“Am I True?” — A Defense of President Eyring’s BYU–Idaho Devotional
A response to ldsdiscussions.com’s blog post “Am I True? BYU Idaho Devotional Recap” (September 19, 2018)
What the Devotional Actually Said
On September 18, 2018, BYU–Idaho President Henry J. Eyring delivered a devotional address titled “Gaining and Strengthening a Testimony.” The talk centered on a personal spiritual experiment he had practiced for thirty years: when tempted to doubt the Church or its leaders, he asked himself not only “Is the Church true?” but also “Am I true?” — meaning, am I living with integrity, am I spiritually aligned, am I examining my own heart as well as external claims?
He shared a formative experience: as a young law clerk, a supervisor challenged him on the Book of Abraham. Rather than responding with polemics, his father — Elder Henry B. Eyring — asked him two simple questions: “Have you read the Book of Abraham?” and “How do you feel when you read it?” This approach — turning inward to evaluate one’s own spiritual state — was the heart of the devotional.
He also proposed a spiritual experiment: assume the Church is true, identify at least one way you are not fully living its teachings, and then repent. His point was that spiritual impediments — unresolved sin, pride, willful avoidance — are legitimate variables in the equation of doubt, and that honest self-examination is part of rigorous inquiry, not a substitute for it.
He cited the scriptural pattern of Enos and Alma the Younger, both of whom experienced transformative confirmation of truth only after deep personal reckoning. This is the devotional in its actual form — a pastoral invitation to honest introspection, not a command to stop asking questions.
Claim 1: The Devotional Is “Textbook Gaslighting”
“That is the textbook definition of gaslighting: to make it seem like you are the crazy one for asking the question in the first place.” — ldsdiscussions.com
This characterization is inaccurate on both clinical and logical grounds. Gaslighting, as defined in psychiatric literature, is a form of persistent psychological manipulation by which a specific individual causes another to doubt their own memory, perception, or sanity — typically through lying, denial, and misdirection (Dorpat, 1996; Stern, 2007). It requires an ongoing power relationship in which the manipulator systematically distorts the victim’s grasp of reality.
Eyring’s devotional does none of this. He did not deny that historical questions exist. He did not claim questioners are mentally unstable. He did not punish anyone for asking. He invited a spiritual experiment — one that anyone is free to accept or decline — and acknowledged that personal integrity and spiritual condition are legitimate factors in spiritual discernment. That is not manipulation. That is sound epistemology.
Importantly, self-examination has been a cornerstone of serious religious inquiry across every major tradition. The Apostle Paul wrote: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). John Calvin wrote extensively on the necessity of self-examination before approaching the Lord’s Supper. The Desert Fathers built entire ascetic programs around interior scrutiny. The suggestion that asking “Am I true?” is gaslighting would, by the same logic, pathologize all of Christian spiritual formation.
The ldsdiscussions.com post conflates two distinct activities: (1) asking whether one’s own spiritual state is a variable in how one receives spiritual truth, and (2) denying the existence of historical problems. President Eyring did the former. The post accuses him of the latter.
Sources: Dorpat, T.L. (1996). Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control. Jason Aronson; Stern, R. (2007). The Gaslight Effect. Morgan Road Books; 2 Corinthians 13:5.
Claim 2: The Church Suppresses History and Blames Doubters
“The church has a history of hiding evidence from members and then gaslighting the ones that continue to have questions.” — ldsdiscussions.com
The factual record does not support the claim that the Church systematically hides its history. Consider the following:
The Joseph Smith Papers Project — initiated by the Church in 2001 and transferred to the Church History Library in 2005 — has published over two dozen volumes of primary source documents, including diaries, letters, revelation manuscripts, and financial records. The final printed volume was released in 2023. The entire collection is freely available at josephsmithpapers.org. Many of these documents had never been publicly available before. This is not suppression; it is unprecedented archival openness.
The Gospel Topics Essays — published beginning in 2013 — address polygamy, the Book of Abraham, DNA and the Book of Mormon, race and the priesthood, First Vision accounts, and other sensitive topics with frank acknowledgment of historical complexity. Critics who once accused the Church of hiding this material now face the inconvenient reality that the Church published it. One cannot simultaneously accuse an institution of suppressing information and cite that institution’s own publications as evidence against it.
It is true that correlated curriculum did not emphasize every nuance of early Church history — but this is universally true of introductory religious education at every level in every tradition. Sunday school curricula worldwide — Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim — do not survey historiographical debates. Omission from introductory curriculum is not synonymous with institutional suppression.
Sources: Joseph Smith Papers: About the Project; Church Publishes Original Documents of Founder Joseph Smith, LDS Newsroom; Gospel Topics Essays, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Claim 3: The Priesthood Restoration Was “Retrofitted” Retroactively
“Why didn’t the church tell us that Joseph Smith retrofitted the priesthood revelation years after he said it happened?” — ldsdiscussions.com
The historical picture here is more nuanced than ldsdiscussions.com suggests. Scholars at BYU Studies have identified a seventeen-day window between May 15 and May 31, 1829, within which the Melchizedek Priesthood restoration can be documented — a window derived from internal dating in the Joseph Smith Papers themselves. The delayed public announcement of these events does not constitute retroactive fabrication; early Church history was primarily an oral tradition, and formal documentation lagged behind events across the board, a pattern consistent with how other 19th-century religious movements recorded founding events.
An 1832 account of the First Vision — the earliest known account, predating the more commonly cited 1838 narrative — corroborates that Joseph Smith was actively recounting his foundational spiritual experiences long before critics claim the record was “retrofitted.” The Church published this 1832 account itself through the Joseph Smith Papers. If the intent were suppression, this is an extraordinary way to suppress evidence.
Furthermore, the premise that “late documentation = fabrication” is not a principle applied consistently in historiography. The accounts of Jesus’s resurrection were not written down until decades after the event. Paul’s first letters predate the Gospel narratives by twenty years. No serious historian concludes that delayed documentation automatically invalidates the underlying event.
Sources: Priesthood Restoration Documents, BYU Studies; Detailed Response to CES Letter: Priesthood Restoration, FAIR Latter-day Saints.
Claim 4: The Book of Abraham Papyrus “Had Nothing to Do with Abraham”
“Why didn’t the church tell us that the papyrus that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham had nothing to do with Abraham at all?” — ldsdiscussions.com
This claim assumes a conclusion that is actually in active scholarly dispute. The ldsdiscussions.com framing assumes (a) that the recovered fragments represent all the papyri Joseph Smith possessed, and (b) that the translation process was direct and mechanical. Both assumptions are contestable.
The extant papyri fragments — identified as portions of the Hor Book of Breathings — constitute only a fraction of the original collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art returned eleven fragments in 1966; the original collection was substantially larger and is not recoverable. FAIR Latter-day Saints notes that “The Document of Breathings made by Isis is not the Book of Abraham” — it is an entirely separate papyrus that happened to be in the same collection.
Moreover, scholars Nicholas Frederick and Joseph Spencer (BYU) have proposed that the Book of Abraham may have been received by revelation — with the papyri serving as a catalyst rather than a word-for-word source text. This “catalyst theory” is internally consistent with Joseph Smith’s own description of his translation process, which varied significantly across different projects. The Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges this interpretive range openly.
The claim that the papyrus definitively disproves the Book of Abraham requires certainty that the extant fragments were the sole source material, that “translation” meant direct linguistic decoding, and that Egyptological consensus settles questions of inspired revelation. None of these premises is as settled as the post implies.
Sources: Book of Abraham: Joseph Smith Papyri, FAIR Latter-day Saints; Translating the Book of Abraham: The Answer Under Our Heads, FAIR 2020 Conference.
Claim 5: Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon Is Anachronistic
“Why did Joseph Smith include Deutero-Isaiah verses in the Book of Mormon, when we now know those parts of Isaiah were not written until after Lehi left?” — ldsdiscussions.com
The Deutero-Isaiah argument is presented as if the documentary hypothesis were settled scientific fact uniformly accepted by all relevant scholars. It is not. The hypothesis that Isaiah 40–55 was composed by a second author writing during or after the Babylonian exile is a majority view in critical scholarship, but it is neither unanimous nor without credible scholarly dissent.
BYU scholars at the Religious Studies Center have addressed this directly. From a Latter-day Saint theological standpoint, if Isaiah was a genuine prophet with access to divine foreknowledge — as the text itself claims — then the predictive content attributed to “Deutero-Isaiah” is exactly what one would expect from an authentic 8th-century prophet. The documentary hypothesis rests on an a priori assumption that predictive prophecy is impossible; accepting that assumption begs the question against the very tradition being evaluated.
Additionally, BYU scholars Nicholas Frederick and Joseph Spencer have proposed that God may have revealed a fuller Isaiah text to Nephi on the brass plates than was available in the original Hebrew — a theologically coherent solution that the post does not engage.
The argument from Deutero-Isaiah has logical force only if one grants the premise that prophecy cannot be genuinely predictive. That premise is not a neutral historical finding; it is a theological commitment dressed in academic language. It should be named as such.
Sources: Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, BYU Religious Studies Center; Frederick & Spencer on Deutero-Isaiah and the Brass Plates, B.H. Roberts Foundation.
Claim 6: DNA Evidence Disproves the Book of Mormon
“Why did the church insist that the Native Americans were the original Lamanites, only to shift the narrative once DNA testing proved that the Native Americans are actually descended from Asia?” — ldsdiscussions.com
This argument rests on a conflation of two separate questions: (1) What did earlier Church leaders and members assume about Book of Mormon geography? and (2) What does the text of the Book of Mormon itself require? These are not the same question.
Population geneticists — including LDS scholars — have explained that even if a small group of Semitic migrants (Lehi’s family) entered the Americas in 600 BC, their DNA signal would be effectively undetectable within the vastly larger existing indigenous population within a few generations. FAIR Latter-day Saints notes that no genetic study has ever been specifically designed to test for Lehite descent, and that the genetic dilution problem makes absence of evidence a non-evidential finding in this case.
The “shift in narrative” claim also misrepresents the history. The Church never officially canonized a specific Book of Mormon geography. Individual leaders and members held various views — hemispheric, limited geography, heartland — none of which constitute doctrinal positions. The limited geography model, which is today the dominant scholarly framework among LDS researchers, was advocated by scholars like John Sorenson as early as the 1980s, well before genetic testing became relevant.
Sources: DNA and the Book of Mormon, FAIR Latter-day Saints; The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint, BYU Religious Studies Center.
Claim 7: The Kinderhook Plates and Mark Hofmann Prove Failed Prophetic Discernment
“How come the church leaders have no power of discernment to know that the Kinderhook Plates were a hoax or that the Mark Hofmann documents they paid him for were a complete fraud?” — ldsdiscussions.com
This argument implicitly assumes that if Church leaders were genuine prophets, they would exercise perfect, continuous supernatural discernment on all material questions — including the provenance of 19th-century brass plates and forged documents. This is not a claim the Church makes and never has been.
The Kinderhook Plates: The Church officially addressed this in 1981 in the Ensign, acknowledging the plates were a hoax and stating clearly that there is no evidence Joseph Smith ever formally translated them “under the direction of God, as he had with the Book of Mormon.” The Church, not critics, published this conclusion. One contemporary journal entry references Joseph Smith examining the plates; this is not a record of formal prophetic translation. The ldsdiscussions.com framing requires treating a casual examination as equivalent to a formal prophetic undertaking.
Mark Hofmann: Hofmann deceived professional experts, law enforcement, document examiners, the Library of Congress, and top manuscript specialists across the country — not merely Church leaders. The documents passed forensic analysis specifically designed to detect forgeries. Elder Dallin H. Oaks addressed this in 1987, noting that prophets are not omniscient and that the prophetic gift is not designed to override human agency or substitute for expert investigation. Expecting Church leaders to supernaturally detect what trained forensic analysts missed is an extraordinary standard applied to no other institution.
Sources: Hofmann Forgeries, ChurchofJesusChrist.org; Dallin H. Oaks, August 1987 Remarks on Hofmann, FAIR Latter-day Saints; Kinderhook Plates, FAIR Latter-day Saints.
Claim 8: Modern Prophets Give No Revelations and Have No Answers
“If we believe in personal revelation, how come the prophets do not give revelations anymore, do not have answers for the tough historical problems, and do not claim visions like the early days?” — ldsdiscussions.com
The LDS Church has always taught continuing revelation, not continuous, canonized revelation. The 9th Article of Faith states: “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” This is a claim of ongoing revelation — not a promise that every revelation will be formally added to the canon or publicly declared.
Furthermore, modern Church leaders do make significant claims to revelation. The 1978 revelation on the priesthood (Official Declaration 2) is a post-Joseph Smith canonized revelation. President Russell M. Nelson has publicly described receiving specific divine guidance on key decisions. The distinction ldsdiscussions.com draws — between “real” early revelations and supposedly absent modern ones — applies a double standard: early revelations are real by assumption, while modern ones are dismissed by assumption.
Finally, acknowledging that leaders do not have complete answers to every historical question is not a prophetic failure — it is honesty. A system that claimed to have all the answers to every historical and theological puzzle would be far more suspect than one that acknowledges the boundaries of human knowledge while affirming divine guidance on matters of salvation.
Sources: Modern Prophets and Continuing Revelation, LDS Newsroom; The Blessing of Continuing Revelation to Prophets, General Conference, April 2020.
The Central Methodological Problem
The ldsdiscussions.com post presents itself as championing rigorous, objective inquiry against a Church that suppresses critical thinking. But the post itself fails several basic standards of rigorous inquiry:
It applies asymmetric standards. The same epistemological charity extended to critics — that uncertainty about evidence does not disprove their position — is never extended to believers. Every gap in the historical record is treated as evidence against the Church; no gap is treated as evidence of genuine complexity or uncertainty.
It conflates personal experience with systematic suppression. “I was not taught this in Primary” is not equivalent to “The Church hid this.” An individual’s incomplete Sunday school education does not constitute institutional deception, any more than a Catholic who never heard of patristic textual criticism could accuse the Vatican of suppressing church history.
It misrepresents the devotional in order to attack it. President Eyring did not say that doubters are spiritually broken, that historical questions should not be investigated, or that the Church’s history is problem-free. He said that personal spiritual integrity is a variable in spiritual discernment, and that self-examination is a legitimate and necessary part of the inquiry process. These are defensible positions with deep roots in Christian spiritual formation.
It treats spiritual methods as inherently suspect. The post argues that asking “Am I true?” is a manipulation designed to short-circuit inquiry. But this framing assumes that the only valid method for evaluating religious truth claims is purely external and historical. If one excludes spiritual experience as a legitimate epistemic category from the outset, then no spiritual framework can ever receive a fair evaluation. That is not rigor; it is philosophical gerrymandering.
What Self-Examination Actually Is
The spiritual tradition President Eyring invoked is ancient, cross-cultural, and universally recognized among serious practitioners of faith. In Latter-day Saint theology, the ability to receive spiritual confirmation — the witness of the Holy Ghost — is described as contingent on one’s spiritual openness. This is not a manipulation tactic; it is the internal logic of a tradition that understands spiritual receptivity as a real variable in the acquisition of spiritual knowledge.
The question “Am I true?” does not replace “Is the Church true?” It supplements it. Any honest intellectual inquiry includes an examination of the inquirer — their priors, their emotional state, their motivations, their biases. A scientist who acknowledges confirmation bias in their own methodology is being more rigorous, not less. A believer who asks whether their spiritual state is affecting their spiritual perception is doing the same.
ldsdiscussions.com closes by assuring readers: “You are not the problem.” That is a comforting message, but it is not always a true one. Epistemic humility requires acknowledging that our own internal states — grief, anger, betrayal, social pressure, pride — can and do influence how we evaluate evidence. This is not a religious idea; it is a well-established finding in cognitive science. To tell someone they should never ask “Am I part of the problem?” is to remove a tool of genuine intellectual honesty from the inquiry process.
President Eyring’s devotional did not shame doubters. It invited serious seekers to bring their whole selves — including their own spiritual condition — to the question. That is not gaslighting. That is what real inquiry looks like.
Conclusion
The ldsdiscussions.com post on the BYU–Idaho devotional is an example of a genre that presents emotional resonance as scholarly weight. The genuine pain of individuals who felt misled by incomplete Sunday school curricula is real and deserves pastoral compassion. But personal pain does not constitute a scholarly argument, and the rhetorical move of repackaging devotional pastoral counsel as “textbook gaslighting” does not survive scrutiny.
The specific historical claims made in the post — on the priesthood restoration, the Book of Abraham, Deutero-Isaiah, DNA evidence, the Kinderhook plates, and the Hofmann forgeries — are all more complicated than the post acknowledges. In each case, the Church’s own publications, the Joseph Smith Papers, the Gospel Topics Essays, and rigorous LDS scholarship provide substantive responses that ldsdiscussions.com does not engage.
President Eyring’s message — examine your own heart, repent where needed, and then experience for yourself whether the promises of the gospel are real — is not an evasion of hard questions. It is a specific methodological claim: that spiritual knowledge requires spiritual conditions, and that genuine inquiry includes the inquirer. That claim is worth taking seriously before dismissing it with a borrowed psychological label.
Those who have doubts deserve better than a website that validates their conclusions before they finish asking their questions. They deserve the full scholarly picture — including the responses that ldsdiscussions.com never shows them.