The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE. 

Just before leaving for her first year at Cornell University, a young friend of mine approached me with a question on her mind. She had been a Church member for a little under two years, and she wondered about the teaching that the Church is true. It’s a claim so familiar that many of us take it for granted: ours is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30). When she was baptized, my friend had accepted membership into the Church and entered a covenant relationship with God and her fellow members. But she still wasn’t sure how to explain to classmates what it meant to say that the Church is “the only true church.” She wasn’t even sure why the concept of an “only true church” was necessary.

Her question got me thinking. It’s an excellent question, and she’s far from alone in asking it. What does it mean to say that this is the “true church,” if other religious groups also influence their members to lead good lives and help them feel close to God? What does it mean to say that this is the “true church,” if our historical records reveal a sometimes-messy process of God working with fallible humans? I’m not going to do justice to that question in this short article. Let’s just be clear about that. But I do hope to share some ways of thinking about the truth that is in our Church—and the truth that we can make in and of our Church.

The discomfort that prompted my friend’s question arose, I believe, because the “only true church” claim at times does not feel loving. It can feel exclusive, as if we’re discounting the value of other faith traditions, or arrogantly boasting in ourselves. While some of us find the security of belonging to the one true Church appealing, for others of us it creates substantial psychological dissonance between our devotion to our own faith and our appreciation of other churches and other sources of truth. We see and celebrate the fact that other religious groups provide benefits to their own members, consistent with God’s universal mercy. We don’t want to discount those benefits. We don’t want to be arrogant. We don’t want to blind ourselves to the goodness of other people, and we don’t want them to feel that we don’t see their goodness. So, what does it mean to say that the Church is true?

Let me be clear. I don’t just study this Church, I live it. And I love it. I’ve raised my children in this Church, as my own mother raised me. Aside from the many reasons I love this Church, I have chosen to live my life in the Church simply and finally because I believe it is true. In this article, I’ve tried to bring more precision to that belief.

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.