And and and women own that realm. Yep.
So, what do we do if we're going into some type of a spiral of women having a problem and leaving the church and women becoming the more premier anti-Mormons that are influencing others to leave the church, all going through this kind of the same spiral?
So, I want to touch on social media addiction because I fall into the female social media chronically online trope. I recognize that I'm online all the time. I recognize that I consume a lot.
I will say before I started creating content and I was simply just consuming, I was significantly more miserable and upset at my life versus when I switched and started creating and I started putting my own content out there. I look at social media content now with a curiosity. It's like, I wonder if I'm going to find a new thing that I can talk about on my page today. And then it turns into a fun creative process for me.
And I want to touch on that word deconstructing. Deconstructing. What does that mean? You are the opposite of constructing. You are taking down something. You are not creating. You are destroying.
Where we feel best.
We just read this in Come Follow Me two weeks ago. Moses 1:39, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
God's work and glory is to create us and to guide us to be like him and to bring about our immortality and eternal life. That is his work and his glory. He is creating. We have several accounts of the creation story because God loves it so much, right?
Who is the destroyer? Satan.
When you are constantly taking down, deconstructing, destroying something else, you are not building. You are not creating. You are not doing the divine things that our Heavenly Father loves to do the most.
Of course you're going to be miserable. Of course you're going to go down this path.
I mean, you see like on the opposite end of the spectrum, Alyssa Grenfell this last week, she put out a video making fun of a family who was doing a TikTok dance at their daughter's funeral. Their daughter had made that dance while she was in cancer treatment.
Alyssa is doing the same thing I assume that I do when it comes to creating, right? But I'm looking for things to amplify or to correct or to make the culture, make the situation better for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am building up something. I am participating in the building of Zion.
She is on the hunt looking for the weirdest thing the latest Latter-day Saint family has done so she can ridicule it, so she can mock it, so she can tell her followers this is why Mormons are the way they are. And that's the problem is that she's destroying and we should be creating.
So what do we do about this one?
I mean beam in my eye here for a minute. Take a break from social media and go touch some grass and go create things with your family. Go create a family. Go do something with your life other than scrolling and constantly consuming.
Beam in the eye. Sarah's a massive sinner here.
But additionally, in the social media world, put your voice out there. You're not alone in this anymore. There's not just a few people out there who are saying what needs to be said. There should be more because we as Latter-day Saints know the truth. We know the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we are promised that the word of the gospel is going to spread to all nations and eventually every knee will bow.
Participate in the gathering of Israel like President Nelson has said.
All right, I want to switch topics.
You're in the middle of a transition finally.
You know we've got something you've talked about, something I talk about, is the family proclamation. And this is, I think, core. To me it is as entwined with the doctrine of Christ as anything else out there. It is together. You cannot separate them. It's the ideal.
Very few of us live the ideal, but that is the ideal. And so that's what the Church teaches.
However, you have individuals that are young and single and some older and single and they don't fit in very well to the ideal. And so to some degree many feel they're kind of an outsider.
What can the Church do to help with those individuals? I've heard you even say that YSA sometimes even feels like you're a second-class citizen.
Yes. So, a couple things. I have been in the YSA for a decade now. I've seen a lot of really good change in the last decade for YSAs. I have seen a lot of great progress, but I still see this general attitude.
And I actually don't think it's coming from the Brethren anymore. I think it really helped to have President Nelson whose wife was single for 50 plus years and now President Oaks whose wife was also single for 50 plus years. So they have a different perspective.
So I don't even think it's coming from the Brethren anymore. I think this is a cultural thing that people view single people in the Church as “I don't know what to do with you and I don't know how to treat you.”
I mean I've heard bishops say this to me in repentance conversations for law of chastity issues. My bishop got married at 21 and now he's telling a 28-year-old woman to keep the law of chastity in prime childbearing years. Okay… like good luck.
I actually feel bad for him in that situation.
But I think that this is a cultural thing that people shouldn't be counting out the YSAs or believing that what they're doing in their lives is less worthy of accolades and attention than any other thing that a family ward is doing.
I think there's just this general attitude that it's this group of teenagers getting together at church.
Perhaps those predominantly student wards with freshmen. I think that's what a lot of people's experience with the YSA was — their freshman year at BYU — and then they went off and got married and they've been in the family ward ever since.
Sure, that does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't.
But my experience has been: I'm 23. I'm 24. I'm now 25 and I'm not married. I'm 26 and I'm not married. I'm 27 and I'm not married. I'm now 28 and finally we have the ring.
But I have seen the same thing with a bunch of YSAs that I've gone to church with for a decade now where we're kind of looking at each other like, “Holy crap… we have the extended AP YSA at this point. Advanced Placement YSA.”
And yet I know they've been at church with me this whole time. They've been stalwart and faithful.
Aside from the sealing covenant, we have made the same covenants that people in the family ward have made. There are people in the family ward who still haven't made the sealing covenant.
So why are we being treated as a less-than member by the members?
Like I said, I don't think it's the Brethren anymore. The Brethren have called out the single epidemic. I think it was Elder Gong who pointed out that more than 50% of the Church is single — whether it's YSA, widows, divorce — it's like 52% of the Church is single.
So the Brethren know.
It's the rest of us that need to get on board and say, you know what, I'm going to stop calling the YSAs kids.
Don't call me a kid.
I go sit next to a lawyer at church — you're going to call him a kid? I've sat next to doctors — you're going to call them kids? Seriously.
That's not what the single people of the Church are made up of anymore.
It's a problem. And we as a culture need to stop looking at them like that.
We are just as valuable in the gathering of Israel and the spreading of the gospel as anybody else. Just because we're missing that one covenant doesn't change our value to the Lord's mission.
