You can read the manifesto at https://latterdayorthodoxy.org .

You can also read more about it in this news article published by the Salt Lake Tribune last Sunday: https://sltrib.com/religion/2020/12/05/theres-new-manifesto/

Even though I am not actively blogging at the moment so I can focus on finishing my book, I’d like to pop in to share a few insights about what we mean by radical orthodoxy within the context of the restored gospel.

First, let me say something about the title. We explored a lot of different options before settling on the words “radical orthodoxy” to describe the ideas we have tried to articulate.

The word radical is complex, with a rich, symbolic etymology. It has deep roots– in fact, it is derived from the Latin word rādix which literally means “root.”

Over time, words evolve meanings beyond their etymological origins, and in Modern English, the word radical usually refers to a desire for change— not just superficial change, but change at a fundamental, root level. Radical can also refer to something basic or intrinsic. Sometimes it means far-reaching or thorough. In chemistry it refers to atoms, ions, or molecules that have unpaired electrons, which makes them highly reactive. When it is paired with an ideology, radical can sometimes mean extreme. And most people also recognize it as a popular slang term roughly equivalent to “excellent!” or “awesome!”

The word orthodoxy comes from the Ancient Greek roots ὀρθός (orthós), meaning “correct,” and δόξα (dóxa) meaning “way or belief.” So it literally refers to correctness in doctrine or belief. In a religious context it usually refers to conformity to established or accepted beliefs.

By putting these two words together, we intentionally create a paradox. How can you desire deep change while still conforming to established doctrines?

Throughout our lives we encounter this struggle between extremes: change vs statis, conformity vs nonconformity, progress vs conservation. Radical orthodoxy is about navigating the space in between.

G.K. Chesterton famously wrote about the conflict between change and tradition in an analogy that is often referred to as “Chesterton’s Fence”:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’ This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.”

When we talk about the restored gospel in online forums, we find various competing voices in addition to the official communications from the Church.

On the one side we have those who say that because the fence exists it therefore must always remain the same. No changes or adjustments are necessary or allowed.

On the other side we have those who want to tear down the fence because it imposes limits on them that they don’t like, regardless of whether those limits might serve a good purpose that they don’t know about or may not have considered.

Radical orthodoxy sees the great value of tradition, and the potential dangers of change. But it also sees the necessity of change and improvement, and the potential dangers of traditions that become an end in themselves.

Radical orthodoxy looks to the roots. It encourages us to not only examine the fence, but also explore the reasons why the fence exists in the first place, the purposes it served when it was put there, as well as the purposes it continues to serve. And it is open to the possibility that the fence might need to be changed, updated, or moved– though never cavalierly or recklessly, and always with an eye toward the roots of why it exists.

However, in addition to the principle of Chesterton’s Fence, latter-day saints have an additional variable that they must consider: Living Prophets. One of the fundamental tenets of the Church is a deference to those whom God has chosen and authorized to represent Him and to speak on His behalf.

Being a faithful member of the church does not require you to believe that the prophets are infallible or to agree with everything they have ever spoken. But it does mean that you intentionally allow their teachings and directions to weigh more heavily than your own opinions. And it means that you are willing to reconsider or change your views when they conflict with what the prophets teach. Faithful members avoid contradicting or undermining the authority, programs, and policies of the Lord’s authorized servants– especially those teachings that are proclaimed by all fifteen of the apostles and prophets who comprise the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church.

However, apostles and prophets also have personal opinions and personal interpretations. They sometimes speculate. They are not always acting in the capacity of a prophet or apostle. That means that, for example, the content of a private letter written by an apostle to a family member or a friend ought to be considered inherently different than what they teach over the pulpit in a general conference of the Church or when they are otherwise acting in their official role and giving apostolic teachings. Furthermore, some counsel is context-specific and meant for a specific audience, circumstance, or time. Some teachings are meant to address local problems and were not necessarily intended to be generalized into a principle for the whole Church.

A personal opinion expressed privately by an apostle should not necessarily be given the same weight as something taught in a stake conference, which in turn should not be given the same weight as a discourse given in a general conference, which in turn should not be given the same weight as the teachings that have been taught by many apostles and prophets over time.

An idiosyncratic idea expressed a few times by one or two apostles that has not been taught by any of the subsequent prophets or apostles should weigh far less among the factors of your testimony than those precepts, principles, and doctrines that have been taught repeatedly by multiple prophets and apostles from the time of the restoration until the present. The doctrine of the church is not found in a popular quote or some obscure sentence from a single discourse. And the teachings and guidance of the current, living prophets, who relay the will of the Lord regarding present circumstances, should always carry more weight than those of the past.

It can be difficult to disentangle official teachings of the Church from cultural ideas and traditions. Some traditions and cultural concepts are wrong and should be abandoned. Some are good and useful and should be preserved. But the relationship between tradition, culture, and doctrine is complex, and changing tradition and culture can have unexpected consequences. There are always tradeoffs. So just because something is traditional or cultural does not mean it can or should be discarded.

Radical orthodoxy seeks to navigate these considerations while continually defending and following the living prophets. It can recognize the need for change and improvement, and it can acknowledge mistakes and misinterpretations of the past, while still recognizing the value of tradition and culture, and at the same time trusting in the Lord and the prophets and apostles He has chosen to lead His Church.

Radical orthodoxy sees that there is great complexity, beauty, and infinite wonder to be found within the framework of the Church. There are infinite opportunities for intellectual exploration and discovery within the constraints of faithfulness. We do not need to cross lines, break barriers, and deconstruct truths in order to find intellectual fulfillment. In fact, choosing to work within the limits and constraints of the gospel can be the catalyst for profound discovery and invention.

Radical Orthodoxy is orthodoxy with deep roots. It is orthodoxy that is far reaching and thorough. It is orthodoxy that embraces change– but change that is rooted in fundamental ideas and truths– not in the hasty or superficial, not in change for the sake of change itself, and not in change in order to conform to societal pressures. Radical orthodoxy is about letting the gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of His prophets change and reform us.

Some might even say that radical orthodoxy is awesome orthodoxy.

Now, back to focusing on my book…

Recently critics and dissidents have been clamoring for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to abolish the common practice of having lay bishops hold private interviews with youth in which they ask them questions about sexual morality and the Law of Chastity.

Many of these critics are concerned about the propriety of having a bishop talk about sexual issues with young men and women alone as well as the potential for abuse. And they point to legitimately tragic anecdotes from people who feel that the practice had a negative effect on them as youth. Some even claim that it facilitated abuse by a bishop.

Earlier this year, the church announced that it would update its policies to optionally allow youth to have a parent attend the interview with them. The church provided bishops with standardized questions to be asked. And parents and youth were also to be given information about the kinds of questions and topics that would be included in the interview beforehand.

But the changes do not seem to have appeased the critics, who will not be satisfied until they have pressured the church to abolish the interviews completely and with them any enforcement of the Law of Chastity.

I just wanted to raise a point in support of the interviews that I have not seen made elsewhere, and that I hope the critics will seriously consider:

What about youth who are being sexually abused by their own parent?

A private interview with the bishop in which questions about sexual morality and the Law of Chastity will be raised poses a great risk to a parent who is sexually abusing their own child. It is an opportunity for the youth to reveal the abuse to the bishop without the abuser there to control the conversation. The bishop can be a trusted adult and authority figure that youth may feel can provide them help and safety from their own abusive parent. Sexually abusive parents must feel terrified that they will be exposed every time their son or daughter meets with the bishop alone.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if, in the name of protecting youth from abuse by bishops, we inadvertently undercut an important avenue for youth to potentially escape from abuse at home?

It is important to realize that these kinds of policy changes always include tradeoffs and unintended consequences. We should be circumspect and cautious and consider the potential drawbacks as well as the perceived benefits.

The vast majority of bishops in the church are good, honest, moral men who put in an immense amount of work to serve the people in their congregations without any compensation. They hold authority and priesthood keys that give them stewardship over the members of their wards and the right to oversee their spiritual welfare. They sometimes make mistakes. But they also often receive amazing inspiration and revelation to bless the lives of their ward members.

For every anecdote critics share about an inappropriate bishop’s interview, there are literally hundreds of others where bishops have helped young people repent from sin and find happiness in the gospel. And I suspect that for every story of an abusive bishop, there are others where a bishop has been instrumental in saving youth from an abusive situation at home.

We should take great care that in our zeal to pluck out the tares, that we do not accidentally destroy the wheat too.

A week without any social media, news media, or blogs, has been enlightening. I deleted all the social media apps from my phone and closed all of my pinned browser tabs to social media sites.

During the first few days I found myself absentmindedly unlocking my phone and trying to open social media programs only to realize what I was doing because they weren’t there anymore. I hadn’t recognized how habitual they had become until they weren’t there. It was almost like an automatic reflex. By the end of the week the urge was mostly gone, but not completely.

I realized that I needed to be more deliberate about when I use social media and when I don’t. I have reinstalled some social media applications on my phone. But I have chosen to disable all notification messages and indicators for them. We’ll see how it goes.

The second thing I realized was that by cutting out social media and news media, my everyday life was far more peaceful. I could enjoy the people and events happening immediately around me at home, at work, in my neighborhood, and at church.

My impression is that news and social media make every tragedy and crisis elsewhere in the world feel local. We get caught up in the narratives and topics that the media give us and we end up neglecting the people right in front of us because we are expending our energy elsewhere. It is a good thing to be engaged with the world, and politics, and trying to help people in need. But I feel that news and social media often take that good and healthy impulse, and they manipulate and distort it into something bad and unhealthy.

Last year at the October General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson warned us:

“We live in a culture where more and more we are focused on the small, little screen in our hands than we are on the people around us. […] sometimes it’s easy to miss some of the greatest opportunities to serve others because we are distracted or because we are looking for ambitious ways to change the world and we don’t see that some of the most significant needs we can meet are within our own families, among our friends, in our wards, and in our communities. We are touched when we see the suffering and great needs of those halfway around the world, but we may fail to see there is a person who needs our friendship sitting right next to us in class. […]What good does it do to save the world if we neglect the needs of those closest to us and those whom we love the most? How much value is there in fixing the world if the people around us are falling apart and we don’t notice? Heavenly Father may have placed those who need us closest to us, knowing that we are best suited to meet their needs.”

I realize that I need to live my life and expend more of my energy locally with the people who are around me: my wife, my children, my family, my neighbors. So I will be striving to prioritize face-to-face interaction with the people around me over news and social media.

Going without news and social media is a useful and healthy exercise and I will be doing it on a regular basis in order to help me keep perspective and live more deliberately.

I encourage everyone to try it. You’ll discover things about yourself. And it will improve your life.

You may have noticed that things have been quiet here on my blog for a long time. The reason I have been blogging less is that for the last two years I have been writing a book.

Mormons write a lot of books. But my hope is that this book will be different than other Mormon books you might have read– both in style and substance.

The purpose of my book is to help members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints build faith in Jesus Christ, the Church He restored through Joseph Smith, and the living prophets and apostles he has authorized to lead and direct it today. And while there are many LDS books with the same purpose, I hope to introduce new concepts and ideas that are not found in any other of the popular or scholarly books on Mormonism.

The human mind is an amazing thing. Our ability to reason and analyze is powerful. But our intellectual capacities can also lead us into mental traps and logical loops that interfere with our belief in the gospel. My hope is that my book will introduce readers to new ideas and concepts that can help them cultivate a faithful mind and avoid mental traps that undermine their faith.

The book includes some ideas that I have written about here on my blog over the last decade. But when started adapting these ideas from my blog posts into book format, I discovered that there were a lot of underlying concepts that inform my blog posts but that I have never explained. And I felt that it would be important for the book to lay out these ideas with greater context and in more detail.

I have some friends who are amazing writers and who can spin out spools of insightful, coherent prose like spinning gold out of straw over night. But I am a slow writer. I puzzle and struggle over every sentence and paragraph. And it takes a lot of mental and emotional energy for me to express my ideas in writing.

So, I have dedicated whatever time and energy I have for writing to working on my book manuscript. That means that even when I would like to blog about current events, or my observations about various topics, I have chosen instead to work on my book.

So far, I have written 9 chapters with over 39,000 words– which, including footnotes, comes out to over 170 double-spaced 8.5 x 11 pages. The final manuscript will probably be at least twice that number. So I’m about half way done.

In the last 10 months I have been scheduling time daily to work on it, so even though it has taken me 2 years to get to where I am, I hope to finish the second half faster than that.

Once the manuscript is complete, I would like to get it published through a traditional publisher. But if that proves too difficult, I may consider self-publishing.

If you would like to be informed about the progress of this project, or if you are interested in possibly reading pre-publication excerpts, if you are involved in book publishing and may be interested in evaluating it for possible publication, or if you are simply interested in purchasing or reviewing the book when it is available, please subscribe to receive email notifications about progress and publication at this link:

Book Notifications Subscription Form

I will also try to post periodic updates here on the blog.

Thank you so much for your interest and support.

J. Max Wilson

What they are doing in China using technology to modify and mold social behavior is both ingenious and amazing, but also terrifying. This article from Wired is long, but worth the read:

INSIDE CHINA’S VAST NEW EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL RANKING
https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/

Basically, companies and the government in China are developing a technology-driven “Social Credit Score” that they can use together with concepts of gamification to socially engineer the views and behaviors of people on a massive scale. In some ways it is kind of like Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, but instead of fear and oppression, it uses social, economic, and psychological incentives to create a more subtle and manipulative despotism.

I think it is likely that, as the article suggests, this kind of centralized reputation based social engineering will eventually come to the United States.

Meanwhile, individuals in Utah and elsewhere are currently working on technology that could revolutionize identity, reputation, and trust using open source software called Sovrin that uses an ingenious combination of cryptography and a public ledger technology similar to the blockchain used by bitcoin.

https://www.sovrin.org

Sovrin has the potential to overthrow many of our existing power structures related to reputation, credentials, education, and trust. In some ways it is in direct opposition to the kind of centrally controlled reputation system being implemented in China described in the article above. It is distributed, decentralized, and in control of individuals instead of big businesses and governments.

Here is an hour-long video of a presentation about Sovrin given by Phil Windley back in October 2017. Windley is the former Chief Technology Officer for the State of Utah. He is a professor at BYU and had forty years of specialization in the subject of digital trust, reputation, and identity. He is directly involved in the Sovrin project. The presentation is very technical at times, and interrupted some by impatient questions from the audience, but the descriptions he gives of what Sovrin does and its potential applications are both amazing and potentially revolutionary:

And here is a PDF that discusses how Sovrin works:
https://sovrin.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/How-Sovrin-Works.pdf

Perhaps Sovrin or some other a decentralized technology will miraculously disrupt the coming technologically driven despotism. I hope so. Either way we are headed for interesting times.

This isn’t aimed at anyone in particular and it isn’t meant as an attack on those of you who have expressed sincere outrage online about past or current events. It’s just something that I have been thinking and worrying about lately.

In a world of billions of people, there are far more atrocious things happening at any given moment than the human mind can possibly comprehend and deal with.  At the same time, we are very bad at evaluating proportion, cost, and cause and effect.

We tend to choose to be outraged about certain atrocities while ignoring many, many others. Often our outrage is directed and manipulated by news, propaganda, or circumstances. Every few weeks, or even every few days, there is a new trending topic about which everyone must be outraged and about which everyone must comment publicly through social media.

While it is true that good people must stand up and speak out against evil, I am concerned that constant social-media virtue signaling can become a substitute for virtue itself, and that it might contribute, counter-intuitively, to a kind of moral fatigue and general apathy regarding everyday sin and suffering.

There is a danger that as long as we have signaled that we have the right views concerning the outrage du jour, we will feel righteous, even while we continue to privately mistreat our families, take advantage of our neighbors, employees, and co-workers, hold grudges, and indulge our favorite sins.

This is something that I have to watch out for in myself. And I recognize that there is a degree of irony in posting these thoughts publicly in social media.

I believe that anger, outrage, and violence can affect our brains like a drug. Arguing with people on the internet or fighting with your spouse can trigger powerful chemicals in the brain. Political or moral outrage can become a kind of addiction.

The challenge is to stand up for what is good and virtuous without becoming controlled by or addicted to the effort, and at the same time not allow our expressions of public virtue to become a substitute for genuine personal righteousness. We must be as fearless in confronting our own local and private sins as we are in declaring our virtue regarding the trending topic of the day.

This is a real dream that I had last night and not just a composition.

Last night I had a dream that a new high-end restaurant opened in town that specialized in gourmet meals made from human excrement. It soon became the most popular restaurant in town. I found myself there for a work-related lunch. The beautiful menu was full of elegantly named dishes that sounded wonderful. The food looked delicious– meticulously prepared by the best chefs. Not only was the restaurant forthright about the fact that the primary ingredient in all of their dishes was human feces, they insisted that human excrement was organic, natural, and healthy — citing scientific studies in which gut flora was restored by using fecal transplants.

Other people in the restaurant were eating with gusto and exclaiming about how delicious it all was. I hesitantly sniffed a bite-sized nugget, fried and breaded with subtle spices– carefully prepared so that there was only the slightest, almost undetectable hint of miasma. For a moment I felt the social pressure. I bit and swallowed. It didn’t taste bad. But I immediate changed my mind and I refused to eat more. It didn’t matter how meticulously it had been prepared, how appealing it was made to look, how delicious it was made to taste, or that they claimed that it was healthy. We were eating human excrement. I thought about all of the toxins, diseases, and parasites found in feces. We were EATING HUMAN EXCREMENT!

Then I woke up.

War News from Mexico (1848) by Richard Caton Woodville

Our human minds crave logical completeness. We want everything to fit into a tidy explanatory map. We also have a natural fascination with the sensational and controversial. We are drawn to reports of misdeeds or misfortune. We love to expose conspiracies, dirty secrets, and gossip.

It is easy to get emotionally drunk on outrage and anger. We can be so inebriated on indignation that our vision becomes distorted and we become sloppy about information.

My advice to you is to slow down. Be wary of information that appeals to that natural affinity for the sensational and sordid. Avoid jumping to hasty conclusions.

Reality is messy and complex. Initial reports and impressions are usually incomplete or inaccurate. Be circumspect about information that confirms your worst fears or that fits too easily into a logical narrative or that seems to provide an easy, satisfying, comprehensive explanation.

You should be initially suspicious of information that stokes your sense of outrage and indignation. Outrage and indignation should always be complemented by accuracy, precision, truth, and constraint.

I have found that a prudent approach is to choose to resist the impulse to immediately share anything that piques an emotional response or that you would normally share to support your point of view.

Consider using a bookmarking service to save links that you want to share on social media. (I use https://getpocket.com) Resist the urge to immediately click the share button and bookmark it instead. Then sit on bookmarked links for a while; wait a few days or even a few weeks before returning to them to evaluate if they are still worth sharing.

In the meantime, make an effort to learn more about the topic. Purposefully seek out some contrary points of view. Watch to see what other information comes out. Bookmark related articles. By the end of your waiting period, you will have a collection of links on the topic. You will then be able to decide whether to share the link or not. You might choose to share one of the other articles that you found instead.

This delay between your initial reaction to information and sharing it is contrary to both our natural impulses and to the viral information dynamics of social media and the internet. It requires self-discipline to temper our natural inclination to binge on emotion generated by scandalous and sensational information.

I have been trying to do this for a number of years now, and though I have done it imperfectly, I feel that it has improved my social media interactions and my life. I recommend it to you as well.

Today we are writing about the Saturday Morning Session of the April 1975 Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In April of 1975, Robert D. Hales was called as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.The Saturday Morning Session of April 1975 was the first time he ever spoke in conference. He would later serve in the First Quorum of the Seventy and then as the Presiding Bishop before being called to be an Apostle in April 1994.

He explained that initially President Marion G. Romney had called his wife and him to serve a mission in London. But a few weeks later he received a telephone call from the prophet:

“Brother Hales, do you mind if we change your mission?”

“I will be glad to go to whatever place you send me.”

He said, “Do you mind if we change it to Salt Lake City?”

And I said, “No, that will be fine, President.”

“Do you mind if it is little bit longer than three years?”

“However long you want it, President.”

“We would like a lifetime of service.”

Elder Hales describes his feelings by comparing himself to a man who has fallen off a cliff and was desperately hanging onto a limb that was slowly giving way. A voice calls out to him to let go and that he will be protected. “The call was clear,” he said. “I had to let go of everything that I had known and what I had been striving for in my life to become an Assistant to the Twelve.”

Elder Hales was 42 years old. Just before being called as a general authority of the church, he was president of Chesebrough-Pond’s Company. He had worked hard to gain that position after having been the president of the Papermate division of Gillette, as well as an executive at Max Factor and the Hugh’s Television Network.

And then he was asked to abandon his career and plans and serve in the church for the rest of his life. Elder Hales considered this an act of Consecration. He and his wife consecrated their lives to serving the Lord and his church.

He explains consecration with this memorable observation:

“It is not in death or in one event that we give our lives, but in every day as we are asked to do it.”

Sometimes we think of being martyred for the gospel would be the ultimate demonstration of our faith and dedication. But giving our lives by giving each day to the Lord and living it as He asks us to is in some ways a more daunting and difficult task.

I am thankful for Elder Hales and his willingness to give his life up, every day, for the Lord.

Other bloggers writing about the Saturday Morning Session of the April 1975 General Conference today:

• All by G
• Sabbath Day: Turning Our Hearts by Jan Tolman
• In every day as we are asked to do it by Marilyn Nielson

Today we are writing about the Friday Afternoon Session of the April 1975 Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In December of 1974, Sister Virginia Perry passed away. She had been privately fighting cancer for four years. When she was first diagnosed, the doctors told her she would likely only live for six months. She told her husband, L. Tom Perry, “Don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t want it to change our way of life or have anyone treat us differently.”

She quietly underwent three serious surgeries, going to great lengths to keep them secret:

“With her careful planning, she would attend church on Sunday, the operation would be performed early Monday morning. By Tuesday, she was trying to get out of bed. By Wednesday she would be up moving around, trying to regain her physical strength. Thursday would find her helping the nurses assist others who were in the hospital. Friday she would spend trying to convince the doctor that she was ready to go home. By Saturday morning the doctor would give up in despair and discharge her. Sunday she would be back in church looking radiant.”

Throughout her hidden illness, she continued to lovingly serve those in need.

Two years into her struggle, her husband was called to be an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Then, in April of 1974, eight months before she passed away, he was called to be an Apostle. I can hardly imagine how difficult it must have been to take on all of the burdens and travel associated with these new responsibilities on top of an ongoing fight with cancer. Elder Perry was often away from home for months at a time. But she appears to still have kept her illness private.

“Her last acts were so typical of her. She was up preparing breakfast for her family. I heard her drop a dish and give a little moan. As I rushed from my study, thinking she had injured herself, I found that she was suffering from a stroke that was causing her to lose the use of her right arm. […] There was terror in her eyes as the paralysis started to spread down her side. I told her I was going to rush a call to the doctor. She said, “First, give me a blessing.” As I laid my hands on her head that morning, the Lord in his great mercy let me know that her time had come.”

In the April 1974 conference of the church, Elder Perry dedicated his entire talk to his dear departed wife, entitled simply “A Tribute.”

“She placed her illness entirely in the hands of the Lord, and he blessed her with enough strength to endure and just enough energy to live the kind of life she wanted to live. […] The Lord blessed her with four additional years that medical science could not promise her. How grateful we are for those years, for it was during this period that she was able to stand by my side as we were honored in these present positions. She was able to see, at least in some degree, what she had tried to make of me.”

I encourage you to read the whole thing:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1975/04/a-tribute

In our modern era of social media, Sister Perry’s insistence on keeping her illness private seems utterly foreign. Our culture has undergone a major shift in attitudes about privacy, propriety, and pain. We now broadcast our struggles and our pain, not only to family and friends, but to the world.

Being open about the difficulties we face allows others who are struggling to know that they aren’t alone, and to draw strength from the examples and counsel of those with similar challenges.  But reading about Sister Perry makes me wonder if perhaps we have lost something. There is something noble and inspiring about her private pain and her efforts to serve and bless others while she suffered in secret.

I can see virtues as well as drawbacks in both being open and in being private. Perhaps it comes down to pride vs. humility:

We can publish our pain out of pride and anger. We can also keep our pain private because of pride and anger.

We can publish our pain in humility and faith. And we can also keep our pain private because of humility and faith.

Sometimes we hide our pain from the people who can help us the most while broadcasting our pain to virtual strangers on the internet. Other times we hide our pain from people who could benefit from our example and help.

Sister Perry lived a life of service and selflessness. She put her illness in the hands of the Lord and He blessed her. Elder Perry recommends her as an example of faith:

“Even though there is great loneliness without her, her passing was sweet because of the way she had lived. In tribute to her today, I recommend to you her way of life. I watched service consume pain. I witnessed faith destroy discouragement. I have seen courage magnify her beyond her natural abilities. I have observed love change the course of lives.”

Other bloggers writing about the Friday Afternoon Session of the April 1975 General Conference today:

• Profoundly Worth It by Nathaniel Givens
• More Practical Mormonism by G
• Her Finest Hour by Daniel Ortner
• Using My Agency Wisely to Receive His Blessings by Jan Tolman
• We all suffer another loss by Marilyn Nielson