Rethinking Obedience

Conversations with Dr. Jennifer

Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Sexuality, Education, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Self-improvement

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All of us start out following the rules of our family or group because we want to stay safe, earn approval, or belong to something larger than ourselves. Safety and belonging are not small motivations, they're important and necessary steps on the pathway of our moral development. But obedience is the first law of heaven for a reason. It was never meant to be the final one. Obedience lays the foundation for us to grow towards something far greater: integrity. In this conversation with Larkin Swain of the Sanctuary Podcast, Dr. Finlayson-Fife walks through her three-stage framework for spiritual and psychological development and explains the role of obedience in each stage. We begin in fear. We grow into belonging. And in Stage 3, we use the moral compass we developed in Stages 1 and 2 to make our decisions not from fear or compliance, but from our own integrity. When we make that shift from living by the letter of the law to the spirit of it, it can feel like something has gone terribly wrong. But it hasn't. It's actually the whole point. SHOW NOTES: SAVE up to 30% at COZY EARTH through June 1st with code JFF30

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sometimes people will say, you know, well, I believe in God like it's an inherent good,
0:05.4	but what I care more about is what is the God you believe in asking of you?
0:11.8	Is our belief in God asking us to bring our conscience and our honesty and our humility
0:17.8	and our willingness to keep growing and the expectation to love even when we're not getting the validation or approval
0:25.6	or reinforcement that we want, right?
0:29.6	That's really, really important, is what does my belief ask of me
0:34.5	and am I willing to offer it?
0:36.2	Thank you. believe ask of me and am I willing to offer it?
0:50.3	Welcome to Conversations with Dr. Jennifer, a collection of interviews on the topics of relationships, sexuality, spirituality, and more. All featuring Dr. Finlayson Fife.
1:00.5	Jennifer, welcome to sanctuary. I am really looking forward to this conversation and really
1:10.5	grateful for you just to take the time to join me.
1:13.7	Thanks for having me.
1:15.3	Before we dig into things, for anyone who happens to not know who you are, I know that you are beloved in the LDS community and especially the Faith Matters community, but case anyone tuning in is unfamiliar with who you are,
1:28.6	could you just give us a little introduction into what you do, maybe like why you're passionate
1:33.4	about what you do?
1:35.3	Yeah, well, you know, I grew up in the church and learning a lot about marriage and how much it
1:41.4	matters and actually really looking very much forward to getting
1:46.1	married and being a mother and all those things. But I also noticed people in my ward and around
1:52.2	me that were not happily married. They had like there's seven children between them on the bench
1:57.3	and sacrament meeting and they looked happy to be separate.
2:07.4	And, you know, this was just like I don't know what it was, but I at an early age was really interested in the question of what helps people be happily married.
2:11.5	So I got my PhD in counseling psychology.
	...

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