The truth about Latter-day Saint women “seems to be in short supply these days,” Sheri Dew — executive vice president and chief content officer of Deseret Management Corporation — told a crowd of Latter-day Saint women and others gathered Thursday for BYU Women’s Conference.
“There isn’t anything all that secret about most of our lives,” Dew continued as the crowd of listeners sitting inside the BYU Marriott Center roared.
This is “why most of us wouldn’t make very compelling reality TV,” she said. “But maybe you’ve noticed that there isn’t much reality in reality TV.”
Hollywood seems fixated on portraying millions of smart, talented, accomplished, devoted and chaste Latter-day Saint women as women who are “secretly petty, promiscuous and preoccupied with flaunting their covenant-breaking,” she said. But these things aren’t true.
“Sisters, it should not surprise us that the adversary is taking direct aim at the women whom the Lord is counting on the most: his covenant daughters,” Dew said.
Dew focused her remarks at the women’s conference on three spiritual habits to help Latter-day Saint women and others maintain spiritual equilibrium through “ears that hear and eyes that see” in an unstable world.
The lives, voices and examples of faithful Latter-day Saint women are the “greatest rebuttal to Hollywood’s insanity,” Dew taught.
“Let us be women who keep our covenants with such precision that the power of God cannot be restrained in our lives. Let us cultivate keen powers of discernment that detect anything untrue. … Let us be the reason someone turns to Jesus Christ and discovers his mercy, his power and his love.”
When silence is ‘no longer a virtue’
Dew, who has attended most of the last 49 BYU Women’s Conferences, said “testifying of truth” is one spiritual habit that helps cultivate ears and eyes that hear and see “what is important, what is right and what is true.”
“I wonder if we realize how impactful, even life-changing our testimonies can be,” Dew told listeners. “Imagine what would happen if more than 8 million of us were regularly looking for opportunities to bear witness of what we know to be true.
“We would change the world.”
Dew said bearing witness can take many forms: conversations, service and one’s example as a faithful Latter-day Saint.
“Our social media accounts can be useful,” she added. “But they can never replace, in the same way, our voice on the ground.
“The greatest witness we bear may be looking, leading and loving as a consecrated disciple of Christ would,” she said.
Dew then also emphasized the power of a verbal testimony.
“Words have power, and prophets have urged us to become articulate in testifying of truth,” she said. “If you feel uncomfortable expressing what you believe, can I invite you to practice?”
Dew encouraged listeners to develop whatever level of expression they would like to have and to “never underestimate” the gift of the Holy Ghost.
“I testify that your voice and your life can bear witness of truth and literally change lives,” she said, adding that bearing testimony builds testimony, too.
Dew quoted early Latter-day Saint woman Eliza R. Snow, who said: “There is a point at which silence is no longer a virtue.”
“Sisters, we are at that point,” Dew said, urging Latter-day Saint women today to use the power with which they have been endowed.
“Hollywood may have some glamour, but Hollywood does not have you,” Dew said. “Hollywood does not have an army of women filled with faith, whose lives of accomplishment and sheer goodness shine like beacons to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. …
“May we have the life-changing influence that women of God are destined to have because we have and we cultivate ears to hear and eyes to see what is important, what is true and what is right.”
Seeking truth among half-truths
Another spiritual habit to maintain spiritual equilibrium is to seek truth, Dew told listeners.
“I submit to you that the very definition of a woman of light is a woman who has ears to hear and eyes to see what is important, what is true and what is right,” she said.
Dew explained that Satan, the “father of lies,” is highly skilled at deception and has “more tools of distraction at his disposal today than ever before.”
“The increasing sophistication of AI is making it difficult and will keep making it more difficult to identify what’s even real, let alone true; and the noise created by a flood of constant content can be deafening,” she said.
She also said that one of the greatest threats to maintaining spiritual balance is “choosing to listen to people who have mastered the art of the half-truth.”
What is the antidote to such a threat? Dew pointed to the words of the late President Russell M. Nelson and his successor, President Dallin H. Oaks of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
President Nelson pleaded with Latter-day Saints to let God prevail and give him a “fair share” of their time, Dew said. President Oaks has emphasized the need to cultivate the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost.
The world is in a season “where the adversary has become so effective in disguising truth that if we don’t have the Holy Ghost, we will be deceived,” Dew said, quoting the recent words of President Oaks.
“Immersion in truth is the only antidote to the deception placed throughout the secular drilling we consume daily,” Dew added.
She invited listeners to seek truth about God and his son, Jesus Christ; the gift and power of the Holy Ghost; the restoration of the gospel; and how Heavenly Father feels about them, individually.
“Seeking truth helps chase darkness away,” she said.
Hearkening to truth
A third spiritual habit to maintain spiritual equilibrium is hearkening to truth, Dew taught.
The word hearken is the first to appear in the Doctrine and Covenants, and it means more than just listening, she said. Hearkening means listening “with the intent to obey.”
“Hearkening to truth, meaning acting on the truth we’ve sought to find, opens our ears and eyes to more truth,” Dew said.
She then acknowledged this can at times be a challenge, saying: “One stumbling block that keeps us from hearkening to truth is our unwillingness to put God first.”
“I’m imagining,” she continued, “that we have each failed at times to put the Lord first.
“I have, though I don’t know why I ever let it happen, because things go better when I make him the center of everything I do.”
The Lord’s “math is different than ours,” Dew said. “When we give him even some of our time, it seems like he multiplies the rest, while also dividing our sorrows, our anxiety and our grief.”