Doing this blog has been very helpful for me. I began it because I needed to have a more regular practice for studying the gospel, a place to preserve the things that I have learned, and the social motivation to be consistent.

I also hoped that this blog would be a positive resource for you, the reader. Ideally it would be a way to raise questions of your own and lead you to some important self-realizations. And I intend to keep this blog public in the hope that it can have some impact for good.

But at the same time, the greatest value in research comes when we conduct it ourselves, not when we merely read of it from others. And while I am grateful for many mentors who taught me many true things, the fullest conversion has always come when I relearn those same lessons on my own. It is good for us to share and to teach, but one of the most important lessons to convey is the need to find out for oneself.

With this study I would like to consider how we do this. Where is the line between supporting a friend in their first steps versus becoming their crutch? When is it better to not answer a question so that one can find things out themselves? How do we start relying on our own spiritual study instead of taking other’s beliefs as our own?

As always, I would be very curious to hear about your own experiences with this, too. Can you pick out the moment where you began to stand on your own, personal testimony? What was it that convinced you depending on someone else’s foundation wouldn’t cut it anymore? What was the difference between believing what another told you versus having learned it for yourself?