Beyond the Hallway: What the LDS Middle Zone Misses

There is a kind of religious discussion that has become more common among thoughtful Latter-day Saints. I’ve been looking through more of it lately.

Much of it is sincere, intelligent, and compassionate. It tries to help people remain within the LDS Church while naming problems many members feel but do not know how to say out loud.

It speaks to those who still believe in the Restoration but no longer experience it through the clean, confident certainties of their growing up years. It acknowledges institutional problems, prophetic fallibility, historical complexity, gender imbalance, scriptural messiness, and administrative and policy issues.  It recognizes not every talk is doctrinally correct, not every policy change helps everyone, and leaders have and do say uninspired things.  

I do not want to dismiss the value of this kind of writing. It can comfort people in complexity. It can help them feel less alone. It can create enough breathing room for faith not to collapse under the weight of institutional disappointment. It says things many Church leaders either do not say, cannot say, or are not positioned to say over the pulpit. 

But comfort in complexity is not the same as being led to truth. Breathing room is not the same as covenant. A hallway can be a mercy, but only if there is a door to walk through.  If religious writing helps people survive the collapse of inherited certainty but never points them toward revelation, repentance, covenant, and the actual recovery of God’s work, then it may accomplish an important early mercy while still stopping short of the Gospel it professes.  What if God has more for us than breathing room?  

That is the gap I keep feeling.  

The gap is not honesty, intelligence, or compassion. There is plenty of all three.

The gap is what happens next.

Sometimes that hallway is a good transition.  For someone raised in a religious world where every question was treated as faithless or worse, apostate disobedience, just being allowed to admit complexity and messiness can feel like a breath of fresh air.  Still, religious breathing room is not the same as a destination. It is not the fulfillment of prophecy. It is not Zion.

Becoming more compassionate towards those within one's own faith who see life or spirituality differently is good. Becoming more tolerant is often good. Learning to hold opposing ideas without discarding faith is good. Making room for people whose belief no longer fits the simpler LDS mold is good.  These are the themes I see in this category of faithful LDS writing.  People seem to feel more for those friends and family who struggle or who have left the Church and there's people writing and hoping to retain faith amidst the doubts and difficulties present in 2026 Mormonism.  

If the Restoration is unfinished, then the main question can't just be whether we stay in the Church or leave it. It can't just be whether we become more patient with imperfection, or more charitable, as valuable as those things are. The deeper question is whether God is still offering something to be received: scripture, covenant, correction, repentance, priesthood, Zion, even God's own presence, and whether we are working towards that or lingering longer in the hallway.  As the saying goes, the enemy of the "best" is often the "good".  

At some point, a person has to ask: Is the purpose of religious honesty just to preserve enough faith to make my continued LDS membership tolerable? Or is the Gospel pointing somewhere else?  

That is the question I cannot shake.

The modern Latter-day Saint hallway

From where I sit, and the portion of the world I observe, more thoughtful Latter-day Saints today seem to occupy a middle space. Some remain content with the simplicity of accepting whatever the Church and/or its leaders say or do. That's faithfulness in some people's eyes. Others have been confronted with challenges about Church history, authority, and no longer believe the simple version of things. 

But neither have they left. I respect that. Even when earlier explanations do not hold up under scrutiny, they still want faith. They stay, often sincerely. They stay because they love their people. They stay because the Book of Mormon still speaks to them. They stay because their spiritual life was formed in the Church. They stay because leaving would feel like amputating part of themselves. They stay because they believe God is still there, even if the institution and its leaders are way more human than they once thought.

That kind of staying can be noble. But again, I question it as a destination and resting place of one's faith.  I am not saying the middle zone is worthless. I am saying it may be transitional.

The risk I see is that the new articles of faith become: “We believe it's complicated, but we stay anyway".  

Prophets? Complicated.

Scripture? Complicated.

Priesthood? Complicated.

Church history? Complicated.

Gender? Complicated.

The temple? Complicated.

Authority? Complicated.

The Restoration itself? Complicated.

"It's all complicated but it's all ok because we're all imperfect" becomes the mantra.  Yes, many of those things really are complicated. But complexity wasn't what the Gospel was pointing to. Scriptures speak of higher levels of faith that produce saving fruit and increased understanding. That sounds like the resting place of faith we all deep down long for but don't always know how to find. 

I do not write this as someone standing above the problem.

As I've read these books, essays and listened to the podcasts, the risk seems to be adopting a form of faith that can survive complexity but struggles to find the right truth to anchor to.  While these writings ask tough questions, often they don't land on a satisfying answer.  Which sort of turns the endurance marathon into the destination. It can still attend church. It can still use religious language. It can still quote scripture. It can still write moving essays and give great talks about grace, belonging, uncertainty, and divine love.  But quietly stops asking the most unsettling religious question:

What is our actual LDS institutional standing before God?  What if it is worse than we assume? What if scripture’s warnings apply to us more directly than we have wanted to admit?  As tough to swallow as that may be, the answer may be illuminating because it then forces the question: What is God asking of us in our day? What does actual repentance look like? Does God actually have covenant people on earth, and if so, what are they expected to do other than deconstruct previous religious beliefs?

Deconstruction is not restoration

Latter-day Saints should understand this better than anyone: deconstruction is not restoration. This is not to say deconstruction isn't necessary or helpful.  I've seen it be helpful.  But the Restoration did not begin because Joseph Smith learned that the religious landscape was complicated, nuanced, and yet still a place where he needed to remain. It began because he took the confusion seriously enough to ask God. And when God answered, Joseph did not merely write a book, publish an essay, or give a talk about remaining faithful when dealing with his religious confusion or ambiguity. He acted. He translated. He gathered. He baptized. He organized. He received commandments. He brought forth scripture. He made covenantal claims.  Were there things to deconstruct?  Sure, but that wasn't the objective.  

The Restoration was not about staying true to whatever religious tradition you inherited.  And I don't think it's any different now.  In Joseph's day the restoration was a full-blown intervention. It claimed that heaven had spoken again. It claimed that scripture was not closed. It claimed that God intended to establish covenant, gather Israel, restore knowledge, and prepare a people. It didn't just ask people to be more compassionate or more tolerant. It asked people to sacrifice, develop saving faith, and accept that God was moving and you had a choice to come aboard.    

It forced an issue:  That you cannot both claim to follow Christ and also reject the messengers Christ sends (i.e., Joseph Smith).  But that assumes you have correctly identified Christ's messengers.  That is one of the tests this middle-ground Mormon discourse does not seem to spend much time on.  Our inherited traditions make that question very challenging.  The answer threatens the fabric of what we've been taught for decades.  

I certainly hope the Restoration today is not simply a therapeutic resource for managing religious complexity. Either it continues as a living work of God and requires the same kind of response it required in prior dispensations, or it becomes simply an inherited religious culture with unusually interesting historical and modern problems.

This is where this modern Latter-day Saint discourse seems to end. It is willing to say, “The Church is not as simple as we thought.” It is willing to say, “Prophets are fallible.” It is willing to say, “Our scriptures have a human element.” It is willing to say, “The institution has changed before and may change again.” or “LDS Church leaders/prophets have been and still may yet be wrong.”

All of that may be true. But then what?  Something modern LDS discourse seems less willing to ask is "What if God acts outside of my religious institution all together"?  

This doesn't mean be reckless. It does not mean every institutional disappointment proves God is elsewhere. It does not mean every new spiritual claim is true. But if we believe in an unfinished Restoration, then we cannot rule out in advance that God may speak, gather, correct, or offer covenant in a way our inherited expectations did not prepare us to receive.

One observation is that we've slowly lost touch with some of our best measuring sticks.  Our traditions and conference talks are given greater weight than scripture.  I've seen many who are hesitant to apply a scriptural measuring stick to our 2026 landscape out of fear of being labeled an apostate or being seen as faithless.  So if LDS Church prophets are fallible, then how does God actually authorize His work? How do you actually discern when Church leaders are acting as men or as prophets of God?  

If scripture has been mishandled, then what does it mean to recover scripture?

If the canon is open, then what would it look like for God to add to it? Why hasn't it happened?

If the Restoration is unfinished, then who is willing to receive more, and what is the process to do so? Do we wait on the institution who raised us to answer and deliver restoration to us?  

If authority has become commingled with Church business administration, then what is priesthood independent of office? If corporate management is indistinguishable from current LDS prophetic council, then what should you and I do besides give each other breathing room in the hallway?

These are not just interesting questions or side questions.  They are right in the middle of it.  They are the questions the Restoration itself forces. 

Grace, love, compassion and empathy are prominent themes I've noticed in this category I’ve been reading.  But even the modern LDS recovery of grace feels incomplete if it doesn't fulfill the promised destiny of the restoration.  I don't believe grace is God’s way of telling us nothing further is required. Grace is what makes it possible.   

More compassion and tolerance is not the same thing as hidden knowledge being revealed from Heaven.

I see in these writings that people are more and more seeing real issues within the LDS church.  But those observations are not always followed all the way to their Restoration implications.

This kind of writing can identify the wounds all around us with real clarity, but it has a built-in assumption I want to challenge, which is that the only medicine and only remedy are increased awareness of the various challenges members of all kinds face, empathy, inclusion, and gradual institutional improvement. 

Those are good things, but may miss the larger Restoration claim: that God is not merely asking us to make the existing LDS atmosphere kinder, but to accept that perhaps He is now offering a new dispensation.

The danger of both staying and leaving

As I've read these books and essays and heard the talks about staying faithful amidst one's doubts, I see a trend. I see a form of intellectual exploration that can look like depth, faith, and endurance, but still avoids a key underlying premise, which is that the LDS institution is the vehicle and the only vehicle through which God will complete the restoration.  

It knows a good amount of history, a good amount of theology and the authors see enough of the machinery behind the curtain to know not all is well.  The people often know enough personal difficulty to speak gently and treat others who are different with kindness.

But it may not know how to let tradition go.  It may not know how to say, “Lord, what are you doing today, and am I part of it?”

It may not know how to receive an answer that costs someone deeply held traditions and assumptions.

"Staying" vs "leaving" the church I think misses the point.  There are dozens of reasons to do either.  There are perhaps more reasons to stay, and doing so can sometimes assist others who also see issues but yet want to be part of their community and retain the good of their faith.  And sometimes that is wisdom.

But staying vs leaving leaves a 3rd alternative unexplored. In Joseph Smith's day, just finding reasons to stay in whatever Church you belonged to wasn't going to fulfill God's plan for the restoration, nor was it going to qualify as hearing God's voice.   

The question is not merely, “Did you stay?” or “Did you leave?” The question is, “Did you receive?”

The gap I see is that finding interesting reasons to stay can become a way to remain permanently unclaimed by anything. You’re in the Church, but on your own terms. You accept doctrine, but only when it still feels acceptable. You see through the curtain, so you no longer fully trust the Church’s claims, but neither do you fully let them go. No institution can claim you. No prophet can claim you. No scripture can claim you. Eventually, perhaps, we become less aligned with what’s required for God to fully claim us as well, because our inherited tradition may have taken precedence over actually hearing and responding to God’s voice.

I'm not saying you need to up and join another church, like in Joseph's day. What I am putting forward is the idea that, scripturally speaking, very often God's work is not taking place where the people think it is.  The Jews did not expect an "outsider" like John the Baptist.  Christians did not expect a young Joseph Smith. At this moment in time, maybe “the Lord’s Church” is more covenantal than institutional.  So staying vs leaving leaves you in the same danger either way.  

An unfinished Restoration requires a response

The phrase “ongoing Restoration” is common in Latter-day Saint writings and leaders' Church talks. But it is often used vaguely as a reference to whatever change comes next. It can mean administrative adjustments, new programs, shortened meeting schedules, policy revisions, temple changes, or sleeveless garments.

But if the Restoration is truly ongoing, then the stakes are much higher than administrative policies.  We've allowed ourselves to become confused at what is a policy change vs a revelation.  And then wonder at our own confusion over something that should be very straight forward.  

An ongoing Restoration means God is not finished speaking. It means scripture is not merely a historical artifact. If a canon is open, yet no additions for 100+ years, then what gives?

It means covenant is not merely a word attached to temple attendance or institutional belonging. It means priesthood is not reducible to office. It means Zion is not a branding concept. It means the Book of Mormon is not merely an identity marker for being the only true church, but a warning and invitation to all Gentiles who receive it. It means Joseph Smith’s work cannot be conveyed by highly correlated lesson manuals.

It means we may have to ask whether the Restoration, as heaven intended it, is going to come from where we were taught to expect it.  

That question is uncomfortable. It should be. It cuts. It does not merely accuse an institution. It accuses me. It asks whether I have received what the Gospel offered, and if not, why?  It asks whether I want God or merely religious belonging.  Or if I'm willing to tolerate less of God for more religious belonging.  It asks whether I want truth or only the social comfort of discussing it. 

A Restoration faith cannot be content with endless analysis. It must eventually ask: Has God offered something new, and is God doing something today? Am I willing to receive it? Or do my traditions keep me lingering (dwindling) in my beliefs?

The difference between staying and receiving

There is honor in acting in faith. There is honor in remaining with people who are flawed, patient with leaders who are limited, and charitable toward a community that is still growing. That's Christlike. My point is that if that's all we focus on, we may miss what God is doing in our day. Simply “staying” in the LDS church is not the highest form of faith. Receiving is.

Receiving truth. Receiving correction. Receiving new scripture. Receiving a actual covenant. Receiving messengers. Receiving Christ.

A person can stay in a church and refuse to receive what God is offering.

A person can leave a church and still refuse to receive what God is offering.

The question is not merely, “Did you stay?” or “Did you leave?” The question is, “Did you receive?”

That question cuts through the religious fog of our day.  Did you receive light?  Did you receive correction?  Have you been born of God?  Has God offered and taught things you are not currently even aware of?  

If God spoke outside your religious framework, would you have any clue?  If you were a Jew back in the day, on what grounds would you have accepted John the Baptist or Jesus?  If you were a random Christian in Joseph Smith's day, on what grounds would you have accepted Joseph?  

Those are pertinent questions today if you contemplate that God is not required to fulfill His work via the LDS Church.  

Beyond the hallway

I understand why people remain in the hallway. The hallway feels safer than false certainty. It allows conversation and a safe space to have uncomfortable discussions. It allows complexity. It allows people at different stages of faith to breathe.  But I think it's only useful if it leads somewhere.

At some point, the Restoration asks more of us than the ability to discuss difficult things beautifully and honestly. It asks whether we will receive the things God has given, including the things that expose our idols, threaten our status, unsettle our inherited loyalties, contradict our religious traditions, and require us to stand somewhere.

The Restoration's goal wasn't to help us feel better about our religious institutions in order to remain in them. It was to actually restore something.  It exists to bring us back into the presence of God. A teaching once taught by Joseph but is largely absent from LDS curriculum now. 

The goal of the Gospel requires more than institutional patience. I believe at the end of the day it requires more than "staying in the Church".

So yes, let us be honest. Let us be compassionate. Let us admit complexity. Let us stop pretending every inherited answer is sufficient.  And stay in the Church if that fits your situation.  

But then let's also ask the next question. What does the unfinished Restoration require me to receive that I have not yet received?  What is God actually saying in our day, and is it still found within the LDS church?  And if not, where can I find it?

That is the question that turns religious honesty into discipleship.  That is the question that moves us beyond the hallway.

The Church Splashpad

My wife and I recently taught Primary in our LDS ward.

Singing time went well. The kids learned some beautiful songs, and the lyrics were uplifting.  Not all the songs in primary are always ones I find uplifting, but the ones this week were.  The chorister used sign language to help the children learn and remember the words. It was sweet and sincere.

But the current LDS second-hour schedule allowed only 25 minutes for Primary class. That is the same amount of time the new Church second-hour schedule will have for everyone once it goes live this fall.  By the time the kids got a drink and settled there was not much time left.  

Even with 10-year-olds, 20-ish minutes was not enough time to do much more than walk through a gospel splash pad. It was more like a sprinkling of topics, scripture phrases, and vocabulary words. We were able to make one or two points, but we ran out of time before there seemed to be space for a substantive lesson.

This is not how Church felt in my younger years. We are losing something, and many seem to not notice, not care, or assume that all is well in Zion.  

Gone are the days, at least in that setting, of swimming in the deep end of the gospel pool. The church schedule structure itself seems to allow less and less room for any degree of depth. What's left feels more like a sprinkler that drips for a few minutes one day a week.

That saddens me.  This is not what Christ offered the world.  

The superficiality is not going to feed hungry souls. And from what I can see as I look around, souls are hungry. People need more than religious vocabulary. They need time, stillness, teaching, searching, repentance, testimony, and real engagement with the Gospel.

Yet instead of being given room to swim and immerse our minds in gospel truth, we are increasingly squeezed into a weekly sprinkling with little chance of thirst being quenched.  

More and more, it seems to be left to the individual and the family to search into the things of God. Weekly religious services may still invite and provide time for limited interaction, but they no longer seem designed to give us a lot of substance.

So maybe the honest reality is that if we are hungry, we cannot rely on an institutions at all to feed us. The religious tools are offering less and less. We will have to seek, ask, knock, study, pray, and go to the Lord ourselves.  

And maybe that has always been the real test anyway.

Carrying Burdens

This quote is worth reading: 

"I’m not saying be dour, long-faced or stoic.  Quite the contrary. “Be of good cheer” was His oft repeated expression, even using it as a greeting on many occasions.  (See Matt. 14: 27; Mark 6: 50; John 16: 33; Acts 23: 11; 3 Ne. 1: 13; D&C 68: 6, among others.) Cheerfully go about doing good, and trust in Him.  He will guide you. He was happy. He was cheerful. So are those who know Him best. (See, e.g., JS-H 1: 28.) 

There isn’t a single thing you do for His sake which He will forget or fail to credit to you.  Nor is there a single mistake which He will remember and hold against you, if you repent. (D&C 58: 42.)

You should let your thoughts be such that you will be confident in His presence.  (D&C 121: 45.) Be of good cheer.

I know of no more cheerful a being in the universe than Christ. When He says, Be of good cheer, we ought to all accept that as the mantra. There is nothing that any of us will ever go through that He hasn’t gone through, with a considerable greater degree of difficulty. He lived with a higher ‘specific gravity’ than any of us had to ever fight against. And He won for each of us a prize that is potentially eternal. It will be eternal, one way or the other. But if you take full measure of what He offers, it will be delightfully eternal. 

Cowardice is largely predicated upon fear. Don’t be cowardly. Don’t be fearful. Fear is the opposite of faith. For goodness sake, you’re already in the battle! You’re already going to be overtaken. The fact of the matter is that no one gets out of here alive. Live this life nobly, fearlessly. When you take the wounds that come your way, you make sure that they come to your front! Don’t let ‘em shoot you in the back. Go about your life boldly, nobly, valiantly. Because it is only through valiance in the testimony of Jesus Christ that you can hope to secure anything—not valiance in your fidelity to anything other than Jesus Christ. The fact of the matter is that faith must be based in Him, and Him alone."

Podcast Episode 95: Good Cheer

What strikes me in this is not just the call to be brave, but the call to be cheerful while we're at it.  

Within this quote, and in my own life experience, I see how easy it is to carry burdens in a way that is anything but cheerful. Some burdens are difficult, heavy, and seem as though they may never end. Some come from our own choices, but others come from things outside our control.

And yet, it seems there is wide variety of options in how we carry them.

If Christ can be cheerful after carrying far more than we ever will, then cheerfulness must be possible even under weight. So what is the key? How does a person remain cheerful under pressure?

One of the things scriptures teach that Christ gained through the atonement, was knowledge. Knowledge seems to be part of the key. Christ’s knowledge and hope seems to be part of the recipe  for cheer. 

But knowing that cheerfulness is something we are taught to have does not mean it’s easy.  It’s not pretending things are easy. I do not think it means denying sorrow, danger, exhaustion, or difficulty.  Perhaps it means we do not have to let those things overtake us and that it's possible to carry them well, or alternatively, carry them poorly and end up feeling grim.  

I've noticed it's possible to be serious without becoming heavy.  As well as discern danger without living under dread or living in fear. We can carry weight without becoming joyless. That is typically not my mind and body’s default response, but through Christ, I have to admit the scripture's prove being of good cheer is possible and encouraged.  

Christ said His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:28–30). That seems odd, considering He bore the heaviest burden of all. And yet there it is. We are all yoked, one way or another, by sin, unbelief, error, weakness, incomplete understanding, and distorted perspectives. But cheerfulness may be one of the signs that we are learning to carry our load with Him.

I have noticed that when I try to carry my burdens alone, I feel weighed down by them. When I carry them with God, the burden does not always disappear, but it does seem to change.

Perhaps cheerfulness is not something we force ourselves to manufacture. Perhaps it is something that happens naturally when we are aligned with God, trusting Christ, and serving in the right way. Perhaps when trust in Christ becomes real, our burdens really can become light.

When Prophets Follow the Crowd

With the Church’s recent announcement about the change to the second-hour block on Sundays, I’ve been looking back on the Church’s decisions, guidance, and trends on various topics over the last decade.

I can’t think of what could make weekly church meetings even more shallow than they have already become than trying to now hold two separate meetings inside one hour. With chit-chat, people getting seated, announcements, and comments, this will predictably lead to shorter and shallower lessons. Whatever benefits there may be, it will be impossible to avoid the cost to lesson depth and quality.

The announcement gave no reasoning for the change and no acknowledgment of the elephant in the room, which is that teachers now get to make maybe one or two points and take one comment before class is over. 

Over the last 10 years, I’ve noticed a decline in explanations for organizational changes. There is less logic, reason, or scriptural basis, and a move toward a free-flowing mass of ongoing leader-based changes. As other examples: sometimes we have Priesthood Session at General Conference, sometimes we do not. Sometimes they hold a Relief Society session at General Conference, other times, they do not. Sometimes using "Mormon" is a good thing, as in "meet the Mormons", but within a few years the term became an offense to God, per President Nelson.  For who knows how long, garments had sleeves, and now suddenly they do not. The temple ceremony used to be very consistent, but now it changes frequently.

But back to some reflections on the past 10 years of rapid LDS Church evolution. What comes to mind is the baptism of children of gay parents flip-flop policy. The original announcement was stated to be revelatory, and then they reversed course and changed the policy after public pushback.  That was pretty problematic if you take the time to read what they said, how it was presented, and then how they later reversed course. But few people remember that or even care now.

The Church’s pandemic response is another example that exposed a serious concern in its claims of prophet-leadership, and it goes beyond normal human mistakes or policy failures. If senior church leaders lead by revelatory insight from God, as one of the Church’s primary claims asserts, then one would expect guidance that reflects more than the public consensus available to every institution and risk-averse executive in society.  During the pandemic, the Church echoed the dominant script of the time by urging vaccination and masking, without offering anything meaningfully distinct in judgment, discernment, or wisdom. They were indistinguishable from the public narrative.  How much of that needs to happen before it fundamentally changes the practical meaning of prophetic guidance?

The issue is not that prophets should have outperformed medical specialists or scientists on every technical detail. The issue is that, based on their claims, one would expect keener judgment, deeper moral clarity, and some semblance of independent discernment. But their counsel was thin, reactionary, and institutionally dependent. The pandemic counsel was to follow government leaders with no mention of the voice of conscience. A church claiming divine guidance could have offered an actual message: encourage personal responsibility, strengthen health through exercise, sleep, sunlight, and good diet, care for the vulnerable, and help members think soberly about tradeoffs using conscience rather than simply parroting the then current public-health consensus.

Exercise and diet were not a full substitute for pandemic policy, but they were obvious pillars of health and resilience that were absent from the Church’s top-level public guidance during the pandemic. Has the Church mentioned those topics elsewhere in the past? Yes. But scattered mentions in prior materials are no excuse for failing to make them a visible priority when a major health event hits. Here we are six years later. How much more pandemic-resistant would the entire membership base be if they had emphasized such foundational things and continued to recommend them? You cannot fix an unhealthy or at-risk population in two weeks, but it has been six years, and the church population is arguably no better prepared for another pandemic than before.

If top Church leaders continue to present themselves the way they do, yet repeat the same narrow mainstream messaging as everyone else, and behave as any other business institution, it creates a credibility problem. And when later facts complicate the original confidence, such as the acknowledged myocarditis vaccine issues, and the overstated benefits of masking, the fallback defense becomes that leaders were simply doing their best with the information available. But that turns prophetic leadership into ordinary administration.  That's not the Gospel. That doesn't satisfy the soul.  That undermines their claims.  In all of this, it's the people I hurt for.  It's the members I'm concerned about.  It's the people close to me who experience actual harm from false claims. It's the total lack of depth coming from an institution that claims to be more "Christ-centered" than ever.

My point is not that the Church should have only preached fitness during the Covid pandemic. My point is that during a historic time of public fear, its leadership displayed no visible sign of wisdom, discernment, or even long-term common sense. Rather than revealing prophetic judgment, they displayed the same business risk management as every other institution, theirs was just clothed in religious authority. That seriously undermines claims that the Church’s leaders provide distinctively revelatory or prophetic guidance in consequential real-world matters. I do not accept for one second that exercise, appropriate rest, sunlight, and a good diet were too commonplace for them to repeat during that time of public hysteria. That would have given people solid ground to build from.  How can people remain spiritually healthy if their basic physical health suffers from chronic neglect, while foundational principles of health are sidelined in favor of near-total reliance on (Big) pharmaceutical intervention and trust in government leaders?  

I can no longer tell the difference between organizational changes in the business world and organizational changes in the LDS Church. They are interchangeable and rely on the same tools, IE proof of concept, test runs, and they have the same outcomes. This new second-hour change to the Sunday School schedule feels like just another structure change that may well be changed again in a year or two.  How can we call these trends prophetic leadership?  The terms we use as a people have remained, meanwhile the actual things themselves have fundamentally drifted.   

That is part of what makes this pattern so troubling. The problem is not merely that the Church is wrong from time to time or shallow in some of its responses and decisions. Everyone makes mistakes, and not all decisions turn out to be good ones.  But what happens when later wisdom starts showing a pattern? 

The deeper problem is the pattern of claimed prophetic leadership that is functionally interchangeable with corporate management. And once that becomes visible, it cannot easily be unseen. A church and its leaders can ask for trust and to be followed on the basis of divine authority, or it can behave like a risk-managed institution following the trends of its age, but it cannot do both indefinitely without eventually forcing members to question whether the prophetic claims are no longer meaningful, or worse, false.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother

Genesis 2:24

...therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. 

The same from Matthew 19:

Have you not read that he who made man at the beginning made him male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh?

A common LDS reading of this passage, specifically "leave his father and mother", is in terms of where you live and who you live with.  Meaning that when you get married you move out of your parents' house and in with your spouse to start a married life.  But what if that's dreadfully shallow? What if there is so much more to leaving your father and mother?  What' if it goes way beyond just changing your address, and committing to a new relationship?    

What else could leaving your mother and father entail?  Do we dare look?  Do we dare ask the question?  Sometimes you need to be careful what you ask for.  

In an insightful passage from the book "The Middle Passage" we get a fresh and sobering gut check on how we are doing in terms of little considered inner-self elements of leaving our father and mother. 

This is from the first chapter: 

When I was in fifth grade, just after World War Two, our teacher bought some glass prisms which had been intended for submarine periscopes. Before and after class we would amuse ourselves by lurching down the aisles, running into walls and each other. We were fascinated by the question of reality and how to find one’s way by such bent angles of sight.

I wondered if those children who had to wear glasses all the time saw better or only different worlds. When I considered that the lens in our eyes also refracted the light, I had to wonder further whether the reality we saw might wholly depend on the lens through which we saw it.

​It remains useful to borrow that youthful perception, to acknowledge that whatever reality may be, it will to some extent be shaped by the lens through which we see it. When we are born we are handed multiple lenses: genetic inheritance, gender, a specific culture and the variables of our family environment, all of which constitute our sense of reality. Looking back later, we have to admit that we have perhaps lived less from our true nature than from the vision of reality ordained by the lenses we used. ​

Therapists sometimes assemble a genogram which represents an emotional family tree. The history of the extended family over several generations reveals recurrent motifs. While genetic predispositions play their role, it is clear that families transmit their vision of life from generation to generation. The lens passes from parent to child, and out of that refracted perspective choices and consequences are repeated. And just as we see some aspects of the world through any given lens, so we will miss others.

​Perhaps the first step in making the Middle Passage meaningful is to acknowledge the partiality of the lens we were given by family and culture, and through which we have made our choices and suffered their consequences. If we had been born of another time and place, to different parents who held different values, we would have had an entirely different lens. The lens we received generated a conditional life, which represents not who we are but how we were conditioned to see life and make choices. All generations are seduced into anthropocentrism, tending to defend their vision of the world as superior to that of others. So, too, we succumb to the belief that the way we have grown to see the world is the only way to see it, the right way to see it, and we seldom suspect the conditioned nature of our perception.

Even in the most privileged of childhoods, life may be experienced as traumatic. We were connected to the heartbeat of the cosmos in our mother’s womb. Suddenly we were thrust violently into the world to begin an exile and a search to recover the lost connectedness. Even religion (from Latin religio, “bond between man and the gods,” or religare, “to bind back”) may be seen as a projection of the search for lost connections onto the cosmos itself. For many, given the impact of poverty, hunger, abuses of various kinds, the initial experience of the world is devastating to their sense of self.

These wounds, and the various unconscious responses adopted by the inner child, become strong determinants of the adult personality. The child cannot incarnate a freely expressed personality; rather, childhood experience shapes his or her role in the world. Out of the wounding of childhood, then, the adult personality is less a series of choices than a reflexive response to the early experiences and traumata of life.

​So we all live out, unconsciously, reflexes assembled from the past.

The problem is not that we have complexes but that complexes have us. Some complexes are useful in protecting the human organism, but others interfere with choice and may even dominate a person’s life. ​

Complexes are always more or less unconscious; they are charged with energy and operate autonomously. Although usually activated by an event in the present, the psyche operates analogously, saying in effect, “When have I been here before?” The current stimulus may be only remotely similar to something that happened in the past, but if the situation is emotionally analogous then the historically occasioned response is triggered. There are few who do not have an emotionally charged response around such issues as sex, money and authority because they are usually associated with important experiences in the past. ​

Of all the complexes, the most influential are those internalized experiences of parents we call the mother complex and the father complex. These are generally the two most important people we have ever encountered. They were there for the laying of the keel and the launching of the vessel. It was their treatment of us and their strategies toward life to which we were exposed.

Ok, with that in mind, consider again the passage to leave your mother and father and join with your spouse in a new united life. Oh boy, God embedded a whole lifetime inside those words to leave father and mother.  It may be that we have underestimated the magnitude and implications of what God is saying.  And the amount of work it may take. If we are to leave father and mother... that's no easy task.  At one point of development such an idea was not even conceivable.  Even as an adult, and perhaps despite moving halfway around the world, we may still need to leave our mother and father and join with our spouse in oneness. 

T&C 157:35:

Marriage was established at the beginning as a covenant by the word and authority of God, between the woman and God, the man and woman, and the man and God.

It's interesting that the man and woman both have an individual covenant with God.  There's individual work involved and only then does it start to look like what was established at the beginning. 

Continuing on with excerpts from the same chapter from The Middle Passage:  

Another ego-related hope of youth is the desire for the perfect relationship. While one has seen less than perfect relationships all around, we are prone to assume we are somehow wiser, better able to choose, better equipped to avoid the pitfalls. The Koran warns, “Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you? We imagine such advice applies to others.

One may look at the sorry remains of a parent’s marriage and conclude, “I know better than they and will choose wisely.” One may still expect to be CEO, write the Great American Novel, be a terrific parent. 

Heroic thinking is useful, for were one to suspect the trials and disappointments ahead, who would have set off into adulthood? I have yet to be asked to give a commencement address, but loathsome as such speeches usually are, I still might not have the heart to tell the truth. Who could bear to say to eager and hopeful faces, “In a few years you will likely hate your job, your marriage will be in peril, your kids will cause you fits, you may very well experience so much pain and confusion about your life that you will think of writing a book about it.” 

Who could do that to the dewy-eyed, hitching their wagons to a star, even as they lurch down the same confused and wounding way their parents trod? ​Heroic thinking, with its hopes and projections barely tempered by the world’s ways, helps the young leave home and dive, as they must, into life.

More will be said later of the role of projection in marriage, but perhaps no other social construct has so much unconscious baggage imposed upon it. Few at the altar are conscious of the enormity of their expectations. No one would speak aloud the immense hopes: “I am counting on you to make my life meaningful.” “I am counting on you to always be there for me.” “I am counting on you to read my mind and anticipate all my needs.” “I am counting on you to bind my wounds and fulfill the deficits of my life.” “I am counting on you to complete me, to make me a whole person, to heal my stricken soul.” Just as the truth cannot be told in a commencement address, so the hidden agenda may not be spoken at the altar. One would be too embarrassed, if one acknowledged them, by the impossibility of these demands.

These are sobering remarks from psychologist James Hollis. I found his insights fascinating and humbling.  I disagree that marriage is just a “social construct” but that wasn’t the point he was making. The unconscious baggage is what we can work to “leave” as we contemplate leaving our mother and father and entering marriage. 

I don't detect anything in the scripture or those passages that suggests we be ungrateful, or discard anything good that a persona's mother and father offered or provided.  We ought to be grateful and honor our parents, as the original 10 commandments taught.  What I do see in these words is that we can't really claim it as “us” or claim authentic living if we are unconsciously acting out automatic extensions of our parent's worldview, lens, values or belief system. If we had different parents, we would be unconsciously living out those patterns. And very likely be part of whatever their religion happened to be.  

So, what is to be done?  The author of that book suggests we recognize it and work to make what’s unconscious more conscious and reclaim (or allow) unknown parts of ourselves to live more fully, more conscious, and (in my interpretation) allow our God given identity to surface and bring new and additional meaning to life. 

Leaving parents seems to include this inner work.  Connecting to God yourself.  Then, having reconnected to the God of the universe yourself, creating a united life with your spouse. Conscious and full of light, taking responsibility and accountability for the gift that is your life.  

Who cares about savor, more salt!

A Reflection on Church Metrics and Meaning

There are moments during church when I want to speak up, but doing so wouldn’t be constructive. For those times, I’m grateful for a blog to reflect, question, and explore what we’re taught.

Today’s lesson was based on Elder Rasband's talk, Right Before Our Eyes. The title comes from a quote from President Nelson.  The phrase seems meant to evoke majesty (President Nelson's description) and wonder at events currently taking place.  The talk followed suit, highlighting the rapid increase of temples, the surge in missionary work, rising baptism numbers, and the growth of Church-run education. These statistics were presented as evidence that the Church is thriving by every measurable standard, and by extension, that it is the Lord’s work. And further evidence that the lord is hastening the work.  

But something felt off.

The Metrics We Choose to See

The lesson focused exclusively on positive indicators, temples, and new temple announcements, membership totals, and institutional reach.  A lot of it was construction focused.  Not once were we invited to consider less flattering metrics: member activity rates, church attendance, temple participation, retention, modern revelation, new light or knowledge from heaven, or spiritual vitality. These were and typically are, absent from the leader's talks. 

When only favorable and cherry-picked statistics are shared, it creates a misleading narrative that risks becoming more about institutional pride and vanity than useful, honest truth.  How can we repent when we insist on avoiding the truth that would lead to repentance?

Salt, Savor, and Stats 

The instructor referenced 1 Nephi 14: “And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few.” He (and all others) connects this to the global LDS membership, suggesting that our small numbers fulfill that prophecy.  The members are likened to the “salt of the earth” from Matthew 5.

Supposing we go with the analogy and presume our self-identification with the salt is accurate, we then must also wrestle with Christ’s warning: “If the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.”

It’s easy to identify as salt. Self-identifying with the good guys in scripture, the salt, the saved, the exalted, the righteous etc...  that's the norm for religious people.  But what if we're wrong? It’s harder (but more spiritually helpful) to ask whether we are salt that carries savor.   

We were reminded by both the talk and the lesson that “hundreds of temples” were once a dream, and now they’re a reality. But how many of these temples are actually built? How many are attended regularly? How many were announced without local awareness or preparation?  I've seen several examples where the city (or the country, like China) that is going to house the new temple puts on social media that they have no knowledge of any such temple being proposed. 

Likewise, we were told that 18 million members was once unimaginable. Now it’s a milestone reached, and one to be congratulated.  Hundreds of missions? Another fulfilled dream. But selected statistics fulfilled on paper can be terribly flattering, pacifying, and misleading.  

A Warning from 3rd Nephi

Jesus warns in 3rd Nephi (Covenant of Christ wording):

"But if they won’t return to Me and obey My voice, I’ll let My people, O house of Israel, go through them and trample them down. They’ll be like salt that’s become useless, which is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by My people, O house of Israel."

How can "My people" trample the salt, if they ARE the salt?  Our identification with salt seems like something we shouldn't just presume. Even if we identify with the salt, we can still be trampled underfoot by the Lord's people.  In other words, even those who once had savor can become useless and change which group they are associated with.

Honest Reflection

When Church leaders again and again focus solely on positive indicating metrics, it can feel like vanity dressed as righteousness and progress. When perilous spiritual realities are ignored in favor of institutional triumphalism, I worry we’re building assumptions that are false, vain, and spiritually fake. 

Honesty, even when unflattering  (perhaps especially) helps build trust. Without honesty, how can we claim to even see or know the truth?  

All diseases caused by evil spirits?

At church last week the instructor shared some interesting ideas and claims based on a quote from Brigham Young. He explained that Brigham taught that diseases and bodily problems and pain are all caused by evil or unclean spirits.

The room was initially very quiet. Then one guy asked for the idea to be repeated as it was surprising to him.  What struck me was how quickly the group accepted the idea without discussion. It seemed beyond scrutiny simply because Brigham Young said it. Perhaps some questioned it silently, but no one spoke up. I thought the quote sounded strange, yet I stayed quiet too.

The instructor didn't quote the exact quote as it didn't seem to be part of his prepared materials.  So I went and looked up the quote to see what he was talking about.  

Here’s the quote:

Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 129–134 (discourse 28), December 4, 1856, Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City:

“You never felt a pain and ache, or felt disagreeable, or uncomfortable in your bodies and minds, but what an evil spirit was present causing it. … Do you realize that the ague, the fever, the chills, the severe pain in the head, the pleurisy, or any pain in the system, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, is put there by the devil? You do not realize this, do you? … When you have the rheumatism, do you realize that the devil put that upon you? No, but you say, ‘I got wet, caught cold, and thereby got the rheumatism.’ The spirits that afflict us and plant disease in our bodies, pain in the system, and finally death, have control over us so far as the flesh is concerned.”

That first sentence is quite a claim. It attributes about everything to evil spirits. The last part of the quote attributes evil sprits as even what's behind our eventual death.  Such sweeping teachings seemed to merit some exploration.

Brigham seemed to anticipate such responses as "I got cold" "I got wet" and that's why this or that consequence happened with my body.  He predicts people will say such things and seem to refutes such thinking, saying those aren't the real cause.

 If we broaden “evil spirit” to include any lapse in body mechanics, judgement, or vision, like stubbing your toe or stepping on a Lego at night, then maybe this could make sense. But that still doesn't really make sense.  I stepped on a Lego recently. It hurt. It blended in with the carpet so I didn't see it.  It was inevitable give the amount of Legos my kids have on the table in the living room at any given moment. 

Should I conclude that a false spirit caused me not to notice the Lego?  Where would that line of reasoning take the mind?  Do evil spirits rally for flu season and take a break in summer? If we take these ideas to their conclusion where does that land us?  This teaching seems to lead to a very strange place with evil pulling all the strings as it relates to the body.    

What Do the Scriptures Say?

Brigham specifically mentioned fevers, so let’s check the Book of Mormon/Covenant of Christ:

Alma 15:3
“Now Zeezrom lay sick at Sidom with a burning fever caused by his great mental distress over his iniquity.”

Here, the fever was caused by the guys own mental distress, not an evil spirit.

Alma 46:40–41
“And there were some who died with fevers, which during some times of the year were very common in the land — but they could control the fevers because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots God provided to remove the cause of diseases which affected people due to the climate — still there were many who died of old age.”

These fevers were "very" common during parts of the year.  The verse says they were due to the climate, not evil spirits. The solution was herbal, not spiritual. If evil spirits caused the fevers, why not just cast them out? The scripture instead taught about plants and herbs and their respective qualities.  People still died, of old age. There's no suggestion in that passage that evil spirits were the cause of fevers or death.  People got old and died. Same as everything else on earth. Which God himself ordained as part of this earth life. Gen 3:19: “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread Until you return to the ground, For from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

Mosiah 17:16, 19

Abinadi prophesied that diseases would afflict the people as a judgment from God, not from evil spirits.

John 9:1–3
When Jesus healed the man born blind, He was asked who sinned, the man or his parents. Hs reply was that the blindness was not caused by sin but so “the works of God should be made manifest.”

 Jesus cast out evil and unclean spirits on plenty of occasions but it doesn't say that's what he did for the man born blind. These examples do not appear to be caused by evil spirits.  

Contrasting examples:  

There are examples in the new testament where someone did have some physical issues as a result of an evil spirit. 

Mark 9:17–27  

And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not. … When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.

Matthew 12:22 

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.

There are clearly occasions where evil spirits are involved with the physical issues. Brigham’s teachings however overgeneralize and over simplify the issue in an odd way.  Various scriptures seem to contradict much of his statement. The scriptures attribute some bodily issues to personal choices, some to climate, some to God's judgment, some to God’s purposes, and yes, some to evil spirits.  But definitely not all. Brigham's teaching (at least that one, and a few others) frankly gives evil a pretty hefty dose of power.  

If you get the cause of the pain wrong, then you are very likely to get the remedy wrong too. For example, suppose we look at diet and the bodily effects and diseases stemming from what we put into our bodies.  The Word of Wisdom has instructions about keeping the body healthy.  What if we mis attribute something to an evil spirit when in reality it was something we repeatedly consume?  And that's to say nothing about the health effects of our beliefs, family patterns, and how we manage stress.

---

Brigham's quote ends like this:

“The spirits that afflict us and plant disease in our bodies, pain in the system, and finally death, have control over us so far as the flesh is concerned.”

They have control over us as far as the flesh is concerned he says. They plant diseases, pain, and finally death.  Well that sounds pretty terrible. So are we doomed to being controlled by these evil spirits as long as we have a body?

Contrast Brigham's statement with this from Joseph Smith:

“A man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth.”

Perhaps Brigham’s statement illustrates Joseph’s warning.  Lack of knowledge leads to captivity by some evil power. What's ironic here is we are encountering a teaching that every pain and disease is caused by evil spirits. If that's not correct doesn't it give them more power and lead you into captivity? 

I'm not saying evil spirits don't also jump at the opportunity to afflict a person while they are down, sick, or dealing with some disease. Sounds reasonable that evil would afflict someone who's temporarily more vulnerable. In my experience that is common. But as for being the underlying cause, scriptures have enough examples to show that disease and illnesses can have many causes, physical, emotional, environmental, or divine, not just spiritual. And that in turn should inform how to go about addressing it.  

We do need knowledge otherwise we are liable to be brought under the influence of some false idea, IE false spirit.   

D&C 84 section heading hides the Church's Condemnation

In my local LDS Sunday School this week the instructor was giving us a summary of the D&C sections being covered this week.  He relied on the section heading to give some context and the gist of the various sections.

We came to D&C 84.   Here is the section heading summary online and in the printed versions of D&C for verses 54-61. "The Saints must testify of those things they have received".

Here's what 54-61 says, see if you think that summary is an even remotely appropriate way to cover the below: 

54 And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—5 Which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. 56 And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all. 57 And 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 have given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written— 58 That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father’s kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion.

59 For shall the children of the kingdom pollute my holy land? Verily, I say unto you, Nay. 60 Verily, verily, I say unto you who now hear my words, which are my voice, blessed are ye inasmuch as you receive these things; 61 For I will forgive you of your sins with this commandment—that you remain steadfast in your minds in solemnity and the spirit of prayer, in bearing testimony to all the world of those things which are communicated unto you.

That is one of the most serious warnings and collective rebukes in all of restoration scripture given through Joseph Smith: the Lord declares that the entire Church is under condemnation, specifically for treating lightly the Book of Mormon and prior revelations, not just failing to believe them, but failing to live them. That's all completely absent from the section summary summarizing those verses. The summary is arguably so lacking and misleading as to be false. It reduces a critical reproof and explanation of the Saint's status into a soft encouragement to “testify".  Based on a single out of context phrase from only 1 of the 7 verses summarized.

After over 100 years of editing (measuring from the time the first section headings were introduced) this has never been corrected or updated.

I can only speculate on why this section heading is so misleading and neglects mentioning the Church is under condemnation and why. But after decades in the Church I can do more than speculate about what some of the consequences of this misleading section heading have been. Many lifelong church members are not even aware of the condemnation. They assume all is well. Teachers who rely on the section headings to prepare their lessons or check out what's important won't even know about it, much less teach about it.  If people are not aware of it, how can anyone act on it? 

Here's a more accurate section summary for those verses:

54-61 The Lord condemns the entire Church for unbelief, vanity, and for treating the Book of Mormon and other revelations lightly. Because of this, their minds are darkened. The condemnation will remain until they repent and live what they have received. The Lord commands them to remain steadfast, solemn, and prayerful in proclaiming the things He communicates to them.

So, as it stands, the commandment is to proclaim what the Lord has communicated.  And this is one of those things He communicated.  So rather than hiding this condemnation or shying away from it, the commandment is to proclaim it!

BofM Conclusion: Scripture for Our Time: Covenant of Christ

 I've read Covenant of Christ cover to cover and wanted to post my review to conclude this blog post series.  

There's a website with some fantastic tools and side by side comparison options here: Home | Covenant of Christ

Covenant of Christ Review: 

This was not some easy-to-read edition that dumbs down the content or simplifies the text to make it more accessible. This is the real deal. This book keeps the original chapter divisions from Joseph Smith, but also includes LDS chapter numbers in bold right in the text, which makes it easy to find your way around. Instead of splitting everything into individual verses this used paragraph-style sections that keeps the original author's thoughts together and gives the reading a better rhythm. The small verse numbers are still there as superscripts, so you can track familiar references but not be distracted by them. The dual headers at the top of each page are also a helpful touch.

After reading this modernized text I can’t go back to the old archaic language. The new modern language is beyond refreshing. It's not a commentary or interpretation. This is the actual authentic text rendered in modern language. I’ve compared numerous passages to the old version and this new version legitimately and carefully preserves the original. It's all intact. If people think this has altered meaning, it is they who first need to do their homework.

How it felt to read it: It's like the book opened up in a whole new way. As though layers of "seals" were removed and the text became new, more meaningful, and powerful. The themes and message are substantially clearer. I found it had the same spirit as the text originally provided by Joseph Smith, but stronger and clearer. The old language was becoming more and more foreign and mentally exhausting to read. It hits differently when the authors speak like you do. Phrases such as “it came to pass” and “I would that you should” and verb suffixes like “cometh”, “sayeth” are awkward, especially to my kids. The old language made God feel distant and unrelatable. Then there’s Isaiah, which many of us in the LDS church were advised to simply skip over. This new text changes all of that.

I'm one who's read the book enough times that I was used to the old archaic language. But that didn't mean I understood it. What happened for me is my mind would gloss over more and more passages assuming I understood what they meant simply due to familiarity with the older English words and grammar. Reading this book however is an entirely different experience. It's a fresh lens, with fresh depth and applicability to God's work happening now.

BofM Part 8: More Good

Part 8: More Good.

Joseph Smith addressed the title of the Book of Mormon (at least tangentially) a few times. 2 occasions where Joseph used that title when referring to the Book of Mormon (one in a letter to Stephen Post (1838) and another in JS-History, Part 19 (written before Nov. 1839), --see SOJ p. viii). Another instance where Joseph mentions the title of the Book of Mormon was a letter Joseph wrote to the editor of the Times and Seasons, circa 15 May 1843 (https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-editor-circa-15-may-1843/1). The letter to the editor, may in fact be the last time he addressed the subject during his life.

In the letter, Joseph states that he hopes "sober-thinking and sound-reasoning people will sooner listen to the voice of truth, than be led astray by the vain pretensions of the self-wise" and then seeks to overcome an error about the definition of "Mormon." Joseph then says "Let the language of that book speak for itself" and quotes from the book about how the record was written in Reformed Egyptian and no other people knows the Nephites language. It also states that God "hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof." Joseph states that he was the means through which God translated the record "through the grace of God."

Joseph also states that "the word Mormon stands independent of the learning and wisdom of this generation" and that the world is "destitute of revelation."

Because "none other people knoweth our language" Joseph states "therefore the Lord, and not man, had to interpret." Therefore Joseph gives the following definition of Mormon by revelation. Right before he gives the definition he talks about the "Bible" which is the title for the Old and New Testaments, therefore when he gives the interpretation of "Mormon" through revelation it is related to the title of the Book of Mormon as that is the context of the surrounding interpretation. He says "the Bible in its widest sense, means 'good.'"

Then the literal interpretation of "Mormon" is given — "more good".

Of the accounts reflecting Joseph’s relations with the Lamanites is one made by Wilford Woodruff 2 months after the above referenced letter to the editor of Times and Seasons. A visit with Pottawattamie chiefs in July 1843.

Photo courtesy of Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

This tribe had originally inhabited over fifty villages in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. Having faced intense pressure to give up their lands and go west, they did so in 1834, settling in the area of the present state of Iowa. The chiefs met with Joseph, some of the Twelve, and others. Their spokesman said:

We as a people have long been distressed and oppressed. We have been driven from our lands many times. We have been wasted away by wars, until there are but few of us left. The white man has hated us and shed our blood, until it has appeared as though there would soon be no Indians left. We have talked with the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit has talked with us. We have asked the Great Spirit to save us and let us live; and the Great Spirit has told us that he has raised up a great Prophet, chief, and friend, who would do us great good and tell us what to do; and the Great Spirit has told us that you are the man (pointing to the Prophet Joseph). We have now come to see you, and hear your words, and to have you tell us what to do. . . . (HC 5:480)

Wilford Woodruff comments: “The Spirit of God rested upon the Lamanites, especially the orator. Joseph was much affected and shed tears. He arose and said unto them: ‘I have heard your words. They are true. The Great Spirit has told you the truth. Im [sic] am your friend and brother, and I wish to do you good.’” After Joseph spoke of the Book of Mormon and directed them to pray to the Great Spirit and live in peace the chief asked, “How many moons would it be before the Great Spirit would bless them?” Joseph told them, “Not a great many” (HC 5:480–81). 

The Great Spirit told them that he would do them "great good" and Joseph responded and said he would do them "good." And once Joseph said he would do them "good", he immediately spoke to them about the Book of Mormon (or "more good").

The Covenant of Christ is indeed more good. He who IS good provided the title by revelation. It's a covenant text, approved by the Lord for our day!  What a perfect example of "more good".

From the back cover of the new volume: 

This record was first introduced to the world in the poetic and archaic language of the King James Bible almost two hundred years ago. It has been preserved by the Lord to come forth in clear modern English. This book is both a revelation and a warning. Though it may seem improbable, it extends an unmistakable invitation to connect with God through a renewed covenant.

Anything that persuades people to do good comes from Me, because good comes from no one other than Me. - Ether 1:18. (Ether 4:12 LE)

Another important development worth noting is that this new Covenant of Christ volume has an edition specifically addressed to one of the intended audiences: 

Covenant of Christ - First Nations

From the item description: 

This book is a sacred record written by earlier covenant people brought by God to live on the Western Hemisphere. In scripture this land is part of the islands of the sea in what is now referred to by many First Nations people as Turtle Island. This record contains a spiritual message from the holy men of this promised land to the Indigenous people living today who are their descendants. The things written in this book are valuable for mankind, especially for Native people who are identified in this text as a sacred remnant of the house of Israel through Joseph, the son of Jacob. This record was buried in the ground for fourteen centuries and protected by God. An American prophet was given the record by an angel and that prophet then translated and published it as scripture. Now these ancient voices are coming forth from the dust and calling out in a way that is a direct, clear message. The Lord has promised that the simplicity of these words will result in strong faith for First Nations people as they learn of the promises made to their forefathers and of God's covenant to be fulfilled in the last days. This book is a prophetic record that will help bring all holy bundles of sacred teachings and ancient traditions into one great circle of light and truth. It is a sign that the time has come to include all Native blood with the house of Israel again. It is a covenant to Indigenous people of this land from the great Creator, the Great Spirit, the Peacemaker, the Holy One of Israel who is Jesus Christ. He rose from the grave and visited your ancestors, confirming they were and are a chosen people with a promised destiny. This record invites you to follow God's path to rise up to receive eternal glory with the Great Father of us all.