For those who didn’t hear, there was a shooting at an LDS church 18 days ago. I’m not sure if this was big news outside of LDS circles. Sad when there is “just another shooting.”
For these last two weeks I’ve considered writing something about the attack.
It felt like something I should write about.
But I didn’t know what to say. Especially with all the conversation that started to come up around it, I didn’t really want to contribute to that.
But again, I felt like it was something I should write about.
The first thing I felt when I heard the news was a real, deep sadness. A quick, deep sadness, like a punch of sorrow to my gut.
The next thing I felt was a little ashamed of myself. There are shootings often. Unfortunately. When this happened, it hit me hard. I found other recent shootings that I hadn’t heard anything about. Every shooting brings me sadness. Why did this one impact me so much more? I guess because this shooting happened against my people, I felt it more.
Still, these were my people. I now had images of being with my congregation on Sunday when a nightmare might start. These were followers of Christ. These were my brothers and sisters.
What happened in Michigan hit me. But it’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the response.
What should separate members of the body of Christ? How should members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints act? How should true followers of Christ respond to an act of violence against them?
I encourage you to read that last link becuase Dave Butler, the man who started the fundraiser, makes some good and important points.
It’s not easy to forgive your enemies.
Is this a story of forgiveness or is it a story of empathy, love, and compassion? It is an example of all those things. This was just a way for a community of people to show all those attributes in a difficult circumstance.
We have a commission to look after the widowed and fatherless. There was now a family that needed that. The human family showed its true character when it stepped up to help the widowed and the fatherless.
If we could just show more love, compassion, forgiveness, and empathy in this world, how different would it be?
I am proud of my church.
I am proud of Jesus Christ’s church.
I’m proud of our members and what we represent. I know that aggression against the followers of Christ will increase. I wrote about this last week. I hope our faith is ready to withstand the trials that await us.
I hope that throughout our trials we can always remember that love, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness are always the right choice.
As I prepared to write on this topic that I quite honestly don’t want to write about, I listed out those possible titles for this post. If that list is an indication of anything, it’s how scattered my thoughts on this topic will be.
I actively avoid politics. I aggressively avoid current affairs.
It’s not that I want to, I’d like to be aware of the important things happening around the world. It’s that I feel like I have to.
Politics and current events are so filled with hatred, vitriol, unkindness, unfairness, poison, and frankly stupidity that I have chosen to actively avoid it. This becomes a problem when my wife wants to discuss these things, and would really like her husband to be able to discuss it with her, and then she has to watch me like an ostrich putting my head straight into a hole. I just want no part of it.
Recent events have led to me looking into some things.
I hear so much leftist this and right wing that – I am aggressively trying to keep myself from knowing what these distinctions mean. Call me naive. I think it’s all so stupid.
What does this have to do with those topics listed above?
Just saying Israel and Palestine, I believe, ignites passionate political beliefs.
If you need proof, yes, even wars are split along party lines:
I do not like passionate political beliefs. I hope this post has nothing to do with politics.
I hope this post has something to do with history, what’s right, and prophesy.
I’ve written about Israel and Palestine before HERE and ten months later HERE.
The Book of Mormon was written so that we, the Gentiles of today, will understand what is coming in our future. The Book of Mormon is meant for our day and is meant to guide us.
I’ve recently been reading Hugh Nibley’s thoughts on what the Book of Mormon teaches us about how a civilization and a people can go wrong and destroy themselves.
I probably lost most people at “prophesy.” Prophesy is real. And while I put my head in the ground about political affairs and current events, I think the rest of the world puts its head in the ground when it comes to prophesy.
Hugh Nibley emphasized, as I’ve been studying his words regarding Mormon chapters 1-9, how the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica ultimately destroyed themselves. He detailed how the chosen people of this land, those who were given this land and given God’s covenant that it would be their land as long as they followed Him – how those people lost their favor and were destroyed.
The extinction of a people started with:
Pride.
No repentance.
War.
Revenge.
War is justified when it comes in self-defense. The thing I want to focus on here is revenge. Hugh Nibley talks about how the Nephites of the Book of Mormon were destroyed when they officially became a bloodthirsty people bent on revenge. God withdrew from them when they decided they would avenge all their fallen brothers who had been killed.
Which leads to me today, long having put my head in the ground since that post about Palestine and Israel four years ago.
I accidentally read an article about the current state of the Israel – Palestine war.
I decided to write this post when I read this:
“Signs for this old-new vocabulary are everywhere. It is common among Jews, for example, to add the initials for “blessed his memory” next to the name of the dead – but in this war, almost every soldier or civilian victim is memorialized with the phrase “Hashem yikom damo” (God will avenge his blood).”
God punishes the wicked with the wicked. You don’t want to become the people punishing the wicked in the name of God. Because at that point, you are the wicked. And at that point, your day will come too.
I fear how long the United State of America has felt the need to be the aggressor in the war against wickedness around the world.
There is a big difference between wars of self-defense, wars of aggression, and wars of revenge.
Ceasing to remember the blessed memory of loved ones and instead seeking to avenge blood is not God’s way.
The world has long said this is how God works. It is not how God works. It is how Satan works. And when people think they’re acting on behalf of God but really being led chain-linked by Satan, the worst atrocities happen.
Prophesy is being fulfilled before our eyes and the world collectively puts its head in the ground.
Which leads to my concluding point that Hugh Nibley mentions. Ultimately, we will all be judged for our own actions. What we do matters. All we can do is what we can do – kindness, forgiveness, love, peace, avoid contention, avoid fighting, avoid hatred, avoid judgment, meekness, humility, faith. These are the things we can do in a world that is lost and confused. A world that is deviating. A world that distances itself from God more and more every day.
You do your part. You do what’s right.
You love. That’s all.
9/15/25 Update
As I painfully, accidentally read more political information, I come back to add more because it seems relevant to what I’ve already written.
Some recent quotes I’ve read from Donald Trump regarding Charlie Kirk’s assassination:
And then I read articles and comments and it’s all attack attack attack hate hate hate while yelling at Trump for saying to attack attack attack. Does no one see the irony?
The same article with the headline
later, quietly, adds:
“The president added in a separate answer that he would urge his supporters to follow a nonviolent path in response to the shooting. “He [Kirk] was an advocate of nonviolence,” Trump said. “That’s the way I’d like to see people respond.””
Why does “beat the hell out of them” get the headline?
Because it evokes emotion on both sides. It gets clicks.
The same article that condemns Trump for violent speech chooses to promote the violent speech.
Why?
Because the violent inflammatory statement get the clicks.
It is all hypocrisy.
I’m not excusing Trump’s, “beat the hell out of them.” I am condemning it. But if we fail for this click-baiting and this hatred, this you against us mentality, we become part of the problem.
Then I read Governor Cox of Utah’s statements:
“We can return violence with violence; we can return hate with hate. That’s the problem with political violence. It metastasizes. We can always point the figure at the other side. At some point we have to find an off ramp, or else it’s going to get much worse.”
I stand by the Governor Cox’s words.
An eye for an eye quickly becomes lives for lives. Revenge hurts everyone.
How do we find an off ramp?
Again, from Governor Cox:
“Social media is a cancer on our society right now,” Cox said. “And I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.”
Love. Forgive. Look past the thing you disagree with someone on and instead look at the beautiful, passionate, important person they are.
We all have a divine heritage and one day we will be embarrassed about how we thought of the people around us.
There is no other side. There are only people. We are all imperfect and the sooner we realize that and forgive and show love, the better we will all be. Only love can heal the divide in our world.
As a boy growing up, the idea of beauty evolves so rapidly.
As a toddler, anything that can be put in your mouth is beautiful.
As you begin to walk, a ball becomes the epitome of beauty.
As you get older, you appreciate the beauty of the world around you: mountains, snow, that very climbable tree.
You start to appreciate animals for their beauty: your dog’s soft fur, the majestic power of horses, the effortless flight of birds.
And inevitably, as you get older (the timing is different for every one of us), one day a girl catches your eye. It’s a new feeling of appreciation. Have girls always been this…pretty? I actually remember that particular moment in third grade. I still remember her name. I still remember thinking for the first time: this is beauty.
And you continue to grow.
Now you’re in fifth grade, you might get your first crush. And it’s all giddy excitement.
Sixth grade, it’s still fun and interesting—this beauty that girls hold. You’re fascinated by it. For some of us, it becomes all we can think about.
Now you enter high school. And many start to broaden their thinking. You still appreciate the beauty you did as a kid—in that delicious snow cone, the sound of a basketball bouncing, the unique beauty of a fish dangling on a line, the forests, the sky…
But all of these things pale when compared to the beauty of the female sex. And you start to believe that they are a species of their own. You long to understand them.
The world has long tried to shape, mold, and distort your view of what true beauty is. As you go through high school and grow, girls become a central theme.
And then one day, in high school or after (again, the timing is different for everyone), you see someone — and you realize there is more. Not only is this person beautiful—you can see that immediately—but there’s more. You notice grace, you see confidence (or lack thereof- both are beautiful). You notice demeanor, kindness, a way of speaking. A way of being.
This is someone you want to be around.
And if you’re lucky, that person wants to be around you too. And now this person is light, air, and sustenance. Being around them energizes you. You realize: this is beauty.
And then you get married.
You notice there are blemishes. They do things that annoy you. They have habits you don’t understand. Somehow, your mind doesn’t reject them. Because, like the distant and jagged edges of a mountain, you know the imperfection of this person adds to their character and to their beauty.
One day, it all changes again.
She starts to grow around her belly. Everything the world has tried to convince you isn’t attractive starts to happen. You realize you never knew what beauty was. She literally glows.
She grows, and she glows.
And then your world is flipped upside down. Because you see a miracle happen before your eyes. The beauty! After that moment, you can never look at this being you’ve started a life with the same. You will never go back. You realize you have been in the presence of a Goddess—not in the cliché way we use that word nowadays, but an actual being sent with miraculous powers from a place above.
The life she bore and created grows. And you look at this little life, and you look at the woman who brought it to you, and you try to wrap your mind around this beauty.
The craziest part is, from this moment on, the woman—your wife—often feels her least “attractive.”
And you look at her, and you realize there has never been anything more majestic, more miraculous, more beautiful than this person.
This once girlfriend. This once fiancée. This wife. This mother. This person.
She thinks the miracle she has borne has subtracted from her beauty, because the world often tells her it has. That she has lost her once great power.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. You want to know the truth?
This person is the most beautiful thing to ever exist.
Surprisingly I haven’t written about the Chosen yet.
I’m about to finish season 3. I think this is an important TV show.
In this season, there is a moment when Mary is talking to Tamar, a woman from Ethiopia.
Mary voices jealousy towards Tamar for seemingly being able to push her way into the group without any hardships. Mary points out that she needed demons cast from her and to be pulled drunk from a tavern to get to her current place with Jesus. Mary seems to think Tamar is lacking humility due to her lack of trials.
It was at this point that Tamar said something that jumped out at me while I watched:
“Jesus forgave you, but you choose to hold on to it.”
An episode later we get a look into Matthew’s past. Matthew is my favorite character.
We see a flashback to when an old man came to Matthew during Matthew’s time as a tax collector. The man brazenly admits to legally accumulating tons of debt in an effort to help his children. The man will be sentenced to a prison camp because he’ll never be able to pay back the debt. He doesn’t care; he is an old man.
The man then gives Matthew some prayer tassels. They are seemingly worthless, but the meaning of the old prayer tassels was significant to the old man. To him, those tattered tassels were priceless.
The man gives them as a gift to Matthew telling him that one day he may regain his faith and need them. Matthew insists that he will never need those prayer tassels. The man insists.
Matthew held onto those tassels and Mary found them.
When Mary asked about them, Matthew told her the story. He didn’t understand why the man gave this sentimental item to him. Mary explained that the old man wasn’t giving some prayer tassels to Matthew, he was giving his faith to Matthew.
Matthew’s response:
“Why would he do that for someone like me?”
Mary then told a story about a time she was going to kill herself. The only thing that stopped her was a dove. She saw it in the distance and took it as a sign that she shouldn’t do what she was considering.
She told Matthew that man who gave away his prayer tassels was Matthew’s dove.
These scenes from this powerful show gave me a lot to ponder.
I often feel like Mary and Matthew.
“Jesus forgave you, but you choose to hold onto it.”
“Why would he do that for someone like me?”
I pondered on whether I’m holding onto anything. Are you?
The second question is a question I ask myself often. Why would God do this for someone like me? Why did Christ suffer, for me?
Sometimes I think I’m like Mary, holding onto guilt that Christ no longer wants me to hold. That said, I have an interesting relationship with my guilt. I don’t dwell on it. I think a lot of it has left me. Still, sometimes I think I feel unworthy.
We all hold onto things we should let go, becuase Christ already forgave us.
We are surrounded by doves, those people that see our potential. We can always be the dove to someone else when they feel like they’re coming up short.
We all feel unworthy sometimes, even though those around us see our potential. And God always sees our potential.
I had an Ivy experience that I wanted to write down. It’s something I think I’ll never forget, but still good to get it written to make sure I don’t forget the lesson from this experience.
One night I was with Ivy and doing her bedtime routine. I don’t usually do “Beth’s routine.” My routine is to rock Ivy to sleep with a bottle then lay her down. This night Beth asked me if I wanted to do what she normally did which was read to Ivy, then turn off the lights, rock her to sleep, and lay her down.
I started reading a book to Ivy and she was thoroughly enjoying it. She was curled up in my left arm as I rocked in the rocking chair and held the book up in front of her with my right hand. She would get a huge smile on her face every time I would emotionally read a portion of the story.
As I was reading, my left pocket started to vibrate. Normally I wouldn’t even consider answering a call at this moment. I had been making calls that week for my church calling. There were some people I needed to get a hold of, and it was important I talked to them. This all went through my mind as I held Ivy and weighed my options. I decided I didn’t know when I would get to speak to this person again and I needed to answer.
I jostled Ivy up a bit and got the phone out of my pocket. I believed it to be only a minor inconvenience to her. I answered the phone and began talking. I expected it to be only a minute or two conversation. As I was talking, Ivy got unsettled and started to fuss. I put the phone between my right ear and shoulder and got her into my lap in front of me. I started to bump her up and down to soothe her.
As I rocked her up and down, she got more content. When I was listening to the person speak on the other end, she even smiled and enjoyed the rocking. Then I started talking. When I talked to the person on the other end, for some reason Ivy got really unsettled.
This is the image I have in my head. When I would be talking into the phone she would curl her bottom lip over her top lip, her bottom lip would start to quiver, and she was the saddest looking baby I have ever seen. I’ve seen her do this once or twice before, but never so directly related to something I was doing.
This pattern repeated a couple times. I wouldn’t talk and she would smile and rock on my lap. I would start talking into the phone and she would get very upset and start to cry. The image I have in my mind is of betrayal. I don’t know if that’s what Ivy was actually thinking, probably not. But all I could think was, this was her time with me, and now I’m on the phone, and it’s upsetting her more than I’ve ever seen.
It broke my heart.
I got off the phone within 5 minutes but by that time the damage was done. I turned off the lights and tried to rock her which almost never fails but she was not having it. She was completely unhappy.
Beth took over and was able to settle Ivy down and put her to sleep.
I went outside to think.
Now, the reason I answered the phone wasn’t bad. I don’t think what I did was blatantly bad. My intentions were good.
As I sat outside, this is what I told myself. I got kind of bitter for a moment. Can’t I answer an important call related to my church calling? How can I be a productive and responsible member of my church if I don’t take those important calls? I was getting more upset. Then something hit me.
There were a lot of good things that I could have been doing at that time while I was with Ivy.
But, at that moment, there was nothing more important in the entire world than being with her.
I wasn’t bad because I wanted to fulfill my calling, answer the phone, help someone, fulfill my duties. Those were good intentions.
It didn’t matter.
While I was reading to Ivy, she was the most important thing in the world. Nothing else mattered. Whether or not she actually felt betrayed by me answering that call during our reading time (again, she probably didn’t), I did betray her. That was her time with me, and I took it from her.
I could have called that person back 15 minutes later and it would have been fine.
I learned an important lesson I hope I never forget that night. While there are a million good things to be doing, my daughter is the most important thing in the world. Especially in the precious and far-too-few moments I get with her, nothing else in the world should matter.
It was one of those cosmic-shift moments. One of those moments I realized would stay with me for the rest of my life. A moment I learned an extraordinarily important lesson from.
I’m grateful for that moment, and I hope to never cause that quiver of a lip ever again.
Reading back on this 4 years later and I think I still hold tight to that lesson learned. Just today someone told me about a celebrity who was asked if there was anything that made him jealous of other people. His reply was that he is jealous of anyone who still has kids at home.
One day my girls will grow up and I’ll miss the playing and the wrestling and the tickling and the screaming and the tantrums and the fighting. I try to remember that every day.
Now Ivy is almost 5 and Wren is how old Ivy was when I wrote this. Crazy.
No Coincidences 