Testimonies

Over a year ago I committed to send a testimony in to Mormon Scholars Testify. Then I had the year from hell, teaching twelve courses, including eight different preparations and five new “preps.” During that same year, I read about and thought about social media very much, as I was teaching digital media courses that relate it to marketing ideas. As a participant in social media (e.g., @elscotto on Twitter), I became increasingly aware of the permanent and public nature of everything I posted. That meant that if I had a controversial thing to say, it would be there forever for scrutiny, either honest or not. I scrubbed my Facebook of all identifying markers, I went back through 1000+ Tweets (that was painful when my only contribution to the world seemed to be banal movie, tv and restaurant reviews, along with retweets of things I found interesting or funny at the time). I put up a blog to try it and promptly took it down because I felt I couldn’t say things there that I wanted to, for fear of being misinterpreted (maliciously or otherwise). I considered what I could put on Mormon Scholars Testify that would never, ever cause me trouble (yes, I am a natural man with selfishness issues). While I went through that marathon, I struggled to be a good husband, father, and bishop. So I apologize to Daniel Peterson for taking so long to respond. Here goes . . .

I want to preface my remarks by saying that I think of testimonies as extremely personal and highly sacred. In some ways this has also contributed to my tardiness in participating in this forum. I am probably too careful in Life 1.0 about sharing my testimony, so sharing it in a Web 2.0 forum is daunting and I have had trouble reconciling how I feel about it. Daniel has been persistent, sending me a reminder every six months or so, for however long it’s been, that I please participate. I know the power of testimony but even as a “scholar” of social media I wonder about the effect a testimony posted here can have. Anyway, with that hesitation, I will proceed.

My grandfather’s grandfather was converted to the church in Wales in the 1850s, as I understand it. I’ve read some of his journal entries; those were tough times for the Welsh and for the Church. That’s as close as I come to understanding my LDS genealogy, which is to say that I have neglected that part of my duty as a member. I am proud, if uninformed, of my heritage as a “blue blood” Latter-day Saint.

I served a mission in northwest Mexico from 1979-1981. This was partly the result of a mother that nagged me and a girlfriend that had no interest in getting serious with someone not faithful enough to serve. It was also largely a result of a lifetime’s preparation by Church programs that taught me public speaking, leadership, and general principles of service to others. It was mostly the result of getting through The Book of Mormon for the second time (first time in Seminary at 14) and getting on my knees to ask God if I should serve. I knew immediately that I should. This is one of those spiritual experiences that can only be appreciated by those who have had one—sorry, but that’s the best I can do without sounding trivial. When I worked with a friend consulting with Harley-Davidson some years ago, an experience of this type (though not necessarily a truly “spiritual” one) was described by the bumper sticker “If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand.”

In grad school (1984-1988, PhD in Marketing, University of Utah) I had a struggle with my faith. I took a class called “The Philosophy of Science” which challenged me to examine carefully what I believed. At about the same time I was reading about something called “flow” in the sociology literature. Flow is a bit like an endorphin release during certain behaviors or activities. I even wrote a paper about it later and introduced the idea into my field (Roberts, Scammon and Schouten 1988). I wondered if I could attribute my spiritual experiences to flow. In other words, were they self-induced and not related to Heavenly influence? This would be devastating. I was married in the temple to someone who has never doubted. What would this do to that relationship? Was my draw to Mormon culture enough if I could not believe? I decided to believe while I tried to figure it out. Several of my friends in grad school took the opposite approach . . . they decided to not believe until they figured it out. To me at least, my approach seemed more honest, but I can tell you that they said just the opposite and at least one old friend is still angrily haranguing me twenty-five years later because I ended up still believing, while he is certain it is all a self-serving, elaborate deception.

My approach to this spiritual dilemma was to go to the Salt Lake Temple every Saturday (almost all of this took place in 1986) and work the sealing desk—where appointments are made for temple weddings and sealings. I did not do a lot of temple work that year (actually participate), but I was in the walls of the temple trying to give service to others. In my free time at the desk I wrote in my journal. Over a year I talked myself through what I believed and why. I examined my spiritual experiences and tried to determine if they could have happened merely because I wanted them to. At the end of that year, my two main findings were that:

1. I had been present or spoken the blessing on at least two occasions where the post-blessing effect was a miracle that defied mere flow.

(a) On my mission in La Paz, Mexico, 1979, we taught and baptized a quadriplegic man. He had been wheelchair-bound for five-to-six years following a car accident. I do not remember the exact wording of his confirmation blessing except that there was a promise of improvement and healing. He was using a walker within a week and canes soon thereafter. I do not know how he is today, but I know at that time he received a blessing that went beyond the very frail humans (missionaries, local church leaders, members, and witnesses) present. Flow did not cause Agustín to walk.

(b) A friend of ours joined the Church in Columbia, Missouri. I was finishing my undergraduate work in psychology at the time. The lady was epileptic and was having a severe time dealing with the disease. I confirmed her a member of the Church. I remember hesitating, waiting for the words to come. They did and I promised her progress with her ailment and healing. My bishop at the time told me afterword that he knew exactly what had happened during the confirmation and that it was inspired. Wes was a professor of electrical engineering who was in every sense a truth seeker, a pragmatist, and not a blind follower to anyone or any thing. A week later the good sister had some tests that showed almost a disappearance of the problem in her brain scan. Cindi recently found us on Facebook and told us that she had not been completely cured but that the disease was more manageable now. She had had several months epilepsy-free until giving birth a few months later.

I realize that if someone wanted to frame these events as other-than-miraculous, it would be easy to do. But these were not “the effect of a frenzied mind” (see Alma 30:16), they represent true miracles provided by God to inspire the faithful.

2. During that difficult year, I also read The Book of Mormon. I found myself more and more convinced of the teachings in the book and the story of its prophetic sources. This was not a sudden finding or feeling as it has sometimes been in my life. It was a weeks-long wave of knowledge passing over me that just gave me the reassurance that this was right, that what I believed was really true, and that I should move forward and stop questioning at least the basics of my religion. Again, I do not have words to describe this time of closure except to say that it gave me great peace to know that I did not have to declare that I did not believe and possibly rock many family boats in the process.

But I did not become (or “re-become”) a believer to keep family peace. That would have been as intellectually dishonest as leaving the church without giving it the effort it requires to find out. I was able to push big doubts aside and not let small ones distract me because I did some due diligence, receiving and pondering and sincerely asking (see Moroni 10:3-5). I came, again, to know the truth.

So what do I know? What can I testify to?

1. The more I read the scriptures and understand the Gospel, the more it comes down to Jesus Christ providing us a way to repent through his atonement. Without this I would be lost, as would everyone. Making this personal has not been an easy path for me; I feel like I barely get it and don’t appreciate it enough. I assume this is going to be a lifelong learning process for me. Nevertheless, I know it is a true principle and I have personally experimented with the healing that repentance can bring to a troubled soul.
2. I know the clear doctrines presented in the Book of Mormon come from God through prophets.
3. I have always been amazed by tithing, and I know that it is a true principle. We give by faith and we are blessed with abundance (Malachi 3:10-12). I have lived it. I have seen others live it. I have seen miracles in peoples’ lives as they lived it.
4. Being a Christian only works if you give service to others. You can learn everything about all things spiritual and it will avail you very little without faith in action. Service is where the Gospel “rubber hits the road.” With service, you also feel an immediate reward of peace and happiness. I’m grateful I was raised to experience this, as in a purely empirical world it might seem almost a paradox that to give to others somehow improves your lot as well. I know giving service to others is a true principle of Christianity, and that you are blessed for every such effort.
5. I know God allows miracles to take place to bless peoples’ lives. But if you are looking for major miracles in life, you may miss many minor ones that are sometimes equally impressive. I have watched as couples fell back in love and avoided living out their lives bitterly—this by prayer and righteous desire. I have seen shy men become powerful and beloved leaders of congregations. I have seen rookie leaders make decisions like spiritual giants. I have seen children go back to bed after a priesthood blessing to heal a bad earache and sleep through the night. I have given a blessing to a very sick, very premature baby and known months in advance that there would be no lifelong problems associated with this difficult beginning. I have experienced very specific inspiration about my career, in my church callings, about major spending decisions, and in my role as a father and husband.

I can’t tell you how any of this happens. I can’t give you scientific explanations, or even logical ones sometimes. That does not diminish in the least their truthfulness. What I’ve experienced is called “anecdotal” by those who hold the scientific method and empirical evidence as the most sacred of tools for measuring truth. I respect the scientific method and empirical evidence and critical thought. But knowledge of spiritual truths just can’t be measured yet by those tools, particularly when skepticism is the first prerequisite of proper inquiry. That’s the opposite of how faith works, where a “desire to believe” (see Alma 32) is the starting point.

There it is. I believe some things and I know some things and I’m grateful to be at peace with that. Thanks, Heavenly Father!

Reference:

Scott D. Roberts, Debra L Scammon, John W. Schouten (1988), “The Fortunate Few: Production as Consumption,” Advances in Consumer Research Vol 15, ed. Michael J. Houston, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 430-435.

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Scott D. Roberts was born in an Air Force hospital in Wichita Falls, TX. He has lived in San Antonio, England, Odgen, Cape Girardeau, Missouri (where he graduated from Jackson High School), Columbia, Missouri (where he completed a bachelor degree in psychology from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1984), Salt Lake City (where he received his doctorate in marketing from the University of Utah in 1988). His professional life has taken him to Oxford, Mississippi; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Lyon, France; Brownsville, Texas; Yuma and Flagstaff, Arizona; Bristol, Rhode Island; and Austin and San Antonio, Texas. An Air Force brat, Dr. Roberts is becoming a confirmed Texan, with now 15 years combined living in four Texas cities.

Dr. Roberts served a mission in northwest Mexico (at the time, the Hermosillo Mission). He met his wife during his few semesters at BYU. They have four children and a small but growing group of grandchildren.

Dr. Roberts’ current position is as Associate Professor of Marketing at The University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. He will shortly take over the duties as Director of The Hispanic Marketing Institute. His research and teaching interests center around international marketing and consumer culture, and he has recently been fascinated with social media as it relates to those areas.

Posted April 2011

“Tell me a story,” I would plead of Grandma as a child. Though I wanted to hear of Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, she would say, “Susan, I can only tell you stories that are true. If you want to hear truth I have something to say.” Not wanting to sleep, I enthusiastically listened to stories of Jesus, the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and those whose sacrifices created our legacy of faith.

Though I believed in the truthfulness of Grandma’s stories, there was one that caused me discomfort. It was of a young pioneer girl named Sarah Ann who was in danger of being trampled by stampeding buffaloes. In this perilous situation she knelt and prayed for protection. “In answer to her prayer,” said my grandmother, “she remained unharmed, even though hundreds of buffalo stampeded around her.” Instead of marveling with wonder at the miracle, I emphatically pronounced, “That’s impossible!” Grandma countered, “It is not impossible to those who have faith. Susan, it was because Sarah Ann had faith and you don’t.”

Such forthrightness caused me to ponder, then and now. I attended Church, paid tithing, and said my prayers, but the essence of faith, the substance of “things which are hoped for and not seen” had eluded me (Ether 12:6). As the years passed my outward demeanor mirrored faith, but my inner faith was lacking. I rationalized faithful events as good fortune, favorable circumstances, and just being “plain lucky.” Would I ever have a faith like Sarah Ann’s?

The answer was slow in coming, but in retrospect paralleled my desire for faith. That desire was ignited my freshman year at Brigham Young University. On a whim, a girlfriend and I decided to spend the weekend in Salt Lake City. While sitting with suitcase in hand at Temple Square, my friend casually remarked, “The President of the Church, David O. McKay, lives just across the street in the Hotel Utah.” Her continual nods of assurance and our curiosity led us to the hotel. Speaking with the bellboy and hotel manager about where the famous resident lived was frustrating. Their refusal to disclose his whereabouts, punctuated with security implications, fell on deaf ears. We left them, determined to answer the question, “If I were a prophet of God, behind which door in this hotel would I choose to live?”

After hours of knocking on doors and greeting blank stares from grumpy hotel guests, we staked out three floors. An innocent chambermaid on one of the floors revealed the answer. Excitedly, we hugged each other as only BYU freshmen can. Our enthusiasm was boundless, until we decided to see if the prophet was home. Being the smaller of the two, I was designated to knock on the door. If the knock was answered, I was programmed to say, “We are selling early orders for Girl Scout cookies; would you care to place an order?”

As I walked toward the door I felt reticent; yet, as my feet faltered and heart pounded, my friend pushed me forward. It wasn’t until I reached the door and was knocking that she ran like a flash of light to the far end of the hall. I was just turning to run when the door opened and before me stood the prophet. He looked surprised but didn’t say anything. Neither did I; I couldn’t. I felt like I had a key to the celestial kingdom but did not belong—I was not worthy to be in his presence. I started to cry and then to sob. He took me by the hand and said, “Won’t you come in?” I waved to my friend down the hall, whose open mouth betrayed her surprise, and entered the prophet’s home. Our discussion remains personal, but the resulting impact of that meeting was to change my inner direction dramatically. I resolved, as never before, not just to mirror faith, but to know of faith, to be faithful like Sarah Ann each day of my life so I would be worthy to see again a prophet, my Savior, and my Father in Heaven.

O that I could say I had always lived up to that resolve. I can echo Nephi in saying, “My heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins” (2 Nephi 4:17-19).

To strengthen my resolve, I consciously determined that I would study in depth the scriptures, doctrinal discourses, early Church records and histories, and biographies of the righteous. I can say with Parley P. Pratt, “I [have] always loved a book. If I worked hard, a book was in my hand in the morning . . . A book at evening; . . . a book at every leisure moment of my life.”¹ After decades of reading and reading and reading more I learned: “If ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, . . . let this desire work in you” (Alma 32:27). That inner working has now resulted in a knowledge of the great truths about faith. From the scriptures I have learned that “the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him” (1 Nephi 7:12). We must “ask in faith, nothing wavering” (James 1:6) because “it is by faith that miracles are wrought” (Moroni 7:37). “Jesus [is] the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2); “your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters” (Mosiah 5:7). We all yearn to hear, “Thy faith hath made thee whole” (Enos 1:8).

These truths are not new but eternal. The followers of Christ in the meridian of time and the Saints of the latter days made the discovery of these truths years before and lived lives of enduring faith. But I needed to discover those truths anew to reach an understanding of who I am in the eyes of Deity and why Jesus loved me so much he would atone for my sins that I might return to my Father in Heaven.

Helping me in the process of discovering faith have been the journals and histories of early Saints who knew and loved the Prophet Joseph Smith. I stand amazed at their resolve to cling tenaciously to their faith amid the Extermination Order, the Haun’s Mill Massacre, and the prospects of war. It seems to me that they echoed the words of Joshua, that no matter what trial beset them, they resolved, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). For, like Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). And like Joseph Smith, “What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty,” and yes, his faithful Saints, from worshiping him (D&C 121:33).

The names and stories of those who remained faithful and endured in righteousness are not lost. They are told and retold by their thankful posterity from generation to generation. As we remember with gratefulness our legacy, let us recall the faithful declarations of the past. Near Liberty, Clay County, Missouri, Samuel Bent was the object of religious persecution. He was tied to a tree and whipped by a mob, and saw his wife die from the effects of these privations.² Yet he nobly declared, “[My] faith is as ever and [I feel] to praise God in prisons and in dungeons and in all circumstances whatever [I] may be found.”³

Titus Billings’s escape from mobocracy in Missouri was plagued with starvation and frostbite: “For three days and nights he had only slippery elm bark for food.” His feet were “frozen so badly the flesh came off in pieces.”⁴ Yet, like Samuel Bent, he praised God for his faith.

When Joseph Smith Sr. was imprisoned for a $14 note of indebtedness against him, he was promised he could go free if he renounced the Book of Mormon. His thoughts turned to the Apostle Paul: “I was not the first man who had been imprisoned for the truth’s sake; and when I should meet Paul in the Paradise of God, I could tell him that I, too, had been in bonds for the Gospel he had preached.”⁵

Another of those who epitomized the faith I wanted to obtain, a faith like Sarah Ann’s, was John Murdock. At age seventeen John “came near bleeding to death; yea death stared me in the face, but I covenanted with my Heavenly Father that if he would preserve my life, I would serve him.” True to his resolve, John turned to prayer and meditation and began his search for the gospel of Jesus Christ that professed and practiced the ancient ordinances.⁶ He first united with the Lutheran Dutch Church, but “soon found they did not walk according to the Scriptures.” He next joined the Presbyterian Cedar Church, but he said, “I soon became dissatisfied with their walk, for I saw it was not according to the scriptures.” He then united with the Baptists, but withdrew himself from them when he recognized “their walk not to agree with their profession.”⁷

Continuing his search for truth, John turned to the Methodist faith, but discovered “when I did not please them I would have to be silent among them awhile.” By 1827 he had joined the Campbellites. “It caused me to rejoice believing that I had at last found a people that believed the Scriptures,” wrote John. For three years he faithfully attended their meetings, but as the ministers denied the “gift and power of the Holy Ghost,” John lost interest and concluded that “all the [religious] Sects were out of the way.”⁸

Then in the winter of 1830 his prayers were answered. Four missionaries sent to the Lamanites arrived in Kirtland from the state of New York. They preached, baptized, and built up the Lord’s church after the ancient order. Curious, John journeyed twenty miles to see the new preachers for himself and rebuffed a Campbellite who tried to dissuade him. “I told him I was of age, and the case was an important one, of life, and death, existing between me and my God, and I must act for myself, for no one can act for me.”⁹

He arrived at Isaac Morley’s home in Kirtland about dusk and was introduced to the four men and presented with a copy of the Book of Mormon. He said that as he read the new scripture, “the spirit of the Lord rested on me, witnessing to me of the truth of the work. . . . About ten oclock [the next] morning being Nov 5th, 1830, I told the servants of the Lord that I was ready to walk with them into the water of baptism.”¹⁰

John wrote, “This was the third time that I had been immersed, but I never before felt the authority of the ordinance, but I felt it this time and felt as though my sins were forgiven.” After being ordained an elder, he returned home rejoicing and endeavored to bear testimony. To his joy, “my family gladly received me and my words, Thank the Lord.”¹¹

It was John Murdock who, after the death of his wife, gave his surviving twins, Joseph and Julia, to Joseph and Emma Smith to rear. It was John who served a mission with Hyrum Smith to Missouri (D&C 52:8-9). On the trek his feet became wet: “I took a violent cold by which I suffered near unto death. . . . [But] I could not die because my work was not yet done.”¹²

Truly, it was not complete. The calls of the Lord from his prophets would take him from house to house, from village to village, and from city to city, proclaiming the everlasting gospel to all who would listen, from the eastern United States to Australia. On October 14, 1852, a letter from Brigham Young released John from his final mission: “Return in peace. Your Mission is accomplished and others are on the way to follow up and build upon the foundation which you have laid.”¹³

Who were those sent to build upon the foundation he laid? Could they include me, if I am faithful “at all times and in all things, and in all places” to the truths I have learned (Mosiah 18:9)? The Saints of yesteryear, when the winds of adversity, the trials of faith, or the Abrahamic test raged and beat upon their houses, stood firm because their foundation was in Christ (see Matthew 7:25). These Saints accepted the name of Christ by baptism and did not allow their faith to be tossed to and fro like the waves of the sea (James 1:6); nor did they stray from the strait and narrow path to the filthy waters or spacious building of Lehi’s dream (1 Nephi 8).

They were not like their contemporary Jared Carter, who recognized that “the spirit of God in a measure has left me,” but failed to rectify the problem.¹⁴ Nor were they like William McLellin, who maintained his testimony of the Book of Mormon but denied the Lord’s chosen leaders, saying: “When a man goes at the Book of M. he touches the apple of my eye. He fights against truth—against purity—against light—against the purist, or one of the truest, purist books on earth. . . . Fight the wrongs of L.D.S.ism as much as you please, but let that unique, that inimitable book alone.”¹⁵

The faithful Saints learned and willingly embraced truth. They did not approach the gospel feast as a smorgasbord, offering a nibble here, a bite there, a taste, a smell, or even a desire to change the recipe. They accepted the gospel harvest as a feast of thanksgiving and embraced the truth as they came unto Christ and partook.

Through faith they had found the passageway to eternal life and clung to the rod of iron amidst the refiner’s fire, the fuller’s soap, and the trials that tested their integrity and tenacity. For them and for thousands and now millions of Latter-day Saints, faith increased to knowledge until they knew in whom they trusted: they knew their Redeemer lived (see Job 19:25).

I need to repeat that remembered legacy of faith. Their external trials of life are obviously different from mine, but my internal resolve must be comparable to theirs. May I forever be grateful to my Father in Heaven for the gospel in its fulness and for the opportunity to read preserved records and to ponder and choose the path of faith. May I endure in righteousness as I nurture my faith and strengthen my resolve to commit myself to a Christlike life. May I choose the path trodden by our faithful forefathers, who knew that yesterday’s faith needed to be nurtured today.

As I partake of the Lord’s supper, his feast, his delicious fruit, my hope of eternal brightness grows as I contemplate an infinite joy with the Saints of the Most High God—Abraham, Joseph Smith, John Murdock, and, yes, I could say with my grandmother, even Sarah Ann.

NOTES
1. Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, 6th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1966), 2.
2. Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: A Compilation of Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men and Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4 vols (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Company, 1901-36), 1:368.
3. Donald Q. Cannon and Lyndon W. Cook, ed. Far West Record: Minutes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1844 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1983), 222.
4. Melvin Billings, comp., “Titus Billings, Early Mormon Pioneer” (n.p., n.d.), 21. In author’s possession.
5. Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 185.
6. Journal of John Murdock [typescript], 3. L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
7. Journal of John Murdock, 5, 7.
8. Journal of John Murdock, 4-5.
9. Journal of John Murdock, 6.
10. Journal of John Murdock, 7.
11. Journal of John Murdock, 7-8.
12. Journal of John Murdock, 10.
13. Reva Baker Holt, “A Brief Synopsis of the Life of John Murdock” (n.p, 1965), 12. In author’s possession.
14. Autobiography of Jared Carter [typescript], 28. Grammar has been standardized. Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
15. Larry C. Porter, “William E. McLellin’s Testimony of the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies 10, no. 4 (Summer 1970): 486.

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Susan Easton Black (Ed.D., Brigham Young University) is a Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, where she joined the faculty in 1978. She is a past Eliza R. Snow Fellow, Associate Dean of General Education and Honors, and Director of Church History in the BYU Religious Studies Center. She was the recipient of the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award in 2000, the highest award given a professor on the BYU campus.

Specializing in research on Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saints, and particularly on the Missouri and Nauvoo periods, Professor Black has authored, edited, and compiled over ninety books and as many articles. She is married to Harvey B. Black and currently serves as a ward Young Women’s president.

Posted March 2011

I grew up in the Chicago area and joined the Church in my teens. I have had many blessings in my life, and through the gift of agency, have made good decisions and bad decisions. I am grateful for, and have a profound belief in, the gift of the Atonement that allows us to see our life in a spiritual perspective and offers us the opportunity for repentance to become more like Jesus Christ. We are assured that in this life, none of us will really be much like Him, but because of His grace, he loves and accepts us anyway. And, as we ask Christ daily to forgive and reconcile with us, we learn how important it is that we forgive and reconcile with others. This is the essence of the Christian message I have found as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One of the things I have experienced in particular is the reality of the gifts of the spirit. By this I mean that God is always near to us and knows of our situation. He is willing to bless, inspire and guide us as we diligently seek Him and endeavor to obey His will. I have had many experiences with the Holy Ghost in my life in the form of promptings and impressions that have led me to make decisions or to act or proceed in ways that I otherwise would not have. In looking at the situation later, I have seen that, because of the direction that came to me, situations have turned out much better for my good, and for the welfare of my family, than they would have otherwise in absence of the promptings. I believe that God does hear and answer our prayers, and I have felt this many times in my life.

I also have a testimony of the power of the resurrection, and that when we die, our spirits will go to a place of repose and learning, and that we will be reunited with those we have known and loved here in this life. Our death in this life is by no means the end of our existence. The life of God’s children is eternal, and our purpose in this life is to prepare, as best we can, for eternal life. Christ, as our eternal judge, knows us better than we know ourselves, and will judge us with infinite love and mercy.

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Daniel A. Austin (J.D., Columbia University; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor of law at Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in Illinois, and served in the Taiwan Kaoshiung Mission. He is married to Wendy Warren Austin, and has four children.

Posted March 2011

One of the things I love about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is its elegant self-consistency: the doctrines and practices fit each other. Indeed, the degree of agreement between the Holy Bible and modern scriptures is, to my mind, nothing short of miraculous.

As an academic, I’m committed to questions and answers—one of my favorite sayings is, “Always chew your truth thoroughly; never swallow it whole.” The idea is that we should use our faculties to compare assertions with our experiences so as to catch inconsistencies, because truth is self-consistent (i.e., assertions A and not-A cannot both be true). From this viewpoint, I find much of religion unsatisfying, but I have no such dissatisfaction with the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One example I find particularly gratifying is the uniquely LDS response to the so-called Problem of Evil: How can God, being perfectly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, have created a world containing evil? In syllogistic terms, it might go like this:

Syllogism I
Major Premise: God created everything that exists.
Minor Premise: Evil exists.
Conclusion: God created evil.

Syllogism II
Major Premise: God is perfectly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing
Minor Premise: Any perfectly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing being would never create evil.
Conclusion: God did not create evil (or more specifically, evil does not exist).

Thus are most Christians—most religions, actually—stuck. Many of my academic friends are non-Christian, even entirely irreligious, for precisely this reason. They see this fundamental inconsistency: either evil is some kind of fiction, or God is somehow not what we thought.

Now, enter Joseph Smith and the restored gospel of Jesus Christ: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:29). Thus we discover that God, although perfectly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, is not the Uncaused First Cause that Aquinas asserted. We lesser beings “have no beginning; [we] existed before, [we] shall have no end, [we] shall exist after, for [we] are gnolaum, or eternal” (Abraham 3:18). Next we discover that, although God “rules in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath” (Abraham 3:21), He loves us so perfectly (per John 3:16) that He took us as He found us (see Abraham 3:21) and is glorifying us each into the most joyful beings we can be (per 2 Nephi 2:25 and Doctrine and Covenants 88:27-32). He didn’t create evil; each of us is our own, small, uncaused first cause of evil (as well as our poor pittance of good). Thus, Christ’s Atonement stands not as the poorly sanitized human sacrifice of pagan ritual that some of my irreligious friends perceive but rather as the Great Healing of us eternally flawed—damned—beings who, despite our fatal weakness, are nevertheless capable of great joy.

Another extraordinary example of the miraculous truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the uniquely LDS response to the question of free will versus determinism: how can humans, as creations of an all-powerful God, have free will? Either God’s omnipotent creative act irrevocably determines our ultimate destiny and every waypoint leading to it, or He isn’t omnipotent after all.

Again comes the perfect truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Per the scriptures referenced above, we see that eternal, uncreated human intelligences interact with God as existentially independent agents. God most assuredly could run us all like robots, but His will that we each be perfected to our ultimate joy leads Him to give us life, knowledge, agency, and commandments (see Moses 7:32-33), the ingredients of joy. Thus we have agency, or what I sometimes call “self-determinism.” Yes, our ultimate fruition is already determined, but by our own eternal natures. True, this could be called determinism, but I hope it’s clear that it isn’t the determinism of traditional western thought: rather it is each of us blossoming through God’s love into all the unique splendor of which each of us has been individually, uniquely capable from all eternity. What could be more free? What could be more beautiful?

My testimony is fundamentally spiritual: I know by the transcendent witness of the Holy Spirit that the restored gospel is true, that Christ is my savior, and that He leads His church today. However, with that knowledge I also find inestimable comfort in the manifest consistency of the restored gospel, and I totally identify with Brigham Young’s statement: “I feel like shouting hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith, the prophet whom the Lord raised up and ordained, and to whom He gave keys and power to build up the Kingdom of God on earth and sustain it” (Journal of Discourses 3:51).

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Thomas Hilton has served since 2003 as chairman of the Management Information Systems Department in the College of Business at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. From 1998 to 2003, he was Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of Business Information Systems at Utah State University, where he had taught since 1986.

He received his B.A. degree in English composition and literature and his Ph.D. in instructional science and technology with an emphasis in computer information system development, both from Brigham Young University. He has done additional, postdoctoral, study at the University of Minnesota, the University of Baltimore, and the University of South Carolina.

During 1997-1998, Professor Hilton served as president of the International Association for Computer Information Systems.

Posted March 2011

Years ago when I was on faculty at a state university, a student asked me, “How can you have a PhD and believe in God?” My response was, “How could I have a PhD and not believe in God?” It is my belief in God that has motivated me to continually study and learn. My belief that I am a daughter of loving Heavenly Parents defines who I am.

I was born into a family with parents that faithfully practiced the Latter-day Saint religion. We moved several times during my childhood, and I was exposed to various perspectives, religions, and lifestyles different from my own. I remember reading as a teenager with fascination about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, as well as talking with friends about their Christian beliefs or Jewish faith. It was as a high school student in Seattle, Washington. that I first attended early morning LDS youth scripture study classes. As a freshman, the scriptural text we studied that year was the Book of Mormon. I remember coming to the realization that Mormonism is not just a church meeting one attends on Sunday, but an entire way of life. I knew that I needed to decide for myself if this was the way God wanted me to live my life—if it was, I would dedicate my life to the gospel of Jesus Christ; if not, I wanted nothing more to do with the LDS faith.

In addition to my readings of other religions, I read the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and I remember clearly the night I knelt in my room and prayed. I had been taught as a child to pray to a loving Heavenly Father, and I had had experiences as a child where I felt that God had answered my prayers, calmed my fears, or directed me in decisions. As I prayed that night, I asked if the Book of Mormon was true, and if I should live my life as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I felt a strong and loving presence, as if God were wrapping me in His arms. I felt an intense joy, like never before. That is why I am a believer—because it brings me joy. It gives meaning and direction to my life.

We believe that “the glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth” (Doctrine & Covenants 93:36). My academic studies intertwine with my spiritual life—which gives my educational pursuits meaning and purpose. I study sociology because I care about social interaction. I care about those that suffer injustices because of discrimination or poverty. I see all human beings as part of a larger family—that we are all brothers and sisters—literally children of loving Heavenly Parents. We each have a divine potential and deserve the opportunity to reach that potential. I study the health and well-being of women and children because my religious life teaches me that we have a responsibility to care for each other. I recognize that I have been blessed with wonderful opportunities and resources to learn and be productive. I have a responsibility to give back. It is the example of Jesus Christ that motivates me to seek solutions to human suffering.

I believe that through my faith I experience spiritual guidance or personal revelation. The spiritual direction I receive is like a “sixth sense.” It provides another way to experience and understand the world around me. It enlightens my mind and understanding, and gives meaning to my work. Ultimately, I am a committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because it makes me a better human being.

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Renata Forste was born in New Mexico and has lived in Virginia, Oregon, Washington, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah. She received her BS and MS degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University, and her PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. Renata is married to Michael Forste and they have three daughters. Currently, Renata is the chair of the sociology department at Brigham Young University. Her graduate training is in demography and her research focuses on the health and well-being of women and children in Latin America, as well as patterns of family formation in the U.S. She was on faculty at Western Washington University prior to joining the faculty at Brigham Young.

Posted March 2011

The longer I live, the more my soul is filled with a testimony of God’s eternal plan for all His children. My heart and my mind both know of the reality of God, of Jesus Christ, and of their individual love for each person that comes to this earth. At this later stage of life, I can look back at the happenings of my own existence and see that God’s hand was constantly there in all the important watershed moments, as I made critical decisions about my own life, and as I participated with my husband in the rearing of our family. At various stages along my journey, I could not tell how the finished painting called life would appear. But I now see how God influenced events to come together in unexpected ways in order for the masterpiece that is mortal life to come to full fruition. I truly marvel at the miraculous manner in which God was able to smooth over and even erase those sometimes messy and unpleasant episodes of my life into a harmonious whole that continues to be full of beauty and promise through the merciful Atonement of Jesus Christ. I have been so grateful to have had a righteous, kind, and selfless husband by my side to help in negotiating through these life trials. I have a firm testimony regarding the reality of his priesthood power as he took opportunity to bless me and our children throughout our lives. Those blessings have been moments when I felt God’s presence, aid, and comfort very near. I also bear testimony to the reality of God’s participation in the great gift of a patriarchal blessing. My own blessing, which I know came directly from a loving Father in Heaven, has given me direction, comfort, and joy throughout my life. It has also revealed to me how great and personal God’s plan is for each one of us, as I have seen these promises come to pass in my own life and in the lives of my children in ways that no mere mortal could have presupposed or arranged. The bestowals of my own patriarchal blessing and those of my children have truly been some of the most spiritual moments of my life when I sincerely felt God’s presence, love, and concern for me and each of my family members.

In my education and practice as an art historian, I always liked to believe that I was moving toward the discovery of truth in my research. I now realize, however, that when I discover and theorize about some new archival detail, this is not the same thing as experiencing eternal truth. I am grateful, therefore, to have partial access to those vast eternal truths via revelation through past and present prophets. As those truths work upon my mind, both through the testimonies of others and through my own personal revelation, I am amazed at the overwhelming sense of peace and enlightenment I receive. Moreover it is an enlightenment that is lasting and that far surpasses the joy experienced via academic insight. I am so grateful for the broader perspective of eternal truths, and I am grateful for the opportunity of receiving knowledge beyond my own ability to study, learn, and understand in this life. I have a testimony that prophets truly are called of God to give us direction toward achieving eternal life and lasting happiness. And I am grateful for the personal revelation that comes while reading prophetic pronouncements to help me comprehend and employ the instruction given.

In conclusion, my testimony of the gospel, the Atonement of Christ, the priesthood, prophets, scriptures, and personal revelation all conjoin around my sure conviction that I am a child of a loving Father in Heaven who has a plan to help me return to Him by becoming the righteous individual I desire to be.

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Martha Moffitt Peacock (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is a professor of art history at Brigham Young University. Her research centers on the relationship of art to the lives of women in the Dutch Republic. Her articles “Proverbial Reframing—Rebuking and Revering Women in Trousers,” “Domesticity in the Public Sphere,” and “The Imaging and Economics of Women Consumers and Merchants in the Netherlandish Marketplace” deal with themes of female empowerment through art. She has also published and presented on women artists such as Geertruydt Roghman and Anna Maria van Schurman. Additionally, she has published on Bosch and Rembrandt. She contributed to and edited two exhibition catalogs on the prints of Rembrandt and his circle at BYU. She is currently working on a book entitled Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives: Imaging Women of Consequence in the Dutch Golden Age.

Posted March 2011

I began my academic career in 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the goal of becoming a scientist. Spiritual matters were not prominent in my agnostic perspective, but a year of immersion in the material and mathematical worlds changed me. I wondered whether there wasn’t more to existence than empiricism.

One spring evening I went up onto the roof of Burton Hall to meditate. As I gazed out upon the Charles River and the Boston skyline, an odd feeling came over me. I knelt down and said my first deep prayer: “God, if you are there, help me know what life is all about.” Suddenly, a serene feeling came over me and my skin tingled. My mind seemed to open up and I sensed that there was something way beyond science. But I didn’t know what it was.

I soon consulted an academic adviser and asked whether I could pursue a different curriculum than engineering and physics in my second year, something more like the required Humanities class I had taken and enjoyed. I was told to try “General Science.” When I demurred, he told me about an MIT collaborative program with several select liberal arts colleges. After some deliberation, I chose Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and arrived there in the fall of 1953. The year at Reed significantly altered my life. I became engrossed in philosophy, psychology and art history, while gradually shedding my obligations in the math and physics courses.

More importantly, I met five brilliant young Mormons, the most significant being Marian Shafer, who was from Utah and Alberta, Canada. I gradually came to love Marian, who taught me the basics of the restored Gospel of Christ. She was only seventeen when we met but she held valiantly to her testimony against the scientific and philosophical arguments I threw at her religion. At the same time, I was buffeted by the atheistic orientation of my roommate, John Blake, who hailed from Greenwich Village in New York City. The year at Reed thus shook up my construction of the world both in coursework and in the ongoing informal debates that laced conversations everywhere on campus.

So it was that, when summer arrived, I left for construction work in Alaska with a large box of books on topics such as eastern religion, biological evolution, and Mormonism, including The Book of Mormon. I thus entered into an intensive study that added the possibility of revelation to the empirical and rational modes of inquiry to which I was accustomed. This became a mental “free-for-all.”

The Book of Mormon was stunning and challenging to my inquisitive mind. One day, after completing my study of the entire volume and lacing it with critical notes and questions, I hiked into the forested hinterland along the beautiful Tanana River. There, alone, I knelt reverently and asked God in the name of Christ if the book was true. What I experienced next is impossible to fully describe. It was an epiphany and a witness of truth, most sacred and desirable. The rejoicing by Enos and Ammon (Alma, chapter 26) reminds me of how I felt. I thirsted to know more and to feel again the Love of God that had encompassed me, but it would take time. More study, lifestyle alterations, careful reasoning, and religious experience were necessary before I could detach from my skeptical views and fully embrace the restored gospel and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Near that time, Marian surprised me with the news that she had decided to leave Reed College and enroll at BYU on an enticing scholarship. I knew zero about BYU but decided to visit there at the end of the summer. As I explored Provo, driving east on Center Street toward the stunning mountains, I was impressed to stop and pray in the car. The same kind of feeling occurred that I had experienced in Cambridge before I left MIT; but this time it was more direct, like “Coming Home.” So I transferred to BYU, my third school in three years.

At BYU, I continued my study of psychology, philosophy, and history while also adding courses in biological science and, particularly, in religion. By the end of my junior year, I had chosen to major in psychology, to become a member of the LDS church, and to marry Marian—which she agreed to! I was baptized in Provo on March 13, 1955, by BYU professor Robert K. Thomas, a Reed College and Columbia University alumnus. An academic leader, he was our teacher, counselor, and dear friend.

My conversion involved a continuing series of inquiries and divine inspirations, accompanied by a concerted effort to integrate, balance, and resolve conflicts among the different ways of knowing. Through study, prayer, and a repentant heart, revelation came, not as a light nor a voice, but by brilliant perceptions so vivid as to never be denied. I came to know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and the head of His Church. I know too that He has called and chosen an unbroken succession of Prophets, Seers and Revelators from the time of Joseph Smith to the present.

After receiving bachelors and masters degrees at BYU, I received my PhD in clinical psychology at Stanford (1957-60) under the supervision of Albert Bandura. I then spent a postdoctoral year at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of Wisconsin Medical School with Carl Rogers as my adviser, following which I became a professor in the clinical psychology PhD program at Teachers College, Columbia University, for eleven years (1961-72). My focus was psychotherapy research and, generally, how people change. During that time, I also served in church callings, including as a bishop in Emerson, New Jersey, counselor to the Eastern States Mission president, and adviser to the LDS Student Association at Columbia. For fifteen interesting years (1957-1972) I engaged in ongoing dialogues and debates with many intellectual Church critics and investigators, which frustrated and enlightened me and them.

I returned to BYU as a professor of psychology in 1972 and embraced opportunities to add research on religion and mental health to my scholarly agenda. This produced controversy, notoriety, and unexpected awards. It fulfilled my longing to integrate a religious perspective with psychological theory and practice. I also served in the church as a bishop, a stake president, and a member of the Sunday School General Board. My life became one of continuing service to others; of obedience to the laws, ordinances, and authorities of the church; and to nurturing Marian and my marriage and our family of nine children. The extended family now numbers about three dozen persons.

Marian, a clinical social worker, and I have both served the public through the practice of psychotherapy. This, in turn, helped us manage our own family problems and crises, of which there have been many. Our hearts are tender toward all people who experience severe stresses (which is most of us), including those who have felt hurt by the church and become estranged from it. We have personally experienced and observed in others the healing effects of competent counsel combined with wise spiritual guidance.

After retirement in 1999, I have done professional writing, missionary work, and, especially, family history and temple service. Marian has been my constant companion, adviser, and compensator for my deficiencies.

Note:
Another essay, “Life and Testimony of an Academic Clinical Psychologist,” gives a more extensive account of my experiences than could be given here. It is available in Susan Easton Black, ed., Expressions of Faith: Testimonies of Latter-day Saint Scholars (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996) and is available online.

References:
A.E. Bergin & S.L.Garfield (eds.) Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. New York: Wiley, 1971, 1978, 1986, 1994. (A Citation Classic). Fifth Ed. 2004, by M.J. Lambert, Ed.
P.S. Richards & A.E. Bergin. A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy. Wash, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997, 2005.
A.E. Bergin. Eternal Values and Personal Growth. Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2002.

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Allen E Bergin, PhD (Stanford University), now retired, taught clinical psychology at Columbia University (1961-1972) and Brigham Young University (1972-1999).

Among his many honors, he received the Distinguished Professional Contribution to Knowledge Award from the American Psychological Association, served as president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research and received its Distinguished Career Award, received various awards from the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists and served as its president, and received the Oskar Pfister Award in Religion and Mental Health from the American Psychiatric Association.

Posted March 2011

My Witness

“What matters to me is … not that I believe it, but that I believe it”
(Sir Thomas More, in “A Man for All Seasons”)

The first question put to me by a very prominent non-believing Jewish social theorist at my oral exam for advancement to PhD candidacy was, “How can you be a sociologist and a Mormon?” That context called for a reply based on critical rationality and social science knowledge, rather than on personal testimony. But I have worked at integrating the two and spent more than fifty years thinking about and studying science and faith, and doing so with substantial philosophical foundation and comparative research.

What does it mean for me, a somewhat Marxian social scientist, to testify—to bear witness—that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and that what Mormons call the “Restoration” is likewise true?

On what basis do I make such a claim? What qualifies me as a competent witness? What about all the problems of ‘knowing’ identified by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists? In a “post-modern” world in which relativistic views of knowledge, even of science, are influential, is it really possible to credibly claim to know something?

Testimony is both a form of knowledge and its expression. It can be about things physical as well as spiritual and about concrete facts as well as principles. One can testify in diverse kinds of settings, from courts to caves. But it is always about what one has personal knowledge of and can stand as a witness for, thereby involving only that in which one has sufficient confidence to stand by when the going gets tough. Thus, it is about truth-telling.

What does my testimony mean to me? Confirmation so strong that the knowledge is more sure than science. So strong that, while I often put my mortal life in the hands of science, I bet my eternal life on the Gospel. So when I declare that I have a testimony, I mean that my combined experiences, research, and reasoning persuade me that this is the most sure thing there is, the most real of realities.

Scientific knowledge relies on physical measurement, public confirmation, hypothesis testing, replicability of method, and effectiveness of practical applications. Thus, when we fly in airplanes we bet our lives on the truth of some principles of physical science and engineering. Scientific knowledge is, at any point, an approximation and subject to refinement, but much of it has proven reliable as well as exciting.

Spiritual knowledge is similar to science in some aspects. Confirmation also depends on following a systematic and repeatable method (albeit private rather than public), posing specific questions and examining evidence (testing relevant hypotheses), and practical outcomes.¹ Likewise, resulting understanding is subject to refinement, emerging “line upon line.” And I have found life-betting validity and reliability as well as intellectual excitement and development in the Restored Gospel.

Philosophical knowledge relies on critical rationality and logical analysis, which help establish the clarity, consistency, and warrantability of arguments for claims of truth. And philosophy poses important questions and accumulates various answers to the big questions of life.

Understanding of spiritual principles and the Divine plan of life also entails pursuit of the big questions, careful analysis of various answers, sorting the wheat from the chaff, etc. And I have found in the Restored Gospel the most comprehensive, comprehensible, and convincing philosophy of life and living that I have encountered in a lifetime of comparative study of ideas. It is a sublime concept with personal purpose and power as well as explanation and meaning, which scale from the individual to the infinite and from the pre-mortal to the post-mortal in eternal time. A truly unmatched and grand theory which incorporates all dimensions of the universe and life—material and spiritual, natural law and meaningfulness of mankind, physics and a personal God.²

Humans as whole persons combine multiple approaches, in varying degrees, including intellectual, emotional, intuitive, experiential, and sensual (five physical senses). Sometimes humans take advantage of a ‘hidden’ dimension—one not utilized by science and philosophy—the spiritual, a kind of “sixth sense” if you will, one based on direct communication with God via an underutilized communication mechanism.

Each approach has benefits and limitations. Each offers some certainty, but combined they make possible a degree of confidence which cannot come from any single method.

The most competent witnesses make use of all approaches. And that is what I have done, for more than fifty years. While the bedrock of my testimony is the spiritual experience of Divine revelation, a substantial part of the total witness is a kind of truth net or web of interconnected and supportive evidence, theory, and analysis from both scholarly and spiritual sources. In short, the intellectual, spiritual, social, and emotional are mutually reinforcing, and in that I find greater confidence and conviction than in any science.

Confirmation of belief and knowledge—a testimony—may be direct and/or indirect. For example, Peter had direct experience with and evidence of Jesus’ physical resurrection, and Joseph Smith had direct experience with the risen Lord. On the other hand, many people receive a testimony that the testimonies of Peter and Joseph are true. Scientists today depend more on indirect testimony than on direct; that is, they accept the witness of others that their findings are valid and reliable. And many scientific measurements are indirect rather than direct, which means that we infer the existence of some thing or property from measurements of other things. Dark energy and dark matter are good examples of inference from indirect evidence in modern physics.

I have received, over the years, both direct and indirect confirmation of several specific things. I have received direct spiritual confirmation of Jesus as the Christ, His Atonement, the historicity and message of the Book of Mormon, the Divine calling of Joseph Smith, and the Restoration (among other things). But, interestingly, I have also received indirect confirmation of those—in two ways. The first was a very powerful spiritual witness that the testimony of my ancestors was true. This came, at age twenty, before my direct confirmation of discrete items (mentioned above), and this became a motivating force in my pursuit of direct experience and knowledge. The second source of indirect confirmation has been intellectual and scholarly examination of evidence, both internal and external, and arguments, including virtually every critique of Mormonism as well as the rebuttals.

So the evidences for my testimony are multiple and varied, entailing reason and experience as well as spiritual manifestations and affirmations. Now let me offer a particular comparative illustration of my message, connecting contemporary physics and classical faith.

Recently I was deeply impressed by two paintings depicting some events in our pioneer heritage.³ I was stirred not just by the suffering, but by the unseen force which moved them to undertake and endure extreme hardship. One painting is a representation of both the hardship and heroism of an event of the famous Martin and Willie handcart companies. Another depicts the account of several participants that unseen angels assisted in pushing the handcarts in a particularly difficult situation.

These angels were not seen by the natural eye nor heard or touched by other physical senses. But several pioneers testified of the real presence and assistance of these unseen beings.

Modernist philosophy and the psychology of self-deception dismiss such stories as figments of imagination or stress-induced wishful thinking. After all, it is argued, angels do not exist because they have not been observed and cannot be measured by material means of science. Furthermore, they say, the human mind is a myth-making mechanism.

Yet that idea is a special conceit of the modernist mentality, one that does not hold up well to critical analysis. One only needs to examine contemporary physics to see how science confidently asserts the existence of things it cannot see or measure.

Thus, many physicists claim that more than 90% of our universe is “missing.” This massive amount of stuff is called “dark matter” and “dark energy.” It is said to be “missing” because it cannot be detected, but it is assumed to exist because modern theory would not be right or ‘true’ without it.

Likewise, modern “string theory” (in physics) asserts the existence of unseen parallel universes and seven more dimensions than the four we know in our own world.

So consider the paradox of the modern rationalist who ridicules faith in unseen angels and unmeasured power of the Holy Ghost while believing in missing matter and invisible universes. And these people presume to pooh-pooh the spiritual form of knowledge and communication?! “There is none so blind as those who will not see.”

No, there is nothing less true, or less real, or less rational about spiritual knowledge from God than about material knowledge from science.

Thus, after decades of extensive examination of every argument against faith in God and the Gospel, as well as several undeniable spiritual experiences, I affirm and bear witness that the testimony of our pioneer ancestors about those and the Restoration is True.

In summary, my testimony is the strongest thing I have. It came in expected and unexpected ways, and it came both easily and with much difficulty. And it is an integrated, total experience and system of thought, understanding, and practice.

After growing up in a household of faith I sought my own independent testimony and understanding. I spent my first two years in college pursuing philosophical understanding and scientific evidence in an attempt to discover the truth about God and the Restored Gospel. But, not surprisingly, to no avail—they did not have the answers or even adequate methodology.

My spiritual testimony began when I was approaching my twenty-first birthday, during a couple months of intense prayer and study, especially of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Several special spiritual experiences leave me irrevocably convinced of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel. These cannot be denied nor explained away by various forms of science and scholarship. My intellectual testimony developed over many years of extensive study of churches, religion, philosophy, and science (natural and social).

Together these (experiences, research, analysis) form the basis for a strong personal commitment to the reality of Christ and His Gospel—one strong enough, I hope, to carry me through the ultimate test. This testimony serves as both anchor and compass, keeping me from going too far adrift in the storms of this mortal existence and pointing the way to Eternity and Exaltation.

The bottom line is that I can say that I KNOW that Jesus is the Christ, that He did accomplish the Atonement, which makes possible eternal life, that the witness of the Book of Mormon is true (in both principle and history), that Joseph Smith is a prophet selected by God and through whom Divine priesthood, organization, and principles were revealed and restored. In short, I testify that the Restoration is True and that its outcomes are most powerful and meaningful.

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Notes
¹ Elements of the Gospel epistemology may be found in I Corinthians 2, especially verses 9-11; Alma 32:17-43, especially 26-34; Moroni 10:3-5; and D&C 9:7-9 and 50:10-22.
² As Joseph Smith taught: “the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity – thou must commune with God.” (TPJS: 137)
³ “Rescue at the Sweetwater” and “When the Angels Came” by Clark Kelley Price.

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T. Allen Lambert grew up mostly in San Diego, the son of a physicist who was philosophically thoughtful, and started college in physics and still pursues physics as a hobby. He first attended college at the University of Utah where he pursued physics, philosophy, pool, poker, and football for 2½ years. Then an LDS mission to France and Switzerland, which burden focused his attention on the urgency of personal knowledge of what is actually true.

Then four years at BYU, where he discovered sociology and social psychology as his preferred academic path. In addition to involvement in student government, he had the unique opportunity of serving as a teaching assistant to Chauncey Riddle and Reed Bradford, both profound thinkers about, and practitioners of, the Gospel. Other religious thinkers he was blessed to take courses with included Hugh Nibley, Hyrum Andrus, and Lynn McKinlay.

Then on to graduate school at Washington University (St. Louis) where he explored the philosophy of science and phenomenology while majoring in social theory, organizational and small group behavior, and development of the self, and publishing research on student protest and youth and social change.

His next stops were on the sociology faculties of Boston University, Rice University, and the University of Arkansas. Then three years in business (starting a hi fi shop).

Deciding to return to academia, Allen entered another doctoral program at Cornell University in rural sociology and the political economy of regional development. His dissertation advisors included an agricultural sociologist, a cultural anthropologist, a Marxist economist, a geographic historian, a political scientist, and a physical chemist—for a topic too complex to describe here. But marriage and children prompted a return to business, taking advantage of the emerging personal computer revolution.

After years in business and a couple of terms as a elected member of the Ithaca (New York) Board of Education, Allen discovered that almost no one actually studied school boards. So back to school for a third round, this time in education administration. So he is presently doing a large-scale comparative study of the organization and operation of school boards. And he has taught as an adjunct professor at Cornell, SUNY Albany, and Elmira College.

Allen’s intellectual interests range widely. In addition to academic writings and professional presentations in sociology, social psychology, political economy, and education, and many newspaper editorials, he has published stuff of relevance to Latter-day Saints in FARMS Review, Dialogue, Sunstone, Sunstone Review, Zion Quest, and First Things.

In addition to his hobby of selected topics in science and religion, Allen teaches the high priests in his ward and serves as co-chair of Area Congregations Together (ACT), an interfaith group in the Ithaca, New York, area. And he rides motorcycles (Goldwing), including a 4,500-mile trip last summer with his son (who also does philosophy as a graduate student at Harvard).

Posted March 2011

Please forgive me for a simplistic analogy I have often thought of throughout my career. Years ago, I became familiar with a television commercial geared to children which advertised Tootsie Rolls, a small chewy chocolate-like candy. The refrain echoes, “Whatever it is I think I see, becomes a tootsie roll to me.” It has been my experience that whatever it is I think I see is in truth and serious reality a reflection of the true and living God and His Son, Jesus Christ. In countless ways, I see His hand in my life, and feel the truthfulness of His gospel. All things testify of Him. I leave my testimony here from the perspective of my role as an artist and musician.

The constant struggle for perfection fills the halls of music schools everywhere in the form of scales and endless melodic repetitions. We are quick to tell our students and ourselves that perfection is a process. Yet we yearn for it. We sacrifice our time, talents, and all that we would otherwise be to the pursuit of a moment of creative genius. It is the stuff of movies. In my own struggles, there were many times when I wanted to choose an easier path, though I wonder now if there is such a thing. Music was for me the most honest of all pursuits. In an academic world where a 92% was an “A”, 92% of the right notes wasn’t even passing. One can’t fake Mozart. I often mused at how impossible perfection was—for even if you play all written indications correctly, as the new computer programs could do, there would be something missing. How like my life. It was only with a proper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ that I began to understand the nature of perfection.

It was my dream to be a fine oboist in the role of a music professor. As there are fewer than 350 full-time oboe professorships in the United States, I also knew that the odds were not in my favor. One day, as an undergraduate, I walked from a class on the far side of campus to the music building. In the preceding class, I had found myself contemplating the many forms of pride. I was deeply troubled by the music world, and my place in it. Too many performers were satisfied not by being good but by being better than others. The constant comparisons were at the heart of music education. I knew as well as anyone that the desire only to be one’s “best self” rang hollow if that “best self” wasn’t good enough to beat the others for a job. What kind of life could that be for a seeker of truth and goodness? As I pondered these questions, an informal cry escaped my mind to the God of the Universe, “If only we musicians knew that we could all play!” In that moment I received a critical answer that has stayed with me throughout my schooling and career. As well as I know anything, I know that, somehow, everyone will have a chance to play. I know that each of us has something to contribute to the artistic world. Our job is to find our own voice and become creators.

The doctrine of agency is one of the most beautiful and essential aspects of reality for an artist to understand. The divinely appointed gift of agency is central to the Creator’s great plan of happiness for his children. As a part of this plan, we are free to act. We have an opportunity to determine good from evil. As we exercise this gift in the choices of our lives, we hope, as all good people of the earth do, to choose well. We strive for the perfection of our choices. We strive to choose always good over evil. We then strive to choose better over good, and then best over better. At various points here and in the eternities we will have rejected evil and all lesser goods. We then have opportunities to exercise our agency to choose between equally good choices based on our preference. To choose between many good things is to choose a color or to choose a pitch, rather than to choose right from wrong. The result is that we choose from a rainbow of beautiful options according to our own vision. In the eternities, the culmination of agency is creation, and creation is art. To be creators in the likeness of our Father should be the goal of every artist.

We few who have chosen the arts as our mortal life’s work are bound by obligations more serious and profound than our all too common struggles for “perfection.” It is our happy obligation to act as a shadow of the great Creator. It is our role to bring about beauty through the exercise of agency.

I testify to the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which fullness can be found in His church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The doctrines therein are not the doctrines of men, but the doctrines of the Creator of heaven and earth. We are made in his image and, as artists, we strive to be like him.

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Elizabeth Young Rennick, assistant professor of double reeds, joined the faculty of Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), where she is also coordinator of chamber music studies, in 2005. Previous to this appointment, she held positions at Snow College (Ephraim, Utah) and Coe College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). She holds degrees from Brigham Young University (BM and MM) and the University of Iowa (DMA), and considers herself lucky to have studied with Geralyn Giovanetti and Mark Weiger.

Elizabeth is a founding member of Dolce Veloce, an actively touring flute-oboe-piano trio, with flutist Sonja Giles and pianist May Tsao-Lim. Dolce Veloce has had performances in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Wyoming, Arkansas, Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Minnesota. She has served in the Cedar Rapids and Dubuque Symphony Orchestras (Iowa) and the Lexington Philharmonic (Kentucky). She was pleased to play at the International Double Reed Society Conference in 2005 (Austin), 2008 (Provo), and 2010 (Norman), and has been selected as a performer in the upcoming 2011 (Tempe) conference. She performs with numerous small ensembles, including the Madison Winds, the resident faculty quintet at EKU, and is especially fond of playing with the Lexington Bach Choir and promoting chamber music in the Lexington area.

An enthusiastic educator, Dr. Rennick frequently works with the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra and is a resident faculty member of the Stephen Foster Music Camps, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, and Wyoming’s Music, Arts and Technology Festival. Elizabeth enjoys making reeds and looks forward to the publication of her research on oboe reed-making pedagogy in an upcoming volume of The Double Reed. She resides with her husband and daughter in Richmond, Kentucky.

Posted March 2011

The confirming voice of the Holy Ghost has taught me the truthfulness of many ideas. But this revelation thing is an inner experience that does not map to the world we live in. I cannot communicate the feeling of the touch of the Spirit beyond my own skin. I can only state that it exists, testify to the possibility that it can be felt, and warrant that the feeling is as unique and identifiable as the savor of salt.

I know why I do the things I do; it is a simple matter after receiving a revelation from God. But the articulation of the why to my colleagues has been difficult because they do not understand the vocabulary and the culture of revelation.

I cannot say that I have ever successfully accomplished it—how would I know?—but the effort has been invaluable because I have learned to engage my colleagues and listen to them. I have discovered that I have nothing to fear from a mutually respecting knock-down, drag-out wrestle over the mental, physical, and social context of the revelatory core. I am happy to harvest truth wherever I find it, even while mixing it up over observation versus belief with an atheistic (and esteemed) Scottish colleague over a Thai meal in Brussels.

My education in being a chemist in the workplace started with my first job in the Midwest after finishing my degree at BYU. It was substantially different from my exposure as a missionary to life in Germany. I realized there that professional people who claim revelation are not considered normal, and that what our colleagues really want to do is heal that “self-delusion” or gently pry that “juvenile tradition” out of our minds and fill in the hole with their learning.

They do not understand the risk of their assessments, or the challenge they have assumed. It looks easy to persuade a fellow chemist to give up his antiquated and restrictive prohibitions on drinking coffee or alcohol. Why, if he were a real chemist he would drop those juvenile inhibitions after reading a few articles from the New England Journal of Medicine that describe the benefits of a glass of wine with supper. After all, a real scientist would believe the science reported in the peer-reviewed journals.

The lab’s chief scientist stepped into my office and took the visitor’s chair. I was an entry level professional, fully ignorant of company politics and people. I had no idea why she would visit me. I could see she only had one cigarette in her mouth but it produced such prodigious volumes of smoke that I wondered if she had another waiting on deck.

“Dan, I understand you are a Mormon.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“A practicing Mormon?”

“Yes, but only one wife. Why?”

“I understand that you Mormons don’t drink coffee or alcohol. Is that right? Why not?”

Puff, puff, puff—blowing particulates from pyrolosis of vegetable organics loaded with condensed phase heterogeneous polyaromatic compounds into my face.

“Well, you know, these things aren’t good for you. The prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation about it, called the Word of Wisdom.”

“Oh, a revelation? God talked with him? So, what do you think of the articles that are published in the scientific literature—I am thinking of something that recently appeared in the NEJM that proves a glass of wine with supper is actually good for you. Your revelation really doesn’t make sense compared with scientific research, does it?”

She’s right; it actually isn’t bad for me. Why did I say it that way? Traditional missionary response, for sure. But not such a good answer in this office today. Why is she doing this? I think she would like to rock my boat of belief. What am I going to say to a fellow chemist and the chief scientist?

“Yeah, that’s a good point, [name]. In fact, I don’t doubt that a glass of wine at supper could be good for my digestion, so maybe I slightly misstated my original reason.” Pause, and then inspiration nudges a new idea into my brain. “Indeed, the glass of wine would be very bad for me, but spiritually and not physically. It is actually a matter of commitment and integrity. When I joined this church I made the commitment to keep its dietary code. I practice and strengthen integrity as I keep my commitment.”

What could she say to integrity? That was beyond chemistry. She considered my answer, nodded, stood up, and walked out.

That answer does not weaken my belief in the divine origin of the Word of Wisdom, but it allows me to keep the pearls of my sacred experiences close to me while being open with colleagues who do not buy into angelic ministration as a credible source of information.

Last year I had the opportunity to refine the response. I approached a group of the managers in our plant south of Brussels who had stopped at the coffee machine. The plant engineer, a man I greatly respect and who obviously feels comfortable with me, challenged me, “Dan, here’s a coffee, come drink it with us.”

“[name], thanks for the offer but you know I don’t drink coffee. I’ll take my chocolat chaud.”

“You should; sometimes you just need a coffee.”

“Yes, there is much good in what you are saying. But it’s all about value,” I said, shaking my right index finger at him. “The value I receive from my church membership—you know that’s why I don’t drink with you guys, it’s church—is far, far greater than the taste of the drink or the social moment.” I had not thought of the value approach before; that was new. He probably did not agree that the things of any church are of such great value, but he accepted my perception of it. He is a good man, and I learned from the interaction with him.

So, the social and mental context of this aspect of my faith has been refined by my experience with people who question me. I keep the Word of Wisdom because I desire to strengthen my integrity generally by keeping my specific commitment to God, and because I understand and want the overwhelmingly high and eternal value a temple recommend and callings in the church bring to me. I don’t make this sacrifice of sociality, taste, and buzz because of health or because I fear the chemical effects of trace levels of nicotine or caffeine or an aliquot of ethanol in my body. Belgian beer is only Brussels city water compared with the taste of revelation from the Holy Ghost. It is an easy call for me.

I want to deflect from my faith a common complaint of my colleagues about traditional Christianity (their target is Catholicism and Protestantism; they just assume Mormonism is another Protestant sect). They hate the elitism (or simply dismiss it as absurd) that is bred by the traditional Christian doctrine that declares Christ universally necessary for salvation but restricts Christ’s availability to a handful of the blessed.

They think they have taken a shot at me when they express their anger or contempt for the condemning judgments the blessed ones toss their way. But I am not in their line of fire. In fact, I explain to them that my finger is on the same trigger, that I fully agree with them. It surprises them but I think their model does not permit them to understand. It does not matter, anyway, for they have thrown the Son of God out with the dirty bathwater of traditional Christian doctrines.

My God cannot be a respecter of persons; the elite Christians are self-made, and their judgments of others can be ignored. Further, I know that Christ is indeed universally available and how it is done. That point alone sharply differentiates my faith from that of the traditional Christians.

Receiving revelation does not make me better than anybody else, and I am not their or your judge. While I am not exactly disinterested in others’ salvation, it is not my problem. This saves us both from the ultimate arrogance of the saved that somehow gives them leave to stomp uninvited into another’s beliefs garden.

I know by revelation that this mortal life is not the end of the probationary period, so I don’t have to cajole, threaten, or attempt to coerce anybody to believe. The evangelicals do this when they show up on my door because they do not know what I know. They want me to take that minute to fill in the “I accept Jesus” card just in case I walk in front of a bus later that day. They would hate for “death to send me reeling to an eternity of hellfire and damnation” because they neglected to force me to sign up for their heaven.

*

Another salvo from my technical colleagues is that I must believe in the literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis like other traditional Christians, since I am a believer in God the Creator. That makes me a hypocrite to either my science or my religion in their eyes. But the rules of the game change with prophets and revelation. Again, I am not in the line of their fire. Truth is my object, not preservation of my models. The prophets gave me the core ideas that flavor my life with profound meaning, but it is effective science that helps me understand the historical and geological boundaries to those ideas, to clarify the physical context of my faith.

Galileo is a classic example. He brought more light to Christianity with his telescope than centuries of religious scholars re-working the same few words handed down from the apostles and the Jews. The Hubble Space Telescope has continued offering the same curriculum to Christians. I have been taught of the unfathomable and infinite reach of the mind of the living God by its photographs.

I believe in God the Creator, but I do not have to believe that he created the earth in a handful of years. I am happy to have inherited the scientific tradition that established the age and complexity of the earth. It fits my model of the eternal God that a few billion Earth-years are insignificant and don’t show up in the high-level construction plans that have apparently come down to us via Moses.

I believe in Adam and Eve but I do not have to believe that they were a global phenomenon and that all humans on this planet descended from them starting some 6,000 years ago. I expect that Ötzi, Lucy, the Cro-Magnon cave painters of Lascaux, France, the 9,000-year old woman whose remains were fished out of the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Neanderthals whose remains I saw in the Neanderthal Museum in Germany, have a story. Adam and Eve and their role in my faith are not at risk because the core came by revelation, but my understanding of their historical and social context will continue to be refined by science.

I believe Noah existed and I am willing to accept that he spent about one year on a boat. On the other hand, I am not constrained to believe in a global flood that wiped out all life on the earth. The Masoretic and Septuagint texts of the first book of Moses are flimsy protection from the big guns of systematic science. Not even the hero Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer and Babylon can deflect the withering blasts of stratigraphic analysis of the tells and the various isotope-based chemical dating methods. I can easily cut the traditional global nature from the local phenomenon so I can retain the core story. I trust good science to put the boundaries around these stories but revelation to confirm the veracity of the core.

Science cannot, however, discern the origins of the core or analyze its mechanisms. The core does not belong to the world of rational analysis and deductive logic. As I said earlier, revelation does not map to our world. But I can offer up the Book of Mormon as evidence that the collision of the spiritual galaxy with the physical galaxy can produce something tangible that has purely revelatory roots. This book is the word of God and stands on its own.

I also believe in the God of Redemption. In fact, the Great Creator and the Redeemer are the same divine being. This is like a professional engineer being a prophet. It is helpful to me that the essential lawfulness, subtlety, and technical integrity of the Creator find expression in the works of the Redeemer. The conditions of salvation are essentially lawful, consistent, explicable, and understandable, and the consequences of properly executed experimental studies entirely predictable.

The last statement above strikes a sensitive nerve with my colleagues.

*

It was an intense argument about religion and science. The old fellow sitting shotgun was a long-time friend, a professional electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He also had expressed an astoundingly fierce antipathy towards the Christianity of his Italian fathers. His partner was in the back seat, another engineer, younger. They were vendors for a project we were working on.

“Science is reproducible but your religious experience is not. That is why science is better than religion, and why you cannot be much of a scientist if you believe in religion.” That was [younger], in the back seat.

“What do you know about reproducible experiments in religion? How many times does an experiment have to be repeated before its results and principles become credible?” I was going to ask how they could so casually dismiss the common experiences of millions of LDS all over the world, but [younger] cut me off.

“I can see where you are going and think that is a useless argument.”

[Older] jumped in. “I have tried many of the paths my believing friends have recommended but none have worked for me. I would be willing, but I have already proven to me that it is all based on emotions. Religion is a fairy tale.”

There it is. He has done the test. A good man has tried to repeat his friends’ religious experiences and found them all to be incredible and irreproducible. Are mine and my fellow Latter-day Saints’ also all emotional? And the church a modern fairy tale? No, and No; I know better. I don’t have to let this one stand.

“Guys, the experiment works, but there are conditions of humility and desire that are essential. It is totally up to the person whether it works or not. Because God is hidden, nobody is compelled to believe—He is not going to suddenly drop out of the sky in front of you and beg you to believe in him. I, the believer, look about me and see the handiwork of God, while you, the unbelievers, do not. Fair enough. The hand of God is in the mind of the observer, and not explicit in the external evidence.” Then an analogy occurred to me.

“Did either of you take an organic chemistry lab in college?”

No, neither had. “We are electrical engineers, not chemists.”

“It is quite an astounding thing that a group of students can be handed exactly the same written procedures, be given exactly the same glassware and reagents, and that one team will produce no crystals; another a thick, sticky mass of yellow gunk in the bottom of the beaker; and another a beaker-full of beautiful white crystals of, say, vanillin. What was the differentiating factor in the quality of the results?”

They did not respond, but they also did not turn me off.

“It most certainly was not the written experimental procedures or reagents. What other variable was there? It had to be the people! It was variations in their diligence, their interest, their belief, the personal evaluation of the importance of organic chemistry lab, their preparations, and etc.”

This was exactly the analogy I had been looking for to help me deal with this issue. “The same holds for the synthesis of a revelation from God, or, in other words, the test of the spiritual things. We are all handed the same written procedures and reagents. Then the results of the experiment are entirely up to us.”

They could not respond. I was merciless and drilled the screw deeper. “I plainly state that each of us is totally personally responsible for the decision of belief and the test of the Spirit. It is not God we are testing.”

[Younger] asked, “How did you do with the vanillin synthesis?”

I laughed, and said, “Oh, I was struggling with who I really was in those days. I probably got the yellow mass of gunk.”

Then he said, “Since you are not a good chemist you had to believe in God.”

That was a nasty little poke; not the first one today. I laughed again (these things don’t bother me anymore) and extended my right arm to the back seat and waved my hand about. “See my hand waving around? I am pushing back on you like you have never before felt it from a religious person. You could not answer me, so you had to fall back to a little weak hand flopping and ad hominem. We Mormons are not like your Protestant sect friends. You have no idea who I am and what I believe. You think you know but you don’t. I have tried to get you to stop your headlong rush to beat up the Mormon in the driver’s seat and ask me questions but you would not, and your models are killing you because they are totally useless with me. ”

[Older] said, “You are probably frustrated that you did not convert a couple of non-believers.”

“No, not at all. Your salvation and faith are your problem, not mine. I enjoy these conversations; I learn much by them. And I think the world of you.”

*

I know that one of my feet is already in their court. They don’t see it because they cannot believe that a man who speaks of revelation from the living God can also accept a 4.5-billion year old earth and rigorous science. They cannot see the other foot because their models blind them to possibilities that are beyond the pale of traditional Christianity.

I will have finished sixty years on this planet in July. I have lived with my faith, its doctrines, practices, requirements, and consequences, for five of those six decades.
My family was fully churchless until we came to the LDS church in Nevada in about my tenth year. My faith was not distilled or rammed into my genes by my parents when I was a child. I learned what I learned by study and by revelation; I was responsible for what I became.

The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church have been a powerfully anchoring force in my life, neither restrictive nor coercive but liberating and compelling to growth. I have been around long enough to see it for what it really is.

It is not a hokey American cult that enriches the few grizzled Elders and good old boys sitting atop the church’s hierarchy, or a beehive of mindless drones, but a full-bodied participative religious experience of love and revelation, volunteerism, and great sacrifice, from the bottom to the top of the organization, in every culture of this world. I love its energy and its power.

I admire the young man, Joseph Smith, called by God to restore the priesthood, the ordinances, the structure of the church, the testimony of Jesus, and knowledge of the eternal nature of man. I owe the Lamb of God for every good thing that I am, and his grace and love for lawfully and mercifully helping me deal with every stupid thing I do. It is my hope to be prepared to meet him at the judgment bar where I intend to personally express my great gratitude to him.

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I built houses and laid stone while finishing my undergraduate degree in German literature at Brigham Young University with a secondary teaching certificate and a minor in chemistry. Prof. Milton Lee, Professor of Chemistry at BYU, invited me to join him as a graduate student in my last undergraduate year. Five years later I departed BYU for Kansas City as a newly minted Ph.D. I was employed by the Midwest Research Institute to provide support to the National Toxicology Program’s toxicological studies around the country. I then took a position in the corporate analytical services group of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., near Allentown, PA. I have been with Air Products since December 1984. I was lab-based until about 1999 when I accepted the opportunity for a fundamental career change. I have become the global technical product and R&D manager for a new product, responsible for its rollout throughout the world and for keeping the new product’s development pipeline filled. I have learned a lot about high-pressure gases engineering principles and practices. I was based in Brussels for most of the past eight years, and have traveled extensively throughout the world. The best part of this job has been the wonderfully diverse people with whom I have worked in many nations.

Posted March 2011