Testimonies

During my 1984-85 sabbatical years at BYU, I decided to write a book about the relationships between modern economics and my religious beliefs. The intent was to find scriptural examples to illustrate important economic principles including the importance of specialization and trade, externalities, and motives. However, the more I tried to illustrate principles of economics using examples from the scriptures, the more I came to recognize there was a major conflict between neoclassical economics and economic outcomes described in the scriptures. The conflict centered on motives. Being motivated by “selfishness of preferences” emphasized in neoclassical economics appeared quite incompatible with being motivated by “love” described in the first and second great commandments to love God and others.

As a result of this conflict between selfishness and love, and being unsuccessful at making the gospel examples illustrate economic theory as I understood it, I decided to focus on what the gospel could teach me about economics. The result was that my study of the Book of Mormon turned on a light through which I could see more clearly concepts in economics that before I couldn’t explain.

One early insight came to me after reading about the relative prosperity of those who cared for each other versus those driven by greed: “And thus they [those who cared for each other] did prosper and become far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church” (Alma 1:31). Nothing I had read before in my profession had made such an unambiguous declaration about the conditions leading to economic prosperity. But how could ‘caring’ or sympathy lead to economic prosperity, I wondered?

One obvious answer was that caring, in which we internalized the well-being of others, would increase our interest in and willingness to trade with those we cared about. And trade was required if a society was able to specialize—which Adam Smith described as the key to productivity. In addition, honesty and covenant keeping, also hallmarks of a righteous people, reduced transaction costs, which also facilitated trade. Furthermore, caring led the community of saints to conserve shared resources and reduce harmful externalities—which is so much a focus of modern economics. And finally, caring as a motive resolved the long held conflict between efficiency (which, it was assumed, required selfishness) and equity (which, it was assumed, required public redistribution of resources). The conflict is resolved, the scriptures reported, because a people with one heart who cared about each other would work just as hard for those they cared about as for themselves (resolving the efficiency problem) and share with those in need without an external threat of force to effect redistributions (resolving the equity problem). As a result, among such a people, called Zion, there was both prosperity and equity.

So the next step in my career was to ask the question: is there any evidence that relationships alter the terms and level of trade and with whom we trade? Does caring, or the internalization of another’s well-being which we called sympathy, have a place in modern economics?

So a colleague and I set out to examine if relationships influenced trade. Our first study asked: how do relationships influence the minimum sell price of a used car. After we completed the study we sent it off to the program committee for our profession’s annual meeting. The reviewer’s response was not encouraging: “I don’t know what you are doing, but it’s not economics.” We later published the article in another venue, but the reviewer’s response was a foreshadowing of the difficulty in convincing colleagues that relationships matter.¹

One day I was visiting with a colleague about my interests and the importance of caring relationships, which seemed to be an essential resource required for economic prosperity. He suggested that I call this resource of caring or sympathy social capital. “What a great idea,” I thought. And so, social capital was born—for me. Only later did I learn that the same concept was present and growing in importance across the social sciences. Each discipline defined and applied social capital slightly differently but, in each case, they recognized the importance of this resource embedded in relationships. Some observed how positive relationships could improve the formation of human capital.² Others noted that communities worked better when neighbors were connected.³ And still others noted that development outcomes could be improved with social capital.⁴ And finally, the most recent Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to a political scientist who demonstrated the importance of relationships of trust in the allocation and use of shared resources.⁵

Since that early effort to appeal to the scriptures to teach me about economics and the importance of caring, I have enjoyed a profound peace as I have studied and written about “the dismal science” and caring.^{6, 7, 8} I have also learned that one not need compromise one’s gospel convictions to accommodate modern philosophies of science and man. Finally, the experience of using the gospel to illuminate my professional inquiries has made me even more grateful for the truths of the restored gospel and strengthened my faith in divine revelation through ancient and modern prophets.

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Notes:
¹ Robison, L.J. and A.A. Schmid (1989). “Interpersonal Relationships and Preferences: Evidences and Implications.” In R. Frantz and H. Singh (Eds), Handbook of Behavioral Economics. Vol. 2, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 347-358.
² Coleman, J. (1990). “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal of Sociology 94:S95-S120.
³ Putnam, R.D., R. Leonardi, and R. Nanetti (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
⁴ Woolcock, M. (1998). “Social Capital and Economic Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework.” Theory and Society 27:151-208.
⁵ Ostrom, E. (2009). “A General Framework for Analyzing the Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems,” Science, 325(5939), 419–422.
⁶ Robison, L.J. (1992). “Economic Insights from the Book of Mormon” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1:35-53.
⁷ Robison, L.J. and B.K. Ritchie. (2010). Relationship Economics: The Social Capital Paradigm and its Application to Business, Politics and Other Transactions. Surrey England: Gower Publishers.
⁸ Robison, L.J., A.A. Schmid, and M.E. Siles (2002). “Is Social Capital Really Capital?” Review of Social Economy 60:1-21.

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Lindon J. Robison is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. After receiving a B.S. from Utah State University and an M.S. from the University of Illinois, he earned his Ph.D. at Texas A & M University in 1975.

Dr. Robison’s professional interests focus on such areas as social capital and the influence of attachment values and socio-emotional goods on farmland values, environmental practices, surveys and framing responses, and transaction costs. Among his publications are Present Value Models and Investment Analysis (1996, with Peter J. Barry); “Social Capital and Household Income Distributions in the United States: 1980, 1990,” Journal of Socio-Economics 28 (1999): 43-93 (with Marcelo E. Siles); and “Is Social Capital Really Capital?” Review of Social Economy 60 (2002): 1-21 (with A. Allan Schmid and Marcelo E. Siles).

Posted December 2010

I was pleased to be asked to participate in Mormon Scholars Testify. I have certainly seen my share of academic condescension towards the LDS religion and its scholars, but I have never experienced anti-LDS sentiment that was seriously threatening in any way to me or my career. More than anything else, my religion has made me a bit of an oddball among my associates, and my only desire as an academic has been to produce the best work possible as a personal testament of my belief in God—a proof that God has indeed sustained me throughout my academic and personal life.

As a woman who opted to leave academia for about ten years to finish raising my family, I currently have a lot of catching up to do in my field of ethnomusicology. But I can safely say that my decision to put my children above my career for nearly a decade has blessed me in more ways than I could have imagined.

After completing my Ph.D. and two post-doctoral fellowships, I had to face my career options as a mother of two sons. Having recently taught as an adjunct at Columbia University, a colleague offered to hire me as an adjunct at New York University with the expectation that it would turn into a full-time position. As tempting as the offer was, I felt certain that all the responsibilities would have adversely affected my ability to raise my sons, and I turned down the offer. Consequently, I decided to change career paths and teach music in the home to support my children—a career that would allow me to have a flexible schedule and work out of the home. While it broke my heart to abandon the field I found so personally invigorating, I knew that this was the right decision. I finished my last academic article in 1997 (it was published in 2002) and put my book project on permanent hold.

While raising two boys was the greatest challenge I have ever faced, I was given extraordinary help throughout the process. I believe that making the decision to put my children over my career enabled me to get unusual help in taking care of them. It was certainly not that I didn’t have to experience all the challenges that any parent faces; rather, I feel as though I was given special assistance. And I never looked back on my previous career while I was raising my children. Perhaps that was what made the next phase of my life so unanticipated.

I received word from my former mentor that a position was opening up in the Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature Department at BYU in 2007. Interestingly, my younger son was graduating from high school that year and planning to enter BYU the very year that this job would begin. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I mechanically went through the application process. Because of the hiatus in my career I knew that my application would raise suspicions, and it did. But the application went through, my interviews were successful, and I was offered the job.

Getting back into the academic groove took a full year, but I have been able to resurrect my research projects and get back into publishing once again. The book manuscript that I had put on hold in 1997 has now been published in the SOAS Musicology series at Ashgate. Three articles have been published since beginning work at BYU, and two more have been accepted—including one in the flagship journal of my field, Ethnomusicology. I am working on a second book manuscript now and have been unusually blessed with ideas for future research projects. I realize that this windfall has been a direct consequence of my faith in God and His infinite mercy towards me.

I have a testimony that God is directly involved in our lives. I know that He will bless us after we have honored our commitments to Him—particularly our commitments to our families.

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Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson received an undergraduate degree in harp performance from BYU, an MA degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. She conducted research on the inter-relationships of language and music in the narrative arts of Tianjin, China, as a Fulbright-Hays and National Academy of Sciences Research Fellow. This research resulted in the recently published volume The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language (click to go to publisher’s page). She also worked as a President’s Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and taught interdisciplinary courses in the Asian humanities and in gender-music relationships at Columbia University in New York City. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University.

Posted December 2010

I have been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since I was baptized at age eight, but have been a convert to the Church since my freshman year in college. I remember at one point in high school thinking that the Church taught good morals and encouraged good families, but that the stories about how Joseph Smith obtained the plates that were translated into the Book of Mormon just sounded very strange. I had no single experience thereafter that radically altered my views of the historicity of the founding of the LDS Church and the Book of Mormon, but after reading the Book of Mormon as a junior in high school, I knew it was true—not in the sense of mental conviction formed by weighing of evidence, but because a settled conviction had come to my heart and mind as I had read and studied the book. Over the years, I have gained increasing appreciation and respect for the power and complexity of the Book of Mormon. In addition, as I have experienced divine intervention, answers, and influence in often small but very powerful ways in my life, I no longer find the idea of Joseph Smith being taught and led by angels and God strange. I have come to know that God loves us and can and does interact with our world in tangible, physical ways.

As a freshman in college, I heard the then-current president of the LDS Church, Ezra Taft Benson, challenge members to get nearer to God by reading the Book of Mormon daily.¹ I took his challenge and started reading the Book of Mormon every day. The Book of Mormon came alive to me and helped me find insights in the literature I was studying as a comparative literature major. I found myself changing for the better, being happier, more full of hope and optimism, more peaceful. I started to see the obligations I had assumed as a member of the Church as invitations to joy rather than expectations set by others. I came to appreciate and see the need for Christ in my life; in short, I became a convert.

Through college, law school, legal practice, and my academic experience, my understanding of the teachings found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has continued to bring me joy and peace. One example that some may relate to or struggle with is the question of marriage and motherhood. LDS Church leaders have repeatedly taught the importance of family and have encouraged men and women to make marriage and family a priority in their lives. While reaching out in love to all, the Church teaches the importance of marriage between a man and a woman and the potential for these marriages to last eternally.

Having experienced academic life as a single woman, a married woman with teenage step-children, a married mother of young children, and now as a single mother, I have found peace and joy in each of my various seasons. Throughout this time I have felt reassurance and direction as I have tried to shape my life to follow LDS doctrine and divine promptings. I have spent many years adult and single. During this time I have continued to feel the truth of the importance of marriage. Although I may not ever fit the stereotype some have of Mormon women (or Mormon women may sometimes have of themselves), I know that God knows me and has directed my life. I have trusted in God’s timing and continue to believe in the doctrine of marriage and family.

After being happily settled in an academic career, in a field that I enjoy and find deeply satisfying, I married a man who had four children from a previous marriage. Combining full-time academic life with instant step-motherhood was an adventure, but again, LDS doctrine and the individual peace and guidance that are such an essential part of it have given me reassurance, help, and sanity. Some ask how one can know that guidance and prompting are from a divine source and are not merely self-suggestions or imagination. It’s hard to give an answer that can satisfy others, but I have increasingly learned and am still learning to better recognize and follow the small voice of the Holy Spirit that speaks peace and wisdom from God, a voice which I can feel when I try to trust God instead of relying exclusively on my own rational thinking. Over time I have seen the results in my life from using this inspiration in combination my rational faculties, and continue to see miracles. Even more importantly, I know that seeking to serve God with all my heart, might, mind, and strength has changed me and made me a more careful and thoughtful scholar, a more patient and understanding parent and friend, and a happier and kinder person. The path is far from over, but I’m grateful to see the good fruits that have come in my life from attempts to choose a faithful life as a Latter-day Saint. To me, these serve as an additional witness, confirming that of scripture, Church leaders, and the promptings from the Holy Spirit.

After step-parenting in combination with full-time academic life, I had two more children and spent several years as a part-time academic and a stay-at-home mom. LDS Church leaders have underscored the important role of mothers, and their influence, particularly in the lives of their young children, and have encouraged women to make the raising of children a key priority in their lives. I know many mothers face difficult decisions and that not all women are in position to or have a desire to be a stay-at-home mom. I’m deeply grateful that this has been possible for me. I know there are books and articles I have not written and conferences I have passed up, but I find deep and often surprising joys in raising my children. Parenting small children brings immense amounts of repetitive and seemingly mindless tasks, but to me this also brings a tremendous opportunity to help my children develop a base of love and trust and curiosity for the world around them. I also continue to learn from my children and step-children—from their grace, their kindness, their willingness to forgive, their desires to understand the world, and their joy in life. I see colleagues and friends who have been more fully engaged in the academic world and admire their publications, their ability to inspire students, and their impact in the world. I feel peace and deep satisfaction, however, from my choices and attempts to listen to divine direction through LDS Church doctrine and individual divine guidance.

Faith and listening for God’s voice have brought immeasurable peace to me through my divorce as well. Divine inspiration and the assurance of a loving Father in Heaven have never been more tangible to me. I feel that love through peace from the Holy Spirit and in a flood of divine light, guidance, and comfort as I study the Book of Mormon. It’s not an easy or ideal situation, but the peace and guidance keep coming one step at a time.

I am grateful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a follower of Jesus Christ. My life has been blessed by many friends of other faiths and those of no faith; although they may not share all or any of my convictions, they are examples to me of the life I seek to lead. I wish to add my witness, however, that I have come to know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been established by God; that its leaders, including Joseph Smith and the current leader, Thomas S. Monson, are prophets called by God. The Book of Mormon has brought me closer to God and is a powerful witness of Jesus Christ. Reading the Book of Mormon, trying to follow LDS Church doctrine, and attempting to listen to the quiet direction from the Holy Spirit have shaped my life, brought me deep and abiding joys, and continue to give me faith and hope for the future.

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Note:
¹ Ezra Taft Benson, “Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon,” Ensign (Nov. 1988).

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Elizabeth A. Clark earned her B.A. magna cum laude in Comparative Literature and Russian from Brigham Young University in 1994, and was the student commencement speaker for her class. She went on to earn her J.D. summa cum laude from the University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1997, serving, during her time as a law student, as Editor-in-Chief of the BYU Law Review.

As Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Professor Clark has taken part in drafting commentaries and legal analyses of pending legislation and developments affecting religious freedom, and has assisted in drafting an amicus brief on international religious freedom issues for the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Clark has co-taught classes on Comparative Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, and European Union law. She has published numerous articles and chapters on church-state issues and has been an associate editor of three major books: Facilitating Freedom of Religion and Belief and two books on law and religion in post-Communist Europe. Professor Clark has also testified before Congress on religious freedom issues. Fluent in Russian and Czech, she has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Church-State Studies in Slovakia since 2009, and is a reviewer for the Journal of Law and Religion, a member of the Review Board for Critical Issues in Politics and Justice, and a member of the Ukrainian Association of Researchers of Religion.

Prior to joining the Law School, Professor Clark was an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Mayer, Brown & Platt, where she was a member of the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Group. Professor Clark also clerked for Judge J. Clifford Wallace on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Posted December 2010

“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.”
(2 Corinthians 13:5)

Recently, I had occasion to spend some time with a good friend who is a devout Catholic. Our late afternoon golf outing followed a day spent on the campus of Wheaton College, where a graduate school classmate of mine had been inaugurated as the eighth president. Wheaton is a 150-year-old evangelical school just west of Chicago, Illinois, which counts among its eminent alumni the Reverend Billy Graham. As we came up the eighteenth fairway, my friend said to me: “Mike, I’ve decided to use you as an example with others: here you are a committed Mormon in the midst of finishing a degree at Notre Dame, golfing with your Catholic friend after spending the day at Wheaton College. Now that’s ecumenical!”

While I was flattered by my friend’s observation, my experience is hardly unique. I have been blessed throughout life to see much of the world, to be exposed to many of God’s creations and children, and to experience many cultural, intellectual, and religious traditions. Within these various settings and among a whole host of different people, the Lord has provided opportunities for me to try as best I can to adhere to the Apostle Paul’s admonition: “Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.”

Two of my very best friends have religious traditions far different from my own: Roman Catholicism and Judaism. These friends are committed to their faiths, they make tremendous sacrifices, they serve others, and they positively impact the lives of their families and associates. They have my unending respect and admiration for their adherence to their own traditions and faith. I am a better person for knowing them. My own beliefs have been reinforced and deepened by witnessing first-hand the devotion my friends demonstrate on a daily basis. In many areas, the devotion of my friends to their faith and principles exceeds my own—their examples have motivated me to do better and to try harder to live my own religious beliefs.

I must confess that, throughout my life, neither a great deal of attention nor time has been spent contemplating the mysteries or being consumed with theological—or even historical—discussions relative to doctrine or events in our Church’s past. This is not to suggest that I am not intellectually curious nor that I have never experienced periods of doubt nor questioned my own religious tradition. Frankly, there are parts to our history and dogma which I do not understand. Nonetheless, I do not allow discrepancies in records, accounts, or even theological arguments to interfere with what I might term a very simple faith. For others, these nagging questions or doubts prove to be insurmountable obstacles and have steered them off on a life path different from the one I have chosen to walk.

My faith is rooted and grounded in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His life of service to others, in His sacrifice, death, and resurrection, and in His role in my everyday life. All else, as Joseph Smith said of our religion, is mere appendages to the incontrovertible fact that Jesus died on the cross, rose again in the third day, and lives today. This faith is what motivates me to try to do good and what keeps me among the Mormon faithful. It also motivates me to continue in good standing within the LDS Church so as to avail myself of priesthood ordinances and blessings, and thereby bless the lives of my family and friends. The organization of the Church, regardless of the congregation’s location—together with its members—has proven to be a constant in my life when other influences have ebbed and flowed.

In short, I try my best to find fellowship with the Mormon Saints for three simple reasons:

First, it is the faith of my fathers. As the anthem in our church hymnal concludes: “Faith of our fathers, holy faith—we will be true to thee ‘til death” (Hymns, no. 84). The examples of my forebears are not only humbling and motivating, but they also steel me for the challenges I face in my own life. In many ways, my devotion to the precepts of the LDS Church is in part an expression of gratitude to family members and others for what they sacrificed. Although I have my own agency and could choose any number of paths to take, my belief system has propelled me to never betray the trust of my family by abandoning the faith of my ancestors. And from my examination of other faiths and belief systems, Mormonism is the best fit for me personally and spiritually. It is what I know and what I believe.

Second, a commitment to and belief in the LDS Church have provided a solid and secure foundation by which I try to live a Christ-centered life. There are many areas where I fall short but I am buoyed up by our faith’s promise of forgiveness and eternal progression. I firmly believe in the principle of personal revelation and the importance of the Holy Ghost in prompting me daily as I strive to live in such a way as to merit its companionship. I also value our faith’s commitment to truth—in all of its forms and wherever it may be found—and the affirmation that we as mortals are expected, even commanded, to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). My own personal quest and pursuit of knowledge has led me back time and again and to the faith and traditions which my family and friends have inculcated in me since birth. Mormonism is as much a part of my cultural and personal DNA as any genetic code inherited from my parents.

Further, adherence to gospel principles has enabled me to make decisions that have served me very well and that don’t require that I “remake” these decisions over and over. A simple but profound example: while living and studying as a graduate student in England, I saw daily the destructive and addictive power of substance abuse in classmates’ lives. My abstention from these substances freed me from the consequences they had to face because of their own personal choices. Life can be hard enough without the compounding complications that come from making unwise life choices that could easily be avoided.

Third, the principles espoused by the LDS Church have blessed my life and provided opportunities for spiritual growth and service to others. While the latter years of high school—and most of my professional life—have been spent in Utah, I have often been among the minority in work and school circumstances as I have lived in other parts of the United States and the world. These settings have provided ample chances to demonstrate my active LDS faith by my actions. My hope is that these actions characterize me as one of the “believers” to those who observed my actions on a daily basis.

This, then, is my faith and my testimony. I choose to not share experiences or instances that are more private in nature because they are just that—they are personal to me and my life’s journey and I hold them sacred. As Isaiah says in my favorite passage in chapter forty, I have tried to “wait upon the Lord” (verse 40) and he has answered my prayers in powerful ways which I reflect on frequently to provide support during difficult times in life.

For me, the best way to “testify” of my beliefs is how I live my life. Jesus taught, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Arguably one of organized religion’s most revered figures, and the author of hymn number 62 in our LDS Hymnal, St. Francis of Assisi once wrote: “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

If the primary purpose of websites such as this is to build and strengthen faith, I would hope that my own personal life and my attempts to serve others as best I can are a much stronger testament than anything I might write or say.

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Michael T. Benson is the fifteenth President of Southern Utah University and holds the rank of Full Professor within the Department of Political Science. Prior to his current position, Michael served as President of Snow College and, age thirty-six at the time of his appointment in 2001, is the youngest university or college president in the history of the Utah System of Higher Education. He also served as special assistant to the President at the University of Utah, a cabinet-level position on that campus.

In addition to various board assignments and community service, Michael is a member of the seven-person Utah Appellate Court Nominating Commission and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council for Education in Washington, D.C.

Author of numerous journal articles, Benson also wrote Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Praeger, 1997). He has served as an academic advisor and essayist for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, and as a consulting historian to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Michael has worked and studied in England and Israel and is regularly sought after for lectures on the modern Middle East and the American presidency.

A cum laude graduate of Brigham Young University with a degree in political science, English, and history, Michael completed a doctorate in modern Middle Eastern History from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College). He also earned a master’s degree cum laude from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame in non-profit administration.

Michael served a full-time mission to Rome, Italy, and currently teaches Gospel Doctrine in the Cedar City 9th Ward. He is married to Debi Woods and is the father of five children: Emma, Samuel, Truman, Tatum, and Talmage.

Posted December 2010

I am a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and family therapist.

I am the only child of Jewish parents, born in 1934. My family was not religious and only had a very dim and somewhat gloomy feeling that there is a God without mercy, especially with all the things that had been done to Jews in general and to our family, since my grandparents and one aunt had been murdered in Auschwitz.

While we were lucky not to have been sent to a concentration camp, survival in Vienna was bad enough. In the end we had to go into hiding.

We survived in a dangerous and inimical world with a knowledge that to be Jewish is something to hide because we are not wanted and are outcasts anyway.

When I grew up I learned about the atrocities that were done by Christians in the name of Jesus Christ and I had to find other ways to understand the world. So I very early turned to psychoanalysis and my ultimate goal was to explain God psychologically, as a self-created image, a fantasy of man. Yet the dim image, especially of my father, of a “Father” in heaven went with me. But I never resorted to it.

Since the Americans had come to occupy part of Austria and had established an “Information Center,” I had the chance to read a lot about the American way of looking at and dealing with the world and that gave me hope for a better world. A book I found in this library dealt with polygamous families. They were very positively described.

While in my internship during my medical training I met a nurse whom I started to date. I was afraid to tell her that I was Jewish, and when she told me that she was Mormon I told her about that book and that I had a received a good impression about those families. We married and tried to build our own life as a family.

My wife invited me to Church activities. It was nice but I was sure I would never join that church. I wanted to stay free of any religious ideology. My wife never tried to convince me. We had had the missionaries come over for lunch. They were nice fellows and I had treated them accordingly. When they had health problems I tried to give advice. That was it. I had avoided reading the Bible and especially the Book of Mormon.

What was important, however, was the idea I learned of gathering the House of Israel. A Christian church with such an idea? That was interesting and lessened my distance a little bit toward the Church.

Though this was interesting I wanted to stay free and thought I had to find facts that would help me decline any suggestions for joining the Church. I wanted to prove it wrong so I had to overcome my dislike of reading religious books and started to read the Book of Mormon to prove that it was just another book to support “their ideology.”

When I started to read I could not stop. I read all night and it was like being encircled by fire. I did not logically understand what I read and yet I could not stop.

When I had finished I was excited and exhausted at the same time. I knew now—no, I felt—that somehow it was true.

When our branch president asked me the following Sunday if I wanted to be baptized, I answered without hesitation, yes.

I had no discussions from the missionaries, yet I did and still do everything that is part of my religion. It has greatly enhanced my vision of man as son or daughter of God and of what “man can become.” I had already developed a method to help people see themselves as they really are, in full health and wellbeing, that is very helpful to lead people out of illness and depression, and was confirmed by the teachings of the Church. I am showing it to patients and they gain hope. I am teaching it in seminars and the participants enjoy it and use it with success. Teaching family therapy at the medical university in Vienna is like teaching gospel knowledge, and my students enjoy it and appreciate it.

And it is all about “what man may become” and what we can do to help.

The teachings of the church are true; the Gospel as the Church teaches it is the saving instruction for mankind in this troubled world. The Lord Jesus Christ truly is the Savior.

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Dr. Harry Merl, born in 1934, is married, with five children and eighteen grandchildren. He graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Vienna with an MD, specializing in psychiatry and neurology. He is the retired Director of the Institute for Psychotherapy at the County Clinic „Wagner-Jauregg“ and Assistant Professor of Psychotherapy at Graz University. Currently, he is teaching “Systemic Single and Family Therapy” for the Department of Psychiatry in the Vienna Medical University and “Self-Management” (eco-systemic thinking) at the Johannes Kepler University, in Linz.

An analytic group therapist and psychoanalyst (training analyst), and, since 1969, a family and systemic therapist and supervisor, Dr. Merl introduced family therapy to Austria, with trainings for trainees since 1972. He has received decoration for special merits for the Austrian Republic.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dr. Merl has served as bishop of the Linz Ward, high councilor, first counselor in the Salzburg Stake presidency, and temple missionary (2001-2003). Currently, he is teaching Institute together with his wife.

Posted December 2010

What I Know and Don’t Know

In 1985 Mark Hofmann killed two innocent people and nearly himself trying to cover his string of forged documents, many of which were calculated to cast church history in a suspicious, less than faithful light. Earlier that year (May 1985) the church published one of the forged documents in the Church News, a purported letter from Joseph to Josiah Stowell about using a fresh hazel rod to find buried treasure guarded by a clever spirit. At age fourteen, I read the letter in the Church News at the breakfast table and asked my father flippantly why they weren’t teaching me that at church. “I don’t know, “ he said. He explained that he didn’t understand the letter. He made no pretense to understand it. He then explained to me that he knew that the Book of Mormon was true because of his experience with it and with the Holy Ghost. It would be many years before I could understand that my father had given me a most effective epistemology for breakfast.

At the time of the bombings, Hofmann had rumored that he could acquire documents created by controversial early apostle William McLellin if he could get funding. In June 1985, as part of his plot to defraud, Hofmann offered to donate the collection to the church. Ironically, the church had acquired many of McLellin’s papers in 1908. Leaders and archivists who knew of the acquisition had passed away and the church had lost consciousness of the documents. In March 1986, in the legal fallout following the bombings, archivists discovered letters that mentioned acquisition of McLellin’s papers, which led to the discovery of the papers. Rumors spread, meanwhile, that the church would suppress the McLellin documents. Instead, church leaders invited Jan Shipps, a renowned non-Mormon scholar of the Saints, to edit McLellin’s papers for publication by an academic press. She in turn collaborated with John W. Welch, editor-in-chief of BYU Studies, where I was working as an editorial assistant. I was assigned to help the editors compare McLellin’s original holograph journals to typescripts to ensure the accuracy of The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831-1836. I read those journals closely. They are evidence for Richard Bushman’s informed observation: “The closer you get to Joseph Smith in the sources, the stronger he will appear, rather than the reverse, as is so often assumed by critics.” That is my experience.

I have held the first vision accounts in my hands and studied them very much. I know what they say and how they say it. A historian cannot prove or disprove whether the vision they describe was historical. I don’t know that the vision happened because the documents say it did. Rather, I find no reason in the historical record to disbelieve in the vision. I believe that it happened because I find the documents authentic. They speak to me spiritually. I don’t find the same inconsistencies or anachronisms or conspiracy in them that unbelievers have. Indeed, I recently read the journals of Benajah Williams, a Methodist itinerant in Mendon, NY, not far from Joseph’s Manchester, who documented a religious scene perfectly compatible to the one Joseph described.

I have examined the Book of Mormon manuscripts and studied the extensive and complex historical record of its translation. The evidence is conclusive that Joseph produced the Book of Mormon between April and June 1829. Moreover, the historical record evidences that those who knew Joseph best in this period believed him most when he declared that he translated by the power of God. But I know that the Book of Mormon is true because I feel the Holy Spirit when I read it and abide by its precepts. The Book of Mormon makes me a better father and husband, a better follower of Jesus Christ. I know that about it.

I am a student of Joseph’s revelation manuscripts. I was one of the editors of his revelation manuscript books. Joseph didn’t assume that his revelation texts were faxed from heaven. I don’t either. I share his sense that God spoke to Joseph in his language, which Joseph described as crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect. In any communication the encoder sends signals to a decoder, the recipient. In the process there is always “noise” that impedes full and flawless receipt of the message communicated. I understand Joseph’s revelations as messages communicated by a divine encoder but received by a decoder or recipient limited by crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect mediums. In this way of thinking, Joseph neither received the messages flawlessly nor had the power to re-communicate them perfectly, as he and other revelators have acknowledged. My faith in Joseph’s revelations rests on this understanding, and on the compelling evidence that those who knew Joseph best believed his revelations, that he could not produce them on demand, that he marveled at some of them, and that he sometimes confessed to having intentions and aspirations that differed, sometimes significantly, from what his revelations commanded him and others to do.

I know the early reception history of Joseph’s revelation manuscripts. Those who were best positioned to know—the ones with whom he counseled, the ones who wrote as he dictated, the ones whose convenience and reputations were at stake, testified that they were “given by inspiration of God & are profitable for all men & are verily true” (Book of Commandments and Revelations, page 121). I know that the so-called Kirtland Egyptian Papers are not what critics have claimed them to be, and that critical explanations of the Book of Abraham obfuscate the historical evidence rather than rely on it.

There is much that I do not know. I do not know how to understand plural marriage. I have studied the complicated historical record of it diligently and there is very much that remains unclear. I don’t know exactly how to understand D&C section 132. I don’t know what to make of the problematic letter purportedly from Joseph Smith to Nancy Rigdon. I recently gave a talk at a leadership meeting. My topic was historical issues with which Saints sometimes struggle. I catalogued the historical problems, briefly describing each. While describing the received wisdom on plural marriage, I had a distinct and undeniable thought that came from outside me. “You do not know what you are talking about,” it said. It was right. I do not know how to think about plural marriage. I continue to thoroughly examine the historical record, seeking light and truth by study and also by faith. I do know, as a result of that process, that Helen Kimball and Lucy Walker both left testimonies that Joseph did not exploit them, and that they both testified that they received their own revelations, as Joseph invited them to do, before being sealed to him. In other words, I know that the historical record created by witnesses and participants does not match the sensational books and online material created by people who know less than I do. And I know that I don’t know.

I am deeply saddened by reports of Saints losing their faith after becoming conscious of one or more controversial issues of the Mormon past. I wish I could give each of them the experiences I have had and help to educate their expectations and identify their assumptions and discern the difference between their interpretations of evidence and the evidence itself. Obviously, the historical evidence is not the determinant of belief or disbelief. Those who knew Joseph best believed him most. The historians who edit the Prophet’s papers believe. Many of the historians who know the historical record best are firm in the faith. They believe.

I believe. I choose to believe and have not been disappointed as many have. I think that my resilience to the forces that have eroded the faith of so many was forged in my early, formative experiences with the historical record and a faithful father who handed me his epistemology—his way of knowing and coping with not knowing.

I empathize with those whose experiences differ from mine and leave them feeling unable to believe. Stephen Burnett typifies many such individuals. He felt the Holy Spirit and a desire to take the gospel to his relatives. He led his parents into the church and responded successfully to mission calls. But by 1838 Stephen felt completely disillusioned. He tried but failed to regain the Holy Spirit. Finally he “proclaimed all revelation lies” and left the church. Stephen wrote candidly to Lyman Johnson, explaining his decisions. “My heart is sickened within me when I reflect upon the manner in which we with many of this Church have been led & the losses which we have sustained all by means of two men in whom we place implicit confidence,” Stephen wrote, referring to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. He said that the foundation of his faith failed and the entire structure fell in “a heap of ruins” when he interpreted a statement by Martin Harris to mean that Martin and the other Book of Mormon witnesses had not really seen the plates.

Stephen Burnett gave us a rich metaphor by describing his faith as a building whose foundation had been shattered, leaving only a heap of ruins. Those who share his experience know what he means. There are many coping strategies such souls adopt. Stephen chose to acknowledge that “Harris and others still believe the Book of Mormon,” but that he was “well satisfied for myself that if the witnesses whose names are attached to the Book of Mormon never saw the plates as Martin admits that there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing ever existed for it is said on page 171 of the book of Covenants [D&C 17:5] that the three should testify that they had seen the plates even as J[oseph] S[mith] Jr & if they only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut—JS Jr never saw them in any other light way & if so the plates were only visionary.”

I am struck by the three instances of if in Stephen Burnett’s statement. He built his interpretation of the witnesses on hypotheticals: if the witnesses never saw that plates as he believed Martin Harris had said, and if Joseph never saw them then they were only visionary. Hearing that train of thought, Martin asserted that the plates were not visionary. He did not wish to be understood as Stephen Burnett understood him. But Stephen had chosen to disbelieve and Martin’s testimony did not affect him. Evidence of an eyewitness was not the determinant of his faith. Rather, Stephen’s faith, or lack thereof, determined the way he interpreted the evidence of the eyewitness.

I empathize with Stephen. Indeed my heart aches for him. But I do not see as he saw. The historical method I practice professionally and the spiritual life I enjoy have long since combined into a most blessed inheritance: my father’s confidence to choose faith precisely because of the mixture of what he knew and didn’t know.

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Steven C. Harper (M.A., Utah State University; Ph.D., Lehigh University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University and a volume editor in the Joseph Smith Papers project. He previously taught at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, and among the honors he has received are the Juanita Brooks Award for Best Graduate Student Paper and the 1999 T. Edgar Lyon Award for the Best Article of the Year, both given by the Mormon History Association.

Posted December 2010

Pioneers and Poetry

I was born on Pioneer Day, the 24th of July, in Salt Lake City. As a child my faith in a corporeal and loving God was nurtured and strengthened by my pioneer legacy. My ancestors joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Scotland and England and many died before reaching the saints in Utah. My childhood was cocooned by family prayer, family scripture study, and weekly Family Home Evening. When my father prayed I knew he was speaking to a Being he knew well and with whom he had an intimate relationship. I have a vivid memory, as a young child, of opening my eyes during family prayer, peeking at my father as he poured out his heart, certain I would see God—so powerful, eloquent, and sincere were his words. I adored my High Priest father and listened to countless sermons as he served in ward and stake leadership positions, and never doubted his counsel; everything he taught always felt right. In gospel conversations he encouraged me to seek answers to my questions in the scriptures.

When I was fourteen, and read the Book of Mormon on my own for the first time, damp testimony wings struggled to unfold. I recognized the need to emerge from protective pioneer beliefs and fashion my own faith. I felt like Nephi, who desired “that I might see, and hear, and know of these things” (1 Nephi 10:17). It wasn’t that I doubted my father’s words. I just wanted to know for myself. By the time I was a young adult my Gospel wings unfurled and my spiritual transformation began to take flight.

As a young wife and mother I sought the kind of relationship with my Redeemer I knew my father shared—intimate and sweet—and began to study the life of the Carpenter. I read Jesus the Christ by Talmage and studied the Gospels with a commentary. One by one I acquired all the volumes of McConkie’s Messianic Trilogy. With five small children study occurred only when little ones slept. Long after midnight, in the still hours of an early morning, surrounded by books and notes, I paused to survey the scattered evidence of my research. A voice whispered directly to my heart, “It’s true. It’s all true.” My body thrummed and gentle vibrations coursed to my extremities. I felt as if I had, like Nephi, “[beheld] the things which my father saw” (1 Nephi 11:3). In that moment I came to understand the Lord’s words in Isaiah 2:16, “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” I knew Christ was real, that He loved me, and that He would come again. Loving arms embraced me.

To strengthen my knowledge of Christ, I continued to read and study, falsely assuming that scholarly study would develop a relationship with Him. But I came to understand that an intellectual association wasn’t the spiritual, intimate connection I sought—I knew about Jesus but I didn’t know Christ. Daily I battled selfishness, impatience, and pride. Coming to know the Messiah wasn’t about the secular details of life in Galilee, or an ability to recite the parables, it was about changing my heart to be like the Master. Reading about the Nazarene couldn’t nudge me to be kinder, more caring, more generous. I had to lead sheep to know the Good Shepherd.

As my children entered school I mixed motherhood with academics and returned to the classroom. As a teacher I tried to exemplify the Master Teacher: focus on the individual, ask meaningful questions, and center discussions on gospel values. I have sought to direct my students to messages from great literature that would help them draw closer to their King. Together we have learned courage from Hester, honesty from Sarty, friendship from Huck, purity from Tess, kindness from Jarndyce, and modesty from Elinor. Enlightenment about eternal family ties came from Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven,” heavens’ gold and silver light from Yeats’ “Had I The Heaven’s Embroidered Cloths,” married fidelity from Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” and adversity from Maxwell’s “Apotheosis.” In the classroom my objective is a lesson that captures the literary illumination that will enrich our understanding, help us come unto Christ, and be more like Him.

Membership in the LDS church has given me opportunities, in both my scholarly discipline and my personal growth, to follow the footsteps of the Jehovah I seek. It has taught me I must “mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort” that I might stand as a witness “of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” and that if I do I “may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection” and “have eternal life” (Mosiah 18:9).

Why do I believe? Because it’s true. It’s all true. Maybe someday, when our family is gathered and kneeling in prayer, a grandchild will peek, to see if Someone stands in our midst.

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Born and reared in Salt Lake City, Utah, Karen Crookston Holt is an English professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where she has taught for over twenty years. She recently served as English Department Chair. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Utah State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Idaho. Her dissertation focused on the role of reflection: Looking Backward, Living Forward: A Case Study of Critical Reflections in Journals in a University Literature Classroom. Her 2009 Devotional talk, Follow Thou Me, was reprinted by LDS Philanthropies and distributed to BYU-Idaho alumni. She has published articles on Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, and Cold Mountain. Dr. Holt is married to Dr. D. Joshua Holt, a Business Management professor at BYU-Idaho. They have six children and fourteen grandchildren.

Posted December 2010

All my life I’ve understood the importance of pursuing education. Though I haven’t always been diligent in that pursuit, the desire to learn all I can became firmly rooted in me in my post-secondary education. I devoted myself to my studies, and then my education really began. My educational path has been unusual. I’ve received a Bachelor of Arts in economics, a law degree, and a Master’s degree in economics and finance, and am close to completing a PhD in economics. Though my student career has been long, I have not regretted any of my education. It is a privilege to learn.

I have been exposed to many secular environments—the legal community, academia, government agencies, and the corporate world. I have become acquainted with professionals and academics, mingled in their social circles, and made a variety of contacts. The academic environment that I now study and work in is very different from my family and religious life. At times it feels that I live in two separate worlds, and they can be difficult to reconcile with each other.

As an academic and economist I must be critical of assertions or claims made by others, and even those made by myself. I can accept nothing unless I first challenge it from a contrarian standpoint. I have been taught mathematical and statistical methods, as well as skills in critical reasoning, logic, and analysis. All of this is needed to assess the validity of any statement or claim. I also use it to develop new theories and new ways of explaining behavior and economic phenomena. In this way, the body of knowledge in the field of economics is expanded and refined.

It is common for previously accepted theories or principles to be modified or replaced. For example, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, while viewed as a seminal work, is rarely even mentioned in modern economics courses. Despite the ever-expanding set of tools for theoretical development and testing, nothing is certain. Economics has a unique challenge in that there is no laboratory in which controlled experiments can be conducted. All tests and analyses must be conducted by study of the real world, in which it is impossible to control for every possible influence on the issue being studied. What may be true in one setting is not true in another. The reasons why aren’t always clear. As a result, there are no certainties, and no fundamental truths.

Because of our dependence on the real-life laboratory, economists must make assumptions. They are used to isolate the phenomenon we are trying to explain. They are an artificial means of holding the rest of the world constant. There’s a story of three men—a chemist, a physicist, and an economist—stranded on an island. One day as they walked along the beach they came across a can of pineapple. Hungry, they immediately set to figuring out how to get the can open. “Just give me a few minutes,” said the physicist. “I’ll calculate the angle and force with which to throw the can against that rock so that the can will pop open.” The chemist shook his head. “You might spill the pineapple all over the sand. Let me get some seawater and scrapings from some rocks back near our camp, and I’ll make an acid to eat through the can.” Before the two scientists could start arguing, the economist piped up, “Gentlemen, why don’t we just assume a can opener?”

An economic principle or theory can stand or fall on the assumptions it makes. The economist in the story makes an unreasonable assumption, one that in no way reflects real life. The strongest theories either use assumptions that are not material to the end result, or use assumptions that are observable or testable.

My academic life, then, is shrouded by relativism and a lack of truth. It would be easy to slip into this perspective in every aspect of life, not just my academic endeavors. Many of my colleagues accept nothing as certain, and believe life must be lived according to one’s own desires without reference to any external standard other than what is legally or ethically permissible. It is rare to find any religious belief, because it generally proves unsatisfactory when critically assessed from an academic standpoint.

So what is a nice Mormon boy like me doing with these guys? After all, I actually believe in angels and gold plates that were translated by an uneducated farm-boy with his face in a hat. Do I really accept these and the other claims made by the LDS Church as facts, or, desperate for religious meaning, am I “assuming there is a can opener”? This is something I have had to ask myself, and to answer with integrity. But just as economists, including me, can see the results of operative causes we cannot see or fully understand, I have seen the results of faith and the power of God in my life.

But maybe Buddha is doing it. Why Christ? And among many Christian fragments, why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

First, it makes sense. If there really is a spiritual life, the doctrine of Jesus Christ makes sense. It answers the fundamental questions of mankind. What are these questions? Suppose you started watching a television show you’ve never seen before in the middle of an episode. What are the first things you’d want to know? (a) Who are these people? (b) How did they get to where they are? (c) Why are they doing what they’re doing? (d) What’s going to happen? Every person at one time or another faces these same four questions concerning our own existence:

1. Who am I?
2. Where did I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. What will happen when I die?

The doctrine of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, answers these questions more satisfactorily and with more power than any other explanation I’ve seen.

Second, I have witnessed the power of the atonement in my own life and in the lives of others. The atonement and the need for one are unique to Christian theology. They are particularly central to Mormon theology. I have seen those in utmost despair and pain turn to Jesus Christ and be healed spiritually, physically, and emotionally. It is a miracle, every time. I have felt the pain of sin and the joy of forgiveness. I have received the Lord’s merciful care.

I served in the California Roseville Mission. As I entered my second year I became increasingly ill. It was difficult to do the work I was called to do. But I remembered something taught to me in the Missionary Training Center: We cannot come to know the Lord if we are never in need of his succor. I held on to that, and pled with the Lord in constant prayer to help me. My condition continued to worsen and the work became harder and harder. But the Lord sustained me. I was not healed. But through my suffering I came to know the Lord. Though I cannot explain how I know, I can tell you I know He is real. I know Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and I know He came to redeem those faithful to Him.

All these experiences have come after diligent application of the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Mormon has brought me closer to God than any other book. I have spoken with Him in prayer, and He has answered. Though I don’t fully understand how, I know He has. My testimony of and faith in Jesus Christ has brought certainty into my life, a firm foundation of truth. In a world of moral relativism, uncertainty, and drift, this foundation has become an anchor to my soul. So not because of, but in spite of, my education, I have this testimony, and by the grace of God I will not depart from it. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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R. McKay White earned a BA (with honours) in Economics, a law degree (LL.B), and an MA in Economics and Finance, all from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where he is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Economics. He has served at various times as an instructor, research assistant, teaching assistant, and researcher at the University, and, in 2009, presented a substantial paper to the annual conference of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) on the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Co., a financial institution whose 1837 failure played a significant role in the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is married to Paula, and they have four children—Cassi, Lucy, Kellie, and Charlie. His interests include photography and playing the piano.

Posted December 2010

To say that you believe something generally means to say that you trust it. For me to say that I believe in what the Mormon Church stands for should be evident. The true question, then, is more, why do you go for Mormonism? What is it that makes you focus your life on its doctrine and building said Church? How do you know so certainly that this is the right way to go?

It all started with a discussion with my father when I was a fourteen-year-old. As a lad I grew up with Mormon philosophy. During my very early years we lived in New Guinea, where we were the only LDS in probably a thousand miles. Each Sunday we would have Sunday services with the family, Dad presiding and both parents teaching Sunday School and my oldest brother passing the Sacrament. Later, as we lived in the Netherlands and Dad was a Bishop in Rotterdam, I had a father-son discussion with Dad. I wanted to visit another LDS church in the city that Sunday because I had a girl friend there, and Dad tried to persuade me to come to visit the community over which he was presiding as a Bishop. One argument led to another and finally I must have thrown the question to his face “but I don’t even know if Mormonism is the right way to go or not.” It must have startled him, because his answer was straightforward: Well, if you don’t know if it is right, you’d better find out for yourself. But how? Start living it, was his answer. That was a blow to the face, for sure! After all, I had always been coming to all Sunday services, visited all youth activities, and did as I had been asked to do. Moreover, I felt lonely in school, being the only practicing Mormon there, with no addictive habits, with a clean vocabulary, and neatly groomed. To the monks and nuns who were teaching in this Catholic school I was a prime example of the perfect teenager. But I had few friends because of my living standards. Dad’s invitation “to live Mormonism to find out if it is true” had struck a chord that guides me today. I took up his challenge. I guess he was inspired by Jesus’ statement in John 7:17. But after licking my wounds at the thought that my way of living had done me little good other than keep me out of trouble with the law, I decided to start living Mormon teachings in a more conscious way, and while doing so, constantly asking the question to what avail.

The quest gave up results slowly, I must admit. No angels with blowing horns crossed my path, calling me to repentance. No bright lights, to be sure. But slowly I gained knowledge, first naively, but less so over the years. Slowly I grew to trust not only the small voice within me that led me to do the right, but the prophets that I studied in the holy writ. Over the years I have come to find out that, even if the Mormon faith was based on untrue doctrines, it sure as heck makes sense to live by its principles. I learned that God’s commandments, as I now see them, are a more safe and wise way of living than just adopting the values of the cultures I take part in. Abstaining from addictive substances is not just for religious purposes anymore, but a smart way to live. As an organizational anthropologist I now see that the Ten Commandments are more than the basics of social control. Marital fidelity is not to please God, but to save your own marriage and to protect your children from experiences that would traumatize them for the rest of their lives. Prayer is not to inform God about my predicament, but to learn to listen to my own feelings and needs, and tune into what God is actually thinking. As a matter of fact, these so-called commandments of God are a smart way of life and they teach an inquisitive person about the One who came up with these ways of living. One could even say that I can be trusted, not because I am such a good person, but I live naturally by these principles.

God, to me, is the Creator. I am in awe as I look at the expanse of the universe. I am intrigued when I learn of new immense discoveries in astronomy and other sciences. To think that I am even remotely interesting to such a being is mind-boggling. If anything, it motivates me to do right and perhaps learn more from Him.

Knowing of the weaknesses of man, and certainly my own included, helps me understand the frail nature of existence. If life would end with the arrest of the heart beating, what reason would there be for us to learn, to live, to do good? Moreover, why not end it all when suffering seems to be unbearable? And why not end someone else’s life when you see him suffer? Why would there be any value in life at all? The mere fact that anything that lives craves for life as long as possible, gives me hope for more than this life has to offer. I truly believe in life after death.

And if there is life after death, would we not want to make the most of that stage of being as well? That, to me, is the reason for a belief in or trusting in a caring God—Someone Who is not only powerful enough to create, but good enough to trust. Furthermore, my belief system is not based on hearsay, or on the hope that it might perhaps be true, but on experimenting with it in the same way I tend to do in studying the sciences: by observing, hypothesizing, trying to predict the outcome, and looking for when the hypothesis might not be true, and then re-stating the hypothesis.

It is true that there are many ways of looking at life that might, at the outset, provide the answers mankind seeks. To me, all of them are valuable insofar as they lead my quest not to a dead-end but to further learning and inner freedom. As a result of using Mormonism in my life I now have high regards for other religions or people of other faiths. Studying religious cultures and the people who live in them has become more than just a hobby, one could say. That attitude, of seeking more truths, defines Mormonism at best, I believe. And thus, the invitation of my father many years ago, to live its precepts more seriously, and wondering about its truths, has influenced me to the extent that I not only respect others for their quest for a true way of living, but to keep on learning. It helped me in college, taught me during a full-time mission for the Church in Utah, Ireland and Scotland, intrinsically motivated me whilst teaching religion in my career, and sent me back to school to further my education up till now. This force of belief gave me the strength and (some) wisdom to endure in hardship. It saved our marriage more than once. It helped us raise our children to a high spiritual degree and it influences our grandchildren.

I don’t believe I am one of the greater minds walking this planet. And so if one rejects my view of life and Deity as having no value, I would certainly understand. I, myself, have often doubts as to my ability to teach religion in the many nations and cultures of Europe as I currently do. But this I do know, that Jesus is not only that Creator of which I spoke afore, and that He is not just a caring member of the Godhead. I am convinced that by living by His teachings one can actually slowly learn about a tangible God, and not just some mystical, incomprehensible force in the universe. God is alive and invites us to follow His teachings so that He can save us. Scripture study, prayer, caring for our fellow beings and living by God’s precepts are equally important. It makes me grateful for the Mormon Church, its structure, its history, its prophets and programs that help me learn about all that matters in life. It has structured my life in a way that helps me actually put into practice what I believe. To live Mormon teachings, even if one is not an actual member of the LDS Church, makes all the sense in the world. But to actively use this Church in developing oneself and making this world a better place to live on, gives more than one could have dreamed of.

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Johannus D. T. (Hans) Noot is Coordinator of Religious Education in Belgium and the Netherlands and advisor to Seminaries and Institutes in Eastern Europe for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in organizational behavior from Brigham Young University (BYU) and is currently working on a Ph.D. in organizational anthropology at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. An organizational consultant and entrepreneur, he is also president of the Gerard Noodt Foundation for Freedom of Religion or Belief (www.noodtFoRB.eu) and a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU.

Posted December 2010

Yearnings of Joy

I vividly remember being precariously perched atop a stack of kitchen chairs that my mother had moved into the living room so she could wax the kitchen floors, something mothers did back in the mid-1960s. I must have been about four years old because I was still the only child—my sister came along when I was five—and we still lived in the south Provo house from which we moved when I was six. While my mother was preoccupied with her floors, I was blissfully balancing on the furniture. As I sat atop the tower of chairs my thoughts turned to serious matters. Perhaps prompted by the lighter air at that altitude or by the frightening possibility of falling, I began thinking about the Sunday school lesson from that week: The beautiful, young woman who taught our class of four-year-olds had explained how Joseph Smith had prayed to find out which church to join and how God and Jesus actually came to visit him. Atop my throne, I felt like I could use a little wisdom myself—I must have figured that if prayer like that could get that kind of attention, I would give it a try myself—so I decided to pray. As my mom continued mopping in the other room, I prayed with all my heart for God and Jesus to come to my Provo living room. I wanted to see them, hear them, and touch them. I waited patiently for several minutes after praying. Nothing. As my mother finished up the floors, I gave up. I had no vision. But I didn’t feel defeated. Instead I had a blissful, aching yearning that forever changed me. I did not feel disillusioned by my failed experiment; rather, I felt a deep longing for something—some one, some place—I didn’t know what. But I felt I had known once, but could no longer recall the memory.

I’m sure I didn’t think about it in quite these terms at the time—after all, I was a four-year-old boy—but the feeling was real and stuck. And I experienced it many times thereafter. I could not create it—rather it would overtake me when I least expected it. Usually it was when experiencing something particularly beautiful or sublime: watching a spectacular sunset, listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for the first time, being in the mountains, staring up at the night sky away from the light pollution, encountering Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. But it wasn’t the beauty of the experiences that moved me; rather, I believe the beauty stirred in my soul a recollection of an even greater Beauty I had lost, that I’d been separated from, a pre-mortal Beauty that I once knew really well but of which I now retained only vague memories. I also had a strong desire to regain it, if not the place or person itself, to reexperience the feelings of aching and longing that hints of this world far away and of a possible return. The longing hurt, but in a rather exquisite way.

Many years later, I read C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy and recognized that this feeling was similar to what Lewis calls “joy.” For Lewis, joy is a technical term for “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” It is a kind of pleasurable pain, a sweet aching longing for something absent—a moment of yearning so exquisite that, according to Lewis, once experienced one will always want to experience it again. Joy is, for Lewis, a glimpse of the transcendent glory of God.

I should probably remind you that my PhD is in Romanticism, so I have a rather deep interest in feelings and emotions. The Romantics were not so much interested, as their name often suggests, in the romantic glow of love. Rather they wanted to confront the honest feelings of human existence, which they believed were more important to understand than the empiricist rules laid down by the Age of Reason. Wordsworth believed poetry originated in “organic forms,” from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Romantics believed the Enlightenment left humanity cut off from each other and fragmented individually as industrialization divided us into parts of a large impersonal assembly line of being. They were preoccupied with the mystical, the unconscious, and the supernatural, and longed to locate in nature and in the human soul the essential meaning of existence. So for me to talk about my relationship with my religion, I have to talk about my feelings—those moments when I have felt a kind of transcendent connection with other people and another world.

Despite my pre-Kindergarten yearnings for the transcendent, I had fairly non-religious parents. They were deeply moral, kind, good people—my Dad never got a speeding ticket and my Mom was generous to a fault. But they both drank coffee and didn’t pay tithing and were never comfortable talking about religion. My mother taught me to say my prayers at night, but that was really the extent of my religious training at home. My questions got quick, unsatisfying answers. However, I did go to Sunday school and weekday primary meetings. My Mom made sure of that. This setting created a fairly confused kid. I didn’t really fit into my family because I craved religion, but I didn’t really fit into my religion because I was without a family to take me. I felt like an outsider in both worlds.

When I learned about “eternal families,” that a family can be sealed together for eternity, I felt more confusion. I wanted my family to be with me through eternity, but I couldn’t bear the discomfort of talking to them about it. And I began to feel a sense of shame when at Church, knowing my family was not Brady-Bunch perfect like everyone else in our neighborhood. My friends’ parents went to church each week, none of them drank coffee, and, unlike me, they were sealed to their parents in the temple. I distinctly remember having some friends over to my house once when one of them noticed the coffee can in our cupboard. His voice revealed horror: the kind you would expect if I had just told him that my father was in jail for beating up a police officer or my mother was in the back smoking marijuana and drinking Jack Daniels. My friends knew my family was sinning, and I knew they knew. I started to develop what W.E.B. DuBois would call a double consciousness—seeing myself through the eyes of my neighbors and sensing a deep shame about my family’s “wayward” ways. This might have made me resentful either of my family or of our church-going neighbors, but I knew my parents were good people—they didn’t beat up police officers or smoke marijuana— and I knew that my friends didn’t understand that. But I also knew my friends and their families were good people. And I craved the discussion about religion I found at Church, with my friends and their families. It was a double bind; I felt caught in the middle between two worlds, a stranger in a strange land.

And those moments of “joy” often came in a Church context. Like the first time I went with a youth group to perform baptisms for the dead. As I entered the temple, I immediately felt this sense of awe and peace and power. It was another defining moment for me; I felt like I really belonged there, like my soul had found its home. I felt loved and accepted. Most of all, I realized that the yearning I had experienced all my life was for a place like the temple, not the temple but almost.

There have been many other moments when that other world I was longing for seemed like it would burst into this one. The exquisite peace I felt on the last day of my mission, as if all my sins were forgiven and I was pure as a new-born baby. The loving feelings I experienced when I was married to Zina that assured me that somehow in that simple ordinance we were uniting generations past, present, and future in a chain of familial love. The delight I felt when I finally saw my own parents go through the temple and we became an “eternal family.” The indescribable love I felt when my wife gave birth to our four children and the window of heaven opened long enough for these new beautiful beings to enter this world and our lives. And the sweet pleasure of being able to serve my father and mother in their final days before they died and feeling the trust and love that unites us as a family beyond the grave.

The word “religion” comes from the Latin religio, which means “to bind”; its cousin “ligament” illustrates its deeper meaning. Religion is a binding together of believers. It gives us community in which we can create holy lives, a community of saints. I have found my community within Mormonism. I’m not always at ease here; I often find myself frustrated by my fellow Mormons. I frequently struggle with our culture’s conservative politics, I am often uncomfortable with my fellow Mormons’ discourse of surety as they bear testimonies of “knowing” things that I can only say I believe in, and I am sometimes frustrated at the lack of tolerance I see in our Mormon communities toward superficial differences. But I also know that many of my friends and ward members struggle with my more liberal political leanings, my comfort with doubts and ambiguity, and my own lack of tolerance. We struggle together, trying to work out our salvation as a community. In Mormonism I have found a home away from home, a community of faith, a tribe to walk with as I try to find my way back to my real Home.

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Boyd Petersen serves as the Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies at Utah Valley University, where he teaches classes like Mormon Literature and Literature of the Sacred for the English department. He serves as the Past-President of the Association for Mormon Literature and as the Book Review editor for the Journal of Mormon History, and has served on the boards of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and Seggulah. He has published across the range of Mormon Studies, from publications like the FARMS Review and BYU Studies to Dialogue and Sunstone. He wrote the biography Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, which won the best biography award from the Mormon History Association in 2003. He graduated with an MA from the University of Maryland and a PhD from the University of Utah, both in comparative literature, emphasizing Romanticism and Religious Studies. He is the husband of Zina; the father of Mary, Christian, Nathanael, and Andrew; and has fairly close relationships with one dog, a gerbil, and a bunny.

His article “Soulcraft 101: Faith, Doubt, and the Process of Education” is on line at
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=boyd_petersen

Posted December 2010