Don’t Miss This Devotional
Spiritual Creation
From a devotional address given at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA, on Mar. 7, 2023. For the full address, visit speeches.byu.edu.
I have had the great privilege of working and collaborating with creative, committed, and talented individuals across the globe on thousands of hours of content for networks both domestic and international. While I have had many wonderful experiences over the years, the unique opportunity I have at BYU Broadcasting to create content that embraces and magnifies eternal truths central to the gospel of Jesus Christ has been one of the most rewarding of my career.
Defining Spiritual Creation
I would like to talk to you today about what it means to be intentional, spiritual creators in our own lives.
All meaningful creation begins with a spark, a kernel of an idea that is filled with potential. It requires faith, imagination, and focus to grow it into existence. When God created the world, He intentionally shaped and brought order from chaotic matter to create the heavens, the earth, and everything on it.
This ability to create spiritually—to conceptually form an idea before we bring it into existence—is a process that sets us apart from God’s other creations. Isn’t it interesting that out of everything He created on this earth only we are made in His image? I believe that with this truth comes a divinely inherited ability to spiritually shape our own creations, including the experience and path we will forge here in mortality.
Shaping Your Unique Story
I would like to turn now to one of the most important spiritual creations that you will craft during this earthly existence: your story. You have a unique story that you are shaping every day through your experiences and choices. There has never been nor will there ever be another story like yours. Is your story an intentional, spiritual creation? Is it a story that relies perhaps too heavily on another’s influence or is happening too much by default? Is it a story that is in harmony with our Master Creator, our Father in Heaven?
Finding the Heart
In media creation, finding, cultivating, and creating the best stories take time. The development process always begins as an act of spiritual creation, of imagining what an idea could become. This process takes months—and in some cases years. To me, this process of content creation is a beautiful metaphor for our own intentional journey.
One of the first things that we do with any new content idea is boil the premise down to a few sentences. We may refer to this as an “elevator pitch” or a “logline.” But beyond that, we explore the core principles that we want to communicate. What is at the heart of it?
As you examine your own life, how would you characterize your creative expression, your individual logline? And how would you define the principles that make up your core?
Fleshing Out the Story Line
Once we have identified the heart of an idea, the next step in the development process is to flesh out the form. In both scripted and unscripted development, these discussions will include format, story structure, arc, theme, plot, conflict, and character.
In a layered, rich story, industry sources will often refer to the varying plotlines as A, B, and C stories. The A story is what it sounds like. This will be the primary story line for the main character or protagonist. The B story is generally a parallel story line headed by more secondary characters. And the C story is where you might see smaller threads—or “runners”—that pay off long term but in which the characters won’t have any significant transformation.
All of the Lord’s commandments, doctrine, and teachings are tied to the plan of salvation—our Heavenly Father’s A story—and the purpose of our creation. If we are His work and glory, what are we doing to align our A story with His? Is it possible that we’re spending too much time and energy as a secondary character in our own journey, focused on our B or C subplots and missing His larger narrative?
Another aspect of great storytelling is a strong protagonist. A compelling lead character is always a complex, flawed being with nuanced emotions, strengths, and weaknesses who is driven by an overarching aspirational objective.
While you have seen stories with examples of wonderful, complex characters, you have likely also experienced flat, one-dimensional characters who lack depth or substance and often lean on stereotypes.
In a 2009 TED talk, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stated:
“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. ...
“... The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”1
Let us be careful that we don’t reduce ourselves or others to a single story. We must see each other as a collection of our stories, both shared and unique. If our primary story is that of a child of God, then we are bound in that, regardless of any individual beliefs or perspectives that we might have.
Refining the Rough Cut
Once we have moved through the development process and conceptually formed an idea, it is time to bring this abstract creation into physical existence through production.
As problems arise during the production process, there is an oft-repeated joke that we will just “fix it in post.” While the editing process gives us amazing opportunities to shape and refine our creations, it is rarely a good idea to delay a fix that should have been taken care of during production. Fixing it in post will almost always be more painful and costly, and it will often lead to a substandard solution to what we could have done during field production. Our choices become much more limited when we reach this point.
Similarly, in our own lives, while the Savior’s Atonement provides endless opportunities to fix it in post [that is, to repent of our sins in mortality], delaying the changes that we need to make in our lives today robs us of the peace and blessings the Lord wants to provide to us right now.
Once a project is through the development and production phase, we move into the editing and postproduction phase. I must admit that one of the more nerve-racking experiences is viewing the first rough cut of any new program. A rough cut is the first attempt to structure what was captured during production. It will often have sections missing, unfinished elements, and temporary graphics and music.
But as we wade through this creative process of refinement, awkward cuts are smoothed out, the nuances of scenes emerge, and story arcs become clear. While there will always be things that we wish we had done differently, one of the beautiful outcomes of this intense refinement is that new discoveries and opportunities arise, shaping our program in surprising new ways.
While I still feel those initial pains during the editing process, I have learned over the years to trust and have faith in the process of refinement. In our own lives, when we focus on and intentionally care for each moment, making small—or sometimes large—corrections, our story begins to take shape. We will undoubtedly have times when it is hard to see how our rough cut—the life we are creating—can ever become something beautiful. We all have scenes and moments from our stories and the choices we have made that we are not proud of. Only through the power of His Atonement can we refine and smooth those awkward, badly performed moments in our lives. Only when we allow the Master Editor, our Savior Jesus Christ, to shape and cocreate with us can our story’s true potential emerge.
Overcoming the Antagonists
While each creative process is a unique journey, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in every story there will be antagonists—forces working to thwart our story’s progression. “Opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11) is a central theme in our Father’s primary story. His eternal plan requires that we learn, strive, overcome, and, ultimately, choose to turn to Him.
In a 2008 general conference talk, Elder Neil L. Andersen stated: “Challenges, difficulties, questions, doubts—these are part of our mortality. But we are not alone. As disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have enormous spiritual reservoirs of light and truth available to us.”2
When we draw on these spiritual reservoirs and exercise faith, we come to see these antagonists for what they are:
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Perfectionism is an illusion that paralyzes progress. Our loving Heavenly Father gives us chance after chance to iterate, to refine, to become better. Progress is enough when it is aligned with our desire to become more like our Savior.
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Excessive self-criticism can be crippling, but only when we forget where and who we come from and when we cease to recognize our eternal nature and our divine inheritance.
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External pressures can pull us away from our core. Only by choosing intentional, spiritual creation can we create and align our primary story with God’s plan for us. Focusing on subplots will never bring us a fulness of joy.
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And finally, regarding the adversary: Satan is a powerful liar. He urges us to hide, to stop, to turn away, and to believe we aren’t worthy of the Savior’s love and redeeming power.
These antagonists and more can easily derail us if we allow it. Instead, as we walk through the spiritual, intentional refinements that the Savior offers us, our story can become more beautiful than we could have imagined.