I vividly remember babysitting my four little sisters one afternoon when I was about 12. I was downstairs watching TV, like the conscientious babysitter that I was, when I heard my sisters in the kitchen upstairs excitedly calling out a word that sounded like "stickers!" I shrugged and went back to watching my Transformers cartoons (this was the 80's). Soon, however, it became apparent even to me that the word they were calling out in such joyous chorus was, in fact, "sugar." I quickly investigated and found that my sisters had discovered mom's five-gallon bin of white sugar and were flinging armfuls into the air in delirious ecstasy. The kitchen was a winter wonderland, and my sisters looked just like little sugared donuts. Interestingly, what took them maybe five glorious minutes to create took me hours to clean up. By the way, if any of you kids out there ever encounter a similar situation, and you end up wondering if you can just sweep all that sugar off the floor and back into the bin without mom noticing... Yeah, she's going to notice.
Today, I would like to speak about entropy: spiritual entropy. I’ll ask my students not to cringe. Entropy as a concept is simple enough to understand because you experience it every day.
Thermodynamic Definition of Entropy
Physicists in the 1800s realized that any time energy is used to do work, some portion of that energy is unavoidably lost as heat to the surroundings. For example, if you use a hand pump to fill your bike tire with air, some of the energy you expend is wasted in warming up the pump and the tire. When you peddle that bike, a significant portion of the energy you use goes to overcoming friction, which dissipates that energy as heat, warming up and disordering your surroundings.1 Understanding entropy allows chemists and physicists to predict directionality and spontaneity in chemical reactions and other physical processes.
You see entropy in a more general sense in the observation that your room always seems to get cluttered, dishes are always waiting to be washed in the kitchen, the floor always needs sweeping, your desk is always a mess... and all of this happens without any extra effort on your part. It's just a side effect of living your life; in order to accomplish anything (like making a sandwich or brushing your teeth), you end up disordering your surroundings. A consequence of this is that you have to expend a significant amount of your time and effort cleaning up after yourself, reorganizing your surroundings and your tools at least enough so that they remain useful.
Entropy means disorder. The natural tendency of all things: Nature. It is the unavoidable part of all energy expenditure that is unavailable for work.
For example, I enjoy woodworking. I have a modest little shop set up in my tiny garage at home. Usually, when I begin a new project, I cannot just start building. I must do some work to reverse the entropy that has accumulated since the last project before I can begin because the workbench is covered in wood scraps and tools; there are boards and papers and manuals and drill bits and wrenches and car parts and (because this is Hawaii) beach sand all over every available surface. Once I’ve organized things enough that I can start my project, I must regularly take time to reorganize and clean so that I can continue making progress on my project.2
As a proud father of three little girls, I have ample evidence that kids are amazing little entropy machines. The sheer magnitude of disorder they generate hour by hour, minute by minute, is just staggering. They delight in making messes and thrill in creating disorder. The “sweet” experience with my sisters that I shared at the beginning of my address is just one example. Just a few minutes of simply following their natural inclinations resulted in the generation of huge amounts of entropy. The mess was easy to make, but the cleanup required far more time and concerted effort.3
Entropy is the unavoidable and natural tendency of all systems toward disorder. The only way to reverse this tendency is to access an outside source of energy. Living systems, like the human body, do this by taking in high-energy, low-entropy fuels from our surroundings and expelling low-energy, high-entropy wastes (like CO2and H2O) to our surroundings. In this way our bodies are able to grow and organize and maintain order, keeping entropy low at the expense of increasing the entropy in our surroundings.
Biology Is a Battle Against Entropy
To help us understand how hard our bodies have to work to overcome entropy so that they can function I’d like to “zoom in” and focus on some details. Hemoglobin is a protein found in your red blood cells. Its job is to transport oxygen from your lungs to your tissues in your brain, muscles, etc. That might sound like a simple task, but it is actually quite complicated. You see, if hemoglobin just simply latched on to oxygen molecules in your lungs, then it wouldn’t do us much good. It has to be able to release the oxygen at the right time and in the right place. In order for hemoglobin to tightly bind to oxygen molecules some of the time but not at other times, it must be exquisitely designed to be sensitive to its environment; acidity, carbon dioxide, chloride, O2 concentrations, and even altitude affect the behavior of hemoglobin. It also has to be very specific in its binding preferences: it can’t stick too tightly to other similar molecules. It must remain soluble in your blood and function well in very tight quarters. And, it must accommodate all of these specialized functions quickly and efficiently without using up too much of your cells’ resources. All of this requires that hemoglobin be an exquisitely tuned machine with many moving parts. It is composed of 9,272 atoms. Each of these atoms has a specific position within the protein where it needs to be in order for hemoglobin to function properly. A modern automobile has about 10,000 separate parts, so in some ways, you can think of hemoglobin as being of similar complexity. And, just like a car, if some of those parts go bad or are removed, the machine won’t function properly. For example, sickle-cell anemia is a terribly painful and debilitating disease that is caused by a genetic mutation to one of the genes that encodes hemoglobin. This inherited mutation changes only about seven of hemoglobin’s almost 10,000 atoms but has a devastating effect on the ability of hemoglobin to do its job.
Each of your red blood cells contains about 280 million copies of hemoglobin4 , and we estimate that each person has roughly 20-30 trillion red blood cells5 , so that means you have about 8 x 1021 hemoglobin molecules in your blood stream (that’s an 8 with 21 zeros after it). It’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of that number, so let’s think of it this way: If you had a magical expander machine that could expand the size of objects, and you blew up all of the hemoglobin molecules from just one person to the size of a miniature marshmallow (a million-trillion fold magnification) and then took all those hemoglobin molecules and spread them out evenly, you could cover the entire surface of the earth to a depth of about 16 meters (53 feet) in hemoglobin marshmallows.6Another example: if you took just the carbon atoms from all your hemoglobin (2,952 carbon atoms per molecule), you would have about 480 grams of carbon total. That’s about a cup of carbon in the graphite form. Now, since we seem to have magical abilities, let’s take that handful of carbon atoms and string them together, end-to-end, in a single atom-wide line. Though you wouldn’t be able to see this line of carbon atoms with even the most powerful (light) microscope, you could stretch that line all the way out the door and down the road to the PCC… then on over the mountains to Honolulu, then out over the ocean, past China, past Europe… all the way around the world, and then out into space past the moon, past Mars, past Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and all the way out to Pluto. And back. 300 times.7 My point is that there are lot of atoms (and they are very, very small) just in that one kind of molecule in a body.
And hemoglobin is just one of 20,000 or so different kinds of proteins in the human body. We haven’t even mentioned RNA, DNA, lipids, polysaccharides, and thousands of other kinds of molecules that you find in each of your trillions of cells in your body. And, of course, as any biologist will tell you, the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. Clearly, the human body is a wondrous creation of almost infinite complexity; a beautiful gift given to us so that we can be a part of God’s plan here on Earth. However, with that gift, God has given us the commandment that we take care of it because without proper nourishment, the right temperatures, clean air, exercise, etc., our bodies start to lose the battle with entropy, and all that mind-boggling complexity begins to break down. We get unhealthy, we die, and entropy wins.
Applying the Concept of Entropy to Spiritual Things
Spiritual entropy is essentially the same thing as the physical entropy we’ve been talking about but in a spiritual sense – the tendency of our spirits to drift away from God and His commandments. This spiritual tendency is a consequence of our physical world and our physical bodies and the associated natural man tendencies. From King Benjamin’s sermon, we read,
“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”8, 9
Naturally, that is, without our having to do anything extra, we drift away from God and become His enemies. James also mentions a relationship between the natural world and enmity with God:
“…know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”10
The "world," by scriptural definition, is "natural" and prideful. Thus, we naturally tend towards spiritual disorder and away from God, toward the world and pride. This is entropy – spiritual entropy.
President Ezra Taft Benson explained this eloquently in his talk on pride in 1989:
“The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means ‘hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.’ It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.
“Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of ‘my will and not thine be done.’ As Paul said, they ‘seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s’ (Philippians 2:21).
“Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled.”11
The only antidote to this tendency, as King Benjamin explains, is to "yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit" and to "become like a little child." Not childish but child-like, meaning humble and willing to submit to everything the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us.
Our natural tendency, meaning spiritual entropy, on the other hand, is to avoid difficulty and adversity. The Lord is asking us to embrace it, just as the Saints did in Helaman’s day:
“Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God.”12
To yield something, as King Benjamin admonishes, is to give it up freely, meaning to give up our pride and our will. We have to let go of our body's needs and wants and let the Lord lead us through our spirits.
But, in Helaman, notice that the "yielding of their hearts" required quite a bit of work: fasting and praying and waxing their humility and firming their faith. So this "yielding" is nothing like a passive process. Much like reversing the sugary entropy in my childhood kitchen, we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work in order to push back the spiritual entropy that constantly pulls us away from God.
But also notice that yielding their hearts resulted in filling their souls with joy and consolation and the purification and sanctification (meaning spiritual cleansing and making holy) of those same hearts which they yielded up to God.
Now, back to King Benjamin's sermon, he tells us that we must yield to the "enticings" of the Holy Spirit. We know that the voice of the Holy Ghost is a still, small voice, so His enticings are easily drowned out in our minds by the noise of the world. The word "enticings" suggests something subtle – not "tempt" or "pull" or even "guide" but entice. Perhaps one of the reasons we have to work so hard to yield our hearts to God is that it takes so much effort to shut out the world and prepare our hearts and tune in our spirits, in other words reversing entropy, so we can start to detect the enticings of His still small voice.
Next, the verse says that after we yield to the enticings, we "putteth off the natural man." The footnote for this phrase points us to Alma 19:6, talking about King Lamoni's miraculous conversion:
“...the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness—yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God.”13
I don't think that the word "natural" is used here accidentally. In this verse, I think the cloud of darkness and unbelief equates to spiritual entropy. That entropy was dispelled by God's light – glory, goodness, and everlasting life. This process overcame his natural frame, as in natural man. Light and darkness are used throughout the scriptures, and this dichotomy always represents God's influence and the lack thereof. Darkness really is nothing in a physical sense, just the absence of light. If spiritual entropy is darkness, then it is simply the absence of God's influence. And, of course, the way King Lamoni was able to have that darkness and unbelief cast away from his mind was through the “light of the glory of God.” The work we do to put off the natural man is simply opening our minds and spirits to this “marvelous light of [God’s] goodness.”
The laws of thermodynamics tell us the same thing about the physical world. The only way to make something non-spontaneous happen (like put off natural man) is to put in “free energy” from an external source (God's influence).
Accordingly, we must be constantly putting in spiritual energy in order to avoid the natural pathway, and there is only one source of that spiritual energy: God’s light.
That is why it isn't good enough to just stop doing bad things when we start to become converted; we must actively look for ways to bring the Spirit into our lives. This is part of the reason that we must regularly partake of the sacrament, serve in the temple, bear our testimonies, magnify our callings, feast from the scriptures, study conference talks, serve our neighbors, come to devotionals, etc. We are pushing back the darkness, battling entropy. The instant we stop working toward opening ourselves to the light, the darkness begins to creep back in.
Prophets also speak of this as nourishment: "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”14 If we don't continually intake food (our source of free energy) into our bodies, then only the spontaneous, natural processes can occur, following the path of maximum entropy until we arrive at "equilibrium." Equilibrium is a term we use in chemistry to refer to the completion of the reaction process, where maximum entropy has been achieved and all useable energy has been expended. In living systems, equilibrium always equates with death. In a biochemical sense, a living cell must constantly intake energy sources (nourishment) to sustain life and stave off entropy. Otherwise, the chemical reactions that cause everything to happen in the cell proceed to equilibrium and then stop, and that’s death. Each of our cells is engaged in a life-or-death fight against entropy every second of every day. Our spirits follow the same principle: without a continual source of spiritual nourishment and order, we start to lose the battle against our natural man, and we begin to succumb to entropy. Without God’s light to sustain us, our spirits also proceed towards a stopping point: spiritual death.
Now back to King Benjamin. After we have put off the natural man in this way, then we can become “a saint." The footnote here directs us to the New Testament where Jesus admonishes Peter just before he went to Gethsemane: "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren."15 Being a saint implies conversion. According to the Bible dictionary, "saint" means holy, or without blemish, or one baptized into the church, so it isn’t until we’ve put off the natural man that we are able to become converted.
And then, finally, we see the driving force behind this entire process of change, the true source of our spiritual nourishment: "through the atonement of Christ the Lord." All this work we've done to yield to the Holy Spirit and put off the natural man and become a saint has opened up our spirits to the marvelous healing power of the Atonement. At the same time, the only way we have been able to do any of this is through the enabling power of the Atonement. An upward spiral of enabling allowing healing and healing allowing enabling. Elder Bednar has taught about these two complementary powers of the Atonement:
"I suspect that many Church members are much more familiar with the nature of the redeeming and cleansing power of the Atonement than they are with the strengthening and enabling power. It is one thing to know that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for us—that is fundamental and foundational to the doctrine of Christ. But we also need to appreciate that the Lord desires, through His Atonement and by the power of the Holy Ghost, to live in us—not only to direct us but also to empower us."16
At the same time, we are becoming a saint we are "becom[ing] as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father." King Benjamin points out what aspects of children we seek: humility, patience, and love – in other words, being willing to submit completely to the Lord, just like my four-year old who knows that mommy can fix any hurt or that daddy can protect her from anything.
It is interesting that the footnote for "submissive" in this verse points us to the topic "self-mastery" in the Topical Guide. Apparently being submissive requires self-mastery, probably because the submissiveness that we are talking about here isn't the just-do-what-you-are-told variety. We're talking about acceptance of the Lord's will, accepting hardship and adversity, appreciating difficulties and challenges, being willing to do whatever the Lord asks us to do. The world sees meekness and submissiveness as weakness, but anyone who has truly tried to adopt this scriptural form of submissiveness knows that it requires a significant amount of strength of will and determination.
And faith. Faith like the pioneers had.
Recently, my wife and I were able to take our family on a pioneer “trek” at Martin’s Cove in Wyoming. It was an exhausting but inspiring experience, pushing and pulling a handcart through the sand and mud and heat, and we only went a few miles. This experience helped me gain a deep interest in my own pioneer ancestors. I knew that some of my ancestors had come across the plains as pioneers, but I began to wonder how many pioneer ancestors I had and what their stories were. I admit to being less than attentive in Family Home Evenings as a kid when my parents taught about these stories, so a few months ago, I began to research through the Church’s FamilySearch tools. Of my 32 great-great-great-grandparents, I was amazed to find that 30 of them crossed the plains as pioneers between 1847 and 1869 in wagon or handcart companies. I have found dozens of amazing stories of their perseverance, dedication, and faith. For example, Lars Larsen was one of my great-great-great-grandfathers on my paternal grandmother’s side. He and his wife joined the Church in their native Denmark in 1867. Their family and friends immediately disowned them. They soon immigrated to America and joined a company of saints crossing the plains to Utah. When they arrived, they were so poor that they lived for two years in a hole in the side of a hill before they were able to afford to build a real house. Lars and his wife Johanne stayed true to the Gospel even after Lars had to spend time in jail for his beliefs. (Fortunately, he had some good company there. In this picture you can see him with his friend George Q. Cannon, after whom the Cannon Activity Center is named. Ironically, I’m only distantly related to Georgi Q. and not through my Cannon ancestors, despite the shared family name.) The faith and dedication of the Larsen family helped them keep spiritual entropy at bay so that they could find joy together even while literally living in a hole in the ground.
President Uchtdorf spoke about this light in the most recent General Conference:A little over a year ago, my wife and I traveled to Jiangxi, China to adopt a three-year-old, little girl. Our other two daughters were also brought into our family by the Lord through the miracle of adoption, but this was our first experience with an international adoption. This was not our plan. In fact, we were completely caught off-guard when the Lord let us know, in very clear terms, that He had prepared us and guided us into this adoption and that He meant Meizi to be our daughter. The last year has been amazing and miraculous for us to be able to witness the miracle of a little heart that had never known a family, or the light of the gospel, or the comfort of prayer, being warmed and brightened by the Spirit and the sweet love of a “forever mommy.” There is a light in her eyes now that wasn’t there a year ago. The light of family love and God’s love has pushed back the darkness and entropy of the world. In April of last year, we were able to take her to the temple to be sealed to her as part of our eternal family. This journey through endless applications, fees, certifications, paperwork, and interviews; and then on to a cold communist orphanage on a dark, rainy December day; and finally into the warmth and light of the Lord’s temple has been one of the most challenging experiences of our lives but certainly one of the most rewarding to be able to be a part of this miracle of light pushing back darkness. Because of the goodness and mercy of God – and I have to acknowledge my angel wife’s faith, determination, and prayers – there is one less orphan in the world, and our family is that much brighter and more complete.
“The Savior has told us in our day, ‘That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day’ (D&C 50:24). The more we incline our hearts and minds toward God, the more heavenly light distills upon our souls. And each time we willingly and earnestly seek that light, we indicate to God our readiness to receive more light. Gradually, things that before seemed hazy, dark, and remote become clear, bright, and familiar to us.
“By the same token, if we remove ourselves from the light of the gospel, our own light begins to dim—not in a day or a week but gradually over time—until we look back and can’t quite understand why we had ever believed the gospel was true. Our previous knowledge might even seem foolish to us because what once was so clear has again become blurred, hazy, and distant.”17
The Purpose of a Fallen (Entropic) World
We might feel to ask the question, "Why does God allow His creations to be subject to this decaying force, this entropy? Why must the world have so much darkness and unhappiness?" I am convinced that entropy is an eternal principle (at least in this fallen world). We know that there must be "opposition in all things"18 in order for righteousness to be brought to pass. In fact, Lehi tells us that “if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.”19
So, there was no entropy in this world before the fall! "All things must have remained in the same state" must refer to a world without entropy. God doesn't create corruption. Man had to turn the key by transgressing God's commandment to introduce entropy into our world. Lehi continues, “And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”20
It seems to me that the Fall allowed the introduction of entropy, both physical and spiritual, into God's creations. Entropy causes or allows corruption to enter our world and our physical bodies. What was created originally in perfection now falls and becomes susceptible to weakness and decay. Pain, sorrow, fear, and death were introduced, but these things are necessary in God's plan for our happiness. The apostle Paul said, “when I am weak then am I strong.”21 Weakness and pain provide opportunities for us to grow and learn patience, humility, fortitude, and faith. And courage.
C. S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist, put it this way:
“This, indeed, is probably one of [God's] motives for creating a dangerous world--a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees … that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”22
Even the end of our mortal experience, when our bodies finally yield to entropy and these beautiful, incredible biological entropy-fighting machines finally return back to the dust of disorder from which God's light and power made us, has its necessary purpose: to open the door out of this "vale of tears" back to our true home, for we don’t belong here! We are “wanderers in a strange land” (Alma 13:23 and 26:36), and as a wise man once said, we are “not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”23This world is not our home, and God does not mean for us to get too comfortable here.
Summary
Without extra effort on our parts, our spirits naturally sink into spiritual entropy: darkness, pride, and an absence of God’s light and influence. In order to avoid this, we must constantly work to fill our spirits with light. This process requires child-like humility and acceptance of God’s will and lots of hard work and dedication. The driving force and power behind this process is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It’s a lifelong process that is really without a destination – at least in this life. You never really get to a point where you can sit back and relax. If we are not actively filling our souls with light, then we are slipping back in to darkness.
The major difference between physical entropy and what I am here calling spiritual entropy is that in the physical world, entropy always wins in the end. Your phone, your computer, your car, your house, and yes, even your body, will all eventually lose the battle with entropy and decay, corrode, rust, rot, and disintegrate. However, Christ has already won the battle against spiritual entropy. The infinite power of the Atonement makes it possible for every one of God’s children to join His team and, through Him, win the battle for eternity. His light is there for us. All we have to do is everything we can do to let Christ into our lives. Our fear and unbelief are the only things in our way. May we all learn to trust in and rely on our Savior a little more, so we can share in His light. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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REFERENCES and NOTES
- The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases in all spontaneous processes in an isolated system. This law also can be used to explain why you can’t make a perpetual motion machine.
- I’m sure you’ve noticed that some people do a better job of keeping entropy at bay in their lives than others. You’ve probably had (or have) roommates or siblings or companions who expend the least amount of effort possible in battling entropy. People whose philosophy seems to be “never clean up anything that, given enough time, somebody else will clean up for you.” Maybe you are that roommate or sibling or, dare I say it? Spouse? I should mention, of course, that I am NOT talking about my own wife here. She is the very opposite of entropy.
- And that was just the effort of cleaning the sugar off the floors and countertops (and cabinets and sink and light fixtures…). Can you imagine the effort that would have been required to clean each individual grain of sugar so as to get the entire system back to its pre-little sisters state?
- Human Anatomy, 2nd Ed., Kenneth Saladin, 2007, McGraw Hill.
- Minasyan, H. Eur J Microbiol Immunol. 2014, 4(2): 138–143.
- Assuming that a mini-marshmallow has a volume of 1 cm3: 8 x 1021 molecules * 1 cm3 = 8 x 1021 cm3 = 8 x 1015 m3. The total area of the Earth is 5.1 x 1014 m2 (Wikipedia). 8 x 1015 m3 / 5.1 x 1014 m2 = 16 m of depth.
- 8 x 1021 molecules x 2952 carbon atoms/molecule = 2.4 x 1025 carbon atoms. The length of a carbon-carbon single bond is about 150 pm, which is 150 x 10-12 m. So, 2.4 x 1025 atoms * 150 x 10-12 m = 3.5 x 1015 m long chain of carbons. The average distance from Earth to Pluto is 6 x 1012 m. So, 3.5 x 1015 m / distance to Pluto = 583. Divide by two for the roundtrip and we get 291.5 roundtrips. Round off to 1 significant digit because this is really just a rough estimate.
- Mosiah 3:19.
- The Apostle Paul refers to the same thing: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
- James 4:4.
- Ezra Taft Benson, "Beware of Pride," General Conference, April 1989.
- Helaman 3:35.
- Alma 19:6.
- Deuteronomy 8:3.
- Luke 22:32.
- David A. Bednar, "The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality," Ensign, April 2012.
- Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Receiving a Testimony of Light and Truth," General Conference, October 2014.
- 2 Nephi 2:11.
- 2 Nephi 2:22.
- 2 Nephi 2:23-25.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.
- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 1942.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955.