How to Seek for Truth Online

If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen me posting a lot about following the prophet and the dangers of seeking advice from influencers on personal spiritual matters. This article is my attempt to answer some of the most common questions I get from those posts, as well as to create a place to point you to the right sources when you want to know how to seek for truth online.

When reading blogs, following Instagram influencers, or even reading comments on a Facebook thread, it is vital to be aware of the media you are consuming. Social media has a lot more influence over our mental, as well as our spiritual health. It’s easy to get sucked in to the opinions of people with thousands of followers. In fact, I believe most of them are sharing a lot of valuable things; why else would they have so many followers? But that’s not an excuse to internalize everything they say.

There are certain questions that are perfectly fine to ask influencers, and others that probably are not. When it comes to your spiritual well-being, I would avoid going to influencers, or even google (unless you really know how to search) for your answers. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad to follow them. Here are some questions to ask yourself when determining if an influencer is sharing truth, or almost truth: (These questions are part of Amanda Freebairn’s article, Discerning the Impact of Influencers)

1. How often does this person speak of Christ—and describe ways their life has been influenced, changed, and healed through His power and influence? When giving advice on church matters, do they overemphasize secular strategies for navigating the Church, rather than emphasizing building a personal relationship with Christ?
2. Does this person, account, or organization present partisan politics as the primary solution for spiritual problems? Do they offer personal or therapeutic strategies and interpretations to the near exclusion of “small and simple” methods which church leaders have repeatedly taught? How often does this influencer encourage foundational principles of spiritual nourishment (prayer, church attendance, service, scripture study, temple worship)? 
3. Do they voice their sustaining of the Lord’s servants and not some imaginary future church leaders with different views?  Do they explicitly or implicitly criticize Church leaders? Do they encourage prioritizing “authenticity,” and “individual truth” (often in a language of “personal revelation”) over following the united voice of the first presidency and quorum of the twelve apostles?
4. Do they present the experience of being a Latter-day Saint as mostly an unhappy one? Are they using trendy, therapeutic language such as “trauma,” “Gaslight,” “harm,” and “toxic” to describe their relationship with the Church? Is their heart at war, or at peace?
5. Does this person or initiative engender anger or strong negative emotions in you? Is this a place where people “hiss and gnash teeth”?
6. Who are their followers? How do they respond to followers who disparage religion, Christianity, and the Church itself? Are a significant number of their own followers leaving the Church or becoming critical of it?
7. What connections does this person, account, or organization have? Are they primarily interacting with others who promote faith in Jesus Christ, sustain faith leaders, and find joy in the gospel?
8. More broadly, does this person, account, or organization demonstrate and encourage Christian charity, including forgiveness and interpreting others in the most charitable light? Or does it generate suspicion and hostility towards those who disagree?

So, what do we do if we have faith-based questions? Seek answers from correct sources. This next part is a list I have found useful when seeking truth for myself.

1. First and foremost, always pray for the spirit to guide you in your quest for knowledge and answers. President Nelson warned that, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”
2. Ask God. Need I say more? Well, I will. He is the ultimate source and should be the first one we ask.
3. Search the scriptures! How often do we forget that the restoration of the Church comes from ancient scripture, as well as modern scripture (revelations to the prophet, general conference talks, etc.) There are so many answers found there.
4. LDS Scriptures Citation Index – Suppose you want to know who has cited 1 Ne. 3:7 in general conference; tap on the First Nephi button followed by the 1 Ne. 3 button; there you’ll find the answer.  Who has quoted Matt. 5:48?  Use the New Testament index to find out.
5. Ask trusted leaders. Remember they are not perfect, but they have authority and stewardship over you and will help you on the right path of finding answers.
6. BYU General Conference Corpus – This corpus (or collection of texts) contains 25 million words in 11,000+ talks from 1851 to April 2022. You can use this corpus to look at changes over time — the frequency of words and phrases, word meaning and usage, lists of all words used much more in one period than another, words and phrases used more frequently by one General Authority than others, and much more.
7. Joseph Smith Papers – As early Church history seems to be a source of many questions, this is a great resource to use. The Joseph Smith Papers Project is an effort to gather together all extant Joseph Smith documents and to publish complete and accurate transcripts of those documents with both textual and contextual annotation.
8. Church History Library Catalog – Another good one for church history, these materials come from a wide spectrum of sources and represent numerous points of view.

This is not a comprehensive list of sources, but I hope it gives you an idea as to how we should go about seeking for truth online. The first result from a Google search just doesn’t cut it. An influencer with 100,000 followers doesn’t give them authority. The internet’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: an almost infinite fountain of information available to anyone with a connection. Let’s use it wisely!