Hello, why religion friends, John Hilton here.

Over the summer, I've been thinking a lot about Adam and Eve.

You're familiar with their story.

When Adam and Eve realized they were naked, they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves.

Now, I've never tried to make clothes out of fig leaves, but they can't be a great covering.

Plus, they dry out and crumble, so you need a new outfit every day or two.

And on top of that, fig leaves contain an irritant that can cause a rash. So Adam and Eve's

solution wasn't just flimsy, it was uncomfortable. The more I thought about Adam, Eve, and their fig

leaves, the more I came to believe that we do the same thing.

We feel insecure about our looks, our income, our grades, our house, our social media profiles.

And so we continually cover up our insecurities with metaphorical fig leaves.

It's exhausting, and it never lasts.

But the good news of the gospel is we don't need to cover ourselves. Jesus Christ covers us.

We know that the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and Eve and clothed them.

He provided a covering that Adam and Eve couldn't make for themselves.

The reality is you don't need fig leaves when

you have a coat of skins. For baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

the doctrine of justification helps us understand that we are covered through the Atonement of Jesus

Christ. Yet this can be hard to feel and hard to teach.

Some of us, as well as those we love, are way down with guilt, believing we are too far gone,

while others shrug off sin as though it doesn't really matter. Both of these are fig leaf

approaches, either despairing in our own weakness or excusing it.

...