Audacious Faith: Appreciating the Unique Power and Singular Appeal of LDS Doctrine

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies officially began on January 1, 2000. The choice of date was purposeful, coinciding with the beginning of a new millennium. It also makes it easy for us to remember the answer when we are asked how long the center has been operating.

In my role as associate director and now director of the center, I interact on an almost daily basis with people from around the world of almost every imaginable religious background—and with many who are not religious at all. Occasionally, usually at a reception or dinner toward the end of a conference, I am asked to explain something about what Mormons believe. Usually someone will want to know what is unique and distinctive about the Church or how it fits with other Christian denominations.

I have come to welcome opportunities like these because they give me a chance to talk about not only similarities between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other faiths but also some of the things that make us different. It is these differences—as well as a few of the ­similarities—that I would like to speak of today.

Audacious Faith

I have entitled my remarks “Audacious Faith: Appreciating the Unique Power and Singular Appeal of LDS Doctrine.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word audacious as “daring, bold, confident, intrepid.”¹ I have come to believe that many basic LDS doctrines are audacious in this sense.

A Peculiar People

I remember when I was a boy being taught to take pride in the things that make us different. We were taught that Mormons are and should be “a peculiar people”² and that we were to be in the world but not of it.³

But in the second half of my life, which coincides with the entire life of most in this room, it seems to me that we as a church have become better at explaining and are more inclined to emphasize our similarities with other Christian churches. This is an understandable part of an effort of the Church and its people to be viewed as less odd and more like others. As recently as Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, the Church and its members were still expected to address the tired, old question of whether Mormons are Christians.

We have sometimes found ourselves in exasperation repeating the name of the Church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church has even changed its logo to emphasize the centrality of Jesus Christ. I, for one, welcome this renewed emphasis on Jesus Christ and His Atonement.

But it is also true that some of our understandings of even basic doctrines are quite distinctive.

The Premortal Existence

I learned this fact as a freshman at Georgetown University. I was assigned to a dormitory called Darnall Hall and a roommate named Tom Warner, who was a good Catholic boy from Queens, New York. His father was a police officer, and Tom was the first person in his family to go to college. He and I became fast friends, and soon I felt that perhaps it was no accident that we had found ourselves as roommates.

One night while we were lying on our cots, I asked him, “Tom, do you think we knew each other in the premortal existence?”

His bedside light snapped on, and he looked at me incredulously: “The premortal existence—what’s that?”

I answered casually, “You know, the pre-earth life, where we lived as spirit children of our Heavenly Father.”

Now he was looking at me like I was from another planet or, perhaps more likely, as if I were a member of a strange religious cult, as others on our dormitory floor had already warned him.

“There is no such thing as a premortal existence,” he said, “and if there is, I wasn’t there.” His life, he explained, began at conception. Then the light snapped off.

I was stunned. I thought of myself as a reasonably sophisticated and well-educated person, but I had no idea how unique and unusual the doctrine of the premortal existence is. I had thought it was a shared part of Christian heritage, and although I believe the doctrine has a power and appeal that is very strong, and although there is scriptural and other evidence that many early Christians embraced the doctrine of the premortal existence,⁴ it is not a part of orthodox Christian or Protestant theology.⁵

My law school colleague Dean D. Gordon Smith joined the Church as a student here at BYU. The premortal existence, he says, is one of the doctrines that first gripped him. As he explained it:

Even when I was a very young man, questions about cosmic justice occupied my mind, and the teachings about the plan of salvation made sense of a world that seemed unjust and inequitable. Equipped with even a basic understanding of the premortal existence, I can view the varied circumstances of the people in this world neither as a product of chance nor as a reward or punishment for prior behavior but instead as part of a grand plan of learning designed by a loving God. This understanding helps me to remain optimistic that even our deepest trials and most profound struggles have meaning and purpose.

If you think about it, it is an audacious claim that we as human beings are coeternal with God,⁶ that we existed with Him through the eternities, and that this earth life is but the middle act in a three-act play,⁷ with premortal and postmortal life bookending and giving meaning to mortal life.

The Godhead

Consider another very basic Mormon doctrine: the nature of the Godhead. A few years ago at the BYU Law School, we were hosting a conference on religious iconography. An orthodox Christian priest from Oxford University had been invited to participate. He was an imposing fellow who wore dark robes, had a long beard, and wore a heavy cross around his neck. He explained that as part of his preparation for coming to Provo, he had decided to do some homework about what Mormons believe. He didn’t want a dry academic account, so he called the Mormon missionaries and invited them over. Can you imagine how nervous they must have been?

He described them as earnest and polite and a little naïve—a description with which many of us can probably relate. He explained:

I asked them to tell me what was unique and ­different about the Mormon Church, and they began to tell me about how Joseph Smith as a teenager was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. Then they showed me a truly remarkable piece of religious iconography. It was a picture of God and Jesus, depicted as two men in white robes and with white hair, standing in the air, with Joseph on the ground leaning back in astonishment.

Like me, you can probably picture the exact illustration from the Gospel Art Kit. Then he projected it onto the screen.

“What a remarkable piece of religious iconography,” he said, “depicting God and Jesus Christ as two men with bodies.” This, he explained, was a complete recalculation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

I have to admit I had never thought of this illustration as noteworthy religious iconography. But think about it: it depicts, in an illustration a child can understand, something profound about the nature of God and Jesus Christ.

God is not a distant, abstract being without body parts or passions; He is a perfect and exalted and embodied man. The implications of this doctrine are rather stunning. When Mormons quote from Genesis that man is created “in the image of God,”⁸ that we are His children, it is not a metaphor; it is a rather audacious claim about the nature of God and the nature of man.

The Nature of God

Joseph Smith often taught that the most important thing for us to understand is the true nature of God. Only then, he taught, can we understand the true nature of man. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 states:

The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

In the King Follett Sermon, recorded in April 1844, only a few months before he died, Joseph said:

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! . . .

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another.⁹

This view of God is so audacious that it is dismissed as blasphemous by some and as unbelievable by others. But it is one of the most simple, elegant, and brilliant truths of the restored gospel. God is our Father, and His work and His glory is to bring us home to Him.¹⁰

Brigham Young put it this way:

When you . . . see our Father, you will see a being with whom you have long been acquainted, and He will receive you into His arms, and you will be ready to fall into His embrace and kiss Him . . . , you will be so glad and joyful.¹¹

Human Nature

Along with its remarkable teachings about the nature of God, Mormon doctrine propounds one of the most optimistic and progressive understandings of human nature that exists in any religious or philosophical account of what it means to be human. This understanding requires us to think positively about ourselves and each other. In Joseph Smith’s understanding, not only is God more like us, but we are more like God and are oriented to become even more like God than in many other Christian understandings. Thus for Mormons it is more than metaphor when Christ appealed in His Intercessory Prayer: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”¹²

For those, like me, who may be inclined as a matter of disposition toward melancholy, the account of who we are as human beings and who we may become, which we are taught in the restored gospel, is a powerful antidote to pessimism or discouragement.¹³ It is audacious to believe that God uses the simple things of the world (us) to confound the wise. It is audacious to believe that God loves broken things (including us and, in particular, our hearts) and that it is from the crooked timber of humanity (again us) that God accomplishes His ends. It is audacious to believe that when we come unto Him, God gives and shows us our weaknesses that we may be humble and that then, through our faith in Him, He will make weak things strong.¹⁴ It is audacious to believe that we are His children.

The Restoration

When I am asked how Mormons fit in with other Christians, I usually emphasize the idea of restoration. I explain that we believe that when Christ was on the earth, He established His Church and gave priesthood authority to the apostles to continue His work after He was gone. In time the doctrines were changed and the priesthood authority was lost. When Joseph Smith received priesthood authority from John the Baptist and Peter, James, and John, it was a restoration of the priesthood authority that existed when Christ had established His Church on the earth. Today the Church is led by apostles and prophets, just as it was when Jesus set up His Church. To be sure, these are audacious claims.

A few years ago I was sitting in a café in Istanbul overlooking the great Hagia Sophia, now a museum and before that a mosque and before that a Christian church dating back to the year 537.

I was explaining to a Muslim friend that Mormons are “restoration Christians.” He is a law professor and is translating one of my books into Turkish. After listening to my explanation, he looked at me and said, “I like that. I think I’m a restoration Muslim; I’m just waiting for the restoration.”

The Standard of Truth

The Prophet Joseph understood that what he claimed to have experienced was almost unbelievable. Near the end of his life he said, “I don’t blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself.”¹⁵ But Joseph had no choice but to believe what he had seen. As he put it, “For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it.”¹⁶

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland reminded us that it is remarkable that Joseph never once in his life wavered in his testimony, even when he was ­facing death.¹⁷

But let us recognize the audacity of Joseph’s claims and the confidence with which he made them. In the Wentworth Letter, in which Joseph was asked to provide a sketch of the basic history and beliefs of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph wrote, in addition to the Articles of Faith, what has come to be known as the Standard of Truth.

Consider the audacity of what he wrote, keeping in mind that this was written in the year 1842, two years before his death at a time when the Church probably had fewer than 25,000 members:

The standard of truth has been erected: no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing, persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.¹⁸

We should not be surprised when self-righteous evangelical atheists reserve a special chapter in their book of contempt for the Church. If the very idea and existence of God is ridiculous and irrational, then the testimony of an embodied God who is the Father of our spirits, whose heart beats in sympathy with ours, and who cries over our suffering and weeps with us must be rejected as especially ludicrous.¹⁹

Critics

Lehi’s dream of the tree of life includes the powerful image of the “great and spacious building” floating as if it were in the air.²⁰ I sometimes think of the Internet, with its capacity for scorning and flaming others, as the modern equivalent. What I don’t understand is why we would think that those who point fingers of scoffing derision and mocking contempt are our friends or have our best interests at heart. Derision and contempt, scoffing and scorn, may have been the stock-in-trade of the cool kids in high school, but aren’t we ready to be done with such immature attitudes toward others and the things they hold sacred? There are plenty of religious beliefs held by others with which I do not agree, but it would not occur to me that I am helping someone to the truth by blaspheming, mocking, scorning, or ridiculing their beliefs. Let scoffers scoff, but don’t mistake them for friends or for seekers of truth and understanding.

Noncreedal Christianity

I also sometimes emphasize that Mormons are noncreedal Christians. Joseph often distinguished The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from other Christian faiths by noting that the Church rejected Christian creeds. The most influential creeds during Joseph’s lifetime included the Westminster Confession of Faith, which declared that God “is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.”²¹ From the First Vision, Joseph knew this to be mistaken. He thought creeds were too limiting of our search and recognition of truth. Indeed, in his expansive imagination, he asserted that the Church embraced all truth, from whatever source. As Joseph Smith put it:

Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraced it felt himself at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, falls at once from his neck; and his eyes are opened to see the truth.²²

This is truly audacious. The heavens were opened to Joseph, and he received visions and the gift of translation. Yet he studied German so that he could read Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, Hebrew so that he could better comprehend the Old Testament, and Egyptian because it was related to the language of the Nephites. Virtually everywhere he settled during his ministry, the Prophet Joseph built or planned to build a temple, and next to it he built or planned to build a university. 

Congregationalism

Another audacious component of Mormon doctrine is the idea that there is no professional clergy in the Church. We are all expected to be ready and worthy to receive a call to serve in whatever position. Sometimes church seems like what Elder Neal A. Maxwell described as a “laboratory of life,”²³ and sometimes, like when I was asked to play the piano as a missionary in Japan, it feels more like “amateur hour.” The Holy Spirit does not necessarily make us a competent organist or bishop.

I love that there is no corporate ladder that we are climbing in the Church. I am grateful that my daughter Ella had a nursery leader who was a former stake president and who adored her and taught her in powerful and simple ways that she is a child of God. I am grateful that another daughter, Sophie, was loved by another member of our ward, a former regional representative, who often asked to hold her during church and who would tell her parents that this little baby was an old soul with incredible wisdom and depth. And you know what? He was right. And I am grateful that our son, Elliot, had Young Men leaders who were very successful in their professional lives but who showed in word and especially in deed that it is possible to put Heavenly Father and our Savior first.

When we moved to Utah and I began teaching at BYU, my calling was to teach the five-year-olds, and I still have a vivid image of Max, who had stripped down to his underwear in the chapel where we were rehearsing for the Primary program and had flailed furiously as I carried him out to find his parents, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Bishop, save me!” Max, if you are here, I am sorry I was not a better Primary teacher.

Then I was called to be the bishop of a BYU student ward, and I felt a confidence and a success that had utterly eluded me as a teacher in the Primary. When I was released, I was called to teach the teachers quorum in our home ward, and I went back to feeling like an abject failure, as the boys shot spit wads at me while I was writing on the blackboard. Now those boys are returned missionaries, and a few of them are probably trying to teach Primary kids or young men in the teachers quorum.

The Price of Mortality

Mormon doctrine also provides a unique ­perspective on the purpose of mortality, human suffering, and what is sometimes called “the problem of evil” by theologians: How is it that an all-powerful and all-loving God can permit so much evil and suffering in the world?

Let me share a story with you about the ­powerful and attractive answer that Latter-day Saint doctrine provides to this question.

My wife, Deirdre, and I were a two-tuition family at Yale, which is to say that it was not inexpensive. She completed her MBA on the same day I finished my law degree. In fact, we missed each other’s college convocations because they were held at the same time. Then we moved to Washington, DC, where Deirdre was working for Paul Mellon and his private art collection and I was clerking for a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

My calling in our ward was Cub Scout leader, and there were two young brothers in my Webelos group. That summer their family was in a terrible car accident. One of the brothers was in critical condition for weeks, and I visited him in the hospital, where he was wrapped nearly head to toe in bandages. This was the early 1990s, when AIDS was not well understood, and this young boy contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion. It took many months, but he eventually recovered from most of his injuries, yet at that time being infected with the HIV virus was akin to a death sentence.

He was asked to speak in Church about what he had learned from his experience. Although he was only twelve, he gave what I think is the most profound and insightful address on the problem of evil that I have ever heard. He said:

Some people have asked me what I did wrong to deserve what happened to me. I’m not perfect, but I’m a good boy, and I know this is not something I deserved.

Others have said, “You must be a really strong person for God to give you such a difficult trial.” 

I don’t feel strong, and anyway, I don’t believe God did this as a reward for my being particularly righteous.

No, I don’t think this happened because I’m particularly bad or particularly good. I believe it happened because I’m mortal, and this is part of the price of mortality. We come to earth, we exercise our agency, and other people exercise theirs, and sometimes we hurt each other, and sometimes accidents happen.

Think about that—“the price of mortality.”

Let us return to the great Council in Heaven, when Heavenly Father laid out His plan for us and explained that a Savior would be necessary. Lucifer came forward with his own plan that he claimed would save everyone. We often emphasize the distinction between moral agency, which was the defining feature of Heavenly Father’s plan, and coercion, which was the defining feature of Lucifer’s plan. But as Terryl and Fiona Givens have reminded us, it may not have been the prospect of agency that led a third of the host of heaven to follow Lucifer; perhaps it was the clear and vivid understanding of the pains and suffering that are an inevitable part of exercising that agency in mortal life. Perhaps it was not freedom to choose that was so daunting but a full appreciation of the consequences that follow from moral agency—our own and that of others.²⁴

The Closeness and Distance of God

In the doctrine of the premortal existence we learn something profound about the character of God. He wants us to experience the full range of human life, including the extremes of human suffering that mortality entails, not because He wants or wills our suffering but because He wants and wills our growth and development. He has provided a blueprint and road map—involving the Savior, His Atonement, the ordinances of the gospel, obedience, and repentance—for us to return to Him.

One of the audacious things Joseph Smith taught was that God is close, not far, and that the heavens are open, not closed, but that did not mean that Joseph had easy access to God at every moment. In a way, and to an extent that might seem paradoxical, there were times when Joseph felt alone, confused, and uncertain about what God’s intentions or desires were.²⁵ God did not save Joseph from the pains of mortality: Joseph lost children, was unjustly imprisoned, saw his people persecuted and driven from their homes as he watched powerlessly from prison, and was ultimately murdered by a mob that likely included people whom he had counted as friends.

But Joseph taught that God is with us—by our side—and that His love and sympathy are fully extended to us in all our extremities. He does not leave us alone or comfortless, even when we feel alone and in need of comfort. As disciples of Christ, we must be prepared to stand alone, although we are never really alone.²⁶ God is powerful and “mighty to save,”²⁷ but He also refrains from intervening too much in human affairs, lest we forfeit the full impact of the lessons of mortality.²⁸

Religious Freedom

The mission of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies is to promote freedom of religion and belief for all people in all places. This comes naturally because for Mormons, religious freedom is, quite literally, an article of faith.²⁹ It is also one of our most basic doctrines.³⁰

Religious freedom has powerful appeal even to those from religious traditions that are often thought of as being suspicious of religious freedom. A friend of mine, Lena Larsen, is a Muslim from Norway.³¹ Recently Lena told me she reads the Koran every year during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.

“Each time I find something different,” she said, echoing my own view about the value of rereading the Book of Mormon.

During one recent reading she noticed a powerful defense of religious freedom in the story of Noah. We are familiar with Noah and the ark from the Old Testament and Sunday School, but there is a version in the Koran as well. In that telling of the story, Noah had a rebellious son who wouldn’t get on the ark. Even when the rain was falling, his son scrambled up a mountain as the ark floated by, and Noah pled with his son to get on board.

Noah said, “O my son, come aboard with us and be not with the disbelievers.”³²

The exchange involved an Arabic term that is intimate and endearing: yabunayya, which is a very sweet and caring way of saying “O my son.”

Noah’s son replied, “I will take refuge on a mountain to protect me from the water.”³³

Noah, Lena said to me sadly, let his son go. “When I read these verses,” she said, “I feel Noah’s pain. As a caring father, he wants the best for his son, but he has to accept that the son chooses his own destiny.” On a personal level, Lena told me, this means that “religious freedom includes the right for every individual to choose freely.”

Similarities with Other Religions

Many of the truths of the restored gospel find interesting expression in the beliefs of other people.

For example, my daughter Ella and I were visiting the sacred Daoist mountain of Wudang in China. As we climbed up the mountain toward the Dayue celestial palace, we noticed the railings were covered in padlocks. One interesting feature of these padlocks was that they did not have a keyhole or a combination. Once you locked them, they could not be unlocked. Our guide explained in halting English, “Honeymoon lovers will carve their names on the lock and then lock it to the railing so that their love will last forever. Or someone will engrave the name of a grandparent who has died so that they can be locked together for eternity.” This, of course, reflects the deep desire for belonging and connection that we see realized in the sealing ordinances of the temple.

A few weeks ago at a conference at Oxford University, a distinguished Jewish professor from Israel, Asher Maoz, expressed the amazement he felt when visiting Temple Square and seeing a depiction of the temple’s baptismal font. He noted the similarities with the Jewish mikveh bath, which is a washing and immersion ritual in the Jewish faith that is used in the ceremony for when someone converts to Judaism.³⁴

I have been helping organize programs in Myanmar (also known as Burma) in partnership with a leading Buddhist monk, a Catholic cardinal, and the Myanmar Council of Churches. In August I was at a Buddhist pagoda in Bagan, Myanmar, where there was a large statue of the Buddha. When I was looking up at him from close range, his facial expression was stern; at thirty feet back he had a slight smile; and further back still, from the very back of the large room, he appeared to be smiling broadly.

My Buddhist friend explained, “The rich and powerful would pray in front, and Buddha looks down at them sternly; the shopkeepers and professionals (including the professors, she said pointedly) were in the middle, and Buddha has a slight smile for them; and the poorest farmers and peasants would pray from the back, and Buddha felt closest and most warmly toward them.”

I couldn’t help recalling the scriptural injunction that the first will be last and the last will be first in the kingdom of heaven.³⁵

Recently I was at the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar, with Anshin Thondara, who is a Buddhist monk I admire greatly. I asked him what he thinks about when he prays. He told me he reflects on the character traits of Buddha—his compassion, his wisdom, his patience, and his love—and tries to implant them in his heart. This has affected my prayers and my meditation, as I now pray to inculcate specific traits of the Savior.³⁶

With Full Purpose of Heart

Recently I was watching carpool karaoke on YouTube from an episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden that featured the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Corden complimented Flea for his skill as a bass player, saying that he admired how committed he was to his playing.

Flea brightened noticeably and said that it was something he had learned from reggae artist Bob Marley. He quoted from a book Marley had written, saying, “The only thing that really mattered when you’re playing music was the motivation and the intensity and commitment to what you were doing in the moment.” This was the key, Flea said, to his success as a rock musician.³⁷

I have been thinking about being fully committed. In the gospel context, being fully committed is often expressed as being engaged “with full purpose of heart.” The Book of Mormon speaks of the importance of following the Savior “with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent.”³⁸

I love the verse in 3 Nephi in which the Savior said:

O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.³⁹

Judge Wallace

Not long ago I participated in a two-week training program on religion and the rule of law in China. The students in the class were professors, graduate students, religious leaders, judges, and government officials from all over China. The faculty members consisted of about a dozen law professors and judges from eight or ten different countries. We had invited Judge Clifford Wallace, an emeritus chief judge of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, to participate.

Judge Wallace has visited China at least once a year since 1974 and is well known throughout the country. He joined the Church as a young adult and has served as a stake president and temple president in San Diego.

One of the students asked Judge Wallace what his religious beliefs were and how they affected his work as a judge.

Judge Wallace answered with the textbook answer I have heard from many U.S. judges—that his religious beliefs do not affect his work as a judge because he has taken an oath to uphold and follow the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

The student pressed, asking, “But what are your personal religious beliefs?”

Judge Wallace answered in a way that made a deep impression on me. “I’m a Mormon,” he said, “a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” He paused for a moment and then continued: “And I’m a believing and faithful member of my church. I really believe it. I don’t just believe part of it or believe it some of the time. I believe all of it all of the time. It teaches me that we are all created in the image of God and that we are all His children. It teaches me that I have to love and show respect to everyone.”

Ironic Distance and Skeptical Detachment

I think our era is often marked by those who hold something back, who maintain “ironic distance” or “skeptical detachment.”Some of us are like little chicks, running hither and fro. But I believe that what Flea said about being a rock musician is just as true of us when we are trying to live the gospel: If we are not fully committed, we will be overcome with doubt or performance anxiety. We can’t be too worried about how we look. If we are fully committed, we will live fully, joyfully, and audaciously. We can dance as if no one is watching.

Earlier this month, after spending the better part of a week at BYU, a scholar from Lebanon told me why he thought Mormons were going to be so successful in the coming century: “Young Mormons are going to get educations, get married, and have children, while the rest of America is going in a different direction.”

He probably has an exaggerated sense of how different we are from the rest of the culture, but in the world in which we live, it is actually quite radically counter-cultural to do these rather ordinary-seeming things. In a country in which almost half of all children are born to single mothers,⁴⁰ we can be peculiar people by getting an education, getting and staying married, and having and raising responsible and respectful children.

Audacious Faith

Like Judge Wallace, I too count myself as a believer—someone fully committed and someone who strives to live the gospel with full purpose of heart. Everything I think and everything I believe is probably in some way affected by my faith. I believe in the power of love because of my faith in a Heavenly Father who loves His children. I believe in truth because I believe in a God who is beholden to truth. I believe in goodness and beauty and in light and right because I believe that God is the Creator of this universe and that He radiates these characteristics.⁴¹

I believe Joseph Smith when he said that LDS doctrine embraces all truth and that there are great and marvelous things yet to be revealed. I believe we should strive to be a peculiar people. I love the truths that can be found in other religions, but I believe in the unique and singular restoration of Christ’s Church, with living apostles and prophets and with priesthood authority, which authorizes those agents to act with the authority of God.

Joseph Smith revealed a tremendous volume of holy writ. Recently I have been reading the same chapter of scripture, preferably out loud, each day for a month as I have tried to really internalize the scriptures. Each month I choose a new chapter. This month I have been reading section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants. If you want to know what I mean by audacious faith, try reading ­section 93 every day for a month.

It is audacious to believe that God has a tangible, perfected body, that He communicates with His Children today, and that His Church has been restored and is led by prophets and apostles. It is audacious to believe that we can receive personal revelation pertinent to our own lives and that of our family; that the priesthood has been restored to the earth; and that families can be sealed and bound together in cords that tie past, present, and future generations into eternal relationships. It is audacious to believe that God is our Father—really our Father—and that we are His children—really His children. We have every reason to be fearless and bold, confident and courageous in our audacious faith.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.