Why I created the ChatBot (in Three Parts)
Part I: Discovery
When I was a missionary for the LDS church, I served in an area that was popular for some anti-mormon material — specifically a film called “The Godmakers.” As a result, there seemed to be a lot of anti-mormon knowledge in the area.
This was also the time with South Park came out with an episode called “All About the Mormons”. This episode explained that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using a stone that he placed into a top hat.
This was not something I had really heard before. As a missionary, I knew that it was a lie propagated by Satan and the enemies of the Church. I would explain that to people. And I would feel the spirit confirm my testimony that Joseph Smith did not do that.
I didn’t feel the need to look into any details because I knew it was false.
Part II: The Angry Phase
Fast forward several years…
I was sitting in Sunday school and someone passed around a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune. In this paper, it was announced that the “Mormon church for the first time is publishing photos of a small sacred stone it believes founder Joseph Smith used to help translate the story that became the basis of the religion.”
I studied more about the Church. It seemed more and more like “anti-Mormon lies” were really just the truths the Church didn’t want its members to know.
I was like, “What?! How is it possible that the anti-Mormons were sharing the truth and the Church was not forthcoming? … And why did the Holy Ghost tell me that story was a lie, when the information was true?”
This started a period of my life where I felt I could not trust the Church or the Holy Ghost, because they both misled me about what is true. There is an adage I felt applied: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
This was hard on me and hard on my wife. I was not sure how to process it all.
My ultimate question was “How can I stay in a Church when I’m not even sure it is true?”
This is a question I wrestled with for over a decade. I thought, “Poor Enos had to pray for a whole day and night…boo hoo.”
Part III: Partial Reconciliation
As I sit here today (November 2025), I’m still bothered by many issues, but it takes up a lot less of my emotional space (but still some — and some days more than others). And I’m still involved in the Church.
Here’s my present reasoning (again in three parts)…
First: Faith Trumps Knowledge. In Alma 32, the Book of Mormon teaches that faith and knowledge are different things. Faith is a hope for things you cannot see. Alma teaches that if you have knowledge, you no longer have faith — you have knowledge. He also explains that you can have knowledge that the seed of the Gospel is good without having a perfect knowledge of things.
An example of this would be, “I know attending church has been good for me because I have experienced it lifting my spirits, but I do not have a perfect knowledge that everything taught in the Church is factually accurate.” To me, this is the difference between faith and knowledge as explained in Alma 32.
Second: Being Factually Accurate is Not Particularly Important. In 3 Nephi 11, Jesus visits the people in the American continent. He finds that the people are in a dispute about how baptism should be performed. He provides instruction on this point. He then teaches “this is my doctrine, that such things [i.e. contention on points of doctrine such as the method of baptism] should be done away.”
He further teaches that “this is my doctrine…” that “whoso believeth in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved….”
He continues:
39 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and whoso buildeth upon this buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.
40 And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them.
From this scripture, I found that I do not need to contend on every point of doctrine. Christ’s doctrine is simply to have faith and repent unto baptism. In fact, Christ explained that if you build your foundation on something other than this doctrine (for example, your testimony is based on the factual accuracy of the Book or Mormon, the truthfulness of Church, or the foresight of the prophets), you are building on a sandy foundation.
After looking at this, I felt permission to not have to contend with others (or even more importantly myself) over various points of doctrine. I could just let them be. If my conclusions happen to be incorrect, I believe Christ can forgive me for that.
Third: The Concept of Self-Regulation and Self-Validation. My last line of reasoning is outside of the scriptures. I read a book titled When Religion Hurts You by Laura Anderson. Never did any book come with more power to the heart of man than this book did at this time to mine.
In essence, the book taught me that it is possible and healthy to practice self-regulation and internal validation. I did not need to wait for an external force — like the Holy Ghost — to bring me answers or to heal my emotions. These things are accessible within me!
Combining these three concepts has greatly helped me navigate my continued participation in the Church. And I wanted to create an AI Chatbot that could perhaps provide this type of context to like-minded individuals in similar circumstances as me.
Creating Leading Kindly, the AI Chatbot
I started this project from a core belief: that the challenges we face with Church history or culture are often compounded by the fact that many of us in high-commitment faiths were never taught the tools to process the powerful emotions that come with it — like grief, anger, and betrayal. After all, navigating a faith crisis is more than an intellectual exercise; it’s a deeply emotional one.
My hypothesis for starting LeadingKindly was that when we lack these inner coping skills, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, and to then make the Church the scapegoat target for our anger.
This Ai Chatbot, which I call Leading Kindly, is designed to help with that. It was built using Gemini on the idea that if we can develop our emotional resilience while simultaneously reframing our faith from being based upon perfect knowledge to one of faith, we can turn a faith crisis into a profound spiritual maturation.
The objectives of Leading Kindly are to:
- Help you build the skills to process your emotions in a healthy way.
- Help you explore a path toward a strong, reconstructed faith.
This is a specific approach, and it may not be for everyone. Your agency is the most important part of this process, and this tool is here to support you in a safe, non-judgmental space.
Our hope is that while the church may at times feel like the enemy, you can one day say:“Come on, dear brother, since the war is past, for friends at first, are friends again at last!”