MIPodcast #178: Divine Aid (Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants) Featuring Amy Easton

Rosalynde Welch: From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute Podcast: Faith Illuminating Scholarship.

I'm your host, Rosalynde Welch. Today on The Questions We Should Be Asking, I have for you an interview with Dr. Amy Easton, author of a new book out from the Maxwell Institute. First though, I wanted to let you know about a great resource for accessing Maxwell Institute resources online at a website called BYU Scholars Archive. This archive is hosted by the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU, and it contains a number of past titles published by the Maxwell Institute, including some of our living faith titles and, special favorites of mine, several books on scripture study by our former colleague James Faulkner, including his Scriptures Made Harder series. Now, this archive does not have our complete catalog, but it does have a lot of great material, and it's all online and free.

We hope you'll buy our books when you can so that we can keep publishing them. But when you can't, check out what's available on Scholars Archive. You can find the website by Googling BYU Scholars Archive Maxwell Institute, or by going to scholarsarchive.byu.edu/MI. And now I'm delighted to share with you an interview with Dr. Amy Easton, who authored the volume Divine Aid in our new Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series. Amy is an associate professor of ancient scripture at BYU, where she also teaches in the global women's studies and American studies programs. Amy did her graduate work in literature, just like I did, and in addition to her work on the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, she studies topics as diverse as 19th-century women's poetry and transatlantic travel literature.

At the time of this recording, Amy was directing a study abroad program in London and we're grateful that she could join us despite having only a laptop to record on. Amy's book, Divine Aid, is all about the relationship Jesus wants to build with each of us. The Doctrine and Covenants shows us the Savior working in real time to build a parent-child relationship with real individuals.

Amy has studied Emma Smith's life in detail, and I especially appreciated how she unpacked Emma's revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 25. The Lord saw Emma's true potential, apart from any limiting stereotypes or self-beliefs, and he invited her to step into her strengths. Amy shared her personal experience of God guiding her own professional career by amplifying certain desires over others.

We talked about parenting in the pattern of the Savior's uncalculated love, offering love and connection even when we may be rejected. If you found the Doctrine and Covenants challenging in all its historical complexity, I think this discussion will be a breath of fresh air. Amy makes the revelations personable, applicable, and hopeful.

Amy Easton, welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Amy Easton: Thanks Rosalynde, it's great to be here.

Welch: Today we are talking about your volume in the Maxwell Institute's Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series. The title of yours is Divine Aid. It's a wonderful volume. I'm really excited to discuss it with you today. Right off the bat, you open the introduction with an epigraph from section 50. And I'm actually gonna read that because it's a scripture that is really close to my heart.

“Behold ye are little children and you cannot bear all things now. You must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth. Fear not, little children, for you are mine." This is a powerful scripture to me. It actually is the scripture that my parents chose to appear on the headstone of my little brother, so I see it every time that I go visit him at the cemetery.

And it captures something of your central theme in this book, as I understand it, which is the kind of relationship that our Heavenly Father wants to have with us, right? How does He want us to relate to Him: as a king, as a ruler, as a judge, or as a father, as a parent? So talk about the parent-child relationship that our Heavenly Father and even our Savior wants to have with us. How should that shape our overall understanding of our relationship with divinity?

Easton: Thank you Rosalynde. I also just want to say thank you for starting our discussion with a question that recognizes these scriptures that I use at the beginning of each of the chapters. Just because they really do--they encapsulate what I want to get across and I appreciate you sharing what you did as well as just the personal appeal that you have with these scriptures.

And for me, I think that they just immediately set out the concern that Jesus has for each of our Heavenly Father's children, the responsibility that he takes for us, the fact that our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Parents, and Jesus Christ, that they really do see and recognize that we are at the beginning of our growth and development, that they really are there to help us navigate the many aspects of our existence, to help us to comprehend that we think that we can't comprehend.

I think the Savior really wants to just help us to see in the Doctrine and Covenants how our Heavenly Parents see us.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: That they again love us, they're there to offer us aid, assistance, love. And what I think again that I appreciate about the Savior so much in the Doctrine and Covenants is Elder Holland, you know, once said in this beautiful talk, “The Grandeur of God”, you know, he's just saying everything that the Savior ever did on his mortar of sojourn was to help us to know what God, our Eternal Father is like.

And I just feel like in particular in the Doctrine and Covenants, he's helping us see what our Heavenly Parents are like. And again, that kind of parent-child relationship, right? That He is so many times acting as that divine parent figure. And He is just constantly offering us this aid, acceptance, love, He's saying, yes, this is exactly what your Heavenly Parents are doing for us.

And I think that they're doing that in hopes that then we will instinctively turn to them, that we will see them as figures who are just there to help us.

Welch: So this raises a question in my mind. One thing that I noticed throughout your book is that whenever you talk about the Savior, I think every time that you talk about Him, you use the title, the Lord Jesus Christ. You append that Lord to Jesus Christ.

And I wonder, I'm sure that was an intentional choice. And in some ways you might think, that kind of makes him feel a little bit distant, right? Like a Lord who's so much more powerful than I, but I'm sure that you've chosen to address him as the Lord Jesus Christ for a particular reason. So talk to us about that choice.

Easton: So part of that is the, wow, I mean, part of that is the fact that people are often like, who is it when we see the word Lord? Like, is that Heavenly Father? Is that Jesus Christ? I feel like I have that brought up so many times to me with my students, particularly when they're reading the Book of Mormon. So in part, that was actually just the reason why I'm bringing that up is that it is the Lord.

Welch: Hmm.

Easton: But it is Jesus Christ. And so not really using that Lord emphasis as a way, as you're saying, to kind of separate Him from us, because I think what we see in the Doctrine and Covenants is really exactly the opposite. I do not in any way see a Savior who is trying to separate Him from us. I think He is constantly instead showing us His nature and therefore our Divine Parents' nature.

Welch: Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. And you know, it actually had the effect for me, I think, of kind of familiarizing and softening that term Lord. Not that it ever was truly distancing from me, but it really helped me associate the Lord Jesus and this idea of the Lord, not as a kind of...

Easton: Yes.

Welch: Scary judge who exists far away, who's gonna come again and, you know, straighten everything out. But as our friend, right? As our friend, as our Savior and our loving guide and our Father, right? It's not wrong to think about the Savior as our Father. He's not our Heavenly Father, but as you point out in section 35, there's a certain kind of parent-child relationship that we have to the Savior when we respond to what is offered in the Atonement, right? When we are saved in Christ and there's a sense in which we become His sons and daughters. So it's really not wrong to think of the Savior as our Father as well.

Easton: I think sometimes also really seeing Him as a father figure and again, a father in the very best sense of the word, right? Like a father who loves us, who cares about us, who, you know--and that's what I think again, is so interesting as you work through these different terms, especially father or Lord, is that for different people it can have, as you kind of mentioned before, somewhat of a frightening or an alienating effect. And I think what we're really seeing in the Doctrine and Covenants is just, the Savior trying to really help us wrap around ourselves around those terms and say, no, no, no, these terms are all positive. They're all good. So.

Welch: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so within this framework of parent-child, we're encouraged to remember that we ourselves are the children, that we are just at the beginning of our journey and our growth, that we're not perfect yet. The Lord understands that and He is cheering us on and helping us to grow and develop.

And then on the opposite side of that equation, we have the parent, right? The Savior who sees in us something that we can't always see in ourselves yet. As a mother, myself--I know you're a mother, I'm sure this is an experience that is common to both of us--that we can see in our children something of their potential. And maybe we see the ways in which they need to develop and grow and we can see what their strengths are. And a good parent then will try to shape their parenting around the potential of the child rather than imposing the parents' own desires or ideas on the child.

So you make this point again and again that God helps us to see ourselves differently than we might be able to otherwise. What first drew you to this theme in the D&C? How did you notice it? And how has it impacted you in your own life?

Easton: Okay, so to answer the question you just posed, I actually want to kind of start by thinking about how it's impacted my life and then moving into kind of how I've seen it in the Doctrine and Covenants. So for me, there is a fantastic painting by James T. Harwood where he depicts Jesus calling Peter and Andrew to leave their occupation as fishers and to be his intimate companions during his mortal sojourn.

Welch: Yeah.

Easton: And so this is the image that I kept as my dominant screensaver throughout my time as a student at BYU. I did this because I wanted a constant reminder of the consecrated life I wished to lead. And most nights during my undergraduate years, I prayed for God to guide me to how I could best consecrate my life to him. I really so desperately wanted to be the type of baller that I saw modeled by Thomas S. Monson.

And at times though, I was often confused because I didn't get a direct answer. And for me, this was particularly hard because my best friend and roommate for three years did. She received direct guidance to know that she was to become a PA and to work with aid victims. And then she went on to do just that. But for me, I just continued to pray and to move forward in the best way I could. And I just kept praying like, “please, help me to consecrate myself, help me to figure out what it is that I need to do.”

Over time, as I kept praying, I began to recognize how the Lord worked with me. I recognized that he most often worked with me through amplifying certain desires over another. So for instance, I originally planned after my time at BYU to do an internship in Washington, D.C. while I took a year off before starting a PhD program. But somehow, my secondary plan of moving to Arizona became so desirable to me. And a part of that plan was to take classes to become a seminary teacher. And taking these classes was never a part of my plan. I didn't want to be a seminary teacher. But suddenly I became so excited and thought, yes, these classes are going to help me become a better university professor, which was like the end goal. But once I took the classes, I thought I suddenly had a desire to be a seminary teacher and to do that at least part time before I began my PhD. So of course I did that.

But sometime kind of during this whole course of six years, I realized as I read the Gospels, particularly like what you just kind of said, that God is not trying to, again, parent us all the same, that He sees in us things that we don't see in ourselves. And He helps us kind of bring those forward.

Right, that he's saying, this is who you are, I see this in you, let me help you become these things. And that's what I really saw that God was doing with these apostles is that he helped them to see themselves differently, right? He's like, no, you're not supposed to be fishers, you're supposed to come and help me like gather souls, right? That's what you're supposed to do. And what we see in the New Testament is we see him doing this again and again and again for like everyone he encounters as saying no,

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: This is who you can be. And this is what you can do. And so I love that. And so for me, end of the story, right, is that he helped me see and have this sudden desire to be a professor in the Ancient Scripture Department, which even as I was doing my PhD was not in the plans. But once I caught up with an old friend, she mentioned it to me. And when she mentioned it to me, suddenly I was like, This is exactly what I should do.

And so I've just long had this belief because I saw God do it in my life. I saw him help me to become something I could never be without him and something I would never see in myself.

Welch: Hmm. Yeah. I recently recorded a podcast with another author of a volume in the series, Mason Allred. Maybe listeners caught that episode. And he writes about seeing as a spiritual practice. And he really encourages us to think about seeing in a visionary way the people around us and seeing in them something beyond maybe the surface or what appears on the surface.

And Christ doesn't always choose us for or extend to us opportunities that we feel prepared for or that we seem like the likeliest prospect for. I have no doubt that--you seem like an extremely promising candidate as a university professor, Amy, but for some of us--we may get extended opportunities that don't feel comfortable.

I really, really appreciated your reading of the passage in the New Testament where he tells his disciples, lift up your eyes, look about you, look at the fields, they're white, all ready for harvest. And this is language that appears in the Doctrine and Covenants over and over and over again, right, as he's calling his latter-day disciples to go out and harvest these fields. But what struck me so much is that he was telling this to his disciples, right, of the Samaritans, right? It was right after his encounter with the woman at the well. And so the field that he was pointing them to, that he was directing their gaze towards, was the Samaritan people, which probably would have been the last people in the world that his disciples would have thought, wow, these are also children of our Heavenly Father and they also deserve to hear the message of Jesus Christ.

So He sees something in us that, that may seem unlikely on the surface, but He sees a possibility or a potential there and He opens that up for us. And I think that leads us to what for me, it felt like really the heart of the book, where your heart really appeared in this book. And that is in your discussion of Emma Smith and the remarkable callings that she received. What do you think that we as modern readers can learn from Emma's story about recognizing our own potential and finding what God sees in us that the world may not see?

Easton: Thank you. I'm just so glad that you recognize what I do see as the heart of my book. That's what I really started with was Emma, because she is one of my favorite individuals in our Church history. And as I've written two other articles about her, I've really just come to prize the Lord's revelation as a moment when He did just help a beloved daughter see herself beyond the societal limitations and expectations of her day, to begin to really see herself as He sees her. And so I think it is as we read Emma's story, the modern readers can learn so much about their own potential.

And I think part of how we do that is recognizing that Emma is being called to roles that are decisively male occupations in the 19th-century, being a scribe, an expounder, an absorber of scripture, a creator of hymnals. So what we really do see is that again, God is not bound by our cultural norms, right? He is not bound by the limitations that others have imposed on us, or I think quite often that we have imposed on ourselves.

I think one thing that we do when we think about Emma, when we think about what are we learning about her is saying, okay, are there limitations that others are putting on me, that I'm putting on myself, that maybe I could remove so that I can open myself up to seeing what God sees in me. Likewise, you know, I think similarly, we really need to recognize as we see Emma's revelation is that we see that there are so many multiple meanings to the promptings that she received from the Lord, right?

Welch: Yeah.

Easton: And I love just knowing that promptings are often broad enough to encapsulate multiple interpretations at different times in our lives. And that we should always be open to and seeking after new understandings from the Lord about the inspirations we have already received.

And I think Emma, of course, shows this best, right, in the fact that she's called as to be an expounder, an exhorter of scriptures. And oftentimes, again, in the Church, we're like, OK, that happened when she became a Relief Society president. And we don't recognize, of course, that there's a 12-year gap between this revelation and between when that happened. And I really think that just speaks to the fact that this was not about a one-time event, right? This was about many events that happened to Emma. This is about the many times that she testifies of her husband's role or of the Book of Mormon or of the church, right? Before his, before Joseph Smith's death, both after Joseph Smith's death.

Welch: Yeah. One of the things I really appreciated about your discussion of Emma was the way that you unpacked this idea of comfort. Emma is called to be a comfort to Joseph. And for some of us, maybe I am guilty of this as well, I might see this as maybe not a very significant calling, right? Maybe kind of a cliche or maybe.

Easton: Mm, yeah.

Welch: It really only speaks to Emma's relationship with Joseph, doesn't really say anything about who she is.

But you really unpack this idea of comfort and you show a comforter as somebody who is strong, right? Somebody who can bear burdens, somebody who can mourn with those that mourn. You connect it to the language there in Mosiah 18. So you helped us to see Emma in section 25 for her own qualities and strengths and potentials, even in her calling as a scribe to Joseph, right? That this is not just a calling of convenience or one that just arises because she happens to be married to Joseph, but that this is a response to who Emma is and is a very specific calling for Emma Hale Smith herself.

Easton: I'm just going to say I love the fact that you brought up the comforting one. In the fact that, as I said, I've written two previous articles on Emma where I've again gone to D&C 25 because I love D&C 25. And I will say that the first two times I wrote about this, I only wrote about those callings that seemed surprising.

And then this time when I was reading through it again, I was so struck by the role of comforting. And I also realized that it had been my own kind of positionality, my own bias that had kind of kept me from, kind of, but had definitely kept me from seeing that and recognizing how essential that was. And for me, it was again, one of those moments where the Lord was inspiring me, where He was teaching me.

I realized, wait, this is like perhaps her greatest calling that we receive here. Because to be a comforter to someone, to get to stand in that role of helping, aiding, assisting, like that, that's what the Lord does. That's again, one of His names that we have for Him is that He comforts us, He helps us, the Holy Spirit comforts us, He helps us.

Welch: Yeah, I really, I'm persuaded by you and by Mason that seeing is a spiritual practice and how we see others is a moral question. And it is incumbent on us to try to see other people the way that our Heavenly Parents see them. And I think maybe we as a people haven't seen Emma clearly for a lot of reasons, many of which are very understandable.

But I think recently, in recent decades, we've come to see her differently and to appreciate her, to see her as the Lord sees her. And I think that the work that you do in this volume takes us even a bigger step toward really seeing Emma as she deserves to be seen. So thank you for that, Amy.

Easton: Thank you. I think that might have been the kindest thing you could say to me.

Welch: Well, shifting gears just a little bit now, one thing you've returned to a couple of times now, which I think is so important and I have experienced myself, is that our opportunities are contingent on our desires, right? The Lord wants to facilitate the realization of our own righteous desires. And so you see this early in the Doctrine and Covenants: “and again, if you have desires to serve God, you are called to the work.”

But there's also another dynamic that goes on sometimes, and that is that God continues to extend opportunities to people even if they don't desire them, or they don't know that they desire them, even if He knows they might reject them. I thought this was a really striking insight. What led you to this insight? And how does this quality of our Heavenly Father teach us about what grace means and what grace is?

Easton: So this insight about what God's nature is, that He continues to love us, that He continues to offer us aid, irregardless of our attitude towards them, really does come from my just consistent study of the New Testament as I just prepare each semester to teach my students at BYU. And I've just seen this insight again and again and again that this is who Jesus is, this is who God is.

I do think that the best place that we see this is in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says that, tells his listeners that God makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and He sends the rain on the just and on the unjust. And then he will just go on to give multiple examples in the Sermon on the Mount of how God continues to love us even when we do not love Him. But He again asks us to do just the same, so for other people.

So for me, this is just the fundamental view and understanding that I have of God. So when I came to the Doctrine and Covenants, I did come with this view. This is how I see God, that God offers us love irrespective of how we behave, what we do. It's just there. It's just constant.

But one thing again that I think is just so fun about reading the Doctrine and Covenants almost 200 years later is that we do know who left the Church. We do know who remained in the Church. We do know all these things that happen.

And so when we read the Doctrine and Covenants, it's just really Him extending these opportunities and this grace to individual after individual that we do know either immediately or eventually rejected his gospel. So then we have to think about, okay, well, why does He do this? And I was really curious about what other people thought of this idea. I mean, I knew exactly what I thought of this idea, but I thought, what do other people think? And so I discussed it with so many of my friends.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: And they kept coming back with the same refrain of this idea that, okay, well, the Lord offers us opportunities, even when He knows we might reject them because it's his way of testing us, that He wants us to use our agency either to accept or reject His will for us. And I can see where they're coming from. I know why they're giving that type of answer, but for me, it just does not match the God that I see.

Welch: Hmm.

Easton: Jesus describing in the Sermon on the Mount. It does not match who I see God is. And so for me, instead, when I see him offering this grace to all these individuals, I'm not surprised because that is just who God is. God offers us grace. He offers us help. It doesn't matter what our actions are.

He will do it irregardless because that is who He is.

Welch: It really reminds me of the parable of the olive tree vineyard in the book of Jacob and the interpretation of my friend, Deidre Green, where the Lord is indefatigable, right? He cannot be exhausted or stopped in His efforts to feed us, to nourish us, to nurture us, even when He knows it might fail. And when it fails, He doesn't abandon us, but He gets innovative and He tries something else and He'll offer another opportunity. But He is able to separate Himself from our own rejection of Him.

And He may weep. We know He weeps and we know that He is affected by us, but He is able, the quality of his love and the quality of his nature is such that He is able to continually, prodigally, we might say, offer and bestow his love on us. As you say, irrespective of our own reactions to that.

It's a point you make very, very powerfully. In particular, as you read the sort of brief but dramatic story of this man, James Covel, is that how you pronounce his last name?

Easton: That's how I normally pronounce it, but I despise pronouncing people's last names.

Welch: Yeah, however he might have said it, we'll call him James Covel. Yeah. We see him in sections 39 and 40, just very briefly, right, where he sort of shows up as this Methodist minister who's developed a real interest in the Restoration. And in section 39, the Lord, as He has to so many, offers him an opportunity to get involved in the work. And then in section 40, we see that he has rejected it, right? He has opted not to take it.

But you make a really important point about how we should respond when somebody leaves the Church or rejects an opportunity. What do we see there in section 40 about the Lord's response to that and how we should emulate that response?

Easton: beautiful. The first thing I love again about that revelation is that he does start off by just showing himself as you already kind of mentioned that he is a rejected God, right? Like before he even welcomes James Covel and says, okay, I want you to be a part of this. He's already said I'm a rejected God. And I think that just sets up well, as you said that vulnerability, the fact that that is who he is.

He is sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected. But again, like with James Covel, like I love in those scriptures that yes, he offers it. Yes, Covel rejects it. But you can, like I am so just filled with this knowledge that,

Welch: Yeah.

Easton: He continues to help him afterwards. That yes, he hasn't chosen this path, but he's chosen another path and he will continue to help them to guide him, to direct him. And so there's just not a sense of judgment in this that he's, that the Lord is asking anyone else to do. Like the Lord of course judges. And I'm so grateful that that just isn't my role. That my role is to instead just assist to love, to guide.

And I feel like we just see that within these two revelations of thinking, yeah, the Lord puts them both there so that we can see both aspects of this and know how we should in turn treat people who reject opportunities or as you said, leave the church is that, yeah, instead of judging them, I think we say, how do I continue to aid and assist them and encourage them in whatever path they may be on?

Welch: You use this word uncalculated. God's love is uncalculated. He isn't an investor who says, okay, well, what's the return going to be if I invest so much of my time and love into this soul versus this soul, right? He invests in us all prodigally. And that is, I think, the lesson and the challenge for us. One of the best things about your book is that it is full of real life examples that are really creative. In almost every chapter, there's a moment where you say, okay, so what might this look like on the ground? And you imagine it from the perspective of all sorts of different people, a mother, a father, a professor, an aunt, a grandmother. So I really love that real life application. And as much as your book emphasizes that we don't need to be perfect to experience God's love or to be a part of his work, how then should we implement this kind of love in our relationships with other people?

Easton: So when people read my book, I really want them to walk away with two messages, right? The first that we've been kind of discussing so far that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Parents, they help us see our capabilities, our potential. They're offering us never ending aid, encouragement, mercy, grace, forgiveness, opportunities.

And then second, that they are really saying, great, now go and do the same thing for others. That is what we want you to do. And significantly, right, they're asking us to cultivate and display this divine love in our relationships because they're saying that's how you become like us. That's how you are able to do this in eternity. So when I think about, what does this look like on the ground level? How am I actually going to offer this divine love aid assistance to others?

For me, it really is starting. And as I talk about this with my students, with other individuals, it always again does start with praying for it. It does start with saying, okay, let's pray. And again, you brought up Mason's book in the fact that he's like, hey, we need to see people differently, right? We need to see them as God sees them. And so if we're ever going to again, aid and assist and do all these things, like we pray and we say, please.

Welch: Yeah.

Easton: Help me to see these people, see individuals as you see them. And as I think about, how are we going to actually make this happen? Well, it works best when we focus on a specific person or a specific group of people so that the Lord can really be specific with us. So you can say, okay, this is how I see them. This is how you can see them. And so like, I often again, ask my students to do this…Almost every single semester I ask them for one week, say, okay, pick an individual, pick a group, pray again to see them, right? Pray to, and again, when I say see them, I really do mean like see them with that potential, right, that they have, but also see them right where they are on that path. Like we don't need to judge them. We need to instead see them deeply. We seek to understand them, to empathize with them, to perhaps see how we might aid them in a path forward. And as I challenge my students to do this, I'm just amazed by what they tell me back. I just hear inspiring stories about how service happens, awareness happens, listening happens, empathizing happens, forgiveness happens, healing happens.

But this really all occurs, it's just simple steps, right? It's saying, okay, like I don't expect my niece to want to go and do these baptisms with me and my family, but I'm still going to ask her, right? I'm still gonna extend that opportunity to her. don't expect goodness, my child to again, maybe like, don't know, make that right choice this time, but I'm gonna still extend the opportunity to them. And then I'm going to again,

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: Really, listen, I'm gonna say, I don't know, with my own child, I think, okay, you love right now Studio C. Putting it out there, people. And I'm like, okay, Studio C is great, but really, are we obsessed with Studio C? Yes, we are. So I'm gonna lean into that with you for a moment, and I'm gonna see why you love that and say, okay, how can we build on that? How does your love for that…

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: make you a better person? How can I help you use that love to improve? Rather than saying, that's not what I think you should be doing with your time. Instead, you're saying, okay, let me help you use that in some way.

Welch: I think that's such an important point to keep in mind, that--we all love the wonderful stories, the general conference stories, right? Where you're prompted to reach out to somebody and they respond and something beautiful happens. And I have had those experiences myself and I treasure them. I live for them, I really do. But also, we have to make ourselves vulnerable to the possibility that that love won't be accepted and it won't be reciprocated. And we have to be okay with that. And we have to be willing to go back again and again.

I have a child who, like many children, went through a rocky adolescence in certain ways. And there was a time when our relationship was changed. I got to a point where I would dread going to knock on this child's door because I knew what I would see in the face that opened the door to me and it wouldn't be love. And I feared that. And there was a part of me that deeply wanted to avoid that moment because it felt like a rejection. But somehow I was strengthened and I told myself, this is the time to have courage. This is your battlefield, Rosalynde. What are you made of? Do you have the courage to go back again to that door and to knock again and to try again to offer love? And it was hard and I can't say that I did it every single time. But our relationship came through. It came through that difficult time and I was able to understand better, I think, the kind of love that our Heavenly Parents have for us by the experience of offering again and again parental love that was not always received but that had a persistent burning desire to restore the relationship.

So I really appreciated your realism and your honesty that sometimes the love won't be reciprocated and that's okay. We're still called to offer it.

Easton: And Rosalynde, I'm just going to say, please do not use my example in Studio C. That was so horrible. Your example was a million times better. Thank you. This is what happens when I'm off the cuff. Like, what are those things? What are those moments? I'm like, my horrible example of what I'm battling with right now. And it's like nothing.

Welch: No, it is. Yes. Well, especially when you're busy, right? I'm not going to take it out, Amy, because I think a lot of people will relate to it. As parents, it's a sacrifice of our time to spend on something that might feel trivial, and we've got other things to do. Or maybe we just want to be reading the scriptures with them, right? But meeting them where they are and showing them that we're willing to give our time to them. What are our lives but time, right? If we want to share our lives, we share our time and we go to where they are. So I think it was a wonderful example. And thank goodness it's not--all of parenting is not as stressful as my particular story was.

Easton: No, no, but I mean, I think like that goes back to it, right? It's just that idea that of seeing people deeply is taking that time, right? It's saying, okay, I'm going to pray for that understanding. And then I don't just pray for my understanding, right? Then I'm going to put in the work to actually do something with that understanding, right? Like I'm going to knock on that door or I'm going to go, you know, and listen to that friend for hours, right? Or I'm going to just, you know, go and help your mother, right? With the things that she needs, right? It's just all those times that as you were saying, you invest time. And again, if we're not investing time, are we really seeing people deeply? I would argue that we're not, if we're not willing to, again, do something with, yeah, just with that side or that knowledge that we're given.

Welch: So Amy, tell me if you think I'm right or wrong about this. I think some Church members struggle a little bit with the Doctrine and Covenants. I think we love the New Testament, right? We get to see the Savior up close and personal. And we love the Book of Mormon. It has so many good stories. We're raised with it. We teethe on the stories of Nephi and Lehi. But I think...

Easton: Yes.

Welch: A lot of Church members have a harder time with the Old Testament and the Doctrine and Covenants. And that's okay. We're not here to shame anybody. There are a lot of good reasons why those books of scripture are a little trickier to connect with and to understand. And hopefully, if you are a listener who falls into that category, and maybe you aren't that familiar with the Doctrine and Covenants, maybe you've tried to read it in the past, but you just haven't connected to it, or it just feels like there's too much history--what would you say, make the case to these listeners that there's something specially relevant for our contemporary world in the Doctrine and Covenants? Why should we invest the time to really be able to understand these revelations?

Easton: So, okay, two things. One, let's do a quick plug for the Old Testament. Come on, those are the best stories, right? Like those stories, narrative theology, it's hard to beat that. And so one thing I would say is that I can relate to, I think those individuals who have, again, like just found more meaning in these other books of scriptures in the fact that I too love-

Welch: I agree. To be clear, yes.

Easton: stories, right? I love stories. They're so, you know, you just, can see them going in all these different directions that you can learn from them and so many ways. And so one thing I would say just right off the, you know, cuff, if people are struggling with the Doctrine and Covenants, I would challenge you to read it differently, to read it as I know I did as I was preparing to write this book. And that was to just read it. To not stop at each section and say, okay, what's the history? What's the background? What's everything that I think I need to know in order to understand this section, right? And instead to just say, as we often have said with the Book of Mormon, read it quickly, right? Like, what do you get when you do a quick reading, when you understand everything?

And I would say, do the same thing with the Doctrine and Covenants. Like, I am amazed, honestly amazed what comes out of the Doctrine and Covenants when you give it a holistic look. When you say, okay, I just want to really understand this as a book and you just read it. And we learned so many things, right? Like that's where my whole idea on divine aid came was on seeing it holistically, but we learned so much about communicating with God, about suffering, about building Zion, about peace, about violence, about redeeming the dead, about temples. Like the list goes on and on.

All of those themes that we deeply care about, about conversion, about understanding who our Savior is, they are all deeply embedded in the Doctrine and Covenants. But sometimes I feel like we almost miss it when we think we need to know, honestly, history, which I know sounds kind of ironic when we're coming to a state of the Doctrine and Covenants, because that's the first thing everyone thinks, I need to know this. But I would say no.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Easton: Doctrine and Covenants does offer us something unique. It offers us a book that is set in the contemporary world. And so when you do just read it quickly, I feel that you just see so easily these people jumping off the page at you, but they're people that are easier to relate to because their successes and their failures are in our modern day. I mean, again, 200 years can seem like a long time, but it also can be like, yes, I can relate to these people. I can see these people immediately. And it is so easy to put ourselves into their stories, into these moments that we hear.

And then we have to love. I mean, please, like, let's love the fact that we have the Savior's voice over and over and over again in each of these revelations. Like where else do we get the Savior's voice repeatedly within, you know, just constantly. And so that's why for me it is it's just studying the Savior. It's saying I'm entering the Doctrine and Covenants just simply to understand what I learn about my Savior and what I learn about my Savior, what I learn about our Heavenly Parents, what I learn about God is just yes.

They are the same yesterday, today and forever. Scripture is always about helping us to understand God and God's relationship with his children. And we see that again so clearly in the Doctrine and Covenants. And once again, what I see is just divine aid, love, assistance, so many messages that will speak to, I think, every single individual if they just dive in and just read it.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I walked away from your book with a greater appreciation for the Doctrine and Covenants as a hopeful text, right? The Book of Mormon has many wonderful, hopeful passages, but it's a sobering book and it's meant to be sobering. I understood and I appreciated the Doctrine and Covenants newly after reading your volume as a book that is full of hope…

Easton: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Welch: For individuals, whether we're in a place where we feel connected to our Heavenly Father and we feel that we're progressing and growing, it's a hopeful book because it shows us what lies ahead. Or if we're at a place where we are struggling and we feel disconnected from divinity and we don't know what we think or what we believe and we don't know how to start, it's hopeful for us in that place too because it shows the Lord working patiently and kindly with sons and daughters who are also in that place. It's hopeful for our society as a whole because it points us towards Zion and toward what we can do as a community when we come together. So I think that's a good reason to go to the Doctrine of Covenants as well in this modern world where oftentimes I think we feel hopeless, we're fearful, we're uncertain about what the future might hold.

The Doctrine and Covenants is a concentrated dose of hope when you read it in the way that you've shown us how to.

Easton: I also love that the Doctrine and Covenants can speak to us about just again, so many issues because we do have violence in our world. We do have suffering.

And I think that it can speak to us about those hard issues as well, but it can help us again, move forward. It can help us to even as we look at these hard issues, I think that we just see a God that still loves us, a God that is helping us through the suffering, through the violence, through those things that are again, very much a part of our world now and we're a part of their world then.

Welch: Amy, as we get ready to wrap up this conversation, it's been so great. I always conclude these podcast interviews by inviting my guests to reflect on the question that names our podcast, which is “The Questions We Should Be Asking.” So Amy Easton, what questions should we be asking about our relationship with our Heavenly Parents?

Easton: I think the first question we ask is, do I have a relationship with my Heavenly Parents? Next, how do I feel about this relationship? How do I see this relationship? Do I see it as one infused by grace, which is of course what I'm saying we should be seeing our relationship with our Heavenly Parents as, but I know many people do not.

So if you don't see this relationship with your Heavenly Parents and your Savior Jesus Christ as one infused by grace, well then think, okay, why? Why do I not see it as such?

How might I alter again my view of this relationship? I think if you feel that way and you want to improve that relationship, I think oftentimes, okay, well then what do I learn about my relationship with my Heavenly Parents and my Savior as I study the scriptures, as I study General Conference talks? And I ask us to do this because I again, when we look at these different works, especially from people and I look at, well, okay, all of them New Testament, Old Testament, Doctrine and Covenants, I see the same thing. But I see again, this parent-child relationship of them trying to help us grow from grace to grace to grace. And so another question I would have you ask yourselves, no matter where you're at, is, is my relationship with my Heavenly Parents dynamic? Is it meaningful to me? And last of all, well, what am I doing to improve my relationship? Because everything is like, I just love, I love the fact that our Savior invites us into this oneness with Him, with our Heavenly Parents, but just thinking like He so wants to be in relationship with us. Our Heavenly Parents do, our Savior, like that's what they want is a relationship and just recognizing that a relationship goes both ways. Like we have to be in it. We have to be working on it. We have to care about it. Just like we do with any relationship we possibly have. We know that if we want to improve our relationship with our children, we spend time with them. We get to know them. We care about the things that they care about. We do these things with our friends. It's the same way. We know if we don't call our friends for a long time, that relationship suffers.

Luckily, unfortunately, I think we all have friends that it's okay that we haven't talked to them in a year or two years. You can pick back up. And that's what I love again about our Savior and about our Heavenly Parents is knowing that if we have let that relationship lapse, that is okay, because they are there. They're there waiting for us to say, yeah, I want to be back in this relationship. But I think it's just important for us to know they always want that relationship.

They always do. So it's just saying, do I want this relationship? And if I do, what am I willing to do to be in this relationship?

Welch: Amy, this has been such an uplifting and hopeful conversation. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for writing Divine Aid. And thank you for talking with me on the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Bye bye.

Easton: Bye.

Welch: Thanks for listening to my conversation with Dr. Amy Easton about her new book, Divine Aid, just out from the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book. If this discussion sparked your interest, and we hope it did, you can go deeper by picking up a copy at deseretbook.com or Amazon and explore more about the series at mi.byu.edu.

Did this episode make you feel more hopeful about your relationship with the Savior? If so, please share it with someone who needs that perspective. And if you're enjoying these conversations, help other listeners find us by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with the Maxwell Institute by following at BYU Maxwell on social media and signing up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu.

We'll be back soon with more thought-provoking discussions and questions we should be asking. Until then, remember, the Savior's help is just a prayer away.

Download the transcript here.