How Can I Learn Truth in Today's Confusing World?
by Krista Call | People May Wonder
I have a confession to make. A few weeks ago I sat down to read my scriptures and found myself picking up my phone instead — not once, but three times before I even finished a single chapter. I wasn't looking for anything important. I was just… reaching. For noise. For something to fill the quiet.
I think a lot of us are doing that right now. And I've been wondering why.
We are living in a world so saturated with information that truth can feel harder to find than ever. Every celebrity and influencer presents their carefully curated version of reality. Political voices on every side insist their side is the one telling it straight. Soft morality floods our feeds until the only sin left is having conviction. And when enough voices shout for long enough, it starts to feel like whoever is loudest must be right.
Truth gets replaced by narrative. By tribe. By feeling. By volume.
This is where my study on this has brought me:
The Lion Isn't Who I Expected
I used to picture the adversary as someone trying to feed us lies. Whispering false things. Planting seeds of doubt. Those, of course, are some of his methods. But the more I've studied this, the more I think the greater danger is something quieter and more insidious.
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." — 1 Peter 5:8
What if the lion's most effective weapon isn't deception — it's distraction?
The author Aldous Huxley wrote about this in the 1950s, long before smartphones existed, in a book called Brave New World. He reflected that the champions of a free press had always imagined two kinds of propaganda: true propaganda and false propaganda. What none of them anticipated was a third kind, content concerned neither with the true nor the false, but with the irrelevant. Content designed not to deceive you, but to occupy you.
"…they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958
The writer Neil Postman captured what that means for truth:
"Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance." — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985
Not hidden. Drowned. By things that entertain. That is a harder enemy to fight than a liar.
Drowning or Drinking?
This study led me to start reading Huxley's Brave New World, a novel about a society that destroys the soul not through pain but through pleasure. Not through censorship but through comfort. The people in that world aren't prisoners. They're entertained. Continuously, endlessly entertained. They never suffer enough to ask deep questions. They never sit in enough silence to hear an answer.
I thought about that as I picked up my phone for the third time instead of focusing on my scripture study.
When was the last time you held the physical pages of the scriptures, where your fingers could rest on the words of prophets and apostles who gave everything to testify of what they knew? Does the time we spend scrolling outweigh the time we spend getting to know the One who is Truth? Are we quenching our thirst in the truths the scriptures provide or drowning in the endless scroll of nothing meaningful, nothing eternal?
"But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." — John 4:14
Two images keep coming to mind. A firehose that is relentless, loud, leaving us emptier the more we consume. And living water that is patient, always available, and permanently satisfying.
A distracted mind is just as dangerous as a deceived one, maybe even more so. If the adversary can keep every moment full, we will miss those quiet moments when he is trying to speak to us. Truth comes to those who are still enough to hear it. And in our world, choosing stillness is becoming harder day by day.
He Didn't Leave Us Without Help
Here is what brings me peace. Our Heavenly Father knew. He knew exactly what mortality in the information age would feel like. Elder Uchtdorf said:
"Our Heavenly Father knew how difficult it would be for us to sift through all the competing noise and discover truth during our mortality. He knew we would see only a portion of the truth, and He knew that Satan would try to deceive us. So He gave us the heavenly gift of the Holy Ghost to illuminate our minds, teach us, and testify to us of the truth." — Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Our Search for Truth," New Era, August 2020
God didn't leave us without a way to find truth. He gave us the Holy Ghost, a companion who can cut through all of it and tell us what is actually true. Not trending true.
And He told us how to use it. The Lord instructed Oliver Cowdery:
"You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right." — D&C 9:8
Not passive consumption. We must study, act and listen, not waiting for something spiritual to surface in our feeds. Honest effort precedes revelation. To hear that revelation, we must be listening for the answer.
That is how we learn truth in a confusing world. Not by following the right account or finding the right podcast. The Holy Ghost will speak it to us, in our minds and in our hearts, when we prepare ourselves to receive it.
An Invitation
I'm not writing this to make anyone feel guilty for enjoying their phone or their shows or their social media. I love all of those things too, maybe more than I should.
But in my recent reading of the Book of Mormon, I felt the weight of Lehi's words as he lay on his deathbed, crying out to his children:
"O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound." — 2 Nephi 1:13
I believe those words were meant for us in this moment.
I'm writing this because I believe there is a life waiting for each of us that is so much richer than a life spent doom scrolling. A life full of wonder and real joy, of meaningful struggle and genuine growth. A life where we are awake, not scrolling through someone else's best moments, but fully alive in our own.
Don't drown yourself in the nothingness of digital noise while there is living truth to be found in the Savior. The water that satisfies is still being offered, the same as it has always been. To anyone willing to drink.
My invitation is simple: awake with me! Put down the firehose, pick up the scriptures, and let's start really living.
"By the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." — Moroni 10:5
References
- 1 Peter 5:8, King James Bible
- John 4:14, King James Bible
- Doctrine & Covenants 9:8
- Moroni 10:5, Book of Mormon
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958)
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985)
- Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Our Search for Truth," New Era, August 2020, ChurchofJesusChrist.org
