out of my realm and understanding, but I believe we need to find a way to petition our schools and legislature to have less dependency on devices and media for our youth. We need to promote good sleep habits. I recommend no screen time for at least an hour before bed. We need to allow youth access to devices, but limit that access. We need to use filters, and I strongly recommend any device that has internet, which I named numerous, should never be in the bedroom, especially at night.

Contrast these scenarios that I often share with families. Your fifteen-year-old son is sitting on the couch with all of the family at two PM, and up pops an inappropriate picture. Very easy to turn that off. Now picture that same fifteen-year-old who’s going through puberty and has normal curiosities and desires, ten o’clock at night, alone in their bedroom, not choosing to do anything wrong, just scrolling through internet, looking at some dumb social media site or whatever, and up pops that same inappropriate picture. Much easier to click on it with curiosity in that scenario.

So I hear all the time, but he uses his cell phone or she uses her cell phone as an alarm. I say, great, back in the day, we didn’t have cell phones. Go buy a six dollar alarm clock, put it in their room, hang up their cell phone in your room or the family room. TVs, anything with internet should not be in their room. Just too much of a temptation.

If your child is struggling with depression and anxiety, reach out to your pediatrician or primary care physician to get help. There are many modalities that we can use to help them. Therapy is key. I know a lot of people and a lot of youth are scared of therapy or have some crazy thoughts about what therapy involves. All therapy involves, in my opinion, is helping our youth handle stress and pressure better. Show me one of your youth who isn’t undergoing significant pressure and stress. It doesn’t exist. Medications, that would be on a case-by-case basis in discussions with specifics of you and your doctor and the child or the adolescent. Help with sleep, as we’ve talked about, there’s things that we can do to help them sleep, whether it be social things that we talked about, what we call sleep hygiene and/or medications. I think it’s so key for our kids who are undergoing depression and suicidal thoughts to avoid media and friends who are discussing those things. That’s like putting themselves in a bad situation. They can still be friend to that friend, but they can’t be talking about them with depression, with their friend’s suicidal thoughts. It’s just bringing them down. And so monitoring the sites that they’re on and the social media that they’re on is key.

Exercise, not only key for our physical health, key for our mental and emotional health. Long and short-term goal lists. I have all my patients who are undergoing significant depression and suicidal thoughts make a short-term goal list, what they want to accomplish in the next week, month, year, and twenty-five years, five, ten years, because I need to give them something to look forward to, to get through this dark time, something to fight for. And finally, hope. Brothers and sisters, they need to see and know there’s a light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

Let’s talk about solutions. I think we need a paradigm shift in how we educate our youth and talk to them about sex. Clearly what we’re doing right now is not working. Three quarters of them are watching pornography, and over half of them say they’re doing it to learn more about sex.

I think in our Latter-day Saint culture, we often discuss sex and intimacy in a negative way, albeit because it’s an effort to try and get them not to partake of it before marriage, but we tell them, sex is bad, don’t do that, that’s not for you, it’s only for when you’re older, and that can lead to a lot of confusion. Then you see a boy, he goes on his mission, and you start all these negative things about sex, and the mission president reinforces that, don’t be alone with a girl, don’t look at a girl, et cetera, et cetera, and then all of a sudden he gets ready to come home from his mission like my son did, and he’s in his final interview, and the mission president said, great job, Elder Greenberg, go home, get married, and make babies. They’re so confused. And then they come home and they get married and we say, it’s so happy for you, it’s so wonderful, go enjoy your sex life with your wife, it’s so special. And here they are, I’ve heard all my life, it’s so bad and wrong and there’s such this conflict, but yet as they go through puberty, they have a natural desire. So what should we do?

Personally, I think we should start by telling them when they’re young that intimacy between a husband and wife is beautiful, it’s special, it’s sacred, it feels great, it was a gift given to us by our Heavenly Father to help spouses bond. I used to think that I’m crazy since I joined the church just about thirty years ago. I’ve had this thought and just viewed it and mostly kept it to myself, told it a few people, because I never hear anyone really espousing the same views. While doing research on this topic, I came across an article published in an LDS article by a social worker, Dan Gray, titled Talking to Our Youth About Pornography, and it says very much, not exactly the same, but very similar things, that talking negative about them leads to confusion.

Obviously, when we talk about sex with our kids, we need to share with them that our Heavenly Father has taught and commanded us that not only is intimacy special, but it’s to be partaken of only in marriage between a husband and a wife. Let them know it’s normal to have curiosity and desires about sex. That’s typical as they go through puberty, when we’re all telling them negative, don’t, don’t, don’t, but our youth as they go through puberty are experiencing feelings and changes in their body and having dreams and so forth. It’s confusing to them, and that’s part of the reason why I think that pornography is a small piece of why it’s so common.

Let our youth know, if they’re watching pornography or engage in sexual acts, that you’re not going to shame or yell at them. Invite them to be open and honest with you and tell them that you’re going to support them. We’ve all made mistakes and deserve and need forgiveness from our earthly as well as heavenly families.

Youth and adults, there is help and there is hope. Nothing you can do will ever change the fact that you’re a child of God, and our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you and want to help you. If you have mental health struggles, there is help and you can get better. If you’re watching pornography, tell our youth, you’re not a bad person. You’re good and special, but pornography is harmful. The adversary has cunningly used a gift from Heavenly Father, which is our curiosity and desire for sexual intimacy that should only take place in marriage, and has used that to ensnare us in the trap of pornography. Many people overcome this addiction. It’s never too late, but you need support. Tell them to turn to their parents, to their bishop, other church leaders, and other trusted adults in their life to start to get help.

Some take-home points. Our youth are being attacked unlike anything that has happened in history, yet in general they’re amazing and inspirational in their strength. Let’s educate ourselves on truly what’s happening to our youth and use that to create an individualized plan to support them in their journey. Show an outpouring of love and understanding to your children, in words and in action. There is hope in our Savior, brothers and sisters.

Few quotes from elders in conference, and then we’ll close. Elder Dunn said, because he marked the path and led the way, there is no portion of our mortal sojourn he has not trod. He has not only known the road, he knows you and what you, as noble offspring of the divine, are capable of. And if I can just turn around what Elder Fowler said, I thought it was so powerful. Just the reverse, there is nothing our kids can do that should ever turn our love away from them, just as there is nothing we can do that will ever turn away the love of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for us.

And finally, Elder Eyring—Matthew Eyring said, it’s important to not allow our challenges to negatively impact our faith. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered for us. He knows exactly how we feel, especially in our darkest and most trying times. As you humbly turn to the Lord and cast your burdens on Him, You have his promise. Draw near unto me, and I will draw near unto you. He will provide comfort. Christ will always be there to rescue us spiritually.

I want to say thank you for allowing me to discuss hard topics that threaten our youth, and thank you for the trust of our stake leaders and me to discuss these topics. And before we turn to questions, I made some of my favorite Jewish cookies, so in addition to putting together controversial slideshows for church, I also like to bake, and then my wife’s going to put them out. You can take some as you leave. And with that, I will leave time for questions and discussions. Thank you.

I think Rob and some other people are going to have microphones if there are discussion questions or things that you want to add. I think we have one there. No one’s thrown anything at me yet, so I think we’re doing okay.

[Audience Member 1]:
I was curious if you have any tips on how to transition responsibilities, so like at home we can be turning off the internet at night or we can be placing these limits, but then they turn 18, they’re leaving for college, how to transition them so that they’re able to take more ownership and control over their internet use over time.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Yeah, great question. That brings up another thought. I’ve had so many instances where parents say, don’t worry, Dr. Greenberg, when I tell them don’t have anything in the internet, any phones or devices in the room, they say, my husband’s an IT expert, we have the Google Home Wi-Fi control, they can’t get into anything, and then when I have a one-on-one conversation, they’re all watching pornography. So don’t be misled that just because—it’s great to have, but kids are smarter than we are. But it’s a great question about how to transition them, and I think it depends on an individualized plan. My son left on his mission at nineteen, he came home at twenty-one, and actually we still had him hang up his phone in the family room. Because it’s just a temptation. I mean, it’s a temptation for them as it is for us. I hang up my phone next to my bed. I probably shouldn’t, but sometimes I’m on call and I need it. But it’s a hard balance to strike because there is that temptation for them, even when they’re eighteen, nineteen, twenty. And so I’m not saying you can’t have that, but I think depends on the kid, depends on how decision-making they are, how responsible they are, how mature they are, and you need to come up with prayerfully an individualized plan to see what you think is best in that scenario. Clearly what I did probably was the wrong thing for my son when I took a hard line approach and said, no way are you getting social media. And there was pushback, pushback, pushback. And I probably took the wrong approach of being too hard-nosed about it because he suffered for it. And so I think we need to strike that balance and it’s all individualized based on that. So sorry it doesn’t answer it specifically, but that’s what I would say.

[Audience Member 2]:
I was just going to offer a little bit insight. I think a lot of times too, the same with the sexual talks, that we have talks about why we have these rules, why we don’t want them having internet in their room, why we want it upstairs, so that as they turn eighteen and go out of the house, it’s not just, you know, every line has been drawn and now it’s gone. It’s that you’ve helped them make those decisions. Maybe they’ve made some mistakes at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and you’ve talked them through those mistakes so that as they’re eighteen and they go out of the house, they have experience, they have insight, so they have some skills to be able to do it on their own.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Yes, I think that’s a great point. Kind of like when I said to view your kids’ devices, let them know it’s not because they’re not trustworthy and a good person. It’s because a hundred percent of people will get tempted. And so you’re there to try and help them understand that those dangers exist with media and try to balance and teach them how to do it responsibly. So great comment.

[Audience Member 3]:
Question. When you talk about monitoring, what can that look like in an effective way? Because we agree our kids are smarter than us. And accountability is important.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Absolutely. And I think if you were the smartest individual and you were monitoring, you’re not going to find everything, right? A lot of kids have what’s called a Finsta or a fake Instagram account. They have one that shows all the happy and great things that they’re doing for their parents to see, and then they have their real account, and there’s no way to know because they can make it on their own. So there’s always that potential, but I think it looks like letting your kids know from the first time that they’re getting any devices and any social media that you’re going to be reviewing it with them, and that if you find that they’re going to have an extra account that you don’t know about, that you’re going to come down on them, and they’re going to lose privileges. And let them know again, it’s because you love them and because you understand more and experience more, but I think that sometimes, especially if you’re feeling suspicious, that can look like, Johnny, let me see your phone. I need to look at all your texts. Well, they may be embarrassed about that, but still, why should there be things that they’re texting that they should be embarrassed about? Or looking at their social media page and those kinds of things. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t do social media hardly at all. I have them just so we can promote some books I’ve written and other things, and so my wife handles it. So I’m probably the wrong person to ask how technically to do it, because I’m almost never on social media, but I do believe that monitoring it, looking at their texts, looking at their media, to let them know, again, I mean, if we gave them a curfew of midnight and they knew we were dead asleep and we would never ever check, probably if they knew there was no penalty, they might start to abuse it. But if they know every once in a while we’re there up reading a book at midnight when they come in and be like, hey, how was your date? They know that they’re going to be held accountable. And so I think if it’s done in a loving way, like Megan said, from the time that they’re young, teaching them that this is helpful so that you can learn how to do it, that’s how I would say, but it’s going to be different for every scenario. But I would start, especially when they’re young, being very involved and as they’re making great choices, becoming less, but not involved at all.

[Audience Member 4]:
Youth are pressured a lot to have a phone. And I think it’s getting younger and younger, elementary school even, their kids are carrying phones. Is there any—I know it depends a lot on the individual child and maturity, et cetera, et cetera, but are there some guidelines about at what age one could start?

[Dr. Greenberg]:
They’re really not. I think probably fourteen. I know that seems extreme. I tell all my patients at ten, you have to have every talk with your child, every talk. I know it’s beyond mind-blowing and disgusting is what I tell the parents, but that ten-year-old is in fourth or potentially fifth grade. In fourth grade, there are a couple kids who have a phone. In fifth grade, it’s about twenty percent. By sixth grade, it’s about a third, and by seventh grade and on, it’s almost universal. So you can be hard-nosed, you know, I think it’s good to say don’t give them a phone until they’re older, but don’t be naive to not understand that all their friends are watching stuff and sharing it with their classmates. So you’re right, it’s getting younger and younger, but I just don’t think they’re mature enough to make those decisions when they’re presented. I mean, we’ve had patients come in whose parents found their five and six-year-old watching pornography. I mean, you see a two-year-old on a tablet all the time. And so they’re too young to understand how to deal with those precious, difficult situations, and they’re not mature enough, even if they’re the most mature nine and ten-year-old, they’re just not mature enough. So I think waiting till they’re older, there might be some kids at fourteen who are not ready, but I think that’s kind of a good balance, but they will be way behind the curve, I will tell you if you wait until they’re fourteen, but that’s what my personal belief is.

[Audience Member 5]:
I think I so agree with what you say in terms of age. I think for parents to talk about certain things at age-appropriate times is very important so that they know, so that they’re comfortable about talking about certain subjects. And I think for a parent to explain the body and to let them understand what the body is all about and what it’s for, why the Lord gave us a body and how it’s to be used, I think that can start very early with children. And I had one thought also as relating to, as at our age, my age, raising children was nothing like what it is now. That is for sure. And but our son, who’s raised his family now, shared something that they did in their home that I thought made a lot of sense. He said that they talked a lot about these subjects, but at a certain time when they had their media, when they had their phones, they agreed when they got their phones that they would have a family discussion, once a week or however often it may have been, that they would look at each other’s phones. They’d look at the parents’ phones, they could, they’d talk about it, and if anybody had deleted something, that was a subject to be discussed. So I, they felt that that was a good way for them to help their children.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Great. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Audience Member 6]:
Thank you, I just want to say thank you for this information. Is there a way that we could get this? I don’t know if you talked about that.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Absolutely not. No, of course. I can share it with Rob or Darcy and then share it. As long as you’re just going to use it for personal use, I would feel better about not you giving the presentation just because I don’t know how it would be taken in different contexts, but if you want to use it for your own personal use, I’m more than happy to share. Or if you want, I mean, a lot of this is data gathered from different places, and I kind of have a Word document about most of where I gathered this data. So if you want more information and you want this, if the stake is good with it, then I’m good with it. President Wagner, I’m going to put you on the spot. Is it okay if we share these slides with people who are interested? [Response affirmative.] So if it’s for personal use, then we can share it.

[Audience Member 6 continued / other]:
And also was one, same with the other presentation as well, because I want to know what the other kids are talking about, use those together, so that when we’re having conversations. I know that’s being recorded.

[Discussion about recording vs. slides.]

[Introducer / Moderator]:
Let’s just do a question or two more, because…

[Dr. Greenberg]:
And I’m happy to stay after and talk if anyone wants to.

[Moderator]:
Yeah, we’d like to give President Wagner, so we’ll take two more questions, and then.

[Audience Member on legal issues]:
I just wondered about also talking to kids about legal ramifications. Like, in my previous life, I was a school counselor, and we had a young middle schooler who had sent some sexually explicit pictures of herself, and it was devastating what became of that. She was a really sweet, good girl. But also, I have a friend whose daughter received sexually explicit pictures of a young man. She screenshotted it and took it to the school, and the police told her that she was in possession of child pornography. Even though she was trying to help her daughter. So I think, and I’ve talked with the school principals here in this area, and I know at least at the junior high and the high school, they have principals that spend almost full time, vice principals spending almost full time going through these kind of accusations. So I would just say it’s important for all of us to understand the laws, which vary in different states, and also help our kids to understand that this stuff can ruin a life.

[Dr. Greenberg]:
Absolutely devastating, and we should share it with our youth. I will say in my experience, having those kind of conversations with them is not effective. Like, they don’t really, I mean, just to put it bluntly, they don’t care as much about, oh, I’ll get in trouble and things like that, even though they should, or it may ruin your—you may not get into the college or whatever if this gets out and it’s out for the world. Unfortunately, they don’t care as much about that, but I think they should know it, I agree.

[Audience Member continued]:
Yeah, and I was going to say, and also maybe trying to help with that, with the schools, I mean, just make sure that there’s understanding with kids, you know, with principals and I don’t know, because some of this stuff has blindsided me as a parent and as a community council person.

2 Nephi 9–10 Lesson Transcript
(Cleaned and lightly edited for readability from the provided recording)

Good morning, everyone.

My problem is I always have too much to say and not too little. So I had this dream last night that I forgot my lesson, I forgot my shoes, I forgot my phone, and I was late. Our brains are fragile, aren’t they? We’re so lucky to be able to think about this beautiful, profound, serious, and important chapter nine of 2 Nephi, and also chapter ten, which is what we’ll be studying today.

So 2 Nephi 9 and 10. Jacob, Nephi’s younger brother, has three main sermons in the Book of Mormon, and this one, the first one, is the longest in the whole Book of Mormon—even three pages longer than King Benjamin’s. And it starts in chapter 6 and goes through 10, so we just have 9 and 10.

With chapter 9, Jacob launches into his own words, because the others—he’s just read at length from Isaiah, as Nephi had asked him to—and so now he begins his own ideas and words and subject.

Chapter 9 does require concentration and focus, but his presentation is really organized and has a logical sequence of thought, occasionally doubling back on topics. And the reading that you get—this little chill of foreboding, yet it’s not without hope or joy.

He basically sums it up in the last verse of chapter 10, if you want to open your books and go there, and I’ll read it: “May God raise you up. Raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement.”

So from physical death and from spiritual death, and that’s where we are in chapter 9. Resurrection, atonement, power—these are not just words. These are the engineering pieces of our existence.

J. Reuben Clark gave a talk in 1938 where he said, and this is repeated often: “The youth of the Church are hungry for the things of the Spirit, and they want it straight and unadulterated.” And that’s chapter 9.

So Jacob’s words and his topics fall into another dimension. It’s comparable to what Ezekiel said in Ezekiel 13:5, when he said, raging against the false prophets of Israel, both male and female. And he said, “You have not gone up into the gaps.”

So what are the gaps that they had not entered into? Well, one would be the place where we know that life is holy. Every minute that we breathe, that other dimension beyond earth life.

So my husband is an attorney, and he has a colleague, and they had lunch once years ago at Lamb’s Grill. Remember Lamb’s Grill downtown? Anyway, so out of the blue, this man—and I’ll call him Eric, his name’s not Eric, but I’ll just call him Eric—starts telling my husband at this business lunch this story.

His dad had come home one day when he was a little boy—this is not my husband, right? This is his friend—and said they were not going to church anymore, to our church anymore. To any church.

And so now here’s Eric, who’s an adult, and he’s a mountain climber, and he was at a base camp. He woke up in the night in his tent, and he’s alone and he’s cold. And he was filled with this gratitude for his wife and his children, his life, his work that he loved. And he said aloud into the darkness, “Why have you been so good to me?”

So you have to know this is a brilliant man who is a tough attorney who does not believe in God anymore and begins to pray. Going back to maybe his primary days long ago, his tent is filled with light, and he heard a voice say, “Because I love you.” That’s why I’ve been so good to you, because I love you.

Well, then he had to go home and tell his wife that he was going back to church.

Sometimes we have to go into the gaps to see what eternity is really about. Sometimes God has to step in and push us into the gaps. But if we never go there, we are wasting the days of our probation, as Jacob says in 9:27: “Woe unto him that wasteth the days of his probation.” These are the days, right, of our probation.

If we never go there, we’re not being careful about what receives our life. What do we give our life to?

But I know that you know that, and that is what Jacob actually says when he begins in verse 4. He says, “I know you’ve been searching and wondering because you know that our flesh must waste away and die. But he says, nevertheless, in our bodies, we shall see God.”

What? How? If our bodies will die, how will we see God? People are probably asking.

And then he begins by talking about Christ’s mortal life in Jerusalem. And he says, verse 5: “Yea, I know that you know that in the body he will show himself unto those at Jerusalem from whence we came. For it must be expedient that it should be among them, for it is imperative, it behooveth the great Creator that he allows himself to become subject unto man in the flesh, and die for all men, that all men might become subject unto him.”

Now there’s an interesting thing. Jacob says that Christ let himself become subject unto all men in the flesh, and die for them, so that all men would then be subject to him. Why did he need them? Why did he need us to be subject unto him?

Because then he could save us if they would let—if we let him. Because it’s either he or Lucifer, it’s one or the other, it’s light or darkness.

So here’s a question. I know this is all doctrinally heavy, but like J. Reuben Clark said, I think it’s what people really long for at base. So here we are. Here’s the question.

Why did Lucifer have success with one third of the spirits in the premortal world? Why did they go with him and not Christ?

Was it fear at the prospect of earth life that we would be vulnerable because we would sin and our strength weakened by having a mortal body? Were they afraid? Or was it laziness? Or even worse, sloth?

Now there’s a word. Laziness is a physical or mental choice to avoid work or exertion. But sloth is a deeper spiritual or emotional apathy called acedia (A-C-E-D-I-A), that involves indifference towards purpose, goodness, or God. Now that is a deep thing when you have sloth.

So Jesus Christ stands out there, as Joseph Smith tells us, in his intelligence, his love, his majesty and power, and two-thirds of all of us chose him. But did Satan, sensing his opportunity, as Catherine Thomas once said, capitalize on the spirits’ fear or their sloth and propose changes to the plan so that no one would have to develop faith, rely on grace, or—and here’s the sloth—go through diminishment and sacrifice.

John Taylor said that Satan wanted to deprive man of his agency so that he, the supposed redeemer, would not have to be subject to man. He wanted to be the glorious Lord without having to suffer what the Anointed One would have to suffer, without having to subject himself to humiliation and infamy.

On the other hand, the Lord’s plan gave man his agency, provides a redeemer; he would offer himself as a substitute and at the same time make it possible for man to be exalted, which thing he never would have had without his agency.

So you can see these engineering pieces working. We know why Lucifer did it. Arrogance, ambition, a grab for power, as we learn in Moses, sloth. John Milton, the great poet, said, “Better to reign in hell than to be ruled in heaven.” That’s from Paradise Lost.

Have you ever heard of Nabil Ravachant? He’s a businessman, and he said this most profound thing, which I have had in my head for months. Here it is: “Thinking only of yourself is a prison.”

Thinking only of yourself is a prison. And I suppose that’s why Satan was doomed from the beginning.

So we can surmise why Lucifer did what he did, but why did Christ do what he did?

Well, here’s one reason. This is from Hebrews 1:9, this amazing verse, speaking of him: “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” He loved righteousness and hated iniquity.

But you know why else he did it? This is from John 14:31: “But that the world may know that I love the Father, I will do it, I will go through all of it. The prince of this world has nothing in me.”

He did it because he loved his Father.

Well, if that’s the case, why did he do it? Why did the Father do it? John 3:16: “For God so loved the world.” You are the world, right? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that the world through him might be saved.

So he, the Father, gave up his Son for the love of his children to save his children, exactly what you would do for your children and any child.

Some years ago when my sister, Susan Maughan, who’s right there, worked full time as a math teacher at the Salt Lake detention center. She invited me to come down and do poetry workshops with those kids who were in jail—really it’s jail.

And you have to understand that these kids had done some really wrong things like drive-by shootings, larceny, murder, drugs. I mean, the whole gambit. And you wouldn’t think they would be up for writing poetry.

So I started out having them write about their fathers, but none of them had fathers that they knew. So I quickly moved to having them write about their mothers—now that was something they knew about, sadly. And the poems were mostly love, but a lot of hate.

But here’s my point and why I’m bringing it up. So I had prepared a lot of stuff to go down there with, but as I got there, I realized I had to just move on instinct and how to proceed.

So I told them they could not use rhyme, they had to be brutally honest and brave, only tell the truth, and they could be angry, and then I read them a few great poems that were brutally honest. I could—you’d be shocked if I read them. They had tragedy in them and love, so they had an example, right?

And after they wrote them—the poems, which I still have right here—I asked their permission if I could read them aloud to everybody in the group. Every one of them said yes, except one really tough girl who said no. And even she, I think, regretted not having her poem read.

And so they read them, and I realized in that moment, as I started to read them, that I could critique them in a different way to the best of my ability. This really isn’t about me. I mean, what can you do in one hour to offset such pain and disaster in a life?

“You are a real poet. You must keep writing. This is so beautiful. You have a fine gift. Keep going. You use such beautiful descriptions. This is powerful. I might cut out that last line in your poem. It would be even more powerful. You have been so honest. This is a strong poem. I love this poem. Can I keep a copy of your poem?”

We do anything possible we can to save the children, don’t we?

And as Terry Warner once said—he was a professor of philosophy at BYU; I had philosophy from him—“The telling blows against evil are struck one act of love at a time.”

I’ll read you one of these. This is one that was written in Spanish, and I translated it into English:

“Here I am locked up like an animal waiting for the day of my freedom, missing you and feeling bad. I ask you to forgive me for your tears. Today I feel sorry for not having listened to you. Forgive me, Mama, again. The tears from my eyes leave all day and all night. I think of you always and wait for you always. I love you, Omer.”

And there’s another one that says, “Mother, I hate you.”

So go to 2 Nephi 9:6 through 9, and I’m going to read these four verses together and then go back, and these verses are really quite shocking.

“For death has passed upon all men to fulfill the merciful plan of the great Creator. There must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come into man by reason of the fall, and the fall came by reason of transgression, and because man became fallen, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord. Wherefore there must be an infinite atonement. Without an infinite atonement, this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained in an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth to rise no more. And if the flesh should rise no more, our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God and became the devil to rise no more. And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies in misery like him. Yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transforms himself into an angel of light, and stirs up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder, and all manner of secret works of darkness.”

So back to verse 6. What do we learn immediately in verse 6?

Well, we learn that death is part of God’s plan. We will all die. Death is as important as life, and because the fall brought death, death needed a resurrection. Why? Because all men are fallen and thus cut off from the presence of the Lord.

So without the resurrection, death becomes final.

Verse 7: a man must needs have remained to an endless duration. If so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth to rise no more.

So what scientific process is he talking about, rotting and crumbling in the earth? Entropy, right? Also called the heat death, also called the second law of thermodynamics, where everything runs down, because heat can only move from a hotter to a cooler body, and when it has distributed itself evenly, there’s nothing. It’s vanished away into something else, although we know not destroyed, because complex materials always break down to the more simple.

So I’ve been running through a tropical jungle recently, and it’s one place you can literally see and smell the rot, the heat death happening, especially rotting mangoes and guavas. I mean, you can smell it happening in the dirt.

So what can stop this permanent breakdown happening to human bodies? What could possibly interfere?

Well, verse 9, Jacob understands, there must needs be a power, a power of resurrection. So isn’t that an interesting way to say it, a power of resurrection? It’s very descriptive of what’s happening. For the Father gave the Son the power to do it. It says in Matthew 28:18, Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.”

It’s quite an amazing thing to think about, isn’t it, that our bodies will be restored? And I want to know at which age they will be restored. This age or this age? I’m sure you want to be in that age too.

But Jacob doesn’t let us be happy very long. He’s kind of a dour soul, our Jacob. He says in verse 14 that when it happens, when the resurrection happens, we will have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, 15 and 16, and when all men shall have passed from death unto life, become immortal, they must appear before the judgment seat of the Holy One of Israel, and be judged, and they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still.

Verse 24—this is, we’re all in 9 mostly. And if they don’t repent and believe and be baptized and endure, they must be damned.

Now, what do you think it means to be damned? I’ve thought about this a lot, and this is what I think. Just what it means now, only it’s spelled differently. When a river is dammed, it’s stopped up, right? If we are damned, we are stopped. We make no progress, and our lives are stopped.

Joseph Ortlund years ago said in conference, and this I liked—it stuck with me—the most important stewardship you have is the glorious responsibility your Father in Heaven has given you to watch over your own soul.

So in other words, what happens to us a lot of it is what we are doing to our own self in here and in here.

So the next thing he talks about is spiritual death, when we become like him. And then he moves into it quickly.

God provided the resurrection as the first step to a physical at-one-ment, atonement, but there had to be a spiritual at-one-ment as well to save our spirits, and that required an atonement.

So remembering 8 and 9, it said if we are cut off from God, from his mercy and grace, and rise no more, then the opposite of at-one-ment is happening, right? We’re being split from God.

And then verse 9, our spirits will become like him, like Satan, to remain with the father of lies and misery like he is.

So a question: why do we become subject to the devil and become like him, to remain with him in misery like he is? Why do we become subject without the resurrection to him? Why can’t God reach us there? That’s what I wanted to know. Why—he can do anything—why can’t he reach down and pull us out?

Well, here’s the best answer that I’ve come up with. Because we have no way to become clean and whole, thankfully, to enter God’s presence, because we always sin, right? And without his help, we can’t return, and we are dammed up or stopped.

So even though our spirits may live subject to Satan, the atonement makes available to us the only kind of lasting life worth having. We could keep on living, but who wants to like that?

He undeniably said this, because the body could go on living and soak the spirit, it will be a horrible thing if you are going to be living in a sewer forever and ever. And the Father could not let that happen, not to his children.

So Christ volunteered and stepped in. And gave us the atonement, his atonement.

So is this reality all this that we’ve been talking about? Was there a plan for us to escape from the grasp of this awful monster, death and hell, the death of the body and the death of the spirit?

Do you believe in the powers of darkness?

So I’ve told this story before. I think you’ve heard it, sorry. So one morning early in Puerto Rico where we were on our mission, I was out running in this little park—it’s called an herb. We lived in like a gated neighborhood, and as I ran, I heard through an open window up a story above the park in a house, a man screaming, raging at a child. It was a terrible sound.

The screaming and the child crying. And here’s what happened. The park became still and silent, which is something on an island where there’s always sound, right? Birds and wind and palms moving. There was no sound. Beside the screaming and the crying of the child, the birds stopped singing, the wind dropped, the palms were still. It was as though the whole world stopped and was listening, and I’m not making this up.

In D&C 38:11 and 12, it says, the powers of darkness prevail upon the earth among the children of men in the presence of the hosts of heaven, which causes silence to reign, and all eternity is pained.

And that is exactly what happened in the park. Silence reigned in the face of the powers of darkness. Eternity was pained and it was frightening.

Is Satan’s power real? Yes.

Is there hope for joy in a world of such darkness? Yes.

J.R.R. Tolkien, you all know who that is, Lord of the Rings, right? He wrote his books after his terrible experience in World War I in the trenches. This is his statement:

“Among the tales of sorrow and ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days, there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy, and under the shadow of death, light that endures.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

9:21: “And he cometh into the world that he may save all men, if they will hearken unto his voice. For behold, he suffereth the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam.”

Isn’t that beautiful? We all belong to the family of Adam.

And Jacob just rises up in gratitude and joyousness a couple of places, one is in 9:13: “O how great the plan of our God! For the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous. And the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible and immortal, and they are living souls.”

I’ve got two grandchildren in the graves, and I want to see them again, and here they are. One is Karis, this one, and the other one is Alexandras, Isaac and Larry. So I just brought them for you. You don’t have to come look at them, but.

So how important—oh wait, first I want to say this. You probably didn’t notice in that verse I just read, which was 13, that it says the spirit and the body is restored to itself. Those words are singular, aren’t they? Is and itself, you know, a verb and a pronoun. So the spirit and the body are one.

It’s quite beautiful, D&C 88, you know, you all know this: the spirit and the body are the soul of man.

So how important is the body in God’s whole plan? Why is it so important, and can we ignore it? Can we eat Oreos and chocolate cake?

These are mine. I know, it’s dumb, but there’s nothing left of that chocolate cake, let me tell you. There’s a little strip. We all have our things, right? Oreos, nah, but chocolate cake, okay.

So how important is the body? Can we still eat Oreos and chocolate cake?

Well, the body is the vehicle and the conduit of light, both in and out. And my favorite answer as to why the body answers or matters is this, that it can be a revelatory instrument. Through our bodies, we take in light, we grow, we learn to love, we touch, and we comfort, we work in the earth, and we forgive and repent. All with the body, right?

Jesus said the light of the body is the eye, and if your eye is single, your whole body shall be full of light. The body is so important.

Does a body have to be perfect to be a revelatory instrument? Can the body be an instrument of life if it’s imperfect, if it has a few extra pounds, if it has an extra chromosome, if it is broken, if it always remains a child?

D&C 93:33 says, “The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, cannot receive a fulness of joy.” The elements are the tabernacle of God as well. I added that.

So can we knowing this hate and destroy our bodies? Well, yes, it happens, doesn’t it? It happened to me.

I had shoulder surgery a year in April. It was the most painful thing you can ever experience, let me tell you. And I was so angry that it hurt so much after a week that I went on a walk by myself, stepped into a pothole and broke my leg.

I never talked about it to you, I bet. And I’m lying on the asphalt thinking, I can’t believe this just happened. I just—I know I broke it. I broke my leg.

So I have this horrible, you know, I have this thing on my shoulder and a broken leg. Was that stupid or what? I mean, we do things to ourselves, you know. I was afraid to, you know, tell anybody. It was so embarrassing.

Elder Richard Scott said—he’s talking about the word of God—that it can actually accelerate healing of the body. So he says that the scriptures are like packets of light that illuminate our minds. But then he applies the scriptures to how they influence the body. I thought this was so interesting.

They, the words of God, have potent power to heal emotional challenges. They can accelerate physical healing. They can accelerate atonement. What an amazing thought.

So there’s this really startling verse in chapter 9, verse 42, where Jacob tells us whom God despises.

Now this is startling, ’cause you think God loves all, everyone equally, right? But maybe even he has emotions about some things.

So let—you know, Jacob really gets going, and he shows us the things we do that waste the days of our probation.

So this is 9:28. At the top of the list is intellectual pride. “When they are learned, they think they are wise, that they know everything of themselves. But they are so foolish.” You see, these are the people who think they know everything. And they set aside the counsel of God.

Verse 29. He does give a caveat: “To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.”

And then 30, and right behind the learned are the rich who despise the poor and persecute the meek.

And 42: “And they that are rich who are puffed up because of their learning and their wisdom and their riches”—and that, I think, is the point. They are puffed up. “They are they whom he despiseth, and unless they cast these things away and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he won’t open the gate to them.”

Those are pretty terrifying words. What a statement, “fools before God.” And also appears in Paul’s words, works.

And what gate is he talking about? Well, verse 41: “Come unto the Holy One, remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel, and he employeth no servant there. He will be there. He will know every one of us.”

Is there a more beautiful verse in all scripture than that?

Neal A. Maxwell said this beautiful thing about Christ being the keeper of the gate. Not only is judgment not delegated, but divine mercy can best be applied by he who knows everything about us. I’m paraphrasing. He knows things that only he can know, like the moments of courage in your lives, the unknown, unnoticed acts of Christian service. The unspoken thoughts that you have—the only way he could know them is how he knows them, except—and he is the one that can give perfect judgment. That person is the keeper of the gate, the one who uses the vast resources of his power to get us home safely.

So in 39—verse 39, Jacob talks about the carnally minded. “Can’t you see,” he says, “to be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal.”

So here’s the question. Why is being carnally minded death?

You can ask yourself, well, there’s the obvious reasons we’ve all—we’ve just been, you know, talking about, but here’s the one I like the best, because we are beings of light. 1 Thessalonians 5:5: “Ye are all the children of light and children of the day. We are not of the night, nor of darkness.”

We’re beings of light, and if we turn away from light, we’re going against our very natures, and that can destroy a soul. I think it does. I see it everywhere.

Jacob says something happens to people who are not fools before God. This is in 43. It’s so sad. He says, “Happiness is hid from them forever, that happiness which is prepared for the saints.” They will never have that joy to be alive in themselves. Even though they struggle through earth life.

I have—here’s a few words about the great Isaiah, because right now, Jacob goes into some words of Isaiah, even though he doesn’t give him credit. So let’s read those first.

He says, “Everyone that thirsts”—this is verse 50 and 51—“Everyone that thirsts, come to the waters. You don’t need money, there’s no price. Do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy. Come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not.” Aren’t those beautiful?

So let me just say a bit about Isaiah. He isn’t even quoting him like he did in previous chapters. Isaiah is just in his head, I think, and comes out of his mouth, and that happens so much. Isaiah’s thought permeates the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon are always quoting him and expressing their own thoughts in his words often without like this ever even mentioning the source. He’s speaking from the dust, Isaiah is. He saw Christ, Nephi saw Christ, and Jacob saw Christ, the three great witnesses.

And I’ll just add that Isaiah is a literary genius and Israel’s most profound thinker. He might be the greatest poet of the English language, I always thought, except maybe for Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom I think is a great poet. So don’t ever back off from Isaiah.

So chapter 10, Jacob wraps up his sermon. Most people think that Nephi only added segments of this second day.

We learn in 10:3 that the Holy One’s name is Christ, and this is where people, prophets, start calling him Christ in the Book of Mormon, because an angel told Jacob what his name was. This, and so it begins to be used.

In 18, we learn that the Gentiles will be numbered among the house of Israel. I just brought my little teapot, ’cause it’s so pretty, as a representative of the Gentiles, because they will be in the house of Israel as well.

They will be numbered, verse 18, among the house of Israel. It’s just a little thing.

We learn about the land. Jacob talks about a choice land, verse 10: “This land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land.” What land’s he talking about? Our land, our Americas, right?

“It shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles. There shall be no kings upon the land who shall raise up unto the Gentiles. I will fortify this land against all nations, and he that fighteth against Zion will perish. I will be a light unto them forever that hear my words.”

It’s verse 11 and verse 19. “It is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands,” and we live in that land.

So Jacob says, verse 20, don’t hang our heads down. We shouldn’t be hanging our heads down, because, verse 20, this gorgeous verse, we are not cast off. We’ve been driven out of the land of our inheritance, but we’ve been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path.

Could there be anything more inspiring or beautiful than that? The Lord is giving us something better than what we have lost.

So you may have had great trouble on this earth. So many troubles. But who’s to say you have not been and may be led to a better land, with the sea, or path, the sea, that great, but eternal, endless unknown, shimmering in its blue and white, and turquoise and green, shining beauty, and its great storms, and its great beasts that rise out of the sea, crash.

I’m just gonna end with the wonderful Wendell Berry. Do you know Wendell Berry, the author? So wonderful. With his statement, who just died, what a loss to the world.

“Laugh. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection.”

I’ll read it again.

“Laugh. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection.”

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Transcript of the audio recording (approx. 44–45 minutes)

Let me just second what she said about Judy, and I know your mother is so proud of all those lessons and all the practicing you did to be able to play so beautifully for us today. So welcome to this beautiful fall morning.

I have to tell you, I’m a little bit surprised at how much I enjoyed preparing this lesson this week. I wasn’t counting on that, and I’m hopeful that you can feel some of that excitement that I felt also.

Today we’re talking about Second Nephi chapters, halfway through chapter 4 through chapters 8. And during these chapters, it’s been thirty years since they left Jerusalem. Okay. We know that because Nephi talks about it; he says it’s been thirty years, and he is going back and he’s writing about all the stuff that we’ve already learned about in First Nephi, okay? He’s telling these stories. And later on in this chapter, he also talks about it being forty years, so thirty to forty years after they’ve left, he’s writing this, writing these books, and I thought, well, I’m looking out at this group, I bet most of you can remember stuff that happened thirty or forty years ago to you, you know? And because I can, and when I think back thirty or forty years, I’m thinking, oh, I was in the midst of raising teenagers, and aren’t I so glad I’m still standing here to talk to you, so this is great. So I have a much different perspective of my life thirty years ago than I did when I was in the trenches, you know, doing it. And I feel this is the same way with Nephi. He’s got a better perspective of what has happened these last years. And now he’s writing these plates.

And upon these, I write the things of my soul, and many of the scriptures which are engraven upon the plates of brass. For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children. So here’s his purpose, and Laurie talked about this last week, about how his purpose for writing. We should have a purpose for reading. He had a purpose for writing this.

Now, we start off with a very different kind of writing in this chapter than we’ve seen so far, and I’m almost not being the scholar and not being to the end of the Book of Mormon, I think this is a unique chapter in the Book of Mormon, and it is what we call the Psalm of Nephi. Okay? This isn’t him talking about his history or the brothers or all the miracles that have happened, you know, that have got them to this point in the promised land. It’s very, it’s just a different interlude. This is personal. This is, he’s looking back at his life and both lamenting his weaknesses and praising God. And I’m going to read the whole thing. It’s quite a long psalm, but I would ask you to follow along because I’ll have it up here, but you can read it wherever, but I just think it’s an important part, and we’re going to spend quite a little bit of time on this.

This is the setup that he’s taught before he starts his song. Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord, and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth, O wretched man that I am, yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh, my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities, I am encompassed about because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me, and when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins. Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. This is kind of the setup for it. And it reminds us that Nephi was a prophet, but he was also a man who suffered and temptations and didn’t live the way he always wanted to live, maybe a little bit like us.

And then we start with the Psalm of Nephi. My God hath been my support. He hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness, and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing of them to quake before me. Behold, he hath heard me, heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge by visions in the nighttime. We know some of these stories that he’s talking about. And by day have I waxed bold in mighty prayer before him. Yea, my voice have I sent upon high, and angels came down and ministered unto me. And upon the wings of his spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains, and mine eyes have beheld great things, yea, even too great for man. Therefore I was bidden that I should not write them. O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away and my strength slacken because of mine afflictions? And why should I yield to sin because of my flesh? Yea, why should I give way to temptations that the evil one may have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why art thou angry because of mine enemy? Awake my soul, no longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions. Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say, O Lord, I will praise thee forever. Yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation. O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake at the appearance of sin? May the gates of hell be shut continually before me, because that my heart is broken, and my spirit is contrite. O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be stripped in the plain road? O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness? O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies? Wilt thou make my path straight before me? Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way, but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way but the ways of my enemy? He’s just pleading with the Lord here. O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of the flesh, for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of the flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm. Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss, therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee. Yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend up unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen.

Now, this is called the Psalm of Nephi, and I know you all know this, but a psalm is a song, right? So I thought, certainly someone has made a song out of the Psalm of Nephi, and I was not wrong. The BYU men’s chorus put Nephi’s psalm to music. Finlandia, so some familiar music to you. But they took literary license with the words, making them rhyme while keeping the spirit of the psalm. I’m going to show you the video, and the video has the words up there. You’ll see that the words don’t exactly match this whole long psalm of Nephi, but they certainly match the spirit and the meaning that he gives, and I think they got it right. So let’s go.

[Song plays; approximate lyrics from the performance:]

Upon his word I ponder day and night.
He stirred my drive, brought visions to my sleep,
and kept me safe for desert’s and the deep.
He filled my heart with his consuming love.
And bore me hard on means of his grace.

Yes, as I grow, O wretched man am I,
my flesh is weak, and I become the spot
of sin, O world of sin, which holds me in its thrall.

If I give in and choose temptation’s call,
then straight through slack I waste in sorrow’s day.
My peace is strong, my enemy is free.

Awake my soul, no longer droop in sin.
Rejoice my heart, and let me praise again,
let me praise the Lord my God, who is my rock and stay,
to keep me straight upon His praise, plain way.

O let me shake at the first sight of Thee,
and thus escape my foes with.

I love the Lord. In him my soul is.

Okay, let’s try to do this right. I think they did a great job on that. So now, how can we liken that to ourselves?

I have a big shout out to the Eighth Ward Blue Society book group. We read a bunch of books, and a couple of years ago, we read this book, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. And it is—I, the opinions you hear are not necessarily those of anybody above me, but I think this is the best book on prayer I’ve ever read. And he talks about this, not LDS, he talks in this book about how we can make our prayers more meaningful. And I’m just gonna read from one particular chapter called “How to Pray Differently.” And he says, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he gave the Lord’s Prayer. And, okay, this is the participation part of the program. All of you can repeat the first sentence of the Lord’s Prayer with me, if you would do that. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Okay, that’s the first—let’s do it again. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That’s the first line, and he says, What do we learn from this first line? He says he learns three things. We are to remember who God is. He is our Father. He is in heaven, and He is hallowed or sacred. The second thing we learn is remember who we are. I’m a child of God. And the third thing, and this might be the most hard, everybody else is also a child of God, okay? To learn those three things from that, okay? Because everybody else is our siblings.

Now, he talks about this, I want you to—this is to remember exactly what he said, and how one way to pray differently, but then he says we need to remember who we’re talking to when we’re speaking to the Lord. And I found a couple of quotes, Robert Millet said, Jesus Christ is not a cosmic errand boy. Do my prayers sometimes become that, where I give a list of things that I would like done in my life? And then Neil Maxwell said, we need to talk about the difference between showing up and worship. And sometimes I think I’m showing up more than I’m worshiping. He said, but to worship is to intentionally praise and adore our God in a way that transforms us.

So, Tyler Staton here gives us three ways to pray differently. And I’m not saying you should do this all the time, but once in a while, it wouldn’t hurt. He says there are three things to do, and let’s see. The hymnal of ancient Israel is found right in the middle of the Bible. Here we find the 150 psalms, prayers that have given language to generations of our spiritual ancestors. Read a psalm slowly. I prefer to read aloud, even when I’m alone. When you reach a line that resonates, allow it to be a springboard for your own prayers. Let a single verse or phrase from an ancient prayer become a foundation for praising God as creator, redeemer, savior, or friend. So, pray a psalm. So what psalm should you pray? I thought you’d never ask. How about you could do Nephi’s psalm, which is a little long. You could pray something from Isaiah. You could do a psalm from Psalms, like the Lord is my shepherd. But how about we liken the scriptures to ourselves? And hear me out here, write your own psalm. Okay, I can feel the eyes rolling from here, okay? But I want, we’re going to give this a try.

A couple of years ago, Sister Susan Gong, and yes, she’s the wife of Elder Gerrit Gong, was quoted, gave a talk, and there was an article in the Meridian magazine called “Writing a Psalm of Your Own to Strengthen Your Relationship with the Lord.” And Susan Gong gave an example of how you write your own psalm. And I’m gonna give you one example of a sister who heard this talk, and she is not named because they didn’t name her in the thing, and this is the psalm she wrote.

Praise ye the Lord, my Redeemer and friend, for he hath sustained me through heavy trials, and given me hope for eternal glory. The Lord, he is my light, my constant companion, and my joy, and I will lean on him and bring his pure love and truth to others.

She followed these five things. Begin your psalm with “praise ye the Lord.” Next sentence or phrase, “for he hath,” add an “and,” next sentence begin with “the Lord he is my,” and close your psalm with “and I will.” These are sentence starters that we use. Now, if you were ever to take notes in this presentation, this is what I would recommend. You take, we’ll, we’re gonna go through this slowly, but you put a number one, begin your psalm with praise the Lord, and then skip down, and then put the second and third, and we’re gonna do a psalm here, and we’re gonna look at Nephi’s psalm, and see how he works with this.

So she says, begin your psalm with “praise the Lord.” Praise ye the Lord. And I’m gonna give you some samples. Praise ye the Lord, my Redeemer and friend. That’s from one of the sisters’ psalms. If you take just a second and think to yourself, I’ll give you twenty seconds here to think, what could you start your psalm with? Praise ye the Lord.

Okay, let’s go to number two. The next sentence or phrase begin with, “for he hath,” and I’ve got an example right from Nephi’s psalm. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. That’s an example from Nephi’s psalm, and here’s one from a sister. Praise ye the Lord, for he hath come to me when I was alone, and no one was there for me, not even myself.

The third. Add “and.” Second Nephi 4:25. And upon the wings of his spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains. And a sister. And he hath sent angels to rescue me, and his spirit to comfort me.

Number four. Next sentence begins with, “the Lord, he is my.” Second Nephi 4:20, my God hath been my support. He hath led me through my afflictions in the wilderness. And a sister, he is my light, my constant companion, and my joy.

Close your psalm with, “and I will.” And I think this might be the most important part. What will I do? Nephi says, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend up unto thee, my rock and my everlasting God. Amen. And the sister, and I will lean on him and bring his pure love and truth to others.

I was really touched by these, and I so, and I’m really glad that Sister Melissa puts all these up on the scripture class so you can look at all of these. But I’m calling this Psalms of the Sisters, and I don’t have names because they didn’t give names. They were people who gave permission but did not give their names. Here’s a psalm.

Praise ye the Lord, for he hath come to me when I was alone, and no one was there for me, not even myself. And he hath sent angels to rescue me, and his spirit to comfort me. The Lord, he is my light, he is the love for me that I have not had for myself. And I will not let go of this hand, no matter how dark and terrible the path, and he will save me now and until the end.

Number two, praise ye the Lord, for he hath protected my children and guided me out of sorrow. The Lord, he is my salvation and solace. In his name I will comfort those in need of comfort and mourn with those who mourn.

Psalms of the Sisters, number three, praise ye the Lord, for he hath given me beautiful people to love, for he hath blessed me with a full life, surrounded by so much love. He is my redeemer, my greatest friend, my perfect example, and I will gladly recognize his hand in all things.

And number four, praise ye the Lord, for he hath rescued me from a secular life without an ultimate purpose, and led me with the Spirit to his gospel and his church. The Lord, he is my very patient leader and example, and I will try harder to follow his example.

I thought these were beautiful psalms, and I will tell you, I did write my own psalm. I’m not sharing it here because it’s not as good as these, but it is personal to me. I think it’s a worthy thing to try to give a prayer or a psalm of worship to God. That a single verse or phrase from an ancient prayer or your own soul become a foundation for praising God as creator, redeemer, savior, and friend. Nephi has done it. Psalms in the Old Testament. I think it’s a lovely little interlude in our history of the Nephites and Lamanites. And after this lovely interlude, we are back to what is happening in the promised land.

The promised land has not healed the rift between the brothers. It has finally escalated to the point of no return, and now Nephi has to once again go into the wilderness. So we’re in Second Nephi chapter five. And it came to pass that the Lord did warn me that I, Nephi, should depart from them and flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me. Wherefore it came to pass that I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, my elder brother, and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God. Wherefore they did hearken unto my words. And we did take our tents, and whatsoever things were possible for us, and to journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had journeyed for the space of many days, we did pitch our tents.

I’m so sad about this. They spent thirty years previously, they go into the wilderness to go to the promised land, and they no sooner get to the promised land, than Nephi’s leaving and going back into the wilderness again. And then this, the scripture, I found some sad scriptures in here. And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban. Remember this, come back. And after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us. For I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. Think about this. This is, I’m sure many of us have had rifts in our family. And here we are in the promised land and we can’t keep it together.

So I’ve been thinking about this, and here’s how I imagined. I tried to think of a way to portray this, and I thought, okay, we’ve got Lehi’s family, and we’ve got the promised land, and for all these times, you know, they’re wandering around in the wilderness, coming, and they build the ship, and they come, and to get to the promised land. And so we’ve got these two, like, circles from a non-existent Venn diagram that’s not matching, and what I had hoped for was that it would look like this. Here’s all Lehi’s family, and here’s the promised land, and they’re all together and living in peace, and we’ve gone through all of these hardships together, and here we are. And instead, it doesn’t look like this. It looks more like this. We’ve got Lehi’s people, and we’ve got the chosen land, the promised land, and chosen people, and some are living out, and there’s a whole bunch. It’s a mess.

And I started thinking, what makes a chosen people or a promised land? And in Second Nephi chapter five verse ten, here’s one of the things that Nephi is saying that his people are doing. And we did observe to keep the judgments and the statutes and the commandments of the Lord in all things according to the law of Moses. And verse eleven, and the Lord was with us, and we did prosper exceedingly, for we did sow seed, and we did reap again in abundance, and we began to raise flocks and herds and animals of every kind. And they’re not technically in the promised land, because I think the Lamanites are still there, right? They went out into the wilderness. It is a little ironic that the promised land, the Nephites, the Lamanites stayed there. And the Nephites leave. And the Nephites even build a temple, which means maybe we make our own promised land. And it came to pass that we began to prosper exceedingly and to multiply in the land, and it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness.

So we’ve got the Nephites living in, after the manner of happiness, and how do we get there? Wherefore, oh, and what’s happened to the Lamanites? Wherefore the word of the Lord was fulfilled, which he spake unto me, saying that, Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words, they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence. So the Lamanites are living their own kind of life in the promised land, but they’re not living with the covenants. So I think, can we choose to be chosen? Elder Bednar said this, many are called, but few are chosen. That’s from Doctrine and Covenants 121:34–35. God does not have a list of favorites to which we must hope our names will someday be added. He does not limit the chosen to a restricted few. Rather, you and I ultimately can choose to be chosen through the righteous exercise of our moral agency. So it seems to me that the Nephites chose to be chosen even if they’re back in the wilderness. And maybe we can choose to be chosen, whether we live in Zion or in Manitoba or in Senegal or anywhere in the world, we can choose to be chosen and find our own promised land wherever we are. Okay, that’s my little, gotta try on that.

Then we come to Isaiah, and it’s sort of why Isaiah. Jacob has been set apart. One, the Nephites go into their own land here. They start to organize, and Nephi starts setting up things. And I think it’s also he’s setting up for a changing of the guard, because Nephi’s I don’t know, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, I don’t know how old he is, but he can look back thirty and forty years, so he, so he’s that old. And can I say, I think it’s been hard living in the wilderness. It hasn’t been cushy, cushy times. And he’s setting up, Jacob has been set apart, and he’s decided, Nephi has asked him to read Isaiah to the people. And this is sort of interesting. I have from this book called Second Nephi by Terryl Givens. It says, Nephi concludes this brief account of community building by definitively replacing the focus on a promised place with an aspiration to become a promised people. So he says, okay, well, we’re not in the promised land. Let’s become a promised people. And then he sets Jacob up to read, and why Isaiah? Well, it’s because Isaiah is prophesying about their brethren in Israel, okay? He says, and Jacob says this, behold, my beloved brethren, I, Jacob, having been called of God, and ordained after the manner of this holy order, and having been consecrated by my brother Nephi, unto whom ye look as a king or a protector, and on whom ye depend for safety, behold, ye know that I have spoken unto you exceedingly many things. Nevertheless, I speak unto you again, for I am desirous for the welfare of your souls. Yea, mine anxiety is great for you, and ye yourselves know that it has ever been. For I have exhorted you with diligence, and I have taught you the words of my Father, and I have spoken unto you concerning all things which are written from the creation of the world. And now, behold, I would speak unto you concerning things which are, and which are to come. Wherefore, I read you the words of Isaiah, and where do they get the words of Isaiah? The brass plates. When Nephi left, he took the sword of Laban, he took the brass plates, and he took the Liahona. Those are directly mentioned. But he’s got the brass plates, and they are the words which my brother has desired that I should speak unto you, and I speak unto you for your sakes, that ye may learn and glorify the name of God. And now the words which I shall read are they which Isaiah spoke concerning all the house of Israel, wherefore they may be likened unto you, for ye are the house of Israel. And there are many things which have been spoken by Isaiah which may be likened unto you, because ye are the house of Israel.

Anybody here from the house of Israel? I should ask for a show of hands, but I’ll raise my hand right around for the house of Israel. So why are they interested in the house of Israel? Well, these are their brethren. I have a grandfather who would sometimes speak a few Swedish phrases because he still remembered what he didn’t personally remember. He was a little blacked out sometimes. But his father came from Sweden, and we talked about interested in what’s going on in Sweden, okay? So they’re still interested in what’s happening in Israel. I’m hoping that they’re happy that they avoided the destruction of Jerusalem, but they’re doing that.

And so in Nephi 6, oh, let’s see, did I want to read? Okay. Yeah, yes, I did want to read this. What do they learn from Isaiah? First, they learn that God can make any land a land of promise, a holy land. They have lived this principle, and their descendants will continue to experience its reality. Second, they learned that very real prophetic promises tied to their place in God’s designs for the human family are still intact despite their separation from their lands and kindred of their original roots in Israel. It is to these promises and assurances from Isaiah that Nephi devotes so much of his attention in the rest of the second book, because they are still entitled to the promises of the house of Israel.

So in Second Nephi six, and now, verse eight, and now I, Jacob, would speak somewhat concerning these words, for behold, the Lord has shown me that those who were at Jerusalem from whence we came had been slain and carried away captive. Nevertheless, the Lord has shown unto me that they should return again, and he also has shown unto me that the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, should manifest himself unto them in the flesh. And after he should manifest himself, they should scourge him and crucify him according to the words of the angel who spake it unto me. So Jacob is receiving his own revelation, and now he’s receiving revelation of Christ’s coming. And I was always really excited when I found all of these references in Second Nephi to Christ, when I was, when my purpose for reading was looking for Christ. Here’s some of the places that I found it.

And in Second Nephi chapter eight, now he’s talking about the second coming and the benefits of keeping the commandments. And because this is in the future, this is really speaking to us today because it’s in our future. For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arm shall judge the people. The isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath. For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner, but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart I have written my law. Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool. But my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation.

I believe I thought this stuff was so important that he had, that he spends a lot of time in his books writing about what Isaiah had to say. So, what have we learned? And once again, an assignment, a challenge, or an invitation. What are you getting out of reading the Book of Mormon? Are you finding those things for that purpose that you set? Or are you finding different things? It doesn’t matter as long as you’re finding some purpose. Choose to become chosen people in your own promised land. You can be chosen, you can be living in the promised land on Shirley Lane, okay? Or Morningside Drive, or Camille, or wherever. Choose to be, because you, by living the commandments, you can make any place a promised land, and you can write your own psalm and pray it. And I hope you do. I’ve found this a meaningful part of my prayer life, and I hope you do too.

Thank you for your attention, and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Transcript

Thank you so much for that prayer. I was just holding in—I feel like I’m kind of prayer needy. If you’ve even glanced at me sideways, I’ve asked for your prayers. There’s been a lot of thought and prayer that went into the decision of whether or not I could accept this calling to teach. I asked my family for some feedback, and I was met with some hesitation, surprisingly. So I asked what the hesitation might be, and I was told that when I’m preparing for lessons, I’m just not that much fun. So that’s definitely something that I’ve added to my prayers—that I can continue to do this and still be fun. But I have received comfort and assurance from the Lord that He will help me.

But in addition to praying for me, I have been praying for each of you—each of you that come with whatever it is that you might be carrying at this time. I recognize that you all come for different reasons and different hopes of what you want to gain from this hour of being here. And for this reason, I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon. For what it has to offer, because I know that it is the Book of Mormon that can bring whatever it is that you might be in need of—whatever hope or peace or healing or assurance is found in the Book of Mormon, because it is the Book of Mormon that points us to that true source of hope and healing, which is our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I was so inspired by Anita’s first class that she gave when she talked about finding a purpose and a focus in reading and in her scripture study. She commented about how we’re familiar with the stories in the scriptures, it’s something that we know that are comforting to us, but she wanted to challenge herself to read it with a central focus, and I believe she said she read it once focusing on the words of Christ and has since had other focuses and purposes. And when she said this, I knew that was something that I needed and that I wanted to do. I’m also curious if it motivated any of you, and if you have found a central focus or purpose this year in reading.

But after deciding that and looking for what my focus might be this year, I was especially intrigued when I heard Jared Halverson talking about Nephi’s purpose in writing the Book of Mormon. In 1 Nephi chapter 6, verse 4, Nephi says, “For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved.” So with this, we know that everything that Nephi writes is going to point us towards Jesus Christ. And then Jared Halverson pointed out what he said is Nephi’s thesis statement. This is the first chapter of the Book of Mormon, the very last verse in the first chapter where Nephi says, “But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.” That was it. That’s my purpose. That’s my focus—to focus on reading and searching these scriptures with the intent of seeing the tender mercies of the Lord.

So this week’s assignment was 2 Nephi chapters 1 through 4, and right out of the gate, guess what we find? The tender mercies of the Lord. We have Father Lehi has gathered his children together. He’s getting old. He has some words that he wants to share with his children, and this is what he says: “And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had made an end of teaching my brethren, our father, Lehi, also spake many things unto them, and rehearsed unto them, how great things the Lord had done for them in bringing them out of the land of Jerusalem. And he spake unto them concerning their rebellions upon the waters, and the mercies of God in sparing their lives, that they were not swallowed up in the sea. And he also spake unto them concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained—how merciful the Lord had been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem. Why? Because if we had stayed, we would have perished. How merciful is the Lord.”

Don’t you think that Lehi is just saying, do you want to see the evidence of God’s love? Do you really want to see how he has never forgotten us, how he’s been with us from the beginning? Look around. Look where you are. We’re here. We are in this land of promise. We are here safely. I get the feeling that Lehi, this father, doesn’t feel as though Laman and Lemuel are focusing on the Lord’s mercies. And it’s hard to blame them. Life hasn’t been easy for them. They’ve experienced every type of physical depravity. It looks nothing like what they had hoped.

Do you ever get caught in this cycle of focusing on what’s not going right? Is there any chance that we can relate a little bit? I think that occasionally we start to ruminate on what’s not going right, on a prayer that wasn’t answered in the way that we’d hoped, in the way that our life looks, in the way that we might have been wronged. I don’t think that Lehi’s trying to invalidate all of the hard, but I think he knows that ruminating on the dark keeps us from seeing the light.

But what if it’s our nature? What if it’s our nature just to be a little bit skewed towards our lack? Is that something that we can change? Can we change our nature? Neuroscientists tell us that the more we repeat a behavior, the deeper a neural pathway in our brain becomes. This is called Hebb’s law. It’s neurons that fire together, wire together. It’s basically what you think about becomes your reality. So one of the greatest gifts of God is that he has created us and created our brains to be able to change. We can change our very nature. This means that you can create new neural pathways. It’s just that your brain wants to go to that path of least resistance. So it will continue down the path that is well-worn. So if you want to create a new neural pathway, you have to repeat a behavior over and over again.

So if I want to bypass the very deeply worn neural pathway that is created by picking up my phone, which is just an impulse now, I have to focus on instead picking up my scriptures. And the more I pick up my scriptures and not my phone, the deeper this neural pathway becomes. The easier it is for my brain to go to this neural pathway. What we choose to think about is deeply influenced by our image and knowledge of God, which is what I think that Lehi is desperately wanting his children to know. He wants them to know God, he wants them to know his nature, and he wants his sons to respond to the greatness of God by openly loving and honoring him. He knows that when we understand—when they understand God’s greatness—we want more and more of him.

I personally really want my children and grandchildren to focus on the goodness of God, on the goodness that’s in their lives. My son mentioned to me recently that he spent a lot of time and effort creating what he’d hoped would be this really fun weekend for his three kids, who are ages ten and seven and four. He said he felt like the weekend went really well, everyone had a great time, and then when their grandparents had met up with them later and asked them what they did that weekend, they all shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn’t remember. My son said he just felt so defeated. How could they not remember? I feel like Lehi has a little bit of this similar feeling. How do you not remember? How can you ignore the goodness of God? How can you ignore what we just did this weekend? And then he kind of gives us a little insight as to how we remember, in that he continues to bring it up. He continues to talk to them about it. He continues to remind them about all of the ways that the Lord has shown up in their lives. And that is why in the scriptures we hear over and over again, remember, remember, remember. So when we remember, it changes our very focus, which changes our very nature.

So Lehi’s come to the end of his life, and he’s gathered his family together for some counsel. He’s going to teach them, he’s going to bless them, and he’s going to bear his testimony to them. What message do I want to leave my loved ones?

I have a new daughter-in-law, Ellie. We had a conversation recently about fathers and counsel. Ellie told me that she remembers many conversations with her own father growing up in Mexico. When Ellie was born, her father applied for a green card for his daughter, knowing that if and when that application was accepted, she would need to leave his care and his protection and move to the US. He knew very well that that time could come before either of them felt ready. What would you say to your children if you knew that you had limited time while they were in your care and protection? Ellie said her father took every opportunity to fill her with his wisdom and love and counsel. She said many of their conversations centered around situations that had moral implications, and that they would go something like this. He would say, listen, if X happens, you have a choice. You can choose to follow the crowd, you can choose to follow the world and where those natural man tendencies lead you. But pick up that thread, see where that choice leads. Could that choice lead to this, but might then lead to this, and it could then lead you to a place that you don’t want to be? Make the choice, he said, that is going to protect you and protect our family name. Ellie’s father was trying to teach her to think celestial, and she felt his love. Well, when throughout all of those conversations, at seventeen, that application was finally accepted, and she left her father’s physical presence. But his words stayed with her and have been a beacon and a protection to her to this day.

In this last conference session, Elder Christofferson had his landmark talk, “O Be Wise.” He said, at different times, President Nelson has reminded us that as we make current decisions, we should always be asking, where will this lead? What is the effect on our future of the decisions we make in the present? And then this one by Amy Wright, if we become casual in our discipleship of Jesus Christ, it could be catastrophic for our children.

Did you just really feel this from Lehi? Turn to 2 Nephi 1:21. He says, “And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that I might leave this world with gladness because of you.” And then in verse 28, we learn that Lehi really would love to give his sons, the oldest sons, the birthright blessing. He says, “And now, my son, Laman, and also Lemuel and Sam, and also my sons who are the sons of Ishmael, behold, if ye will hearken unto the voice of Nephi ye shall not perish. And if ye will hearken unto him I leave unto you a blessing, yea, even my first blessing.” I mean, after all of this dissent and murmuring and mocking, this father has not given up. He is still pleading for them to choose the greater portion. With this, I think Lehi is mirroring our own Father in Heaven, who never gives up on his children, who continues to desire a covenant relationship with them, so that he might more fully bless them, empower them, and protect them.

Verse 13, Lehi pleads, “O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.” Wake up, he’s saying. Wake up from the sleep of ignorance and apathy, and from the sleep of complacency, from the sleep of self-indulgence. Wake up to your own part that you’re playing in your own misery and discontent.

Lili Anderson said that she sees this as a call to wake up from our natural man’s desires to cover and deny our sins. She says this has application to every one of us. We’re all bound by something. We have great privileges through our covenants that we live beneath because we are human. And when we undertake to cover our sins and lie to ourselves, when we are selfish with our husband, when we hide resentment toward a parent for past mistakes, when we yell at our kids and justify it, it is excusing ourselves. It is dumbing down the principles of the gospel to match up with our behavior. We justify and rationalize, I was under stress, I was hungry, I was in a bad place. And you know what? I pay my tithing. I go to the temple. I serve. I’m good enough. We pretend that we’re living in better harmony with our covenants than we are, and behold, the heavens withdraw themselves. All about power, all about light and truth, intelligence, blessing, protection, withdraws. This is how we fall into a deep sleep.

Three times he implores his sons to arise from the dust, which is a way to say, I want you to arise from your low station, from the dust of the natural world, from the natural man. I want you to fully trust in the Lord and stay true to the covenants that you’ve made with him. Verse 23, he implores them to awake, put on the armor of righteousness, shake off the chains which they’re bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust. This is similar language to Isaiah 52, with the themes of waking up, rising from the dust, putting on sacred clothing, and removing chains.

There have been multiple things written about this, about this imagery of being taken from the dust. Apparently in the ancient Near Eastern world, being taken from the dust was indicative of a covenant with deity. It was part of a coronation ceremony. It was to arise, put on sacred clothing, remove chains, and be accepted as a covenant partner. This has been so incredibly fascinating to me. All of a sudden, as I’m reading, I am seeing references to dust and rising and it rising everywhere. We have Lehi speaking to his sons about rising from the dust while he’s preparing to go down into the dust. Adam and Eve were formed from the dust. Jesus took his finger and wrote in the dust, and then washed the dust from the disciples’ feet. So if dust is the earth, and perhaps symbolic of our fallen world, of our flesh, of our natural man, then we’re being asked to choose the things that are of the spirit and not of the flesh. And if we’re to arise, that means that we’ve fallen. We live in a fallen world. Adam fell, that men might be. And as mortal men and women, we will fall over and over and over again.

When Alma the Younger was visited by an angel of the Lord in the midst of his rebellion, he was so astonished that he fell to the earth. He couldn’t get up. And you know what the angel said to him? Alma, arise, arise. Arise and stand. Suddenly I had this image of Alma, the angel reaching out his hand, pulling Alma up from the ground, from the dust, kind of patting the dust off of him, saying, this is the dust of the world. This is the dust of your misconceptions. What is our dust? What of this fallen world and of our natural man tendencies are clinging to us? What do we need help in brushing off?

Lehi takes it one step further in verse 21. He says, “Arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity.” With so much of what is being talked about in the media lately about men, this one really stood out to me. What does it mean to be a man today? Men are under attack. But let’s be honest, we’re all under attack. These are the last days, and Satan has pulled out all the stops, and he has redoubled his efforts on men.

Dr. Leonard Sax, who is a physician and a psychologist, and has done extensive research on national trends that are affecting our children, namely boys, wrote a book called Boys Adrift. In the book, Dr. Sax explores what he saw as a growing problem. Our boys are losing motivation in school. They’re disengaging from achievement, and they’re struggling to find direction. He argues that there are six major contributors to this trend. I’m not going to go over all six, but one of them, he said, was changes in education. He said, if you want to know if a school is a good school for your boys, check the honor roll. He said, traditionally, the honor roll had some equilibrium. It was pretty equal girls and boys on the honor roll. He said, maybe skewed a little towards boys. You check the honor roll in schools now, they’re girls. Very few boys on the honor roll. He said, if you want to know if it’s a good school, see if there’s a little more equilibrium with boys and girls.

And then I had a friend point out this recent article from the Deseret News. Do you see this? The headline says, America has thirty million single young men. Even Utah is feeling it. Their researchers are pointing to three major factors: gambling, gaming, and pornography.

In Elder Christofferson’s talk, “Let Us Be Men,” he said, in large measure, manhood is defined in our relationship with women, and I would say in how women treat men. Godly womanhood and godly manhood can be reflected in how we interact and how we treat each other. In verse 21 of chapter 1, Lehi alludes to this when he says, “Be determined in one heart and one mind and united in all things.”

Again, Lili Anderson, who’s a clinical psychologist, she suggests that we put this question to our teens. What would it look like for your mom and dad to be united? She said she hopes that their response would look something like, it would be that they would come together on something, not necessarily agreeing on it, not necessarily coming at a decision the same way or the same direction, but being able to work together and come together and be united in that purpose. She said, then ask your teen, what would it look like for you to be united with your parents? Would it look like you being willing to submit to their will, to their goals, to their focus and their desires? Do you have enough trust in them? I think we can ask ourselves this same question about our own heavenly parents. What does it look like for us to be united with them? Do we have enough trust in them to submit our wills?

Elder Christofferson said this about men. I think this is a very comprehensive list that I think is incredible. He said, real men are one heart and one mind. They unite with others to build Zion. They don’t feel the need to do everything on their own. They’re not contentious, and they are peacemakers. They don’t put others down. They’re anxiously engaged in a good cause. They wear something—robes of righteousness or the armor of God. They are warriors of a different kind of battle. They fight for truth and righteousness. They can be great leaders, but also great followers. They are team players and humble enough to recognize the experience, goodwill, and counsel from other people. They don’t rebel. They move the work of God forward, and they don’t seek power and authority over others. A real man is not afraid to confront what needs to be confronted. He has the courage to speak the truth and stand up for it. As leaders of righteousness, they are sometimes required to speak with sharpness, endowed with the power of God. They follow the promptings of the Spirit.

I saw a clip recently from a podcast interview with Matthew McConaughey. He was asked what he thought the difference was between a nice guy and a good man. And not that I’m holding up Matthew McConaughey as the gold standard of manhood, but I thought that he had some good points. He said, a nice guy gets along. He doesn’t necessarily have discernment or judgment, and is not quite sure what he stands for or stands against, but people like him. Conversely, a good man knows what he stands for, and when that is tested, he may not be perceived as a nice guy. He said, this is much harder, because it will mean that you’re not always the most popular or the most affable. Gone are the days when it was enough just to teach our children to be nice. We are all going to be asked to stand, to stand up for, to stand up to our beliefs and our God. What do I stand for, and will I stand for it when I’m confronted with meanness and hostility, when I know that it could cause me to lose friendships or be mocked? What do our children see us standing for or standing against? Do they, or our coworkers, or our extended family, our social media followers, do they know without a doubt what we stand for? I hate conflict. I just want everyone to get along, which is why it really pulled at my mama heartstrings when I read a part from Catherine Arviset Starr’s Ali’s Mission email a couple weeks ago. In it, Ali writes, it’s been a discouraging week, and we were feeling the burden of missionary work. We had a lot of negative interactions with people this week. And we were often treated unkindly. We got sworn at a few times before we could even open our mouths and had some scary encounters with people. In the face of persecution and conflict, Ali is learning to stand for convictions, to suffer for Christ’s sake.

One of the sons that Lehi is not telling to awake and arise and shake off the dust and the chains that he speaks to is his son Jacob. Where in chapter 2, he tells Jacob that he knows that he has been subject to much trauma and abuse. And it is clear that Lehi is not concerned with Jacob’s eternal destiny as much as he is with his psychological well-being. Instead of spending any time admonishing him, Lehi is able to teach. In 2 Nephi chapter 2, verse 1, it says, “And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my firstborn in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren. Nevertheless, Jacob, my firstborn in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.” So you mean that there is purpose? There is purpose in affliction? All of that affliction can be for our good. How do we do this? That’s all chapter 2 tells us. It is through this, it is through God’s great plan of happiness, the great plan of salvation.

Scholars have said that chapter 2 of 2 Nephi is so doctrinally rich that if all Joseph Smith gave us was this chapter, it would be enough to prove that he was a prophet of God. Because where did he, Joseph, get the deep and expansive doctrine taught in the Book of Mormon, much of which was contrary to the religious beliefs of his time? For example, contemporary Christianity taught that the fall was what? It was negative. But we view it, and because of this verse, as a positive step forward. He teaches us about the fall. He teaches about the purpose of affliction, of opposition, which is because of agency and culminates with the role of the Holy Messiah, the Anointed One.

Freedom, eternally and earthly, comes from the right use of agency. You will never gain freedom until you make a right choice. Captivity and suffering come from the wrong use of that agency. We have the power to choose, which is made possible by opposition. Some choices are right, some are wrong, and the way we know the difference is by the law. The law tells us that there must be an enticement. Verse 5, “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil.”

In verse 17, Lehi tells that an angel of God fell from heaven, became a devil, sought that which was evil before God, and then sought the misery of all mankind. I think Lehi is saying, let’s be very clear. Evil exists. There is good, and there is good’s direct opposite, which is evil. Satan chose evil. He became evil. His works are evil.

I’m going to share a very unpopular opinion. I didn’t love the classic novel by John Steinbeck, East of Eden. The portrayal of the antagonist, Cathy Ames, as pure evil made me so uncomfortable. She’s introduced in the book with this phrase, “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.” And then this line, “She was born with a malformed soul.” Apparently, in a letter to a family friend, Steinbeck wrote that Cathy was supposed to be representative of Satan. One review of the book said that there is no logical explanation for Cathy’s misdeeds. She is evil simply because she wants to be. And I know what you’re gonna say. This is the point. The book is written as a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel in the Garden of Eden, the battle between good and evil.

The article continues, the novel’s most famous chapter introduces us to the Hebrew term timshel, or “thou mayest,” which summarizes East of Eden’s moving thesis: no matter who you are or where you come from, you have the power to choose good over evil. And that’s exactly how we know that Cathy’s misdeeds are not the result of trauma or suffering, but the consequence of personal choice. Cathy chooses evil because she wants to be evil.

So back to my discomfort, now I’m uncomfortable with my being uncomfortable, and apparently so is Hollywood, and as a reflection, the rest of the world. This is our moral relativism. There’s a new screen adaptation of East of Eden out right now. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t offer my opinion on it. But apparently, the creators were also uncomfortable with Cathy being evil for the sake of being evil, because instead they want you to, quote, fall in love with Cathy. One reviewer writes, the writer of this screen adaptation, Zoe Kazan, defended her choice to make Cathy Ames into a sympathetic character in the following terms, quote, “I’m just really curious about, like, well, what if we think of Cathy not as the embodiment of evil, but as a person who does really bad things? And I think we learn more about ourselves if we don’t think about evil people as being that different from us,” end quote. The review continues. We have created a culture that no longer believes in morality. As a result, when evil does dare to exist in our art, it is always either downplayed or tempered by some heart-wrenching backstory. East of Eden’s creators want you to fall in love with Cathy because as a society, we have stopped believing in personal agency.

A key word in Lehi’s description is “from”—to know good from evil. We don’t need to experience good and evil if we can know good from evil. President Oaks tells this story when he was younger, and he’s with his dad, and he asks his dad if he’s ever had alcohol, and his dad says, no, I haven’t, and he says, well, I wanna try it. And his dad says, well, why do you wanna try it? And he says, well, I just wanna know what it, you know, what it’s like. I just wanna know what it tastes like. I wanna know what it’s like. And his dad says, well, you know, it’s not good. He said, well, how do you know it’s not good? You’ve never tried it. And so his dad pulls over right next to a cow patty and says, why don’t you go out there and grab that cow patty and take a big bite? And he said, I’m not gonna do that. Why aren’t you gonna do that? ’Cause it’s not good. How do you know it’s not good? You’ve never tried it. His point being, you don’t need to try it to know good from evil.

Agency was a necessary part of God’s plan, in that it allowed us the opportunity to grow and to change and to become. And Lehi doesn’t throw Eve under the bus. In verse 22, he says, “And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.” Verse 23, “And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.”

Some think that if they had not partaken of the fruit, they would have stayed in the garden, and life would have been peaceful and wonderful and blissful, but that reality is wrong. The fall was part of the plan because they were not happy in Eden. They were in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery, doing no good, for they knew no sin. Adam never woke up and said, what a beautiful day, compared to what? He had no other frame of reference. Satan’s plan leaves no room for growth. It would be as though Adam and Eve came to the earth and then returned the same.

I thought about this in relationship to other events in our lives, other things that we might return and leave. What if we left for a mission and returned the same? Unchanged. What if we experienced motherhood or any other relationship throughout our lives, and there was no growth, there was no change? What if we went through this really difficult challenge or trial? No change. It would all be for naught. How grateful are we for a plan that provides an opportunity for us to grow, to learn, to change? Agency requires choice and opposition and law and enticement, and the fall makes all of this possible.

I think the great question that many ask throughout time has been, why is there so much suffering? Why am I in this messed up world? I have a hard time seeing the love of God in a world where there is so much pain. Remember this talk from Kristen Yee, “The Joy of Our Redemption.” She said, in C.S. Lewis’s writings, Aslan poses three words to a man who has entangled himself in his own devices: “Oh, humankind, how cleverly you defend yourself from all that might do you good.” Where might you and I be defending ourselves from those things that might do us good? Let us not defend ourselves from the good that God desires to bless us with, from the love and mercy that he desires us to feel, from the light and knowledge he desires to bestow upon us, from the healing that he knows we so readily need, from the deeper covenant relationship he intends for all his sons and daughters.

Like all of you, I have known seasons of and experiences of immense struggle and pain. I have felt complete despair over the choices of loved ones and regrets over my own. I’ve been in a life flight helicopter with the most absolute grip and fear that I might lose a two-year-old child to drowning. I have felt anger and fear and uncertainty around my own physical health and the challenges that that has created, coupled with the insecurities around the impact that those had on my own appearance. But I’ve also been blessed with angels, some here, some on the other side of the veil. And I felt gratitude so deep that it’s made it hard to breathe. I wish I could say that I have faced each challenge in my life with complete faith and trust in the Lord, that I’ve allowed him to stretch me and grow me and embrace me each time with his love, but that hasn’t always been the case. But I’m learning, I’m learning to offer myself grace for those times that I wasn’t able to receive what God had for me in those moments. Because I know that the more I come to know about my Savior and my Father in Heaven, the more I come to understand that all of this—this whole human, this whole life experience—has been motivated by pure love, and I’m learning to trust him.

I think one of the things that these scriptures help us to know is that we chose this, all of it. And I don’t think we were hesitant in our decision. I think we were standing at that gate and maybe even shaking it a little bit. I think we were saying, I want to be like you, Lord. I want to see what you can do. I think I’ll be valiant. Give me a chance to know what a physical body really feels like. I want to know what it’s like to be in relationships. I want to find out what hunger is and to know what it is to be tired. I want to know how to love people in all those circumstances. I think we said, I want the whole experience.

I love this. Henri Nouwen said, “We tend to stay away from mourning and dancing, too afraid to cry, too shy to dance. We become narrow-minded complainers, avoiding pain, and also true human joy. While we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. Let us mourn and let us dance.”

Neal Maxwell said, “Sorrow enlarges the heart, creating a wider expanse for joy.” I feel this. I really do feel as though I have a greater capacity for joy. Although some days I wonder if it’s this greater capacity for joy or if it’s just grandkids. But I don’t know, I feel more joy.

Lehi’s great message is, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

Just want to close with a couple of thoughts. This one is going to be hard. You can do hard with Jesus, or you can do hard alone. When you do hard with Jesus, the hard becomes holy. And then finally, this thought from Elder Neil L. Andersen’s talk, “The Atoning Love of Jesus Christ,” he says, “As you continue to place your trust in Him, your clouds of darkness and anguish dissolving in the night will be transformed into cascading tears of joy and peace in the morning’s light. Your sorrows shall be turned into joy, and your joy no one taketh from you. That moment will come. I testify it will come.”

I just want to add my witness to that and say it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Transcript – Shima Baughman

So I have to call her Ms. Howells because she was my daughter’s teacher, so I feel like, thank you, Ms. Howells. You can’t say no to anything your teacher, your kid’s teacher asks, right? It’s like, you come speak at my conference. Yes, I will. When is it? I will be there. Waltmans, thank you so much for that. Katie, Ashley, Lois, that was so beautiful beyond. I wish, I was trying to clap, but then I’m like, clap, no clap. Okay, we’re not clapping, but I would be, I was clapping in my heart. That was beyond beautiful, and yes, that made it worth all of our while to be here, even if everything goes wrong after that. But it’s so great to see you all here.

I want to start to tell you about my high school graduation. I was seventeen years old. I was wearing white, a white dress, cap and gown, a brand new pair of white Dr. Scholl’s wooden sandals. They were brand new. And they had a little bit of a heel. And I thought I looked very beautiful and grown up. I felt grown up.

So we have this large ceremony where I grew up. It’s at a track. And there’s over a thousand people in this audience and families there, your friends are there, teachers, strangers. And I had been told right before that started that I was going to receive an award. So that meant I had to go up to the stage twice. Once for the award and once later for my diploma.

So when my name was called for this award, I stood up, I smoothed my dress, I walked to the stage, shook the principal’s hand, I took the award, I smiled, and then I turned around to walk back to my seat, down this metal ramp with this hollow metallic sound that my shoes made as I walked on it, in front of a thousand people who are now all watching me walk.

About halfway down that ramp in my new white Dr. Scholl’s shoes, I lost my balance and slipped and fell. I went down hard. I cut my knee open on the metal of the ramp. I scrambled up, cause, you know, what do you do? And I finished walking back to my seat with blood running down my leg, and I was trying to pretend that I hadn’t been deeply humiliated and embarrassed in front of every single person I’ve ever met.

But the ceremony wasn’t over at that point, right? I still had to walk up and down that ramp again in these shoes I clearly didn’t know how to walk in for my diploma. So my name’s called the second time. I walk up the ramp, I shake the hand, I take the diploma, and then I have to walk down this ramp again past the thousand people that I just embarrassed myself in front of, and I was terrified. I didn’t want to fall again. I didn’t want to bleed again. So I made a decision. I would walk so carefully down that ramp that I couldn’t possibly fall. I would tiptoe. I would inch. I would crawl down the ramp if I had to.

So I did. I tiptoed down the ramp, one tiny step at a time, so slowly that I think the principal had to call three more names before I reached the bottom. And as I’m tiptoeing, already humiliated, my knee bleeding through my dress, the audience began to laugh. They were roaring, actually. A thousand people couldn’t help themselves. Ha, ha, ha, the girl with the white shoes who fell down the first time is now sneaking down the ramp like a cartoon mouse.

I want to tell you what I was thinking on that ramp, because I think every woman in this room has been there. Maybe not at a metal ramp, at a graduation maybe, but sometime. Sometime where you fell once and you didn’t want to fall again. And so instead of walking normally, you inched. You shrank yourself. You tried to manage how you appeared so that you ended up looking more strange, not less.

I wasn’t trusting my steps anymore after that fall, and the truth is I didn’t start tiptoeing on that ramp. I was tiptoeing for a long time. I had been afraid to be myself for years before I even put on my white shoes. To understand why, I have to take you back further than that graduation to where I was born.

I was born in Iran, and my family was Muslim growing up. We were Persian, my parents were both educated and very politically engaged, my mother especially. My mother’s a very brave woman, much braver than she even thinks she is, but she fought for freedom and democracy in Iran. And at the time, and even now, fighting for those things came at a very heavy cost, and she paid that cost.

My mother was imprisoned as a political prisoner in Iran for her work for the cause of religious freedom, freedom of speech, and democracy. I want you to imagine that for a moment, a young woman, and at this point a mother, she has my sister and me as little kids, ends up being sentenced to a political prison just because she dared that human beings should be free.

The conditions that she was held, and I won’t really describe in detail, but there was a time she describes where she was held in a prison called Evin, it’s infamous, and recently came in the news as the Iran protests happened again, where her captors would randomly execute a certain number of prisoners every night. And she said you could hear a pin drop as they were executing because all the people that were in the cell being held wanted to hear exactly how many of their friends were being killed at random.

What do you think she did in that prison? Well, I’ll tell you. She prayed. She had learned to pray from her mother. She didn’t have the gospel of Jesus Christ, didn’t know anything about it, but she knew there was a God, and from her cell she prayed. She prayed for her daughters, for her family that she couldn’t see.

And during this time, she had a dream that she was in America. And this confused her because she had eight more years in prison. At this point, she had already served two. She dreamed she was flying above some of the most beautiful fall colors on a plane, and she was over a place that she’d never been before and never even dreamed of in America.

And at the same time, outside of this prison, my dad was a neurosurgeon. And during this period, a very high-ranking religious leader from Iran needed a very difficult medical procedure. My father was blessed enough to perform it, and by skill or grace, we’ll never know, probably prepared by the hand of God, though, the procedure was successful. And because of that, this leader asked my dad, what can I do for you? And it turned out his wife and sister were both being held in political prison, and so they were able to be released six months later.

And through miracles, my family was given the opportunity to leave Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and to immigrate to America, to start over. I was seven years old when we arrived in America, and I knew exactly two English words that my mom taught me the day we were leaving, yes and no. And I used both incorrectly. Yes was really hard, so I’d say no a lot because it sounds like nah, nah, no, that’s the same word in Farsi. So, but yes, I did not remember, and so I would get in trouble quite a lot at school.

So this is where our story turns from miracle into miracle. Within six months of arriving in America, my father, who was now working in this hospital setting, met a nurse, and she happened to be a Latter-day Saint, a convert, and she was from Iran. And so she didn’t see my father as a, you know, foreign physician with a heavy accent or a complicated past. She looked at him and she felt this prompting from the Holy Ghost, invite his family over for family home evening.

And she felt it, but she didn’t act on it. She thought, they’re new here. they don’t know me. This is strange. I, I won’t do it. Then she said she felt the prompting a second time, invite them to family home evening. And again, she hesitated. This time she thought, no, because they’re here for one year. If I invite them and they come to my house and learn about Jesus, they have to go back to Iran and they might get killed.

But then she says, she describes her third time getting this prompting. She said, she’s at a, my dad’s at a water fountain pausing to get a drink. And then she gets the prompting again. This time she finally obeys and walks up to my father. She invites him and we came. And that from that one family home evening, this nurse that was prompted three times and finally listened, my family was able to learn about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and we were baptized into the church.

I just marvel at that, and I, you know, so happy to be able to share this with you because I think about my mother praying in a prison cell in Iran, my father having the opportunity to perform a procedure on a religious leader, grant, getting granted passage to America, and within a few months being introduced to the church by this incredible nurse in the hospital. And here I am today in Holladay, Utah, more than thirty years later, with five kids of my own, a marriage in the temple, serving in the church, working at BYU, having a covenant family, just because this nurse followed a prompting to invite us over.

This is the wisdom that my family first learned is that walking with Christ means trusting promptings that we don’t fully understand. I think of the scripture in Isaiah, and it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Before my mother had even finished praying in her cell, God was already arranging a nurse on the other side of the world, and before my father had finished his procedure, God was already preparing our visa. Before any of us knew there was a thing called Latter-day Saints, the Holy Ghost was already nudging a nurse to invite us to her home. God was answering my mother’s prayers in a language none of us yet spoke.

So you would think that a girl who came from these miraculous circumstances, who had been delivered out of a prison cell from Iran by the hand of God, would walk into American life confident and grateful and sure of who she was. I did not.

I want to tell you what I tried to be, because I think this part’s more universal than the prison cell story. the prison cell story is my background, but the next part, I think, is something that a lot of us might be able to relate to.

When I started elementary school in America, I wanted to, more than anything in the world, to be a girl named Kimberly. And I don’t mean a specific Kimberly. I would have been okay being Jennifer. The blonde-haired Kimberly with freckles who carried an L.L. Bean backpack and wore Gap jeans, who walked into the classroom seeming to belong there without any effort. And I was none of those things. I was a small Persian girl with thick, dark hair and an accent and a family that ate food that no one else’s family ate. And I looked at the Kimberleys and I was convinced that the key to belonging was to become one of them, preferably one named Kimberley, preferably taller, blonde, with freckles.

Now, it didn’t occur to me at seven or eight years old that maybe the Kimberleys might also be struggling with something. And it didn’t occur to me that the freckled girl might be wishing that she might have tan skin. we were both miserable maybe for something that the other wished they had.

This is my first version of what I would call a wisdom deficit. I didn’t yet know what wisdom was. I thought wisdom might be figuring out how to be more like the girls who seemed to be doing it right. I thought wisdom meant changing myself, editing myself, and learning, and my sister and I would actually impart wisdom to each other every night as we tutored each other, and we’d get home from school and teach each other the things we learned about being American, how to be more like Kimberly. One of the things, you don’t wear the same clothes every day to school, right? There’s a lot of things we taught each other and tried to, to do to fit in.

Now fast forward a decade. By the time I was a college student at BYU, I had not entirely outgrown this impulse to be someone else. I had only changed the someone. So as a BYU student, I had a, a chance to do an internship in South Africa. I was so excited, but I thought, I really want to belong here, and so I wanted to be embraced by this community, so I decided the best way I could fit in in South Africa is to grow dreadlocks.

Yep. Now, here’s the problem. My hair doesn’t quite easily form dreadlocks. I have Persian hair, and it behaves differently than hair that dreads, but to make it dread, I learned you have to have some damage to it. So I went to a local store in South Africa, and I bought some dye. And I first tried to dye it brown, and that didn’t quite make it dread properly. So after seven of attempts, I ended up with a color of hair I can only describe accurately as lion mane.

So there I was, a Persian girl at BYU, doing an internship in South Africa with damaged hair the color of a lion’s mane, trying to grow dreadlocks. Now, I want you to know in that moment, finally and ironically, I achieved my childhood dream that I’d given up on years earlier. I had become a blonde.

And to, to be honest, that story is funny now, but it wasn’t funny then, because underneath the lion mane hair was the same Persian girl who wanted to be Kimberly, the same instinct. I was trying to be something other than what God had made, still tiptoeing down the ramp, afraid to fail. I just chosen a different costume. And that’s obviously the opposite of wisdom. It was a long, exhausting, decades-spanning project of trying to be enough by trying to be somebody else. And the only thing that pulled me out of that project, the only thing that’s ever stopped me from tiptoeing has been Jesus Christ.

And he, he’s never made me prettier or thinner or blonder or changed my name to Jennifer, but he showed me what wisdom actually was. When we use the wisdom, the word wisdom today, We sometimes think of it associated with something like intelligence, strategy, right? The ability to figure out the right answer in a difficult situation, being smart in a way that’s impenetrable. In the world’s vocabulary, wisdom sounds performative, something that means oppressive, learned through mistakes or hard-earned life experience. But that is not wisdom in scripture.

In scripture, wisdom is a gift that you ask for. James taught it. He said, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. That’s the verse that sent a boy named Joseph into a grove of trees, and it’s a verse that still sends us to our knees. Wisdom is asked for, and it’s given.

When I have asked, the wisdom he’s given me has come to two simple things. Wisdom is accepting who God made you to be and trusting that you don’t need to be anyone else. And wisdom is walking with Christ, especially in his holy house. Everything else I want to share with you today highlights one of those two truths.

The wisdom of Jesus Christ is something completely different. It doesn’t come from old age or cleverness or even being right. It’s steady work of walking with someone in a way that lets them to be seen. It’s taking a longer road, asking a question when you already know the answer, or being patient enough with a person’s disappointment to let it speak before you reply.

I want to take you to a place in scripture where Jesus does this beautifully. It’s a moment that defines to me what wisdom in Christ looks like. On the day of the resurrection, on the very day that Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb, two disciples were walking from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles away. One of them’s named Cleopas, but we don’t know what the other one’s name was. But they were walking and grieving. They had spent the last three years of their life following a man who they came to believe as a Messiah, and three days earlier they had watched him die.

The scripture says, and they talked together of all these things which had happened. That’s what grief looks like. Two people walking down a road, trying to make sense of this tragedy that they just witnessed. And while they’re walking, Jesus came up beside them. But this is the part of the story that’s remarkable. They didn’t recognize him. The scripture said, but their eyes were holden that they should not know him. The resurrected Christ is walking beside them, and they had no idea.

So I want to ask you something. If, if you were Jesus and you had just been resurrected, having defeated death, and you found two of your grieving disciples on the road, what would you do? I, it’s clear to me what I would do. I would reveal myself immediately. I’d say, Cleopas, my friend, it’s me. Look at me, I’m alive. Look at my hands. I would shortcut the whole thing. I would skip to the punchline. I wouldn’t waste a single second.

But as we know, that’s not what Jesus does, right? Instead, he comes up alongside them and asks them a question. In the King James Version, it reads, what manner of communications are these that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? So in modern English, right, what does he say? He says, why are you sad? And, and what are you guys talking about? He asks them a question. He invites them to tell him what’s wrong.

And Jesus, the resurrected Christ, the Son of God, who already knows every answer to every question they could possibly ask, doesn’t grab them by the shoulders. He doesn’t say, you’re getting this wrong. You should actually be happy. Let me, let me tell you why. He walks beside them. He asks them a question, and then he lets them talk. And they did talk. And they tell him about Jesus of Nazareth, and they tell him about the crucifixion. And then they say the line that I think must be one of the most quietly devastating sentences in the entire New Testament. They say, but we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. We trusted, past tense, we don’t anymore. They told the resurrected Christ, who’s walking right beside them, that they had lost their faith in him. And he listened to every word. He let them say it. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t correct them. He didn’t say, stop, I’m right here. Look at me. He let them tell their disappointment all the way to the end.

And then only did he, then after they get done speaking, then does he open his scriptures to them, beginning in Moses and talking about the prophets, he expounds to them all the scriptures of things about himself. He walks the long road with them and he talks to them as they walk. And when they reach Emmaus, he made as though he could have gone further, but he doesn’t impose himself. He waits to be invited and then they invite him. They said, come with us in the evening. It’s a day far spent. He comes in, he sits down, he took the bread, broke it, blessed it, gave it to them. And then at last the scripture says, their eyes were opened and they knew him. And then he vanishes out of their sight.

And then comes this line that’s most instructive. The two disciples look at each other and said, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? Did not our hearts burn within us? Their hearts were burning the entire time, the whole seven mile walk. They hadn’t known it. They hadn’t known it was him, but something inside them was already responding to him before their eyes could see him. The wisdom that they were receiving was already changing them before they understood what they were receiving.

That is what wisdom from Christ looks like. It’s a slow walk, a long question, the willingness to listen all the way to we trusted before you offer a single reply. It’s the choice not to shortcut what someone’s feeling. And breaking your bread at the end of the road, not even knowing who you were walking with. This is for us. I think of all of us. Next time one of our children or the people we love comes to us upset, and you can already see the three points that you want to teach them, right? I would love us all to remember Emmaus, to walk beside them, to ask the question. Tell, let them say we trusted. Their hearts will burn before they understand why. That is a godly pattern. Christ often walks alongside us in our disappointment before we recognize him. In the hardest seasons of our lives, the ones we said we used to trust, we hoped this would be different, he has been there with us, asking questions, listening, waiting to be invited in.

My mother, in that prison cell in Iran, didn’t know the name of Jesus Christ, but he was walking with her along her road. Her heart, even within then, was burning, and her dream in prison gave her her vision of her future life, living in New York, where she would see the most beautiful fall colors imaginable, in the Hudson Valley, where I grew up.

I want to tell you a story now for my own marriage. Because wisdom is not just something we admire in Jesus, it’s something that he wants to grow in us through the hardest parts of our lives. Years ago, after a painful first marriage and divorce, I went through a season of questioning my faith, even though my family had received it through such miracles. I had grown up as a Latter-day Saint, but as an adult, after most of my family had found their own spiritual paths, and after a divorce, I wasn’t sure anymore. I still believed in God, I still believed in Jesus Christ, but I had anger over my marriage and wondered, do I need a church? Do I need to get married in the temple? Could I have faith on my own?

So I ran my own little experiment. I told my bishop that I’m stepping back from my callings in my ward for a time. I read scriptures with my young boys sometimes on Sunday mornings. We made sandwiches for the homeless. I prayed. I tried to serve my neighbors quietly and tried to worship God on my own terms. But I was missing something, and I couldn’t name it, but I was missing something that I couldn’t manufacture on my own, how, no matter how sincerely I tried.

At the lowest point in that season, I knelt down and prayed and, and with tears asked God a direct question. I said, what is your spiritual path for me? Do you want me to be a member of the church? I have real questions, and I laid them out honestly, and then I waited. And two days later, I met my husband, Ryan.

Now, I want you to understand what that means for someone in my position. I had been through one painful temple marriage. The last thing I was looking for was another temple marriage. I had told myself, and anyone that asked, that I was done with that chapter. My heart was closed to it. I wanted to marry a good person, but not somebody that was a member of the church.

At this point, I barely knew Ryan, but of course I noticed immediately he was quite handsome. That was clear. But that wasn’t it. Something more profound happened. In the space of two days after this most honest prayer, something happened that I can’t explain in any other way. My heart softened. Not to Ryan exactly, though of course I was excited about this prospect, but my heart softened miraculously to the possibility of another temple marriage, of trusting again, of knowing without a doubt that I needed to fully engage in God’s church on the earth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That softening wasn’t analytical, it was godly wisdom, the wisdom of an honest, fervent question answered by a powerfully kind God, the wisdom of being willing to ask a real question and accept the answer.

And, you know, I’d love to tell you that that marriage to Ryan and what followed after was happily ever after. We actually met in April and got married in August. It was quite quick, even by LDS standards. But That happily ever after didn’t quite happen for us at first. being two people in their thirties together, one with two small children, another one who had been dating everybody, it seemed like, for eighteen years. Literally, we, we couldn’t go anywhere without meeting somebody that he dated. it’s probably there’s some in this room, some of your daughters, anyway. Yeah. So you, you see the struggles.

It meant working through some hard moments for us, right? Ryan and I fought in our early marriage. We just didn’t see things the same way. I was a single mother. He was, you know, a single man, a really good single man, but, but still. So at one point we’re having a real, real bad fight, and Ryan has this inspired thought. He says, what if we go to the temple every week together?

The best advice we applied in our marriage was to be in the house of the Lord as often as we could. This, I can’t say this with enough emphasis, this healed our marriage. It healed my past. The Draper Temple, the, the Taylorsville Temple, the Bountiful Temple, and my favorite, the Jordan River Temple, most efficient temple in the world, are all within thirty minutes of this space here. It’s my favorite place to pray, pray on earth, the house of the Lord, and I just have had all of the, the, some of the questions that I put on hold when I came back to church about women and the priesthood and our role there, it, the more time I spend in the house of the Lord, I feel very confident in my priesthood power, and all of those questions have just really gone away. I just know that in our future, we have this magnificent Power and this future that as women, and we’re integral to it. So I, I just, all of those issues in my past just went away.

the Lord has told us what kind of place his house is, a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, house of learning, a house of God. When my own house feels disordered, which is a lot of times, I like to go to his. And I want to tell you specifically of what happens when I do.

Just a little while ago, not too long ago, I was struggling with something with my two oldest sons. I have five kids, the, the two oldest are, are boys. They’re really good boys, but there was this particular issue that I’d been worried about for weeks, and I had a thought about it, and I prayed about it, I talked to Ryan about it, and the night before, I was going to sit down and have a real conversation with them. I told Ryan, this is my three-prong plan, these are the three things I’m going to say to them. And I thought it through real carefully. I told Ryan I was going to say these things, and he thought it was a great idea. He said, great. My plan was very reasonable, I have to say.

Then the next day we go to the temple, and so I thought, before I talk to them, I’ll go to the temple and pray about it first. So I do my ordinance, I sit in the celestial room, and I pray, and I sit in the house of the Lord with my three points written down in my head, had everything ready, I was prepared. I was going to take these three points and deliver them, but as I sat there, the spirit whispered something that I didn’t expect at all. The spirit didn’t refine my three points or give me additional ones. It didn’t give me a better version of how to say it, more clever version, no. The spirit said, don’t say any of those things. Just love them.

That was it. That was a whole revelation. Don’t say any of those things. Just love them. I’d gone in expecting to leave with my points, a blessing from the Lord on them, and instead I left with no point at all. I went home, I didn’t say the things, I didn’t lay it out. I, I loved my sons, and I held them, and I listened to them, and just had conversations with them that were much different than the ones I had planned to have. It was pure love, not instruction, more listening, less talking. That is a road to Emmaus. That’s Jesus on the road, refusing to shortcut his disciples’ grief and refusing to teach them before they have a chance to feel what they feel. The only way I’ve ever been able to access this kind of wisdom, the wisdom not to teach when I want to, is, is in the temple.

Sister Patricia Holland, who I love, said something near the end of her life. She said, be quiet, be still, simplify, be meek and lowly of heart and pray. And I testify that miracles will come when we slow down, calm down, and kneel down. That to me is a temple in three lines. Wisdom is discipleship in life. It’s not knowing the perfect thing to say. Wisdom is knowing where to go when you don’t have the right answer. And for me, that place is always the house of the Lord.

I want to tell you about another woman who walked into my office a few years ago. Her name is Hannah, I’m just changing her identity, obviously, but she’s a law student at BYU. She had been through trauma that I will not describe in detail. She’d been abused and mistreated by several people close to her, so much so that she asked me, before classes even began, that she would never want to be called on in my class, which is criminal law. She didn’t want to be looked at, she didn’t want to be tested, she just wanted to disappear.

But her ears perked up one day when I spoke of forgiveness. So one day she came to my office, and I remember praying before she came that I might have the spirit with me, because I didn’t know what to say to her. Nothing in my training as a law professor trained me to deal with the kind of trauma that she was carrying. So she came to my office with her pencil and paper, wanting to leave with, with a list, things to work on, things to read, strategies, you know, how do we fix what’s going on.

And I started to tell her some things. I started to talk about forgiveness and about Jesus Christ, and she picked up her pen to write down what I was saying. And as she did, the Spirit whispered something to me unmistakably, the same kind of whisper I heard before. It said, tell her there’s no list. Just tell her to go to the temple every week.

So I said it, and Hannah looked at me and said, do you mean once a month? I’m in law school. And I said, no, what if we start with once a week? And she said, I have not been to the temple in four years, but we committed to go and to send each other a picture every week to be, to hold each other accountable.

In her second week, she wrote me a text. She said, I don’t want to speak too soon, but honestly, just after going once to the temple, a lot of good things have just fallen into place. I choose to believe that God is already helping me more from just even going twice, but I will keep being consistent. Hannah had been going to therapy for years. She was not seeing the results she needed until she started going to the house of the Lord.

On her third week, she wrote me again. She said, I honestly feel like I’ve seen a fire hose of blessings since I’ve been going to the temple, which feels too good to be true. She says, for the last several years, my every day has been rough because I’ve had night terrors in the evening. I’ve had flashbacks and panic attacks during the day, but every day I went to the temple, my night terrors stopped. That is a miracle because this is having a serious toll on my health.

This is wisdom that says sometimes the best counsel I can give you is no counsel at all. Sometimes wisdom is the courage to give counsel so simple it sounds a little embarrassing coming out of a law professor’s mouth. The spirit will not let me dress it up. Just tell her to go to the temple. Nothing you say will heal her. Send her to my house.

Sometimes God’s wisdom for our lives is simpler than we want it to be. We come to him wanting a five-pronged plan. He wants to give us a habit, a weekly walk, a small faith act that we can repeat. We sometimes resist the simplicity, I know I do, because we’ve been trained to think wisdom should be complicated, but it’s not. Christ’s wisdom is simple, and what matters are a few things.

As Elder Shumway said earlier this year at BYU devotional, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. One of my favorite quotes, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything except walking with him. King Benjamin taught the same wisdom, and see that all these things are done in wisdom and order, for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. Can we take one small faithful step at the speed where we can walk with our Savior?

I want to tell you about Linda, because she shares one of the most beautiful examples of wisdom that I’ve ever encountered in a Latter-day Saint mother. There’s a man named David, he grew up in the church, and as an adult, he worked in what some might politely call as an unlicensed pharmacist, a drug dealer. The, the younger one’s got it, you know what I’m saying. He was arrested and incarcerated more times than he could count. He spent nineteen years in and out of prison on, addicted to prescription drugs, in pain, in prison cells. He caused much sorrow to his parents, especially his mother, Linda.

Miraculously, after years away, David came back to church, and he bore his testimony recently about the atonement of Jesus Christ. He said, I am living proof that Jesus Christ loves us, and he loves you. I asked David, how did this happen? He told me his mother helped him, but he didn’t explain how. So I went and asked his mother, Linda.

Linda told me that for years, she was at a loss for what to do for her son. She had spent much of her retirement bailing him out of jail, losing most of her income. She cried more tears than she could count. But then one day, she says, I felt a clear prompting. She was supposed to work in the temple. She didn’t say a word about the prompting to her husband. She just felt it. And that same week, the stake president called them in and asked them to serve as temple workers.

Linda spent every free moment in the house of the Lord, and while she was there, she did something I find astonishing. She would close her eyes and visualize her son in whites, her drug addict son, the boy she’d bailed out of jail more times than she could count. She could see him in whites, working in the temple beside her. She would see him as a divine being, even while he was sitting in his cell. This is the wisdom of a mother who refused to see her son the way the world saw him. A mother who after hour after hour in the house of the Lord trained her eyes to see her son the way her savior Jesus Christ saw him.

Her son David said late one night in his cell contemplating his situation, God came to him. And because of that experience, he decided to change. Linda said, the temple transforms us because of the power that seeps into your soul while you’re there. And then she said, if people understood the power of the temple, they would be lined up and crawling and fighting to get in. We have a temple, many temples within driving less distance. We have what Linda would have crawled to reach. That’s the kind of wisdom none of us are born with, but it’s what we can glean as a gift from the house of the Lord.

Now I want to come back to the little girl who wanted to be Kimberly, to the BYU student with the lion mane hair in South Africa, to David and Hannah, to all of them who are operating on the false belief that if we could get themselves right, if we could get ourselves right, God would accept them and that we would belong. But that’s not how God works. Paul wrote, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. The very things about ourselves we wish we could trade are often the things that God has already chosen in us.

There’s a sister whose words I wish I could have comprehended at seven years old, a former member of our Holy City Presence, Chieko Okazaki, a Japanese, Hawaiian born to Buddhist parents, and she joined the church at fifteen. She definitely knew what it looked, what it felt like to not be a girl named Kimberly. And she said this about our Savior. She said, Our Savior is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He’s not embarrassed at us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and grief. Jesus Christ doesn’t need the polished version of us, not the version with no freckles, perfect hair, and zero awkwardness.

Though I have to say, I recently talked to a woman in my ward who is truly my ideal childhood beauty of a Kimberly. Her name’s Laura. And she told me she hated being tall growing up, and she was teased for her freckles. So apparently even the Kimberleys didn’t want to be Kimberleys. Christ wants the real version of us, even the lion-mane version, especially the version that, that we’re trying to edit out. He wants us how he made us. And I think that self-acceptance is wisdom, and it doesn’t come from looking inward. It doesn’t come from finally fitting in or becoming someone else. It comes from walking with Christ. He’s the only one whose embrace can sustain us.

But Christ’s acceptance isn’t our path to stop growing. It’s what gives us courage to keep growing without hating ourselves along the way. The gospel asks us to become new creatures, avoiding despising the creature God is making, patiently making new. There’s a difference between wanting to become more like Christ and believing we’re worthless until we get there.

Michelle Craig, a former counselor in the Young Women’s General Presidency, gave a talk in 2018 called Divine Discontent, and she drew a distinction between divine discontent, the holy yearning that moves us forward in faith, and what she called Satan’s counterfeit, paralyzing discouragement. Sometimes it feels like what feels like a spiritual crisis is actually discouragement dressed up as humility. She has taught us a lot about wisdom. She’s a woman who was born and raised in Utah, and if you ask her, says that she lived a small, quiet life. She was born in Provo, Utah, married and raised a family, but by her own description, she said, I’m not even someone who made comments in Sunday school.

And yet, on March 21st, 2018, while taking a nap on her couch, she was interrupted by ringing on her home phone. She looked at the caller ID. It said, Jesus Christ. And she stared at it puzzled, and then it rang a second time, and she thought, well, I ought to pick it up. And a sister on the other end asked her and her husband to meet with President Dallin H. Oaks, and as she sat across from an apostle of the Lord, overwhelmed, feeling completely inadequate, he asked her, are you worthy to receive a calling? And are you willing to accept any calling? She said yes, and yes. And she teaches, what you have to offer is more than enough, even with your human frailties and weaknesses, if you rely on the grace of God.

We are more than enough, not because of who we are, but because of whose we are. Because of the grace at work in us, the very thing that we’re most embarrassed about, the heritage, the divorce, the nightmares, the fear of making comments in Sunday school, it’s often the doorway in which the miracle walks in. The very thing you wish that wasn’t part of your story is the part that Jesus Christ loves.

So I want to come back to where we started, my little 17-year-old self in my white shoes, tiptoeing down the metal ramp, still bleeding from my knee. I thought wisdom meant figuring out how to be someone else, someone who could wear high heels. Though you might notice if you ever see me, I never wear high heels, even today. Let’s see my shoes. No heels. I’ve learned that safety lesson once.

Patricia Holland wrote that she spent years comparing her quiet, reflective, thoughtful self to the robust, bubbly, talkative, and energetic Elder Holland. Over time, she learned that she had untold abundant sources of energy to be herself, but the moment that she tried to imitate her neighbor, she said, she felt she was fractured and fatigued. Her point was, God didn’t create us to exhaust ourselves becoming someone else. Wisdom is learning to become ourselves in Christ.

What I have learned since then is that wisdom is not a smarter, more careful version of me or you. It’s not what you do when you stop worrying, what people think, what people will think about you when you fall. But it’s starting to walk with our heads held up high. Even our bodies know this truth. When we lift our gaze, something in us begins to lift too. And researchers have found looking upward is actually associated with beautiful mental effects in our, our brains that lead to healing and happiness. And so when I go to the temple, one of my practices is to lay in the celestial room, or I guess you can’t lay, but put my head back and look up. And you have this beautiful ceiling here, but to look up in the celestial room in the house of the Lord.

Wisdom is a road to Emmaus, the willingness to walk the longer road than you wanted to with someone who might be listening. Wisdom is the temple, the place where you go when you need to revisit your battle plan to God’s plan. Wisdom is Hannah, who came in wanting a list and left with a covenant relationship. Linda, who closed her eyes in the temple and saw her son in white.

That is the wisdom I’m here to bear testimony of today, the kind of obedience, the unshowy, three times prompted obedience that changed every generation of my family forever. Some of you today in Holladay, Utah, are quietly trying to walk towards this kind of wisdom. Some of us here are tiptoeing. Some have fallen recently and are afraid to walk normally. Some of you are bleeding under a dress that no one can see. Some of you have been the nurse in this story, filling the prompting once, twice, three times, wondering if you should obey it. Some of you have been the mother praying from her own kind of prison cell.

I want to testify that we don’t have to tiptoe. Christ is walking next to us the entire time. He’s not waiting for us to be perfect. He’s not embarrassed by us. He wants us just as we are, doubts, questions, and all. He wants to know what we’re thinking about and why we’re sad. He wants… He’s okay letting us doubt. He is speaking to us from scriptures and from the words of our leaders on a longer road than we wanted to walk. And in our hearts, in the moments we maybe haven’t yet named, he’s already allowed us to burn with the spirit within us.

Let’s all slow down, calm down, kneel down. Let us be with women of wisdom, with ears to hear and eyes to see what’s important, what is true, and what is right. Sister Du, the beloved, a beloved leader in our church said recently at BYU Women’s Conference, she said, tell me what you pay attention to, and I’ll tell you who you are. When we give him even some of our time, it seems like he multiplies the rest. While dividing our sorrows, our anxiety and grief. So let us spend time with the Lord in prayer, visiting his house often, and walking with him in wisdom. So when we walk down whatever ramp life asks us to walk down, we can walk with his confidence. Our beloved God does not want his daughters to tiptoe, and I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Instructor: One lovely prayer. Thank you. And how good it is to see you. You look terrific.

Let’s start with Jesus. Let’s start with Christ. I have a song here that I hope you’ll enjoy. This is a combined choir of BYU students, and as you listen to it, will you listen to the contrasts in the lyrics? And also, will you look at these beautiful, beautiful young people?

Choir (lyrics approximate; recognition is poor):
As he suffered, he had faith. Once upon the cross he bowed, bowed the lonely hand. Now the Lord of grace I am. Once upon the cross he bowed. Now his cherubim arise, now his cherubim arise. Was rejected by his own, nothing he shall be known. Nothing he shall be known. As I seek and let alone, thou exaltest to a throne. Once of thee see me, reward, cause in I will then go. I see how you…

Instructor: Now, dear King, he shall be known.

Well, I ask you to look for the difference of the contrasts in that song. Our lesson today is 1 Nephi 19 through 22, which is a study in contrasts, but also similarities. So I hope you see that as we go through.

It’s about Jesus Christ as Savior, Redeemer, and Gatherer. It’s about our learning and profiting from likening the scriptures to ourselves. It’s about former and present-day scatterings. It’s about present-day gatherings. And it’s about our commission to gather God’s children.

You know that old saw you hear: tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. Well, that’s kind of the way these chapters work. In 1 Nephi chapter 19, Nephi tells us what he’s going to tell us. In 1 Nephi chapters 20 and 21, he uses Isaiah 48 and 49 to tell us. And then in 22, he tells us what he told us. In other words, he makes an explanation of Isaiah’s words to Laman and Lemuel.

Let’s talk about Nephi’s purpose. He says, “I have written these things unto my people, that I might persuade them to remember the Lord their Redeemer,” and you will hear this purpose spoken over and over as we go through this lesson. Again, that I have written these things that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer.

One of the aspects of this lesson, because of what I told you about the structure—tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them—I’ll be moving through all of those scriptures to make that point. In other words, they’re not clumped together. The first section of chapter 19 we’re going to talk through, but throughout the lesson I pull in verses from the other chapters as well, so don’t let that confuse you. I hope you’re not flipping through pages trying to follow the scriptures that we’ve referred to.

Here’s an example. I just quoted this from chapter 19, verse 23. Here’s verse 24: “Hear ye the words of the prophet, and liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope.”

I’m interested in this. How do Nephi’s writings or influence affect your hope, your comfort, your joy? Also, do these writings influence your choices, your concerns, and maybe even your repenting?

Well, Nephi cites Zenock and Zenos’s prophecies of Christ’s coming sufferings and crucifixion, and we’re going to deal with that now.

So in verse 7 of 19, he says, “For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet.” And I have an example of this from my life.

There’s a TV show called Clarkson’s Farm. It’s a British documentary, and it’s just a hoot. We love it. It’s a lot of fun. And we watched several episodes of it, and we love all the characters. They’re all great. There’s a fair amount of profanity in it—not a lot, but some. You know how farmers are. But occasionally, rarely, they take the Lord’s name in vain as a way of swearing.

And the first couple of times we went, well, let’s move on. Not that it’s okay, but we like this show a lot. And about the third episode, we kind of had it with that. And the problem was, we’d been watching this show with a daughter who’s not in the Church, and she was loving it too. And we were joking about it. We joked about the characters together and everything. And so the challenge came: how do we tell her we’re not going to watch this anymore? But we did. I said, there is other profanity—that’s what farmers say—but this is a bridge too far.

And we were worried about her reaction because the relationship with her is rather tenuous, and so we grasp at every opportunity. But she was okay with it. She even said, “I’ll try not to do that while I’m around you.” Oh, please don’t. Anyway, it worked out okay. But in fact, it was a method of trampling under their feet our Savior Jesus Christ.

“And behold, Christ cometh according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem. And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught. Wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it. They smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it.” Why? Because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering toward you and me.

I came across this writing, so it’s in poetic form. [Name unclear—sounds like “Albersdor”; described as German.] This is a German poem, which doesn’t translate all that well in terms of the rhyme scheme and so on, but it’s still worth reading. Listen to this:

“Christ, you have been made man so as to make us gods, and you have been chained so as to release us from our chains. God, tortured with floggings and thorns under an unjust judge, you teach us to bear our sorrows with calm and resignation.” Isn’t that lovely?

“And all these things must surely come, saith the prophet Zenos. And the rocks of the earth must rend; and because of the groanings of the earth, the God of nature suffers.”

So we’ve kind of dealt with that part of chapter 19. And so let’s move to the scatterings now.

We’re talking about—by the way, scatterings include a whole human history of scatterings—but specifically we’re going to talk about Israel and Lehi’s family scatterings and present-day scatterings.

Here’s a screen that we’re not going to read all of. You can relax. The reason I put it up here is to show you how complicated the scattering process is, and the gathering as well. This is a very complex, history-long process, so we’re not going to talk a lot about it. But I came across this gal named Kristen Walker-Smith. She’s a mother of teenagers, and she makes videos in an attempt to help her children understand what the scriptures are about. And so she’s made a video about the scattering. Now, I regret to tell you that the screen’s rather small on this. I made it as large as I could, but frankly, I used this because she’s so cute. I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

Kristen Walker-Smith (video): Class is in session, and today we’re finding out what exactly is the scattering of Israel. Prophets have been telling us that the gathering of Israel is the most important thing going on in the world right now. So what exactly is the scattering?

The scattering happened in three parts. First, the united Israelites divided into northern and southern kingdoms. Second, the northern kingdom, which had ten tribes in it, was taken by the Assyrians. We don’t know what happened to those tribes. Third, the southern tribe of Judah, with the remaining two tribes, was later taken into captivity by the Babylonians. About 70 years later, they were given permission to return to the Promised Land, but only some of them returned. The rest stayed scattered.

So the scattering is the idea that God’s chosen people were no longer together in the Promised Land physically, and their lack of proximity to prophets, priesthood, and sacred promises with God—or covenants—meant that they became scattered spiritually too. That’s exactly what the gathering of Israel is reversing today. We are trying to bring people back to God’s prophets, his priesthood, and promises made with him. Make sure to save and share this with your team, because they’re probably wondering what the scattering actually is.

Instructor: Isn’t that great?

“And as for those who are at Jerusalem, saith the prophet, they shall be scourged by all people, because they crucified the God of Israel, and turn their hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders and the power and glory of the God of Israel. And because they turn their hearts aside, saith the prophet, and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations.”

Notice—I’m going to go back. You know, notice that this is chapter 19. This next one is chapter 22. I told you I was going to be skipping between the chapters, okay? Because the themes are the same.

“And it appears that the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations. And behold, there are many who are already lost from the knowledge of those who are at Jerusalem.” A very complicated pattern. “And they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea; and whither they are none of us knoweth.” That’s what she said, right? Nobody knows, “save that we know that they have been led away.”

By the way, there’s a great deal of scholarly information that you can access about the gathering, if you choose. It’s fascinating. There’s just too much to cover here.

But Laman—Nephi tries to explain to his brothers. Remember, they ask him in chapter 22, “What meaneth these things?” And he says, “Hear ye the words of the prophet, and liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope as well as your brethren from whom ye have been broken off.” Yes. The Lehites were broken off. They were a scattered branch that was broken off, and Nephi was trying to get them to recognize that aspect.

Well, have you experienced any scattering in your family? I have.

In this last conference, Elder Rasband gave a talk. I’ve taken some clips from it. Once again, you’ll remember that the way this happens is these clips start abruptly and end abruptly, so I hope you’ll be comfortable with that. But these comments of Elder Rasband I thought were particularly applicable here.

Elder Ronald A. Rasband: My dear brothers and sisters, my message is for everyone whose heart aches for loved ones who’ve turned away from the Lord, stepped away from obedience to God’s laws, breached their covenants, and left behind a string of broken hearts, becoming, as the Bible says, tossed to and fro.

As the Apostle Paul described, you may feel burdened excessively, beyond your strength, weighed down as if being pressed out of measure. If I asked for a show of hands of how many feel that way, hands would shoot up in this hall and around the world. Most of us have faced such anguish in our families or our circle of friends. I know Sister Rasband and I have.

Instructor: So, kind of a universal issue, isn’t it? The scattering of loved ones.

Have any of your family members experienced trials in the wilderness? Mine have. This past week, my niece died of an alcohol overdose. She went into seizures and passed away, leaving two young children. Her father, my husband’s brother, told us she’s actually been a functioning alcoholic since she was fifteen years old. She’d been in rehab off and on. Nothing worked. She simply drank herself to death. Now, imagine the isles in the wilderness for her, for her children.

Nevertheless, Nephi and Isaiah prophesy gatherings.

“When they no more turn aside their hearts against the Holy One of Israel, then will he remember the covenants which he made to their fathers. Yea, then will he remember the isles of the sea; yea, and all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord, according to the words of the prophet Zenos, from the four quarters of the earth.”

You know President Nelson’s famous line: the gathering of Israel is the most important thing taking place on the earth today.

Well, as of September 2026, more than ninety thousand full-time missionaries are serving worldwide. The count includes young proselyting missionaries, young service missionaries, and senior missionaries. And for our own stake, presently eighty-six missionaries are serving from the Olympus Stake. This includes Church service missionaries. Fifty-eight of those are proselyting missionaries. Eight missionaries are presently in the MTC. In addition, of the nine presently assigned to depart for the mission field, eight are sister missionaries. Yes.

Here’s an interesting picture. I gotta look and see how clear it is for you. Oh, it’s pretty good. This is a picture taken by Clinton Christensen, who works for the Church History Department. He recently returned from a visit to Papua New Guinea, and this is a picture from that trip. You’ll see in the picture a group of men standing knee-deep in mud in white shirts and ties, and their pant legs rolled up. You see in the foreground a man in the water baptizing, his arm to the square. You can’t see the person he’s baptizing, but you can, sort of. You can see the hand of the person who he’s holding. You can also see five men to your left at the water’s edge. Two are holding spears. Three are holding axes. They are there to attack crocodiles who may be in the water.

“And then, O house of Israel, behold, these shall come from far”—Papua New Guinea, who knew?—“and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.” The gathering of Israel is the gathering of faithful Saints wherever they are.

Do you remember this?

Conference clip: Welcome to conference. Why did the temple workers cross the road to help the people on the other side?

Instructor: So you know where this is going, don’t you?

We had a gathering not so long ago in our neighborhood, in our ward. This dear sister in the white skirt is a member of our ward and has been a member of the community all her life. And the gathering takes place over years. Years. Neighbors have loved her, cared for her, encouraged her, and gathered her. And you see on your left Bishop Mahas and Bishop O’Brien at her endowment ceremony in the Draper Temple. And then on your right, the picture of the gatherers. A profound time.

So what gathering is happening in your family?

I’ll tell you just quickly a little gathering in our family that’s going to happen day after tomorrow. We have several grandchildren who are not in the Church, and we’re taking four of them to New York—not New York City. My husband was born and raised in Schenectady, and so we’re going to upstate New York. You know what’s in upstate New York. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, even if we don’t make the Church’s historic sites, it will be a time of togetherness, of love, of happiness and excitement, and of their knowing that we love them no matter what.

Now, I’d like us to take a few minutes. Will you talk about what gathering is happening in your family? Okay.

[Class discussion, roughly 27:23–34:00; not captured in the speech track.]

Okay, what terrific, terrific love there is here. I just heard three wonderful stories—what gathering is happening in your family. Boy, I have to tell you, we’re working on this one full time.

Here’s another clip by Elder Rasband. I hope you find this useful.

Elder Ronald A. Rasband: Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ pulls much more than his weight. His Atonement is witness of his all-encompassing love for each one of us. Brutal as it was for him, his Atonement was crucial for our eternal journey. Remember, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

He has already paid for the sins and errant choices of all of God’s children, including those for whom you and I grieve. He knows them. He knows their hearts. He loves them. He gave his very life to bring them home—all the way home.

Remember the prodigal son who chose to leave his safe moorings for riotous living? He lost his fortune and his self-respect, and he returned home in a wretched state. When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran to him. He was lost and now was found. What brought him back? It was love. He knew where to find it.

Love, brothers and sisters, is the answer to connecting with all of our loved ones. Our Father extends his protective arms to us and to those still distant from him and his Son. He asked us to do the same. Jesus Christ beckons, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Instructor: So, as with everything, every problem, Christ is the answer.

Well, we’re going to spend a little bit of time with the Isaiah chapters. S. Kent Brown wrote a book entitled From Jerusalem to Zarahemla: Literary and Historical Studies of the Book of Mormon, and in it he asks the question, what is Isaiah doing in the Book of Mormon? And Nephi explains that. Once again: “I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning,” and to persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer.

So, why did he include them? “And the Lord”—this is back in chapter 19—“surely did show unto the prophets of old,” including Isaiah, “all things concerning them,” the Jews in Jerusalem, “and also he did show unto them many concerning us,” the Nephites in America, and us as well.

Nephi openly declared that he intended to deepen people’s faith in the Holy One of Israel while linking his family’s experience to prophecies concerning the scattering and gathering of Israel. I’m going to skip this next slide.

In Isaiah, Nephi found calming solace, as well as evidence of prophetic fulfillment. We’re going to spend a little bit of time talking about these chapters of Isaiah. You can see what I’ve written here: Isaiah’s poetic symbolic imagery is best read with the Spirit. Now, just like most people, I struggle with Isaiah, but with these two chapters, I’ve spent enough time in them over the last four weeks to come to love them. But I have to tell you, it’s with the Spirit that that happens. However, the language itself is wonderful. So let’s look at a bit of it.

This is Isaiah speaking: “Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah”—or out of the waters of baptism—“who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness. Nevertheless, they call themselves of the holy city, but they do not stay themselves upon the God of Israel, who is the Lord of Hosts; yea, the Lord of Hosts is his name.”

“For I foretold former things long ago; my mouth announced them, and I made them known. Then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass. For I knew how stubborn you are.” This is the NIV. “I knew how stubborn you were. Your neck muscles were iron, and your forehead was bronze.”

I love this picture. Look at this. “I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass.” Don’t you love that picture? You’ve seen those people, haven’t you? Maybe once or twice you’ve been that guy.

Nevertheless—for my name’s sake—we’re going to deal with the black side first. “I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb. Nevertheless”—that great word, nevertheless—“for my name’s sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off. For, behold, I have refined thee, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.”

Have you experienced refining fire, and did it refine you indeed?

Nevertheless, he says—now we offer the blessings of repentant Israel. And I’m going to go through this slide, and then I’m going to skip a couple, because we’re running out of time.

“Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, O isles of the sea, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee; and I will preserve thee, and give thee my servant for a covenant of the people.” I’m just going to read the last lines. “They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor the sun smite them; for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.”

This one I love. “Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established. Break forth into singing, O mountains, for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.”

And then Zion says, “The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” But he will show he hath not. “For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”

“Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.” Look at that little kid licking ice cream. That’s cute. “And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their faces towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” That’s you and me.

Nephi explains it. “It meaneth,” he says, “that the time cometh that after the house of Israel have been scattered and confounded, that the Lord God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles. And after our seed is scattered, the Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth unto our seed. And he gathereth his children from the four quarters of the earth. And he numbereth his sheep, and they know him; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd; and he shall feed his sheep, and in him they shall find pasture.”

He gathereth his children. Don’t you love that? That’s us. That’s our children. That’s the people in Papua New Guinea.

Well, let’s end with Jesus. I’m going to show you a musical video. This is a group of young people singing a song of praise. And then I’ll grab my testimony at the end.

Duration: ~45:52

I’m happy to be here today. I’m even happier that all the technology is working. Nobody’s been praying harder for that than me.

We’re glad.

I just want to say at the first, I know people listen to this on podcasts, because I’ve been listening on podcasts. If you are listening on podcasts and would like to see the slides that I show, if you will just email me, I will send them to you so you can look at those. And my email is—if you promise not to send me any offers for diamonds—you can do it to anita lineback at gmail dot com. Okay, so it’s really easy.

So today we’re talking about First Nephi sixteen to eighteen, and I titled this Directors, Cycles, and Ships.

As I was reading this, I just was overwhelmed with the cycles that I kept seeing. And here’s the cycles I see in Lehi’s family, okay?

There comes a problem, or a bump in the road, and then immediately there’s murmuring, and then after murmuring and whatever else goes on with that, there’s chastisement, and then there’s repentance, and then we come to another bump in the road, and there’s murmuring, chastisement, repentance, and it just keeps going on and on. And we’re going to see a number of those today in the reading that we have.

When we last left them, they were camping in the wilderness outside Jerusalem. This is an overview of Lehi’s journey. This is a map somebody made that I trust they know what they’re talking about, but I will make no claims for its authenticity except that it seems right to me.

Lehi and his family have been camping in the desert outside of Jerusalem, so they’ve been going back and forth, right? Get the plates, get some wives, get all of that stuff. And now this map of the Arabian Peninsula: they are going to travel down the east side of the Red Sea, and there’s a whole bunch of little places that they camped, apparently, and this is mountainous terrain, and then at the bottom they sort of make a left turn and they end up along the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula. That’s a journey of about twenty-two hundred miles.

I started thinking about that and I thought about what other journeys do we know. Well, the pioneers coming to Utah from various places in Missouri went about two thousand miles. The children of Israel wandered in the desert, and from Egypt to the promised land was about two hundred and fifty miles. So this is the math portion of the program today. I was very excited about this.

How long—if you’re going twenty-two hundred miles and it took them eight years—somehow I’ve never clicked in that it was eight years that they went. That’s going two hundred and seventy-five miles per year. If you’re the children of Israel going the 250 miles, they’re going 6.25 miles per year—not a real burning speed. And the pioneers were going about 15 miles per day. I just like doing a little math once in a while.

Here we go. They’re getting ready to start their journey.

And it came to pass—I’m in First Nephi 16 verse 9—and it came to pass that the voice of the Lord spake unto my father by night, and commanded him that on the morrow he should take his journey into the wilderness. And it came to pass that as my father arose in the morning and went forth to the tent door, to his great astonishment he beheld upon the ground a round ball of curious workmanship, and it was of fine brass, and within the ball were two spindles, and the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness. And it came to pass that we did gather together whatsoever things we should carry into the wilderness, and all the remainder of our provisions which the Lord had given unto us, and we did take seed of every kind that we might carry into the wilderness.

Now this is amazing. The Lord tells him that night, “Okay, tomorrow you’re going to go in the wilderness,” and then that morning he finds this director outside his tent door. It just sounds fantastical, doesn’t it? This small thing that would point where you would go, and even we’ll find out later it has things written on it. How in the world could something like that happen?

Do we have anything like that today? I mean, before Google Maps, here it is, and it’s telling you.

So they’ve got this—I want to say magical, but that’s not the right word. They’ve got this ball that will tell them where to go for eight years. No battery recharging, nothing like that.

I’ve always thought that we need to liken the scriptures to ourselves. That’s a direct quote from some scripture. And I started looking, and I found an example of where they actually did this in the Book of Mormon. And I’m going to Alma 37.

And now my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the thing which our fathers call a ball or director—or our fathers called it Liahona, which is, being interpreted, a compass—and the Lord prepared it. And behold, there cannot any man work after the manner of so curious a workmanship. And behold, it was prepared to show unto our fathers the course which they should travel in the wilderness. And it did work for them according to their faith in God. Therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done. Therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God day by day.

And this is where Alma starts likening it. Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means, it did show unto them marvelous works. They were slothful, and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence, and then those marvelous works ceased, and they did not progress in their journey. Therefore they tarried in the wilderness, or did not travel a direct course, and were afflicted with hunger and thirst because of their transgressions.

And now, my son, I would that ye should understand that these things are not without a shadow. For as our fathers were slothful to give heed to this compass—now these things were temporal—they did not prosper. Even so it is with things which are spiritual. For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point them a straight course to the promised land.

I find that so interesting that Alma is likening—and I don’t know how he’s reading those plates or he just knows the story—how he’s likening the Liahona to them. And for those of you keeping score at home, the Liahona is only mentioned once in the Book of Mormon, and it’s right here in Alma 37. It’s always just called the directors otherwise.

Now Alma’s preaching to his people and he’s using the Liahona, and then I went down a rabbit hole. Because what does Liahona mean? They said it was a director, but I found an article by Jonathan Kirche called “The Direction of the Lord: An Etymological Explanation.” Etymology means the history of a word.

And he says the name Liahona, although it appears only once in the Book of Mormon text, has drawn the rapt attention of the curious and the learned. My contribution builds upon past efforts to explain the possible etymological meaning of the name Liahona. I offer what I argue to be a more plausible explanation than those of my predecessors in light of the Lehites’ linguistic background. My approach is to transliterate back into the Hebraic idioms of the time of Lehi what I perceived that Joseph Smith saw or heard and dictated.

I was really excited about this because I love vocabulary, and I know I’m an old English teacher so that just turns lots of people off. But he said he wanted to look at what, if Lehi was writing in Hebraic terms, those terms would have been that Joseph Smith would have heard or seen in his translation. And then he presents the grammatical elements used to form the name Liahona, which he shows to mean quite literally “to Yahweh is the whither,” or by interpretation “direction of or to the Lord.”

I thought that was really exciting. I can see that not everybody here is as excited about that, but I was excited about that. I really like this name—direction of or to the Lord.

Now, has anyone besides Lehi and his family and his followers ever seen the Liahona? I want you to just turn to a neighbor and say yes or no.

Okay. All right, let me point you to D&C section 17 verse 1. Behold, I say unto you—and he is talking to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, three witnesses—Behold, I say unto you that you must rely upon my word, which if you do with full purpose of heart, you shall have a view of the plates, and also of the breastplate, the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, which were given to the brother of Jared upon the mount when he talked with the Lord face to face, and the miraculous directors which were given to Lehi while in the wilderness on the borders of the Red Sea.

Now we have no official documentation that they saw all these things. But we also have no official documentation that they did not see these things. And I thought, oh, so I started researching, and I found some stuff, and I really wanted to show you it, but I couldn’t find it from any source that I was comfortable to put on a slide in front of all you ladies if it turned out to be bunk. But then I did find something somewhere that I was comfortable with.

This is Revelations in Context, and the chapter is “The Experience of the Three Witnesses.” Days later, the prophecy was dramatically fulfilled. It was in the latter part of June 1829, David Whitmer wrote. Joseph, Oliver Cowdery, and myself were together, and the angels showed them the plates to us. We were sitting on a log when we were overshadowed by a light more glorious than that of the sun. In the midst of the light, but a few feet from us, appeared a table upon which were many gold plates, also the sword of Laban, and the directors. I saw them as plain as I see you now, and distinctly heard the voice of the Lord declaring that the records of the plates of the Book of Mormon were translated by the gift and power of God.

So all of you who whispered yes, just give yourself ten points. That was really good. All right, there’s the end of my deep dive.

Let’s go back to Nephi 16 verse 28. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the pointers which were in the ball, that they did work according to the faith and diligence and the heed which we did give unto them. And there was also written upon them a new writing, which was plain to be read, which did give us understanding concerning the ways of the Lord. And it was written and changed from time to time according to the faith and diligence which we gave unto it. And thus we see that by small means the Lord can bring about great things. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did go forth up into the top of the mountain according to the directions which were given upon the ball.

So he goes and these directors lead him to food, because that’s a problem in the wilderness. You can’t pack enough food for apparently eight years. So they’re using the Liahona to direct them through words, through their faithfulness.

And then I remembered just last week and the week before we taught a lot about the iron rod as the way to God. And I thought, how can the—there’s two ways apparently, or at least two ways. The Liahona can lead you, the iron rod can lead you. They seem to be different ways to get to the truth.

Richard Paul wrote an essay in 1967, and he said there are two types of church members: Liahonans and iron rodders. And I found it really interesting. I really liked it because he said there’s kind of two different ways to do it: hanging onto the rod or living faithfully and following directions. But I feel like I’m not one or the other. And then I thought, well, I’m sort of like Nephi and Lehi. They use both—the idea of the iron rod and the Liahona. But it’s interesting to think about how you use both the iron rod and the Liahona in your life. Two different ways.

So I immediately went back to this slide I used last time I taught. And you may think, oh, she’s so tickled with the way that slide turned out. That’s why she’s using it again. And you’re right. It’s exactly why I’m using it again. But it talks about having a less direct way and a more direct way to hear God’s voice. And if you remember, personally, that’s why I’m reading what I’m reading for in the Book of Mormon: I’m looking for ways I can—things I can do to hear God’s voice.

So this was the slide that I used, and I thought, oh, I bet I can use it again because it was so good. I’m going to use it again, only this time I’m calling it the Liahona versus the Iron Rod. And then I didn’t like that. So I thought, the Liahona and the Iron Rod. Okay, we can use both.

So there’s my slide: Liahona on one side, Iron Rod on the other side. And then I thought, how are these people moving forward using these tools? So I thought, okay, what am I going to write under Iron Rodder? And the first thing I said: words of the prophet. Listen to the words of the prophet—that’s the iron rod. And then the scriptures—the word of God. We all know the song: the iron rod is the word of God. And then I came to this one: the Liahona magazine. Can you imagine? It was just like made for this slide. And then I started getting closer to the Liahona: personal revelation. And then more personal incentive. And I’m actually going to talk about this with a few other stories here in this lesson. And heart and mind. If you remember, the feelings in your heart and mind.

So there’s a continuum, and the Liahona and the iron rod are both important. But I think it’s really interesting sometimes to think about what are you using at any particular time.

Let me just say one other thing with this. Neither of these work unless you’re keeping the commandments and not murmuring. You can’t hear the still small voice when you do that. This is presupposing that you are doing your best.

All right. Nephi 17. And it came to pass we did again take our journey in the wilderness, and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth, and we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness, and our women did bear children in the wilderness. And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like unto the men, and they began to bear their journeys without murmurings. And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God, he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he commanded them. Wherefore he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness. And we did sojourn in the wilderness for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness.

And remember, this time the Liahona has been working for these eight years, keeping them on track all this time.

Well of course we can’t go very long before we run into some problems, and I’m calling this “doing what the Lord asks.” And Nephi’s got a problem. His bow breaks—his steel bow breaks—and even worse, the other guys’ bows have lost their spring. I don’t know what the life cycle of a bow and arrow is, but I gotta think it’s less than eight years before that happens.

And it says: Now it came to pass that I, Nephi, having been afflicted with my brethren because of the loss of my bow, and their bows having lost their springs, it began to be exceedingly difficult, yea, insomuch that we could obtain no food. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did speak much unto my brethren, because they had hardened their hearts again, even unto complaining against the Lord their God.

So here we’ve got the problem and the murmuring starting. And then right next, instead of murmuring, Nephi takes some action, some personal incentive. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick an arrow, wherefore I did arm myself with a bow and an arrow, and a sling, and with stones. And I said unto my father, Where shall I go to obtain food? And of course, what’s he going to do? He’s going to ask the Liahona where he should go to find food.

Now I can’t do everything here, but I do know that Laman and Lemuel got so mad at Lehi, or Nephi, they tied him up. They were mad, and at this point he shocks them—literally shocks them. This is where I see it escalating. Every time the murmuring starts, they do something—they murmur, they beat up Nephi, now they tie him up. And now he shocks them. More than once this happens. And that’s when Lehi is able to do—and it says, and it came to pass that the voice of the Lord said unto him, Look upon the ball, and behold the things which are written. And it came to pass when my father beheld the things which were written upon the ball, he did fear and tremble exceedingly, and also my brethren and the sons of Ishmael and our wives.

I’d really like to know what was written on that ball. But it scared them.

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the pointers which were in the ball, and they did work according to the faith and diligence and heed which we did give unto them. And there was also written upon them a new writing, which was plain to be read, which did give us understanding concerning the ways of the Lord. And it was written and changed from time to time according to the faith and diligence which we gave unto it. And thus we see that by small means the Lord can bring about great things.

That’s about the third time we’ve heard that. Small things can bring about great things.

I’d just like to say, how many of you think that Laman and Lemuel were jerks? Okay. All right. I just want to ask a question to this group. How many of you in here have ever sinned? Oh, I feel so much better being in a group of sinners. How many of you in here have repented? How many of you in here have ever repented for the same thing more than once?

I appreciate the long-suffering of the Lord with Laman and Lemuel. Because the Lord has been long-suffering with me. I have repented of the same things. I have my own cycle. Maybe some of you have your own cycles too, where you’re not where you want to be and you do your cycles. So I’m having a little soft spot in my heart for Laman and Lemuel here as a good example of what the Lord will do for them.

All right. Same issue once more with feeling. How do we do what the Lord asks of us? We’re going to need a bigger boat.

And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying, Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord.

Okay, how many times do we see this when a prophet goes up to the mountain? We talk about the mountain of the Lord or the temple of the Lord. We see this with Moses on Sinai, and we see it other times too. Nephi goes up into the mountain.

And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying, Thou shalt construct a ship after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.

Now once again, if I was given a task—he doesn’t say, “Lord, make the ship appear.” He says, And I said, Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me? I love this. He is thinking, what can I do to make this come to pass?

Now this may surprise you, but it may not. His brothers were not impressed with the fact that he was going to build a ship. Like, how in the world can you build a ship? And why doesn’t the Lord just build it? He could part the Red Sea; certainly he could build a ship. Why is it? That’s a really good question to ponder.

I will say that I always think that the Lord doesn’t ever give us anything that we can’t do for ourselves—that we need to take part in it. But we’re going to talk about shipbuilding.

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts. And after I had made bellows that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire. For the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire as we journeyed in the wilderness. For he said, I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not. And I will also be your light in the wilderness, and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments. Wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall be led towards the promised land, and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led.

Okay, so Nephi’s a shipbuilder now, but there’s another shipbuilder in the Book of Mormon, in Ether. Ether 3 verse 1. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared—now the number of vessels which he had prepared was eight—went forth unto the mount, another mountain, which they called the mount Shelem because of its exceeding height, and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones, and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass. And he did carry them in his hands upon the top of the mount, and cried again unto the Lord, saying—

Once again, the brother of Jared takes initiative. What are we going to do? I don’t want to travel in the dark. What can I do? And so he makes these molten stones and he takes it to the Lord.

Behold, O Lord, thou hast smitten us because of our iniquity, and hast driven us forth, and for these many years we have been in the wilderness. Nevertheless, thou hast been merciful unto us. O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness, but behold these things which I have molten out of the rock. And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man. Therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in the darkness, and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea.

I’m not going to spoil this; we’ll get to Ether later on at the end of this story. But that’s the brother of Jared taking initiative, building ships that he didn’t know about.

And lastly, Genesis 6 and 14. This is the Lord speaking to Noah. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

So now we’ve got three non-ship builders becoming ship builders. And all three of them had successful journeys in their ships.

Now I don’t think I will ever be asked to build a ship. I may be told where to rent a houseboat, but I won’t be building a ship. But I have been asked to do hard things. And I have found I have been more successful in doing hard things when I go to the Lord and when I try to help myself.

The Lord doesn’t—if you’ve got a problem, he doesn’t just sort of make that guy at the office disappear that you don’t like. He doesn’t suddenly make your kids respectful. But if you—I have found in my life, when I try to do the hard things, the Lord will help me. And usually it’s small things, and I don’t even recognize what those small things are until days and often years later.

All right. Same issue, same cycle. Verse 8, Nephi 17—wait, First Nephi 18. And it came to pass after we had gone down into the ship and had taken with us our provisions and things which had been commanded us, we did put forth into the sea and were driven forth before the wind towards the promised land. And after we had been driven forth before the wind for the space of many days, behold, my brethren and the sons of Ishmael and also their wives began to make themselves merry, insomuch they began to dance and to sing. I don’t think this is a bad thing, okay? I just am. And but here it comes: and to speak with much rudeness. Yea, even that they did forget by what power they had been brought thither; yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness.

Well, here we have the cycle once more. They’re at sea, and Nephi—I’m sure they thought, “Killjoy that he is”—he says, you know, stop that. We’ve got to stop that. The Lord doesn’t want this.

And then in First Nephi 18 verse 10: And I, Nephi, began to fear exceedingly lest the Lord should be angry with us, and smite us because of our iniquity. So the rudeness might be a little more—that might have been a euphemism for what they were doing. I don’t know. That we should be swallowed up in the depths of the sea. Wherefore I, Nephi, began to speak unto them with much soberness. But behold, they were angry with me. Oh, who couldn’t have seen this coming? Behold, they were angry with me, saying, We will not that our younger brother shall be a ruler over us. And it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords, and they did treat me with much harshness. Nevertheless, the Lord did suffer it that he might show forth his power, unto the fulfilling of his word which he had spoken concerning the wicked.

And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could not move, the compass which had been prepared of the Lord did cease to work. Well, now we’re in the middle of the ocean, and the compass doesn’t work, and Nephi’s tied up—he who is the only one that has any experience in shipbuilding now. And then what’s worse, a storm comes up. And the storm scares everybody, including Lehi and his mother. And Nephi himself says, oh my word, now we’re going to be lost into the sea. And I got to think, eight years we’ve been doing this, and now here we’re going to die.

And then in verse 21, it came to pass that the brothers finally figure out that this is a problem—maybe we ought to untie Nephi. And it came to pass that after they had loosed me, behold, I took the compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did guide the ship, that we sailed again toward the promised land.

I really like this painting by Jorge Cocco Santángelo. You know, it’s really nice. And once again, after the chastisement, help.

Well, okay, it’s been building up since the beginning of First Nephi. And it came to pass that after we had sailed for the space of many days, we did arrive at the promised land. And we went forth upon the land, and did pitch our tents, and we did call it the promised land. And it came to pass that we did begin to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that they did grow exceedingly; wherefore we were blessed in abundance. And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of man. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.

Well, they come to a land not of milk and honey, but a land of fertility, beasts, and ores. They’ve come to the land. And that’s where we’ll end up in First Nephi 18 today.

So what have we learned today? It’s always not an assignment, not a challenge—or maybe an invitation, unless you respond better to assignments or challenges. What do you want to get out of the Book of Mormon? I repeat that because I am finding that I am finding lots of things for the reason I want to read the Book of Mormon today.

But we’ve learned some other things too. When are you a Liahonan and when an iron rodder? That’s something that I’d like to [consider]. And how can we begin to build our ship, make our bow, or get to the promised land? What do I, Anita, need to do to do that? And lastly, what cycle do we want to break? Do you have a cycle that you want to [break]?

Well, you can use the lessons from Nephi in these chapters of Nephi. You can hold onto the rod, you can listen to the compass, you can do whatever you will. But I think the Book of Mormon is written for us today, so how can you apply it to your life?

I love—over the years I’ve been in lots, most of the organizations—and I love it when I’m teaching in Primary because that is the one place I unfailingly get touched by the Spirit each week. Sometimes it’s in lessons, sometimes it’s in the sharing time presentation that Primary presidency does, but mostly it’s in the music. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had tears listening to the music in Primary.

So today, with a prayer in my heart, I’m going to play you a song called “The Liahona” by Angie Killian, and it is a Primary song.

[Song / video plays]

Song excerpt (audible lyrics):
…And I will follow where he leads.
I will follow where he leads.
He’s coming…

I could have just played that song instead of yammering at you for forty-five minutes. And those kids—I’d like every one of them for my grandchildren, I’ll tell you, they are cute.

But let me just say: may we all listen to our own Liahona and keep hold of the iron rod to get to our own promised land. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.