Be a Good Person
Service, Christlike Living, and Goodness Beyond Institutional Metrics
Guiding Text
Teaching Section
Service as Reclamation, Not Performance
Lesson Plan
Distinguish service as performance (earning approval) from service as reclamation (flowing from authentic values and gifts suffering has given you).
Post (2005): voluntary authentic service associated with greater happiness, health, and longevity. Compelled or guilt-driven service produces burnout.
Service in direct human encounter. Requires no priesthood, no temple recommend. Only willingness to see need and respond.
VIA Character Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Reframing empathy, sensitivity, resilience as strengths rather than symptoms of brokenness.
Name one strength to put into service this week.
Detailed Lesson Content
Many of you served missions, callings, brought meals—while hiding. The service was real but the context poisoned by concealment. You served while breaking. Service as performance is exhausting. Service as reclamation is sustaining—flowing from authentic values and a desire to reduce suffering because you know what it feels like. Post (2005) found authentic voluntary service associated with greater happiness and longevity. King Benjamin: 'When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.' Christ in Matthew 25 identifies with the outcast. If you have felt like a stranger in your own church, Christ says He is standing next to you. Your capacity for service does not depend on institutional permission.
Recommended Videos
Martin Luther King Jr., ‘The Drum Major Instinct’ (1968, 35 min)
Preached two months before his assassination, King explores how the desire to be first can be transformed into a force for service—challenging us to be drum majors for justice, peace, and righteousness.
Watch on YouTube →Adam Grant, ‘Are You a Giver or a Taker?’ (TED 2016, 13 min)
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant explores how givers, takers, and matchers interact in the workplace—and why the most successful people are those who give generously.
Watch TED Talk →President Russell M. Nelson, ‘The Second Great Commandment’ (October 2019 General Conference)
President Nelson shares examples of how the Church and its members fulfill the Lord’s second great commandment to love our neighbors through humanitarian efforts and compassionate service.
Watch Talk →Additional Reading
- Post, S. G. (2005). Altruism, happiness, and health. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 12(2), 66–77.
- Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish. Free Press.
- Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues. APA/Oxford.
- Mosiah 2:17; Matthew 25:35–40; D&C 81:5; James 1:27.
Academic Framework
Research on prosocial behavior and psychological well-being demonstrates that acts of service and generosity are associated with reduced depression, increased life satisfaction, and enhanced sense of meaning (Post, 2005; Piliavin & Siegl, 2007). For LGBTQ+ individuals recovering from religious trauma, service functions as both a healing mechanism and a reclamation of agency: it allows participants to demonstrate, to themselves and to others, that their worth is not diminished by their orientation and that their capacity for Christlike love is not contingent on institutional validation.
The concept of 'benefit finding'—the identification of positive outcomes from adverse experiences—is a key component of post-traumatic growth (Helgeson et al., 2006). This session invites participants to identify the specific capacities for empathy, compassion, and service that their suffering has produced, and to deploy those capacities intentionally.
Theological Reflection
Mosiah 2:17: 'When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.' This is perhaps the simplest and most beautiful articulation of Latter-day Saint theology: service to others is service to God. It does not say 'when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, provided that ye meet the institutional worthiness standards.' It says when ye are in the service. Period.
Matthew 25:35–40—the parable of the sheep and the goats—describes the final judgment entirely in terms of service: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. Not once does Christ mention sexual orientation, temple recommend status, or institutional compliance. The measure is love. The measure has always been love.
Discussion Prompts
- What acts of service have been most meaningful to you—either given or received? How have those acts shaped your understanding of God?
- The letter says goodness is 'who you already are when you stop performing and start living.' What does performing look like for you? What does simply living look like?
Integration Exercise
Service plan: Participants identify one specific act of service they will perform in the coming week—not as an assignment but as a reclamation. The act should be something that uses the gifts their experience has given them. They will report back to the group in Session 12.
Therapeutic Methodology
Primary Modality: Behavioral Activation (BA; Martell et al., 2010). For participants experiencing residual depression or anhedonia—common in the later stages of religious trauma recovery, when the acute pain has subsided but a sense of flatness or purposelessness remains—Behavioral Activation provides an evidence-based framework for rebuilding engagement with life. BA's emphasis on values-consistent action (rather than waiting for motivation to appear) aligns naturally with this session's focus on service. Clinicians should help participants identify patterns of avoidance, withdrawal, or passivity that have developed as coping responses to religious trauma, and collaboratively design behavioral experiments that test the participant's capacity for meaningful engagement.
Secondary Modality: Positive Psychology Interventions (Seligman, 2011). Clinicians should introduce the 'three good things' exercise and the 'signature strengths' inventory (VIA Character Strengths Survey). Research demonstrates that identifying and deploying one's character strengths is associated with increased well-being and decreased depression (Seligman et al., 2005). For program participants, the exercise carries additional therapeutic significance: many have been conditioned to see their strengths through an institutional lens that discounts or pathologizes them. Reframing empathy, sensitivity, emotional depth, and resilience as signature strengths—rather than symptoms of brokenness—is a powerful corrective.
Group Process Note: This session should feel lighter than its predecessors. The heavy deconstructive work has been done. This session is about construction—about proving to oneself that one's life has meaning and agency beyond the institutional narrative. Clinicians should encourage celebration of small wins and facilitate peer recognition within the group.