Yet the Church’s opposition to expanded access to elective abortion has provoked significant backlash, even among its members. What’s going on here?

Idaho

Let’s look at Idaho. Current Idaho law is highly protective of unborn life. Its Defense of Life Act generally prohibits abortion after fertilization, with exceptions in the first trimester for reported rape or incest and for abortions that a physician determines are medically necessary to prevent the woman’s death. Idaho’s fetal heartbeat law separately prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected (around six weeks), with exceptions for medical emergencies involving risk of the mother’s death or a substantial risk of irreversible impairment of a major bodily function. However, the narrower exception under the Defense of Life Act takes precedence. 

Proposition 1 would significantly alter Idaho’s law by establishing a right to abortion before fetal viability and allowing it after viability in cases of medical emergency. Yet many support the measure, despite its expansion of elective abortion, typically citing concern for women’s access to medical care.

We must take seriously our responsibility to protect mothers’ lives and health. As scholars from the Ethics & Public Policy Center have written: 

Just as justice requires us to protect all unborn children, so too does it require us to protect access to life-affirming medical treatment for pregnant women facing grave medical complications. This is part of the pro-life ideal, not an exception to it. Ensuring access to such treatments is morally right and consistent with giving both mothers and unborn children the same protections accorded to others.

But you don’t fix potentially problematic law with worse law. Instead of ensuring the death of more unborn children by expanding abortion rights, Idaho residents should work to better tailor existing legislation to increase protection for the health of women and their babies. Significantly expanding elective abortion access is not the answer to ensuring medical professionals can act competently in cases when the mother’s health is at risk.

As you might expect, Doe’s extremely broad definition of health allows almost any concern to be invoked to justify abortion that is not strictly medically necessary—hence the ubiquitous slogan “abortion is healthcare.” Many critics believe this definition is far too broad and has contributed to a permissive legal framework under which an estimated 65 million abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973. 

In Idaho, a coalition of abortion providers, emergency room physicians, and maternal-fetal medicine specialists are supporting Proposition 1 in order to expand the state’s medical exceptions for abortion. Some emergency room physicians—who often provide initial care for pregnancy health crises—and some maternal-fetal medicine specialists—who provide care for both mother and unborn child, especially in high-risk pregnancies—believe that legislation restricting abortions will inevitably be interpreted in ways that will prevent them from providing the care they believe is best for their patients. They also fear the current law will result in doctors being prosecuted for exercising their best medical judgment in cases involving “serious but non-fatal harm, such as significant organ damage or an infection that has not yet become life-threatening.” 

These are important considerations. The law needs sufficient flexibility for physicians to provide care in cases where the distinction between a significant health concern and a life-threatening condition is unclear. It’s important to note that ordinary treatments for pregnancy complications are already legal in Idaho and are not classified as abortions. These include treatments for ectopic pregnancies, molar pregnancies, and completed miscarriages. And the law already covers life-saving treatments when the mother’s life is obviously at risk. So the controversy lies in the gap when a woman faces serious bodily injury, but death is not necessarily an imminent certainty.

Nevertheless, physicians in Idaho have transferred patients to out-of-state hospitals rather than risk becoming a test case that could jeopardize their practices or expose them to costly litigation. 

Idaho would likely benefit from amending its existing laws to emphasize that physicians can address serious threats to mothers’ health before their conditions become life-threatening. A proposition that does just that would be reasonable. But Idaho does not need to overhaul its entire legal scheme to provide elective abortions up to viability—a change that goes far beyond tailoring the law to improve care in emergency medical contexts. 

The Secular Case for Restricting Abortion

Beyond improving medical care, some simply want to expand abortion through viability for any reason, which both the Idaho and Nevada initiatives would do. Here’s why this is problematic.

For one, enshrining abortion as an individual woman’s right devalues human life itself, as well as society’s respect for mothers and children. Recognizing the unborn as having important social and moral status also recognizes pregnancy and maternity as important, meaningful, and charitable acts. As Erika Bachiochi has written, “To belittle the moral status of the unborn child is to belittle the state of pregnancy, and so the pregnant woman. Indeed, the sacrifices that pregnant women endure during their pregnancies would be more honored (and perhaps more rewarded) were we as a culture honest about the dignity of the human beings who have been entrusted to their care.” Our Creator endowed us with the unalienable right to life—the minimal prerequisite to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Women are trustees of unborn life and therefore stand in a position of trust relative to their vulnerable unborn children. 

Framing abortion solely as a woman’s private right also devalues fathers and families more generally. It impairs family relationships by elevating parental relationship problems, economic fears, and educational goals over the welfare of unborn children, and thus over human life itself. Being a husband and a father encourages men to develop emotional maturity, patience, and empathy, and fosters deeper personal growth. Currently, fathers have no parental rights relative to their unborn children, but they retain the duty of support. Many fathers of aborted children feel disenfranchised and experience grief over the abortion of their children, and many mothers are also negatively affected by abortion.

Ending the lives of the unborn cannot solve the problems women and their children face.  It appears that most abortions are performed on the poor or working poor, nearly two-thirds of whom are in their 20s. There are pro-life answers to pro-choice questions, and we must provide women better choices than abortion. 

In no other human relationship do we recognize a general right to unilaterally terminate another person’s life. As Lynn D. Wardle queried in “World & I,” “How can any activity that involves the consent of one individual, requires the assistance of a second, and results in the destruction of a third be called a matter of privacy?” In fact, giving a parent the right to end the life of their child, as Mary Parthun has pointed out in the book “Abortion’s Aftermath,” is socially regressive. Some ancient societies exposed unwanted newborns to the elements to end their lives; we’ve legalized ending the lives of unborn children in utero via chemicals or medical procedures and call ourselves morally superior. 

The Case for the Church’s Intervention

These secular arguments are not the only grounds for opposing initiatives that expand abortion rights. Latter-day Saint teachings also provide Church members with spiritual and temporal grounds for restricting elective abortions.

Against the backdrop of abortion ballot measures in Idaho, Nevada, Virginia, and Missouri, the letters from Church leadership discussed earlier provide wise and welcome counsel. New members may be unfamiliar with the Church’s long-held view that human life—including the unborn—is a sacred gift from God, central to His plan for the spiritual progression of His children. And some longtime members, despite knowing the Church’s policy on elective abortion, are nonetheless wary of supporting restrictions on a woman’s agency to choose abortion. 

The Church proclaimed the dignity and value of every human soul more than 30 years ago in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” In order to protect and promote the eternal progression of those souls, the Church counseled that sexual relations should be only between a lawfully wedded man and woman who care for each other, welcome the birth of children, and cooperate as equals in providing for and rearing their children. Those teachings affirm the intrinsic worth of human life and the profound importance of committed, healthy family relationships—both of which elective abortion degrades.

The Church supports individuals’ efforts to establish and maintain strong families through far-reaching educational and humanitarian programs, including self-reliance courses, health initiatives, and mental health services.

The stakes are high—for society and for individual souls. As we continue to address abortion and efforts to restrict or expand it, we should “accept the reality that we are fellow citizens who need each other” and heed President Oaks’ counsel to interact respectfully—a much-needed call for civil discourse in our age of sound-bite rage campaigns, both online and in person. 

Surely we can love our neighbors as ourselves, including women with challenging pregnancies, their irreplaceable unborn children, and the fathers of those children. We must love them enough to find ways to help them establish and maintain healthy family relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even into eternity.

The post Mothers Deserve Better Than This appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints offers a series of short, child‑focused videos that teach simple gospel principles through relatable stories.

The “Growing Faith” collection of videos is available on the Church website and on YouTube.

These short videos help children see how faith, forgiveness, kindness, prayer, revelation, and discipleship apply in everyday situations.

by Autumn Dickson

My family watched Treasure Planet last night. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and it was awesome sharing it with my kids last night. In the movie, we see Jim, a rebellious and angry teenager. His mom is trying to take care of him on her own because his father abandoned them, but Jim makes it pretty difficult. He is remarkably intelligent, but in the beginning, the image is formed that he has repeatedly gotten into trouble.

His mother has no idea how to handle the situation because she can’t protect him by forcing him to choose a life that’s good for him. I don’t know about Jim’s mom, but I feel like I would be yelling at my child, “Why can’t you see?! Why can’t you see that there is a whole life out there worth building? There is so much happiness to take hold of! Please don’t do this. Please don’t throw away your life and enter a cycle that is very difficult to crawl out of.”

The movie goes on and Jim has an awesome character arc and figures out his life and ends up taking care of his mother, but I can’t help but think about beginning-of-the-movie Jim. It doesn’t matter that he’s smart. It doesn’t matter that he has a home and food. It doesn’t matter that his mom loves him. It doesn’t matter that he has everything he needs to build a life worth living. Jim is headed towards his own destruction. He’s a step away from Juvenile Hall, and that doesn’t bother him. He’s too angry to make the kinds of choices that will build a worthwhile life.

And in real life, we often find that kids who are choosing trouble have a hard time getting out of it later. Their life becomes plagued with addiction or past legal records that prevent them from moving on even when they want to. Needless to say, it was a very different experience watching this movie as a child in comparison to watching it as an adult. As a child, I empathized with Jim. As an adult, I obviously empathize with the mother.

As I read the chapters for this week, my mind circled back to Jim and his mom again. I realized that Heavenly Father empathizes with Jim’s mother as well. In many ways, Israel is a rebellious teenager. They’re bent on choosing a path towards their own destruction, and Heavenly Father won’t force them to choose what’s right. Rather, He gets to sit and watch while His children reject the home, food, love, and blessings He has offered to them.

Here is something He asks Jeremiah to tell them.

Jeremiah 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.

Your wickedness will correct you. My fear is not in you. Let’s talk about those phrases in reverse order.

The fact that they don’t have the fear of God in them once again reminds me of Jim’s mother. Jim did not see the wisdom of his mother’s words. He didn’t see her sacrifices. He didn’t see how hard she was working to take care of him and how his choices were deeply affecting her. He didn’t fear her. In modern language, he didn’t respect her. I think he loved his mom, but that awe and attunement to her wisdom was absent.

And because he didn’t respect her, he didn’t listen. Movies are movies, and they often turn out differently than real life and so I will probably stop using Jim as an example at this point. In real life, that lack of respect means that we ignore God and His warnings, and eventually, that lack of respect is going to lead us into choices that will punish us. It will lead us to choices that will bring about our own destruction. Our wickedness will teach those difficult lessons.

We see this with Israel, and more relevantly, we see this in our own society.

There are a million examples of how ignoring the words of the Lord can lead to heartbreak, and yet, we don’t fear Him. We think we know what we’re doing. We think we can handle it. Everyone who is pushing for the Lord’s words is just judgy, and the world suffers for it.

I give one example.

I went to a wedding that had alcohol a few years ago. The wedding was nice. Everything was fine. The reception started afterwards. And at first, it was still all fine. I absolutely LOVE dancing, and I got to dance like crazy. It was a ton of fun. But by the end of the night, I started to see some weird things happening. Married spouses were dancing a little too friendly with each other. One of those married spouses tried dancing a little too close to me, and I dipped out. I didn’t see anything happen that would likely break up a marriage in a night.

But I did see very skewed boundaries. I saw a lot of people making decisions that they wouldn’t make otherwise. I saw behaviors that would breed worry and distrust. I honestly haven’t been around alcohol much in my life despite growing up in Texas, and so this was really the first time that I saw how alcohol can affect a person firsthand.

I understand that there are a million marriages out there that are fine despite two adults drinking alcohol.

I also know that a majority of my personal friends (I suppose I can’t speak for every single one of those friends) have had at least one deeply difficult experience happen to them under the influence of alcohol. And dare I say it… they were destructive experiences. There were stupid situations that would have never happened without alcohol. Despite the fact that they didn’t enter their evening with malicious intent and despite the fact that they’re wonderful, incredible human beings, and despite the fact that those experiences shouldn’t have happened, those destructive experiences did happen.

Surely we should be able to go out into the world 100% vulnerable, but that is not the world that we live in. The Lord is wise. He knows this. He knows the danger. He tries to protect us.

When we don’t recognize His love and omnipotence, when we don’t respect Him and all that He has to offer in our lives, when we ignore His warnings and protective barriers, then it is more likely that we will find difficult and destructive experiences.

That is not to victim-blame. If you’ve had alcohol and found yourself in that kind of destructive experience, you didn’t deserve what was coming to you. I sincerely believe that. You’re not morally abhorrent. You didn’t ask for it.

Rather, I use these principles to warn those who come after. Listen to the Lord. He knows what He’s talking about. You can do everything right, and bad things can still happen, but those protective barriers keep out much of the harm. I will preach what could potentially prevent harm.

Listen to Him! He’s not trying to boss you around for fun. He’s not bossing you around because He’s a narcissist. He doesn’t punish you because you offended His ego by not listening. He is trying to protect you against very real, negative influences in the world. He’s trying to prevent pain that isn’t necessary to your growth.

I testify that the Lord loves you. He is watching you. He is watching the situation of the world around you. He seeks to protect you. Following Him has been nothing but a blessing in my life. I am so, so grateful for His wise counsel.

Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Jeremiah 1–3; 7; 16–18; 20 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.

When we use the phrase “mental heuristics,” we are talking about something like a set of software programs in our minds. These programs cause us to process information rapidly in certain ways, usually automatically and without our awareness. For example, sports fans sometimes become excessively caught up in intense rivalries, and when two fans of opposing teams in a rivalry see each other in public, they might go out of their way to avoid each other after their mental heuristics lead them to anticipate an ugly public confrontation.

And their mental heuristics may be completely wrong. It may be true that both of them are very kind and respectful toward opposing fans and would be great friends if they got to know each other.

Mental heuristics can be accurate or inaccurate, but they are extremely useful. We cannot constantly investigate our surroundings, interrogate the people around us, and study every issue in depth at every moment. The human mind relies on heuristic shortcuts to keep us safe and help us avoid sensory and information overload.

Indoctrination into belief systems creates mental heuristics. Expressive individualism is the worldview at the heart of movies like “Footloose” and “Frozen,” and a person with an expressive individualist heuristic automatically views all attempts to create community norms and standards as preventing the expression of a person’s “authentic self.” Postmodernism is a worldview that many people adopt in graduate school, and it creates a heuristic that views all human activity and discourse as attempts to structure power. Marxism and Marxist-influenced approaches create mental heuristics in which we divide the world into oppressors and oppressed and see society as “systems of oppression” that maintain various forms of “supremacy.”

I should reiterate that heuristics are not inherently good or bad. As Latter-day Saints, we actively strive to develop good heuristics of charity that lead us to a default processing of the world with love of God and neighbor.

Our political heuristics in particular are powerfully reinforced by brain chemistry. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently wrote an excellent book, “Off Ramp,” in which he explained:

When we feel connected to others, our brains give us a ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling that is caused by the hormone oxytocin. This is a bonding hormone that increases feelings of trust, empathy, and closeness to partners, friends, and family and communities … It also pushes us to defend our in-groups against threats from others. In a 2015 study, participants given oxytocin were more likely to “adopt the erroneous judgments of their in-group members than subjects who did not receive the hormone.” Oxytocin increases in-group favoritism, lying for one’s team, conformity to in-group preferences, and aggressive protection against threatening outsiders. It’s fun to consider when you’re watching the TV show Survivor, but alarming when it suddenly invades every aspect of our lives. That loyalty doesn’t disappear once a person steps outside of the ballot box. It seems to follow us everywhere.

This echoes the observation in psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s landmark book “The Righteous Mind” that the brain chemical dopamine is also directly involved in our political thinking. He described a study in which researcher Drew Westen gave his research participants political messaging they found difficult and then gave them counter-information that “released” them from the mental stress of that initial information:

Once Westen released them from the threat, the ventral striatum started humming—that’s one of the brain’s major reward centers. All animal brains are designed to create flashes of pleasure when the animal does something important for its survival, and small pulses of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral striatum (and a few other places) are where these good feelings are manufactured. Heroin and cocaine are addictive because they artificially trigger this dopamine response … Westen found that partisans escaping from handcuffs (by thinking about the final slide, which restored their confidence in their candidate) got a little hit of that dopamine.

Given the role of these two chemicals in our responses to political information, we benefit from asking: What is really going on in our personal experiences of politics?

Most of us believe our political and other views are correct; otherwise, we would hold different views. But in a TED Talk, Kathryn Schulz asked a question later echoed by Jonathan Haidt: “How does it feel to be wrong?” The answer is the same way it feels to be right. The reassuring, reinforcing sensations of oxytocin and dopamine are experienced by people who are right and also by people who are dangerously wrong.

As specific examples, I think of President Donald Trump and Jon Stewart as the kings of political dopamine on the right and left, respectively. Trump built his political career and Stewart built his career as a commentator in the same way: publicly humiliating people to entertain audiences. Both of them have always offered their audiences some amount of truth, paired with enormous heuristic shortcuts that avoid real truth in opposing views. By sneering and insulting their opponents, they leave their audiences awash in surges of dopamine that reinforce their sense of intellectual and moral superiority.

We sometimes discuss peacemaking in terms of civility, but in reality, civility only reduces conflict, which we might call “détente-making.” This is valuable, to be sure, but peacemaking—the attainment of genuine mutual understanding and respect—requires work that is deeper and more difficult than détente-making. It requires work that breaks us free from the dopamine- and oxytocin-reinforcement loops that keep decent people suspicious and even hateful toward each other.

Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch has recently caused a stir by pointing to the “civic theology” of Latter-day Saints, articulated most strongly by President Dallin H. Oaks. I suggest this notion of our civic theology is essential to understanding President Oaks’ prophetic project. And I suggest the heart of our Latter-day Saint civic theology can be seen in a simple personal exercise: Imagine the political figure you most despise. For American Latter-day Saints on the political left, that figure is likely Donald Trump. For American Latter-day Saints on the political right, that figure might be Kamala Harris or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Understand that this person, who fills your heart with fear and loathing, may well end up in the presence of God for eternity, in what we call the celestial kingdom. And the celestial kingdom is a place where everyone will be fully at peace with one another, without any personal hostility or grievances. Knowing the likelihood that many of your current political adversaries will be there, is the celestial kingdom still a place where you yearn to be?

So many of our discussions of peacemaking focus on the tactical, on things we should or should not do. But as this exercise illustrates, a real theological question in which we name names is a much better exercise for helping Latter-day Saints to understand the stakes involved in peacemaking. If we are mired in political oxytocin that leaves us feeling love and belonging toward our in-group and fear and loathing toward everyone outside our in-group, we would do well to break free of that chemical feedback loop. The work of breaking free is to honestly explore the validity of opposing political views. This involves setting aside heuristics that we formerly relied upon to rapidly make sense of political information. In the process of sincerely looking for validity in opposing political views, we may or may not change our minds. But we will likely lose relationships that depend on the constant chemical reinforcement of political oxytocin. In this, we take up our cross.

In politics and everywhere else, the quest for truth cannot long coexist with other cravings like belonging, comfort, or validation. All of the most important questions of our time are so serious that they sift out people who are willing to patiently see beyond their heuristics and wrestle deeply over what is true, from those who use political and moral discussions merely as a means to oxytocin- and dopamine-driven rewards.

Returning to where we started: In her article on abortion, Meagan Kohler could have done the predictable thing. She could have written a typical article intended to push her readers’ partisan mental buttons and give them another hit of dopamine. Instead, she wrote a serious piece exploring how the assumptions about gestation that we find in the pro-choice movement are regressive for civilization. That is a position that deserves deep reflection, not shallow heuristic dismissal.

But for people who have spent years or even decades cultivating heuristics of intellectual entropy, expressions of moral order and clarity are received as oppressive or even pathological. Social media is a place where intellectually entropic people gather to reassure each other in a hot tub of oxytocin after feeling the sharp discomfort of clarity. On subjects like abortion, there are many voices of entropy both in and out of the Church, so a frenzied response is almost to be expected. But there also may be a few people—perhaps even just one—at a crossroads in their thinking, willing to give their hearts to a real consideration of a thoughtful treatment of the issue.

To reach that small subset of readership is the goal of every converted Latter-day Saint commentator. We should likewise each carry a personal goal of modeling something other than heuristic-driven responses toward people we regard as political or religious opponents. In many cases, even when we disagree, there are things we can learn from them in that disagreement.

The post Could You Share Heaven With Them? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In the United States, October Is a nationally recognized Family History Month, a time to connect with our family and Honor the heritage of our ancestors.

There are many ways you can celebrate and honor your heritage. Find ideas in the following:

• Read the article “31 Ways to Celebrate Family History Month.”
• Watch the FamilySearch 101 YouTube videos.
• Use FamilySearch’s “Compare a Face” or “Famous Relatives” features.
• Find a relative’s headstone through BillionGraves, Find a Grave, or FamilySearch.
• Read the article “Ideas for celebrating Family History Month.”

In his October 2026 General Conference address, “A Higher and Holier Fast,” Elder Ulisses Soares invited Latter-day Saints to look beyond the outward observance of fasting and consider its deeper spiritual purpose.

Drawing upon Isaiah 58 and the Savior’s example, Elder Soares taught that fasting is more than abstaining from food or petitioning Heavenly Father for specific blessings. It is a sacred opportunity to strengthen our relationship with Him, align our desires with His will, and become more attentive to the needs of His children.

Even when answers do not come in the way we expect, fasting and prayer help us develop greater confidence in the Lord, in our covenants with Him, and in His plan for our lives, as well as a deeper willingness to accept His will.

Yet fasting can raise sincere questions. If Heavenly Father already knows our needs and desires to bless us, why does He ask us to fast? And if we fast faithfully but do not receive the blessing we seek, has our fasting accomplished anything?

Elder Soares’s message offers an important clarification: The purpose of fasting is not to change God’s willingness to bless us, but to draw nearer to Him and allow His will to shape our hearts.

Common Criticism: Fasting Treats God’s Blessings as Something We Can Earn

Some critics interpret religious fasting as an attempt to influence God’s decisions through personal sacrifice. From this perspective, abstaining from food may appear to be a spiritual bargaining process: if we sacrifice enough, pray earnestly enough, or demonstrate sufficient faith, God will reward us with the outcome we desire.

This concern can become especially troubling when faithful individuals fast for healing, guidance, reconciliation, or relief from suffering but do not receive the answer they hoped for.

If fasting is understood primarily as a way to obtain specific blessings, an unanswered prayer may leave someone wondering whether their faith was insufficient, their sacrifice was inadequate, or God was unwilling to help.

But this interpretation overlooks an essential distinction between seeking God’s help and attempting to control His response.

Fallacy at Work: False Cause

A false cause fallacy occurs when a causal relationship is assumed without sufficient justification.

In this context, the mistaken assumption is that fasting necessarily produces a particular divine response: if we fast faithfully, God must grant the requested blessing. Conversely, if the blessing does not come, something must have been wrong with our fast.

But fasting is not a spiritual formula that guarantees a predetermined outcome. The scriptures contain accounts of fasting and prayer accompanying remarkable blessings, but those examples do not establish that every faithful fast must produce the same result.

Elder Soares teaches that fasting is an opportunity to align our desires with God’s purposes and our expectations with His wisdom. The spiritual value of fasting cannot be measured solely by whether our circumstances change.

Doctrine: Fasting Draws Us Closer to God and Helps Align Our Will With His

In Isaiah 58, the Lord challenges His covenant people to look beyond the outward performance of fasting and recognize its sacred purpose. Rather than presenting fasting as an isolated act of physical deprivation, Isaiah connects it with sincere worship, righteousness, compassion, and care for those who suffer.

The Lord promises:

“Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am” (Isaiah 58:9).

This promise emphasizes the Lord’s nearness and His willingness to hear His children. Fasting, when joined with sincere prayer, can help us become more receptive to that divine relationship.

The Book of Mormon likewise teaches that the people of God fasted and prayed often, becoming increasingly humble and firm in their faith in Christ (Helaman 3:35). Their spiritual growth was not simply the result of enduring physical hunger. It came as they humbled themselves before God and opened their hearts to His sanctifying influence.

The Savior’s own example provides the clearest model. Before beginning His mortal ministry, Jesus Christ fasted in the wilderness. His fasting was not an attempt to persuade the Father to change His divine plan. It was an expression of perfect devotion and preparation to fulfill that plan.

Through fasting and prayer, we likewise seek to deepen our relationship with Heavenly Father and become more willing to follow His will.

Elder Soares’s Correction: Fasting Changes More Than Our Circumstances

Elder Soares taught:

His example teaches us that fasting and prayer may not remove every burden from our path, but they draw heaven near and endow us with divine power to overcome or endure whatever circumstances we may face, giving us the spiritual fortitude to remain faithful to the Father’s will.

This distinction is central to understanding the law of the fast.

We may begin a fast seeking a particular answer, but the Lord may bless us with something we did not anticipate: greater patience, deeper trust, spiritual clarity, increased humility, or strength to continue through a difficult season.

These blessings do not necessarily eliminate our challenges. Instead, they help us face those challenges with greater confidence in Heavenly Father’s love and wisdom.

Importantly, this does not mean fasting is merely a psychological exercise or that we should stop seeking specific blessings. The restored gospel teaches that God hears and answers prayers and that fasting can accompany sincere petitions for divine help. But our faith is ultimately placed in the Lord, not in our ability to produce a particular outcome.

Elder Soares describes fasting as an opportunity to align our desires with God’s purposes and our expectations with His wisdom. A higher and holier fast is not defined by how successfully we persuade God to follow our plans, but by how willingly we seek to follow His.

Solution: Fasting Is Both Personal Devotion and Christlike Charity

Elder Soares expands our understanding of fasting by connecting our relationship with God to our responsibility toward His children.

He taught:

Our fast becomes not only a personal act of devotion to God but also an outward expression of Christlike charity and love.

This principle is rooted in Isaiah 58, where the Lord describes an acceptable fast as one that helps relieve oppression, loosen burdens, and care for those in need. Fasting is therefore not intended to turn our attention exclusively inward. As we seek greater communion with Heavenly Father, we should also become more sensitive to the suffering, struggles, and needs of others.

For Latter-day Saints, generous fast offerings provide one tangible expression of this principle. These contributions help provide temporal assistance to those in need while allowing members to participate in a shared work of compassion and consecration.

Elder Soares reminds us that even offerings that appear small can become meaningful expressions of love and service. The Savior provides the perfect example of this outward-facing discipleship. He came not only to teach divine truth but also to minister personally to those who were burdened, afflicted, or in need.

As we follow His example, fasting can help us become more attentive to opportunities to serve. We do not fast simply to invite heaven into our own lives. We also fast to become more willing instruments through whom the Lord can bless others.

Living Apologetics: Recognizing the Blessings We May Not Have Expected

It can be tempting to evaluate a fast by asking whether we received the answer we wanted: Did the illness improve? Did the difficult relationship change? Did the anticipated opportunity appear? Did the uncertainty disappear?

These are understandable questions, especially when we are fasting about circumstances that matter deeply to us. But Elder Soares invites us to consider additional questions:  Did fasting help us feel closer to Heavenly Father? Did it increase our willingness to trust Him? Did it soften our hearts or help us recognize someone else’s needs? Did it strengthen our ability to remain faithful through uncertainty?

Sometimes the most meaningful blessings of fasting are not immediately visible. They may appear gradually through increased spiritual sensitivity, greater compassion, or a growing confidence that the Lord is aware of us even when our circumstances remain difficult.

This perspective also encourages greater sensitivity toward others. We should not assume that someone whose prayers remain unanswered has failed to fast with sufficient faith. The Lord’s wisdom, timing, and purposes are not always fully visible to us.

And because fasting includes a commitment to Christlike charity, our response to another person’s suffering should not be to evaluate the adequacy of their faith, but to offer compassion and support.

Practical Apologetic Use:

• If someone says: “If fasting doesn’t guarantee that God will answer your prayers the way you want, what’s the point of doing it?”

• You can respond: “We believe fasting is about much more than receiving a particular blessing. When we fast and pray, we’re expressing our faith in God and seeking to draw closer to Him. Sometimes that includes receiving the specific help we’ve asked for, but sometimes the blessing comes through greater strength, understanding, or willingness to accept His will. Fasting also reminds us to look beyond ourselves and care for others. Its purpose isn’t to control God’s decisions, but to deepen our relationship with Him and become more like Jesus Christ.”

Ways to Apply Today: 

1️⃣Approach your next fast with a desire for communion, not only an answer. Bring your sincere needs and questions to Heavenly Father, but also ask Him to help you understand His will. Consider how fasting might strengthen your relationship with Him regardless of the immediate outcome.

2️⃣Look for blessings beyond changed circumstances. As you fast and pray, pay attention to feelings of peace, increased patience, greater humility, or a renewed willingness to trust the Lord. Remember that spiritual growth can occur even while difficulties remain unresolved.

3️⃣Allow your fasting to become an expression of Christlike love. Consider how your fast offerings, time, attention, or service might bless someone else. Ask Heavenly Father to help you recognize a need you can respond to with compassion.

Keep This Talk With You

Elder Soares’s message reminds us that the law of the fast is not simply about abstaining from food or seeking specific blessings. It is an invitation to experience deeper communion with Heavenly Father and become more like His Son, Jesus Christ.

We may approach fasting with sincere hopes for healing, direction, or relief. Those desires are worthy of bringing before the Lord. But faithful fasting also invites us to recognize that God’s wisdom may extend beyond the outcomes we can presently see.

Sometimes the answer comes through a changed circumstance. Other times it comes through a changed heart. And as our hearts become more receptive to the Lord, they can also become more receptive to the needs of His children.

Elder Soares taught:

Though our fast offerings may seem small and simple, they become consecrated expressions of compassion, concern, and service.

This week, consider how you might approach fasting with renewed purpose. Perhaps that means bringing a sincere question to the Lord while remaining open to His will, expressing gratitude for spiritual strength you’ve received, or finding a meaningful way to serve someone who is struggling.

Remember that fasting is not intended to be a joyless exercise in deprivation. It is a sacred opportunity to draw closer to God, deepen our trust in Him, and experience the joy of Christlike discipleship.

The highest purpose of fasting is not simply to receive something from the Lord, but to draw nearer to Him and become more willing to bless His children.

When I fast, am I primarily seeking a particular outcome, or am I also allowing the Lord to change my heart and guide me toward the needs of others?

The Consider Conference series by FAIR offers an in-depth look at recent General Conference talks to help members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints navigate common questions, misunderstandings, and criticisms. Each post provides doctrinal insights, historical context, and practical ways to apply gospel principles in everyday conversations. Through this series, we hope to equip readers with faith-promoting resources that encourage thoughtful reflection, respectful dialogue, and a stronger foundation in gospel truths, fostering both personal conviction and meaningful discussions with others.

The post A Higher and Holier Fast appeared first on FAIR.

by Autumn Dickson

In Isaiah 61, we find a mission statement for Jesus Christ. In those verses, Christ talks about the reason His Father sent Him here to the earth. There are many prophecies about Jesus Christ, but He chose this prophecy specifically when the time came for Him to announce His divine Sonship and mission during His mortal life.

Isaiah 61:1-2

1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

There is one phrase in particular that I want to talk about: “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” I did not understand what this specific phrase meant until this study.

The year is not a calendar 365 day year. Rather it is a word to describe a season of God’s grace, redemption, and favor. It is acceptable because it aligns with God’s merciful will for His children. Christ’s life was that season of grace.

It also holds allusions to a very specific ritual in the Law of Moses: the year of Jubilee. This was a radical social and economic practice that is detailed in Leviticus 25. Essentially, every 7th year was a Sabbath year where the land would rest and not be farmed, and debts and slaves were given relief. After 7 cycles of 7 years (the 50th year) on the 10th day of the 7th month, a ram’s horn would blow.

With that blow of the ram’s horn, some incredible things would happen. Any land that had been sold or leased or lost due to debt or poverty would revert back to the original family owners. The land belonged to God, not individuals. This prevented permanent loss of family inheritance and cycles of generational poverty. Individuals could not actually sell their land permanently because they believed the land belonged to God; they could only lease the land and the right to harvest the crops. The year of Jubilee would end all leases so when people were leasing out the land to cover financial hardship, they would agree on a price depending on how many harvests were left before the Jubilee.

Going along with the land debt reversion, Hebrew indentured servants (people who had to sell themselves in order to service to pay debts) were set free and returned to families and ancestral lands. You couldn’t lose your inheritance or yourself.

There was also a land reset. The land would rest for a second year (the normal 7th year cycle and then the 50th year); there was no sowing, reaping, or harvesting. This signalled deep trust in God’s provision. People ate what naturally grew from the fields, and there was a promise of bountiful harvest in the sixth year to cover the needs of the people.

First of all, what a cool concept. What incredible protections for His people. They could work hard and keep their dignity and take care of their debts, but they couldn’t permanently lose everything. That is definitely a year of Jubilee, an acceptable year of the Lord. Unfortunately, the people didn’t really follow this part of the Law of Moses. It was never regularly or successfully implemented in ancient Israel. However, Jubilee can be applied on the most important level whenever we desire. It can happen spiritually.

When we observe the mortal life and mission of Jesus Christ, we can see why the announcement of the beginning of the Lord’s ministry would also be called an acceptable year of the Lord.

Because of Jesus Christ, we do not have to permanently lose our ancestral inheritance for ourselves or for future family members. We are given new opportunities to live lives that are as rich as anyone else’s. Permanent loss was completely prevented even if there were seasons of hardship and servitude and repentance; you can’t permanently lose everything.

And because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, our families are protected as well. We see spiritual poverty amongst families all the time. The children suffer because of what their parents lost. In a world without Christ’s atonement, justice would still take everything from these children despite the fact that they were set up for failure. The atonement allows Christ to judge mercifully and circumstances into account rather than holding hard, fast lines of justice.

Indentured servants were freed. Not only could you not lose your inheritance, you didn’t have to lose yourself. You could be your own steward again. No one could keep racking up debts against and keep you indentured forever. Think about what that meant for a person who went through these celebrations of Jubilee. You walk away from that indentured servitude, hopefully grateful to God for setting up a society that prevented you from being a slave forever. Hopefully, you walked away with the understanding that God’s foresight and planning allowed for you to come home. Hopefully, you recognize His grace, rejoice in His goodness, and work to be a good steward. You look at your freedom compared with your servitude, and you choose to do something worthwhile with that freedom.

And then, of course, the land reset. We rejoice in the freedom offered to us. Every Jubilee year, the poor would theoretically (since it wasn’t really fully implemented) be given this deep sense of awe and gratitude at the Lord’s mercy. However, it’s not just the poor who rely on the Lord. Even the rich need the Lord, and the land reset would have given them an opportunity to learn that same lesson: their deep dependence on the mercy of the Lord. In a year of no sowing, reaping, or harvesting, they had to trust that the Lord would do exactly as He promised. He would provide for them.

I testify that the acceptable year of the Lord has come. Because of Christ’s mortal ministry, servants are freed, inheritances are restored, and none of us need be in permanent poverty. We have a deep dependence on the Lord regardless of whether we spend entire sabbatical Sabbath years allowing the land to rest. Recognizing that deep dependence is a blessing for us. It gives a safety net in a world that can take everything. I am so grateful for what Christ paid to bring about this Jubilee.

Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Isaiah 58–66 – Part 2 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.

We sat down with Walker Wright, author of the recently published book “Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Foundations of Latter-day Testimony,” to discuss this pattern and how someone might work through it. Wright’s book lays out an intellectual case for the plausibility of the “roots” of a testimony: belief in the Godhead, belief in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief in the Restoration. In our interview spanning metaphysics, science, history, and epistemology, we explore questions ranging from what the nature and orderliness of the universe might tell us about the plausibility of God to what we should make of the experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses.

Wright serves as the director of programs for a Yale-based institute and has previously held academic program management roles at public policy organizations in Washington, D.C. His writing spans economics, politics, and religion and has appeared in academic journals and public outlets alike. He holds an MA in government from Johns Hopkins University, as well as an MBA and BBA from the University of North Texas.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and style, and Mr. Wright has approved the edits. 

Anna: Good morning, Walker. Thank you for joining Amanda and me today to talk about your new book, “Nourishing the Roots.” Amanda and I both read it and really enjoyed it. We’re excited to jump into some questions about it today.

Walker: Thanks for having me. Appreciate the invitation.

Amanda: Latter-day Saints, especially those who are experiencing a trial of faith, often hear this domino logic: If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really is Christ’s restored church, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and then God is our Heavenly Father. So all we really need to know is if the Book of Mormon is true. But you started from a much simpler and almost opposite route: why anything at all? Why did you think that was the right place to start?

Walker: Great question. I don’t disagree with the logic that having a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon is the major paradigm shift and the way to truly anchor you in the truths of the Restoration. That’s why I make it the last chapter. I think that is the most fundamental and best way to come to know the truth of it. For most Latter-day Saints, that’s usually how they get their testimony and where they begin. 

My approach is to go all the way back to what we can really know about anything, which goes back to the basic fundamentals of reality. When you start to question these experiences, start questioning all experiences. Go all the way back and start to build again. The hope is that once you get through chapters one through seven—starting with reality, the Resurrection, and the Book of Mormon itself—someone questioning those experiences can say, “Maybe that wasn’t self-delusion. Maybe that was genuine. Maybe I should continue to take that seriously.” 

Or if you’ve never had that experience yourself—maybe you’ve always been a non-believer of some sort—maybe you can get over some of these hurdles that might be blocking you from even trying to have a spiritual experience. Eventually, once you’ve thought through it, you might say, “Maybe I should try this. Maybe I should take it a little bit seriously,” and you might be in a place where you could genuinely attempt to have a spiritual experience. I decided to start at the root because the hope is to help people overcome a number of hurdles and create the context for a genuine spiritual experience.

Anna: I was really interested in your discussion of the intelligibility of reality. That chapter blew my mind because we take so much of it for granted. Math works with physics, but it doesn’t have to. Why that chapter? How does that help form a basis to develop some of the most basic and fundamental beliefs?

Walker: I start there because it is one of the most knowable things: existence. We all exist. It’s one of the most familiar experiences that we have: existing and seeing that things around us exist. As you pointed out, we often take that for granted. Understandably so, because it’s natural. We form these beliefs through sensory experience. 

But if you actually stop to think about existence or being, you realize that it’s pretty weird. You start to ask, “Did things have to exist?” And even if they did, they could have existed in a chaotic form where nothing made sense to us, with no meaning, purpose, or pattern that we could derive from anything. Yet, that’s not the kind of reality that we live in. There is an orderliness and a rationale behind these things. There are laws of physics that we discover. We don’t just project those laws onto a nonsensical reality, but they’re actually woven into the fabric of reality. That’s very lucky, and in some sense, somewhat unexpected. 

It could be a happy accident that we exist. It could also be a happy accident that it’s orderly and rational to some degree. But I don’t know if we really should expect that. Once you start to think about that, it puts a crack in the naturalist worldview—the idea that nature is a closed system that is sufficient to account for itself and that you can explain it all from within that system. This worldview generally sees reality as nothing more than physical processes and mechanisms. There’s no ultimate purpose to these processes. It’s just the machinery of the universe.

But I don’t know if that’s tenable anymore once you start talking about things making sense and that there’s actual sense to be made, because that entails meaning in the way things operate. That indicates a logic to the whole structure. And logic isn’t inherent in any mere mechanism. Describing physical laws assumes lawfulness and order. It smuggles in meaning. And I don’t know that meaning has any place in a strictly naturalist view of the universe. It’s not so much that “why is there something rather than nothing” or “why is the world intelligible” automatically means God, the Restoration, or anything like that. But I think it puts a crack in naturalism. Once you start moving away from that worldview, you start asking, “What are the alternatives? What kind of reality do we exist in?” Eventually, hopefully, you get to the point of asking whether it’s the kind of reality that makes more sense with or without God. This is the first step moving towards a reality that contains the divine.

Anna: That’s really interesting. You also talked about consciousness. I had to read that chapter a few times just to wrap my head around it: the fact that we are conscious and can comprehend that we are. Yet as much as we can describe the neurons firing and the chemicals flowing, we cannot actually understand the subjective experience of consciousness merely through its scientific process. How does that connect to a person’s consciousness or mind in seeking truth and developing a testimony of the roots?

Walker: I see the first three chapters as laying the groundwork for moving beyond a naturalist worldview. You have the strangeness of existence and the intelligibility of reality in the first chapter. You have the fine-tuning of the universe that reinforces this intelligibility of reality. 

What makes that difficult for me to agree with is that once you start to go through the machinery of the brain and think through it, if it is all just physical stimuli and physical processes, then we can easily imagine a world in which those physical processes are still going on, but there’s no subjective experience. In the book, I talk about what philosophers of mind call “zombies,” which basically look like us, act like us, and are in every way, shape, and form the same as us, except there’s no light on upstairs. Or maybe the only conscious experience is white noise. It could have been that way if mind were just machinery, but it didn’t end up being that way. 

One of my favorite thought experiments is the “Chinese nation” by the philosopher Ned Block: let’s say you gave everyone in China very specific instructions about when and what to signal to others, along with a cell phone to carry out those signals. The entire nation ends up functioning like neurons in a brain, flipping certain switches at certain times by use of these signals. Now let’s say that you hook the whole system up to a robot. The people of China collectively function as the robot’s “brain,” and the robot begins to act like a conscious human being because of all these switches. Now, ask yourself, “Is that robot conscious? Does that robot have a subjective first-person experience?” Most people would say no. But if we say that the mind is nothing more than this kind of machinery, then we haven’t really explained why we have conscious first-person experience. We all could have ended up like this robot. But we’re not.

There seems to be a qualitative difference and gap between the physical nature of the brain and the experience of consciousness. Mind is more than machine. I sum it up by borrowing from a philosopher who says it’s a construction error to think mindless particles suddenly become mind: Just like white marble tiles do not suddenly add up to a black, non-marble floor, mindless, impersonal matter does not suddenly add up to a personal, subjective mind. The implication seems to be that the mind must be in the ingredients from the get-go, that it must have always been there. It’s not a latecomer to the universe. It seems to be at the foundation of existence, the ultimate foundation of all things. So now you not only have the strangeness of existence, the intelligibility of reality, and the fine-tuning of the universe, but a mind-like reality where mind is eternal, has always been around, and was there from the get-go. That fits very well with the Latter-day Saint perspective that intelligence is not created or made, and that mind was in the beginning with God, premortality, all that type of stuff. Now you have this strange mind-like reality. Is it the kind of reality that makes more sense with God or without? That’s the groundwork that leads up to God, Christ, and the Restoration.

Amanda: I want to take us back to the Book of Mormon now. You make an interesting comparison between the historical evidence for the Resurrection and for the Book of Mormon witnesses. What do you think a Christian who accepts the Resurrection but quickly dismisses the evidence for the Book of Mormon witnesses actually has to grapple with when it comes to the witnesses? 

Walker: What I’ve noticed a lot of the time in people who have rejected the Book of Mormon witnesses but accept the Resurrection—especially if they’re leaning hard on the eyewitnesses of the Resurrection or the New Testament witnesses—is that I don’t think they’re familiar with the documented evidence. I don’t think they’re familiar with how much we have from these witnesses, how consistent they are, and how early they are in terms of proximity to the actual event. Some are much later, but we have plenty from within a month or so where you have actual signed statements and so forth. 

Many Christians who reject it make elementary mistakes. I’ve heard people in some debates say, “Joseph was the only one who saw them.” That seems to be completely ignorant of the witnesses themselves. Or they’ll say, “It was just a fraud.” What’s your evidence that it’s fraud? That’s the question, isn’t it? Or they’ll say something like, “The witnesses went back on their testimonies,” which they never did. 

What they’re missing is how closely they parallel the ancient witnesses of the Resurrection, meaning that they had plenty of incentives to deny their testimony. They had reputational damage. It cost money in the case of Martin Harris. The witnesses faced persecution, they faced death threats, some were beaten, and some were actually killed. Some left the Church. Some came back, but some didn’t. That is really interesting, because the claim was not, “Joseph was never a prophet,” but for those who left, they said he became a fallen prophet. That is a very important distinction, because ultimately it’s saying, “Angels, God, the Restoration—that happened. I just think it may have gone off the rails later on down the line.” The Book of Mormon witnesses are something a lot of Christians are missing. They’re between a rock and a hard place: they’ll rely heavily on the eyewitnesses of the Resurrection, but then if they take that eyewitness argument seriously, they either have to deal with these Book of Mormon witnesses and take them seriously as well, or they have to undermine their own argument in favor of the Resurrection. 

These critics are missing many of the same incentives the early Christians faced, and they’re overlooking the fact that we have far more documentation from these particular witnesses describing their experiences, and that it wasn’t just one kind of experience. You had the Eight with a very tangible, physical, natural experience, and the Three with the angel. The two of those together, reinforcing each other, make it pretty hard to come up with an overarching explanation to dismiss them.

Amanda: At the beginning of our discussion, you mentioned how people going through a faith crisis are reevaluating their previous experiences and looking for things like how much of this was confirmation bias, how much was emotional manipulation, or a draw from culture. Book of Mormon antiquity is always a big question for people who are struggling. How do you distinguish a good case for Book of Mormon antiquity from confirmation bias, where you’re counting all of the hits while you sort of dismiss what doesn’t work?

Walker: Great question. The biggest thing—and I say this in a footnote, not in the main body of the book—is that critics will ask, “Is there any non-Latter-day Saint archaeologist, Mesoamericanist, or anthropologist who takes the Book of Mormon seriously?” The answer is pretty clearly no. Nobody looks at it who isn’t a Latter-day Saint. I point out that if they did take it seriously, they would probably become a Latter-day Saint, and then they would remove themselves from the critics’ preferred category that was created. 

Second, it’s not just being an expert in a particular geography or field; you also have to be an expert in the text itself. What does the text itself actually claim? That was something that John Sorenson was doing when he created the limited geography model: piecing together what the text itself says about its own geography. That’s just one example. To me, the bad arguments for supposed antiquity usually rest on a whole bunch of assumptions about the ancient world or about the text itself, and sometimes both, instead of what the actual text says and what we actually know about the ancient world. When those two things converge, that’s when it becomes—not a knockdown argument by any means—but definitely one that should raise eyebrows where you say, “That’s interesting.” 

The best ones for me are the most subtle, where the text itself actually makes more sense when you take that ancient evidence into consideration. If you read the Bible straight through, KJV style, you can get a lot out of it, but you can also be confused. Using a commentary that has cultural context can make the text come alive so that you understand why they acted that way and what was going on, because it doesn’t always give you that information. It assumes the audience already knows. Same thing with the Book of Mormon. Anytime I’ve incorporated ancient evidence to give cultural context to the text, it starts to make more sense, come alive, and I understand the text better. It has no business doing that if it’s strictly a 19th-century text, because it should have no coherence with the ancient world. That’s a personal thing for me, where the text begins to actually make more sense when you take into consideration this evidence for antiquity. That’s one of the biggest flags for me.

Amanda: People who are struggling through a crisis of faith often describe feeling dismissed when people offer advice focused on getting back to the basics: read your scriptures, say your prayers, go to church, take the sacrament, fast. When we are supporting those who are struggling, how do we keep this roots-and-branches framework from becoming a way to dismiss real, heartfelt, good-faith questions about issues that may be branch issues?

Walker: Great question. I’ve already seen some responses to my book where I’ve been accused of being dismissive just by promoting the idea that there are roots (primary, fundamental beliefs) and branches (secondary beliefs that are outgrowths of the roots)—just the sheer model of it is offensive in some way. Most of the time, the answer’s not going to be, “You have a concern about Church history. That doesn’t matter. Here’s a book by Walker Wright, go read that.” That’s not the best way to do it. 

A lot of the time, I’ve found that you’ll reach a certain assumption that might not be necessary or justified, or it’s a paradigm about prophets. It’s a gangly branch that could be cut off; it’s not something you have to preserve. You don’t have to believe or think that; you can think about it another way, and that fits just fine in the Church’s teachings. By asking questions and being genuinely interested, you go through these and figure out where they’re coming from. That helps people feel heard, and it helps you both understand where the issue is. It may not resolve it right then and there, but it helps you better connect on where you both are coming from. I have had experiences where I’ve pointed out that they don’t have to hold a certain assumption, and that helped them move on from there. My experience with people has been to always try to figure out how what they’re struggling with connects to these roots and whether there actually is a through line between what they’re struggling with and the major claims of the gospel.

Amanda: That connects a lot with my own personal experience, where I thought the issue was polygamy, and the more I questioned it, the more I got down to: maybe the reason why polygamy led to me thinking I might be an atheist is because I’m struggling with the nature of God, what God might think, and how my assumptions about the world might be different than the way God views the world.

Walker: Absolutely.

Amanda: After spending most of the book constructing an intellectual case, you ultimately end with personal revelation. Does that suggest that apologetics don’t actually produce faith, or perhaps they can clear intellectual obstacles so that people become more willing to encounter God?

Walker: I think it can be both. Elder (Neal A.) Maxwell (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), quoting Anglican philosopher Austin Farrer, said that arguments and reasons don’t produce faith, but they create a context in which faith can thrive. It’s few and far between, but I think there are some people out there where the sheer intellectual argument can do something for them. That really does it for them. But that’s not most people. Most people take reason and their own experience into account. 

I see the book as casting a wide net to those people who might be 95% intellectual, hoping to offer good arguments, reflection, and reasons to take it seriously. None of it is absolute proof; none of these are knockdown arguments that you can’t explain in other ways, but I think someone can walk away saying, “I may not believe it, but it’s not unreasonable.” That’s a move in the right direction as far as I’m concerned. 

For most people, apologetics helps clear hurdles. I hope my book causes people to reflect on how they know things, how their experiences are wrapped up in how they know things, and gets them to think about the world around them, how they make sense of the world, why they should make sense of the world, and if there is sense to be made. To really drill down deep into these existential questions. I jokingly say that if you’re going to have a faith crisis, have an existential one, because an existential crisis makes you ask deep questions about what anything means, what your life means, whether there is anything after death, or if it all just ends there. Those types of questions are the kinds of cracks that God can get into and reach you in different ways. 

Spiritual experiences aren’t just an emotional high. Sometimes it can be enlightenment, where an idea clicks, a worldview makes sense, or you feel pulled toward meaning. There are a variety of experiences that people have. I hope apologetics can reach those few who are intellectually minded, while clearing hurdles and creating a context for others to feel it’s reasonable to rely on these spiritual experiences and safe to attempt to have them.

Walker: For me, it was definitely an afterward thing. I had a spiritual experience in the MTC related to the plan of salvation and the death of my sister from years earlier, but soon after, I was introduced to the work of Truman G. Madsen, to whom the book is dedicated, who taught me that the intellectual pursuit of the spiritual was something that could be done. He made me want to learn and know more. He provided a model of asking questions, seeking answers, learning more, and growing in my faith. Through that, I would come into contact with things that were more difficult than expected: weird history, policies, or people behaving badly. But because I had been anchored by the spiritual experience, I still felt strongly that this was right. 

I would ask how I could make sense of a particular issue and if there was an answer to be found. Some people say, “I put it on the shelf.” Well, at some point you have to take it off the shelf and read it. Work through it, but don’t be so hasty in your judgments and conclusions. That doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a framework that works, but a lot of times people are too quick to pull the trigger: “I Googled over the weekend, and my faith fell apart.” Would you do that with any other academic or intellectual pursuit? If someone Googled a different subject over the weekend and changed their mind overnight, would you take that seriously? Probably not. Then why do that with ultimate questions that people have been wrestling with for thousands of years in philosophy and theology? Take a breath and take time to think through it. 

When it came to the intellectual stuff, especially when I got home from my mission, I found myself struggling with constructing a coherent theological worldview and working through classic arguments about God and religion that didn’t always overlap neatly onto Latter-day Saint theology. Trying to think through these philosophical questions was an intellectual and spiritual struggle, but it anchored me in these big questions. That’s what an intellectual pursuit can do. Some people say that you can or should come to a spiritual conclusion only after you understand everything. I don’t think that’s the case. You can have a spiritual experience, recognize that it seems genuine, and then want to better understand it. That’s what we do with lots of things: we have an experience or observe something, recognize that it happened even if we don’t fully understand it, and then try to better understand it through thought, study, or experimentation. That’s how we learn things. The fact that an experience can give you a reason to believe something doesn’t mean you have finished thinking about it. But it also means that you don’t have to act like that experience didn’t give you legitimate knowledge that you can act on.

Anna: Thank you. I’m excited to share this with our readers. 

The post Nourishing the Roots: An Interview with Walker Wright appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will speak to young adults during a worldwide devotional on Sunday, November 1, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. MST. He will be accompanied by his wife, Sister Mary G. Cook.

All young adults ages 18–35, including those who will turn 18 this year and those who are married, are invited to participate.

How To Watch

• Live: Watch live and on demand on broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org, Gospel Stream, YouTube, YouTube ASL, and BYUtv. It can also be viewed live on the Church satellite system in select locations.
• On-demand: The broadcast will also be available for on-demand viewing in the Gospel Library and Media Library. For more options, see “Other Delivery Options” below.
• Transcripts: Transcripts of the messages will be available shortly after the broadcast. They can be found in the Gospel Library at Adults > Young Adults > Worldwide Devotionals > 2026 Devotionals > November 2026 Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults.

The term “pro-choice,” the chosen moniker for what appears to be the most sacred cow of mainstream contemporary feminism, exemplifies that the ability to choose is more important than whether that choice is good. Unfortunately, much feminist discourse focuses on defending women’s right to choose, but is increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of helping women make good choices. 

This seems to me to be at odds with what a movement for women ought to do, and what I think early first-wave feminists were trying to achieve—encouraging the conditions that make women’s thriving possible. In our current climate, women’s autonomy is celebrated, even at the expense of community; their professional success is lauded, even at the expense of family; their sexual freedom is praised, even at the expense of intimacy. 

Reality television offers a revealing example of this contradiction. Cast members submit themselves to cosmetic procedures, expose their most intimate relationships to public scrutiny, sacrifice their children’s privacy, and allow their painful personal experiences to be sold as commercial entertainment. Media outlets and fans celebrate these decisions as feminist and empowering and continue to tune in, even when it is obvious to anyone that these shows are tearing the cast members’ lives apart. Meanwhile, the disturbing allegations surrounding the Cornell 7 case have renewed questions about consent, vulnerability, and the limits of sexual freedom.

Both cases reveal the limitations of a culture that treats individual choice as the ultimate measure of empowerment. Perhaps our cultural understanding of agency has become so impoverished that we have confused the freedom to choose with the wisdom to choose well. 

The Limits of Consent

In October 2024, a young woman at Cornell University attended a party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, and what followed has become the subject of a distressing legal and cultural controversy. The woman, who has been identified publicly as Jane Doe, alleges that, while intoxicated, she consented to a sexual encounter with two men, but these men invited others to participate without her consent. She says they pressured her to take the dissociative anesthetic ketamine, which she consented to, but which left her “completely incapacitated,” and she later described the sexual encounter that followed, which she alleges involved seven men, as “traumatic” and “gang rape.” Cornell investigated and handed down expulsions, suspensions, and other sanctions to the men involved, but the local district attorney initially declined to pursue criminal charges due to the standard of consent under New York law, though a special prosecutor has since been appointed.

Establishing consent in this case has been tricky. Jane Doe admits that she arrived at the party having drunk vodka at her sorority house and other drinks at nearby bars. She says she consented to a sexual encounter with the first two men but not with the others later. According to messages described in the investigative record, in the days following the party, one of the men apologized to her about the encounter, to which she replied, that “non[e] of …[it] was illegal,”  “honestly I really liked being with you [and another defendant],” “everyone needs to grow up because…sexuality is changing,” and “I’m really open-minded.” According to accounts of the investigation, she also visited the campus health center that week for treatment of a urinary tract infection, which she reportedly told healthcare providers she had developed in a “traumatic way.”  One of the accused men alleges that Jane Doe initiated sexual contact with him without consent. 

Consent is more than a technicality; it is an important baseline for the legality of sexual behavior. But as many have pointed out in recent years, consent does not establish whether an encounter was ethical or good for the people involved. Even when consent is freely given, people cannot always anticipate how a sexual experience will affect them. They may underestimate the emotional toll it will have on them. They may not understand the expectations of other participants, or they may discover afterward that something they believed they wanted was, in fact, deeply humiliating, degrading, or violating. 

Women are not responsible for the misconduct of men, including predatory sexual behavior. But regret alone is not evidence of a lack of consent. And women may not always have a sense that they are going to regret a particular sexual experience in a culture where they are encouraged to “own their sexuality” and discouraged from judging any sexual interactions between consenting adults.  

Consider how we teach children about physical danger. A child can learn to be careful with knives by cutting themselves or around the stove by burning themselves. But most of us would prefer a less injurious approach to teaching kitchen safety. There is little advantage in these kinds of painful lessons when a parent can instead help children anticipate the danger and avoid the injury altogether. And a parent teaching a child to hold a knife correctly would hardly be considered a restriction on the child’s freedom, but rather a necessary precursor to it. 

And yet for very weighty matters such as sexuality that involve both our bodily safety and emotional well-being, we are generally reluctant to give young women explicit guidance on safety for fear that it will be received as “victim blaming.” 

Different Bodies, Different Personalities, Different Stakes

These conversations often assume that men and women are basically the same, making choices on an equal playing field. But women are not just smaller men. Our bodies and our personalities have important differences, and women do not respond in situations of danger in exactly the way men do. 

As Louise Perry argues in “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,” the sexual revolution has treated biological differences between men and women as inconvenient obstacles rather than realities to which we should give moral consideration. But our differences do matter.

In the case of sexual relationships and sexual assault, differences in average size and strength between the sexes make women more vulnerable to physical harm. High-profile cases of sexual assault often lead to questions such as “Why didn’t she fight back?” 

Dr. Jim Hopper, a course director in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has written extensively on the effect of sexual assault on the brain. Drawing on his research into the brain’s response to trauma, he explains that women who are sexual assault victims often experience involuntary immobility during the assault due to prefrontal cortex impairment:

For those who assume a functional prefrontal cortex—including many victims as they look back on what happened—passive habit responses can be baffling. They seem exactly the opposite of how they surely would—or should—have responded. And if the fear circuitry perceives escape as impossible and resistance as futile, then not fight or flight, but extreme survival reflexes (which scientists call “animal defense responses”) will take over. These can activate automatically when the body is in a predator’s grip—and when, as half of rape victims report, we fear death or serious injury.

But women’s vulnerabilities extend beyond physical size and strength. Among women, personalities vary greatly, but on average, women tend to be more agreeable and less physically aggressive. They value politeness more, and they are also less open to new experiences, which correlates with lower sociosexuality, or the desire to participate in novel or noncommitted sexual encounters. 

Thus, a woman may agree to, or at least not reject, sexual contact she does not want for fear that she will disappoint a partner or appear impolite. Saying no to an unwanted sexual advance or act seems the obvious answer, but many young women Perry interviewed for her book reported going along with unwanted sex to avoid confrontation, perceived impoliteness, or disappointing their partners.

Unfortunately, it’s not unusual to hear stories about women who consented to sex that they found uncaring, degrading, or upsetting. Women are far more likely to regret casual sex than men, and their reasons include feeling pressured, experiencing disgust, and general worries about the encounter. When our culture says good sex is the kind that is consented to, and bad sex is the kind not consented to (i.e. rape), women lack the language to describe sexual experiences that are clearly lacking in moral quality, but not forced, which means it is harder for them to insist on sex that is responsive to their wants and respectful of their human dignity. 

These differences between men and women do not negate women’s agency, but they complicate the circumstances under which it is exercised. And men can also experience social pressure, emotional dependence, and the consequences of poor judgment. But we do need to take seriously the distinctive circumstances of women’s lives that put them at increased risk for regrettable and demeaning sexual encounters. 

The Illusion of Empowerment

In 2004, Fox premiered “The Swan,” a reality television series in which women underwent dramatic makeovers that included extensive cosmetic and dental procedures, intense weight-loss regimens, and drastic style changes in pursuit of becoming more beautiful versions of themselves. 

More than two decades later, the documentary “The Swan: Behind the Mirror” revisits the experience through interviews with former contestants and their loved ones. Some describe genuine benefits from their transformations, while others report a significant emotional and psychological cost.

Contemporary reality programs operate according to similar incentives.

On shows like “The Bachelor,” “Love is Blind,” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” cast members expose their intimate family and romantic relationships, as well as their personal vulnerabilities, to millions of viewers. Being involved in these shows can bring financial success, fame, and professional opportunities. But that involvement also comes with heartbreak, humiliation, and family conflict packaged into televised entertainment. 

The cast members have agency. They choose to be on these series, sometimes enthusiastically, and some benefit professionally from those choices. And yet the reality television industry can profit from women’s decisions without always serving their interests. 

The women of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” for example, have become highly visible figures in a reality series that has brought them fame, opportunities, and relentless public scrutiny. These women are certainly responsible for their own conduct, but they are responding to incentives, egged on by the entertainment industry and calls of “You go girl!” from their fans. And their participation in these shows is voluntary—they can walk away from the show at any time (several have).

But voluntary participation is not sufficient to establish whether such participation is healthy, ethical, or empowering. A cultural framework is deeply broken when any voluntary act is celebrated as liberation, especially when that act violates traditional moral or ethical norms and even when the people making those choices will almost certainly suffer. Surely we can do better than this.

Choice Is Not The Same As Agency

Contemporary discussion about choice so often treats agency as the absence of restraint. We see this play out repeatedly in criticisms of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Is tithing really optional if you cannot attend the temple unless you pay it? How can the Church oppose liberal abortion laws when agency is such an important teaching in the gospel? 

But within Latter-day Saint doctrine, there is a distinction between choosing and choosing well. Agency is foundational to our understanding of life and the plan of salvation. We believe that we are all God’s children, all moral agents capable of choosing good, and all accountable for those choices. But this agency does not mean all choices are equally good or that respecting someone’s freedom means moral neutrality about their choices. 

The entire plan of salvation is predicated on God’s children learning how to use their freedom wisely. God’s commandments do not exist to get in the way of our independence. They are guidance for how to use our divinely given agency in a way that leads to happiness, fulfillment, and communion with Him.

In fact, obeying God’s law tends to lead us away from the kinds of decisions that diminish our freedom, including addiction, destructive relationships, financial irresponsibility, and other forms of self-defeating behavior. Avoiding these choices expands our future opportunities rather than diminishing them. 

The same principle applies to intimate relationships. Sometimes exercising agency requires restraint. Sometimes it means refusing something attractive in the present because we know it threatens our future opportunities. Sometimes it means rejecting popular philosophies such as “sex positivity.” Sometimes it means sacrificing a potential romantic relationship with someone who wishes to push a sexual encounter beyond what is good or healthy. And sometimes it requires accepting moral guidance from those with more wisdom, even when that guidance is limiting to our social and romantic opportunities. 

This does not diminish our moral agency; rather, it acknowledges that moral agency is a gift that we must learn to use well. 

Freedom Requires Moral Foundation

In a recent essay responding to the Cornell controversy, Catholic legal scholar Erika Bachiochi argues for better moral formation among young men. She draws on the history of the Virginia Military Institute and its traditional gentleman’s code to make the case that moral principles must be cultivated deliberately, through education and example. Simply having a code of conduct or a list of rules or commandments is not enough. 

If we are concerned about the sexual abuse and exploitation of women, we cannot simply teach them to avoid what is illegal. We should cultivate men who genuinely respect women, who value exercising self-restraint, and who recognize that they have an obligation to behave in a way that is good for others.

I want my own daughters to be confident and independent, but I also want them to have courage and self-respect and to exercise prudence and sound judgment. I want them to know how to recognize unhealthy relationships, resist social pressure, and understand that there are consequences to their decisions. I want this for all young women. 

This is not the same as expecting women to prevent men from mistreating them. The accountability for mistreatment lies completely on the one doing it. Men can be honorable even when women have made imprudent decisions. 

But likewise, women’s particular vulnerabilities, as well as their value as human beings and daughters of God, should drive us to help make wise and protective decisions. And I am not just talking about within religious communities. Moral lines may differ between people of different faiths and secular people, but we can and should agree that having some lines is an objective good. 

In so many other consequential areas of life, such as education and professional development, we encourage young people to think carefully and consider the risks and implications of their decisions. This counsel is not an affront to their autonomy. Surely romantic and sexual relationships deserve this same care.

It’s true that guidance is sometimes delivered poorly. But the potential to give guidance badly is not a sufficient reason not to give it at all. Abandoning moral instruction does not leave women free from influence. Rather, the guidance will come from other sources: peers, social media, pornography, entertainment, and commercial industries. Rarely do these sources have the best interests of young women at heart. The question is not whether young women will be influenced, but by whom, to what end, and for whose benefit. 

Taking Women’s Agency Seriously

So do women have agency? Of course we do. And because we do, we should take very seriously our responsibility and capacity to use it well and our obligation to guide young women to do the same. 

Women deserve protection from coercion and exploitation, and they should be able to make meaningful decisions about their lives. But they also deserve a culture that is willing to tell them the truth about the risks associated with some decisions, understands the vulnerabilities women experience, and helps them develop the wisdom to choose flourishing lives. 

We don’t need to treat women as helpless victims or pretend every choice is equally liberating. Autonomy and moral guidance need not be at odds with one another.

A culture that values women’s agency should not just be interested in whether a woman can make a particular choice, but also in whether she has the knowledge and judgment to recognize what choices have the potential to actually be good for her. The freedom to choose is a gift, and helping women learn to choose well is one of the most important ways to honor that gift. 

The post Do Women Have Agency? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The Interpreter Foundation and Redbrick Filmworks continues to release a new episode of their not-for-profit series of mini-documentaries titled Becoming Brigham each Monday. This week, they released the following episode:

Episode 38: “Sacrifice For What?”

• Why did a people preparing to abandon Nauvoo still finish the temple and receive their endowment?
• What did it cost ordinary Saints to complete the temple, and what does that sacrifice say to modern people who have a temple nearby?

Historian Matt McBride describes how Brigham Young kept the Saints finishing the temple while they were also preparing to leave for the west. He preached that the ordinances were an inheritance in the eternal world, and he risked losing a season’s crops by sending his teams to haul for the temple. Stone and lumber could be had locally. Cash could not, so members gave pennies, silver spoons, and wages, and missionaries collected donations overseas. The hosts compare that direct sacrifice with modern tithing, and doing temple work for our ancestors. McBride says the winter of 1845-46 bound the Saints together and expanded their sense of priesthood power.

Why this docuseries? Many people are aware of Brigham Young as a pivotal figure in American religious and frontier history, but Brigham is also often misunderstood, seen as a larger-than-life caricature rather than as a man. Who actually was Brigham as a man, a father, a husband, and a prophet? The video web series Becoming Brigham debunks fictions and provides surprising new insights into the real Brigham Young. Learn more in the article “Becoming Brigham: The Video Series Premieres.”

Jennifer Roach Lees holds a Master in Divinity as well as a Masters in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health therapist and lives in Utah. She was the 2023 recipient of the John Taylor Defender of the Faith award.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Isaiah 58–66 – Jennifer Roach Lees appeared first on FAIR.

by Autumn Dickson

Do you feel like you’re doing everything right but find yourself overwhelmed with your own burdens? Do you feel like you’re doing everything the Lord wants you to do, but He is silent and not noticing?

Because the Lord has a response for you chapter 58. There are many ways that the Lord responds to these kinds of questions and feelings, so internalize this message with wisdom. He may be speaking to you, or maybe He sent this message to me this week because it was exactly what I needed to hear.

So the Lord starts out Isaiah chapter 58 with a plea to Isaiah. He asks His prophet to call the people to repentance. They “seek (Him) daily” and “forsook not the ordinance of their God.” In other words, they do what the gospel tells them to do. They go through the motions and ordinances of the gospel. But despite this, the Lord had commanded Isaiah to preach repentance to them.

The people don’t like that very much so in verse 3, we find a response from them and then another response from the Lord.

Isaiah 58:3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.

The people are like, “Hey! We fast! Why don’t you notice that? We suffered, and you refuse to see it.” And the Lord responds with, “On your fasting day, you’re still seeking after your own pleasure.” The chapter continues on calling them out for fasting and purposefully suffering or for seeking themselves. That is not the fast the Lord has chosen. He didn’t ask us to fast so that we could afflict our souls.

He asks us to fast to change us.

Isaiah 58:6-7

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

The Lord didn’t ask the Israelites to fast for funsies. It’s not about making His people suffer. As always, the Lord’s commandments are FOR us, not to punish us or make us appear righteous. The Lord asked them to fast to inspire them to be better. He wants them to see what it’s like to be hungry and take care of other people.

When we fast correctly, the Lord is proud of us, but it’s more than that. We don’t go through the motions and look up for a pat on the head. The idea is to fast, let it change us and help us see the world through an entirely different perspective, and then gratitude springs up spontaneously for the opportunity to see through His eyes. It’s not about suffering enough so He can tell us we can finally go play. It’s about soul-deep satisfaction coming from more important aspects of life.

This message is not just about fasting. It is an example of a bigger problem for the Israelites.

I’ve gotten really caught up in my own problems lately. I am hyper-focused on the stressors we’re facing, and my worries have definitely been dragging down. I keep trying to have faith, and while I think the Lord is pleased with me for that, it hasn’t always been effective. I still end up worried again after my mini-spiritual breakthroughs where the Lord assures me.

On Sunday, the Spirit whispered to me thatI was doing it wrong. Instead of focusing on trying to be okay with my own stress, I simply need to focus on someone else. My eyes should be looking for others who need encouragement. One of the most effective ways to free myself from carrying the burden of my own problems is to focus on helping someone else carry theirs. I know this but seem to forget it often.

So I pleaded with the Lord to send someone for me to serve. I didn’t want to focus on me anymore. I wanted to change and turn outwards because I wanted to be like Him. Despite everything on my plate that already feels like it’s swallowing me whole, I asked for more service.

That’s when the Lord opened my eyes a second time.

I didn’t need new service opportunities. To be perfectly honest, a majority of my life is spent in service right now between mothering, being a wife, sharing my testimony online, and regular church service. I have plenty of service opportunities already. I have plenty of people who need me already.

Like the Israelites, I was seeking Him daily, and I wasn’t forsaking the ordinances. Unfortunately, I was simultaneously fixated on myself. I was still seeking after my own pleasure in the midst of “fasting” and doing everything I was supposed to be doing.

I feel like He sends me this message a lot. You would think I’d learn my lesson, but I take comfort in the fact that He repeated this lesson to Israel and they struggled with it too.

This is not the fast that He chose for me. He chose a fast where I am legitimately investing myself into others, not just checking off a list. I find it especially powerful that the Lord states at the end of those verses, “hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” Heaven knows I’ve been doing everything required of me, but I’ve also been sneaking away and hiding in my room to try and get a grip on my own stress and worries. I was literally hiding from my own flesh to try and get a break!

That’s not to say it’s not appropriate to take breaks or that we should completely lose ourselves. The true difference is that we need to stop seeking after ourselves. That path gets us nowhere. It doesn’t help anyone. Nobody feels better including yourself! My kids can feel that I’m distracted and trying to hide from them, and I get wrapped up in my own problems.

This is not the fast that He chose for me. It could be easy to say, “He wanted so much more FROM me,” and to feel more overwhelmed. I think it is just as accurate to say, “He wanted so much more FOR me.”

I testify that Christ wants us to invest our hearts. He gave us commandments and fasting and ordinances, but not as an end-product. He gave us those things so we could change and find joy. I testify that everything Christ gives is to bring about His ultimate purpose of our eternal joy. Follow Him! Lose yourself in service to Him and others. It is so joyful.

Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.

The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Isaiah 58–66 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.

The Church has released the second episode of “Dedicate,” a new video series created as part of the global Salt Lake Temple Celebration.

Watch Episode 2

About the Dedicate Video Series

The six-part video series “Dedicate” follows seven young adults from Brazil, France, Ghana, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States as they explore the Salt Lake Temple, meet with Church leaders, and navigate questions of faith, purpose, and spiritual growth. Throughout the series, they share personal experiences as they deepen their understanding of temples and strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ.

Watch Episode 1

Additional “Dedicate” episodes will be released every Sunday at 8:00 a.m. MDT through November 1, with the sixth and final episode set to air in spring 2027. In addition to English, episodes are available in Cantonese, Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Where to Watch the Videos

The first episode is now available on the Church’s YouTube channel and in the Gospel Library app.

Learn more in the article “Get Involved In The Salt Lake Temple Celebration,” which explains the various ways you can participate in the temple celebration either in person or virtually.

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