Psalms 49–51; 61–66; 69–72; 77–78; 85–86 Part 1 • Dr. John White • August 24-30 • Come, Follow Me

followHIM - Hank Smith & John Bytheway

In this episode of 'Follow Him,' hosts Hank Smith and John Bytheway welcome Dr. John White, a recently converted theologian from Baylor University, who shares his transformative

Key takeaways

• The Psalms are not just religious poetry but deeply personal responses to God, reflecting human emotions like despair, remorse, and hope.
• Understanding who God is—especially His mercy—is foundational to understanding oneself and one's spiritual journey.

Main topics

• The role of the Psalms as personal prayers and responses to God
• God's mercy as central to spiritual healing and identity

Notable quotes

"If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves." – Joseph Smith

"I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." – Psalm 84:10

Conclusion

Dr. John White's powerful testimony and deep study of the Psalms illustrate how Scripture can transform lives,

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Coming up in this episode on Follow Him. Speaker 4 (0:03) I joined a fraternity. I was really trying to fit in, to be accepted, and I had this father wound, this father hunger. I needed love and affirmation. Started partying quite a bit, and I got kicked out of my fraternity for partying too hard. My parents had already paid the room and board, and I didn't tell them right away because I was embarrassed. There was a lot of shame associated with that. I began to read the Bible. seriously for the first time in 1987 as a sophomore in college. I remember coming in touch with God's mercy because I didn't think God could forgive me for the stuff that I had done. Speaker 3 (0:44) Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my door-keeping co-host, John, by the way. John, now, I know that doesn't sound like a compliment, but it really is. Listen to this verse. Here's Psalm 84, verse 10. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. Isn't that beautiful? I thought you were saying dorky at first, but it was doorkeeper. My dorky ghost. That might have worked, but this one I think is a little bit better. Speaker 2 (1:21) I'm kind of both. My Speaker 3 (1:23) dorky doorkeeper. John, we are privileged today to be joined by Dr. John White. Dr. White, if it's okay if we call you John, welcome to Follow Him. It's good to be here with y'all. It's going to be a great day. I've been waiting for this one for quite a while. I think our listeners are going to be so interested, not only in what Dr. White has to teach, but in his story. Let's talk about the book of Psalms. John, by the way, what are you looking Speaker 2 (1:52) forward to today? One of the things I remember from four years ago is Eric Huntsman and how he called the Psalms a response. It's not so much a revelation. These are words of men responding to God. And I feel that. I Speaker 3 (2:09) think that's beautiful. You know, I've had many students through the years, when we talk about the sacrament, they'll say, I just leave the hymn book open and read through the lyrics. It's such a sacred time. Dr. White, John, what do you want to do today? What are you hoping to do? Speaker 4 (2:26) Well, I'm really excited to show how this block that we're going to be looking at, I'm not sure if you all had planned this, but it opens and closes with one question. What can ransom a soul from the grave? Then how it answers it. Then the second, I think listeners will really enjoy discovering at the very center of the Psalter, the book of the Psalms, is mercy and what that means for anyone who might be struggling. Some people think that maybe God is more disappointed in them, and I think mercy will speak a word to them. Lastly, as we study this, I'm hoping it goes from simply meditation that the prayer book of the Bible, that's what a lot of people have referred to this as, would become part of their prayer life. I know for me, that's been significant in my own spiritual formation. I love at the end in Psalm 86, 11, it talks about that our prayer life should be such that it unites our heart with God in fear. as far as reverence. And that's, to me, the destination of discipleship, what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Speaker 3 (3:27) I go from, oh, this will be interesting to, wow, I'm excited in less than a minute of what John tells us we're going to do today. Now, before we go any further, brother, by the way, what do we know about Dr. White? Speaker 2 (3:39) Dr. John White joined Brigham Young University from Baylor University, where he served for 14 years as a tenured Associate Professor of Practical Theology and Ethics, Director of the Graduate Chaplaincy Program, and co-founder with his wife Cindy of the Faith and Sports Institute. An interdisciplinary scholar, he brings moral theology, ethics, and practical theology into conversation with sport, chaplaincy, medicine, business, and culture with a focus on character formation, applied ethics, embodiment, discipleship, and moral agency. He's published widely, is engaged in multiple writing and research projects, and has led nationally recognized initiatives that integrate faith, spiritual formation, and adolescent development. Geared a PhD in theological ethics from the University of Edinburgh. As a research fellow at BYU's Maxwell Institute, he contributes to the scholarship grounded in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ through research. writing, mentoring, and collaboration. I want to ask what people might be thinking, what brought you from Baylor to BYU? Speaker 4 (4:53) That's a great question. Do we have two years to talk about it? That's how long the investigation started. And I think you've had Dr. Janae Nelson on one of your podcasts. So it actually started in 2023. I was at an academic conference. I was presenting a paper. Dr. Nelson was mentoring a former student of mine, Elizabeth Perkins. She'd just gotten married, Elizabeth Bounds. All that to say, she was there to really encourage and support her. She was doing her postdoc at Baylor and at Harvard. That was a part of the session. At the end of the session, we connected through Elizabeth as far as what I was researching and working on. And I didn't tell people this for a while because I didn't know what to make of it. Because I'm a theologian and we work with oftentimes empirical proof. We're trying to support and corroborate claims about God. But while she was speaking, Speaker 4 (5:52) there was a light over her. I didn't want to tell her after about a month or two, but I said, hey, I just want you to know that day that you were there, I was focused on this light that was above you. And she goes, there was no light above me. And I said, yes, there was. When I began to then read about the restored gospel, learning about the role of light and illumination. I often wonder if I was supposed to see this because I was supposed to catch my attention to what this person was going to talk about to me was more than just academic scholarship, but it was about something that had eternal consequences. That alerted me. We began this conversation. I visited BYU six times over the next year and a half. This investigation really got serious. I began to ask some big questions. It began to not only just rearrange the mental furniture of my intellect, but it began to rearrange things just spiritually for me. There was an illumination that was happening there. I couldn't deny it. It was arresting. It was surprising. And I think it was Charles Dickens that talks about, he said that Mormons have visions and see things in a world where technology would tend to dispute those kinds of things. And as a theologian, I didn't expect to see those kinds of things. It shocked me and opened my eyes to begin asking more existential questions. Questions about who am I, where am I headed, and those kinds of things. Speaker 3 (7:10) Wow. I'm excited to hear more of this story. I know Janae. We know Janae well here on the show. We love Janae. Janae, thank you for bringing us Dr. White, getting this process started. John, by the way, this is quite a story. Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:27) miraculous. I mean, I want you to be able to tell the story. How many years now has it been since you had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? I converted Speaker 4 (7:37) in 2024 at the Sacred Grove. Then I was baptized in 2025. So just last year in October here in the greater Provo area. Speaker 2 (7:46) Wow. Just October. Wow. Speaker 3 (7:51) Brand new member of the church, theologian coming from Baylor. This is an extraordinary story, and I'm sure people want to hear it. Let's jump in. I'm going to read from the Come Follow Me manual, then John, we want to be taught. The title of the lesson this week is, I will declare what he has done for my soul. Sounds like it's going to fit really well. The writers of the Psalms share deeply personal feelings in their poetry. They wrote about feeling discouraged, afraid, and remorseful. At times, they even felt abandoned by God, and some Psalms carry a tone of frustration or desperation. If you've ever felt that way, reading the Psalms can help you know that you aren't the only one. But you'll also find Psalms that can encourage you when you're having such feelings, because the psalmist also praised the Lord for His goodness, marveled at His power, and rejoiced in His mercy. They knew that we are burdened by evil and sin, but that the Lord is good and ready to forgive. They understood that having faith in the Lord doesn't mean you'll never struggle with anxiety, sin, or fear. It means that you know who to turn to when you do. So well written. All right, John, with that, how do you want to start? Speaker 4 (9:05) Well, I'd like to start with a question, who is God? And the Psalms spend a lot less time telling us what to do. and more about showing us who God is. That means that what we ought to do should always be in agreement with who God is as far as doctrine. When I've thought about my own walk with God, sometimes I've shrunk God. He's kind of this resident policeman or he's this law giver. He is that, but he's more than that. He's a managing director. He's the big man upstairs. We even hear athletes say that sometimes. The Psalms really get at this and help to reframe the way we see and know God. When I started to invent this investigation, I started reading everything. In fact, my wife said early on, why are all these Mormon books coming in through Amazon? And I stopped her. I remember where we were at in the kitchen. I said, well, I need to let you know something. This was shocking to her. It's still shocking to her as far as the decision. But I said, I'm seriously thinking about converting. I felt like it was Nicodemus going to Jesus that I didn't know where this was going to end. So I was careful because I didn't want my colleagues. to get alarmed. What if it didn't end in me converting? Then they would see this kind of like flirting with things. And why are you exposing your mind to those kinds of things? I discovered this quote by Joseph Smith that says, if men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves. So what we see here is that our comprehension of God leads into our comprehension of ourselves. And even John Calvin said this in the book of his institutes. He says, he's not sure what comes first, knowledge of God or knowledge of self. What's beautiful about this, as we grow in our knowledge of God, we grow in our knowledge of self. As we grow in our knowledge of self, we grow in our knowledge of God. And you see this all through the book of Psalms. This understanding of God is something that I think we all wrestle with. And we get our portraits of God from our culture, from our upbringing. I mean, ideally, God set it up that the family should be the ideal place where we get a perfect portrait or a good portrait, a good vision, a good window to God. But we all come from families that are less than perfect. And so it doesn't always work out that way. And I know for myself, That was a challenge. Some of the things I wrestled with early on, I had a father that did the best he could, very successful CEO, but he struggled with alcoholism. I knew sometimes when I was coming home, what dad was going to show up. Was it the successful, competent social dad that everyone knew? Or was it the dad sometimes that the way he decompressed is that he would have a drink? That had me early on to become very hypervigilant. My view of God was one that I didn't think I ever really measured up. I was never good enough. My dad was very exacting at times. To give you hope, our vision of God will help crystallize our visions of ourselves. Hopefully, those will become more and more in correspondence and alignment. That's what I wanted to start with, big picture. Then I want to talk about how to read the Psalms. And then we're going to jump into the actual Psalms and get at some themes and get into dissecting some of the verses. I'm sure your listeners know that there's five books of the Psalms echoing the five books that we see in the Pentateuch by Moses. Book one, two, book three, book four, book five. What we're looking at is these Psalms fall in towards the end of book two through book three itself. Verse 15 of 49, but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave for he shall receive me, Selah. Then 86, 13. This is what we close with and it answers it, for great is thy mercy toward me and thou has delivered my soul from the lowest hell, from the grave. We start off with this question and we get it answered there. Scholars talk about that rhetorical device as an inclusio or a book and it envelops this whole section that we're studying. I like what the ancient Jewish tradition says at the center of the Psalter is 7838. And the middle verse, arguably people say this is the center. If you go right to the center of the whole book of Psalms, it says this in verse 38, but he, God being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity. So mercy is literally in the middle of the book. And that shouldn't surprise us as Latter-day Saints. You see, even though that doesn't function technically as a chiasmus, but we see in Alma 36. Speaker 4 (13:21) Listeners will know John Welch. He's well known for this observation that we see at the center, this phrase by Alma, Oh Jesus, thou son of God, have mercy on me. So in both testaments of Christ, when the structure folds in half, mercy's in the crease. Mercy's in the crease. I mean, we have Christ that's in the crease. When we come to the Psalter, there's a triple register. So I did my dissertation on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St. Augustine, and John Paul II, Karawaitia. That's his name before he became Pope. And Bonhoeffer calls the Psalter the prayer book of Jesus Christ. He has an interesting way of setting this up that I think should register with our listeners. He talks about there's really three lenses when we read the Psalter. First, there's the historical. David is praying. I mean, these Psalms, many of them are attributed to David. But then he talks about that Christ prays these Psalms. When you look in the New Testament, he was Jewish, so his piety was such that he was raised in the Psalms, the book of Psalms. Finally, the third register is that we pray the Psalms. And I like what one great early church theologian said, the Psalms are like a mirror to the person singing them. And you said the last, was it Huntsman, Eric Huntsman we saw in here? I feel like the Psalms are anatomy of the soul. John Calvin said that, that when we look at the Psalms, we see the emotion. I think the Psalter is wanting us to know that we have a God who will take anything that, I mean, he's there, he's our parent. He wants to hear from us. In fact, one could argue that those who haven't learned to express their anger to God oftentimes then find ways to act that out that might be inappropriate. I think at the Psalter, we want to recognize that there's something significant there, that God is speaking as much for Speaker 2 (15:05) us in the Psalter itself. It's considered to be the center of the Psalter. The center of all the Psalms is 78, 38. I'm just writing this, right? This is great. Speaker 4 (15:17) The Masoretes would say maybe it's verse 36, but most people, a lot Speaker 2 (15:22) of scholars say it's verse 38. He being full of compassion forgave their iniquity. And I'm making my own footnote right now to section 64, verse 7. I, the Lord, forgive sins. I just love that's what I do. Speaker 3 (15:39) John, it is so fun to hear you quote the Book of Mormon. Speaker 4 (15:44) I mean, you've been a member of the church for, it Speaker 3 (15:47) hasn't been a year, and you're quoting Alma like it's just off the back of your hand. I just... Take a quick tangent and tell us about the Book of Mormon. Speaker 4 (15:57) I have in my ring here, this was my commitment ring to God, to the restored gospel of Alma 32, 28. When I got my first Book of Mormon, I had obviously some pre-understanding, didn't give much credibility to it. In fact, people often say, don't read the Book of Mormon and don't pray with Mormons. It'll change your life or God will change your life through them as witnesses. I started reading the Book of Mormon and I just started seeing. My studies were preparing me for this a long time ago. So I did my dissertation, I told you, on John Paul II. He's written this magnus opus of theology of the body. As a former athlete and still want to be athlete, I found so much life in the body because of the pain that was in my family growing up. I did a deep dive on this theologically to understand that the body is a visible explanation of an invisible reality of divine and spiritual. That came home when I began to read the Book of Mormon and I began to understand, for example, that God the Father consists of flesh and blood as we read in D &C. God the Father has a face. The work I was doing about human understanding of materiality and physicality began to