Introduction
I try to be of the mindset that no matter how many times I hear the same thing, I can always learn something new from it. But in recent days, I’ve found that my formerly optimistic assumption is more of a theory than a lived practice.
Consider a typical Latter-day Saint sacrament meeting. After the ordinance has been completed, the first speaker takes the pulpit, preps their materials, gives a bright smile, and says, “Good morning/afternoon brothers and sisters, my name is X, and today I have been asked to speak on Y.” Obviously, you fill in the Xs and Ys with the unique details, but I’m fairly certain this is the obligatory way everyone begins their talk. And that’s fine. I’m in full support of genre conventions that help guide our communication. But then come a series of peculiarly similar statements. Something like, “Feasting upon the word of God with real intent will cause our faith in Christ to grow.” Or instead, “I bear witness of the divine truth that God is our Heavenly Father, and he loves you individually and uniquely.” Maybe even this classic testimony finisher: “I know the Church is true. I know that Joseph Smith is the Prophet, and that this is the restored Gospel. I know that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and it is through the Atonement that we can be healed.” Each of these statements convey important truths, but for some reason, my mind tends to dip in and out of attention as people recite them from one Church talk to the next, week after week after month after year.
I start off strong, believe me. I’m fully present. I know the topic, something along the lines of spiritual momentum. The speaker has borrowed elements from President Nelson’s address in a prior General Conference. They’ve inserted a direct quote here and there. But, uh, I’ve got leftovers in the fridge at home, and the fries are probably going to be soggy. I knew I should’ve just eaten them when they were fresh. Wait, what are they saying? Right. Read your scriptures. Very important. I’ve been slacking there. Oh, you know where else I’ve been slacking? That essay. I’ve got to remember to submit it tomorrow night. Did I proofread it? Wait, ah! Pay attention. What did they say? Yes, of course. Service. Man, I’ve been really bad at ministering lately. Then again, when was the last time I was ministered to? Does anyone actually minister? It’s kind of a funny word. Min–i–ster. Sigh. How long has this talk been going? Only five minutes?!
You get the idea. And I know it’s a problem.
I know I should strive to focus on what’s being expressed, even though I still find that my mind is never where I want it to be. But there had to be something I could do. Fortunately, I had a really good idea.
Interviews!
Okay, I know that sounds incredibly boring, but hear me out: I figured that others’ unique insights would trigger my own re-appreciation of these oft-quoted truths. In some way, I could step outside of myself to understand and see anew. It also allowed me to indulge my fondness for intrareligious and interreligious conversation—definitely a bonus!
I began by learning about the religious background of each interviewee.
Interviewee 1 considers herself spiritual but does not believe in God in the same way Christians do. As a result, she does not identify with any organized religion. However, she grew up in Utah and was frequently exposed to different components of the Church and its culture.
Interviewee 2 considers himself Anglican. He formerly investigated several religions, including the Latter-day Saint tradition, and subsequently became quite familiar with the beliefs and practices of the Church, though he never became a member.
Interviewee 3 grew up in a household that practices a flavor of Hinduism, and later discovered that other family members also practiced Sikhism. In her youth, she was very invested in her religion, but in later years found herself questioning certain aspects of it. While she no longer participates in as many outward practices, she still appreciates the religion’s philosophies, insights into human nature, and its direction in what to value in life. She also admitted that she knows little about the Church.
Contrary to interviewees 1, 2, and 3, interviewees 4, 5, and 6 had generally similar backgrounds. All of them grew up in the Church, though interviewees 4 and 5 mostly grew up outside Utah, whereas interviewee 6 grew up in Utah. All three consider themselves devout.
With this context established, I then asked the interviewees to provide me with a definition of some common statements that appear in the Church. What follows are snapshots of their responses.
A Collection of Thoughts
“On the Lord’s errand”
Interviewee 1: “You may not understand what you are going through right now, but there’s meaning behind it. So, keep at it, because you’re supposed to.”
Interviewee 2: “This could be general, something like, ‘I am trying to follow the path of the Lord, the path He has chosen for me.’ Or it could be a temporal thing where you’re taking on a specific duty, like Relief Society president.”
Interviewee 3: “To be doing something that aligns with whatever your particular God considers right, important, or urgent for that moment or time.”
Interviewee 4: “This refers to doing what the Lord would have you do. Since I served a mission, my mission was very applicable to that: I was doing the Lord’s work here on earth.”
Interviewee 5: “Whatever action you’re taking is with the purpose of serving the Lord. For example, a lot of people describe missionary service as being ‘on the Lord’s errand’ because all your actions there are, hopefully, in service to the Lord.”
Interviewee 6: “You have dedicated your life to God.”
“Tender mercy”
Interviewee 1: “There might be times where things are tough for everybody, but God sends some sort of reprieve. But I feel like, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and can send these tender mercies anyway, why would he even allow there to be bad moments in the first place? Why couldn’t he just make goodness the norm?”
Interviewee 2: “We typically use this to say something like, ‘Lord forgive us according to thy tender mercies.’ I feel like it would be used in prayer mostly, maybe a homily or a sermon, because it seems like it’s connected to atonement and sin.”
Interviewee 3: “Something came in the nick of time, or it was a big relief, or a kindness that was especially appreciated or needed.”
Interviewee 4: “It’s not like a blessing you take for granted. Instead, it’s similar to a blessing that’s sort of like, ‘wow, I really needed that in this moment.’”
Interviewee 5: “Some unexpected, small miracle. Not something big, but something nice.”
Interviewee 6: “This one has a connotation that I don’t love. In a way, it makes you feel like God is blessing you when you don’t deserve to be blessed. Maybe, in a more positive context, it also references a blessing that surprised you, or that was fitting for you in a moment of need.”
“Let God prevail”
Interviewee 1: “I kind of don’t like that statement. I feel like it’s saying that your life is property, it’s not in your own hands, everything is already written for you, and you can’t make a difference. It seems like a hardcore determinism: any decision you make is a predesigned fate that you have no control over.”
Interviewee 2: “I like this a lot. It describes so much of what Christian living is supposed to be. It captures the idea of free will or moral agency because you are choosing God to prevail in your life. Instead of watching this Netflix show, I read a passage of scripture, or I go out of my way to help this person because I am choosing God. If I don’t let God prevail, I choose destruction by default.”
Interviewee 3: “It sounds like it’s the whole, ‘it’s all part of the plan,’ type of thing. Maybe you say this in response to someone’s shock or frustration regarding a certain circumstance: ‘This is the way of the world that God wants,’ or, ‘It is fated by God, and you need to see it through and believe that your God knows what He’s doing.’”
Interviewee 4: “That’s a phrase that’s been used a lot more since President Nelson has been called. So, it’s when you align your will with God’s will and let what He wants for your life to come to pass.”
Interviewee 5: “President Nelson always talks about the gathering of Israel, and in order for members of the Church to do God’s work in preparation for the Second Coming, we must allow God to prevail in our lives. For example, to put Christ’s teachings and the words of the Prophet and what we think God would have us do, over our personal wants.”
Interviewee 6: “Humility. Be humble enough to know that you don’t know everything. Take direction, guidance, and counsel from a being who is categorized as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.”
“I know the Church is true/This is the Restored Church”
Interviewee 1: “The first time I heard this, I was at a farewell, and—I do like this quote, and I hear it in a nice way—but throughout the service, every single person who stood up said it. All of the sudden, the phrase became empty. It felt like they had to say it and not that they genuinely wanted to say it. I feel like whenever you say this, it should be a reassuring statement for you and for everybody around you because you feel the Church is actually true. You should use it when it’s real.”
Interviewee 2: “Most religions typically claim the truth of their specific Church, though they do so differently. Latter-day Saints have a presumption that the previous church went astray, but somehow they restored it.”
Interviewee 3: “I don’t know if ‘Church’ is referring to the community of beings who are gathering, a specific set of principles, or a particular text. As for ‘restored’—I’m assuming that they’re saying their Church is one that has improved upon a prior failing of another church. They’re saying they’ve fixed, enhanced, or improved it. Or, it was returned to an original form or glory.”
Interviewee 4: “A lot of the time, people will ask Heavenly Father if the Church is true, and they’ll explain some sort of experience where they’ve felt confirmation of that. They believe in it with their full heart. When we talk about the Restoration, though, we’re referencing Joseph Smith, who had to ask God which of all the churches was true. He received his answer that there were no true churches, and eventually, he became the one to restore the Church of Jesus Christ. So, we can also receive confirmation from God if it is true that Joseph Smith restored the Church.”
Interviewee 5: “Most people, when they use this phrase, are referring to personal experience that’s emotionally driven. It’s almost like they’re sharing their truth. We can be referring to the Church as the people, a set of doctrines, beliefs, scriptural texts, or the organized religion. The word ‘restore,’ though, references our belief that Christ set up an organization of the Church, and this organization—including its doctrines—were lost over time after Christ’s death. Then, Joseph Smith restored the exact same organization, doctrines, and priesthood that Christ implemented in his original Church.”
Interviewee 6: “I think that there are two distinctions to this term. For some people, they view it as an indicator to others of their devotion to the Church. Other times, people question if they can ever really know that the Church is true, but they believe—or want to believe—that it is. And I would add that when people are referring to the Church, they are referring to everything, not just the religion. It’s like a thesis statement for all other beliefs.”
“Child of God”
Interviewee 1: “Some people take it that you are a literal descendant of God, but I’m not sure if it needs to be read literally. I think it means that we’re all interconnected, in a way, because we all come from the same place, so we’re all one. We’re family.”
Interviewee 2: “This necessarily implicates the very significant idea that God is our Father. And this is the same Father as Jesus Christ’s. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ literally instructs us to pray to God as though he is our Father.”
Interviewee 3: “You are a person who is such that they are a child of God, or, if you’re a believer, you’re a child of God. Or, this might be referring to anything that’s living that God has created.”
Interviewee 4: “We are the spirit children of our Heavenly Father, which is why we see him as a father figure, because he created our spirits. And because we are children of God, and we have a Savior that has atoned for our sins, we have this ability to change and grow and become the best person that we can.”
Interviewee 5: “When we reference that everyone is a child of God, it’s their spirit we reference. Obviously, everyone has a physical mother and father, but we believe that all of our spirits came from the same Father and Mother, and they are the God that we worship and praise, so therefore, we are all children of God, and we are all equal because we come from that same root.”
Interviewee 6: “If you break this down, a child is someone who is not fully developed, someone who is learning and growing into something more. So, I think it means the potential to become something divine. I also think it’s important to note that, if we are children of God, and God is good, then that means we—as spirit descendants of God—have been, are currently, and will be, good.
Piecing It Together
Statements I had previously categorized as “overused” and possibly “boring,” had now been taken up by the interviewees, who spun them in a myriad of directions. At the conclusion of these interviews, I asked each interviewee the question that had initially begun my little project: how can we remember to engage newly with these statements no matter how many times we have heard them before?
All admitted that this would be a difficult task, given the nature of communication and all the external noise that confounds it. Even still, they believed there were some guidelines that may help—namely, intentionality, action, reflection, and humility.
Interviewees 2 and 3 stressed our roles as intentional speakers. In particular, Interviewee 3 suggested that “we could do a better job at explaining the why” that belies our belief in these statements. After all, “it’s one thing to know the truth, but it’s another thing to understand why the truth is the truth.” Our capacity for storytelling, our ability to explain how we came to know that these statements are true, or why we find them to be true, can be powerful conduits that help others understand what these statements might mean for themselves. Language and communication are malleable and complex tools, and it is important to be aware of—as Interviewee 3 puts it—“not just what we are saying, but why are we saying it? And why do we say the things we do?” When we use these statements, we must understand what they mean, why we might be motivated to use them, and in what contexts we should be using them in.
But merely saying something is distinct from actually living it. Interviewees 1 and 5 pointed out that you may make use of commonly quoted statements, but it will not mean anything to you unless you actively live it. In the words of Interviewee 1, “you have to really understand what it means and actually connect to it in order to use it in a way that wouldn’t be trite.” In essence, this allows you to connect with the statement in a very practical sense. Interviewee 5 provides an example of this, stating, “if you are the kind of person that “treat[s] other people like a child of God, you know what that means in action. And when you say it through words, others will understand what you mean because you’ve acted that out in your life.” You become representative of it.
Interviewee 4, along with Interviewees 2 and 5, focused on the role of the listener and their capacity for reflection. Specifically, Interviewee 4 noted that it is important for us to “really think about the things that we’re hearing and saying. We can choose to remember [these statements] as divine truths, or not. In some cases, the repetition of these phrases is precisely what testifies of their importance” (Interviewee 4). It is up to us to take the responsibility to contemplate and reflect on the words being said. While it can be easy to sigh and roll our eyes, this supposed superiority will obstruct us from gleaning any new, important insights, such as how we might not be living the principles taught in these statements despite our claims that we believe in them.
Interviewee 6 chose to emphasize humility, a trait that intersects with all others previously mentioned. We must understand that there is always more to learn about these simple statements, as our knowledge is never complete. Interviewee 6 reminds us that the moment we think we have learned everything is simultaneously the moment when “truth gets boring. But when we let curiosity take the lead, we grow in our intelligence, which brings us closer to God. We learn and understand more about his infinite nature, which is truth,” unending truth. We have the capacity to change our minds, to receive the seemingly repetitive or mundane and turn it over and over again, dissecting it, so as to see it from all its many different, complementary angles.
As I listened to these handful of thoughts—these multiple perspectives—the statements I had formerly seen as monotonous began to transform into something expansive and living. Each person had left a unique imprint upon these words, taking me down varied strings of thought, from what it meant to have a divine heritage, to their stance on praying to Saint Mary, to the existence of Heavenly Mother. Obviously, much of this could not be reflected in their interviews, but this chance at interreligious as well as intrareligious dialogue was sacred.
It reminded me how to listen, how to pay attention to the profound rationales, explanations, and spiritual journeys of those I engaged with. In a brief moment, I was allowed entry to their minds and hearts, to know the way they thought as well as to witness the birth of their thoughts, to see how they themselves had come to fully realize and understand what I had not. For a moment, I saw through their eyes.
There is always another way of reflecting and engaging, of hearing and seeing. The next time I forget this principle, forget how to see newly, I’ll try tilting my head.