Healing Through Disclosure

By Eric Smith

Years ago, I was working on some personal introspection and found I had some deeper emotional baggage I needed to let go of. I felt impressed that my wife who is a medical nurse would have some understanding that could be of benefit to my process of healing and letting go of old emotional energies. As I mentioned my need for a metaphor, she began to describe a medical procedure called debridement. I found its implications to my specific situation then to be inspired and have found it a useful visual in many ways since.

If you’ve ever had a wound and failed to care for it properly, you may have found that the condition worsened, spread, or never healed fully. Debridement is the process of taking a wound that is messy and infected and enlarges it and sterilizes it in order to heal properly. Failing to enlarge the wound through deliberate cutting could leave some debris in the remote corners of the flesh and tissues, allowing seemingly invisible infection to re-fester. Emotionally speaking, it is that first step in healing that can be the most difficult and painful to take, but if taken properly, it can have the desired healing effect.

It reminds me of the first step in the well-known and successful Alcoholics Anonymous program, in which the addict must first realize that they have an addiction. Admitting an addiction is like the enlarging part of debridement, but instead of opening the flesh deeper, it potentially opens the heart and mind ultimately paving the way to recovery, soberness, and a new and prosperous life.

Triggered Polarization

I don’t know about you, but the year 2020 felt like a focal point in the ideological views of Americans. Sure, we have always had political differences and there are those who have always held extreme views on numberless issues, but something shifted. Before the shift, handfuls of polarized voices were heard, while the greater majority were quietly living their lives without any need for choosing a side of any kind. It’s like the COVID-19 epidemic poured water on the flames of indifference, giving way to and fueling personal opinion. I felt anger and tension rise from people I hadn’t really heard from before. Previously outspoken voices got even louder. Civil conversation in all social circles took a slump, as restrictive rules and laws increased. Everything and everyone became more of what they already were.

Some may see the shift as a negative thing, which could be through some filters, but in a spiritual sense I see it as a positive thing. It may be possible, that 2020 and the events it contained, or even perhaps some invisible intergalactic energetic phenomenon, were actually the driving force behind the scriptural and doctrinal theme of the wheat and the tares. This principle was given to us by the Savior, in a parable form, which seems to have been given more as a prophecy than a parable, and it unquestionably deals with the latter-days in which we live.

The metaphor is simplistic: because wheat and tares look almost identical, the harvester should let them mature and ripen together until such a time their subtle differences become obvious, at which point they should be separated, and their fate becomes realized. 2020 seems to be the year that triggered the beginning of the declaration of who is wheat, and who is a tare.

I offer my opinion that those lines are not individually firmly drawn in the sand yet, but choices and political circumstances in 2021 and moving forward will naturally move fence sitters to one side or the other. As a side, if I were to pinpoint a specific moment the shift occurred, it would be when Moroni dropped his trumpet (see blog post here).

Already in 2021, I am seeing not just individual voices become more outspoken, but entire organizations are unifying in certain directions. The effect of having whole movements with louder voices seems to be causing neutral individuals to feel greater pressure to align with those big voices. As this continues, I anticipate greater polarity and social and political lines will be more firmly decreed. It will be much simpler to recognize friends and foes.

This polarity matches Nephi’s depiction that there will be “…save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil” (1 Nephi 14:10). It is obvious that those boundaries will not be political or drawn along ecclesiastical, racial, or social boundaries of any kind, but simply on the boundary of those who are good and those who are evil; those who are service oriented and those who pursue service-to-self, which is ultimately how a wheat and a tare might best be defined.

At the heart of those who are evil is a formalized effort to unite themselves through an insatiable appetite for wealth, control, and praise. This effort has existed since Lucifer enticed Cain to kill his brother, Able, for selfish gain, and has been passed down through the generations until this time. In the last century, secret oaths were even more formalized along with their associated rites of passage, until nearly every institution has become influenced by one or more members of this band, whose ultimate end will prove an annihilated earth and people if they were to succeed. This matter of national self-destruction through secret works of darkness is without any question, one of the most central themes of The Book of Mormon.

Moving Forward

As polarity increases, I feel a natural disposition to do my part to invite the comfortable and complacent to the side of truth, despite whatever differences or backgrounds we face. In days ahead, I expect to stand beside perfect strangers of different faiths and skin color but unified in our love of truth and light and in our desire to pull down darkness in high places. But before that day comes, courage and a full disclosure of truth is needed.

I recently heard Mike Stroud state in effect that choices cannot be made, and sides cannot properly be taken until a true and clear understanding of the choice is provided. That true and clear understanding is what many are calling disclosure. Disclosure of the secret acts of those in high places has been underway for a while but has only been a proverbial trickle from a faucet. Many are anticipating a massive disclosure of the secrets and crimes of darkness by those in high places throughout the world and are anticipating it sooner rather than later. This so-called disclosure may coincide with a latter-day prophesy of Nephi, who said: “There is nothing which is secret save it shall be revealed; there is no work of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light; and there is nothing which is sealed upon the earth save it shall be loosed” (2 Nephi 30:17).

As disclosure continues to hasten, I feel there is a responsibility upon all men and women to rise and do their part, but to do so in a calm and objective way. In this time of polarization and heated emotions, hasty and unrighteous judgements with the added need to seek and declare punishment upon others are all too common. When persecutions escalated against the early members of the LDS church, Joseph Smith was in the Liberty jail and received Section 123 of the Doctrine & Covenants, which outlines the duty of the Saints in relation to the perpetrators of evil against them, which were “enough to make hell itself shudder, and to stand aghast and pale, and the very devil to tremble and palsy” (v10).

The Lord’s council to them is equally fitting for the crimes committed against us individually and against humanity in our day. His instruction was to “gather up a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this State” (v1). It was suggested that a committee should be appointed to find those deeds out and take statements and affidavits in building a case against such evils (v4). These efforts were described as “an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart” (v11). The Saints were then told in verses 13 and 14 to earnestly “waste and wear out [their] lives” to bring to light all the “hidden things of darkness.”

For all who have a knowledge of some evil thing, it becometh every man who hath been warned, to warn his neighbor (D&C 88:81). We are further told in Ephesians to “…have not fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:12, emphasis added). The Greek word for reprove could have been rendered as expose, or even disclose.

The scriptures cited here show the necessity of speaking out against known deeds of darkness. Therefore, it would become all who are aware of darkness in any place, to expose that darkness for what it is, regardless of the evil, who is committing it, or what institutions it could be the means of defaming. Those who know of such evil and remain silent may be considered accomplices to the evil. But more importantly, through a brave act of disclosure some may be the means of creating healing opportunities for themselves, many others, and even our nation.

Disclosure of darkness is spiritual debridement. It can be painful, but it is so critical for the true healing that is so well needed for us individually and as a nation and world.