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Come, Follow Me Week 22 – Joshua 1–8; 23–24

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Trying to Serve the Lord Without Offending the Devil

By Nick Galieti

(Originally published on February 11, 2015 as part of our “Rise Up” podcast for youth)

When it comes to living our lives, we have a lot of choices placed before us. We have our choice of schools to attend after high school, or even a choice of career path. Spiritually speaking, we have a choice to make. When viewing the world around him, even Joshua in the Old Testament dealt with this same question. In Joshua 24:14-15 he was speaking prior to his death and reflecting on the different choices that he made in his life when he recorded this often quoted passage: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 22 – Joshua 1–8; 23–24

Come, Follow Me Week 16 – Easter

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by Scott Gordon

This week, with Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Currently, 63% of Americans identify as Christian. This is down from 75% just 10 years ago. Those who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes referred to as “nones,” has risen to almost 30% of the US population. This is an increase of 6% in the past 5 years.[1]

Does Religion Help? [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 16 – Easter

Come Listen to a Prophet’s Voice

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by Robert Hill

Every six months, dating back to 1840, Latter-day Saints gather as a worldwide congregation to worship, sing and learn at the feet of leaders we consider living prophets. It’s a wonderful time full of the Spirit of God. But recently, I can’t help feeling I miss the way General Conference used to be. I don’t mean the recent changes in whether we get a male priesthood session or the socially-distanced broadcasts necessitated by the pandemic. I mean the feeling of sitting down for it. It wasn’t so very long ago that I looked forward with unalloyed eagerness to gathering with family and food for a joyful weekend of spiritual edification. [Read more…] about Come Listen to a Prophet’s Voice

Come, Follow Me Week 10 – Genesis 28–33

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Becoming Israel: Learning How to Prevail with God Through Covenants

By Steve Densley

The stories we find in Genesis 28-33 are rich with covenant imagery, from Isaac’s blessing that Jacob would receive the promises of the Abrahamic covenant in the first verses of chapter 28, to Jacob’s building of an altar in the last verse of chapter 33. In between, we find the dramatic stories of Jacob’s vision of the ladder to heaven and Jacob’s wrestle with God, both episodes that remind us of the temple. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 10 – Genesis 28–33

FAIR Conference Podcast #75 – John Gee, “Lessons on Doing Apologetics”

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

John Gee, Lessons on Doing Apologetics

John Gee’s books are for sale in the FAIR bookstore.

John Gee is the William (Bill) Gay Research Professor in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University. He has authored more than 150 publications on topics such as ancient scripture, Aramaic, archaeology, Coptic, Egyptian, history, linguistics, Luwian, rhetoric, Sumerian, textual criticism, and published in journals such as British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar, Enchoria, Ensign, FARMS Review, Göttinger Miszellen, Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy, Journal of Academic Perspecitves, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Journal of Egyptian History, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, Lingua Aegyptia, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur, and Interpreter, and by such presses as American University of Cairo Press, Archaeopress, Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, E. J. Brill, Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Deseret Book, de Gruyter, Harrassowitz, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Peeters, Praeger, Religious Studies Center, and Society of Biblical Literature. He has published three books and has edited eight books and an international multilingual peer-reviewed professional journal. He served twice as a section chair for the Society of Biblical Literature.

FAIR Conference Podcast #64 – Jeffrey Thayne, “Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim”

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2021 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Jeffrey Thayne, Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim

A transcript is available here.

Jeffrey’s book, Who Is Truth: Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith, is available from our bookstore.

Dr. Jeffrey Thayne graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology. He completed his doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. He runs the popular Latter-day Saint Philosopher blog, and spends time engaging in worldview apologetics (articulating and exploring the worldview assumptions that inform our faith). He currently resides in Washington state with his wife and two children.

Come, Follow Me Week 37 – Doctrine and Covenants 98–101

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A Letter to my Seminary and Institute Students

by Louis Herrey

My dear young friends,

This week I had the chance to meet with several of you. As always, it is a joy to be around you. I deeply appreciate not only your attendance, but also your participation. You might not think your comments matter that much, but believe me, your words are a strength to me and to your classmates. I feel like I want to become a better person because of you.

I see the goodness in your faces; you have an honest desire to come closer to Jesus and grow in truth and light. All I want to say to that is: continue. Continue to walk in the light of your Savior, trusting Him with every step you take, showing gratitude each day for the grace that He gives you.

My heart is full, and there are many things I want to tell you. For starters, even if you might be facing more complex challenges in your live than I did in my youth, I still understand what you’re going through. I know that although you are filled with dreams and ambitions, it’s hard sometimes to know if you’re on the right path to fulfilling those. I know that although you have faith, sometimes you wonder if it’s strong enough – or even there at all. Some of you struggle with finding your identity, fighting off addictions, and suffering injustices caused by others. And on top of it all, you may ask, why is it such a struggle finding true love? [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 37 – Doctrine and Covenants 98–101

Shaken Faith Syndrome: Early to the Party, But Still Relevant

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Available from the FAIR bookstore

[Cross-posted from Mike Ash’s personal blog.]

My first book attempted to assuage the faith-crisis concerns of struggling Latter-day Saints. The work continues.

The First Step

At the risk of sounding boastful, I’ve authored three books (with a fourth on the way) and hundreds of articles (both in print and on-line) in the hopes of reinforcing and safeguarding the faith of Latter-day Saints. I don’t mention these accomplishments to brag, but rather to lament. Despite hundreds of hours researching and writing thousands of pages of material, I find that through the years, over and over again, members who struggle with their faith fall trap to the same problems I addressed a dozen years ago.

Earlier this year (2020), I received an email from someone who asked if my views expressed in my book Shaken Faith Syndrome (2008 and updated in 2013) have changed since I wrote the book. My answer was that the arguments I made in that book are virtually unchanged and that the cognitive suggestions and observations I made then, are equally applicable now.

As I’ll try to address in future articles, members today stumble over the same cognitive dilemmas (often of their own making) which sets them up for problems when they encounter faith-challenging material. As a people, we haven’t matured in our intellectual approach to gospel topics (despite the fact that even the Church had made attempts to update our thinking with articles such as those included in the Gospel Topics, essays). [Read more…] about Shaken Faith Syndrome: Early to the Party, But Still Relevant

FairMormon Conference Podcast #59 – Elder Kim B. Clark, “Seek the Lord Jesus Christ”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2020 conference, held earlier this month. If you would like to watch all the presentations from our 2020 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Elder Kim B. Clark, Seeking Jesus Christ

The transcript and video are available here.

Kim ClarkElder Kim B. Clark was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 4, 2015. He was released on October 5, 2019. During his time in the Seventy he served as the Commissioner of the Church Educational System. At the time of his call, Elder Clark was serving as the president of BYU-Idaho.

Elder Clark received a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He joined the faculty of the Harvard Business School in 1978 and was named dean of that school in 1995. In 2005 he became president of BYU-Idaho. Elder Clark currently serves as the NAC Professor of Management at the BYU Marriott School of Business.

Kim Bryce Clark was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 20, 1949. He married Sue Lorraine Hunt in June 1971. They are the parents of seven children, and grandparents of 26 grandchildren.

 

Applying Heidegger to Religious Conviction

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by Jeffrey Thayne and Ed Gantt, cross-posted from Latter-day Saint Philosopher

A number of philosophers (Martin Heidegger, Hubert Dreyfus, and others) argue that there are two basic “ways of being,” or modes in which we live-out our lives and make sense of the world:  the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand. The first denotes our ongoing, active, purposeful, and engaged involvement in relationships and activities as we go about our daily life. The second identifies the more abstract, detached, reflective, or more “intellectual” or “theoretical” way in which we sometimes take up the world and our place in it.

The following example from Dreyfus may help to illustrate this distinction:

We hand the blind man a cane and ask him to tell us what properties it has. After hefting and feeling it, he tells us that it is light, smooth, about three feet long, and so on; it is occurrent for him. But when the man starts to manipulate the cane, he loses his awareness of the cane itself; he is aware only of the curb (or whatever object the cane touches) or, if all is going well, he is not even aware of that, but of his freedom to walk, or perhaps only what he is talking about with his friend.[1]

[Read more…] about Applying Heidegger to Religious Conviction