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Welcome to the Recent Speeches podcast presented by BYU Speeches, featuring inspiring new devotionals and forums given each week on BYU Campus. Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU Speeches wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting Speeches BYU Edu Podcasts.
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This devotional address entitled A Bonfire of Faith was given on May 6th of 2025 by Hal R. Boyd, then Chief of Staff to the President of byu. I was having such a good time just sitting there with my wife holding hands. I think we're going to count this as a date night. It's only 11am Got no kids. They're in the car, by the way. They're fine. We've got a half charged iPad and there's enough gummy fruits and scattered trail mix in that car to last weeks, so. But I'm so grateful. We're so grateful to be here. We're so grateful for that stunning performance, that beautiful performance, that prayer. Thank you, Emma Lynn. We're grateful for all of you to be here on a somewhat stormy Tuesday morning. I pray that the Spirit will be with us and will instruct us during our time together. I want to begin today by just paying homage to President Jeffrey R. Hauling, acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and one of the beloved patron saints of this university, Brigham Young University. I'll do so by adding a little twist to a comment that he made years ago before a BYU devotional. He said the key to any such speech such as this is to manage your own expectations. It's like being in an archery contest with a blindfold on. You're probably not going to hit your mark, but if you do things right, you'll at least keep the entire audience on their toes. So I hope to fulfill that today. Like President Holland, I love this university. I love you. I love this place. I love byu. It's not hyperbole to say that BYU changed the trajectory of my life. We toss around the phrase alma mater and it's a synonym for where we went to college and but translated literally from the Latin, alma mater means generous or nourishing mother. It's a fitting metaphor, particularly this week as we honor our real nourishing mothers. I'm grateful to have my mother, Connie, and also my mother in law, Lynn, here with us today. My first memories of BYU were as a child traveling out with my mother so she could attend Education Week. She was an early morning seminary teacher and she knew that this place was intellectually enlarging and, and Spiritually strengthening, may it ever remain so. Thank you to my mother and to all of the mothers and women who keep the fire of faith alive on this campus and well beyond. Loyal, strong and true, through and through. BYU is my alma mater. This is where I chose to serve a mission, where I discovered lifelong friends and mentors, where I grew in my testimony of the Savior and His restored gospel and church, where I published my first scholarly works, and where, in one of the great miracles to ever occur on this campus, I got a BYU intramural championship T shirt. And I know what you're thinking. No, I did not have to purchase it at di okay, it was legitimate. But in all sincerity, I am a living testament that if you give to this place, it will give back to you 10, 20, 20, a hundredfold. Ecclesiastes teaches, cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days. In other words, serve, participate, pitch in. Cast your bread in abundance on this campus and not just at the duck pond. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my wife, Holly and I met here. She was schlepping a massive sign across campus after hosting a Marriott school event. Hollywood. Holly studied tax accounting. I can't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure the sign she was carrying said something like, marry me and you'll never have to file your taxes loan ever again. I, at the time, was reading Don Quixote, and I mustered some quixotic courage and asked her if she needed help carrying the sign. Her response was as swift as it was definitive. No, she thankfully, only moments later, the sign, which was in fact just an advertisement for the married school event, started slipping. With our marriage hanging in the balance, I envision heaven dispatching a half dozen or so angels, likely all four of our children, out in the car to ensure that that sign fell. Because when it did, she reconsidered my offer to help carry it. I know this all sounds a little bit too sappy, too saccharine, too much like a mawkish Hallmark movie. But just wait. It gets worse. The next day, I texted her the following message. Hi Holly, this is Hal, your new sign carrying pal. Are you busy Saturday? How about a play? What do you say? Yay or nay? It's bad. I know dog roll would be a generous descriptor, but in my defense, there was no chatgpt in those days. Holly thankfully did in fact say yay. And I immediately did humanity a favor and forever retired from text message poetry. It's always a chance for a comeback, though. I hope you sense that Holly and I love this place. We have deep affection for byu. It is indeed special, and I say that not to boast but to emphasize BYU's unique role and responsibility to lift and serve, to hold fast to both reason and revelation, to build intellect and character, to seek learning by study and, yes, also by faith, to become, as BYU President C. Shane Reese has said, that Christ centered, prophetically directed University of Prophecy. One of President Reese's predecessors, Franklin S. Harris, called our spiritual mission a peculiar mandate and a fire that must be kept burning. I'm convinced that our success in keeping that fire of faith alive on this campus has implications that extend well beyond Ninth east and Cougar Boulevard. The eyes of heaven are upon what happens here. There are thousands, living and dead, who've dreamed of an academic institution that would confidently respond to the question posed by Tertullian 2 millennia what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? We say everything. We say revelation enhances reason. Sainthood exalts scholarship. Discipleship adds to deliberation. There is no conflict between science and religion. President Russell M. Nelson has taught on this campus. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both. So, brothers and sisters, my fellow disciples, friends, bring your kindling to the bonfire of faith. Add a branch or a twig or two, or better yet, toss in an entire cord of wood, because it's here we must love more purely, learn more deeply and serve more effectively. Whatever spark, whatever unique light you have, shine it here to bless others. Because that spiritual fire, which is dimming or already dead in most corners of the academy, must burn ever brighter at BYU until the perfect day that Christ comes. Harvard Law School's Noah Feldman visited our campus in 2009, and he began his forum remarks by describing a university founded by deeply committed religious believers considered radicals in their day or who faced bloody and unremitting persecution. They were forced to travel thousands of miles under very, very difficult conditions in shaky conveyances to found for themselves a new Zion. This community then turned to education and eventually started a modest religious academy that grew into a global, cosmopolitan university with students from all over the world. Feldman then confessed he was not talking about byu, but rather the founding of his own home university, Harvard. The parallels are striking between the two origin stories, and Feldman wasn't the first to notice them. In March of 1892, Charles William Elliot, then the nationally prominent president of Harvard, visited Provo. He met with Karl G. Maeser. There were no chalk circles, and James E. Talmadge and he addressed the student body of Brigham Young Academy. According to Talmadge's journal, Elliot drew a very pleasing comparison between the establishment and development of the church educational system and the founding and growth of Harvard University. Now, I'm not arguing that BYU should become the Harvard of the West. For starters, I've given more money than I care to admit, earning a degree from Harvard's chief rival, a school, I should add, whose colors are blue and white and whose emblem is a big block y. I should say, if you do the pipeline from BYU to Yale, you save a lot in swag. So just keep that in mind. No, BYU must become byu, that Christ centered, prophetically directed university about which so much has been foretold. But in pursuing our unique path, I'm convinced we carry more than a few of those embers once kindled in places like Harvard and Yale. While those institutions, among many others, have chosen to secularize. Christ calls on us to continue to hold fast to our spiritual mission, our sacred light. It's a heady and heavy responsibility, and heaven's gaze is upon you, students, you keepers of the flame, you guardians of the light. So let us remain humble enough, intellectually, honest enough, and courageous enough to declare with Hamlet that there are more things in heaven and earth than the Academy has sometimes dreamt up in its philosophies. Take a page in this regard from the theologian Thomas Aquinas, who worked for more than eight years on his magnum opus, employing as many as four scribes at a time. One day during prayer, the story is told, he received a vision so forceful, so penetrating, so numinous, that he abandoned the theological treaties altogether. When his trusted secretary asked why, Aquinas replied he had seen things that made his writing like straw. This account should remind us of the prophet Joseph Smith's observation that you can learn more by gazing into heaven for five minutes than reading all the books written of on the subject. Then there's the great scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who some consider as the inventor of the world's first mechanical calculator. In Paris, on the night of November 23, 1654, something happened between the hours of 10:30pm and half past midnight. I mentioned the times here just to remind you of your curfews, which you have to abide by at byu. But between these hours, Pascal had an experience that he treated as sacred. He memorialized the spiritual experience by writing the following Fire God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not the God of the philosophers or of the learned certitude. Certitude joy, peace. He then placed the parchment with these, in other words, into this jacket lining, as if to position them closer to his heart. Pascal, after this experience, turned his attention to Christian apologetics. During this period he devised what is known today as Pascal's Wager, one of the most often cited arguments for why believing in God might be considered more reasonable than not. The prophet Joseph Smith remarked after his dispensation ushering first vision of God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two personages, and they did in reality speak to me. And though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true. I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it. The prophet Joseph knew that reason itself was on the side of his stunning theophany, and he rightly concluded it would fly in the face of reason to deny having witnessed it. Beware, then, my young friends, of falling prey to what President Reese has called the false dichotomy of thinking. We must choose either reason or revelation. In fact, they are both indispensable in our quest for light and truth. As young, married students, Holly and I were approaching graduation. We planned to move to Chicago for graduate school. We'd traveled there twice and put in deposits for my program and for an apartment. But one morning back when we were in Provo, I awoke with what I can only describe as a revelation to pursue a completely different path and to take a job for which I wasn't even being considered. I hadn't even sent in a resume. I had no offer. This might talk about quixotic. This might all seem irrational or unreasonable to the uninitiated, but reason itself demanded that I acknowledge the reality of this revelation. Reason, then, together with revelation, the head and the heart allowed Holly and me to jointly pursue this new path with faith. And although I was frequently tempted to waffle in the weeks that followed, in hindsight Holly and I are immensely grateful. We did not fall prey to the false dichotomy of choosing either reason or revelation alone. It wasn't until years later, in a few jobs, that Holly and I connected the dots to see the Lord's hand guiding us to experiences and opportunities that have helped us serve more effectively. Dispute not because ye see not the Book of Mormon teaches, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. Imagine for a moment hiking Mount Tippanogos and venturing off trail. Perhaps you're looking for that perfect Instagram selfie. Actually, that wouldn't happen because you're all on Bereal. But you're at a cell phone range and suddenly you find yourself stuck on a ledge from which you can no longer safely turn back. You spot a means ahead to get to safety. But there's just one problem. To quote the 19th century pragmatist William James, getting to safety will require taking a terrible leap of faith. James frames the dilemma this have faith that you can successfully make that leap and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself and hesitate and you will be all unstrung and trembling and roll into the abyss. On the ledges of life, you will be tempted to doubt yourself or your faith, to feel as though you might not be able to make that leap. I plead with you in those moments, look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. As the Savior of the world struggled and suffered incomprehensibly in the Garden of Gethsemane, prostrated with pain, body bleeding, he didn't doubt himself or his Father. No. Instead we read Christ prayed more earnestly. Remember this in the darkest nadir, when the Son of God asked that the bitter cup might pass, Christ manifested more faith in his Father's plan, not less. Look unto me. In every thought Christ pleads with us, Doubt not, fear not. There's another temptation that can sometimes dim or even distinguish brilliant fires of faith. It's the temptation that comes when the going gets good. When we start to succeed or receive accolades or public accomplishments. The search for or addiction to external validation can sometimes incentivize us to drift from our spiritual mission. Usually this temptation isn't initially about doing something completely contrary to our moral compass, but just to modulate the needle ever so slightly to accommodate more money or more social standing. To be clear, self reliance and accolades can all be very positive as long as our spiritual integrity remains intact and and our motivations remain pure. Institutionally, BYU has of late been receiving some impressive academic accolades. From business school to law school to engineering to nursing and everywhere in between rankings from places like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Financial Times, US News and World Report. This year, BYU didn't seek out but received an elevated Carnegie classification as a Research One institution, the highest such designation. There's palpable excitement and progress around BYU's future School of Medicine. And in the fall, just as we commence our sesquicentennial celebrations, BYU will enroll one of the largest classes in the university's history. Meanwhile, BYU's Wheatley Institute is increasingly a National Force for Mission Inspired Scholarship on the Family, Religion and Human Flourishing and the Inspired Constitution. BYU is also in the process of exploring a fourth initiative on poverty alleviation in athletics. We are one of only two universities in the entire country to have both football and men's basketball finish the season ranked in the top 15. We can cheer for that. It's good. Yeah, why not? Why not? Go Cougs. We won NCAA national championships this year in both women's and men's cross country and in performance across all men's and women's Division 1 competition. BYU currently ranks 10th in the nation according to the latest Learfield Directors cup standings. It's impressive, and yet this litany of accomplishments doesn't even begin to capture all the incredible progress and excellence across this campus, academically in performing arts or otherwise. We've witnessed some of it this morning, but it's worth stating that no win on the field, no musical performance, no top tier, peer reviewed publication is worth even any slightest drift away from Christ or His kingdom. Again, Jesus is our example in this regard, resisting Satan's temptations in the wilderness, including the praise, power and possessions of the world, by expressing loyalty to His Father and his Father's commandments. He said, you shall worship the Lord your God, and and only him shall you serve. It's heartening, then, to learn that our campus is experiencing year over year increases in students who report not only that they're graduating having grown academically, but that they've grown in their testimonies of Jesus Christ and his living prophets and apostles. I don't expect those kinds of data points to show up in national rankings, but they are the trends that truly transform the soul. I feel impressed to warn about one other thing that can dampen the fires of faith, which is sin. Sin sows sorrow and tumult, but Jesus Christ's infinite and eternal atonement provides a path to hope, forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. To increase the fire of faith in your life and on this campus, I encourage you to repent early and often. This is a joyful process. President Dallin H. Oaks once recounted hosting visiting journalists on BYU's campus. They were favorably impressed with what they saw here, but after one of them used the public restroom in the Wilkinson center, he came back to President Oaks with an impish smile. Well, I found out that you were just like everyone else. When I went to the restroom here in the Wilkinson Center, I found there was some writing on the wall, he said. Embarrassed, President Oaks began to respond, but the man quickly explained he was just Joking? Yes, there was something written on the wall. But, he continued, I've never seen anything like it. It was just one word. Repent. The natural man is inclined to cover sin. But I plead with you for the sake of your soul. Commit now to repent early and often. Counsel with your bishop where necessary. It will be an enormous blessing in your life. Let me elaborate. Before the company Toyota was in the car business. It was in textiles. And the founders noticed that when strings broke on the looms, it would go undetected until the very end of the process, resulting in large runs that ruined the fabric and caused waste in time and resources. Eventually, the company invented automatic looms to stop immediately when a string broke so the problem could be a addressed and fixed as early as possible. This reduced waste and increased productivity. When Toyota transitioned from textiles to cars, it implemented similar manufacturing processes, helping it succeed against well established competition. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, we all sin. We all fall short of the glory of God. The key then is to repent early and often to experience what President Nelson has called the joy of daily repentance. After all, repentance isn't just reserved for our most grievous sins. When Jesus asks you and me to repent, President Nelson has taught he is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit, even the way we breathe. End quote. TWO Stories As a young woman, my friend Sherry Dew, now the executive vice president of Deseret Management Corporation, was invited to give a presentation about the church to an all girls club at her school. She was so nervous about going that on the day that the presentation arrived, she called up and said she was sick. She felt enormous guilt for having done so. But she said this experience flipped a switch. She vowed in that moment to never let something like that happen again. So when she was out working in the family farm, she would begin to ask herself questions about her faith, as if she were being interviewed. Over time, this and many other habits helped her overcome the shyness. And the experiences led to her becoming one of the most effective communicators in the church. Second Story My friend Logan Betts is currently a sophomore here at byu. He entered high school knowing almost no one down and out. One day he simply decided he was going to listen to one person's story during lunch. He'd just sit down and hear their story. He then did it another day, and then day after day. And then every day. He met all kinds of kids and heard all kinds of stories. Soon he started to make connections with between those who had similar interests and backgrounds. By the end of the year, he'd made so many friends and connections by just sitting and listening to his peers and hearing their stories that they elected him as a student body officer. Let us joyfully change, grow, learn, repent. You will feel Christ's love and become better. Yes, this is important for your mortal progress, but it's also vital for your eternal salvation and exaltation. So next time, heed the writing on the bathroom wall when it says, repent. Let me end where we began. Harvard. Sixteen years before its founding, the scrappy band of English separatists alluded to by Noah Feldman, known to us today as the Pilgrims, were forced to part ways with their longtime pastor, John Robinson. Robinson gave the Pilgrims one final sermon before they sailed across the Atlantic. He was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word. He took the occasion to bewail the state and condition of the Reformed churches. Though John Calvin and Martin Luther were precious shining lights in their times as reformers, Robinson said, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light and truth as they had received. On this campus we quote Doctrine and Covenants 93:36, which reads, the glory of God is intelligence. In other words, light and truth. In Latin, the word for truth is veritas just so happens to be the motto of Harvard. And Luke said, veritas, Light and truth just so happens to be the motto of Yale. In Hebrew, light and truth, luxet veritas translates to urim and thummim, a familiar phrase, hopefully on this campus. Elder Clark G. Gilbert, a General Authority 70 and the Commissioner of the Church educational system, recalls being a young faculty member at Harvard and noticing the campus chapel stood opposite one of Harvard's imposing libraries. He recalled how it felt as if he was staring from the Temple of Faith to the hall of Reason. These two ideals seem to be facing off in conflict. No such conflict ought to exist here. Here at BYU we synthesize illumination from both temples. Part of the many theological breakthroughs of the restoration is the revelation that the glory of God is indeed intelligence. We have the privilege and responsibility to gain light and truth. Luke said veritas, so that one day, in the words of our prophet, we may render service of worth to somebody else. The Lord has admonished, teach one another words of wisdom. Yea, seek ye out of the best books. In that same revelation, the Lord instructs Joseph Smith on starting a school of the prophets. Our academic vice president, Justin Collings, recently pointed me to a letter Joseph Smith wrote in Nauvoo to the Saints abroad, stating the temple must be raised and the university be built. But by the time Nauvoo was abandoned and the Saints were once again forced to flee, it wasn't clear whether these early educational embers would smolder or simply extinguish altogether. Thousands of Saints were soon huddled by the banks of the Missouri river at winter quarters. Even before winter fully set in, 14 in the camp died in a single week. There were no vegetables, latter Day Saint convert Louisa Pratt wrote, explaining why so many were afflicted with scurvy, herself included. I pined for vegetables till I could feel my flesh waste away from off my bones. When an elder from the church visited Louisa, the man simply saw her state and sat down and wept. Given these circumstances, and with church leadership operating out of a crude hut called the Octagon, President Brigham Young might have been forgiven for tabling education. No one would have blamed him for focusing exclusively on the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And yet, with only four days before setting off for the Rocky Mountains, President Young composed a letter aimed to assist W.W. phelps in acquiring a printing press. This people cannot live without intelligence, for it is through obedience to that principle they are to receive their exaltation. This is sufficient to show you the importance of using all diligence to bring us the materials whereby we can furnish our children with books and the saints with new things to feast the soul. Now, here you are, backpacks brimming with a superabundance of books, attending a university bearing the very name of the prophet of God who willed it. For 150 years, Brigham Young University has been the bearer of a peculiar mandate. The keeper of a flame. Don't let it dim. Don't let it diminish. Because in the days ahead, that flame must become a spiritual conflagration for Christ. It will require more than resisting the temptations I have mentioned. It will require great leaps of faith. It will require living true to your primary identities as children of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ. It will require more charity, more service, more goodness, more light, and more truth. For as the Scripture states, he that receiveth light and continueth in God receiveth more light. And that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. So let us prepare now. When the light and the truth of the world returns, there will be no more tears and no more sorrows. All who are lost will be found. All who are sick will be healed, all who are abandoned, reclaimed. The last shall be first and the least shall be most. Every knee bowing, every and every tongue confessing the glorious eternal fire. Faith you've kept strong on this campus will spread light and truth throughout the whole earth, ushering in never ending peace and progress. May we be a university ready, a people prepared and may our feet be nerved for that final joyous leap to embrace our Savior. I pray in the sacred name of of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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