Testimonies

An Answer to Anyone Who Cares to Ask (1 Pet. 3:15)

To many people, spiritual belief appears irrational and organized religion can seem like a threat to autonomy. On both counts, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looks suspicious. While its claims of angels, gold plates, lost civilizations, and modern prophets may not inherently be any more implausible than the miracles and beliefs of other faiths, the fact that all of this came together less than two hundred years ago, at a time when Joseph Smith’s life and teachings could be documented, gives one pause. And since 1830, the Mormon Church has developed into a large, hierarchical, tightly-controlled institution that wields considerable economic and political power, and which excludes women from most leadership positions. In addition, surveys regularly show that Mormons are among the most highly partisan religious groups in the United States with respect to party affiliation, they are among the least likely to believe in evolution, and their track record on civil rights is mixed, at best. Why would someone who cares about history, science, intellectual freedom, and pluralism be interested in such a religion?

The short answer is that I was raised a Latter-day Saint, and from the inside, the religious belief system is nearly seamless. Mormonism provides clear, satisfying answers to the great questions of existence: What’s the purpose of life? What happens after we die? How should we live? What does God expect from us? I grew up in a household in which the principles and precepts of Mormonism were accepted as self-evident, and in which most of the books on the shelves were by Latter-day Saints writing for other Latter-day Saints, but because I did not live in Utah I was aware from an early age that I belonged to a religious minority. And I was curious about how other people answered those same questions. I read voraciously as a teenager and then enrolled at Brigham Young University (of course).

BYU is often considered a “safe place” for young Mormons to study, and indeed, even as a Greek major I was carefully shielded from twentieth-century New Testament scholarship, though Plato, Aristotle, and even Aristophanes were fair game. Yet it was in Provo that I first encountered LDS opinion journals such as Sunstone and Dialogue and learned of some of the more difficult aspects of Mormon history, culture, and theology (such a belated discovery is now probably impossible in the age of the internet and blogs). At the same time, I also became acquainted with intelligent men and women, both fellow students and faculty, who combined the courage to ask hard questions with the conviction that faithful answers were possible, even if they were not immediately apparent. It was also during those years that I served an LDS mission in Taiwan and became fascinated with a rich, ancient culture that had known nothing of either Athens or Jerusalem. Chinese history, literature, and philosophy changed my life. In a very typical way, education brought a realization that the world was much more complicated than I had once thought, and that the easy, rather simplistic answers of my childhood were no longer adequate. And then I went to graduate school to study Classical Chinese.

(From this point on, good friends will realize that nearly every “I” that follows stands in for a “we.” I married Heather Nielsen a few months after my mission, as I was starting my sophomore year in college, and every subsequent opinion, belief, or achievement has been the result of nearly constant conversation with her. She is the source of many of my best ideas, she fiercely critiques all of my writing—including this essay—and she constantly forces me to refine and rethink my positions. Heather is the kindest, wisest, most faithful person I have ever met, and also one of the most intellectually engaged. The prospect of continuing this relationship into the next life is, for me, one of the most appealing aspects of Mormonism.)

Yale is a fairly secular university, but they care deeply about freedom of thought and expression, and they deliberately make room for religion. I remember going to a convocation where the president spoke to new freshmen and encouraged them to explore their religiosity along with other aspects of their lives (“even those of you,” he said, “whose faith may at this point be latent”). As Latter-day Saints, we had a small student congregation of about thirty members and we were given a place on campus to conduct religious services on Sunday mornings. It was a small chapel on the freshman quad in a building that served as a center for all kinds of students groups and student activism. We were probably the only Sunday school in the entire Mormon Church that met in a room decorated with “US out of El Salvador” and “Down with American Imperialism” posters, or that held worship services in a space that had been the site of a gay and lesbian dance the night before. Some people found it uncomfortable, but I was grateful that we too had a voice and a presence, and I was eager to extend the same courtesy and dignity to others.

Not every Mormon student took advantage of the religious opportunities at Yale. I was in the branch presidency and we used to joke about the “Chapter 2’s”; that is, students who came to church with their parents the first Sunday of the school year, and then quietly confided to us afterward, “You may not see too much of me in the future; I’m starting a new chapter in my life and I’m not sure that the church will be part of it.” But just as there was the freedom to not be religious, there was freedom to find and even share religion, and we were a very close-knit group, probably because we felt so outnumbered. Some of the most satisfying religious experiences of my life came during those years; in fact, I still keep in contact with many of the members of my congregation from that time.

I believe that it is possible to love God with your mind as well as your heart (Mark 12:30), and a university education can be an essential part of that sort of devotion. There is no better way to learn about one’s own faith than by trying to explain it to others. Part of college life is making new friends, interacting with people of different beliefs and backgrounds, and responding to opposing viewpoints, challenging perspectives, and contrary evidence. Sometimes faith gets lost in these sorts of discussions, but it can also be strengthened and deepened. What makes the difference? In my case, it wasn’t simply a summary dismissal of whatever conflicted with my beliefs. I am still bothered by a number of things—the lack of direct archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, its anachronistic quotations from Second Isaiah, polygamy, the Mountain Meadows massacre, our exclusive reliance on the King James Bible, our tendency to mythologize our history, our preference for sentimentality over substance, our quickness to label honest disagreements as anti-Mormonism, our devotion to the Boy Scouts, and my own impatience when the church doesn’t speak out more forcefully on moral issues such as torture or access to healthcare. There is a lot that I am still trying to figure out, and many thoughtful Mormons could probably construct similar lists of their own. Some may even choose to leave over such issues. But for me, these uncertainties are greatly outweighed by what I do know, from years of experience in the church and reflection on its teachings.

From the outside, the Mormon Church can seem monolithic and potentially oppressive. In actuality, however, it is a volunteer organization that relies almost entirely on the good will of its members. There are clear directives from Salt Lake City, but leaders at the local level (both men and women) quickly realize how little leverage they have over their fellow congregants other than by example and exhortation. Everything is done through time-consuming, unpaid, rotating assignments, from administration to preaching to pastoral care. As a graduate student and a professor, I have always devoted at least 15-20 hours a week to my assignments in bishoprics and branch presidencies, teaching a scripture study class for high school students every morning at 6:15 am, working with children and teenagers, serving on the high council in a large stake, and now as a member of the stake presidency (among other callings; and this list is not all that unusual). The Latter-day Saint religious experience is highly demanding, but also highly rewarding. The closest relationships in my life, including my marriage, have come through shared church service. Latter-day Saints do not get to choose their congregations; rather, geography dictates where they will attend, and as a result, most Mormon wards encompass economic, ethnic, racial, and political diversity. And strikingly, such differences matter much less than the covenants we have taken to “bear one another’s burdens . . . mourn with those that mourn, yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:8-9). It is remarkable that political opponents as headstrong as Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch could still pass the sacrament to each other, or even attend the temple together.

I believe that this particularly intense sort of community makes me a better person and a better Christian. I have sat in church councils trying to help members living in poverty in mountain hollers, and thought, “If it weren’t for the church, I wouldn’t have much to do with these folks.” But this is not convenient, sporadic, relatively impersonal charity; I have been deeply involved in these people’s lives, for years on end, and they are equally involved with mine, teaching my children and helping me out of tight spots. At the local level, being Mormon feels like being part of an extended family. Yet this same warmth and community are available wherever one goes. And Mormon humanitarian efforts around the world, made possible only by the size, resources, organizational abilities, and access to skilled volunteer labor of the LDS Church, make me proud to be part of this religion. I love these people. I love their goodness and sincerity, their selflessness and faith. It’s a joy to be associated with them.

Of course, the sociology of Mormonism is separate from its truth claims, and though skepticism probably comes more naturally to me than belief, I nevertheless choose to believe. I savor what we have in common with other Christians—the Bible, resurrection, forgiveness of sins, gifts of the spirit, the example of our savior, the importance of moral living (though I certainly acknowledge that Mormons are not orthodox Christians)—and I love the doctrines of the Restoration (as we call it): that everyone who has ever lived has an equal opportunity for salvation, that sinners and unbelievers are not cast into hell forever, that God is not ultimately responsible for all the evil and suffering in the world, that marriages and families can last into eternity, that there is no end to knowledge and progress, and that God continues to speak to prophets today just as in biblical times. When I go to the temple, I marvel that I belong to a religion with such a sense of sacred ritual, and that it means so much to me. As I have studied and researched the Book of Mormon for scholarly, academic publications over the last few years, I find it more and more impressive. Though I respect the opinions of those who are attuned to its many historical improbabilities, it seems to me to be a revealed text, with roots in the ancient world. It may be hard to believe such things, but I do. They make sense to me, and as I have prayed, studied, served, and performed priesthood ordinances such as giving blessings and baptizing my children (another advantage of a lay ministry), I have had spiritual experiences that I interpret as the Holy Spirit bearing witness to me of the truths of Mormonism.

I believe that the LDS church is not just an alliance of well-meaning individuals, but that it is literally the restored church of Christ, and that the best way to follow Jesus is through Mormonism. Of course, Latter-day Saints do not have a corner on goodness, nor do we have a monopoly on truth. Although Mormons sometimes speak with the assurance of people who have all the answers (which can make those of us with doubts and questions occasionally feel out of place), it is nevertheless a core value of the faith that God “will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Articles of Faith, 9) and that he has spoken in diverse times and places: “For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in his wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have” (Alma 29:8). So when I teach the history of Buddhism, I’m not interested in having my students convert to that Asian religion, but I do want them to understand it as fully as possible. And, belonging to a faith tradition myself that is often misunderstood, I try as hard as I can to present the religion responsibly, so that if there were a Buddhist in the class, he or she would say, “I may not always agree with your perspective, but that is a fair representation of what I believe.” (This has actually happened, even in North Carolina). Oddly enough, I think that studying Buddhism makes me a better Mormon. Buddhists have some very powerful critiques of our conventional notions of self and our lack of mindfulness; they are keenly aware of suffering and the destructiveness of desire; and they have pioneered an admirable ideal of environmental stewardship.

Mormonism is still a relatively young faith, and we have only begun to investigate the possibilities inherent in our distinctive scripture, doctrines, and practices. We have contributions, as Latter-day Saints, to make in several academic fields, but we also have much to learn. Joseph Smith once noted that that there were many truths in other churches, and he urged his followers to “gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ‘Mormons’” (History of the Church, 5:517). That expansive vision of Mormonism is one that I find inspiring. Because I have had educational opportunities that my parents did not have, I believe a bit differently than they do, but I believe just as passionately.

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Grant Hardy is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has a B.A. in Ancient Greek from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from Yale. He has authored Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History; The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China; and Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (forthcoming in April from Oxford University Press); as well as the Introduction for Royal Skousen’s recent Yale edition of the Book of Mormon. He has also edited The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition; Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships; and the Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 1 (also forthcoming). Hardy is currently working on a 36-lecture DVD/CD course for The Teaching Company entitled Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition.

Posted December 2009

“Because of”

My testimony of the gospel and Church of Jesus Christ is not only what I believe, but why. When we understand why we believe what we believe, we are more grounded, constant, and secure in our beliefs. Throughout my life, I have had numerous personal and intellectual experiences that affirm and re-affirm my testimony. I have learned that a testimony is complete when we add because of to what we believe and have experiences that complete the because query.

I know that God lives and loves me because I have felt His presence in my life. At Christmas this year, when I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father who I might help, a person came to mind who was not on my screen. Following this prompting, I offered support and learned that my help was both timely and an answer to her prayer. God hears prayers and at times He lets us be the answer to others’ prayers. When my father died, I felt a mix of gratitude that he did not unduly suffer and of great loss at missing him. While walking, I prayed for comfort and experienced in a lovely sunrise an undeniable and consoling spirit of peace that God knew and loved my father and that my father was in His loving arms. Whenever I have had major decisions in my life around marriage, family, living, or career, I have turned to God for confirmation. In small daily requests and in times of crises or significance, I have felt God’s enduring presence. He answers prayers by offering me quiet assurances and clear directions. When I approach Him, He responds. I know the Lord loves me and I try to love Him back by my actions.

I know that Jesus is the living Christ whose atonement allows me to repent and begin anew because I have experienced the joy of living his teachings and the liberating freedom of letting go. I have visited sites where He walked and taught and marvel at how teachings from 2,000 years ago continue to guide my life’s decisions. He lived and taught us how to live so that we may find joy in our lives by following His teachings. I am a Christian because I am devoted to Christ-like living. I try to follow the 10 commandments and serve others. Even more, I have made mistakes because of my many weaknesses and sins. I work hard to learn by facing and overcoming my weaknesses which enables me to grow. But, when my sins begin to limit my growth and lead to despair, I have turned to the redemptive power of Christ’s atonement. In ways I don’t fully understand, I can avail myself of Christ’s expiation and allow Him to exercise mercy on my part so that I can leave my sins behind. I am forever grateful that Christ took upon Himself the obligations of my sins so that I may let them go and move forward.

I know that Joseph Smith was a living prophet because I have studied his work and felt a confirming spirit, and that we have living prophets because I listen to their words. God works in patterns. He has always called prophets like Noah, Moses, Abraham, and Peter who are His spokesmen. The pattern continues. God chose an imperfect young man to be a means of restoring His gospel. Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from ancient records which testify of Jesus Christ, but which also serve as a testimony of Joseph Smith, who could not have created this marvelous volume of scripture of his own accord. Those who study the Book of Mormon find incredible insights from ancient prophets who knew the gospel. Joseph restored the Priesthood, which has blessed my life as I have received and given blessings of comfort. Joseph followed the Lord’s counsel in establishing a church that shifted attention from Joseph as an individual and charismatic leader to a Church as an organization that would outlive any single individual. Joseph Smith is a remarkable prophet whom the Lord chose to re-establish His church. Since Joseph Smith, we have continued a pattern of living prophets who continue to receive insightful and timely revelation from a God who loves all His children. They anticipate life’s problems and communicate the Lord’s desire to help us avoid those problems. In a recent conference, in the midst of global economic despair, their message was not chastisement for not listening to previous counsel to stay out of debt, but of love and hope for what can be. I have a testimony of living prophets because their counsel offers hope.

I know that the Church enriches lives because I have been a part of this community of Saints. I like organizations and have studied them for twenty-five years. Organizations have personalities or capabilities that take on a life of their own. The identity of this Church is one of family and service. I have been blessed by being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I travel around the world and meet a member in Singapore, South Africa, Norway, Copenhagen, Helsinki, or Newark, we immediately have a common bond. We don’t know each other’s hobbies, lifestyles, or profession, but our shared beliefs unite us. These gospel brothers and sisters have helped me feel part of an extended family. When we were on a three-year mission for the Church in Montreal, one of our young missionaries got stuck in Washington DC in a city-closing snow storm. She was scared to death, being from another country and not knowing anyone. She borrowed a phone from a fellow passenger and called me in Montreal. Within minutes, I called a church leader in Washington DC whom I had never met and within thirty minutes our missionary was picked up at the airport and she then spent a few days in another member’s home, being part of an extended family of Saints. I have seen people’s lives change as they join the Church and experience this community. A lonely and discouraged sixty-year-old man in Montreal joined the Church and found, for the first time in his life, a family of caring people who accepted him. As he changed from being homeless to being in a new family, his life took on meaning and we could see a physical and emotional change in him. The Church blesses the world through its extensive welfare outreach work, and its members by letting them have an extended family that shares common values and in which members care about each other. Some of my favorite teaching is not working with business leaders, but the weekly Sunday School class with sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds in our local church congregation. I come to love and care for them, as others have done for my children. We are a village who raise children and sustain adults. When asked to serve as a nursery leader in Sunday services of eighteen- to thirty-six-month-old children, as a Sunday School teacher of sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds, as a bishop (or pastor) of a 500-person congregation, or to preside for three full-time years over mission in Montreal, we have gladly accepted these assignments because they help us grow by helping others. And, we have received help from this community. When we moved to our new home, we were welcomed into our new ward family with open arms, and food. It is so nice to have personal friends who share our values and who don’t care much what we do professionally, but care for us for who we are personally.

I know that the doctrines of the church bring peace to my heart because they make sense and give direction and meaning to my life’s choices. We have been promised that we will know the truth by testing it, or we shall “know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:16, 20). The fruits of the doctrine are many. Living the Word of Wisdom wherein we take care of our bodies, gives me health. Paying tithing, where we donate money to the church, helps me develop more fiscal discipline. Spending structured and unstructured time together as a family builds lifetime bonds with my wife and with our children. Attending the temple to make covenants renews my spirit. Taking the sacrament on Sunday renews my connection to Christ and helps me to feel His spirit in my life. Reading scriptures, saying personal prayers, and serving others helps me find meaning and purpose in my life. Being married, or sealed, for eternity gives me stability in my marriage. The doctrines of the church make sense. They are logical. Each doctrine has a blessing attached so that when we understand and live the doctrine, we have access to those blessings.

Faith can be complex, mysterious, and profound. For me it is also simple, straightforward, and pragmatic. I have a firm testimony of gospel principles “because of” my experiences. I know that the gospel offers similar blessings to those who will open their minds and hearts to its principles and practices.

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David O. (Dave) Ulrich is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organizations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. He has helped generate award-winning databases that assess alignment between strategies, human resource practices, and HR competencies. Professor Ulrich grew up in Oregon and Missouri, graduated from Brigham Young University, and earned his doctorate in business at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)

He has published over 150 articles and book chapters, and twenty-two books: The Why of Work (2010; with Wendy Ulrich; McGraw Hill), Leadership in Asia (2009; edited book; McGraw Hill), HR Transformation (2009; with Justin Allen, Wayne Brockbank, Jon Younger, and Mark Nyman; McGraw Hill), Leadership Code (2008; with Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman; Harvard), Companion for Strategic Human Resources (2008; with John Storey and Pat Wright; Routledge), HR Competencies (2008; with Wayne Brockbank, Dani Johnson, Kurt Sandholtz, and Jon Younger; SHRM and RBL Group), Leadership Brand (2007; with Norm Smallwood; Harvard), Human Resource Value Proposition (2005; with Wayne Brockbank; Harvard), The Future of Human Resource Management (2005; with Michael Losey and Sue Meisinger; Wiley), Human Resources Business Process Outsourcing (2004; with Ed Lawler, Jac Fitz-enz, and James Madden; Wiley), 100 Things You Need to Know (2003; with Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo; Lominger), Competencies for the New HR (2002; with Wayne Brockbank; Society for Human Resource Management), Why the Bottom Line Isn’t (2003; with Norm Smallwood; Wiley), GE Workout (2002; with Steve Kerr and Ron Ashkenas; McGraw Hill), HR Scorecard (2001; with Brian Becker and Mark Huselid; Harvard), Results Based Leadership (1999; with Norm Smallwood and Jack Zenger; Harvard), Learning Capability (1999; with Arthur Yeung, Mary Ann Von Glinow, and Steve Nason; Oxford), Tomorrow’s (HR) Management (1997; with Gerry Lake and Mike Losey; Wiley), Human Resource Champions (1997; Harvard), The Boundaryless Organization (1995; with Ron Ashkenas, Steve Kerr, and Todd Jick; Jossey Bass), The Boundaryless Organization Field Guide (2002; with Ron Ashkenas, Todd Jick, and Katy Paul-Chowdhur; Jossey Bass); and Organizational Capability (1990; with Dale Lake; Wiley).

Professor Ulrich edited Human Resource Management 1990-1999, has served on the editorial boards of four professional journals, and was elected in 1994 as a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. Among his many other honors, he received the Pro Meritus Award from the Employment Management Association in 1995, for “outstanding contribution to the human resources field,” and, in 1997, was given the Warner W. Stockberger Achievement Award by the International Personnel Management Association to “recognize an individual in private or public life who has made a contribution toward improvement of public personnel management at any level of government.” In 1998, he received lifetime achievement awards from the Society for Human Resource Management, the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruitment, and the Employment Management Association. In 2000, the World Federation of Personnel Management granted Professor Ulrich its George Petitpas Memorial Award for lifetime contributions, and he was listed in Forbes Magazine as one of the “world’s top five” business coaches. Business Week ranked him as the #1 management educator and guru in 2001, and, in 2005, Executive Excellence ranked him #2 management guru. That same year, Fast Company named him among the ten most innovative and creative thinkers of 2005. In 2007, he received both the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Training and Development and an honorary doctorate from the University of Abertay, in Dundee, Scotland. He was ranked the most influential person in the human resource field by HR Magazine in 2006, 2008, and 2009.

Accompanied by his wife Wendy, Professor Ulrich presided over the Canada Montreal Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2002 to 2005.

Posted December 2009

Having been raised in a family in which both paternal and maternal lines have been in the Church for generations, I probably leaned on the strength of others’ testimonies for some of my growing-up years. I saw nothing but good in the Church and seriously yearned for everything I learned to be true.

My recollections of my baptismal day two weeks after I turned eight years old include a vivid memory not so much of the actual baptism at our stake center as of the fact that my friend’s mother, an Arab Muslim, recognized the significance of the day and gave me a dollar to celebrate.

I participated with my family in reading scriptures in the early mornings (although I can honestly say I wasn’t always wide awake or in a receptive mood). We had regular family prayers in the mornings and evenings and were very faithful in our Church attendance. My seven siblings and I attended Primary and later Mutual during the week. I recall that we were generally willing and happy to go, although I’m sure we occasionally complained about trying to get homework done or being busy with other activities.

When I was old enough, I attended seminary classes for four years in a released-time setting. I never had the “opportunity” to attend early-morning seminary, but I didn’t complain about that. I enjoyed my seminary classes and teachers. I looked up to those teachers as valuable sources of information about the gospel as I was seeking to strengthen my own testimony. I must admit that my comfortable faith received a bit of a jolt when one of my sister’s seminary teachers abandoned his wife and numerous children to enter into polygamous relationships with some of his former students. I was truly troubled that a person who taught the gospel on a daily basis could stray from its current teachings and practices and also lead others away from its firm foundation. I believe this is my first personal encounter with someone who made a conscious decision to apostatize from the teachings and lifestyle of the Church. From my limited perspective, I could not see that his choices brought him any particular joy and happiness.

My patriarchal blessing, received when I was 16, has been a source of comfort and strength to me through the years. I was promised that as I contemplated its meaning and tried to live up to the high concepts outlined therein, I would have reason to rejoice. As I was seeking guidance in selecting a vocation, I often read through that blessing. I sincerely thought that my talents and gifts were leading me in the direction of teaching home economics and bringing the “true pattern of life” to others. Now, after three degrees in home economics and family studies (which were all very beneficial as I raised our family of six children), I have been led to discover that perhaps what the Lord intended all along was for me to bring the “true pattern of life” in a gospel sense to others. As an editor at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and later the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, I am constantly able to read, edit, and prepare for publication many works of great worth to the children of men. I am able to rub shoulders with many faithful scholars and to aid in bringing their understanding of the gospel to others.

One opportunity that I have had for years has been my assignment to edit volumes in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. I have been closely involved in preparing volumes 9–19 in this series for publication. My personal associations with this brilliant but humble man have only served to strengthen my own testimony. I was constantly amazed at his insights and his ability to glean the big picture from the thousands of sources he read (and remembered). I have dealt with the issue of the accuracy of Nibley’s footnotes and have concluded that “nothing was made up or fabricated. Even if we were ultimately unable to find a quotation [which was quite a rare occurrence], we always knew it existed somewhere.”¹

I was particularly attracted to Nibley’s writings in Approaching Zion, his articles on the temple, and little gems that seemed to resonate with my soul in Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri. It was such a pleasure to interact with someone whose own enthusiasm for the gospel was only bolstered by what he found in his research and studies. To him, his discoveries meant that a divine hand was directing the happenings in the universe. He and the Lord had a quiet understanding about where he could best serve, and he never sought for positions of power or influence. In fact, he was often astonished at the influence some of his writings had on others. Brother Nibley was sometimes asked how we could live the law of consecration in these days, and his reply was, “That is between you and the Lord.”

I have wrestled with the problem of evil, but I personally know that the Lord’s eternal plan for us is much better than I could design for myself. I do not know why my husband experienced a stroke 15 years ago, but I do not question that we have become stronger, better, and more compassionate through the resulting experiences. Not that we would line up for more adversity (in Neal A. Maxwell’s words), but we can learn eternal truths through working to overcome them. I do not know why people suffer poverty, ignorance, wars, natural calamities, etc., but I do know that our understanding of such things is limited. I do believe that the Lord expects us to bless the lives of others and not stand idly by.

I desire nothing more than to be found valiant and unflinching in my testimony and a source of strength to those whose faith is weaker than mine. I trust that my actions will set a pattern that others can follow. I declare to all that our Savior, Jesus Christ, has come into the world and performed a great atoning sacrifice that can alleviate our pain and suffering here and make possible eternal joys hereafter.

I cannot pinpoint an exact time when I knew I had a testimony. In fact, it seems that I have never doubted. Now I realize that many are plagued with doubts, and I can only be grateful that I have been blessed with a sweet testimony of the truthfulness of the restored gospel and its principles. Along with the Lamanites “who were converted unto the true faith; and . . . would not depart from it,” I wish to remain “firm, and steadfast, and immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord” (3 Nephi 6:14).

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Note:
¹ See Shirley S. Ricks, “A Sure Foundation,” FARMS Review 20/2 (2008):253–91, at http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?reviewed_books&vol=20&num=2&id=728

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Shirley Smith Ricks spent her growing-up years in Provo, Utah, with her parents and seven siblings.

Dr. Ricks filled a mission in Southern Germany, after which she completed her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Brigham Young University in home economics and family studies.

Married to Stephen D. Ricks, she is proud of their six children and spouses and their eight grandchildren.

Her current position as editor at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University has provided her the opportunity of editing many volumes in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley and of serving as the first production editor for the FARMS Review and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

Posted December 2009

My Conversion

I grew up with my mom in a little pink house in Parkersburg, Illinois—a farm town of 250 people in the southeastern part of the state. My mom wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but she was a good Christian who tried to teach me to be grateful and patient and honest. Because of her, I grew up believing in God. I always knew someone was watching over us. I knew that no matter what went wrong in this world, someone would set things right in the end. Growing up in Parkersburg, I didn’t know about living prophets or modern-day scriptures. I didn’t know that God could reveal himself, through his Spirit, to ordinary people. But in my early twenties, I was taught truths that most people in this life never receive. I learned that everyone on earth is a child of God—even me. I learned to repent, through the atonement of Jesus Christ. I learned the things every member of the Church is supposed to know, but I learned them in my own way. Everyone’s conversion story is unique, because each person is unique. My conversion started when I was eleven years old and watching my favorite TV show.

Kung Fu, a TV series that ran from 1972-1975, was about Kwai Chang Caine, a Buddhist monk, who wandered the nineteenth-century American West and talked about “oneness” and “truth.” He served people and helped them see the vanity of the world—that is, when he wasn’t defending himself against bad guys with his awesome Kung Fu fighting skills. Because I liked that show so much, I went to the library and checked out books about Chinese wisdom, Buddhism, and Taoism. My favorite book was called Wisdom from the East. It was full of proverbs from the Bible and from Eastern philosophers like Buddha and Confucius. One of the proverbs that I still remember said, “An honest man never fears a knock on his door at midnight.”

Not a lot of people in Parkersburg, Illinois read Confucius, but a lot of people in P’burg did drink beer. One night when I was fifteen, I went camping with two of my friends—Mike and Jeff—a couple of miles down the railroad tracks from town. Earlier that day we had pooled our lawn-mowing money and asked J.D. Lane to buy us two cases of beer. (J.D. was the twenty-one-year-old friend of Jeff’s older brother, Dave.) We met J.D. and Red Schwartz at the Sugar Creek Bridge at 10:00 p.m. that night. With flashlights in hand, we carried the beer through the woods for a quarter of a mile to our campsite. For the next few hours we sat around the campfire and listened to FM rock on Jeff’s portable radio while we drank, laughed, and smoked cigarettes until we threw up or passed out or both.

A month or so later, Jeff and I bought some marijuana from his brother Dave. Pretty soon we were getting together a couple of nights a week to smoke a bowl in the shed at the back of Jeff’s property. I knew marijuana was illegal. I knew it was against the law for minors to drink, but I never felt that what I was doing was immoral or wicked. For me, it just seemed like an initiation thing that every guy had to go through.

Something else happened when I was fifteen: I discovered rock and roll music. I bought an album by the rock group Kiss, a live album recorded at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. Every night I’d shut the door of my room, put on my headphones, throw Kiss Alive! on the turntable, and crank up the volume. In my mind’s eye, I imagined the four guys from Kiss standing up there on the stage—playing music, breathing fire, wearing ghoulish make-up and black leather, stomping around in shoes with six-inch heels, and all the while, surrounded by 20,000 devoted fans! It wasn’t long before I talked my mom into buying me an electric guitar. In six months I was in a rock band with some guys I’d met at a keg party. At age seventeen, I was the singer and rhythm guitarist in Split Level—the best rock band in my high school. I wanted to be a rock star. “By the time I’m thirty,” I told my friends, “I’ll either be famous, or dead from a drug overdose.” I went to school stoned and never did any homework, but I did work very hard at what I believed in. I read for hours in books and magazines about rock musicians. I memorized song lyrics and wrote my own songs. I learned about guitars, electronics, sound systems, and stage lighting. I was a very dedicated student of my craft. Music was the way I understood life.

Then, in 1981, after graduating from high school, I moved to Vernal, Utah. I’m not even sure why I did it. The guys in the band couldn’t understand it. Maybe my mom and my sister had something to do with me moving. I’d been arrested twice in Illinois for possession, and my mom wanted to get me away from my friends. So I moved to Utah right after my older sister Sharon did. She and her husband had had financial problems in Illinois, and they came to Vernal to start over. My oldest brother Jerry had been living there for years, working in the oil field business.

On my second day in Utah, I got a job at a grocery store, working in the meat department with a Mormon girl named Wendy. She was eighteen, and I was nineteen. That day we went to lunch together at the Taco Time next door. I thought she was cute, so I bragged about keg parties and drug use and told her things about my rock star heroes. A few days later I went to her house and sat on her bed while we listened to Mormon pop music and talked. I had never been in a teenage girl’s room before. It was all stuffed animals and posters and clothes on the floor. While we talked, Wendy showed me some gospel picture books that looked like children’s books to me. She told me about the pre-existence and the three degrees of glory. I could tell she really believed in it, and it all seemed very nice and sweet in a simple kind of way. Then when she told me that all the wicked people would go to the lowest degree of glory, the Telestial kingdom, I remember saying, “Cool, I could go there and spend eternity with the guys in Led Zeppelin!”

Soon after I moved to Vernal, I found a Book of Mormon in my sister Sharon’s house. I don’t know how it got there, but the thing that interested me about this particular Book of Mormon was the testimony that was written in the front cover. The person who donated the book had said, “I don’t know that this book is true. But I do know that every time I read it I feel closer to the Spirit.” I was impressed because he said he didn’t know. Wendy and the other Mormons I’d met were always saying they knew the Church was true. I just thought they said that because they had been raised to believe it. If they had been raised Catholic or Baptist, I figured they would say they knew that was true. But this guy—the one who had written his testimony in The Book of Mormon I found—he didn’t know. I could trust him.

I remember lying on the bed in my room at Sharon’s house, reading The Book of Mormon and smoking a cigarette. I think I read more than a hundred pages in a few days. I probably got to the Isaiah chapters in Second Nephi and gave up. At the time I thought the Book of Mormon was reliable enough, but I didn’t see the connection between it and the LDS church.

My contact with the church didn’t go any farther than that for a while. Pretty soon I got into the partying scene in Vernal and started a rock band with Wendy’s inactive brothers. Eric played lead guitar, Norm played the drums, and I went to the pawnshop and bought a bass. In a few weeks we were playing bars and keg parties and jamming and using drugs on Sundays. By the end of my first year in Vernal I was the evening manager at the IGA grocery store. I had a key to the store and could take home all the beer I wanted. But I worked six days a week, and on the weekends I partied and played with the band. Sometimes life got a little hectic.

In the spring of 1982, my brother Jerry hired me to work for him. He sold oil field equipment—drill bits especially—and he needed a “bit hand.” Working for Jerry, I traveled all over Utah, New Mexico, California, Texas, Oklahoma, and once we drove as far as Michigan. Jerry paid good money, and I had weekends off for serious partying and playing with the band.

By that time, I’d also moved into a little cottage-apartment owned by Doug and Maureen Mangrum, a couple with three young children. My “humble abode,” as I called it, was situated just a few feet away from Doug and Maureen’s home. It had once been a one-car garage, but someone had converted it into a little cottage with a tiny kitchen, a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. The Mangrums were good landlords. When Maureen made special meals, she would bring me a plate. She would bring me homemade cookies, and she even made me a gingerbread house at Christmastime. I knew the Mangrums were LDS, so when I had a party with eight or ten of my friends in my little house and Doug would call and ask me to turn down my music, I would do it right away because they were so nice about it.

I had money, substances, and my own apartment. I even had a couple of romances to keep life interesting. The only problem was, I wasn’t happy. Maybe this is the point where some people go on to harder things, but I was just getting “burnt out.” Sometimes I would draw the curtains in my little house, sit down by myself in the living room, put a good record on the turntable, smoke a big fat joint, get the munchies, eat a lot of junk food, and then go to sleep. Later I would think to myself, “This is no life,” and I knew I had to make some changes.

Tired of partying and going nowhere, I spent one particular day off reading the Bible. I had a Bible my Aunt Wilma had given me when I graduated from high school, the kind with the words of Jesus in red print. That day I read the Gospels, and I loved the teachings of Jesus. He was so wise and so true. If Kwai Chang and Confucius were great teachers, Jesus was the greatest teacher of all. Later I went for a walk and prayed that God would tell me if He was real. I wanted to know what to believe. But I didn’t feel anything when I prayed. I wanted immediate answers, but they didn’t come.

In the summer of that year my oldest niece’s husband, Moses, asked me to visit his church, the Church of Christ in Vernal. Moses was crippled from polio and had to use crutches to get around, but those who knew him didn’t feel too sorry for him because he would sometimes borrow money from kindhearted people, or cash in his disability checks, and spend the money on drugs and alcohol. Then he’d leave town without paying his bills. Moses liked to go to new churches and meet people who would offer him charity. Moses took me to his church, and I liked the fact that they taught from the Bible. I don’t remember much about going there, except that I brought Wendy with me one Sunday morning and we got in a big argument afterwards because she said they taught false doctrine.

One evening I went with Moses to this little white church on the west side of Vernal to talk with the pastor. Moses had bought an old Cadillac from the pastor on a handshake deal. We talked for about an hour about cars and scriptures and churches, and then the pastor led the discussion to the subject of baptism. He took us to the front of the church, up on the stand, to a trap door in the floor between the podium and the choir seats. He lifted the door, and there was the baptismal font. Before I really knew what was going on, the pastor had us preparing for baptism. He filled the font while Moses and I changed into white clothes. He baptized both of us, and afterwards, we went out on the front steps of the church to have a cigarette. I thought that was kind of strange even then.

I only went to church there for a few weeks, though. The people were old, the sermons were boring, and the pastor and teachers said a lot of negative things about the Mormons. I thought the Mormons were bad because they said the other churches were false, but this church was just as bad. So Moses left town without paying the pastor what he owed on the Cadillac, and I stopped attending the Church of Christ. Still, I was searching. I was thinking about religious things, trying to find out what was right, and the Lord was leading me along.

In the fall of 1982, Vicky, my niece, got married. Her husband Bart had been raised and baptized a Mormon, but Bart hadn’t been to church since he was in primary. The missionaries knocked on their door one day, and Vicky invited them back to give a lesson. At that time Vicky and Bart lived in a house trailer behind Wendy’s brother Norman, the drummer of the band I was in.

Vicky invited me to sit in on the discussions. After about the third lesson, the missionaries left one night with all our cigarettes and coffee. (I’m sure at least a thirty-dollar value.) It seemed like such a good idea when they took them, but once they left—and took their spirit with them—we felt sort of empty and alone. It wasn’t long before Bart and I headed out for 7-Eleven to restock.

I liked the missionaries though. One was from Arizona; his name was Elder Pursley; and the senior, Elder Walters, was from Philadelphia. I liked Elder Walters because he liked a lot of the same rock music I was interested in. He had joined the Church in Philadelphia about a year before his mission, and I trusted him that he knew it was true. I thought, “Here’s a guy who hasn’t lived under a bubble in Utah all his life.” I soon lost contact with the missionaries, though, because they had only met me at Vicky’s and they didn’t have my home address.

After meeting the missionaries, I started reading the Book of Mormon again. My brother Jerry’s business wasn’t doing very well, and he was spending most of his time on the road. My job was to sit at the shop, answer the phone, and be there in case someone wanted to buy something. I ended up getting paid to read the scriptures for five or six hours a day.

I’d been told that the coming of Christ to the Nephites was the climax of the Book of Mormon, so I read each page carefully, wanting to understand how the story was built up to this important event. When I got to the chapters about Christ’s teachings to the Nephites, I wasn’t disappointed. In the Book of Mormon I found the same Jesus I had loved in the New Testament. During this same time, I happened to be browsing in the Vernal public library one day when I came across a copy of The Pearl of Great Price. I read about how Satan appeared to Moses, commanding Moses to worship him; then Satan threw a temper tantrum when Moses didn’t worship him. I was so impressed that I wanted to buy the book for myself. I went to Vernal’s LDS bookstore and asked the girl at the counter if they sold a book called The Pearl of Great Price. She sold me the Doctrine and Covenants/Pearl of Great Price combination in a paperback. I then began reading all of the LDS scriptures in my workday reading sessions.

I was especially impressed by the revelations given to Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants. I thought it was good that every date and event related to the revelations were explained in the section headings. As I read, I felt I was reading things that were true. I never once felt that the things I read in the LDS scriptures were false or designed to deceive me. I trusted them, but I shared these feelings with almost no one. In fact, my whole conversion seemed to go on with hardly anyone noticing.

At this same time Wendy and I started dating more often. We had dated once in a while before, but her mom didn’t like me because I smoked cigarettes and my hair was down to my shoulders. I told Wendy one night that I thought the Church was something really good, but I didn’t know if I could have the strength to live the commandments, especially the Word of Wisdom. She told me she would help. She had confidence in me even though I didn’t have confidence in myself. Wendy was able to look past my long hair and bad habits and see someone who could accept the gospel and love it.

I was partying less, reading scriptures, praying. I was finding a new life. When I read the Book of Mormon, I knew it was true because it felt right in my heart. I didn’t pray when I finished the book, according to Moroni’s promise, because I had been praying all along, and my prayers had been answered. One day I was on the Maeser Highway going toward LaPoint, just driving around in my 1971 International Travelall and thinking about life. I was looking out at the brown, deserted landscape of northeastern Utah when I gained a witness from the Spirit. Seeing the red rock and the sandstone and the mountains, I thought about the battles of the Nephites and Lamanites I had been reading about in the Book of Mormon, and I knew that the Nephites and Lamanites were real. They weren’t just characters in a story. I felt a sure knowledge deep within my heart. It wasn’t a whisper or a burning. It was a feeling of surety, a firm knowledge. I knew that the Nephites and Lamanites had really lived on this continent, and that the stories and teachings in the Book of Mormon were true.

What I still didn’t know was how the Church fit in with the Book of Mormon. I had to learn that by actually being a member. Once I had a testimony of the LDS scriptures, I knew I had to be baptized. That’s when the missionaries found me at my apartment. I don’t even think they taught me all the official discussions. I was taught what I absolutely needed to know in my baptismal interview, which was an experience I’ll never forget. In those days there were ward Seventies who did what ward missionaries do now. There I sat on a metal folding chair, one-on-one, in a little cinder-block-walled room at the ward meetinghouse with this forty-something man who was asking me some very personal questions. When he asked me if I had a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, I said “yes.” That part was easy. Then the questions got harder: “Will you keep the Word of Wisdom?” “Will you pay tithing?” “Will you keep the law of chastity?” That’s when I knew this was serious business. I really didn’t know if I could do it. I had never promised anyone that I would avoid drugs or alcohol or extramarital sex. Now, here I was, face-to-face with a representative of God’s true church, and he was asking me if I would promise to keep all the commandments.

The weight of his questions was sobering, but I had to say “yes” because I knew it was the right thing to do. I walked out of that meeting a little shaky. I had made some serious commitments. I didn’t feel strong, and I didn’t feel confident. Looking back, though, I believe that taking that step of faith, that step into the darkness, had to count for something in God’s eyes, even if I wasn’t yet a model of worthiness or self-control.

On the day of my baptism, Wendy was there, the Mangrums were there, Elder Caldwell and Eric, the guitar player in my band, was there. The only people from my family who came were my niece Rhonda and my nephew Rick. That same evening the missionaries were baptizing an eight-year-old boy from a part-member family, so most of the people there had come for him. I was sort of disappointed when nothing miraculous happened at my baptism. I thought I would feel something in my soul when I was baptized or confirmed, but I really didn’t feel anything. Wendy had said that after she got baptized she felt clean and new all over. But I felt just the same as I always did. A few days later I read a verse in the Book of Mormon (Ether 12:6) that says “you receive no witness until after the trial of your faith,” and I knew that this scripture applied to me. My witness came more slowly—in the Lord’s time.

The growth of my testimony was partially dependent on my commitment to the commandments. I didn’t immediately forsake all my sins on the day I joined the Church. For one thing, it was hard for me to give up cigarettes. Sometimes I would buy a pack, smoke three or four, and throw away the rest of the pack, only to repeat the whole process a few days later. When I felt unworthy, I’d skip church, telling myself that I had to get control of my life before I was worthy of the Lord’s blessings. I didn’t yet understand that what I was doing could be likened to a sick person avoiding the hospital until he gets well.

After a few weeks, I talked to my bishop, and he didn’t condemn me. He wasn’t out to punish me. He just wanted to help. After reading The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball, I realized that I had to change my friends and my activities if I wanted to be free from the things that held me back. I couldn’t visit some of my relatives or friends without being tempted to bum a cigarette or smoke a joint. I couldn’t date some of the girls I had known before. I couldn’t even stay in the band; there were too many temptations in the bars and parties we played. So I began to change my life and my whole attitude. My weaknesses led me to some serious backsliding during my first year as a member of the Church, but despite my struggles, I knew the Church was true, and I learned that I could only be happy when I lived its teachings.

During those first few months, I read every church book I could—Jesus the Christ, The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Discourses of Brigham Young, anything that would feed my hunger to learn the gospel. I learned to serve, too. I went home teaching, I worked on the Church farms, and I participated in Young Adults. And I especially grew to love the feelings I felt when I read the scriptures. Even the Bible made more sense to me when I read it as a new convert. As I sat in Sunday school and listened to the teacher talk about the teachings of Christ, I knew more than ever that the Bible was true and that the Savior was real.

Two months after I joined the Church, Wendy got married to a returned missionary. Some people thought I would fall away from the Church after that, but I didn’t. A year later I went on a mission to North Carolina, which gave me even more opportunities to read the scriptures and learn about the Gospel by living it and teaching it to others.

I started keeping a journal on the day I got baptized. I looked back in that journal recently and realized that just a few weeks after I joined the Church I started talking about going to college, something I had never before considered. My conversion to education has been a part of my conversion to the gospel ever since. After my mission, I married Cindy Hunsaker, a first grade teacher I met in Young Adults. A few months later, at age 24, I started college. I attended Utah Technical College (now Utah Valley University) and Salt Lake Community College as a part-time student before enrolling at BYU as an English major. Then I earned a Master’s degree in English from Illinois State University. I taught for one year at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, before I was hired in 1995 to teach English at Ricks College, now BYU-Idaho. In 2006, I completed a PhD in education at the University of Idaho-Idaho Falls. Being a student and a full-time teacher at BYU-I made life very busy at times, but my teaching and learning served each other very well.

During my early college years, when our children were small and I was working and going to school full time, I learned more about living the gospel than I ever learned as a convert or a new missionary. While we were in Utah, I worked for seven years on the graveyard shift—11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.—at Smith’s Food and Drug. I held church callings, went to college, and tried to learn how to be a good husband and father. Learning to healthily carry all of those loads at once was harder than anything I’d ever done before. My wife and I had three children during those years, we were always busy in the church, and we moved seven times. Those challenges gave me a whole new vision of what it meant to be converted. It’s one thing to measure your life by what you don’t do: “I don’t drink, smoke, cuss, sleep around, or dress like a bum.” But there’s more to the gospel than that. Living the gospel is having your heart changed through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and out of that new, purified heart, doing good to all those you meet.

As I look at my life today, I sometimes struggle to reconcile who I used to be with who I am now. As one of my friends said, “Man, you’ve gone from LSD to LDS!” My life has changed dramatically since I joined the Church, and I often wonder, “Why me?” I joined the Church and stayed active when no one else in my family did. Was it my perfectly righteous lifestyle that led me to know the truth when it came? Obviously not! Oddly enough, it seems to be my weaknesses as well as my strengths that have helped me to understand that I am a child of God and I need a Savior. The amazing thing about Christ’s atonement is that he can take anything in our past and make it a soil for new, good growth, if we turn to him and let our struggles be an agent for real repentance. When I joined the Church, I didn’t lose the understanding that I gained through Eastern religions or my years of devotion to rock music. Every true principle that I learned before I joined the Church stayed with me after I joined. Christ’s atonement can transform our past as well as our future, as long as we are faithful.

Because of the atonement, the good and the bad things I’ve gone through have all played a part in my conversion, building my testimony that The Book of Mormon is true, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, that Jesus Christ leads us through living prophets. They say a testimony is given to a person as a gift from the Spirit. I believe that, because I’ve learned that last year’s gift of testimony won’t sustain me this year. Yesterday’s testimony must constantly be renewed. It’s the Spirit that gives us the strength we need to serve and endure our trials, and it’s the Spirit that makes the good things in life even better by putting them in an eternal context. I don’t know where my life would be today if I had not joined the Church, but I know that Jesus Christ is the source of mercy and forgiveness and renewal. He is the one who has the power, through the atonement, to transform souls. If we live his teachings, keep his commandments, and follow his true messengers, we’ll find our lives growing richer and more rewarding each day. We’ll learn that even when living the gospel is tough, it’s all worth it. Then we’ll begin to know what true joy really is.

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Jack Harrell is the Composition Director in the English Department at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where he has taught since 1995 and where he previously chaired the Creative Writing Committee.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Brigham Young University-Provo, and went on to receive an M.A. in English from Illinois State University. Finally, he earned a Ph.D. in Education at the University of Idaho.

Among his numerous publications are short stories and personal essays in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Irreantum, The Storyteller, and Manna; “The Poetics of Destruction: Death Metal Rock,” Popular Music and Society (Spring 1995); “Telling the Truth: Teaching Creative Writing to LDS Students,” Annual of the Association for Mormon Letters 2004; “What Violence in Literature Must Teach Us,” in Ethics, Literature, and Theory, ed. Stephen K. George, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); “Human Conflict and the Mormon Writer,” Irreantum (December 2009); a monograph entitled The Adult Creative Writer: A Phenomenological Study (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2008); and the novel Vernal Promises (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2003).

Posted December 2009

My Life and Testimony
A short reflection on the basis for my faith

It was never difficult for me to believe that the 14 year old boy Joseph Smith saw God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ in his First Vision. I was brought up a believing Catholic, knowing and accepting the many martyrs and saints who said they had seen visions and received visitations from heavenly beings.

Did not Stephen the martyr, in the book of Acts, see the Father and the Son when he was being stoned to death because he preached Jesus? Did not Saul, who stood nearby to watch Stephen’s death, see the Saviour on the road to Damascus? And had not Moses talked with God, and Isaiah received his prophetic commission from God? Of course they did! So, it was not difficult for me to accept as plausible that Joseph Smith also had seen the Father and the Son in upstate New York in 1820.

I grew up believing that all these visions and visitations were as real as the very breath I inhaled every moment of the day. I did, and I was thrilled to learn that not only had he seen and spoken to God and His Son, he was commissioned by them to restore the fullness of the Christian gospel to this generation of God’s children as an essential part of the dispensation of the fullness of times.

I suppose that my religious tolerance and open-mindedness was first planted in my heart while I grew up in Singapore, where our modest post World War II home was located on the other side of the road from a Hindu Temple. From the vantage point of my upstairs bedroom window I looked over its protective walls to see religious ceremonies conducted in that sacred place. The colourful, intriguing, and often noisy rituals that I watched from my window schooled me in that Asian religious practice, and I learnt that if I was to hope to comprehend and appreciate the underlying principles of that and other Asian religious traditions I would need patience and a lot of study and consideration.

It was also during my early childhood in Singapore that a Chinese neighbour challenged me with a claim that, although Christianity described itself as an ancient faith tradition, his Asian faith tradition predated the Christian faith by centuries and had much to teach Christians. His point caused me to ponder the relationship between Christian and Asian faiths. As a result, I asked, “If there is one God of all people, how could there be so many religions, and what is their purpose before God who must surely love and care for all of His children all over the world?

Later, as an adult, I was fortunate enough to travel around a good part of South East Asia and became acquainted with ancient Ramayana plays in Indonesia, Thailand, and India. I read about how these battles between good and evil were transmitted in Indonesia where people acted them out, or recited them for hours in puppet and shadow plays. I visited the serene and haunting Borobudur Temple in Central Java where I pondered how faithful Buddhist disciples patiently sat in silent bell-shaped stupas on that ancient edifice to seek the meaning of good and evil. From these kinds of experiences I learned a critical lesson, namely that patience and tolerance are important parts of the search for truth, even the truth that comes to mankind from the one true God of us all.

Another lesson came from a faraway place near Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau, who astutely observed that, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” [Thoreau, Walden, p65]. By this thought Thoreau suggests that while many individuals may appear to be busily engaged in doing what they consider to be meaningful things to enrich the quality of life for the poor and needy, only rarely do we see someone striking at the root of the problem to find real solutions to the root causes of confusion and discord that we see in the world today.

It is in this setting of many hacking at the branches of our worldwide problem tree and so few hacking successfully at its roots, that Thoreau’s words led me to consider Joseph Smith as a true restorer of the knowledge of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ that today manifests itself across the world in various and sometimes puzzling forms.

As the years went by, I learnt about the works and words of God to his children through the prophets and apostles of the Restoration. My faith in the vision of Joseph Smith grew stronger and I learned to love him as I realised how his devotion and commitment to his holy calling developed, and how he came to pay the supreme price of being a prophet.

At that time, what I did not appreciate enough was the mercy that God was extending to me, a so-called believer, to help me cross the chasm that separated God-fearing believers from becoming Godlike sons and daughters in this day of restoration of all things.

One clue that moved me to see the need for this transformation came from the first Article of Faith, which states:

We believe in God the Eternal Father and in His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost.

I argued that it was easy to say that “we” believe these things because the “we” surrounds us with a host of other believers who protect us from making an individual confession of faith in God, His Son, and the Holy Ghost. So, I privately changed the words of that first article of faith into a personal confession of my faith, in this manner:

I believe in God the Eternal Father and in His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost.

By doing this I no longer hid behind the “we” in my confession of faith, but stood up and stated that this was in fact my very own personal belief and faith! Consequently, I felt the strength of my personal testimony in this Article of Faith and it uplifted me somewhat.

However, I soon realised that there was more to be done if I was to really achieve the full power of my faith, for an individual’s faith is not complete until that individual is able to clearly state who and what is specifically believed in, and in also performing the actions that demonstrate that proclaimed belief.

This line of thinking led me to alter further my personal application of the words of this First Article of Faith to:

I believe God the Eternal Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.

I now felt that I had moved beyond mere belief in such persons as God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, to exercising faith by action according to their words and commandments. In so doing, I expected that I would grow to love and thank them more fervently for the way they had watched over and guided my life. For, had I not been born in a time of global conflict and been rescued from possible extinction when the city I lived in as a baby fell to the enemy? Had I not been raised and nurtured by a selfless grandmother when my parents were unable to do so? Had I not since been given many chances to live a meaningful life with a wonderful wife and family? Yes, indeed I had! The evidence was overwhelming that I needed to be grateful for my life, such as it is, and that I needed to identify the God to whom I must direct my thanks and my actions.

Furthermore, the relationship I now had with the Father, His Beloved Son, and the Holy Ghost was becoming more personal and intimate; not merely as good friends, but as a covenant-bonded family who would stick by me through thick and thin, just as my own grandmother and other family members did when I was vulnerable in the extreme as a little child in a time of war and as I grew to be an adult.

I also realised that, as weak human beings in a fallen condition, we would stumble and fall many times in our lives, but the conditions of repentance and progression would always be available if we truly desired to keep working at it. Trials and tribulations would stalk us always, but we would be equal to the challenge with the aid of God’s love and the gift of the Holy Ghost, because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

The more good work and service we did in His Name, the stronger would become our faith and capacity to serve Him and his marvellous cause of fulfilling the plan of mercy and happiness for all His children. The more we followed the influence of the Holy Spirit the more we knew the source of our spiritual and temporal strength. The more pure we became in motive, desire, and intent, the more He would lift and lead us to the pure living waters and the bread of life that were necessary to move ever forward towards becoming not only a God-fearing person, but more like the Son Himself. For we too would become saviours on mount Zion and we too would be identified as saviours of loved ones long gone into the spirit world, and of living people who become influenced for good by our examples of faith and works, and the fruit of our efforts would lift us and them up to be closer to the desires of Father in Heaven for us.

Ultimately, we would be able to change our personal first Article of Faith to read:

I know God the Eternal Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.

And when we come to this level of faith, we would be fitting candidates for eternal life, for so said Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, that life eternal is to know God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. Moreover, as knowing God cannot be achieved without assistance of the Holy Ghost, we would have had experiences with the Holy Ghost that demonstrated that we knew Him also. Thus we would achieve the ultimate purpose of our existence and feel the love of God in this life and in the eternities.

On many early mornings between 1am and 4am it is not unusual to find me in our study or other rooms in our home where I read and think about life and my service in the Church and how I can be a more profitable servant of the Lord.

One morning I watched an old movie production called The First Vision, and reminisced over how my wife and I had visited the Sacred Grove and the log and frame houses lived in by the Joseph Smith family at the time that supernal and sacred event took place. I saw the fields through which Joseph Smith ran in his hopeful, expectant, quest to ask God for the wisdom to understand which Church was right for him to join. I marvelled at his youthfulness and his focussed faith to speak with God, not knowing that he would open the door to a wonderful new and last dispensation of the gospel to all mankind.

I saw, in the grove of trees that we now call sacred, where Joseph saw a Pillar of Light and, in that white purity of glory, the Heavenly Father of us all and His Only Beloved Son Jesus Christ, by the Power of the Holy Ghost. In that life-changing experience Joseph began his twenty-four-year mission as the Prophet of the Restoration, for which service and calling he gave his life. His undoubting life of service and faithfulness to the revelations of God attracted believers who paid a similar price to know their Father and God, and left a legacy of faith that we also try to replicate in our lives in order to be disciples of this restored gospel.

In the wee hours of that morning I relived that beginning and felt the Hand of the Lord helping me see that I too was a servant of the Lord with an assignment to care for those who are called my family; that I had been entrusted with a calling in which to serve with my sweetheart, who was equally prepared as I was, to be who we are; and that the two of us were in reality stewards of our family and others to enable the Church to fulfil the words of the prophets regarding its divine destiny in the latter days.

In that moment I realised what a blessing it was for me to have that experience, and as a sign that it was from God, I was given inspiration regarding the Light that is the Saviour and the lesser lights that we are, and how we as lesser lights may bear a portion of His Light in order to testify to the world that His ways are the ways of salvation and eternal life, if only mankind will accept His atonement and the good news of the gospel to guide their lives in obedience to the commandments of God.

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Dr W. F. Lionel Walters was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 19 June 1941, just before World War Two began in the Far East. He spent his early life in India and Singapore. At the age of 16 he immigrated to Australia to be an apprentice aircraft engineer with Qantas Airways. He later graduated in electrical engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne and worked as an engineer until 1974 when he was hired as one of four Australians to direct religious education programs of the Church Educational System [CES] of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

His assignments with the CES were in Adelaide, Singapore, and Hong Kong, where he supervised eight South East Asian nations. Soon after returning to Australia he was appointed as country director for Australia and Papua New Guinea, then in Sydney as area director for the Pacific Islands, covering all the countries between Micronesia and New Zealand, and between Australia and Tahiti, until his retirement in 2006.

In addition to his qualifications as an engineer in the aircraft and electrical industries, he earned a BEd from Deakin University, an MEd from Adelaide University, and a PhD in education from the Flinders University of South Australia. He has served the Church twice as a bishop, and as a mission president and a stake president.

He is happily married to Marianne Walters and they are the parents of a daughter and three sons. They have nine grandchildren. Lionel and Marianne are currently Australian National Directors of Public Affairs for the Church, based in Sydney.

Lionel and Marianne organized a bicentennial symposium on Joseph Smith in Sydney in May 2005, and he presented a paper on the influence of Joseph Smith in Asia at a Symposium on Joseph Smith in Taiwan in August 2005. He and Marianne have organised three day-long visits to the Federal Parliament of Australia and four visits to the state parliament of New South Wales by groups of outstanding young adult Latter-day Saints. These visits with leading politicians have raised the visibility of the Church in a positive way in Australia.

Posted December 2009

Portions of this text were published previously in “Thirty Years After the Long-Promised Day: Reflections and Expectations” (BYU Studies) and “Mormon Beliefs Not Peculiar” (Honolulu Advertiser)

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Religion was an ever-present and powerful force in Brazilian society during my childhood, and the deep religiosity of my grandmothers, who both came from diverse religious backgrounds, had a deep impact on me. Even though they both passed away while I was still a child in the 1960s, their legacy for me was one of enduring faith and reverence for God and sacred things.

Then, in mid-1972, the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to my home and started teaching my family. I immediately identified with Joseph Smith. He had been a teenager when he received his First Vision, and since, in 1972, I was almost the same age as Joseph was in 1820, somehow I felt that someone that young would not have lied to the whole world about something so serious and extraordinary. As I studied the materials the missionaries brought to my family, especially the Book of Mormon, my conviction grew and eventually we were baptized into the Church.

After almost four decades, I still feel a deep appreciation for the religion I embraced in my youth. But, having researched and pondered much over the years, I would say that my conviction has been replaced by a high level of assurance concerning the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its beliefs.

As I survey how the Church is regarded in society, many articles and newscasts report that members of other religious denominations label Mormon beliefs as atypical, peculiar, or even “strange.” But how strange are they?

One of the central beliefs is that God is a real being, a literal Heavenly Father to humankind, possessing a tangible, perfect body of flesh and bones. Another is that Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead was a literal one, and that through him all humankind is guaranteed a future resurrection with tangible, perfect bodies, free of diseases or death. I recall one gentleman who asked me, “Why in the world would God want to have a body?” As a senior citizen suffering the ravages of age, he had a hard time understanding that. In my reply I asked him what he would feel like if he could have a perfect body—free of diseases, disabilities, pains, aging, and death. Envision this resurrected body being able to enjoy the warmth of the sun, the softness of the wind, the warm embrace of a loved one, and all other joys of a righteous life … forever. To me, that sounds like a wonderful prospect, not a “strange” one.

Another area often mentioned in articles is the Latter-day Saint belief in temples, and the fact that whatever happens inside those majestic buildings is not disclosed to the general public. The influence of these temples in Mormon life can be evaluated using Jesus’ own standard, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (St. Matthew 7:20). Through those sacred religious ceremonies each Latter-day Saint, young or old, male or female, is encouraged to live a good life improved by faith in God, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreation. They are also taught to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and to do good to all people. Even not knowing what happens inside those Mormon temples, any reasonable person can look at these effects and conclude that something good comes out of this belief.

Combine these two beliefs—a future literal resurrection and a covenant-based, principles-centered life—and the result is a theology that raises humankind to a higher, nobler status of existence. Rather than the traditional scientific view that human beings are a higher form of animal life, the theology restored through Joseph Smith introduces to the world the view that while in this mortal stage humans are a lower, ready-to-be-perfected form of divine life, possessing by nature latent divine attributes that can emerge and develop through conformity to the laws and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love this idea, and I see in it the mind and works of a real, tangible Supreme Being, in whose image humankind has been created, who feels for and loves his children with a perfect love and paternal care.

In Joseph Smith’s own words:

The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them … This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you. They are given to me by the revelations of Jesus Christ; and I know that when I tell you these words of eternal life as they are given to me, you taste them, and I know that you believe them … [and] you are bound to receive them as sweet, and rejoice more and more. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 354-355)

Mormonism indeed introduces to the world extraordinary claims and beliefs. After all these years of membership I still find myself amazed at how these beliefs are intellectually stimulating, spiritually uplifting, filling one with a generally positive outlook and desire for personal development, family unity, and wholesome engagement with the world—not a mere preparation for a heaven in the hereafter, but a continual effort to make our current environment more heavenly here and now.

Perhaps my personal history as a Latter-day Saint will forever be linked to a broader discussion of the interaction between race and religion. Until June of 1978, no male member of the Church with Black African ancestry could be ordained to the church’s priesthood, a practice that started in the mid-1800s. The American society of the nineteenth century was at best ambivalent about the application of its constitutional values to race relations, and the priesthood ban practiced by Mormons can be seen as a reflection of that uncertainty. Other religious denominations of that time also responded to that uncertainty in ways that, by today’s standards, are no less problematic. Denominations opened their priesthoods to people of different races, but generally they did so in strictly segregated congregations. The top Mormon leadership of the nineteenth century did not segregate their congregations, and clearly pointed out that future divine direction would clear the matter up. We believe that such direction finally came in 1978. In the meantime, members and lay leaders attempted on their own to find possible reasons for the existence of the ban. Those attempts led to the unofficial adoption of pre-existing ideas about the Black race well known in other religious traditions for centuries.

But religions are not necessarily racist. People carry in their minds cultural traits and shared beliefs of their larger societies. Unfortunately, instead of using their religious beliefs to refine their cultural beliefs, religious denominations have historically used some interpretation of their religious beliefs to validate cultural traits. That’s how African slavery was supported for centuries by most of the religious establishment.

As a sociologist, I see as almost unavoidable the influence of cultural traits and social norms on religious life. Even the Church’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr., acknowledged that possibility by stating in 1835 that “many, having a zeal not according to knowledge, and not understanding the pure principles of the doctrine of the Church, have, no doubt, in the heat of enthusiasm, taught and said many things which are derogatory to the genuine character and principles of the Church; and for these things we are heartily sorry, and would apologize, if apology would do any good.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 80)

I often receive a lot of questions about my experiences. I love my religion and I have never found in its official doctrine any evidence of racism. Instead, I found words such as these: “[God] doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. . . . Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation. . . . and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.” (The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, 2 Nephi 26:24, 33)

I lived through the last six years of the priesthood ban, and after its lifting I was the first member of my race to serve as a full-time missionary. Now, almost thirty years later I am a high priest and an ordained bishop, and my two sons are also priesthood holders—one also an ordained bishop and the other an elder. My late father, Helvécio Martins, served as a general authority of the Church between 1990 and 1996, being a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy.

Many of the extraordinary blessings, privileges, and promises contained in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ can be enjoyed right here, right now. These extraordinary beliefs have strengthened my faith and led me forward all these years. I still have many unanswered questions, but I have no doubts.

There are many good churches in the world, many great philosophies that provide varying measures of intellectual or spiritual satisfaction to billions of people. But in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I have found the power of the priesthood, the oracles of God, his living prophets, and the ordinances that can prepare all who so desire to once again enter the presence of God, clothed in immortality and eternal life, to enjoy the supernal benefits of that environment with their families.

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Dr. Marcus Helvécio T. A. Martins is the former chair of the Department of Religious Education at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, where he has taught church organization, marriage, and leadership. He was elected “Teacher of the Year” by BYU-Hawaii’s President’s Council in 2002.

A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he worked for the Brazilian government as a systems analyst before obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Business Management, a master’s in Organizational Behavior, and a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion, Race, and Ethnic Relations, all from Brigham Young University.

Professor Martins previously taught at BYU (Provo) and Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho), having also spoken in conferences and other engagements throughout the U.S., Brazil, China, Japan, Malaysia, Qatar, and Singapore. He is the author of the book Setting the Record Straight: Blacks and the Mormon Priesthood (Millennial Press, 2007) and is currently finishing The Bishop: Steward of God, Agent of Salvation.

In the Church, Brother Martins has served twice as bishop and six times as stake high councilor, as well as temple officiator, translator of the Book of Mormon, and Sunday School and Institute teacher. He is married to Mirian Abelin Barbosa, and they have four children and two granddaughters.

Posted December 2009

[Click to read Japanese version.]

Why I Belong, and Why I Believe

As I have progressed through my life, my commitment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has deepened for two reasons. The first is my reason for belonging to the church as an organized institution: because of the way the church is organized, it puts opportunities to help others in my path every day. It facilitates my efforts – and in some instances almost compels me – to practice Christianity, not just believe in it. The second is my reason for believing that the doctrines taught in the church are true. As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. My conviction has deepened as I have continued to study these books and have tried to do the will of my Father in Heaven.

Why do I choose to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an organized religion, rather than attempt as an individual to live a good life? It is because the church helps me understand and practice the essence of Christianity. The mechanism by which the organization achieves this is to have no professional clergy. We don’t hire ministers or priests to teach and care for us. This forces us to teach and care for each other – and in my view, this is the core of Christian living as Christ taught it. I actually have come to feel badly for my friends who belong to faiths in which professional clergy are employed – because they don’t know how much joy they miss when they “outsource” the teaching and care of the members of their church to specially trained professionals.

Several years ago I read a story in a news magazine about flooding in several western states that resulted from the rapid spring melting of a heavy accumulation of snow. One photo showed thousands of Mormon citizens in Salt Lake City who had been mobilized with only a few hours’ notice through a call from their local church leaders. They were shown filling sandbags that would channel the flow of run-off water. The article marveled at the command-and-control precision – almost military in character – through which the LDS church was able to put its people onto the front lines of this civil crisis. Another photo in an article the next week showed a thirty-something resident of a town along a flooding stream in another state, sitting in a lawn chair reading while national guardsmen filled sandbags nearby. The author of the article attributed what he saw to the “organizational efficiency” of the LDS church, but he completely missed the point. Thousands of people instinctively showed up and went to work because they do this sort of thing all the time, week after week, in over a hundred countries around the world, as part of being Mormon. This was not an unusual event – just another week in the life of a typical Mormon.

To illustrate, let me review some of the things that I was able to do in the normal course of being a member of this church in a recent year. Because graduate students and young families move into and out of apartments with regularity in the Boston area, a list gets passed around at church every few weeks, asking for men to show up the next Saturday to help some family load or unload their rented moving truck. My children and I signed up every time, and worked shoulder to shoulder with five to fifteen other men and their children for two or three hours, helping the family move. At least once each month and more often when needed, I visited by assignment an elderly Hispanic couple – a woman who was in poor health, whose husband was struggling to overcome his addiction to alcohol. They lived in a dilapidated apartment in a rough part of the city. Over the course of the year the men in our congregation re-plastered, re-wired, painted and re-carpeted their apartment. We contributed money to fly their grown children, who were struggling financially and living in other parts of the country, to a special family reunion we helped them organize in Washington, D.C. Every Sunday for two hours, I cared for about 14 children aged 18-36 months in the church’s nursery, so that their parents could attend Sunday School class in peace. My wife Christine was similarly engaged. In the assignment she had at that time, when she learned that a mother had a new baby or someone was otherwise ill, with just a few phone calls she would enlist people to appear on their doorstep for a day, a week or for months. They would bring meals ready to eat, or hands ready to clean their homes and do the family’s laundry.

The important point about the prior paragraph is that our experience was not unusual. Everyone in the congregation was similarly serving, not just accepting assignments to help, but seeking opportunities to help. We gave often, and received often. For example, a short time later our family had out-grown our small home, so we found a larger one and put the word out that we would appreciate any help in loading and unloading our rented moving truck. Among those who showed up that morning was Mitt Romney, who had just completed his unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Mitt had a broken collarbone, but for two hours traipsed between our home and the truck, carrying out whatever he could manage with his one good arm. That spirit is just in the air in the Mormon Church, week after week, year after year. The strong help the weak, and the weak help the strong, and nobody thinks about who is weak and who is strong. It creates an extraordinary spirit of mutual love, because as we work to help others who are in need, our love and respect for those we help intensifies.

My children have been raised not just by their parents, but by an entire community of remarkable people. One of the world’s foremost materials scientists, the dean of the Harvard Business School, a podiatrist, and the executive vice president of American Express Corporation were our sons’ boy scoutmasters. These men of substance and position selflessly taught my sons first aid and citizenship, and camped with them in the snow. Each of our children during their high school years went to “early morning seminary” – scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15. The women who taught these classes had degrees not in religion or theology, but in art, law, nursing and literature. They had spent several hours the day before, preparing and searching for a way to help the sleepy high school students the next morning learn an element of the gospel more deeply, and to send them off to school with a firmer resolve to do what is right. Christine and I haven’t raised our children. A whole community of selfless Christians has contributed to helping them become faithful, competent adults. Whenever we have thanked these men and women for what they have done for us, without exception they have expressed gratitude for having the chance to help – because they grew as they served.

Because we employ no professional preachers, it means that every sermon or lesson in church is given by a regular member – women and men, children and grandparents. This means that we have the chance to learn from everyone – people in all walks of life who are struggling in their own ways to follow God. I have found, in fact, that some of the most profound things I have learned about the gospel of Jesus Christ have come from people from whom, if judged by the standards of the world, you would not have expected such profundities to come. For example, about a decade ago I was serving as the bishop, or lay minister, of the congregation of college students in the Boston area. We had assigned a college sophomore to give a sermon about repentance in our service on a particular Sunday. I still remember his key point: “We often view repentance as a slow process. It isn’t. Change is instantaneous. It is not changing that takes so much time.” I had been struggling to overcome a particular bad habit; and I resolved that I would change my behavior right then and there – to quit “not changing.” Where else but in this church could a young, inexperienced student have taught a bishop such a profound lesson?

I believe very strongly that these Mormons that I have described are not more loving or more selfless or more competent than many, many individuals in other faiths. What is different, however, is that we live and serve within a context that causes us to use those attributes – to serve, rather than to be served. And as we use them, they become an even more powerful part of us.

One of the curses that afflicts successful, prosperous people – many of whom have extraordinary talents and good hearts – is that they tend to live and work amongst similarly successful, prosperous people. They thereby become isolated from those who need their help. What I appreciate about the Mormon Church as an infrastructure for Christian living is that it puts me in touch with people I can help. I told a friend once, “If you truly want to live your life as Christ taught, then start coming to the Mormon Church. You don’t even have to believe what we believe. But if you want to practice Christianity, this is where the state-of-the-art is practiced.” This is why I choose to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The second topic I want to address is why I believe in the doctrines of the church. I was born into a wonderful Mormon family, and as I grew up I found few reasons to disbelieve the teachings of the church. My parents had deep faith in its precepts, and their example and encouragement were powerful – I believed in my parents, and I knew that they believed the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was not until I was 24, however, that I came to know these things for myself.

I had been given a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. After I had lived there for a few weeks, far away from the supportive environment in which I had been raised, it became clear that adhering to Mormonism in that environment was going to be very inconvenient. In fact, doing the sorts of things I described in the first part of this essay within the Mormon congregation in Oxford would preclude my participation in many of the things that had made Oxford such a rich experience for prior recipients of my scholarship. I decided, as a result, that the time had come for me to learn for certain and for myself whether Mormonism was true.

I had read the Book of Mormon before – seven times, to be exact. But in each of those instances I had read it by assignment – from my parents or a teacher – and my objective in reading it was to finish the book. This time, however, my objective was to find out if it was a true book or a fabrication. Accordingly, I reserved the time from 11:00 until midnight, every night, to read the Book of Mormon next to the fireplace in my chilly room at the Queen’s College. I began each of those sessions by kneeling in verbal prayer. I told God, every night, that I was reading this to know if it was His truth. I told Him that I needed an answer to this question – because if it was not true I did not want to waste my time with this church and would search for something else. But if it was true, then I promised that I would devote my life to following its teachings, and to helping others do the same.

I then would sit in the chair and read a page in the Book of Mormon. I would stop at the bottom of the page and think about it. I would ask myself what the material on that page meant for the way I needed to conduct my life. I would then get on my knees and pray aloud again, asking the Lord to tell me if the book was true. I would then get back in the chair, turn the page, and repeat the process, for the remainder of the hour. I did this every evening.

After I had done this for several weeks, one evening in October, 1975, as I sat in the chair and opened the book following my prayer, I felt a marvelous spirit come into the room and envelop my body. I had never before felt such an intense feeling of peace and love. I started to cry, and did not want to stop. I knew then, from a source of understanding more powerful than anything I had ever felt in my life, that the book I was holding in my hands was true. It was hard to see through the tears. But as I opened it and began again to read, I saw in the words of the book a clarity and magnitude of God’s plan for us that I had never conceived before. The spirit stayed with me for that entire hour. And each night thereafter, as I prayed and then sat in that chair with the Book of Mormon, that same spirit returned. It changed my heart and my life forever.

It was as if I had been looking out as far as I could see toward the horizon, and had been quite satisfied that I could see everything that there was to see. When I undertook to read the Book of Mormon in that manner, however, I discovered that so much more beauty and truth about who we are and what God has in store for us, lies beyond that old horizon. I did not know what I did not know.

I love to go back to Oxford. As the beautiful, historic home of the world’s oldest university, the town is filled with students and tourists. To me, however, it is a sacred place. It is there that I learned that the fundamental message of the Book of Mormon is in fact true – that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. It is there that I learned that God is indeed my Father in Heaven. I am His son. He loves me, and even knows my name. And I learned that Joseph Smith, the man who translated the Book of Mormon and organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a prophet of God in the same sense that Peter and Moses were prophets. I love to return to Oxford to remember the beautiful, powerful spirit that came to my heart and conveyed these messages to me.

During my adult life I have been blessed to witness or participate in many miracles – events that the scriptures term “gifts of the Spirit.” I have healed the sick by the power of the God. I have spoken with the gift of tongues. I have been blessed to see visions of eternity; and events in my future that have been important for me to foresee, have been revealed to me. These truly have been gifts, and have been great blessings in my life. But when I assess the collective impact that they have had on my faith, my heart, and my motivation to follow Jesus Christ, they pale in significance and power to those evenings I spent with the Book of Mormon in Oxford.

This happened to me a quarter of a century ago. I am grateful to be able to say that in the years since, I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth. I have spent thousands of hours doing my best to share what I am learning with others, and to serve others in the way that Christ wants. And I am grateful to say that, from time to time, that same spirit that permeated my heart in Oxford has returned – reconfirming that the path I am trying so hard to follow is in fact the one that God my Father and His Son Jesus Christ want me to pursue. It has brought me deep happiness. This is why I belong, and why I believe. I commend to all this same search for happiness and for the truth.

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Clayton M. Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1952. After graduating with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University, he received an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He next received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. In 1982-1983 he was a White House fellow, serving as an assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole. Finally, in 1992, he was awarded a DBA from the Harvard Business School, receiving the Best Dissertation Award from the Institute of Management Sciences for his doctoral thesis on technology development in the disk drive industry. He is currently the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.

Dr. Christensen is the architect of and the world’s foremost authority on disruptive innovation, a framework which describes the process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves “up market,” eventually displacing established competitors. Consistently acknowledged in rankings and surveys as one of the world’s leading thinkers on innovation, Dr. Christensen is widely sought as a speaker, advisor and board member. His research has been applied to national economies and start-up and Fortune 50 companies, as well as to early and late stage investing.

His seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), which first outlined his disruptive innovation frameworks, received the Global Business Book Award for the Best Business Book of the Year in 1997, was a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into over 10 languages, and is sold in over 25 countries. He is also a three-time recipient of the McKinsey Award for the Harvard Business Review’s best article.

Dr. Christensen has recently focused his innovation lens on two of our most vexing social issues, education and health care. Disrupting Class, which looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions was named one of the “10 Best Innovation and Design Books in 2008” by Business Week and the best Human Capital book of the year in the Strategy + Business Best Books of 2008. The Innovator’s Prescription (2009) examines how to fix the problems facing health care. So as to further examine and apply his frameworks to the social sector, Dr. Christensen founded Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank, in 2008.

An advisor to numerous countries and companies, including the government of Singapore, he is currently a board member at India’s Tata Consulting Services (NYSE: TCS), Franklin Covey (NYSE: FC), W.R. Hambrecht, and Vanu. Prof. Christensen also applies his frameworks via management consultancy Innosight which he co-founded in 2000, and Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm he founded in 2007.

In addition to his stint as a White House Fellow, he was an elected member of the Belmont, Massachusetts, Town Council for 8 years, and has served the Boy Scouts of America for 25 years as a scoutmaster, cub master, den leader and troop and pack committee chairman. Having served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Republic of Korea from 1971 to 1973, Dr. Christensen speaks fluent Korean, and he currently serves as an area authority in the Church’s Sixth Quorum of the Seventy. He and his wife Christine live in Belmont. They are the parents of five children, and have three grandchildren.

Update: An article about Dr. Christensen can be found in the 14 March 2011 issue of Forbes.

Posted December 2009

Why Am I a Believing Latter-day Saint?

Some people would have us believe that Mormonism is incompatible with academic sophistication and that intellectuals cannot feel comfortable in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a myth created largely by Mormons who, for various reasons, find fault with the Church. My observations of many years within LDS intellectual circles lead me to conclude entirely the opposite. Mormonism has produced thousands of scholars with advanced degrees from the best institutions who have found in their education and their disciplines countless reasons to affirm their belief in the Latter-day Saint faith. The real “Mormon intellectual community” consists of people who love their religion; see in it, its history, its sacred texts, and its leaders, the hand of God at work; and are faithful to their covenants regarding it. What follows is one small example from my own experience.

I have a PhD in Old Testament and the Ancient Near East from a prestigious university. My advisor was the most famous Bible scholar in the world, and all of my other teachers were well-known and widely published scholars. While in graduate school, I worked for four years for the premier organization that sponsors archaeological research in the Middle East, editing journal articles and books. There I read the latest research months before it was published and got to know the scholars who produced it. I published my first book in a prestigious series in my field.

Not long after I began my career at Brigham Young University, my interests shifted from Biblical Studies to Latter-day Saint history and theology, especially to the intersection of Mormonism and the Bible. I continue now to stay abreast of developments in archaeology and the ancient Near East, but I do most of my research and publication efforts in Latter-day Saint history and Latter-day Saint scriptural texts.

I mention all of this simply to point out that I was blessed to have a world-class education under superb scholars. I have researched and published in two distinct disciplines and have known, or studied the works of, the best scholars in each of those disciplines. As a result, and also as a consequence of being engaged in academic pursuits for over three decades, I think I have learned what good scholarship is. I believe I can recognize good and bad use of sources, good and bad academic arguments, good and bad analysis, and good and bad conclusions. I don’t think that I am easily swayed by bad ideas or fooled by nonsense.

So why am I a believing Latter-day Saint?

I am a believing Latter-day Saint because I find Mormonism to be the most rational, intellectually defensible system ever conceived for understanding the world and why I am in it.

God and Man

In recent years, there has been a trend among some people to promote their atheism aggressively in public discourse and in print, expressing loudly their contempt for the very idea that there is a God. I find this trend interesting, especially in light of how unscientific it is. It is based on the following reasoning: “Because I have no experience with something, it necessarily does not exist.”

I am a believing Latter-day Saint because, through Mormonism, I have had experiences with God. Things have happened in my life that I can only explain as encounters with the Divine. I have had thoughts placed in my mind that were not mine, I have received insights into complex matters beyond my ability, I have received answers to prayer, and I have witnessed miracles in my life and in the lives of others. Without exception, those experiences have left me more charitable, kind, empathetic, and forgiving than I was before—evidence to me of an encounter with something nobler and better than myself. And all of these experiences have involved the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its teachings.

I am a believing Latter-day Saint because no other religion in the world explains God and man as well as does Mormonism. When I was a doctoral student in the 1970s, I taught a world religions course with a fellow student (a faithful Evangelical) who is today an accomplished Old Testament scholar. He was leading a review session with our students on the topic of Christianity. Just to spice up the exchange, I asked, “What is the purpose of life in Christianity? Why do humans exist?” His answer was, “Humans exist to serve God.” I thought, “Well, the Babylonians believed that the gods created humans because they were too lazy to fix their own food, and they wanted someone to do it for them. This Christian explanation is no better than that.”

Around the same time, my wife and I bought a lovely Bible storybook from which we read to our little children. In the discussion of the Creation on the first day—“Let there be light”—we learned the following: “Before this, God was all alone in the darkness.”

These unsatisfying ideas do not fare well when compared with the doctrine revealed to Joseph Smith: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). “God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself, so that they might have one glory upon another” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 354).

Add to these statements the words of some of Joseph Smith’s prophetic successors: “All people who come to this earth and are born in mortality had a pre-existent, spiritual personality as the sons or daughters of the Eternal Father” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 12). “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. . . . In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which [each of] His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life” (Gordon B. Hinckley, et al., “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”).

These doctrines are personally fulfilling and spiritually uplifting because they are true. And they are the foundation on which many other truths revealed through Joseph Smith answer the questions the world has been struggling with since the beginning of history.

I am a believing Latter-day Saint because Mormonism answers those questions. It teaches that there is a purpose for the vast universe and for human existence, that humans are God’s children, that they had a pre-earthly life, and that God communicates with his children now. Latter-day Saint doctrine explains human agency, the origin of evil, the brotherhood of the whole human family, and the universality of God’s love. I find in Mormonism an unparalleled understanding of human nature, the saving mission of Jesus Christ, the meaning of the Bible, the purpose of revelation, the origin and objectives of Satan, the need for the Church, the blessing of covenants and sacraments that connect us with God, and eternal rewards that God has prepared for us after this life.

Modern Prophets and Scriptures

Many people, among both academic intellectuals and ardent believers in the Bible, reject in principle the idea of God calling prophets in our day. This is a puzzling attitude. It certainly isn’t based on rational thought or on the Bible. Nothing in the Bible suggests that God can’t call new prophets if he wants to, nor does the Bible foretell that such would not happen.

I would ask my academic friends and my Bible-believing friends: If there is a God, and if he were to call new prophets in our time, would you reject them simply because you have a rule that there is no God or that God can’t or won’t do such a thing? And if you honestly can say that you don’t have such a rule, how would you be able to recognize a true prophet if you saw one?

Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims can be tested. I have tested them with all the tools I know of, and I am completely convinced that God called and inspired him. One way we can test Joseph Smith is to examine the scriptures he produced. God revealed more scripture through Joseph Smith than through any other prophet in history, totaling 886 pages in modern English editions. Some people will choose to reject these revelations without examining them, on the grounds that there is no God, or because the Bible contains all of God’s word and is complete for all time. Setting aside the fact that there is no hint of this notion in the Bible itself, I would ask the following question: Suppose there is a God and that he were to send new scripture into the world? Would you reject it simply because you have a rule that there is no God, or that God can’t or won’t do such a thing? And if you don’t have a rule like that, how would you test the new scripture to see if it contains true messages from a divine source?

Consider the Book of Mormon. I believe that it presents an unavoidable challenge for Christians and academic intellectuals alike. The Book of Mormon contains the account of a thousand years of a previously unknown civilization, complete with scores of named characters and places, detailed events, with conversations, letters, flashbacks, and sermons interwoven into the narrative with perfect consistency. But the most remarkable thing about the book is its message of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon teaches, better than any other book in the world, the principle of faith in Jesus, the nature of sin and human agency, and the processes of repentance, baptism, and spiritual rebirth. It teaches these better than does the Bible itself and better than all the treatises and commentaries ever written by the greatest and most educated minds in Christian history. Each time I read the Book of Mormon, I am amazed by the intricacy of its writing and moved by the power of its message.

But consider its origin. Joseph Smith, an uneducated, inexperienced farm boy from the frontier of North America, produced the book when he was twenty-three years old! How can that be explained except as a miracle? Many explanations have been put forward in the past 180 years for the book’s origin, but none of them work except the one he gave himself—that it was written by men in ancient times and brought to him by an angel, and that he translated it by the power of God. Even though that explanation requires a God, prophets, an angel, and a miraculous translation, it is still the most simple and problem-free explanation ever proposed. I believe it.

I am a believing Latter-day Saint because I have studied intensely the Book of Mormon, the revelations of Joseph Smith, and Joseph Smith’s sermons and writings. Not only have I tested them intellectually, but I have tested them spiritually as well. The Book of Mormon promises those who read it that if they ask God if it is true, “he will manifest the truth of it . . . by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Moroni 10:4). I have received that manifestation of truth, and thus I know not only that the Book of Mormon is true but also that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s work on earth.

———————

Kent P. Jackson is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and is associate dean of Religion. He has been on the BYU faculty since 1980. He has a B.A. in ancient history and languages from BYU and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. He teaches, among other courses, the Pearl of Great Price, the Old and New Testaments, and an introduction to Islam.

Professor Jackson has taught three times at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. He is a former director of Near Eastern Studies at the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU and has traveled extensively in the Middle East. He has also served as regional president of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.

Professor Jackson does research primarily in Latter-day Saint scripture, doctrine, and history, with a focus on Mormonism and the Bible. In addition to numerous articles in this area, he has authored Joseph Smith’s Commentary on the Bible, Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, and Lost Tribes and Last Days: What Modern Revelation Tells Us about the Old Testament.

He is married with five children and nine grandchildren. He and his wife, Nancy, live in Orem, Utah.

Posted December 2009

The Mysteries of God

The dictionary defines mystery as something that people cannot understand, something beyond human knowledge or understanding, something that cannot be explained rationally.

That was precisely my definition and my understanding of religious mystery before I became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before I was confirmed a member of the Lutheran Church I attended preparatory meetings for almost a year. I liked our young pastor who told us Bible stories like Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea, Jonah being swallowed by a big fish, and Noah building the ark, but I had absolutely no idea about the deeper, symbolic meaning of these stories and, of course, I had no understanding of the “religious mysteries” taught by the church to which I belonged.

I did not know who God was. My family did not go to church ever, but my mother, a religious woman, had taught my sister and me to pray at night before we went to sleep. We would lie in bed and spoke short memorized children’s prayers. When I got older I no longer prayed regularly or sometimes recalled them only in my mind. I was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, and the system frowned on religion and prayer anyway. After the war, as I mentioned, I went to church instructions. I had no idea what the role of Jesus Christ was in my salvation. I thought Adam made a huge mistake in eating the “apple” (I really thought it was an apple he ate) because he lost paradise for all mankind. When I was about sixteen, I began to worry a bit as to how I could be saved. Did my grandparents who had died, my uncles and cousins who were killed in the war go to heaven or hell? Where would I go when I died? The only two alternatives promised by my priest were heaven or hell, nothing in between. I did not understand who I was and where I had come from.

I still remember vividly the agonizing pain and inconsolable weeks and months of emotional suffering my grandmother endured when she received the dreadful news that her youngest son had been killed in action in Russia during the Second World War. None of us, including our church, could give satisfactory consolation or hope. She was left to herself with her grief. My uncle Ernst was dead, we would never see him again, he was gone forever. What was now happening to him? Was his soul immortal? Where was he? It was a mystery to us, one that deeply disturbed and saddened us. And it was a question the priest could not answer satisfactorily either.

I remember that for me God was so distant and such a foreboding and threatening being for whom I felt no fervent love and who did not love me. He was indeed a mysterious figure. My church taught that God was a spirit without body, parts, or passions. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost were not three separate individuals, but of one substance, of one essence. They were the Trinity. I did not understand and even my priest said it was one of the beautiful mysteries of the church.

The teachings about salvation and the hereafter were equally vague and mysterious. Men and women, according to my priest, would no longer know each other after death, they would either be consigned to hell or heaven. In heaven all those who had died would be without a body, living as angels in a huge community, but there would be no family bonds. I wondered how God would decide whom to send to heaven and whom to hell. The answer was vague: Good people went to heaven, bad people to hell. I felt that I and my family were good people, but we were also sinners. How many and which sins did I have to commit to be assigned to hell, or how many good deeds must I do to be assigned to heaven? That, to me, was a fundamental problem, and the church gave no definitive answer.

I knew that the founder of my church, the Catholic monk and priest Martin Luther, had agonized for years over the problem of how man can please God and be saved by Him. The Catholic Church taught that man would be saved by works. So Luther and millions of other serious seekers of salvation performed works: Weekly if not daily they went to confession, uttered memorized prayers like the Lord’s Prayer, knelt in front of the altars and shrines of the church fervently imploring the images and statues of the saints to intercede for them with the austere Father. They castigated themselves to subject this evil, mortal flesh to the spirit. Often they walked for miles and miles on pilgrimages to sacred shrines to view the relics of saints and to pray for mercy and understanding. Yet the priest’s absolutions brought new doubts to the sinner. If he repeated a sin after confession, all the sins that had been previously committed would return and the sinner was surely doomed.

Martin Luther finally resolved the mystery for himself, denying the efficacy of works and proclaiming sola fide, by faith alone we are saved. But what does that mean, really? Is it sufficient to confess Christ, proclaiming that I have accepted Him as my Savior and that now I am saved? Can you imagine the confusion and spiritual agony these mysteries cause the willing believer?

To me the answer to my questions came as a miracle, indeed. In one of her travels, my mother had met a woman who was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It so happened that she had a son my age who not only attended church services on Sunday but officiated in the services because he held the priesthood. The two women talked about their sons and compared notes. While he was passing the sacrament I was playing soccer on Sunday. My mother and my younger sister became interested in the Church and attended every Sunday. One weekend my mother asked me to come with her the next Sunday. I really did not feel like it, but I respected and loved my mother dearly and could not refuse her invitation. So I went to my first sacrament meeting. The only detail I remember was that a young man, just two years older than I was at the time, stood at the pulpit and related the Joseph Smith Story. I had come home. I immediately knew God and Jesus Christ had indeed spoken to that fourteen-year-old boy and told him that none of the existing churches were true.

Gradually, grace by grace, the answers came through the enlightenment bestowed by the Holy Ghost, which I had received after my baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ. An authorized agent of Jesus Christ, holding the Priesthood of God, had laid his hands on my head and bestowed the gift of the Holy Ghost, who became my constant companion and revelator of truth.

I learned that the Scriptural phrase “The Mysteries of God” refers to knowledge that is hidden to the uninitiated, such as I had been, the person who does not have the Holy Ghost, but it is not incomprehensible to the enlightened Latter-day Saint.

7 And to them [the ones endowed with the Holy Ghost] will I reveal all mysteries, yea, all the hidden mysteries of my kingdom from days of old, and for ages to come, will I make known unto them the good pleasure of my will concerning all things pertaining to my kingdom.
8 Yea, even the wonders of eternity shall they know, and things to come will I show them, even the things of many generations.
9 And their wisdom shall be great, and their understanding reach to heaven; and before them the wisdom of the wise [the learned theologians] shall perish, and the understanding of the prudent shall come to naught.
10 For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will – yea, even those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man. (D&C 76:7-10)

The teachings of Christ are a mystery only to the world, but are revealed to the faithful children of God through the Holy Ghost:

61 If thou shalt ask, thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things – that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal.
65 Behold, thou shalt observe all these things, and great shall be thy reward; for unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but unto the world it is not given to know them. (D&C 42:61, 65)

I learned that the creeds of men are indeed “abominable” to our Heavenly Father since they are based on philosophy, not on scripture. They teach the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. The Trinity concept is obviously not based on sacred scripture or divine revelation but on philosophical thought. In the decades following Christ’s resurrection and the death of His apostles, learned scholars, schooled in the thought of Plato and other Greek philosophers, assumed leadership in the Church. They changed the plain doctrines of Christ and mystified them to intimidate the simple, uninitiated believer. Only the learned scholar pretends to understand the concept of the Trinity.

When Stephen, one of the first martyrs of the Church, was stoned to death by the angry mob, as recorded in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, he being filled with the Holy Ghost looked up into heaven and saw “Christ standing on the right hand of God.” Where is the mystery of that? When Christ was baptized by John in the River Jordan, he beheld God, who acknowledged His beloved Son, and the Holy Ghost descended. Does that appear as if the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one person, incomprehensible to human understanding?

The creed of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims: We believe that God, the Eternal Father, and his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are three distinct and separate personages as witnessed in 1820 by the young man, Joseph Smith, who knelt in the Sacred Grove and petitioned God for knowledge and wisdom. And the knowledge and wisdom that is so apparent to the initiated person in the Scriptures was affirmed once again and the veil was lifted from the mystery.

When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other – This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (Joseph Smith History 2:17)

The Holy Ghost also made me understand what eternal punishment is. It is not endless punishment, meaning that there is no end. Man’s soul will not be consigned for all time and eternity to endless damnation without ever the least chance or hope of some measure of redemption, but “eternal punishment” is “God’s punishment” and there is a distinct difference:

6 Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment. …
8 Wherefore, I [the Lord] will explain unto you this mystery, for it is meet unto you to know even as mine apostles. …
10 For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore –
11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.
12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment. (D&C 19:6-12)

It is a comforting thought, that punishment of a sinner is not without end, but is measured by God and mitigated by His mercy.

What about my uncle Ernst who was killed in action in Russia? And what about my grandparents and all my ancestors whom I have learned to dearly love? They never heard about the restored church and gospel and thus had no chance to decide whether they wanted to accept Christ or not. Are they forever condemned to eternal hell, as Luther feared for the unbaptized Greek scholars and philosophers whom he admired so much?

What does Paul mean when he asks, “Otherwise, what shall they do who are being baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are they being baptized for them?” (Corinthians 15:29).

The Lord promised to prepare “many mansions” for His followers (John 14:2). Modern revelations assert that all men will be saved into one of the many kingdoms that God has prepared for His children. The Apostle Paul writes about eternal kingdoms that differ in glory as the sun differs in brightness from the moon, and the light of the moon differs in brightness from the stars in the heavens (1 Corinthians 15:40, 41). Modern revelation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith reaffirms this eternal truth (D&C 76:70-81, 96-98).

Can you image the weight that was lifted from my shoulders when I learned that my grandparents and their children, my aunts and uncles and their children, will be taught the gospel in the spirit world and will have the opportunity to accept it and thus may be saved into eternal glory? Not only will my uncle Ernst rise in the resurrection, but he will be assigned to a kingdom of glory and – dare I say it? – even find a mate, be sealed to her, and raise a righteous posterity.

That, indeed, is a miracle and a mystery, but not a mystery beyond my understanding. How glorious are the teachings of Christ! Can we comprehend the message of joy and hope contained in the 76th section of the Doctrine and covenant alone? If this were the only revelation received by a modern prophet, we would sing eternal praises of gratitude to our Heavenly Father, for opening our understanding to one of the greatest mysteries.

I will meet my uncle Ernst again, I will embrace my grandparents whom I so dearly loved, I will be embraced by my father and mother, and by my beloved wife, Joyce, who passed away two years ago.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by proclaiming the good news, the true Gospel of Christ, saved my spiritual and intellectual life. Without the restored gospel I would have become a total skeptic like most of my contemporary German friends. After the traumatic awakening from a brainwashed totalitarian political philosophy that I had undergone in my youth, I determined never again to place my trust in any system or belief that proclaimed absolute truth. But thanks to the grace of God I was enlightened and privileged to decipher and discern the heavenly mysteries: that God so loves mankind, including me, that He sent His Only Begotten Son to redeem us, and that He prepared a kingdom of glory not only for me, but for all my fellow men, a kingdom in which we live in joyous reunion with all our loved ones and with God and Christ, who are separate and distinct personages.

————————–

Hans-Wilhelm Kelling earned his Abitur in Bremen, Germany, and then, following studies at Brigham Young University (BYU), received a Ph.D. in German literature from Stanford University. A former chairman of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at BYU, he directed the University’s European Studies Program for fifteen years and its foreign language houses for twenty-three.

Professor Kelling has been, among others, a Fulbright Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow (twice), a BYU Alcuin Fellow for Distinguished Teaching in General Education, and a fellow of the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), in Göttingen. In 1980, he received the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Teaching Award from Brigham Young University.

His areas of academic specialization include the classical period of German literature (particularly Goethe), twentieth-century German literature, the cultural history of Germany, and computer-assisted language learning. Among his publications are The Idolatry of Poetic Genius in German Goethe Criticism (Berne: Herbert Lang, 1970), Wie man’s sagt und schreibt (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), Deutsche Kulturgeschichte (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974; 2d rev. ed. 1978; New York: McGraw-Hill, completely revised and updated editions 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2008), and, with Christian Gellinek, Avenues toward Christianity: Mormonism in Comparative Church History (Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2001). He currently serves as German editor of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.

He has held many positions in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not least of which involved three years of service as president of its Germany Munich Mission.

Posted December 2009

I first paid serious attention to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints early in my high school years, because I found them attractive and intriguing. Very soon thereafter, I also began to suspect that they were true. I was impressed by a radical set of doctrines – radical in the best sense of the word, meaning deep down to the roots – that rested not upon inferences and speculation but upon credible witnesses. I continue to be exhilarated by the grandeur, vast scope, and cosmic sweep of Mormonism, as well as by its dramatic history, and I have long been firmly convinced that it is all that it proclaims itself to be.

From the outset, my conviction that the startling claims of Joseph Smith and the church he founded are true has rested upon a mixture of intellectual analysis, empirical evidence, and what many would call flashes of intuition. (With my fellow Latter-day Saints, I would term these personal revelations.) In its most ordinary form, such intuition for me has resembled the Sehnsucht or sense of longing that C. S. Lewis describes in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Lewis recounts his quest for what he calls “pure northernness,” for the immense, cold, clear, and fiercely beautiful world that he had glimpsed in various works of literature and – perhaps rather oddly to some – in the music of Richard Wagner. I know exactly what he means. Experiences from youthful backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas of California, coupled with two years as a missionary in Germanic Switzerland, have made that very image a potent one for me, too. Like Lewis, I believe that such yearnings point validly to the possibility of their own fulfillment. If there were no actual object for such desires, we would not have them. Our hunger indicates the existence of food; our thirst demonstrates the existence of water. Yet I am convinced, as Lewis was, that our spiritual yearnings will not and cannot be fully satisfied in this life, however desperately we may seek to quiet them with inadequate substitutes. Even the splendor of the Swiss Alps or the Canadian Rockies, even the exultation of Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” or the majestic choruses of Puccini’s Turandot, do not fully still the longing. But they do, I believe, hint at the existence of something that can. Augustine was right: Our hearts will continue restless until they rest in God.

For, by contrast, the secular, naturalistic position seems to me a constricted, flat, and ultimately meaningless worldview that trivializes all of human life. I’m struck by Huston Smith’s image, in one of his later books, of a tunnel (which he uses to symbolize secularism) running beneath a gorgeous alpine meadow. (Again, coincidentally, there is the image of “northernness.”) Travelers in the tunnel have literally no idea of the glory and vastness of the world through which or, rather, beneath which they are traveling.
Not only is the cosmos that Mormonism discloses to me a rich one, but the doctrines of Mormonism are satisfyingly deep even when compared with other, more “major,” religious traditions. Mormonism is a profound way of looking at the world, seven days a week. It preserves all of the fundamental virtues of theism in general and of Christianity in particular, including the deity of Christ and his vital saving role as Redeemer and Mediator. Indeed, buttressed by the testimonies of modern prophets and apostles, it provides solid backing for Christian theism in a corrosively skeptical age. But it also bathes religious faith in a brilliant and exciting new light. (I cannot conceive of a more hopeful message.) And its claims withstand examination. I have attempted, and continue to attempt, to set out in writing some of the powerful empirical evidences, including marks of Semitic antiquity in the uniquely Latter-day Saint scriptural texts, that, to my mind, argue for the authenticity of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling and the inspiration of the movement he founded. I will have made only the merest beginning on that task when I finally turn my computer off.

At the same time, however, Mormonism is remarkably open to the idea that God is at work in other communities beyond the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While, as almost everyone who knows anything about us surely realizes, we are ardent missionaries, we do not condemn others to damnation. Although we declare, quite frankly, that the fullness of saving truth, religious ordinances, and priesthood authority has been entrusted to the Lord’s restored Church, we also believe that truth and goodness are to be found elsewhere. God has inspired and does inspire others beyond our community, and most likely even unknown to us. In the course of my work editing and publishing classical texts of philosophy, theology, mysticism, and science from various Near Eastern languages, I’m frequently asked, “Why are the Mormons doing this?” I typically respond along the following lines: You know us as an exclusivist group, dispatching tens of thousands of missionaries around the world, summoning others to accept God’s modern revelation to living prophets and apostles. This is accurate. But it is incomplete. We are also, though the fact is far less well known, an inclusivist group, open to all truth and all people. Our own canonical scripture demands of us that we “seek . . . out of the best books words of wisdom,” and our prophets have advised us to gather up truth wherever we can find it. Even more fundamentally, our view of missionary activity (extending beyond this life) and of vicarious service for those who have died without hearing our message, testifies to the impartial love of God for all of his children, no matter when or where they have lived. “Our Heavenly Father,” the Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.” And our expansive view of the eternal destiny of humankind means that, in the end, only those who defiantly and finally refuse God’s love will be deprived of at least some level of salvation. This is, to me, an immensely comforting doctrine.

My experience with Mormon communities on five continents replicates, even in the very human problems that all of us experience (and cause), the life of the early Christian church that I see depicted in the biblical Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul. Latter-day Saint “wards” provide genuine community, a “haven in a heartless world,” in which members of the Church live together in love and mutual caring. Lacking a professional clergy, each of us is responsible to lead and teach and serve. And the power of Latter-day Saint doctrines is especially evident at what might be called the great “nodal points” of human life, such as weddings, the birth of children, and death. Marriage and family are given not only social significance but eternal weight, which powerfully sustains the vows that undergird them and charges even seemingly small daily acts with cosmic meaning. The Church’s emphasis on the central concept of “covenant” seems to me especially relevant in our individualistic society. Additionally, we benefit from rituals of blessing on occasions of crisis and illness, as well as at moments of new opportunity. And the gospel speaks with especial eloquence at times of death, when, in the Latter-day Saint view, those who depart do so into a very real and concrete world in which social ties and family relationships flourish even more richly than they do here, and where learning and growth continue into boundless eternity.

On a firmly practical level, the organization of the Church continues to astonish me with its brilliance and adaptability. Whether responding to catastrophes or sustaining individuals and families during rough times, it is remarkably effective. Specifically, in an era when female-headed households are on the rise in the United States and other western nations, when the disappearance of fathers increasingly leads to what has been termed the “feminization of poverty,” Mormonism, I think, does a strikingly good job at the difficult task of socializing males. From the very earliest stages of adolescence, priesthood callings (and especially missions) train them to serve, to grow up, to think of others rather than of themselves. And from their earliest days, they are taught that their most important role will not be as athletes or as CEOs, but as husbands and fathers, and – notwithstanding the unfortunate connotations the word carries in some circles – as patriarchs, whose primary function is to serve and (literally) to bless their families. This seems to me clearly not a retrograde step but, in the climate of our time, a necessary and salutary one.

Are there dry periods? Yes. Of course. I believe that mortal life was designed to put us through such trials. And they’re not always brief. During those times, though, I recall moments of piercing insight when, as Latter-day Saints sometimes say, the veil between this world and the next has seemed very thin. In my case, at least, these have often been connected with what we regard as the holiest places on earth, the temples built and dedicated by the Church. These sanctuaries are marked off as sacred and inviolate from the ordinary, compromising traffic of daily life and its mundane demands, and I have experienced them as beachheads of that other world in this one.
Do questions remain? Yes. But they intrigue and suggest; they do not paralyze. “For now,” as the apostle Paul noted, “we see though a glass, darkly.” We “know in part.” But I have seen enough and understand enough to be assured that the day will come when we shall see “face to face.” And “then shall I know even as also I am known.” Until then, as the ancient American prophet Nephi said, although “I do not know the meaning of all things,” “I know that [God] loveth his children.”

A famous and somewhat enigmatic fragment from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus says that “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” It is my professional obligation, as a scholar, to know many things. (I wish I knew many more than I do.) But it has been the most fulfilling joy of my life to know one big and very important thing. The nineteenth-century zoologist Ernst Haeckel is reported to have said that, if he could have just one question definitively answered, it would be, Is the universe friendly? My experience, my reason, and the teachings of modern prophets and apostles all concur in testifying that it is.

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A native of southern California, Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Dr. Peterson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he teaches Arabic language and literature at all levels, Islamic philosophy, Islamic culture and civilization, Islamic religion, the Qur’an, the introductory and senior “capstone” courses for Middle Eastern Studies majors, and various other occasional, specialized classes. He is the editor of the twice-annual FARMS Review, the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics–including a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007)–and has lectured across the United States, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at various Islamic universities in the Near East and Asia.

He has served as a member of the board, chairman of the board, associate executive director, co-director of research, and, currently, director of outreach for what is now known as BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship–which has, among other things, produced a computer-digitized version of the Dead Sea Scrolls; electronically recovered damaged documents from the ruins of Herculaneum (Italy), Petra (Jordan), Bonampak (Mexico), and elsewhere; and, with the Vatican Apostolic Library in Rome, electronically published editions of ancient Syriac Christian manuscripts. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of BYU’s four-part Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which includes not only the Islamic Translation Series but three sister series: the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, Eastern Christian Texts, and the Library of the Christian East. These series publish dual-language editions of classical works of medieval Arabic and Persian philosophy, Arabic medicine and science, and early Syriac and Christian Arabic literature. (The volumes are distributed by the University of Chicago Press.). In 2007, in recognition of his establishment of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, Dr. Peterson was named a Utah Academy Fellow and declared a lifetime member of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters.

Dr. Peterson served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission (1972-1974), and, for approximately eight years, on the Gospel Doctrine writing committee for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He currently serves as the bishop of a student singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University.

Dr. Peterson is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they are the parents of three sons.

See, additionally, Dr. Peterson’s chapter in Expressions of Faith: Testimonies of Latter-day Saint Scholars.

Posted December 2009