Thank you so much for that.

I don’t know if I’m the best of people, but I got to be around the best of people. We loved, loved, loved our time in Auburn University, it was a fantastic place to be.

It is an honor to be with you today. Hopefully as I talk today you will understand a little bit more about why I so deeply respect and honor the work of the chaplains, you do a heroic work

for so very many.

I thought I’d start today in a little different place than I typically do, I thought I’d start by opening up just a little bit personally.

I figured in a room full of chaplains that wouldn't be too surprising to anybody, or shocking.

But as we’re thinking about religiosity and mental health, this is a topic that

you all are very familiar with, both topics, religiosity and mental health.

So hopefully I’ll be able to share something that will be useful to you as you think about your work with those who are, perhaps, struggling spiritually, and who need boosting.

Now, again, I’d like to start with some personal experiences, two that came to mind, actually just this morning as I was thinking about it.

And I think some of these will resonate with those of you out there.

First experience is when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I was a young husband, young father of two little kids, and I was in a very intensive graduate program, and that’s

when, for me, the panic attacks began. I was also very active, of course, in the Church.

I had just been called as the early morning seminary teacher, so get to wake up extra early, get out to the church building to teach these wonderful high school students. And I looked around and I noticed that my other cohorts, they weren’t expecting

these kinds of things, right, they didn't nearly had the demands on their time

as I did. It was during this time that, and I didn't know that this was actually a thing, but I developed a twitch in my eye.

I didn't know that you could actually get one of those.

But at this time of so many things, so many demands, I felt

the fairly extreme impact.

And I wondered to myself with all these demands, including religious, “What is

the influence of religion on mental health?”

Second instance has to do with my dear friend, best friend, who two years ago died by suicide.

I met him when we were in graduate school, we were fast friends, supported one another, we had kids just the same age, raised our kids together, our kids played together, he and I played together. We stayed in close touch throughout the years, we wrote things together.

And when I heard that he passed away I was driving in my car, I pulled over

and in my grief

I thought about his engagement in the Church. He was as spiritual a person as you can imagine, spiritually sensitive.

He was the best member missionary that I had ever met, constantly preaching the gospel to others.

And as I sat there thinking about my friend, in that grief

I thought to myself,

“If the Church couldn't save him,

what good is the Church?”

And I thought, “What is the relationship between religion and mental health?”

So I’m going to circle back to these two instances a little bit later and try and describe what it is about religion and mental health that we need to understand. So, we’re going to start first talking about Gen Z. Gen Z are unique in terms of both religiosity and mental health. So we’re going to talk about unique generation. We’re going to talk about the popular narratives about religion and mental health, what’s out there in the news media and our social media that tries to tell us something about religion and mental health?

But then, what’s the research, what do we actually have in the research about religion and mental health?

And then, specifically, what about Latter-day Saints?

Are we unique in any way? And then we’re going to talk about a group that’s particularly vulnerable, and that is LGTBQ individuals.

What’s the relationship between religion and mental health for them?

And finally, what are the implications of all this?

So let’s start with Gen Z. Now, we have Millennials, compared to Gen Z’s, Millennials were born 1980 to 1994, they’re currently 26 to 40.

Gen Z was born 1995 to 2012.

The difference between Millennials and Gen Z is Millennials were born with the internet in their homes and Gen Z was born with the internet in their pockets, and that seems to have made an enormous difference.

In fact, when you look at the trends between Millennials and Gen Z’s it seems to be as large a difference we’ve ever seen between two generations.

As large a difference as between the Boomers and their parents.

The differences between Gen Z and Millennials is stark. And just so you know, this is a really great book on Gen Z by Jean Twenge called

“iGen”, that’s her term for Gen Z. And a lot of the research will show (iGen Z’s?) going to come out of this.

Well, it won't surprise you that Gen Z has lower levels of religiosity and spirituality than any other prior generation. They’re less likely to go to church, they’re less likely to say that they have a belief in God and that they’re spiritual.

For Gen Z, their grandparents were spiritual and religious, on average.

On average, Gen Z’s parents were spiritual, but not religious.

And then, Gen Z are neither spiritual or religious.

Again, on average. And you know so many of these Gen Zers that buck the trend. I have an opportunity to work with lots of Gen Z’s, as a professor I get to teach them, as a father I get to raise at least four of them, and in my church calling I get to be the person who has first through for our Gen Z’s in our ward.

They are wonderful individuals, but face some unique challenges in terms of religiosity.

Gen Z’s are also a little bit slow to grow up.

As it is said, 18 is the new 14.

Where 18 year old’s are today, that’s about a level of social skills where a 14 year old’s were in prior generations.

They’re less likely to have a job or an allowance. They’re less likely to spend time on homework, volunteering,

extracurricular activities.

They’re less likely to go out without their parents.

They’re parents treat them like children, and they don't seem to mind, that seems to be okay for them.

They’re scared of adulting, doing things like getting driver’s license, they tend to delay that.

Much more attention on emotional safety, right. They’re very wary of anything that might cause them emotional discomfort.

There’s a great article, as well, called The Coddling of the American Mind that discusses this.

Family life, in their view, should be put off as long as possible. Of course, a lot of their social activity is online, much fewer face to face interactions.

And, I suppose, one positive thing about Gen Z, amongst others, but there’s less

drinking of alcohol and less sex.

Of course they’re not engaging with individuals, or much fewer individuals, so they don't have those opportunities, but that is one facet of Gen Z.

Another aspect of Gen Z is mental health and the unique things that they’re experiencing.

They’re self-focused, but not self-confident.

Millennials were much more likely to be self-focused and self-confident.

Gen Zers are more self-focused, but less self-confident.

The focus on their self creates this hyper self-awareness that leads to feelings of inadequacy, they’re far more lonely, depressed, and anxious,

and suicidal than previous generations, and that’s particularly true for girls.

They’ve been tracking for a number of decades now the mental health of incoming freshmen, college students.

And in 2016 was the first time that the majority of incoming freshmen

described their mental health as below average.

Most of them said that their mental health was below average.

Without social interactions and doing adult kinds of activities, driving, working, they’re much less likely to learn resilience.

Another thing about Gen Z that we have to understand to understand where they’re coming from, is the moral paradigm that they live in.

And we refer to this as "expressive individualism." And this has really risen over the last few decades.

And within this moral world, the very greatest good that you could accomplish is to be true to whatever your emotional self says you should do.

Whatever your emotional self says that you should do, that is the greatest good.

And so, this being true to one’s emotional self, or better than being true to one’s spouse, one’s family, one’s religion.

And so, abandoning those makes perfect sense to people within this moral paradigm.

Because, well, that’s the greatest good. In fact, what God wants is defined by what your emotional self says,

because God is the representation of the greatest good.

And, well, if the greatest good is my emotional self, well then, God wants me to do these things.

And what God wants is defined by whatever one’s emotional self is feeling at the moment. And I think Doctrine and Covenants 116 perfectly describes this, and is probably truer today than it has been at any other time in the history of the world, and that is, “Every man walketh in his own way after the image of his own

god.” And it’s after whatever they happen to be experiencing.

So that is the overall arching view of Gen Z. I don't want to paint too bleak a picture. Again, we all know Gen Zers that are doing really well, that are resilient.

But on average, what we see is these trends towards increasing problems with

mental health.

Right, well, let’s talk a little bit about mental health and one of the popular narratives that are out there. In other words, what do we see in the news media about mental health, and what’s kind of out there?

Here’s three books

about God.

One by Christopher Hitchens, “God is Not Great: How God Poisons Everything”. Of course you have Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion”.

And Sigmund Freud famously said that “Religion is comparable to a childhood

neurosis.” In other words, religion is not only just, well, nice or just kind of

there and doesn't do any harm, these views religion does do harm.

Well, what about Latter-day Saints? Here’s some clippings from news articles.

ABC News reported, “The still waters of the Great Salt Lake run deep and dark.

The postcard image of Utah is a state of gleaming cities an persistently smiling people. But new research shows a very different picture of the state, a snapshot of suicide and widespread depression.” Daily Universe, BYU’s

newspaper said, “A 2007 report by Mental Health America placed Utah at the bottom of the ‘depression status’ rankings.

One researcher said, ‘It’s so unique in our culture, you won't find this

an issue in Ohio or in Florida or in New York. It’s just not as big a deal, but here it’s huge.” So they seem to be reporting on some research, and the narrative that’s then put out from that is that

Utah is just a sad and depressed place.

Well, what do we have on the research of religiosity and mental health? And we’re just going to first start out with the general research, and then we’ll get more into research on Latter-day Saints.

The “Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health” says this, “The broad consensus”

-- now, are researchers there’s not a lot of things we have broad consensus on. But here we have, “A broad consensus that there is potential mental health benefits of public or organizational forms of religious involvement.”

Essentially, meaning that the vast majority of research shows that if you’re religious, on average, your mental health is better.

The book “Religion and Mental Health”, which summarizes even more recent research says that, “Recent prospective epidemiological studies suggest that those who are more involved in religious activities or say

religion/spirituality is very important or less likely to become depressed over time.” In other words, it looks like there is indeed a causal relationship. We talk a lot about in research the difference between causation

and correlation.

Well, the best research that we have does suggest there is a causal link between

religiosity and depression.

The more religious you are, the less likely you are to become depressed over time.

Here’s just a summary of a lot of the research, on average, religious people have greater life happiness, greater marital happiness

and stability, more fulfilling marital sexual relations -- that’s not something Netflix will tell you, right?

But the religious people actually have more fulfilling sexual relations -- less domestic violence, stronger parent-child relationships.

Often we get in the media the view of the father as the domineering Bible thumping insensitive ruler of the family.

Guess what, the research, again and again shows the more religious dads are, the warmer and the kinder they are to their children.

Religious people have better physical health, less abuse of drugs and alcohol, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, and higher rates of charitable giving and volunteering.

That’s even taking out the charitable giving and volunteering they do for their church.

So if you take the total amount of charitable giving and volunteering religious people do, you take out whatever they do for church, and what’s left is still greater.

Again, on average, still greater than those who are no religious. Religious people are enormous benefits to their community.

Here’s a study that came out just this last year.

“Godly husbands and housework” -- the takeaway here is, “Men who are more actively religious appear to espouse attitudes that place a high value on home and family life, also leading to greater participation in housework.” And if that’s not a reason to date a nice Latter-day Saint boy, I mean, there you have it.

Well,

what about suicide? That’s a big topic of late.

It’s interesting, religion and suicide, the link between those two, is probably the oldest social science question in modern history and we’ve ever asked.

Emile Durkheim back in 1897 wrote a book looking at whether Catholics of Protestants were more likely to die by suicide.

And since then we’ve had quite a bit of research on that.

“The

International Handbook of Suicide Prevention” says this, “Research tends to support the basic premise that religion provides protection against suicide risk.” Again and again and again we see that religion providing protection

against suicide.

Now, why is that? Why night religion protect against suicide and be so good for mental health?

I think it’s important for us to start a little bit with, well, what leads to suicide in the first place? Probably the most dominate prominent theory of suicide is the interpersonal theory of suicide.

And there are three components that outline to suicidal thoughts. Number one is thwarted belongingness, a person wants to belong, but can't.

They can't find a place to belong and that creates a lot of mental

pain, not being able to belong.

As human beings, as children of God, we desperately want to feel like we belong.

Number two is perceived burdensomeness, "I’m just a burden on others, people would be better off if I wasn't here." That often has a lot to do with feelings of shame. And number three, is that there’s no hope that this will change, "this is just going to go on forever.

I can't belong, I’m a burden to other people, and it’s never going to change."

And so people start looking for a way to escape from that pain they feel from this.

Now, then why would religion be so good and protective against suicide?

Well, one is, of course, the social networks.

If you’ve ever been in a ward council you’ve seen this working, right.

So and so had an issue, what is it in the ward that we can do to help? Who has the resources that can help this individual?

So we have he social network of individuals and this religious

integration, I belong to this place, right, I belong to this location, right. So you have social networks to help out and this feeling of belonging.

Another reason why religion is protected is that it provides meaning in suffering

and it provides compensation for the losses that we may experience.

Suffering without meaning is doubly painful.

It it’s just unintelligible, I have no idea why this is happening, that’s doubly painful.

Religion teaches that there’s purposes in our trials.

And religious principles also convincingly compensate for losses in life.

What in the world that we live in could possibly compensate for the death of a loved one, the death of a spouse, the death of a child?

Religion convincingly compensates for those.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” It’s simply not there, there is no victory

that they have. Religion can convincingly compensate for the losses we have in our life.

I love from Joseph Smith when he was in Liberty Jail,

Joseph asks how long is this going to last?

And the Lord doesn't give him a date.

What does the Lord do?

He says, “God shall exalt thee on high.” You will be compensated for the difficulties, “Know thus, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.” It provides Joseph meaning in his suffering. Religion does this very well.

Why else does religion relate to lower suicide? Well, religion often teaches that that would be against to will of God.

God has your life in His hands, He has you there.

He doesn't want you to die, He wants you to live.

Elder Holland in his talk “Like a Broken Vessel” says, “Whatever your struggle, do not vote against the preciousness of life by ending it. Trust in God.

Hold on in His love.

Though we may feel we are like a broken vessel, we must remember that vessel if

in the hands of the Divine Potter.” Religion teaches that we are in

the Lord’s hands.

And also, of course, let me say that one reason why religion will be related to

better mental health, lower suicidality is because we simply do gain power from a higher infinitely loving individual.

We are looking for, we are reaching out to Him in a unique way. Now, I absolutely believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is reaching out to every single person, independent of religion, I don't think He leaves anybody alone.

But those of us who have made covenants, made promises to the Lord, we are endowed with additional power from the Lord to face the trials that we experience in our lives.

Now, at this point, let me go back to those two instances I first mentioned, one about my graduate school experiences and the burdens and the stresses that were there.

In the time when I had all those stresses I noticed that it didn't seem that those of my cohort who didn't have all those demands, well, they were seemingly just as stressed, or even more stressed than I was.

It seemed that happy hour didn't actually make them all that much happier, and that there were other things that they were dealing with.

And at least I had this base of belief, this foundation that kept me steady.

My three happy hours on Sunday seemed to do a lot more for me than their happy hours did during the week.

And I accomplished more in that graduate school program than I ever thought possible.

Not to diminish what they were experiencing or what I was experiencing or try and compete one with another there, but there seemed to be just this reality that I was provided in the midst of that with something additional that

guided me through.

And those young seminary students, I still keep in touch with them.

Oh my goodness, lifelong friends.

I can’t think of anything better I could’ve been doing at my 6:00 a.m.

than being with those young ones and gaining those lifelong friendships.

Well, what about my friend who took his life?

You know, as I was sitting in that car thinking about him and why the Church couldn't save him,

I thought of his life.

He grew up in a very, very abusive home.

He had gained many, many destructive addictions and he was very far down the path of self-destruction,

with accompanying all that, serious mental health issues.

When he was 18 he got to know the gospel, converted to the

Church, served a mission, married a wonderful woman in the temple, have five beautiful children, raised them very well and left

them an incredible legacy of faith and of joy.

And as I thought about that and what his life would have been without the gospel, I realized that, yes, the gospel Jesus Christ did save my friend

here on earth and in heaven.

We had decades more with him than we would have otherwise had.

Sometimes we forget in the midst of a lot of the difficulties and the stresses and strains of the kinds of church work that we do what our life would be like without it, and how blessed we are to have so many of those burdens placed on our back.

Because, indeed, “His yoke is easy and His burden is light”.

Now, having said that, we all know instances when religion can not be very good for individuals.

And, well, what are those instances?

And in fact, C.S. Lewis had this to say, he said, “Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” Religion turns bad when it’s devoid of charity.

When you have chastisement without charity, when you have punishment without patience.

When religion is devoid of the two great commandments, to love God and love our neighbor, then you can say, “Mmm, there’s something wrong going on here.” In fact, the Lord even warned us of this.

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost

all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as soon as they suppose, including religion authority, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. The Lord understands the pitfalls of authority and warns us away from them.

The good news is that religion teaches those two great commandments, right. In Section 4 of the Doctrine and Covenants, what in the world will qualify us to have authority, to work?

Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.

The Lord is trying to teach us that as we engage in our religion we need to have these qualities.

And we get these emphasized to us again and again and again every Sunday, and with General Conference that we just had.

All of these wonderful things. And I think it’s so important that we recognize this final point on this slide, bad religious men are often bad not because of religion, but in spite of it.

In spite of the fact that they get message about goodness, kindness, love, and all of that.

They may be bad, it’s not because of it, it’s in spite of it.

When also might religion be bad? Well, of course, when God’s characteristics are misrepresented.

You might know Jonathan Edwards famous discourse, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, that we’re just spiders and he’s just kind of waiting to throw us into the flames.

When God is seen as that way, that can certainly create little interest in religion or increase in anxiety.

Other times we see religion related to lower mental health is when the broader society rejects that religion. We see this in some places like Eastern Europe, in China.

Here’s an example of when the Church was driven from Missouri, you can imagine that the Saints in several instances probably would've scored pretty poorly

on anxiety scales, right.

Their anxiety might’ve been a little bit higher because of what was going on within the society at the time.

So these are instances when religion might be related to greater levels of anxiety.

Well, let’s talk now a little bit about research on Latter-day Saints. Okay, we’re going to start with the youth.

Latter-day Saint youth in national studies have been referred to

as “spiritual athletes”.

Compared to those of other faiths, Latter-day Saint youth are more likely to hold beliefs similar to their parents, religion is more likely to be passed on. They’re more likely to attend religious services.

They’re more likely to participate in other religious practices.

They’re more likely to talk about religious things in their home.

They’re more likely to know more about their religion.

This is a big one, what the researchers found, a few talking to those of different faiths, Latter-day Saint youth knew a whole lot about their

religion, and religious youth and Latter-day Saint youth also had just greater overall well-being. In fact, there’s a book published by a Christian author, he’s a minister

called “Almost Christian”, it’s about the current youth today.

And this minister had a whole chapter entitled “Mormon Envy”.

Like, how in the world are these Latter-day Saints hanging on to their kids?

And by the way, we’re hanging on to our kids at a much higher rate than most

other religions, at least in the United States where we have data.

Black Protestants are about up with us, but most other religions are declining at a far higher rate than we are, and we’re actually staying relatively steady in terms of our youth activity.

Well, what about adult Latter-day Saints?

The research that is out there basically says adult Latter-day Saints

are, on average, doing really well. Lower risk for eating disorders, have better body image, right. That’s counter to a popular narrative out there, oh, we’re so concerned about that.

But actually, the body image was done at BYU, compared BYU students to students of other universities.

BYU students had the best body image.

There’s less use of drugs and alcohol, not surprising.

And more stable marriages for Latter-day Saints.

The research on Latter-day Saints compared to other religions is quite good.

And part of the reason is Latter-day Saints are particularly religious individuals.

We tend to dedicate a lot to our religious activity.

Now, with all of these things, all these good aspects of religion, well, what about individuals that may feel marginalized?

We talked about how good belonging is, well, what about those that don't feel like they belong?

What about LGBTQ individuals and mental health?

What’s the relationship there between

religiosity and mental health for these individuals? Well, let’s, again, talk about some popular narratives about religion

and mental health for LGBTQ individuals.

Suicide rates, we’ve had a lot of discussion about that if you’ve been paying attention in the media on that. If you go to Wikipedia you’ll find LGBT Mormon suicides, much of it claiming that

LGBT suicides are far higher for Latter-day Saints.

There was a documentary not long ago called “Believer” on HBO, basically the whole premise of the documentary was that the Church is causing suicides for LGBT individuals.

John Dehlin, if you know who that is, said, “What is the cause of Utah youth suicides? It was when the predominate religion within the state of Utah declares war on LGBT people.” Ellen DeGeneres on her show said, “Youth suicide in Utah has increased 141 percent because of the shame they feel from the Mormon Church.” And if you just go to my Facebook feed, right, here’s two comments from -- I just pulled these right out of my Facebook feed of my friends.

One said, “Did you know that Utah has the highest suicide rate among LGBT teens?” Another friend said, “The suicide rate among queer Mormons is astonishingly high, especially when compared to other faith groups/denominations.” So there seems to be this general consensus out there that LGBTQ individuals who are Latter-day Saints are at far higher risk from suicide than those of other religions. So we can ask this question, well, how many studies out there are published that compare LGBTQ Latter-day Saint suicides to suicides of LGBTQ individuals from other religions? How many studies are there out there that actually compare those two?

The answer is zero.

Now, I put an asterisk there, because we just finished a study, and it will be

published later, and I’ll show you the results from that.

But please note that everything that has preceded, although slides of popular narratives are literally based on no data at all, no date whatsoever comparing

LGBTQ suicides to LGBTQ suicides of other various religions or no religions.

There have been no studies out there on that.

Again, with the asterisks, and we’ll get to that later.

Let’s just talk briefly about research on religion and LGBTQ mental health in general. Okay, so this is just general, not specifically about Latter-day Saints right now.

This is a study, I just pasted

the beginning of it, “The Relationship Between Religiousness and Health Among Sexual Minorities: A Meta-Analysis”. Now, a meta-analysis, what that does is it

takes all the studies done in a particular area.

In this case, it took the 73 studies that have ever been conducted on religiosity and mental health for LGBTQ individuals.

And I guess I should just note that the first author of this is a former Latter-day Saint, happens to be gay, so he’s left the Church, he’s a professor up at Utah State University.

If you will particularly connect with, if you will, all the teachings of the Church, this study of these 73 studies,

found that, on average,

mental health for LGBTQ individuals was better when they were religious.

So the same finding that we find for heterosexual individuals also holds for LGBTQ individuals. Now, it appears that the effect might be less but nevertheless there is a positive effect in all these.

Well, if we’re thinking about Utah, well, what about, then, the higher suicide rates within Utah?

Might that not be tied to LGBTQ individuals?

It’s important that we see Utah in context.

This is data from the CDC, and I’ve labeled here the states that are the top ten states in suicide.

And as you can see, all of them, except for Alaska, touch each other.

We’re all in this area, the red indicates the higher the suicide rate. And we refer to this area here as the suicide corridor, the suicide belt. And why is it that there’s higher suicide rates within this area?

By the way, Utah’s number six within this area, not particularly high for this area

of the country.

Well, why is that? Well, higher elevation, that does seem to make a difference in terms of oxygen levels. It makes a small difference, but with how suicide rates are calculated small differences often have big effects.

We’re more rural in these areas, right, fewer mental health resources, perhaps, more disconnection.

Higher gun ownership.

Sadly, guns are an incredibly effective way to die. And when you have simply more of those spread out among the population more

individuals die by suicide.

And race, the two races in the United States that are more at-risk for suicide

are those who are White and Native American. We have a higher level of those in this area. So, Utah is not particularly notable for suicide within its context.

And when we attribute suicides to things that it shouldn't be attributed to, then we miss the mark and we’re unable to help individuals who really need help and target those individuals who need the most help.

Well, let’s get to the asterisk now and talk a little bit about the one research study that compares Latter-day Saints to those of other faiths.

Every other year in Utah they do what’s called the SHARP Survey, the Student Health and Risk Prevention Statewide Survey. This is in 2019 was a random survey of 86,000 Utah youth, 7,200 of those were LGBQ.

And the Q here represents those who are questioning. Now, the T is not in here, there are really too few transgender individuals to be able to do much with.

But what did we find in this study? We could look at thoughts of suicide, attempting suicide,

and depression.

Show you here two, thoughts of suicide.

You could see here that this first bar are Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Saint LGBQ individuals, 28 percent of them had seriously considered suicide in the last year.

That is far too high.

And far higher than those who are heterosexual, and that’s important.

They are at higher risk for mental health issues and suicidality, that is without question. It’s without question that they do need particular attention.

Twenty-eight percent of Latter-day Saint youth had seriously considered suicide who are LGBQ.

But you see that in context with others, we’re actually the lowest. And significantly lower than all other religions, or no religion.

Depression, we find the exact same thing.

Latter-day Saint youth were the least depressed of any religious group.

Somewhat surprising to, at least, the popular narrative is that

the safest place for an LGBQ youth in Utah is in a Latter-day Saint home.

Now, we were able to explain some of those differences. One of those differences was explained by having stronger family connections, and another difference was explained by, well, basically, the Word of Wisdom.

Far less alcohol use, far less drug use predicted those lower rates of suicidality.

And there’s other research that we could go over.

But in the end, what are the implications of all of this? Well, number one, Gen Z does need some particular attention.

They do need challenging tasks to help them build resilience, they also need to

understand the value of religion, and have help in staying connected to religion. Talking about religion and suicide, a Harvard researcher estimated that 40 percent of the increase in suicide of the last two decades could be attributed to declining religiosity.

All right, helping our Gen Z’s appreciate religion is so critical.

It’s really important to remember that in general religion is very good for mental health.

The work that you do to help strengthen spirituality is literally saving lives.

To decrease suicide we need to help people feel belonging, needed and hopeful.

And again, LGBTQ individuals really do need particular attention and reaching

out to in their situation.

Brothers and sisters,

the Lord’s church is here to bless the entire earth.

And it is abundantly clear that it does. We all have our problems.

My goodness, we have mental health issues within the Church that we’re grappling with.

But we need to make sure that we’re not mistaking the cure for the problem.

It’s understanding God well and engaging in spirituality that is so protective for us and our youth. And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.