Is the LDS Church corrupt?

Happy Sunday, everyone. This has a provocative title. I want to qualify what I mean. Is the LDS Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, corrupt?

What do I mean by that? Well, by church, when I say is the church corrupt, I don't mean the institution, or the corporation's soul, or the non-profit, or everybody altogether, or the leaders, or its funding, or any of that kind of stuff. When I'm saying church in this musing, is the church corrupt, I'm using it in the original understanding of the term, a community of believers. We, collectively, you and I, we are the church.

The Greek word, what we say church, *ekklesia*, or the Hebrew *kahal*, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that, these are both translated into our modern language as church, but they're synonymous with just an assembly of people. Right? Think of John in the book of Revelation, talking about two churches, or Nephi's angelic guide. Here's from 1 Nephi 14. I did a musing before delving into that question. It's titled, "Who is in the church of the devil?" Are you? So you can go to sundaymusings.org, and in the search box, you can just type, "Church of the devil," and you'll find that one where we go deep into, what does that really mean?

But for purposes of today, it only means that a church means a large group of people united by common behavior, or worship, or identity, right? So if you're not with God in the church of God, then by rule of exclusion, you're in the other church, in the church of the devil. So when I'm asking about the corruption of our church, I'm talking about our corruption, corruption of God's followers, those who have adopted the name of Christ, our idolatry, our apostasy.

Now, in last week's musing, we covered the proclamation on the family 30 years ago that that was released. You know many of its passages by heart, I'm sure, but did you know what President Hinckley said just before announcing it, reading it, in the Relief Society meeting in the fall 1995 General Conference? Here in this video, this will show you how President Hinckley prefaced the announcement and the reading of the proclamation. Let's take a look.

"With so much of sophistry that is passed off as truth, with so much of deception concerning standards and values, with so much of allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world, we have felt to warn and forewarn. In furtherance of this, we of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles now issue a proclamation to the church and to the world as a declaration and reaffirmation of standards, doctrines, and practices relative to the family which the prophets, seers, and revelators of this church have repeatedly stated throughout its history."

Some interesting stuff there, right? Last week in the musing, we talked about the genesis of the proclamation, what led to it, what prompted it. And here President Hinckley is saying, with so much deception concerning standards and values, and with so much of allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world. Now, I'll tease right now, and we'll talk about at the end, my new book, published for the 30th anniversary of the proclamation, on this topic precisely, the slow stain. This is my author's proof edition, which beautifully says, "not for resale." But you can get this copy now. I'll tell you more about that in a minute where we dive deep into these topics.

Here's the problem. I think the problem with God's children throughout history is that we fall into this trap of thinking that we're more righteous than we actually are. Again, President Hinckley just said there's so much allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world. That was the precursor, the prompting for them to say, here's a line in the sand, here's what we believe, because we already see that things are shifting, right? And so we, the Latter-day Saints, are just as guilty as our spiritual predecessors for thinking that we're more righteous than we actually are, right? Oh, the gospel's been restored. We have prophets and apostles. God's true church, right? Therefore, all is well in Zion. We're A-OK. But history shows very clearly that that is foolish thinking, that that will lead to spiritual ruin.

A couple quotes to substantiate this. I love this one from Hugh Nibley. "Important in the record of the dispensations is that when men depart from God's way and substitute their own ways in its place, they usually do not admit that that is what they're doing. Often, they do not deliberately or even consciously substitute their ways for God's ways. On the contrary, they easily and largely convince themselves that their way is God's way." Fascinating, right? It's like, no one's like, oh, I'm going to be an apostate today, or I'm going to start being idolatrous. I'm going to substitute God's commandments for the ways of the world. And, oh, that stain, right? Remember, Hinckley called it a slow stain of the world. It's not that they're waking up and saying, oh, I want to be stained today. Yes, bring on Babylon, right? It's this slow and incremental thing where we delude ourselves, as Nibley says, into thinking, oh, we're what I'm doing right now must be OK, according to God, because I'm not getting kicked out of the church or I'm not whatever. And therefore, what I'm doing now is fine. Right.

Let's continue. This is from Abraham Gilead. He says, "Among the Lord's people, worship of the true God is rarely done away with. Rather, they often worship the true God alongside the false gods. They maintain careful equilibrium in order to preserve an identity with the national God, the God of Israel or of the fathers. At the same time, the people follow their own gods as they please. This compromise enables people to satisfy both their carnal instincts and their spiritual aspirations." Similar to what Nibley is saying, different words, right? Jesus said no man can serve two masters. And yet many people try. They try to create what's called a syncretic gospel where you're fusing contradictory things into your gospel worship, thus producing something that looks totally different.

Let's conclude the quotes with Elder H. Verlin Anderson. He said, "No people to whom the gospel has been given have remained faithful to their covenants for more than a few generations. This cycle of human folly, which so many prophets have noted, has repeated itself with such consistent regularity that any group which finds itself to be the favored recipients of the gospel would do well to assume that their apostasy is certain, and the only question about it is how long it will take. It is also true that people who conform to the outward ordinances, ceremonies, and practices of Christ's church tend to assume that such activities assure them a place in his kingdom. This assumption, according to the scriptures, is likewise false."

Okay, this is powerful. This is relevant, right? For at least my thesis, in that we think we're more righteous than we actually are, and we, the Latter-day Saints, despite having the restored gospel, etc., etc., etc., are not somehow immune from this long-standing trend. So, we can review scripture to see this that we're going to look at the gospel. So, we're going to look at the gospel of the gospel. We're going to be to make the gospel of Israel as his peculiar treasure. He established a covenant to make them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, as he said. They're delivered from Egyptian bondage by miraculous power. They were supposed to remain distinct in their belief, their behavior, their worship, even as they're surrounded by hostile and idolatrous nations. The Lord urged them to not learn the way of the heathen, saying, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Right? This was the emphasis. And yet, we all know this from our Bible study, they fell a-lusting. They got sick of manna. They worshiped the golden calf. The Israelites participated in the worship of Baal Peor with the neighboring Moabites. After Joshua died, there was a new generation rising up, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. They joined the neighboring Canaanites in Baal worship. Samuel, right? He warned them, "If you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only." So then the elders came, and they're like, Samuel, you're getting old. Make us a king to be like unto all the nations. And Samuel warns them, like, are you kidding me? This is contrary to what God wants. He goes to God. God says, "They haven't rejected you. They rejected me. Give them what they want, but warn them that if you want a king, he's going to enslave your kids and tax you and all these horrible things." And they're like, "Give us a king," right? And so they've abandoned God. You've got Solomon's foreign wives introducing all kinds of idolatry into the camp of Israel, the community. You've got Jeroboam's golden calves. You've got Ahab and Jezebel. You've got Judah's adoption of surrounding idols. You've got the Romans. Like, again and again and again, we can look at how the Israelites struggled with this to maintain a cohesive identity and religion free from the influence of their neighboring peers. Like, they fail again and again and again and again. God's chosen people were like, total miracles were happening, right? And they struggled.

We can think of the Jaredites. Remember in Jacob 5, we have the Zenos allegory about the olive trees, right? And the Lord is, on the vineyard is frustrated. No, the trees are getting corrupt. I need to take off these branches and plant them in the remote vineyards so that they can bear good fruit that I can lay up, you know, for a season unto me, etc., etc. Of course, the Jaredites are one of these branches who are scattered and flung halfway across the world, planted in a remote vineyard. And yet, again, they fall into apostasy, into idolatry. You can think of Jared's daughter bringing in the plans of old, right? The records which our fathers brought across the great deep, which talked about secret combinations. She proposed that her father, Jared, promised her in marriage to Achish on the condition that Achish would kill Jared's father, Omer, to secure the throne for him. This unleashes a constant scene of blowback of children fighting grandparents, fighting cousins, fighting in-laws, fighting all the rest, right? And what you see throughout the Jaredite story is a regular use of the old plans, always going to making the pact with the devil, digging up these plans, being inspired by, oh, look what Satan did with Cain. I want that too. I want power and wealth, you know, and bringing that in. You had wicked monarchs like Ripley-Kish, right? "And it came to pass, it says, that Ripley-Kish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines, and did lay that upon men's shoulders, which was grievous to be born. Yea, he did tax them with heavy taxes, and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings. And it came to pass that he did afflict the people with his whoredoms and abominations, right?" So you've got this God-fearing society where miracles are happening, and they're focused on teaching the gospel to their children, and yet they fall, and yet they incorporate false practices, and yet wickedness enters the community, and they degrade and implode.

We could, of course, say the same for the Nephites, right? I think, you know, we can go through Nephi and Lehi and all these guys, but I love the story of Mosiah. Here's a guy who is a seer, he gets the Jaredite record, he gets a hold of it, and he translates it for the first time. There was this record left by these people and bones everywhere, right? And so he translates it for the first time. And, you know, it's a great bit of information for the people. They rejoice in the knowledge that they had and so forth, and yet Mosiah sees in the Jaredite record this constant warfare because of monarchy, because of the centralization of power, right? And so I'm reading between the lions, but to me, it's very apparent that Mosiah is impacted by reading that story and realizes the destruction that can happen because very shortly thereafter, he assembles the people and he says, look, for example, at King Noah, right? As one of the more recent examples that they're all familiar with. Look at how much wickedness one king can cause to happen. Look at how much idolatry and all the rest, right? But this is prompted by Mosiah having just translated the record and seeing that not just in one isolated example with Noah, but through generational history and societal destruction for these Jaredite people. And so he gets worried about monarchy. He says, "I fear there would rise contentions among you, which would be the cause of shedding much blood and perverting the way of the Lord and destroy the souls of many people." That's precisely what happened to the Jaredites. That wasn't the, so much the Noah stories. It was the Jaredites story. So he of course says, let's abolish the monarchy. Let's have judges. We'll have kind of a self-rule under God's law of a sort that degrades into just constant warfare. If you look at all of the wars that are recorded in the Book of Mormon between that period of self-rule and when Christ comes, there's 15 major war campaigns recorded. And in every single one, it was breakaway Nephites who were wanting to get power and dominion. And they went and they incited the Lamanites as pawns to come and fight the Nephites. We have this childhood teaching in the church. Oh, then, you know, good guys versus the bad guys, the Lamanites versus the, the fly bugging me, Lamanites versus the Nephites, right? But no, the Lamanites were pawns again and again and again and again. It was Nephites breaking off and inciting the Lamanites, fomenting that, that long-standing hatred and jealousy that they had and using them as pawns. All 15 of these war campaigns. Certainly you had King Noah's debauchery. You had the false doctrine of Nehor tapping into man's carnal desire for power and prestige. You've got the people of Ammonihah, the Zoramite apostasy. You've got Gadianton and the secret combinations, the, the fall of the post-Christ, you know, Zionic society that they had for like about what, two centuries, I think. So again, with the Nephite example, we see the same thing that, that, you know, even when Christ came, right? And everyone, all the wicked are destroyed. Now you've got these righteous people and then things degrade. So why then do we think we'd be any different?

To me, the lesson of scripture, as we review the Israelites and we review the Jaredites and the Nephites, we could review the early Christians as well and see the same thing. Again and again, you see God's people allowing for what President Hinckley called the slow stain of the world. Whether you want to call that pride and vanity or the pursuit of wealth and status and ego and all the rest, right? It is the slow stain of the world again and again, creeping in upon God's community. So I'm reminded of this quote, "Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it." I think of the, the prophetic admonition to remember that pervades scriptures. In fact, in the Book of Mormon, there's 227 instances of remember or its variants, typically from father to son or prophet to people and so forth, right? Remember, remember, remember, remember. And so that quote, "Those who don't learn from the past, remember the past and then learn from it, apply it, are condemned to repeat it." That's an interesting word to me because in section 84, you know this, I share this scripture often. This is in 1832. The Lord condemns the Latter-day Saints and says that they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments, which I've given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written. The point of remembering is action, not just to say that you believe this stuff, but to do according to that which is written. Otherwise, you're condemned because you're not learning from the mistakes of the past. You're not remembering to then do. So Nephi, of course, talks about how he likened all scriptures unto us that it might be for a prophet in learning. And so too with the scriptural stories I shared, the Jaredites and the Nephites and the Israelites, we ought to be likening those instances to our day. We ought to be likening their experience, their spiritual degradation to our day so that it might be for a prophet in learning. Otherwise, we remain condemned.

So last week, as we reviewed the 30th anniversary of the proclamation, you know, we talked about the decline of marriage and childbearing. We talked about sexual identity, gender, and the war on objective truth where, you know, your people being pressured into disconnecting their statements and their beliefs from observable reality of people's gender. Let's spend remaining time in this musing touching on some additional ones, because in the book, I certainly go into those topics in more depth. But I want to mention a few more to illustrate this slow stain in a modern context. Because again, we can look at the scriptures and we can see how they were stained in the past. The subtitle for this book is "Lessons from the Past, Warnings for Today." And I chose that because the whole point of learning from the past is to change what happens today, is to not only say, but to do according to that which is God, God has written. We need to act. We need to change. We need to recognize the slow stain for what it is and counteract it. So I talk more about that in the book. Let's go through four examples of modern stains beyond the marriage and childbearing and gender, which we talked about last week. Okay.

So the first one is what I'll call the normalization of abortion. So every year around the world, 73, currently about 73 million abortions are being performed every year. That's about 200,000 a day. And, you know, what's sad is that the church is fly, is mostly silent on this topic. I did a musing three years ago called, "The church is way too silent on abortion." Again, you can go to sundaymusings.org, type abortion or click abortion. You'll find it, or I go into detail on this. But the church is mostly silent. There has been such limited commentary in general conference. And my argument is that this profound silence has resulted in a rising generation being disconnected from the doctrine. Leading one reporter, for example, to find, this is from BuzzFeed, the headline, "Some of the most viral pro-choice Instagram content is coming from Mormon bloggers." Right. And so left adrift without remembering, without being warned by leaders, without having this stuff be talked about again and again, to counteract the constant messaging from politicians and media and academia and peers and all the rest of like pro-choice, et cetera, et cetera. Where's the counter balance there? Where's, where's the pressure on the other side? And if there's largely silence, then young members of the church are in a sense, at least on this topic, like sheep without a shepherd, you know, they're succumbing to the world's seductive lies through the, the pervasive stain of normalized wickedness. In the book, I go into, uh, an idea where in the Book of Mormon, it talks about secret murders again and again, secret murders. There's murders, there's just murder, murder, murder, but then there's this term secret murders. And there's actually a case to be made that secret murders refers to abortion. So that's kind of interesting. But the point is that this stuff pervades the society and Latter-day Saints increasingly, especially in the rising generation have been stained as well. And they don't really have their leaders applying the stain removal, you know, excuse me, pushing back and, and commenting. So that's, I think one example of a modern stain that's impacting our community.

Uh, I'd say another one is the rise of feminism. You know, feminism's goal, the original feminists, their goal was not to lift women up. It was specifically to use them as weapons to dismantle the foundations of our society. That sounds kind of crazy, right? I thought it's all about equality and women's rights, right? Take Kate Millett, for example. So she's a staunch feminist. She's the author of "Sexual Politics." She's known as the female Marx, uh, later it was called the high priestess of feminism. So this is like one of the founding mothers of modern feminism. Here's her quote, "The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the revolutionary or utopian goal of feminism." Like if you want to understand how a system works or what the system is doing or how to alter the system, you need to understand the blueprint. You need to understand why the architects designed it a certain way, right? So if we, if we have this feminism, you can believe whatever veneer they put on top, this facade to, you know, make the pill easier to swallow, but go back and look at the people who architected all of the arguments and the positions and the policies and the strategies of a movement of a system. That is the true nature of the system, not the veneer or the facade, but the, the spirit and the heart. So here with feminism, you've got the complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family. That is not empowerment. That is demolition. You know, for the early feminists, especially homemaking was seen as slavery. One called it a "comfortable, uh, concentration camp." That was Betty Friedan. She's a feminist activist in the mid 20th century, a comfortable concentration camp. And so, you know, despite all the progress and the equality and, you know, the women can own property and they have the right to vote and get an education and join the workforce, despite all the progress. And, and I put that in quotes, like, I'm not saying, you know, women shouldn't be able to own property or any of that kind of stuff. Right. The implication here is not that all of that is inherently bad. Although there's some fascinating online takes about the 19th amendment and what has happened to our civic processes since that that's a whole nother can of worms and interesting to look at later, but there have been multi-decade surveys around the world, asking over a million people, the same question resulting in the same finding again, despite all the outward appearances of progress of equality, what the data shows when highly statistically significant, like the sample size here is massive, right? And the finding is the same greater educational, political and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women as compared to men. Let's look, for example, at the percentage who say that more women in the workforce is a change for the better. Latter-day Saints in 2014, so just over a decade ago, 49% said that just about half of Latter-day Saints said that more women in the workforce is a change for the better. Last year, 2024, one decade later, Latter-day Saints were at 61%, a 12% increase. Again, stain of the world. Right. And let's be fair for a moment. Latter-day Saints had the lowest percentages of any other religious denomination. So, yay, pat ourselves on the back, I suppose. But in those 10 years from 2014 to 2024, evangelicals went up only 2% from 58 to 60. Again, Latter-day Saints went up 12%. So evangelicals only went up 2%. Catholics went up 6% from 69 to 75. Orthodox Christians went down 6% from 70, so they were already quite high, to 64%. Muslims went down 1% from 67 to 66. So, you know, this is like eighth grade math when you get a 78% on the exam, but your teacher gave you an A because you were being graded on a curve. Doesn't mean you were perfect or great, just mean you didn't suck as bad as everybody else, right? So like, yay, Latter-day Saints, we're the lowest of any religious denomination and saying women should, you know, be away from the home and and be in the workforce and let the state raise their children and its schools and other people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So yay, Latter-day Saints are at the bottom. But we're being compared to everybody else and we're going up 12%. That's higher than any of these other denominations. That shows, I think, the stain. That's not to say that women working is inherently bad at all. I employ a ton of women. There are work-life balances and ways to do all the things or necessities because of divorce or like, right? I'm not making any inherent commentary here, but societally speaking, in the aggregate, the push for women into the workforce as more tax cattle for the state and separate, like you look at every dystopian book and it is always the alienation of children from the parents. Always. Right? Just like it is in totalitarian societies in real life, not in dystopian literature. And not just totalitarian societies, also in societies like ours, where there is a push for many people, we'll talk about this in just a moment in the education topic, to separate children from their parents because of the social engineering aspect. So the rise of feminism, yet another stain, modern stain, I think, for the Latter-day Saints.

Pornography. This is easy pickings. We all understand the problem here. The top three porn sites get more visits than Amazon, Netflix, Yahoo, TikTok, Zoom. The top-ranked porn website had around a billion views more than these high-traffic websites. The $76 billion industry, well over two-thirds of men regularly view pornography. And yet, like with abortion, for example, there have been a declining number of church references to it in General Conference. So in the 1970s, there were 18 substantive addresses in General Conference about pornography in the 70s. And by substantive, I mean more than just, like sometimes you'll have a leader who'll be like, oh, there are problems with pornography and drugs and abortion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And so this topic, pornography, has just a scant mention. I'm not including those. I'm saying substantive, like they talked about it, they addressed it. So in the 70s, there were 18. In the 80s, there were six, one-third. In the 90s, it jumped back up to 17. No surprise here, given the rise of the internet late in that decade. Of course, in the 70s, and then you've got, you know, Sexual Liberation and Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner and all these guys pushing the envelope. So no surprise to see a spike in the 70s, a spike in the 90s. In the 2000s, there were only nine. Same numbers, the 2010s. On average, only one meaningful mention for the entire year out of all of the talks. And in the 2020s thus far, only one discourse that has substantively addressed the issue. So how are Latter-day Saints faring here? Are we stained by this just like people more broadly throughout society? Well, BYU researchers surveyed unmarried individuals. They found that 45% of them labeled themselves as addicts. However, the researchers noted that only about 10 to 15% of the people showed true compulsive addictive behaviors, such as, you know, daily use or appearing to be out of control. Granted, this was a very small research study, very small sample size, very selective audience. Still, though, like, it's one thing to actually be compulsively addicted. But the problem with pornography is that, you know, exposure and infrequent consumption is still rampant. And that still has, of course, damaging effects. You talk to bishops, especially in like young single awards, awards. And anecdotally, at least what you hear is like, this is a problem for everybody. It's not one third, it's not 45%. It's not 10%. It's like, if you are male, you will be exposed. And many will seek it out. And whether you're going to call that an addict or not, the usage is high, even in the Latter-day Saint community. In 2014, there was a comparison of pornography use based on the data released by a pornography website. They kind of said, oh, here's the breakdown of where all of you are at, right? And so there was a study done in 2014 based on the data. And Utah use appeared to be much lower than other states, still high, but lower relatively, again, grading on a curve, right? Not as bad as, and granted, Utah does not equal Latter-day Saint because there's plenty of Latter-day Saints elsewhere and plenty of non-Latter-day Saints in Utah, but it's at least a little bit of a proxy to kind of look at it, given the concentration of members of the church. So Utah was still quite high. There was one in 2009, similarly using data from a single porn website, revealing where its customers are. So these studies, like people, you know, there are all these headlines, oh, look at Utah, look at blah, blah, blah. You know, Mormons are still using it a lot, presumably based on this proxy metric, like there's lots of chatter about it, but this is based off of a single source of data from a pornographic website that typically, like one of them, I don't remember if it was the 2009 or the 2014, but the data that they released was like a credit card transactions, where the address in the credit card is. So this is people who are only paying for porn. And also, I mean, this would be stupid to pay for it and not view it, but just because someone put their credit card doesn't mean, doesn't indicate like how often they're using it or anything like that. So it's not great data to like analyze what's going on. Um, right. But, but the problem here is that porn is free and easy to obtain. And, and so basing our understanding of its usage off of a single website where people are paying for it, when it's like all over social media, it's all over the internet and there's free websites and all the rest, right? The usage is much broader. So there's very limited data on Latter-day Saints specifically, but anecdotally, and then based on some of these limited studies and things as inadequate as they may be, I think we are very stained, right? This slow stain of the world has encroached upon Latter-day Saints as well.

Let's do one final example. I'll call this the, the "dumbing down" of society. Uh, and specifically we're talking about education. So God has commanded us, you know, to teach one another, the doctrine of the kingdom to seek out of the best books, words of wisdom. Uh, right. He said that whatever principle of intelligence we attain under this life, it will rise with us in the insurrection. We know that the glory of God is intelligence, right? Education is prioritized. Uh, the church puts a billion dollars a year of tithing revenue into its four institutions of higher education. So clearly there's an emphasis on education. Now the problem is that, okay, so the church is involved in some higher education. The problem here is, is K through 12 education and government schools in particular, that these institutions are more about social engineering than they are about academic success. Again, just like looking at feminism and looking at the architects of a system, we can do that here as well. You go to the Horace Mann's and the John Dewey's like take John Dewey, for example, this guy loved that the schools had, and this is a quote from him, "had a role in building up forces whose natural effect is to undermine the importance and uniqueness of family life." He also liked, and I quote that "the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties." Right? The whole point was to disconnect children from their parents, from their families, from their cultures, from their religions. I mean, Dewey was an atheist. He has this other quote where he says like, "teachers are the prophets of the one true God," blah, blah, blah, you know, creating the kingdom of God. But the dude was a secular humanist. He was an atheist. Why then would he say that teachers are prophets of the one true God building his kingdom? God was the state. Right? And teachers were its prophets, its ambassadors to build the state, to socially engineer the rising generation in that direction. It reminds me of this quote from Hitler in 1933. He says, "When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I, Hitler, calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You'll pass off. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'" I mentioned Horace Mann is another architect of the early American education system, the founder of the common school. He goes to Prussia. He's like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Brings it back. That's what we have today. You can go look up John Taylor Gatto. If any of this is new to you, you can read "The Underground History of American Education," which is a very insightful book. But Horace Mann has this quote where he says, "We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause." What? This is not about academic excellence. This is about social engineering. He has this other quote, Horace Mann, where he says that "men are like cast iron. Children are like wax, right? Adults are like cast iron. They're set in their ways. They're difficult. Just like Hitler, right? What are you? You will pass on, right? Go away. Like who cares? You're our opponent, but your child now stands in the new camp. Your child, in Horace Mann's words, is wax, malleable, manipulable, right?" I think of the National Commission on Excellence in Education clear back in 1983. What's that? 30, 42 years ago. And they do this 18 month study. They go around the country and they're analyzing textbooks and curricula, talking to teachers and students and test scores and all the rest, trying to understand how are we doing education? How's it going? And their report included this doozy, that "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people." So if the observation was that education in 1983 was mediocre, what word would you use to describe what it is today? Where across the board, there's just been a degradation in academic outcomes. I mean, sub-mediocre would probably be a charitable way to reference it. You've got people today who can't pass an eighth grade exam from like a century ago. You can find these online. I include a couple examples in this book. And you can't even understand the question, let alone determine the answer, right? So the "dumbing down" of the rising generation, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" is another way that this has been said. That over and over and over again, less is being expected of the rising generation. So if the glory of God is intelligence, then I think the glory of Satan is ignorance, right? He wants us uninformed. He wants us disengaged and thus more easily influenceable. Again, men are like cast iron, children are like wax, children who don't understand, know who to trust. They don't know the mistakes of the past to detect them happening today. They can't see through BS, etc., etc. Like if you're a dictator for a day, if you were ruler of a totalitarian country, would you prefer to rule over a populace of historically literate, critically thinking, independent-minded individuals or the opposite? Clearly, and the question answers itself, you would prefer to govern over a populace of people that were pacified, distracted, ignorant, entertained, right? Those people are easier to govern. Those people are easier for Satan to control. And so when we allow our children to be steeped in a system, an educational system that prioritizes mediocrity over mastery or conformity over curiosity, you know, secular humanism, like Dewey and all his ilk over eternal principles, you know, we're not really failing our kids academically. We're handing the adversary a victory in the war for their souls. This isn't just about, oh, I don't want to homeschool. I'm too busy or I can't or I wouldn't be any good or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the excuses, which is silly because there's so many abundant ways to do this. It's not just your homeschooling of yesteryear, to take charge of your children's education, to be their primary, not just caregiver, but facilitator of their education. And most Latter-day Saints have shirked this. They, like all of their counterparts across society, enroll children in the state's indoctrination centers and subject their children to the same social engineering that is happening for everybody else. You know, we are commanded to bring our children up in light and truth, not to subject them to a conveyor belt that stamps out their curiosity, their potential under the guise of education. There's a great quote from an evangelical pastor, Vati Bauckham, and he says that "we cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans." I think that has a lot of implication for Christians more broadly, for people of faith even more broader than that, but specifically for Latter-day Saints who are supposed to not be stained by the world and yet are, and actively invite the staining of their children by enrolling their children in these institutions and creating the intergenerational staining of the cultures and the attitudes and the biases and the traditions of the fathers and all the rest that happens in a system like this.

Okay, let's wrap up. So I have these topics and more in a new book called "The Slow Stain." Here's some other topics covered beyond the ones that I briefly mentioned. The monetary system, materialism and consumerism, the false gods we worship, right? Military, secret combinations, surveillance and privacy, the popularity of socialism, equity and neo-Marxism, new age nonsense, big food, big pharma, right? Like I go into all these different examples and more talking about modern stain and looking at how our community in particular has embraced the ways of the world that President Hinckley warned about. Again, I'll briefly note, he said, "With so much of allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world." For that reason, he and the leaders of the time felt to warn and forewarn with proclamation. Of course, the proclamation was narrow in scope just on the family. It was a proclamation about the family. And yet that allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world exists for far broader topics that threaten God's people, some of which I have in the book. "The Slow Stain, Lessons from the Past, Warnings for Today." You can grab it on Amazon. It is now out. I've got a Kindle version. I've got an audiobook version on Audible. You can also go to Sunday. No, what's the website? It's socialharmony.org. That is my imprint for my religious books. So socialharmony.org. You can get a bundle of all my religious books if you want, or this book individually, but you can also get it on Amazon.

We're going to conclude with a scripture, one that doesn't get a lot of airtime. I don't think I've even mentioned this in the past in any of my books, any of my musings, but I think it relates here. This comes from section 63 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It's a revelation given August 30, 1831. So the church, for context, is not even a year and a half old. And in verse 1, the Lord says, "Hearken, O ye people, open your hearts, give ear from afar, and listen, you that call yourselves the people of the Lord, and hear the word of the Lord and His will concerning you." So I wanted to share that before we get into the verse that has the point I want to make, because it establishes who the Lord is talking to. Listen, you that call yourselves the people of the Lord. So He's talking to us, members of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, followers of Christ. Here's verses 17 through 19. "Wherefore, I, the Lord, have said that the fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth, and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Verily I say that they shall not have part in the first resurrection. Now behold, I, the Lord, say unto you, that ye are not justified, because these things are among you." He's not talking to the world more broadly. He's not talking to heathens and Gentiles. He is talking to members of the Church. Now, clearly, He's talking to the ones in August of 1831. The Church is a year and a half old, and already the Lord, you know, it's one more year in 1832 when He says you're under condemnation until you repent and remember the, you know, the Book of Mormon and the former commandments I've given you. So that's in a year from now. Now it's August 30th, 1831. It's like, what, 16 months have gone by since the Church has been organized. And the Lord is saying, "These things are among you." You know, yet we prefer, I think, to be blind and think that the checklist gospel is enough. Oh, I have a temple recommend. Oh, I go to church on Sunday. I take the sacrament. I pay my tithing. Like, great. Good for you. So, too, have plenty of people who have embraced the slow stain of the world. Just because you superficially check requisite boxes for minimal compliance with outward performances does not mean that inwardly you are resisting the slow stain of the world and its allurement and its enticement. Throughout history, God's people have been slowly stained. Again and again and again and again. We are not immune from this trend just because we live in the dispensation of the fullness of times or the gospel has been restored. None of that is a guarantee that there won't be apostasy and idolatry. That there won't be countless foolish virgins and very few who are wise. That the terrors won't heavily overtake the wheat and shove them out, or most of them, despite being among them. Right? There's no guarantees here. And yet, I think this is just one guy's musing. I think we as a church community are corrupt. We delude ourselves into thinking that we're more righteous than we are. We often compare ourselves like some of these data points. Oh, we're not as bad as others. We're marginally better with marriage rates and with childbearing and with, you know, lower pornography use and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And we pat ourselves on the back because compared to others, graded on a curve, because it's easy to see how others are externally behaving. We somehow think we're doing great. But compared against the Lord's standards, not relatively compared to peers, but compared to the Lord's standards, He Himself, not even a year and a half in, is saying, "You are not justified because these things are among you." These sins of fearfulness of man, of unbelief in God's promises, right? Because He says the fearful, the unbelieving, liars, whoremongers, sorcerers. You think like, that's kind of weird, but wait for the chapter on New Age stuff in the book. We'll talk about that. We are just as susceptible. I would argue in many ways more susceptible than our predecessors were because of our devices and our constant connectivity to messages. It's one thing if you live in a little, you know, shanty and, you know, doing a little farm and you've got like a small social circle. Like that's a little bit easier to contain yourself against outside influences of other communities and nations and religions and all the rest. But we, and especially the rising generation, are bombarded with messages. We live in a cacophony of voices and contrary, counterfeit worldviews. And it's very hard for people to resist because as President Hinckley noted, it's alluring and it's enticing. And past peoples, despite not being super connected, were still affected by all of that. Why would we think that we wouldn't be?

So, I don't apologize for taking the tone that I often do on these podcasts. You know, I get people who are used to the "come follow me" superficiality, blah, blah, blah. And like they come here, someone sends them a link to a musing. They're like, "Whoa, why are you so negative? Why aren't you talking about happier things?" And the crap like that, right? Which I do from time to time and I'll bear testimony from time to time and I'll talk about, you know, proactive, positive, whatever stuff. But my worry, my chief concern is that we are allowing the slow stain to encroach upon us. I want to be a voice that says, look, the stain has encroached. We are stained. Let's fix this. Let's get the stain remover. And not silently ignore as that stain just creeps in a little more and a little more. And I get it. It's not, you know, platitudes and pleasantries. And let's talk about all the great ways we're doing just fine. And all the sweet nothings whispering in your ears, which a lot of people want. This podcast clearly isn't for everyone for that reason. But I feel prompted to be one of the warning voices for myself and my family, if not for you and yours and people more broadly. But to foster more conversation about this and intentionality to say, hey, is that a problem? Hey, is that a, is that a stain? Right. I didn't plan to bring this up and maybe I won't make this connection well, but at the time I'm recording this, I'm actually recording this in July. So this comes out later. And that's why my, my book is not one of the actual books. I still have the, the author proof yesterday. My brother and I were out driving a side-by-side off-roading out in the middle of nowhere. And we saw some smoke. He saw it. He's a firefighter. And, uh, and we're like, that's kind of weird. Is that a controlled burn? Is that

A campfire? Is that whatever? And so we tried to like, we were following a trail and the trail wouldn't take us over there. So we had to just fully off-road, get off the trail and drive over all the terrain. And sure enough, it was an, an uncontrolled fire.

Apparently what had happened the night prior is there was a lightning strike right there. In fact, the firefighters told us that I guess they have some way to detect or someone reported it. I don't know. But they, they came out to that area trying to find the lightning strike and said that they looked around. They couldn't find any fire, any, any whatever. And then it started to rain. So they went back home. Turns out they weren't like far enough west. They were a little further over.

So lightning struck it. It split this tree into a bunch of different pieces and, uh, and started a fire, which despite the rain, thankfully there was rain. And so the, the land around was pretty moist, which is why this fire, when we found it had not significantly spread because there was still a lot of moisture, um, into, uh, midday. Had we not found it and that moisture dried up and that fire would have started spreading quite a bit. And, uh, and so we called 911, we were throwing dirt on the fire. You know, we didn't have anything. We didn't have any whatever to, you know, we were just scooping dirt and trying to put the fire out that way. So firefighters came to put out the fire. Great.

I bring this up because, you know, we were observant and took action rather than like, oh, it should be fine. I'm, I'm betting it's a controlled burn or, oh, someone else will take care of it. Like so often I feel like as humans, we fall into this. There's, there's even a name for this. It's not going to come to me immediately, but there's, there's, there's this like social problem where people assume that someone else will take care of it. There's been studies done where like there will be a victim in an alleyway and they'll cry for help. And there's all these people around who can hear and windows open and whatever. And nobody does. Cause they just assume someone else is taking care of it. Which is why, by the way, if you're ever in an emergency, like if you need someone to call 9-1-1 or do something, you point at them and say, you go do this. Right. You don't just say somebody call 9-1-1. I even talk about this with my kids when like one of them will just say, can someone put the password into the computer for me? And then like, I'll just assume my wife's got it. My wife will assume that I've got it. So I even have to tell my kids, like pick an adult and say, dad, will you come do the password? So same thing. If you're ever in an emergency, you need to assign direct action because we fall into this trap of just assuming somebody else has got it. So my brother and I, right, we observed it. We took action. Case closed. Good thing.

Where I come back to with this topic is we've got these slow stains encroaching upon us all over the place. Different topics, different speeds of the stain, different saturation levels, all the rest. We need to call it out. We need to identify it. We need to take action and not just, oh, you know, if it was important, the leaders would tell us. Right. They would talk about in general conference. If it's something we need to worry about, it should be fine. We're doing better than everybody else. Look, look at the world. We're, we're better. No, it's not sufficient. Not, not at all sufficient.

So that is what prompted me for the 30th anniversary of the proclamation in which, or not in which, but before which President Hinckley warned of the, uh, the, the allurement and the enticement to take on the slow stain in the world. As I thought last year about the 30th anniversary one year out, which is now I thought, huh, that would be interesting to talk about. What are those slow stains? Certainly there's the marriage and family and gender and children and all this stuff in the context of the proclamation itself. But, you know, it was like, man, this is so much broader. There's so many ways in which we are being stained.

So hopefully that was enjoyable. Encourage you to go to social harmony.org. You can get this and my other religious books. If you want to dig in, it's 350 pages of goodness. I had a blast writing this. It was at once depressing and enlightening. Um, but I think it is potent. This would make a great gift for folks, uh, as well. And so as Christmas is coming up holidays and all the rest, uh, check it out and get it on Amazon. Again, I've got a Kindle copy. Uh, I've got an audible copy. Check out the slow stain lessons from the past warnings for today. Hope you guys enjoy it. Thank you for listening. Thank you for reading. Let me know in the comments, your thoughts. Did I miss any stains that you think are plaguing God's people today that we ought to, uh, have a warning voice about more conversation about maybe a topic for a future amusing that you want to suggest in the comments. I'll see you there and I'll see you next Sunday.