In a blog post back in 2012, Denver wrote about discussion groups.

The greatest mischief of discussion groups lies in the mistaken impression that collective effort will help the individual in their personal journey. The path to God is solitary. It is between the individual and the Lord. Groups create an artificial environment. The stage erected lets the group appear to occupy center stage moving the Lord into the wings.

It would be better to spend the same hours pondering or praying. Any person doing that would be better served than they are by devoting time to arguing, debate or the convincing of others.

Time spent arguing, debating, and trying to convince others in a discussion group will serve you less than using that same amount of time to ponder and pray. Continuing:

When you learn a new idea and that is followed up with questions or uncertainties about how to make it fit together with current belief or understanding, pondering and praying is more useful. Groups debate. They argue over how to fit it together. How you fit it into your understanding will be different than how another does. The group may not share your background or have studied what you have. Therefore, a group discussion may not even address the difficulties you are contemplating.

Upon receiving a new idea, we are obligated to measure those ideas against the scriptures. Questions and uncertainties that arise from new ideas are better resolved through pondering and praying than in a group discussion. Why? Because groups debate. They argue. The reason is that every individual will fit a new idea differently into their understanding than another.

In a group discussion there is more contention than harmony. Contention is dark and invites errors. It would be far better to contemplate, meditate, study scriptural passages, to look into related statements from prior patriarchs, prophets and apostles than to debate with others. New information can open the mind. Contentious debate will close it.

Contention is darkness. Contention invites error. Contention lacks harmony. Contentious debate closes the mind. The question here, then, is contention relative or absolute? If it is absolute, what is it that makes a conversation respectfully disagreeing instead of contentious? If we think contention is relative, then our differing perspectives will set the meter for us.

You pray each time you partake of the sacrament to always have my spirit to be with you. And what is my spirit? It is to love one another as I have loved you (T&C 157:51).

Can you respectfully disagree and maintain the Lord’s spirit? Can you contend and maintain the Lord’s spirit?

In truth I tell you: Anyone who welcomes the spirit of conflict doesn’t follow Me, but is following the accuser, who’s the father of conflict. He incites people to angrily fight with each other (CoC 3 Nephi 5:8).

It is too easy to follow the father of conflict into fits of arguing, impatience, and demanding what is “fair” be given. Denver explains that it would be better to study scriptural passages, including looking into related statements from prior patriarchs, prophets and apostles. This is more ideal than debating with others. Using the scriptures to guide one’s path to resolution is necessary.

Another problem with discussion groups, or even valued teachers, is the tendency to take attention that belongs to the Lord and give it to a man. No man is supposed to be the focus of your adoration. That belongs to the Lord alone. Men who seek to become the focus or to “win” a debate are likely to draw attention to themselves, rather than to place the focus where it belongs.

Here, Denver gives us a warning:

If even one member of a discussion group is unprepared, the Lord will withhold from everyone the greater light. If you tie yourself to others, you may find it hinders, rather than helps your progress. Since no two people are similarly situated, there will be hinderances for some participants.

What does it mean to tie yourself to others? If one member is unprepared, what is to be done? He then continues by stating that the scriptures are “a gold standard for parsing the mysteries.”

They [the scriptures] contain a great deal of undiscovered truth. Unlocking those mysteries is almost always done in study, contemplation, prayer and solitary reflection apart from the world. Discussion groups become part of the world as soon as they deteriorate into contention. Take a look at discussion boards. How often are they wholesome and free of contention? The “comments” on this blog were disabled because of the deterioration that took place here.

In unlocking the mysteries through study, contemplation, prayer and personal reflection what takes you from being the one unprepared person to the person that can receive greater light? Can that personal growth be skipped?

Denver disabling the comments on his blog is an example of closing the discussion due to the deterioration that comes from contention and debate. If a discussion group is not free of contention, are you required to stay in the conversation?

No one can help you find your way back to God. Ideas and doctrines will; men will not. They are a poor substitute for truth, careful study, individual prayer and meditation, pondering and parsing the scriptures and developing your mind.

Lastly, to reiterate how important it is to preserve our individual agency:

If someone has something to teach, let them teach. Then go your way and ponder upon it. But debating and arguing is valueless or worse.

Whether the arguing is done in anger or not, would your time not be better spend pondering and studying the scriptures through individual prayer and meditation in order to develop your mind? And if you are striving to develop your mind, would you not avoid contentious debate seeing that is closes the mind?

We have been in exile so long we assume there is nothing wrong with being here. We feel comfortable, scattered and in the wilderness building up a form of Zion to which the Lord is neither invited, nor, in which He will ever dwell (Nephi’s Isaiah).

The only way to become aware of the exile that is so wrong, but may feel so “right” in the moment, is to take the responsibility devolving upon us individually to receive more light, truth, and knowledge.

I also think that in our current state of technological development it’s possible for the discontent to magnify the voice electronically over the Internet and to make any level of discontent seem to be much greater than it really is. But if one person is discontent and 500 people are arguing with the one who is discontent it appears that the argument includes at least half a thousand, maybe more. As between one another, that is every one of us, because every one of us is involved in a relationship with one another; you choose. Mind you, Christ could have disputed, he could have corrected, he could have challenged every one of the ongoing religious and social conventions of his day. “You are doing that wrong. Oh, you should stop doing that. Would you quit it! And by the way, you’re so dark in your mind that I don’t know where it begins, except for him, he’s worse, and then her. Oh!”

How much of the gospel of Christ would not have been possible for Him to preach if He’d gone about contending? He chose not to. In that respect, perhaps His most godly example was the patience with which He dealt with those around him; kindly, patiently, correcting them when they largely came to Him with questions trying to trap Him, but affirmatively stating in the Sermon on the Mount how you could take any group of people and turn them into Zion itself, if we would live the Sermon on the Mount.

To be like Christ is to patiently deal with those around us – with kindness too. It isn’t about how well you polish your rhetorical skills, because at the end you’ll find yourself to be an expert contender – without persuasion, gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, and pure knowledge (Glossary – Contention).

Denver continues:

I figure that I’m not that good a teacher because it appears to me that there are a lot of mistakes being made that are perfectly avoidable. I don’t take King Benjamin’s statement that the number of errors that people can make, the number of sins that people can commit are endless, there is no way to possibly number them, as I don’t take that as consoling words. I take that as a challenge to say, Okay, but your people did find peace among one another. And even Enoch’s people found peace among one another.

Enoch had a better audience. Compared to the saints in Joseph’s day or even the people Christ was teaching, those who succeeded with Enoch were better. They took upon themselves the responsibility devolving upon them to be peaceable with their fellowman – “to be obedient, to be true and faithful, to be something more than the kind of wayward, chaotic, self-indulgent, ambitious, self-promoting people that vied for power and influence (Michelle Stone Interview, pg. 5).”

Continuing:

Melchizedek was called the Prince of Peace because he preached but what he preached was repentance. The office of the ministering of angels is to spread the message of repentance. So then all of us have an obligation there, to join in the same thing, repenting, turning to face God. The more we face Him, the more light we take in, the more differently we behave, individually and in connection with each other. I am certain we will see Zion because it’s been promised and it’s been prophesied from the beginning of time. When father Adam prophesied, being overcome by the Spirit in the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and foretold what would happen to his posterity down to the latest generations, Zion was pointed to. Therefore, from the days of Adam on, all the holy prophets have looked forward to that as the essential moment in the history of the world, because Christ will come and will redeem the world. It will be the end of the wicked; it will be the beginning of something far better. That’s been the hope, that’s been the promise, that’s been what they’ve looked forward to. I wonder how many of us share that same longing, that same hope, that same desire that originated in the beginning, because if we don’t subdue our desires, appetites, and passions enough to try and deal peaceably one with another, choosing deliberately to not contend, even when we know people are wrong. When Christ was confronted and he corrected the error he corrected only that error, he didn’t go on with a list of of other weaknesses, failings and challenges, He only addressed the one that was put to him (That We Might Be One, Pg. 9).

What are our desires, appetites, and passions? What do we long for and find appealing? In learning to deal peaceably with one another, that includes making the conscious choice to not contend. This does not mean you can’t address errors and issues. What does addressing an issue look like compared to contending over an issue? The Lord said, “How you proceed must be as noble as the cause you seek (Answer and Covenant).”

Within your family/within your marriage are you and your wife learning to use persuasion? Within your marriage are you and your husband learning to use gentleness in dealing with one another? Are the two of you, together, facing one another in all of the difficulties that come as a result of being married? Are you facing that together in meekness? Do you find that in all the relationship troubles, turmoils, and challenges what predominates is kindness? Is there a search for understanding that results in pure knowledge when it comes to a dilemma (Talk 9 Marriage & Family, Pg. 4)?

In the Answer and Covenant, the Lord says:

I desire to heal you from an awful state of blindness so that you may see clearly my will, to do it. I promised to bring unto you much of my gospel through the Book of Mormon and to provide you with the means to obtain a fullness of my gospel, and I have done this; yet you refuse to receive the truth even when it is given unto you in plainness. How can you who pursue the truth yet remain unable to behold your own weakness before me?

The Book of Mormon contains much of the Lord’s gospel and provides us with the means to obtain a fulness of His gospel. It is not lacking in that area. The truth is in the scriptures, written in plainness so that we can understand. Backbiting, contention, scheming, and accusations cause us to remain unable to behold our own weaknesses through the lens of the word of God.

Unto what can I liken it, that you may understand? For you are like a man who seeks for good fruit from a neglected vineyard—unwatered, undunged, unpruned and unattended. How shall it produce good fruit if you fail to tend it? What reward does the unfaithful husbandman obtain from his neglected vineyard? How can saying you are a faithful husbandman ever produce good fruit in the vineyard without doing the work of the husbandman? For you seek my words to recover them even as you forsake to do them.

This does not sound like a petition from the Lord to use the scriptures less to correct and guide our daily walk. When the women voted last month (November 2025), the majority voted Yes to accepting “the instructions pertaining to women’s councils found in our official scripture canon as a required guide for conducting women’s councils.” I believe this showed the majority of women are trying to keep the covenant and to “have faith in these things and receive the scriptures approved by the Lord as a standard to govern you in your daily walk in life, to accept the obligations established by the Book of Mormon as a covenant and to use the scriptures to correct yourselves and to guide your words, thoughts and deeds.”

You have heretofore produced wild fruit, bitter and ill formed, because you neglect to do my words.

How can we “do” the Lord’s words without adequate study, knowledge, and understanding of the scriptures so that we know what His words are.

The most correct measuring stick, in my view, is the Book of Mormon. As long as you have the Book of Mormon you have the ability to make a comparison, and if something reaffirms something I find there then I regard that as having passed the test. If it contradicts that then I regard that as having failed the test. And if it harmonizes with it but it extends it beyond anything known to me then I’ve got something to pray about, because the ultimate arbiter of truth is God (Other Sheep Indeed, Pg. 16).

The Lord continues in the Answer and Covenant:

For you to unite I must admonish and instruct you, for my will is to have you love one another. As people you lack the ability to respectfully disagree among one another. You are as Paul and Peter whose disagreements resulted in jarring and sharp contentions. Nevertheless they both loved me and I loved them. You must do better (Answer and Covenant, Pg. 1).

When the works don’t line up with professed beliefs, there’s a dissonance that occurs and jarring is the result of feeling that dissonance. Jarring describes disagreements that are not gentle and respectful. The disagreement leads to disrupted unity where the result is friction instead of peace and love. It’s not stating here that we should be opposed to disagreeing with each other. However, the boundaries set include the act of disagreeing being respectful instead of, quite literally, jarring. The Lord is saying that the key to uniting is in loving one another, not learning to argue and contend better.

But there is a great threat hanging over it all that can destroy every part of it – the lies and madness of deluded mankind. The contention, anger and hatred that dominate daily conversation have stirred up the world to anger. “For the kingdom of the Devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance or the Devil will grasp them with his everlasting chains and they be stirred up to anger and perish. For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men and stir them up to anger against that which is good.” (NC 2 Ne. 12:4). Do not be angry with anyone, but certainly not with one another. Nearly all of the violence described in the Book of Mormon came because of anger. Christ condemned this. “Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger one against another, but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.” (NC 3 Ne. 5:8) (Keep the Covenant – Do the Work, Pg. 9).

James Allen, a British philosophical writer, said:

Hatred is none the less hatred when it is called dislike. Personal antipathies, however natural they may be to the animal man, can have no place in the divine life. Nor can a man see spiritual things or receive spiritual truths while his mind is involved in malice, dislike, animosity, revenge, or that blind egotism which thinks “I, in my views, am right, and you are wrong.”

Dislike leads to hatred, which then leads to anger and contention. Angry words lead to violence. There are universal tell-tale signs that we are speaking angrily with one another. Those can be determined through the use of common sense. If the discovery of what is right is lost in the logistics of who is right, that inevitably will lead to anger and dislike.

So now we have a choice. When faced with verbal abuse, persecution, and mistreatment, how can it be of benefit to our souls to break our hearts enough to open the heavens?

Some met verbal abuse by returning verbal abuse, while others tolerated abuse, persecution, and other mistreatment without retaliating; but to the contrary, they were humble and repentant before God (CoC 3 Nephi 3:2).

The people in 3^rd Nephi were not united in keeping God’s commandments.

Therefore inequality increased throughout the land, with even the congregation becoming divided, so much so that in the 30^th year the congregation broke apart throughout the land with the exception of a few Lamanites who remained committed to the true faith. They refused to abandon it, since they were firm, resolute, and immovable, willing to diligently keep the Lord’s commandments (CoC 3 Nephi 3:2).

The congregation itself became divided and broke apart. The few Lamanites that remained committed themselves to the truth faith. They were immovable in keeping the Lord’s commandments. We have a covenant. Are we firm and resolute in keeping it? If we engage in jarring, strife, and contention, we are not keeping the covenant. Conflict encompasses both arguing and fighting.

If the covenant with God is kept, then He will allow His house to be built. The covenant cannot be kept if there is jarring, contention, envy, strife, lustful and covetous desires. If we do the same as those who went before, we would pollute the ground again. I am thankful we do not yet have a place to pollute. It would be better to never gain a promised place for God’s house than to take possession and pollute it (Keep the Covenant – Do the Work, Pg. 9).

We must develop the characteristics and attributes of God, not of man and their philosophies.

“I believe the only way you get to have Zion– and ultimately to have Zion overcome the world– is that you have a small gathering in which a group of people (who are sufficiently contrite and humble and willing to be taught) gather together in a place where a temple gets built. And they work out all of the differences that exist between them so that the division, the backbiting, the jealousies, the clamor, and all of that wind up being resolved. And after they get it right, which will take some while, then you take another family and you bring them in, and you disrupt the order of things, and you create chaos until they figure out how to do it, which will probably (with the first time you expand this) be a formidable problem. And then you bring in another family, and you go through the chaos again because you have expanded the group– except you’ve now learned how to do it because you’ve been through it once. And so the second time you do it, it’s a little easier. And then you bring in a third family, except now you become reasonably adept, and you may even begin to identify the major interpersonal conflict issues that happen as you transition from out there to in here, and you repeat this process until this body is big enough to split.”

Perhaps each time a new family was brought into the group, their tools of resolution focused on the idea of “What now?” They viewed the disruption through a problem-solver’s mentality. Rather than dwelling on the disruption or determining who was wrong or right, they focused on moving forward.

Today’s world reinforces a victim mentality. People focus on “What happened?” But problem-solving requires a shift from blaming to taking ownership. It requires consciously acting instead of reacting. It requires setting and respecting boundaries instead of internalizing resentment. It moves you from stagnation to solution-oriented thinking. Problem-solving doesn’t focus so much on “Why did this happen?” but instead, “What can we do next?”

Growth requires the willingness to change, to transition, and to work through differences with the shared goal of resolution. What the group accomplished above could maybe be best described as below.

The tendency to withhold patience is more often than not because their mote excites your notice through your own beam. A mote is a speck, a bit of sawdust. A beam is a board. Yours is the greater defect. For in you is not only the defect, but the tendency to judge others harshly. Both are wrong. When you have at last purged the defect, struggled to overcome and conquer the temptation or tendency, perhaps the price you pay to do so will make you humble enough to assist another. Not from the position as judge and condemner, but from the position of one who can help. When you ‘see clearly,’ then you may be able to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye. For now you see him as your brother. And in a kindly and affectionate manner you may act to reclaim him. Not as a judge, but as a brother. This is a continuing petition to make things better. But the only way you make them better is by starting inside. It is not for you to work on others, nor move outside your own range of defects, until you have first fixed what you lack. When you can proceed with charity to assist others to overcome what you have overcome yourself, then it is appropriate to approach your brother in kindness to help. Until then, stop judging and start removing beams from yourself (DS Blog).”

Again, we see patience, kindness, humility, and affection being described as communication tools. But even before that, you are holding yourself accountable for your own weaknesses. The work must be done within your own heart before you can look to reclaim and build something with another.

Christ said to the young man that if he wished to have eternal life, he must keep the commandments. The young man stated that he kept the commandments from when he was a youth and asked, “What lack I yet?” Christ then told him another commandment, “If you will be perfect, go sell that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow me.” But when the young man heard that, “he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Truly I say unto you that a rich man shall difficultly enter into the kingdom of Heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard this, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld their thoughts and said unto them, With men, this is impossible; but if they will forsake all things for my sake, with God, whatever things I speak are possible.

Do we treasure our weaknesses? Do we value most the personality traits that keep us from keeping God’s commandments to love one another and follow Him?

Accordingly, original Christianity believed and taught that baptism was essential to salvation, not merely grace. As to faith alone, the original Christians not only believed in baptism but they also believed they could progress in knowledge, obedience, and virtue. Paul denounced the idea that Christians could sin and follow God: “…Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Romans 6:1-2). Paul envisioned the Christian as becoming a new creation through baptism after which we walk in Christ’s path with sin destroyed: “…We are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4).

Peter taught that Christians would progress in godliness until the Christian has his or her calling and election made sure: “…That by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar of, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.” (2 Peter 1:4-10) (DS Podcast; Authentic Christianity, Part 1)

You cannot have charity without kindness. You cannot have kindness without godliness. You cannot have patience without temperance, and temperance without knowledge. There is no knowledge without virtue, or virtue without faith. To all of these things give all diligence so that you are fruitful in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Those who lack these things are blind and forget the reason for their baptism. As Peter taught, should not more diligence be given to making our calling and election sure, than to the devotion of time to “arguing, debate or the convincing of others?”