followHIM - 2 Samuel 5-12, 1 Kings 3-11 -- Part 2 : Dr. Michael Goodman

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

Dr. Goodman returns and discusses the gift of human sexuality within the bounds the Lord has established, and the reign and downfall of King Solomon,  the gift of wisdom, and the power of staying on the covenant path.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/old-testament/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive ProducersDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing & SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsKrystal Roberts: French TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-piano

Welcome to part two of this week's podcast. Doesn't necessarily define the entire lived experience of David, but this event is going to have profound impact on David, on David's family, and on Israel going forward. We've often turned this into a morality tale, and there's a reason for that, but let's just start with verse one. It came to pass after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, we often key on that, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. And we often make hay out of that,

possibly for good reasons. I want us to be a little cautious on that simply because this isn't the first time that a king has sent his general to go do the fighting, nor will it be the last time that king does the same thing. So it does appear that the redactors are making the same point that we often do, which is error number one, problem number one was that David tarried instead of going forth and doing his duty. And that may be accurate. That seems to be the point of the verbiage in one.

On the other hand, maybe that wasn't so strange for a king to not always go to every battle, though I think on a regular basis David had in the past. So problem number one, not being where he should be, possibly. Problem number two, he sees something that you and I would say is probably not meant to be within his purview, his sight. He sees a woman washing herself in verse two. The woman was very beautiful to look upon. So he sees Bathsheba. The seeing, we've got to be cautious here, it doesn't in any way seem to entail a purposeful

peeping that he was literally looking, trying to find this. But one way or the other, he looks and he sees this beautiful woman bathing, becoming ritually pure. As a mission president, I would sometimes have missionaries that would come to me. They'd be kind of calm, but stoic on the outside. And then when we got into the room, they'd just start sobbing into the office. And they'd start with something like president i

you're just gonna have to send me home now you never want to say something like that to a mission president you scare them a jabbers out of them but you know instant panic starting to rise in the heart and i'd say well elder and it was usually elders elder what happened and they would share that they had seen something that they probably shouldn't have seen, right? So I remember one elder that came to me and said, President, we were teaching this lesson to this sweet family. I looked up on a wall and there was a large picture of a woman who lacked clothing. And so he's telling me about this. And I said, what did you do, Elder? And he said, well, I looked away.

And I said, and? I feel horrible. And I said, why do you feel horrible? He says, well, I liked what I saw. I shouldn't have liked what I saw. Really, you shouldn't have. Do you see the problem here? And instead of realizing, you know what?

You did exactly what the Lord would have you do. You saw something, you were attracted to that, and you realized, nope, that's not mine. Therefore, you turned away and you went back and focused. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, but he felt, because he was attracted that he was somehow dirty or broken or wrong. And our youth today tend to experience very similar phenomena.

They'll see something they shouldn't see. Their body will react to it. Their mind will react to it. And because of that natural reaction, they figure I'm broke, I'm bad, I'm evil. But Heavenly Father created us purposefully so that we tend to be interested in these kinds of things. This is not a problem. This is not a sign that we're broken. It's a sign that something's working right. The question isn't, did you see something and therefore are you guilty? It's, did you see something? therefore are you guilty? It's, did you see

something? What did you do next? What David did next becomes the problem. Instead of turning back to his own business, verse three, David sent and inquired after the woman. One said, is not this Bathsheba, which by the way is a real cool name, daughter of the oath, is not this Bathsheba, which by the way is a real cool name, daughter of the oath, is not this Bathsheba or Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Besides simply seeing and turning away, he continues to ruminate and actually inquires after her. There's problem number two. Problem number three, verse four, David sent messengers. He didn't just think, he didn't just ask. He took her. She came in unto him and he lay with her. And then this next phrase really bugged me growing up. I thought,

what strange morality, for she was purified from her cleanliness. Almost as if that's somehow justifying the adultery. Now, since then, as I've done a little bit more study, most commentators, both Jewish and Christian, claim that that statement is not meant to justify the adultery. It's meant to make clear that the child that is going to be born is not Uriah's. It's David's. That she was purified from her uncleanliness means that she was still having a period. She wasn't pregnant. And so one way or the other, he took her in, he slept with her, she returned to her house. Now, we won't even go to the concept of the difference in power structures and being a king and a ruler and the abuse of power that David did in that. But of course, that's where the ultimate,

well, almost the ultimate error came. Then he realizes when she sends back and says, I'm with child. Then he realizes that he's in trouble. He knew better than what he did. And this wasn't just simply a crime of passion. This was intention. He looked, he asked, he purposefully did what he did. And we know David loved God, loved the law, but clearly there's a disconnect at this point in David's love of God and what he's willing to allow himself to do. And so we know the story. He's going to ultimately end up murdering Uriah

so as to quote, hide the problem. It's one of the great tragedy stories in all of scripture. Uriah is an interesting character. The Jewish rabbis and the Christian theologians and academics don't exactly know what to do with him. He's called a Hittite, but the Talmud basically gives you two possible options, the Jewish rabbis. One, that he was a Hittite who converted to Judaism. That's possible. Or two, he was a Jew from birth, but he lived amongst the Hittites, and so he was known as a Hittite. But his name is a Jewish name. It's the Lord is my light. Yahweh is my light. He believes in God and he shows himself so honorably. We know the story. David calls him back,

trying to get him to go in and sleep with Bathsheba to possibly hide his adultery. He won't go into his wife. He says, no, the soldiers are in the field fighting, and am I going to go in and enjoy my home and my wife? No, I won't do it. Well, that didn't work. David said, okay, let's try this. Verse 13, let's make him drunk. If he's drunk, maybe he'll just wander in, and nope, he didn't do it. And so finally, this is so tragic. David not only has him killed, he has the order to have him killed brought back by himself. Verse 15, David wrote to Joab and had Uriah deliver. So he's having Uriah deliver the letter demanding his death. And he wrote in the letter saying, set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, retire you from him that he may be smitten and die. This is beyond

the pale. This isn't, I had a bad day and I yelled at my siblings. This is premeditated adultery, premeditated murder. And as we're going to talk in the next chapter, the consequences are going to be eternal for David. There's so much to learn from this. So when I'm teaching in our eternal family classes at BYU, and we're talking about keeping the law of chastity and staying emotionally, mentally, and physically pure, we talk about the safeties the Lord puts in place. And first and foremost, we talk about keeping the Spirit of God with us. I asked my students, the Spirit of God is actively in your life and you are currently under the influence of the Spirit of God. What's the likelihood that you're going to go out and commit adultery or fornication?

My students aren't dumb. They'll say, it's not going to happen. And I'll say, you're right. The only way Satan can get a good Latter-day Saint to make this kind of a serious error is to separate that Latter-day Saint from the Spirit of God. That seems to be what's happened with David. You had these beautiful examples in 5 and 6 and 7 where David's humble and going to the Lord and seeking guidance and following God's will. Well, by the time we hit this story, David seems to have ceased to make that connection. And as that relationship with God became more tenuous, his wisdom, his decision-making, his choices began to follow more of the natural man than the Spirit of God. And so that tragedy of allowing ourself to disconnect from God is the way that Satan has the greatest chance of getting in and encouraging us and us using our agency to go down this horrifically tragic rabbit hole.

And there's so many moments in here where you're like, David, just don't, just stop. There's so many like warning signs going off. Stop. Don't send an inquire. Don't send messengers. When I teach Book of Mormon, and I kind of equate this with Alma 52, I just think the stratagems of war that we read about in the Book of Mormon are similar to the stratagems that Satan uses against us.

And they're trying to get the Lamanites to leave their stronghold. And so they get a small number of men hey walk by as if you're delivering provisions to another city that's a small number we can take them we'll be right back this is no big deal and they take a step out of their stronghold and this is what david does a step and then another step and and uh so it's kind of a don't leave your stronghold type of a message and as you pointed out it starts out with at a time when kings went to war kind of like David probably should have been but I have a President James E. Faust in October 1997 he said over my lifetime I have seen some of the most

choice capable and righteous of men stumble and fall. They have been true and faithful for many years and then get caught in a web of stupidity and foolishness, which has brought great shame to themselves and betrayed the trust of their innocent families, leaving their loved ones a legacy of sorrow and hurt. My dear brethren, this was General Priesthood Conference, all of us, young and old, must constantly guard against the enticements of Satan. We must choose wisely the books and magazines we read, the movies we see, and how we use modern technology such as the internet. So good.

And that quotation is 25 years old. And I always feel like I have to say there was a day when if you wanted pornography, you had to go find it. And now it's like it finds you. And I just hope our young people, whoever is listening, just what was the phrase we learned last year, Hank, from one of our scholars? Repent relentlessly. Just keep getting back on the covenant path. And you're going to encounter this stuff like your missionaries did. But keep coming back and don't give up.

And keep getting back to the sacrament table and getting the promise that His Spirit can always be with you. You know, years ago, I came across this from Dr. Wendy Watson, who's now Wendy Watson Nelson, President Russell M. Nelson's wife. And she said, what if, like a package of cigarettes or something, what if pornography had a warning label? And this is what she said. The warning label might say, Contents highly addictive, extremely corrosive to the soul materials enclosed. Be prepared to have your mind twisted, your views of life ravaged, and your spirit shrunk. Be aware that the Spirit of the Lord will not be with you during or after viewing.

Be prepared that after an initial rush, you will experience feelings of depression, loneliness, despair, and guilt. However, with repeated exposures over time, you can numb those feelings and enter into almost total amnesia, listen to this, about who you really are and about the truth itself. That was from her book, Purity and Passion, on page 60. Those are strong words, but keep coming back. If that's a line you've already crossed, please keep coming back.

There's a way back, but this is powerful stuff. And the Lord knows the world he sent us to. And section 46, verse 15, right, Hank? He suits his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men, thankfully. But keep coming back to that covenant path. Don't give up. I love it. Yeah. I think in teaching this, you can point out how many different places there are for David to stop and say, wait, what am I doing?

I can stop this right now instead of continuing down this path. Those of you who are longtime listeners of our podcast will recognize the name David Sorensen because David and Verla Sorensen are our sponsors. He gave a talk in the April 2001 General Conference. Doesn't seem like it should be that long ago, but we're talking two decades ago. I'd encourage everyone to read this one. It's called You Can't Peddle Rattlesnake. What a great talk. He says, quote, in the summertime, one of our responsibilities was to haul hay from the fields into the barn for winter storage. My dad

would pitch the hay onto a flatbed wagon. I would then tromp down the hay to get as much as possible on the wagon. One day in one of those loose bundles pitched onto the wagon was a rattlesnake. When I looked at it, I was concerned, excited, and afraid. The snake was lying in the nice cool hay. The sun was glistening on its diamond back, and after a few moments, the snake stopped rattling, became still, and I became curious. I started to get closer, leaned over for a better look, when suddenly I heard a call from my father. David, my boy, you can't pet a rattlesnake. The Bible records that King David was gifted spiritually, but he stood where he should not have stood. He watched what he should not have watched, and those obsessions became his downfall.

He says later on, we have all accepted the responsibility to pattern our life after the master. I think that's a crucial point here, that David knows he is supposed to pattern his life after Jehovah. This is back to the talk. Elder Sorensen continues, he has committed the keys of the priesthood and of divine revelation to our living prophet. He counsels, stay away from pornography. I plead with you to get it out of your life.

Don't allow the poison to touch your souls. What a great lesson. This is a hard one. I remember once walking out of a gospel doctrine class where we talked about David and Bathsheba, and I was with my friend Shane Argyle. And Shane is one of the most righteous, incredible people. And here I was, you guys, I was walking out of this class going, oh, poor David. Oh, David, you should have been smarter. As I'm walking out with brother Argyle, he said, that lesson scares me. And I said, why? Because I didn't walk out of that class the least bit scared. He said, if David can fall,

what does that say about me and you? And I thought, oh, now I am scared. Because the whole time I'm just going, oh, David, what a dumb decision. I would never do that. Where my friend Shane saw, oh, I've got to be more careful. President Kimball once said, paraphrasing, if you take the very best boy in the church and the very best girl in the church and you put them in the wrong circumstance long enough, they will fall. None of us are immune to the mistakes that we can make. This is why it's so crucial to stay connected to God, to recognize when we begin to disconnect. When we read stories like this, we can sometimes just jump right out of the story and into kind of a proof text version of what are lessons to draw. That's good. We need

to draw lessons from it, but there are times when we do that that can send the wrong message. For instance, we talked earlier about the reality that sexuality is not bad. Sexuality is part of the plan of salvation. I teach my students that the entire plan of salvation depends on sexuality. There would be no continuation, no seed, no anything. We shouldn't take from stories like this that sexuality is bad. We shouldn't take from stories like this that the reality of our nature to be attracted to each other is wrong, that that's somehow wrong. We've got to be cautious even in stories like this, plural marriage. We could use this as a proof text against plural marriage, where we know that that's going to

become a major issue ultimately with David and Solomon. It's not that plural marriage in and of itself cannot be commanded or ordained by God. What happened here was twofold. Adultery, obviously, first. This was Uriah's wife. This was not David's wife. And second, the personal tragedy that comes when we disconnect from God to the point where we're able to or willing to make these kind of mistakes. It reminds me of a statement from David A. Bednar. He gave a classic talk entitled, That We May Always Have His Spirit to Be With Us. But he makes an interesting point in

the first paragraph there. He says, hey, we do a great job in the church talking about how important it is to invite the Spirit and to have the Spirit with us. He says, but we frequently overlook one issue. He said, we should also endeavor to discern when we withdraw ourself from the Spirit of the Lord, that it may have no place in us to guide us in wisdom's paths. And so his point is, listen, it's not enough to just seek for the Spirit when you can get the Spirit and expect it on Sundays, and maybe when you're in the temple, or maybe when you're reading your scriptures, but seek to recognize when the Spirit is no longer guiding us in our life, because that's the point where we can begin to make these kind of errors. And even if they're not going to be these massive errors, that's when our path begins

to diverge from the covenant path from God. And in this case, that's what happens with David, the man who was the greatest king that Israel ever knew, the man who did so much good, and the man who after this will continue to try to do good. But my goodness, what tragedy come from this event. I really like what you said. I want to call you President Goodman because as a mission president, telling that missionary, of course, that would be hard for David because that was attractive to him, if I can use that word. It was what he did with that afterwards, that the fact that it was attractive is normal and natural. And I love how Alma, when he's talking to Shiblon,

says bridle all your passions. That word bridle is so good. And Elder Bruce C. Hathen, whom we've had on the program, has commented on that. He didn't say kill your passions. He didn't say passions are bad. He said bridle them, which is a horse is powerful, but useful if we control it. Then there can be a righteous, beautiful use of that as we've talked about. Mike, I think there's also something to be said here of unrighteous dominion. Yes. Right? This idea of I'm the king, I can do what I want. Section 121, I mean, it almost outlines David's fall here in section 121. It doesn't name him, but it says, when we undertake to cover our sins, to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion upon the souls of the children of men in any degree of unrighteousness,

the heavens withdraw themselves, the Spirit of the Lord is grieved, and when it is withdrawn, that's what you said, Mike, when you lose the Spirit, amen, to the priesthood of the authority of that man. And that's really what 2 Samuel chapter 11 is, isn't it? It could be called sad experience. We have learned by sad experience, that's 2 Samuel chapter 11, that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men. As soon as they get a little authority, right? Here he is. He's king.

As they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. It's an abuse of David's power. That's right. Absolutely. I just remember as a teenager when I learned that, wait, the same David that slew Goliath is this day. Oh, and I just remember going, oh, that's too bad, you know, because I wanted him to still be the hero. And it's, it's a tragedy. So I, I would hope that we can maybe take a little bit of what your friend Hank brought out of this, which is it's a reminder that none of us are safe First Presidency in the Quorum of October are so strongly emphasizing the need to stay covenant connected. And sometimes we use that almost as to be perfect, but covenant connected is meaning

connected with God. We need to stay connected with God because then He, through His Spirit and through His servants can guide and help us so that we don't end up in a tragedy like this. I think there could be a tendency for us to blame the woman sometimes in saying, well, she shouldn't have been wearing that. She shouldn't have looked that way. She was kind of causing that to happen. And we've got to stop that, right, Mike? I mean, somehow this is Bathsheba's fault. You know, if a man has a bad thought,

oh, it's because the woman was dressed this way. If she wouldn't have dressed that way, then this man wouldn't have had this thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. Correct. We have to take accountability for our own agency. Yes, the Lord has asked us, male and female, for modesty, but someone else's immodesty is never reason for our violation of principle and commandment. We have to take responsibility, and especially in a situation like this where the power dynamic is so different. Hank, you said it so well. This is not kind of. This is a complete and utter abuse of power. Bathsheba, we have nothing in the text that would lead us to think that she was doing anything other than literally keeping a

commandment. She was becoming ritually pure and doing what she was supposed to do. And ultimately, David is accountable for his actions, and especially in a situation like this. So often, we want to blame someone else for our decisions. And it's kind of like a difference too between where your thoughts go, but then it became a behavior. It became actions as you're talking about. So yeah, your thoughts might go there, and that's when you have to decide, okay. And that I think is a more helpful question for our brothers and sisters in the gospel is how have you learned to respond when you are faced with a temptation like this? I love the fact that we're all three kind of poking at a similar thought here, which is

there is a lot to be taken from this. It has to be taught with nuance. We have to be cautious not to completely proof text and pull things out of context, but also even within context to see it accurately, see that difference in power, see David's accountability, see that the problem isn't sexuality, see that the problem isn't the physical body. The body is meant to be exalted. I love a statement from Elder Holland. He said, this highest of all physical gratifications, you were designed and created to enjoy. It is as natural as it is appealing. And then listen to this. It is given of God to make us like God. In our attempt to teach the importance of avoiding immorality, we must never teach it in a way that leads our brothers and sisters,

young or old, to begin to believe that sexuality is evil. But see it for what it is. It's a God-given gift that is ultimately meant to help us become like God when approached righteously. Oh, and that just makes me want to finish, Alma. Bridle all your passions, comma, that ye may be filled with love. Alma 38, 12. It's a wonderful outcome. You bridle your passions that you may be filled with love, not bridle your passions. That's bad. Oh no, no, no. Bridle your passions that you may be filled with love. Very positive. If I could bring in a little bit of the social science research,

the research is pretty darn clear on this. The reality is that immorality, whether that's premarital sex or sex to those that you're not married to, does not correlate with good outcomes. One of the famous studies that was done, it's got kind of a bit of a provocative title, Hooking Up and Hanging Out, surveyed university students at five different universities around the United States, and they talked about the hookup culture where basically sexuality is an entertainment factor, not a relational factor. And the findings from that study were very stark. These were not Latter-day Saint students. These were just run-of-the-mill students in American universities. And they pointed to the problematic

nature of this. And if you look into the research, it's very clear. Immoral sexual behavior does not correlate. I've got to be cautious with cause because we have a harder time with cause and effect, but it correlates with bad things. In fact, yesterday before coming on to this, I thought, I'm going to poke our own data. So I pulled up our own data set. Our study that we're in the middle of got 2000 families that were following for 10 years, 2,000 parent and child groupings, so 4,000 plus people. Every two years, we survey them. I pulled up our latest wave, wave three. We're in the middle of gathering for the next one. And I pulled it up and I just did some basic regressions to say, what does first age of sexual experience correlate with? What does number of sexual

partners correlate with? We've got a lot of detail on this. I pulled up five or six sexual-related constructs. I regressed them on suicidality, on depression, on well-being. The data is clear as glass. It does not correlate good. In fact, one of the, I can't remember which one of the constructs, whether it was first age or frequency, correlated with two times the likelihood of suicidality, feelings of wanting to commit suicide. And so I'm not trying to say anyone who's been immoral is going to instantly fall to pieces and be mentally ill. What I'm saying is, if you look at the aggregate

data, if you look at it just from a secular point of view, not even looking at it from the gospel, which is more powerful, it's very clear. Immorality does not lead to good outcomes or does not correlate with good outcomes. Ready to go to the consequence? Yes. Now- Here comes Nathan. Here comes Nathan. Here comes Nathan. Okay, chapter 12. This is where, of course, the consequence of David's actions are going to be brought forward. The Lord sends Nathan to David and shares this very, very sad parable.

And to me, this is just so tragic because David's response to the parable is exactly what you would expect it to be. It was exactly what you would hope it to be. He's outraged that someone would do this. The parable is a poor man had a little ewe lamb, treated it like its daughter, which by the way is a fun play on even the name Bathsheba, his daughter, and took and dressed that poor man's lamb and gave it to a rich man instead of taking from his own flock. And look at verse five, David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, there's an oath, the man that had done this thing shall surely die. Oh my goodness. There's where you get your Hebrew, atahash, thou art the man.

Look at verse six, though, even before that. This is because, and he'll pay fourfold because he had no pity. The sad tragedy here is David seems oblivious to the reality that he has just pronounced a sentence upon himself, that his actions fit exactly into this. It's fascinating to me, Mike, how Nathan approaches this. He doesn't come in screaming and yelling. He comes in, David, can I tell you a story? I've always thought highly of Nathan here, that he could come in and really just start to skewer David. Instead, he just says, let me tell you a story. And it's called an entrapment parable.

Because you pass the verdict and then you realize you just passed the verdict on yourself. Jesus is going to use entrapment parables in his life. It's going to have consequences for generations. So of course, Nathan calls him out on it. And to David's credit, I guess you'd say, he acknowledges it. And then listen to the consequence. Go to verse 10. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house because thou has despised me and has taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. So consequence number one, the sword will continually be part of your existence, your house, your experience. Number two, 11, thus saith the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against the out of thine

own house. As we know the story going forward, that's exactly what's going to happen. And I will take thy wives before thine eyes and give them unto thy neighbor. And he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this son. We know, of course, that has at least partial fulfillment in Absalom's actions. We'll talk about that in a moment. And then 12, for thou didst it secretly, but I will do this before all Israel, before the Son. I was reading in a Jewish commentary. By the way, when you're reading Old Testament, yay, grab the best study Bibles you can. But most of those study Bibles are going

to be written from Christian perspectives. There's power in reading a little bit from a Jewish perspective because they're seeing things sometimes that we don't. There's a great Jewish study Bible that said this, that the punishment corresponds to David's sins in a typical measure for measure fashion. Because he put Uriah to the sword, the sword will never depart from his house, alerting to the violent deaths of Amnon, Absalom, and Abed-Jah in the following chapters. And because he took Uriah's wives, his wives will be taken by another, Absalom and others. But it's not just those two things. It's not just that there's going to be some sword play and things. But as I was pondering this, I thought, what are some of the

things that seem to flow? And I want to be careful with this. I actually made a note to myself. We want to be careful not to claim that we totally understand causation. When someone does something bad and then something bad happens to that person, you and I better be a little cautious before we say, see, God's punishing that person. That's not a safe bet. That's not our role. But if you look at David's life after this event, whether it's causative or not, oh my goodness, do you see the tragic correlation? Think about these things. His son from Bathsheba that comes from this union is going to die. Tamar, his daughter, is going to be raped by his son from a different mother. Absalom, David's son by the brother of Tamar, is going to take vengeance on Amnon and kill him.

Absalom is going to try to steal David's throne. Absalom is going to sleep with 10 of David's wife's concubines. Joab, his general, is going to slay Absalom, his son, and 20,000 soldiers in the midst of trying to retake the kingdom that Absalom was trying to tear from him. Joab's ultimately going to be alienated from David. There's going to be constant warfare. His other son, Adonia, is going to attempt another coup with Joab's help. Then we won't even go into Solomon's life and what happened to him. And then ultimately, of course, the biggest consequence is clearly what happens to David in the eternities. You look at the consequences and it's just heartbreaking, just heartbreaking.

I believe that God can punish. But just like what we saw earlier, I believe that God often allows our own actions to bring there the fruits forward. And what you're seeing in David's life from this point forward so often seems to be fruits from these kind of poor choices. The mistrust he inserts into his family at this point is going to, it's going to sow the whirlwind. Yes. And ultimately, of course, eternally, Joseph taught that he has fallen, quote unquote, this section 132 verse 39. Therefore, David, he hath fallen from his exaltation and received his portion, and he shall not inherit them, meaning his family, his wives,

out of the world, saith the Lord. Such tragic, painful consequences to his actions. Hank, you brought up earlier, and I think this is important to acknowledge, Jewish religious authorities and others have basically taken, they agree that David's actions were wrong, but they believe that David has been forgiven. And that belief comes from verse 13 of chapter 12 that we're studying here. Verse 13 says, David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan said unto David, the Lord also hath put away, which in Hebrew just means to cause to pass thy sin, thou shalt not die. That has been taken as evidence that David did make a serious mistake and that there are going to be consequences, but David is still a redeemed, forgiven man. And you see David throughout the Psalms pleading for that forgiveness constantly.

But it's very important to note the JST to that verse. It's in the footnote, God hath not put away thy sin. The punishment, if it passed, it didn't pass away, it was paused. And tragically, some people also proof text us to say that the punishment was passed on to the child. That's why the child died. But you and I have to understand the nature of God well enough to know that that's an impossibility.

God's not punishing our children for our sins, though our children are impacted as a result of our sins. To realize that consequences sometimes continue even after forgiveness comes. In David's case, there's not going to be, I mean, there's going to be forgiveness. He's not going to be damned to hell forever. Joseph Smith taught explicitly that the time would come where he would get forgiveness. The exact quote, David sought repentance at the hand of God carefully with tears for the murder of Uriah, but he could only get it through hell.

He got a promise that his soul should not be left in hell. So David will receive forgiveness. But one of the things we all learn in life is when we make mistakes, sometimes those consequences stay around even after we've completely repented and moved on. And it's not that God doesn't like us. It's not that God doesn't see us as beautiful and of value. And it's not that we can't grow

and become all that God wants us to do, as long as we're not doing murder. But the reality is sometimes those consequences stick around. Those consequences aren't evidence of God's lack of love. God wants us to experience the joy and happiness that comes from living well. One thing that I think is crucial to understand is that the severity of the consequences for David, both in this life as well as the next life according to Joseph Smith, section 132, were not simply the result of his adultery. His adultery was incredibly serious, but it was a result of the murder of Uriah.

We know that in this life, adultery, sexual sin, as serious as it is, can be fully forgiven, fully overcome. We know that this is something that, as serious as it is, doesn't have to have eternal consequences. Murder becomes much more problematic, and David didn't simply commit adultery as bad as that was, he premeditatedly had Bathsheba's husband killed. And that is why Joseph Smith says the consequences are eternal. We don't want anybody listening thinking, oh no, I'm as bad as David. I've done what David has done. David is in a unique position, right, Mike, as the king, as the leader of the army. This is his unique situation the Lord is judging here. And I wouldn't put my own sins into this chapter and think, oh, I've done this. We've talked about David. Can we feel a little better talking about Solomon

as we look at 1 Kings? We're supposed to look at 1 Kings 3, 8, and 11. Throw us a rope here. It's going to get better for a bit, right? 1 Kings 3 and 8 are really beautiful. Well, there's a little foreshadowing in 3 that we got problems coming up, but 3 and 8 are gorgeous. To be very frank, you see a very strong parallel here. In David, you got 5, 6, and 7, where David's humble and seeking the Lord, and the Lord's answering his prayers, and he's doing all this good stuff. And then you have 11 in Bathsheba and 12, the consequence. You have a similar trajectory with Solomon. You've got 3, where he's anointed king, and he has this tremendous gift of wisdom that is promised him.

We'll talk about that as we look at it. Chapter 8 is the dedication of the temple, the house of the Lord that Solomon was allowed to build, actually commanded ultimately to build. And so you've got these happy chapters, Solomon being humble and doing good. And then you've got chapter 11 where it all goes south quickly. So should we start with three? Let's get some happiness just to start. Can you do that? Show us the highlights here. We have a little bit of a foreshadowing of problems to come in verse one.

Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. That's not a problem, but it's the way he did it. He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had made an end to building his own house. In other words, it was a dynastic marriage. He married the daughter of Pharaoh. And by the way, scholars contend that there's not a prayer that he actually married a living daughter of the Pharaoh, but someone in the Pharaoh's house that he married to make an alliance with Egypt. It's these marriages out of covenant, out of Israel, that are going to end up being Solomon's Achilles' heel. Some of the scholarly data looking at this says that 1 Kings is likely not written chronologically as much as it is theologically. You see chapters 1

through 10 that largely show us all the good things Solomon does, with a little foreshadowing that things aren't always good in River City, so to speak. Then you hit 11 and you go forward, and that's the bad things. And so you kind of have as much of a theological ordering as you do a chronological ordering. So you have a little foreshadowing verse one, but nothing's made of it. I would simply make this point because sometimes you look at things

in chapters one through 10 and you say, well, there's just, this is the good stuff. So everything must be good. No, the stuff in one through 10 is happening at the same time as much of the stuff that's happening in 11 onward. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah.

So they separated them. Exactly. The redactors did. We've got a little foreshadowing of problems with verse 1, but then we get this beautiful intro into the spirituality of Solomon. Verse 3, Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father, only he sacrificed and burnt incest in high places. Now that sounds really, really bad, but this is pre-temple. And so one way or the other, at this point, he's doing good things.

Now that the redactors at this point would be very sensitive. Anything that looked like sacrifice outside of the priestly order that should happen. And so that might be a little bit of a hint there. But Solomon's loving God, walking in the statutes of God, verse four, the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there for that was the great high place. Now you're gonna see numbers are often problematic

in the Old Testament. A thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon the altar. Maybe, or maybe just a bunch of them. A lot. Right? Yeah. A lot. He made a lot of sacrifices, which is meant to show two things.

One, he is very faithful, and two, he is very well-to-do. And then, look at verse 5. So beautiful. In Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night. God said, ask what you shall. Ask what I shall give thee. So Solomon, what do you want? It's almost a three Nephites, a 12 Nephites and three Nephites story here.

And I love the beautiful answer of Solomon. Verse 6. Thou hast shown unto thy servant David, my father, great mercy. According as he walked before thee in truth and in righteousness and uprightness of heart with thee, thou hast kept from him this great kindness, building the temple, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day, now. Oh, Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David, my father, and I am but a little child. I know not how to go out or come in. You see the beautiful, this is exactly what we were talking about earlier, right? Thy servant is in the midst of

thy people, which thou hast chosen, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted from altitude. Maybe a little hyperbole again, but verse nine, give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad, for who is able to judge this thy so great a people? So you got this beautiful plea, Lord, give me an understanding heart. And I don't speak Hebrew, but I know enough to be dangerous. And the words here for an understanding heart actually mean a hearing heart, a heart that hears, a listening heart, which is beautiful. Lev Shomea indicates a person that is open to divine direction from God. Give me a heart that's willing to listen to you because you're the one who can judge these people. And by the way, quick note on the word judge. You and I

understand this already. The word, because of your work in Judges, the book, Sefer Shoftin, which is the book of Judges, judge in the Hebrew doesn't simply mean to sit and adjudicate cases. It's to lead, to rule, to guide, to administer. So when Solomon's asking to be a great judge, he's not simply asking, help me to make good decisions like you will at the end of this chapter. Help me to be the kind of leader of Israel that Israel needs. And the only way I can do that is if I have a listening heart, an understanding heart. Mike, I'm seeing all three of our kings, Saul, David, Solomon, all started out so well.

Yes. They all started out with this, who am I? I'm a nobody. I can't do this. Power doesn't corrupt everyone, but it sure does these three. It sure has. And again, I would pull it back to the concept of they disconnected from God. If they were currently under the influence of the Spirit

of God strongly, regularly, daily, they wouldn't make these decisions. Oh, they'd make mistakes. But go back to Elder Scott's promise. God won't let us go too far. If we have a listening and humble heart, he'll pull us back. Well, clearly in the case of David, and as we're going to see in Solomon's case, ultimately, they don't pull back. They make the error. And so this plea for an understanding heart pleases God, which I think it does for us. But the Lord's just saying, I want to be your God. I want you to be my child. Not just in a literal distance sense, but I want us to walk together. And that's the plea. And so God, when we say, I want to listen, I want to learn, God is so pleased with that. Look at his response. Verse 10, the speech pleased the Lord. The Solomon asked this thing, and God said unto him, because thou has asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself

long life, neither hast thou asked riches for thyself, nor hast thou asked the life of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment, behold, I have done according to thy word, lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. Realize this is being written by a redactor, several hundred years removed, and he knows Solomon's gonna become

this great judge and ruler. But you and I know the laws of eternity well enough to know that God doesn't pop open Solomon's head, pour in wisdom, sew him back up and say, now go get him, tiger. This is a process that's going to happen. God will help Solomon become wise as Solomon does wise things. And Solomon seeks God's wisdom and God's insight and God's inspiration, God will give that inspiration. So lest we think that somehow this comes by osmosis, Solomon was going to have to do his part, and clearly did, because he became an incredibly wise and good leader for many years. That's so sad. I know, I know. We're already starting to mourn, but wait, don't mourn yet.

Let's do, let's, let's find some, let's find some more good stuff if we can. So back to verse 13. I have also given thee that thou, that which thou hast not asked. You didn't ask for money. I'm going to give you riches and honor. So there shall not be any among the kings

like unto thee all thy days. God's always more gracious to us than we could ever hope or deserve. But there's also always a caveat. Look at verse 14. And if thou wilt walk in my ways to keep my statues and my commandments as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days. And so there's always a covenantal if-then. God made this tremendous promise, but it's going to be up to Solomon to live worthy of that promise. I think that's important for our members to understand, kind of in a different context, but I think equally important. We sometimes see in the church and in life, in mortality, we see good marriages that end up broken and divorced and lives shattered. And especially when that has happened after confirmation has been received

by a person or by both people that this was a good thing, that God was pleased with it. Sometimes it causes our members to question, well, did I not understand God? Did I not get that inspiration? Or am I broken? Am I the one who's done this? But we have to understand the nature of the God we worship. That God honors agency. And the only way God could guarantee that a marriage will last for eternity would be to freeze our agency, to take it away, to make it so that he controlled us, kind of joysticked us through life. But he doesn't do that.

And so God can make the tremendous promise. Yes, this is good. If you and your sweetheart will continue to exercise your agency righteously, exaltation is your lot in life. But it's going to take both. And by the way, not just one. It's not enough for just one person in that relationship to live true to their covenants. It'll take both to live true for those promises to be fulfilled. And so, as I read verse 14 and I see that if-then context of a covenantal relationship, that's the way all of the blessings of God come to us. They come to us based on our honoring our agency,

our using our agency in a way that ties us and binds us to God. All right, let's keep going here, Mike. Oh, it's just, don't mourn yet. I'm trying not to. Yeah, no, don't mourn yet. So we've got the happy story. We're going to build a temple. But even before that, let's do just a smidge with the judgment. You've got this really tragic story of these two mothers who both had babies and one of them died and they both claim the living child and they bring it to Solomon. And we don't have to go into great detail here, but you see the redactors using this story as evidence of Solomon's great wisdom, in which he basically notices one of the mothers is continually basically advocating for, quote unquote, justice and to have the baby taken away.

The other mother is constantly advocating for the life of that child and saying that that child was theirs. And so he, of course, says, bring me a sword. We'll chop the child in half. You get half. You get half. And of course, the real mom saying, no, no, no, no. Yes, I me a sword. We'll chop the child in half. You get half, you get half. And of course, the real mom saying, no, no, no, no. Yes, I want my baby, but please don't kill the baby. Give the

baby to her. Give the baby to her, yeah. And Solomon says, okay, I think we now know who the real mother is. Brilliant, bright. There are tales like this in other ancient texts, but it's just a beautiful example that the authors are giving us to help us see the wisdom in Solomon. The next several chapters, 4, 5, 6, 7, are all the goodness of Solomon in the building of the temple. It's gorgeous. It's lovely. And it brings us to 8, which is the dedication of the temple. And just as David,

once he established his kingdom in Jerusalem, sought to bring the ark, the presence of God, the symbolic and literal presence of God into the midst of the people, Solomon seeks to bring the ark, the symbol of God's presence, into the temple. And so that's exactly what they do. The priest took up the ark, verse 3. They brought it in. It's just the Levites and the priests. They bring it in. They place it in the holy place or in the holy of holies is what we would call it. They describe the cherubim with this wing spread forward representing the presence of God. They pulled out the staves. And so, by the way, this is one of the clues that this was written before the destruction of the temple

in 586, because they're describing what's happening, verse 8, and there they are unto this day. So the temple's still there when this is being written. But then you have this symbolic presence of God brought into the temple and the Lord says, I can do better than that. Go to verse 10. And it came to pass when the priests were come out of the holy place that the cloud filled the house of the Lord so that the priests could not stand to minister before the cloud for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.

This was the purpose. This is why God wanted to be there with his people. We, like the Israelites, need to learn how desperately we need and need to learn to want the presence of God in our lives, not necessarily bodily each day, but at least through His Spirit. It actually reminded me of a statement from President Nelson that I use regularly in my classes, I think is so important. We need to experience God regularly. That's how we can know and stay covenant connected. But President Nelson in April 2019 said, understand that in the absence of experience with God, one can doubt the existence of God. So put yourself in a position

to begin having experiences with him. Humble yourself. Pray to have eyes to see God's hand in your life and in the world around you. Ask Him to tell you if He is really there, if He knows you. Ask Him how He feels about you, and then listen. The prophet is pleading with us to have regular experiences with God. He doesn't want us to just be a churchy people, a religious people.

We're not seeking to be bound to the church. We're seeking to be bound to God through that covenantal relationship. And that happens as we daily seek to see the fingerprints of God in our life. It sounds like when I read your bio talking about building faith in youth, the kind of thing we want them to notice is to have experiences with God and to see that and notice it and write it down and keep a journal. It's the best reason to keep a journal is document the hand of God in your life type of a thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is in the scripture so regularly. How did Moses recognize Satan's counterfeit? Well, it's because he just got done experiencing the real thing.

Who are you? You know, I'm a son of God made in the image of his only begotten. And who are you that I should worship you? Mind you, Satan is pretty good at his deceptions. He's pretty good at his imitations. If we would stay safe from the imitations the world or Satan would give, we have to have regular experiences with God. So like Joseph Smith, we can say, I knew it. I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it. Those young people that I work with who are able to weather the storms of doubt or faith crisis or even sin, those are the ones who've had experiences,

their own experience with divinity. Those are the ones who seem to make it all the way through. They can say, well, no matter what that person says or that website says, I've experienced God for myself. This is kind of a fun, I don't want to call it a throwback, but it's kind of a reiteration of what Israel earlier experienced as they were coming out of Egypt. The pillar of fire, the cloud and the pillar of fire by day and night was a visible symbol to Israel that God was in their midst. When the pillar moved, Israel moved. When the pillar stopped, Israel stopped. God was doing a 40-year training program to help them learn to follow him. You're going to have to depend on me. So

the Lord was trying to help Israel see he's not like the other gods, quote unquote, that are of stone or wood. He is the God and he lives and he wants to be amongst his people. And this is one of the times after the Exodus that you literally see the presence of God come down amongst the people. This is a long dedicatory prayer here. It's massive, but it's got a neat order to it, actually. There are seven pleas in it, and we don't necessarily have to take a lot of time for this, but it's kind of a fun inverse of what God promised Solomon. at least that's the way it hit me. I'm not grabbing this from anyone else,

but Solomon said, give me an understanding heart. I want to have a listening heart. This dedicatory prayer is Solomon giving the inverse of this. Lord, would you have a listening heart for us? We need you. So look with me. See what I mean by this. Verse 29, hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place. Verse 30, hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant. The end of verse 30, and hear thou in heaven. Verse 32, Verse 34, Verse 36, Verse 39, Verse 45,

Verse 49, This is Solomon's plea. Father, we've built this house to thee. We have done what you have commanded us to do. Please be our God. Please hear our prayers. Forgive our sins. As we repent, forgive our sins.

Guide us. Help us to live worthy of the life that thou would have us live. It's a beautiful prayer where Solomon's saying, we need you. Please hear us. Yeah, it's a beautiful prayer where Solomon's saying, we need you. Please hear us. Yeah, it's a beautiful prayer. All the way from 22 over to 61, just this begging God for his help. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. And the king and all Israel offered sacrifice before the Lord.

And by the way, a lot of sacrifice. Go two verses up from that if we could real quickly. Verse 60, that all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God. Small caps there. So Jehovah is God, that there is none else. Let your heart, Israel, therefore be perfect with the Lord our God, to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. So let's bind ourselves to God at this point. And then they make sacrifices. And by the way, they make a lot of sacrifices. This is another one of those cases

where we're thinking there might be some hyperbole in numbers. Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offering, which he offered unto the Lord, two and 20,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all of the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. Some academic did a study of this and said, if they did this nonstop every minute, it would take two weeks. I'd offer that much sacrifice. So this is definitely the redactors way of saying, everyone came together.

We totally laid it on the altar and we have become bound, dedicated to God. Reminds me of when Mormon says, they all cried with one voice. You're like, well, I'm not so sure they all yelled at the exact same time. Exactly, be cautious on the literal nature of that. So you have happiness here.

You have Solomon, a wise king. By the way, he expands the area that is Israel. It becomes broader, longer, wider. He does good. He builds the house of God, dedicates it. God comes and accepts it. This is beautiful stuff. All leading to the tragedy that is chapter 11. Mike, I'm sorry we brought you on for the episode that just has- I did notice that, Hank. I thought, they don't like me very much.

Both of these stories end so sadly, isn't it? Isn't it just sad? They're tales to help us learn, though. That's obviously why the authors put them in there. Chapter 11, shall we wrap this up? Chapter 11. That just has an ominous town sound to it. Sounds like bankruptcy, yeah.

Verse 1. But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughters of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonites, and Hittites, most of which they were commanded explicitly not to marry with in the Mosaic law. Verse 2, of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, you shall not go in unto them, neither shall they come in unto you. Why? For surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. His wives turned away his heart. Again, I'm not going to lose sleep over what did he really have a thousand

wives. He had a lot of wives. Many of them were not within the covenant. And as was promised, that is exactly what happened. Look at verse four. For it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord God. Now this is interesting, as was the heart of David, which the JST changes, and it became as the heart of David, his father. For Solomon went after Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom, the abominations of the Ammonites, basically Baal and Ashtaroth. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father.

By the way, I really liked one of your episodes where it was pointed out, Israel likely never totally turned from Jehovah. Yeah, it was Dana Pike. They didn't just walk away from God and start worshiping Baal. They just mixed it up. Supplemented it in. And there's such power for that for our day. An active Latter-day Saint with a testimony is not about to just walk away from God

and the gospel in Christ, but are we beginning to mix and mingle other aspects of the world's wisdom and philosophy in with God? And it doesn't mean that we don't love God. It doesn't mean that we don't think God is the greatest, but we don't fully go after God. And that ultimately can end up doing the same thing

that happened with Solomon. And I mean, he goes pretty far afield. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemoth, an abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrifices unto their gods. Again, this isn't just I'm being

a little soft and this one wife has this one God and she really feels for him and I'm letting her do this. This is Solomon kind of like David going fully for a field. And as a result, breaking the Lord's heart and breaking the heart of Israel. The Lord was angry with Solomon, verse 9, because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice. He'd had visitations with God and still turned away. And the redactors aren't pulling punches. Look at verse 10. And had commanded him concerning this thing. God had told him explicitly, don't do this, that he should not go after the other gods, but he kept not that which the Lord commanded.

The power of agency is all throughout these stories. The power of agency to do great, amazing things, build a temple, kill Goliath, right? And then the power of agency to destroy your own life. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. And so it's far enough removed from our day that we're probably not likely to go worship other idols, quote unquote, in the same way. But President Kimball obviously pointed out we have our own version of that. And we're probably not going to marry 700 people. And yet, to me, there's a powerful reminder.

It goes back to David, David and Solomon, the two areas where they fell, the two areas where they didn't stay faithful, were in their sexual intimate relationships and in their families. Well, it's no surprise that those are the two areas that Satan most actively seeks to get us to walk astray, to not realize that our sexual nature is part of our divine nature, meant to bring us to God. That family isn't just a nice 1950s construct here in America, but that it is meant to be our exaltation. That as President Nelson has taught again and again, salvation is an individual issue. Exaltation is a family issue. That who you marry and your faithfulness to that marriage covenant is not just a nicety. It's not just, this is a good thing if you're in the mood. It is necessary for our exaltation. And that knowledge is being challenged in our day. Yes,

most people still believe that marriage is a good thing, though not all. The number of marriages definitely dropping, statistically speaking. In the church, for the last several years, there are more singles than married in the church. And so, singleness is not a curse. Singleness does not mean we're broken. Singleness does mean we are in process. Which, by the way, married, you're still in process. But to understand our theology, we cannot become as our eternal parents without an eternal companion by our side. And hence, the commandment,

not just a suggestion that we marry in the Lord's house to someone of the opposite gender who we can spend eternity with is not a suggestion, but is in very essence section 131, section 132. It's the Lord's commandment that we approach sexual relations and approach marriage as the Lord has commanded. Not because God doesn't love others, not because being single is wrong, but because this is the purpose, the process of life.

And Solomon and David both, he almost wished they would have erred with the word wisdom or something, but not where they did because ultimately this is going to have the strongest impact on their eternal destiny. I go back to 1 Samuel 8 when Samuel said, the people want a king. And the Lord said, this is a bad idea.

This is a bad idea. And we're 0 for 3 here. Saul, David, Solomon, each one started great and fell great. Huge false. There's going to be temporal consequences. So Solomon is going to have all but one, sometimes we say two tribes taken from him. And that's going to happen in his lifetime. But in his lifetime, the authors say, based on the promise God made to David, that he

would never fully take the kingdom from him. He kept one to two kingdoms, Judah and likely Benjamin. It's not the temporal that ultimately matters the most. It's the eternal. And we know that both David and Solomon are not in the best of shape when it comes to that, based on their use of agency having to do with their own sexual nature and their familial decisions. Mike, I want to finish on an uplifting note here as a marriage and a family researcher. How have you seen people do this right? How do you get your relationships right? Let's put David and Solomon over on the side for a second and tell us how to do this in our own lives to make sure that we're staying in a healthy, connected to God relationship. You're kind, Hank. Thank you for pulling us back from the abyss of sadness with this.

The reality is, and this is what we try to do desperately in our classes at BYU. I don't know if everyone that's listening realizes this, but now BYU has four religion classes that are required of all students. One based off the Doctrine and Covenants, one based off the New Testament, the Bible, one based off the Book of Mormon, and then one based on the Eternal Family. And by the way, the Eternal Family is the only one that's primarily based in modern prophetic teachings rather than just scriptural. And I'll be honest, that made some of our friends, our fellow faculty members nervous in the beginning. But the board of directors is the first presidency

in Quorum of 12. They're the board of education for the church. And they weren't nervous on this. They wanted that. And so every student who graduates from BYU has to take the Eternal Family class. And so in that class, we are anxiously seeking to help our students understand that our nature is God's nature, and God's nature is relational, that we are intended to be in relation to

God, and that our eternal destiny is based on living true to our eternal marriage covenants. And so one of the things we try to do with our students is to help them to pull back from the culture of the world when it comes to marriage and family and sexuality and gender issues. There's good things in the world, but there's also problematic things. To try to see marriage and family and sexuality and gender from God's perspective. As we help our students to see what God has revealed through his prophets and catch a vision of why God values family, why God commands eternal marriage in the temple, why God institutes these chances for us to become like Him, or should I say them, our Heavenly Parents,

that Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Parents want us to become as they are, and that that's only possible as we follow the eternal principles that God himself knows and God himself reveals through his prophets. As we do that, John, I like what you said. It won't be perfect. I have a glorious, happy family that is very much not perfect. I tried to be a really, really good daddy and a really good grandpa. By the way, the grandparenting gig is really good. But I know I fall short. I love Doctrine and Covenants 6434. The Lord requires the heart and the willing mind.

He didn't say I required perfection yesterday. The Lord requires the heart and the willing mind. What He needs us to do, what we're trying to do with our students is to help them catch the eternal vision of what sexuality, gender, marriage, family is according to God. And then do our very best to pattern our lives after that, realizing that none of us will do it perfectly, and also realizing that in this life, not all will experience these things in its fullness. And that God has promised, and this I think is so crucial, God has promised that nobody will be denied every blessing that God has promised His children based on anything that is outside of their control. That you and I can know that if we stay covenant connected to God,

we will lose nothing. We will become as our Father and Mother in heaven. We will receive every blessing God has promised all His children. That has been reiterated by almost every prophet of this dispensation. That is without question. So when we see tragedies, I come from a family, my family are not LDS, but my parents were the most amazing alcoholic parents you'd ever want. My family is the poster child, my birth family, the poster child of dysfunctionality, and they're so good. They're so loving. We've got so many challenges in our family, and God loves us. And God has promised nothing that is outside of your choice. You'll have to choose. You still have to use your agency. If you choose to stay covenant connected to me,

I promise you all things, both joy in this life. This is important. You don't have to wait till the next life. Joy in this life and a fullness of joy in the next life. That's the Lord's promise to us. Beautiful. How has your scholarship and research influenced your faith? I think our listeners would be interested in your story of becoming a scholar, not just a scripture scholar, but a marriage and family scholar, and being an active Latter-day Saint. I think that there's a misnomer out there that if you

somehow get more education, you'll lose your faith, but that hasn't happened to you. No, no. In fact, I would honestly say my education has strengthened my faith tremendously. My PhD is in marriage and family, marriage, family, human development. I study what makes marriages and families successful. And I study explicitly dealing with adolescence, suicidality, LGBTQ issues are the areas where I publish and where I research. But you know, I've got to update this in the last probably two years, but it was about three, four years ago, I decided I wanted to look at every single study that had ever been published that is in the major databases to look at what is the influence of religion, one, and the Church of Jesus Christ, two, on well-being.

I have reviewed thousands of articles. Yeah, this took a long time. But I wanted to see, what does the best social science say about God, the gospel, and family, and church. I would testify with all the surety of my heart correlates with well-being. Yes, religion can turn toxic. There can be problems, but the vast majority correlates with well-being. That the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that membership in the Church and living those principles correlates with flourishing, with well-being. And by the way, I know, I know the world struggles to believe this, but if you look at the research, that is true for every group, straight, gay, pick your congregation, and when you look at representative samples and studies that look at the impact, or often not causation, but the correlations between research on well-being and religion,

and research on well-being in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hey, the Church is far from perfect. We have so many things we have to do better, but the research is clear as glass. If you want to flourish in this life, faith in God, faith in Christ, membership in the church is a powerful, powerful way to do that. My scholarship, even on the most sensitive topics, I do a lot of work on LGBTQ suicidality. I have a great love and desire to help. The best research that looks at anything close to a representative sample shows that the gospel is protective for all. Now, does that deny that there are people who struggle? No. People aren't statistics. Individuals definitely struggle, and we need to do better to help all.

But I would simply, in answer to your question, Hank, I would say that my study of the best social science has strengthened my testimony, has strengthened my testimony in God, my Savior, Jesus Christ, and in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Mike. My friend, Mike, so grateful that we were able to share you with our listeners. Thank you for being here. Happy to be here. Thank you.

We loved having you. I'm happy we were able to finish on a positive note. We want to thank Dr. Mike Goodman for being here today. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen, and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. To our production crew, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nielsen, David Perry, Kyle Nelson, Will Stoughton, and Scott Houston. We love you.

Thank you. And we hope all of you will join us on our next episode of Follow Him.