Terryl and Fiona Givens

Quotes by authors Terryl and Fiona Givens

“As Joseph reminded his followers, ‘I believe that God foreknew everything, but did not foreordain everything.’ Exaltation, is within the reach of all, even if the journey toward that divine end is fraught with suffering. If we had insurance against a painful journey, one-third of the heavenly hosts would not have abandoned the enterprise. The risks are real. Or, in the language of the Book of Mormon, we cannot assume that our afflictions come from God, but we can know that ‘God shall consecrate [our] afflictions for [our] gain.'”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  "The Christ Who Heals"

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“A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  The God Who Weeps

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“A problem related to perceptions of Mormonism’s monopoly on truth is the impression that Mormons claim a monopoly on salvation. It grows increasingly difficult to imagine that a body of a few million, in a world of seven billion, can really be God’s only chosen people and heirs of salvation. That is because they aren’t. One of the most unfortunate misperceptions about Mormonism is in this tragic irony: Joseph Smith’s view is one of the most generous, liberal and universalist conceptions of salvation in all Christendom.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens

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“Even recognizing the extent of our unexamined assumptions can be the hardest thing of all. It is like asking a fish what it is like to be wet. ‘What is wet?’ even a miraculously verbal fish would reply. Our assumptions, like the ocean in which a fish swims, are the invisible background to our thinking, waking existence.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  The Crucible of Doubt

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“We have become accustomed to equating testimony with certainty and knowledge, and we use the language of certainty–I know the church is true, I know this, I know that–and it may be that in fact the silent majority as members of the congregation may very well feel unqualified or unable to affirm that they know the church to be true. We are simply trying to add our voices to those of the brethren like Elder Holland, to the effect that we need to be more accommodating and embracing of those in our midst who feel that they want to express the desire to believe without being able to express the certainty.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  The Crucible of Doubt

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“No man woman can remain in this church on borrowed light. However, in 1945, a Church magazine urged upon its readers the exact opposite, that ‘When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done.’ Many are familiar with that expression; fewer are aware that when President George Albert Smith learned of it, he immediately and indignantly repudiated the statement. ‘Even to imply that members of the Church are not to do their own thinking,’ he wrote, ‘is grossly to misrepresent the true ideal of the Church.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens

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“‘Repentance will be possible even after death,’ wrote James E. Talmage. To some, he continued, ‘it may appear that to teach the possibility of repentance beyond the grave may tend to weaken belief in the absolute necessity of repentance and reformation in this life. There is no reason for such objection,’ he explains, when we consider that willful neglect here and now will render the process that much more lengthy and difficult in the future…Our error here, once again, may be in adopting a language of salvation as either/or, as an event that transpires rather than a process that unfolds.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  "The Christ Who Heals"

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“Our deepest healing seldom comes in the ways or modes that we envision. What we think we need to be happy and whole is not always what the Healer knows we need to be happy and whole. Solutions that seem obvious to us may be distractions from where the deepest pain lies…

“A loving Savior does all he can to help us choose the most fulfilling and most healing pathway; the precepts with which he provides us are for our liberation and not our confinement. It all comes down to trust. ‘The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,’ he tells his disciples, ‘but I have called you friends.’ Friends trust each other.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  "The Christ Who Heals"

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“Section 10 of the Doctrine and Covenants contains a rather remarkable reassurance. The date is April 1829, a year before the Church was restored. In this revelation, the Lord refers consistently to his Church as something that already exists. The Restoration, he says, will not ‘destroy that which my people have already received.’ ‘Therefore,’ he continues, ‘whosoever belongeth to my church [in 1829] need not fear, for such shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.’ Those who belong to his church, he tells us, will receive more light. In his words, ‘a part of my gospel’ will be theirs. But this will not, he repeats reassuringly, ‘destroy my church, but I say this to build up my church.'”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  "The Christ Who Heals"

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“‘Hearken unto my voice. Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him…that [you] may come unto me and have everlasting life.’

“What, exactly, is meant by this verse? We are happy to know we have an advocate, but we would hope our Father is not in need of heart softening. It may be that we misunderstand the term advocate the way it is being used here…We see that Christ as the atoning one — the mediator — is not our defender from God’s justice, but the collaborator in and minister of our Heavenly Father’s plan.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens  |  "The Christ Who Heals"

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