same issues through, and it takes humility, but I can say through personal experience that when you pray and say, Heavenly Father, my worldview lens might be smudged. Help me to clean my worldview lens to value different things so that I can see more clearly. God answers those prayers. I can say that I know that he answers those prayers from personal experience. Wow, and all the promises he gives us, he wants to separate us from all of that perspective, how we see all of that. Listen, this has been very, very powerful. Thank you so much for this. At the end of every episode, I say, You know, I believe that you said is true, but don't take our word for it. Find out for yourself. This is Let's Get Real. Until next time.

would say, Man, I don't even know if I want that. But why? Because our priorities are not what God's priorities are yet. But what made us want to choose it, right? I think God's business is to try to transform us into the kind of people who not only want that but who are willing to sacrifice everything else to get that. I think the life he lives is sometimes hard. We know of one person who peeled back the veil and peered upon the life of God lives, and what did he see? He saw God weeping. He saw God weeping with sorrow. That's what he saw. Now, I don't think he's always weeping as S. I don't think it's always. I think the highs and the lows and everything in between. But the point is that with infinite love comes the infinite capacity for grief and hardship. And we saw the example of Christ, or example of God's son, Jesus Christ, who he describes himself as reflecting the life of his father, and he was a man who

some other. What are some other assumptions you think come along with this? Somebody has an expectation, they have a perspective, they have a desire that's deeper within them that might cause that, right? Yeah, what are some of the expect, what are some of the assumptions they're making? I think one of the assumptions that we make is that one of the assumptions is that living the gospel, the story of living the gospel, is something like, Hey, I was struggling in life and struggling to find a job and struggling with my health, but then I got baptized and I started living the gospel and going to church, and now I have a job and my health is better. And they tell this story where the core purpose of the Gospel was somehow to give them a leg up in their various pursuits in the world, right? If they don't have it, then that means something else, right? Or maybe the story is, maybe they think the gospel story is, Hey, I live, I live the teachings and for strength of

published right. We can be object failures by all the measuring sticks known to man and yet stand at a privileged place on the right hand of God because we made a Covenant with God, forsook sin, and became transformed in the image of Christ. I sometimes tell students, if you were to Pure PE, we sometimes think of the heavens, the heaven like right as this idyllic place, right, where you never want, you never grieve, you never cry, it's all you're like, it's just this place of bliss, endless Bliss, right. But I think if we peeled back to heavens and peered back, peered on the life that God is living right now, I think each and every one of us, including you and me, would recoil in horror, and we would say, holy cow, that looks really rough and really hard. I'm not even sure I want that. And in fact, I think one of the reasons for the veil is because if we saw the life that was being offered us, I think some of us

It doesn't stand between me and God. See, it's all about the ordering of the priorities. Seek ye first the kingdom of God exactly and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. And the reason why this is important, this goes back to what we were saying before, what we value most changes what we see. So, for example, when someone says, Hey, you know what? I wish the church was more loving as a community. I don't feel loved to church sometimes. This means that we have more work to do to help people feel more welcome, more involved, and more loved. Other times, I think it's because they've embraced a worldview, an ordering of priorities that changes what they see as love. Let me explain what I mean. You help me understand what you're saying because, um, again, if we're not careful though from the gospel narrative, right, how you're saying it. I think that we sometimes in the gospel perspective, we're talking about it like it's the gospel. I think that's important to include that caveat, right.

everywhere you look and turn right, they're everywhere you look. Um, the... and I think this is where we get challenge and conflict sometimes. We try because they're everywhere, they're everywhere in our culture. The expressive gospel is all over our media now, right? There's... you can't watch the show now without somebody saying, Be yourself, you be you, authenticity. You know, it's the buzzword. It's the authenticity was the year, the word of the year last year, the year before, I'm not sure. Yeah, like don't change, really. I mean, but I think that it's... it's kind of... that's what's interesting about all of these. They're kind of twisted, they're kind of true. There's a little bit of like truth to them, but then... but what's the danger in them? Well, the danger is... here, here the thing. We are latter-day Saints living in a world saturated with these other worldviews, right? And... but we feel this constant itch to syncretize, to try to reconcile the

than any of that what you see in life depends on what you value. So, what does God see? So, there was someone who's close to me. She was in college, and she was an extraordinary student. And then she got sick, and it's been a chronic illness, and it's lasted for now 15 years. She had to drop out of college. She hasn't, I think she was planning on serving a mission at the time, but she wasn't able to serve a mission. Hasn't been able to marry. Hasn't been able to have kids. Hasn't been able to hold down a job. All of her professional aspirations have been shattered. And as a consequence, life is not what she thought life was going to look like. But when she was young and learning the gospel, she had all sorts of visions, an end in mind about what her life was going to have in store for her, and none of those visions, none of those ideas have come true for her. And at one point in time, she asked me a question. It was a

both together open the same ancient tomb. Are they going to see the same thing? No, they're going to see completely different things. One person is going to see Prophet, another person's going to see history. And when two people are looking at the same thing but seeing something different, we have a recipe for conflict, a recipe for disappointment, discord, all sorts of things. I think a lot of the contention that we see in modern discourse comes down to the fact that we're looking at the same thing but seeing something different because our core values are different, and that those core values represent the worldview. And so again, you have the archaeologist and the treasure hunter group both open the same tomb, and they see entirely different things. And so here we have one person who embraces the expressive gospel, one person who embraces the redemptive gospel. They both listen to the same conference talk by President Nelson, and one says, Why all the hate? and the other says, Wow, that is so loving. And so again, they see different things. So what does God see?

maybe it's obscurity, maybe it's infertility, maybe it's um life. I mean, these are life-like chronic illness, premature death. All these things interrupt and interfere with living out that story, right? There's another, let me share another example of this, yeah um. Another story template might be the expressive gospel. Expressive individualism in this story template, the main character, the protagonist, what they want more than anything else is to be themselves, to be authentic, to be true to themselves. Um, this is, I would say, the some people refer to this as the modern Gospel of Disney, right? It's all about being true to yourself. And you, if you look at this story template, you see so many movies that follow this story, all of them, all of them, right? Where you have a character, yeah, a character who starts out in a community or a family that they feel is a little bit stifling, a little bit um, um, that's discouraging them from pursuing the

world view to readjust the readjust what requires us to readjust our what we see as our greatest treasure. What do we treasure more than anything? And I'm reminded of it was um Aaron teaching King Loni. Oh yeah, and not King King Loni's father. That's right. Oh, I love this. Um, here we go. And he and King Loni's father prayed. He said, Oh God, Aaron ha told me there is a God. And if there is a God, and if Thou Art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me? And I will give give away all my sins to Know Thee, that I may be raised at the last day, raised from the dead, and saved at the last day. That was his prayer. He said, I am willing to give away all my sins, not for self-fulfillment, not for not to resolve his loneliness, not to pursue authenticity, not to get financial success or professional success, or even necessarily children or grandchildren, as great as those things are. It was, I will give away all my sins so that I can know

that is what I call the therapeutic gospel. This one is one where it's all about self-fulfillment, it's all about avoiding emotional pain and discomfort, and maximizing emotional comfort. It's about finding self-esteem and belonging, it's about finding emotional intimacy with others, it's about meeting my various emotional needs, and it's not necessarily about self-expression, it's more about fulfilling myself in some way, and that's what the protagonist wants, and what stands in the way, the conflict in that one is the fact that the communities often doesn't necessarily fulfill your needs. What would you say is the main differences between all of them? Because I think like all of them, the root of it is me, and I, yeah, that is right, yeah. Like so for the prosperity, it's more of what I get, what I get. The expressive is more like being myself, yeah. And the Fulfillment is more um, meeting my needs. It's interesting is that these stories are filled in

because um for example the Commandments. It's almost like we're imagining that we're going to be in heaven alone. We're imagining that mhm that the value of Heaven is no more pain, that the value of Heaven is I can have whatever I want, whatever I wanted, yeah. But what is God doing right now? He's he it's he's not thinking about himself. Jesus wasn't focused on himself, no at all um. I have I have two thoughts I want to share here. So first off, if our greatest treasure, if our greatest value, if we Embrace expressive individualism, the expressive gospel, and our greatest value is authenticity and self-express ex, then love is going to look a lot like celebrating me for who I am. And if you if you love me, if you love me, you're going to celebrate all my differences and excentricities, you're going to accept me for who I am. And if you have any expectations of me that are contrary to what I have of myself, then you're not

gospel just fine. Now, all those things are great, they're important, they're good in life, right? But are they the gospel story? Is that really what it is, right? And so, it gets down to the question: Is the gospel a plot-driven story, or is it a character-driven story? So, from what I understand, there's different types of stories, yeah. Would you just explain those? Okay, so I, I, I, there are many, there's probably like hundreds, to be perfectly honest, but I, and when I write and I talk about this stuff, I, I boil it down to four basic templates that I see commonly, okay? The one we talked about already is the Prosperity Gospel, and this one, the protagonist is seeking after something resembling a prosperous life, whether it's career success or material financial success, or maybe it's success in meeting the various benchmarks of our church culture: marriage, mission, family, children, whatever, okay? Nothing's wrong with any of those, but that's their goal. If that's the goal, what's the conflict of the story?

point right when we use the same words, but we mean different things. That's the recipe for cultural conflict, for social conflict, and discord. We start talking past each other when we have people of competing worldviews. We can sometimes have the same vocabulary, but we're talking about entirely different things. Okay, God wants us to be happy. Well, somebody who embraces the prosperity worldview, the expressive worldview, the therapeutic worldview, and the redemptive worldview are going to understand that to mean different things. Same words, different conclusions. Yeah, it makes me think of my own current life circumstance. Man, I think that I get tied into the comparison. It's really like the prosperity. Well, it's almost like, you know, I'm at this age, I'm at this stage of my life. How come this isn't happening? And that isn't even really what I want. Yeah, I mean, really what we deep down want, what we really want, that we, I think we believe that some of these other things will bring us.

Is that real connection with God? Yes, and none of those things will ever do that. They won't, they won't, they, they, they, they will not satisfy, right? No, do not spend your money on that which is of no worth, yeah, yeah. And I love that example that you gave with bread, like when you eat of this bread, you will never be hungry again because that is not going to fulfill you, yeah. You won't need that bread anymore. I love that. And one last thought I want to share with this is what we're always going to be interfacing, interacting with people with different worldviews. Some people are going to put personal authenticity at the highest priority. Some people are going to put gospel, uh, not gospel, they're going to put worldly success at their highest priority. Other people, self-fulfillment, their highest priority. You know what? We can coexist with people with different worldviews in an ecumenical spirit of mutual cooperation and friendship, right? And I think that we should, um, I think we can create a robust, healthy cultural pluralism there where people

wrong with looking for a place to belong. Belonging is wonderful; belonging is great. There's nothing wrong with looking for fulfillment, generally looking for esteem, and looking for love from others. But as we become like Christ, what we realize is that there is something that we want more than any of that, and that is reconciliation with God, becoming like our Savior. And sometimes that means forgoing, giving up, sacrificing, right? And the point, the emphasis I want to make here is that there's nothing wrong with desiring professional success, material comfort, children and grandchildren, self-fulfillment, self-expression, authenticity. Nothing wrong with any of those values; they're great. I want them; you want them, I presume. The question is, which of these various values rises to the top of the stack? In other words, for which of these values are you willing to sacrifice the others for? Do we say, I'm willing to keep my covenants with God only in so much as it doesn't prevent me

honestly because I think that that I I don't speak for God right well I mean I'm saying I think that there's examples of expression I mean he said to Moses this is behold this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. I think that the more we bring our values in harmony with God's values, the more we start to prize and privilege and prioritize the things that God Treasures most, the more we're going to start to see the world the way God sees the world. So what is that? And I think that that's why I mean when I say what is he. I think it's the like you said the immortality eternal life of man is overcoming the fall through Redemption through Christ right by becoming New Creation in Christ. That's what he wants for all of us. The he doesn't care. I mean we we all know this. He doesn't care about how rich we are, how many followers we have on YouTube, how many you know whether our books got

kind of a really rough question. It was, Why isn't the gospel working for me? and I really think the question comes down to worldviews or ultimately what we see as the purpose of the Gospel, what we see as the central promise of the Gospel. Wherever your heart is, there your treasure will be also, and what you see in life depends on what you value. Let me give an example. There is what I sometimes refer to as the Prosperity Gospel, where we define the good life in terms of meeting these certain benchmarks, like Do I serve a mission? Do I get married? Do I have kids? Do I have grandkids? Do I have church callings of escalating importance and visibility? And when all these things are our measuring stick for the good life, and we're living the gospel as faithfully as we know how, and they don't materialize, then we feel like the gospel has failed us or it doesn't work or is not working. Maybe we're broken, or maybe the gospel is broken. What are

have different value systems, and we can embrace our value systems. We can disagree with theirs, but we can get along, right? Where I think we need some more cultural weariness, some more vigilance, is when we start to syncretize the gospel with these other worldviews and come to replace the core purpose. When we start to believe that the purpose of the Gospel is to help us to be ourselves, and then we're like, Okay, well, why do serve me? It's to serve me. The purpose of the Gospel is to increase our worldly success. The purpose of the Gospel is to bring us self-fulfillment. That's when we start to create these syncretisms that subtly distort the gospel and its purposes, and then people end up getting hurt. They start walking away feeling falsely promised something that was never promised to begin with. And going back to that original question, Why is the gospel not working for me? The main thing that I'm understanding to take away firstly a lot of the friction when we

gospel teachings. Our Gospel practices with these various worldviews, and what happens is we come to believe that these various other purposes, these various other goals and treasures, are the promise of the Gospel. What do you mean? Like, for example, if I live the gospel, I will be fulfilled in all the ways that I want to be fulfilled. If I live the gospel, I could be authentically me in all the ways I want to be authentically me. If I live the gospel, I can meet all these benchmarks that I use to measure my prosperity and success. That we, what we do is we go to church, we supplant the purpose of the Gospel with these other worldviews. So, I go to church, I go to the temple, I keep the word of wisdom, therefore, I am somehow owed a comfortable lifestyle, financial security, good health, etc. and so on. But that, that's not the purpose of the Gospel. That never was because we're trying to syncretize.

thee so I can be reconciled with thee, and I'm going to add to him his words, but he may, you know, the next step of this, so that I can become like thee. That's the greatest treasure, and when we put that front and center, then the greatest obstacle becomes the fall, and the solution to the obstacle becomes Christ, and Christ becomes the center of our worldview. Christ is not the center of any of the other worldviews; we are the center of those worldviews. Expressive gospel, who's the center? Me. Prosperity Gospel, who's the center? Me. The therapeutic gospel, who's the center? Me. The Redemptive gospel, who's the center? Is Christ. And this has cascading implications for everything, right? How do we define identity? What is our identity in the expressive gospel? Our identity is all of our unique differences. In the Redemptive gospel, what is our identity? It rests in our covenants with God. We are children of God, children of the Covenant, Disciples of Christ with each other, right? It

from losing my job only in so much as it doesn't keep me from the stratosphere of professional success. I know people and I know of people who could have reached the stratosphere of professional success if they had been willing to budge on their convictions, and they didn't, and now they did. Their names are not as known as they could have been, but the point here is do we or do we say, I'm willing to keep the Comm, my covenants with God only so long as it doesn't require me to sacrifice fulfillment. They have to change, yeah, or it doesn't require me to give up something about myself that I treasure dearly, right? Or do we say, Hey, you know what, authenticity is great. I want to be myself only so long as it doesn't lead me to break my covenants. You know what, I want a perceptional success only so long as it doesn't take me away from God. You know what, I would love to have fulfillment only so long as

we end up embracing a version of The Gospel That Never Was. What the scriptures tell us, the gospel describes as the gospel, and that brings us back to the original question: what is our greatest treasure? What is the purpose of the greatest treasure? Yeah, what is it really? Yeah, and I honestly believe that the greatest treasure, as described in the SC Works of scripture, is reconciliation with God. To be the ability to stand before God with a clean conscience, being, having Christ's image stamped in our countenance, becoming like Christ in character and virtue. Another way to put it is reconciliation with God and transformation in God's image, becoming like Him. That is the greatest treasure. So, that the example I used earlier, where the person who was close to me said, Um, why is the gospel not working for me? What I told that individual was, The hardships you have faced have essentially interrupted all the other stories of your life, but the gospel story was not interrupted and never will be, because as you're living the gospel.

people trying to make me change, and I'm going to go off to where I can actually be where I want to be, who I want to be. Cars is actually the opposite. Cars is the opposite because he, yeah, that's like really what makes it good. This is, this is, he doesn't get the cup. He actually, this is what flips on his head. This is actually a perfect, a perfect foil because in Cars, do you know what he does? He is a self-righteous, arrogant jerk. He joins the new community, takes on a new cause, new obligations, new friends, and then changes fundamentally of the person. He's not being true to himself. He's becoming a new self, right? Cars is actually a perfect illustration of the Gospel worldview where the central desire of the protagonist is, say, in the gospel version, to become reconciled with God. What stands in the way is sin and rebellion, and the story unfolds as we become new creatures in Christ. We give up our sins and take on

loving me. If I embrace the Prosperity Gospel, then struggling to hold down a job, failing to get elected, not getting my book published. I'm going to say, God, why don't you love me? If I embrace the therapeutic gospel, then anytime I don't, anytime I'm feeling lonely, anytime I'm feeling like less fulfilled in my career or less fulfilled in church, I'm going to feel less loved, right? But if my greatest treasure is reconciling with God, then when I... well, then what is love going to look like but invitations to keep my covenants, the mercy and grace of the Savior, and helping me overcome sin, right? Invitations to give up sin can be the highest expression of love if reconciling with God is our greatest treasure. So, what love looks like to us, how we see love, depends on our worldview, on the narrative story that we're using to make sense of our lives. It's because it's going to depend on what we see as our greatest treasure. Imagine a treasure hunter and an archaeologist who

think in our lives that the gospel isn't working for me. We need to maybe consider how what is the lens that we have, what is the perspective, what is the view that we have of the Gospel. Is there anything else you want to add? I would just say there like there have been times in my past where my worldview was out of harmony with the gospel worldview, where reconciliation with God and moral transformation were not my greatest treasures. And it takes a lot of humility to pray and say, Heavenly Father, I'm not seeing things the way President Nelson is seeing things, the way the scriptures seem to be telling me. I'm just, it's just not making sense to me, right? We all have this, we talk about faith crisis, right? Many people have this faith crisis, we like, I'm just not seeing what they're seeing, and we're looking at the same things but we're seeing something different. Help me to see with new eyes, help me to value something different so that I can see through the eyes that the prophet has seen these.

a new cause, new commitments, new obligations, and join a new community of saints and enjoy the fruits and gifts of the spirit, um, and become new creatures. And I think cars is actually a great secular example of that story. Interesting. So the first two are um Prosperity, the Prosperity Gospel, where it's all about, you know, worldly success, professional success, material success. If I'm hitting the wall of like, I'm not where I thought I should be. I think that one happens a lot around here. It's like there's so much comparison, even online. He just like everybody's house. I got they have a house. I don't have a house, you know. Yeah. And then what would the other one was so the another one would be the expressive gospel, which is where it's all about being myself. It's all about asserting myself over and against the Norms of the community. The villain of the story is always the the the the parent, teacher, community leader who has norms and expectations, etc. There's a third one that we can talk about and

was rejected, acquainted with grief. He lived a hard life, a life of deprivation, at times a lonely life, at times right. And I think God is trying to, His aim is to make us into the kind of people who eventually, when we look upon that life, say, Wow, I want that more than I want everything else. And I want to emphasize here, I don't, I absolutely believe that the celestial world is a world of happiness, of course happiness that we can't even imagine. It's just not going to look anything like what the world has on offer. But go back to the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. What was the lie that Satan said, that he told that you could have all of this without the sorrow? Yes, without the pain, right, which is intertwined with all these narratives, right. And so this goes back again to the original question, Why is the gospel not working for me? Well, we ask those questions because we don't yet understand the gospel and what it is for, and that requires us to readjust our

making and keeping covenants with God in the name of Jesus Christ. But what is sin in this perspective? Yeah, for what it... anything that separates us from God is sin, the separation, right? Yeah. And what he really wants is reunion. He wants to be with us. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. And so going back to what you were saying, we worship the Savior who would describe, like you're saying, as a man of griefs, acquainted with griefs, a man who was despised and rejected of men, right? He said, I... you know, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. I don't remember the exact wording of the scripture, right? Yeah. He was a man who was not fulfilled in any of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He didn't have esteem or belonging or... or um, the love of men. He had none of those things, and yet he was morally perfect, and it is... he is our moral exemplar. And what I believe is that as we become more like him, there's nothing

influences what we think of as H. How we define happiness itself. How we define love. We already talked about that, right? What is love? Is love like celebrating us? Is love taking away our pains? Or is love helping us reconcile with God? Yeah, when Maron, I, when he, when he shall appear, we shall be like him. Yeah, for we shall see him as he is. And in that same chapter, it's about charity. Charity, it's about the pure love of Christ. The pure love of Christ. Yeah, yeah, it seeketh not its own. Mhm, authenticity, right? Yeah, so we talk about authenticity. The word of s means something different depending on what worldview. If you embrace the expressive gospel, the authenticity means being myself, expressing myself, not being a non-conformist, right? If we embrace the redemptive gospel, what does authen, what does authenticity mean? It means being the real deal, being a genuine artifact, not being a, not hypocritically keeping our covenants, but genuinely and earnestly keeping our covenants. Yeah, same word, different meaning. And this gets to the

We often have very little idea what various worldviews are shaping our faith, our questions, our doubts, our convictions. These worldviews invariably frame the questions that we ask. Maybe we're broken, or maybe the gospel is broken. Struggling to hold down a job, not getting my book published anytime, I'm feeling lonely. Why isn't the gospel working for me? What is the story that we're telling about our lives? Self-fulfillment, self-expression, authenticity. These stories are filled in everywhere you look and turn. We define the good life in terms of meeting these certain benchmarks. If I'm hitting the wall, I'm not where I thought I should be. It's all about avoiding emotional pain and discomfort. There's so much comparison. They have a house, I don't have a house, and that isn't even really what I want. Lots of people who live the gospel don't end up getting married, don't end up having children, don't end up having grandchildren, don't end up serving missions. What we realize is that there is something that we want more.

vocation, the job, the interest, the passions, the lifestyle that they want to pursue, and then at the conflict of the story is any like the villain of the story is any Norm, any Norms or expectations that people have of them, anyone who reinforces those Norms or reinforces those expectations, and the resolution of the story is always the same. They break free of those molds, they become true to themselves, and eventually the community or their family accepts them for who they really are. They don't really have to change. Yeah, I can list off a million movies like this: How to Train Your Dragon, Frozen, um, um, true. Can you name some? Oh my gosh, um, Meet the Robinsons, uh, the um, I was going to say, I was going to say uh, Frozen, Tangled, Tangled, Footloose, yeah um, you can go on, on October, Scott um, um, what was, there was a recent one on Netflix, it was, you're saying the main, the main, the main storyline is I'm this way and I don't want to change and

as you're attending church, as you're, you know, keeping the commas and keeping your covenants, you are becoming a more Christ-like person each and every day, each and every year. The gospel is working for you because the promise, the all the things that you haven't yet been able to do because of the sickness that you're facing, that was never the promise of the Gospel. The promise of the Gospel was that you can become redeemed and remade in Christ's Image. And so maybe you need that trial in order for that to happen. And that's why he says the word suffer means to allow, yes, right, yes. He was a man of God, he was a man, um, a Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, right? I'm going to come back to that verse in a second, but if we go back to the narrative, like what's the narrative template of the Gospel? Well, what's the protagonist looking for? He wants to be reconciled with God. What stands in the way? Sin. What? How does he overcome sin? By

Youth. I go to the temple. I serve a mission. Then I marry, and then I have children. I have grandchildren, and that's the story, right? But what is that story like? Is that a like? I differentiate between what I refer to as plot-centered stories or character-centered stories, okay? So, plot story, the purpose of like the main type of story that they tell themselves, right? Yeah. And then this gets down to what I said before, a worldview. You could describe it as a narrative template. What is the story that we're telling about our lives? The story in which we're inserting ourselves as the protagonist of the story, right? Okay. If the story is, Well, serve a mission, marry, have children, have grandchildren, well, guess what? That's a great story. It's a fun story. Is it the gospel story? H. Because guess what? Lots of people who live the gospel don't end up getting married, don't end up having children, don't end up having grandchildren, don't end up serving missions, and they can still live the

Why These 3 Worldviews Are Leading People Away from God and Faith | Jeffery Thayne, Latter-day Saint

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