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In 1911, a young man secretly entered the Salt Lake Temple and took dozens of unauthorized photographs of its interior. Those photographs eventually ended up in the hands of a businessman who thought he had something incredibly valuable—something the Church would pay to keep hidden.

President Joseph F. Smith had a different idea.

What followed is one of the strangest episodes in Latter-day Saint history: secret photographs, an attempted payoff, a New York theater presentation, James E. Talmage, and the Church ultimately publishing its own photographs of the temple for the world to see.

But this story raises a bigger question:

Why are we sometimes embarrassed by the unusual parts of our faith?

Seer stones. Angels. Temple clothing. Baptisms for the dead. Miracles. Revelation. Prophets. Sacred ordinances. Yeah—Latter-day Saints believe some unusual things.

Maybe our response shouldn't be to hide them, sanitize them, or nervously explain them away.

Maybe sometimes the best response is simply:

“Yep. We believe that. Want to know why?”

In this episode of Faithful Misfit, we explore the difference between sacred and secret, confidence and defensiveness, and faith and embarrassment—and why difficult questions about our religion don't have to frighten us.

Because you can't blackmail someone with something they're not ashamed of.

"Upbeat Forever" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/