Helping people question a belief without making them defend it

Why this is on a design portfolio

This isn't a religious project. It's an emotional design project.

The problem: how do you help someone question something they've built their identity around? Not convince them they're wrong. Not argue with them. Help them sit with dissonance long enough to ask their own questions.

That's a design problem. The methodology (how you sequence information, manage emotional temperature, create space for dissonance without triggering defensive shutdown) transfers to any product where users have to change how they think, not just what they click.

The platform

The website (missedinsunday.com) and social media presence distilled complex religious doctrine into sourced, sharable content. Every piece followed the same format: a direct quote from an official church source, properly cited, designed as a sharable card. The tagline I kept coming back to was simple: "How can you break through a belief?"

The content design was the product. Each card was a self-contained unit of cognitive dissonance. A quote from a church leader, fully sourced, presented without editorial commentary. The design of the card itself did the work. The source citation was prominent, not buried. The visual tone was serious and respectful, not mocking. The red asterisk in the logo was the only signal that this wasn't an official church resource.

The cards covered race, gender, polygamy, sexuality, obedience, discipline, and personal worth. Every one sourced from official publications, general conference talks, or canonized texts. The specificity was the entire strategy. Vague criticism bounces off. Sourced internal contradictions don't.

The methodology

Religious belief is a load-bearing structure. It holds up identity, community, family, moral framework, afterlife expectations, daily routine. You can't just pull it out. The person has to build something else before they can let go, and the brain knows this. That's why evidence alone doesn't work. The brain rejects evidence that threatens a load-bearing belief faster than it can read it.

Because I came from inside this culture, I knew the first barrier wasn't ignorance. It was the fear that looking too closely was itself a moral failure. The design had to make that fear less expensive to override.

Step 1: Enter through the existing framework

Meet the audience inside their own worldview, not against it. Every piece of content started by referencing the same texts, the same language, the same values. The person needed to feel understood before they could feel questioned.

Step 2: Introduce contradictions the framework can't resolve

Surface internal inconsistencies, not external critiques. I sourced specific, concrete contradictions from within the audience's own tradition. A contradiction from their own scripture can't be waved off as outsider ignorance the way an outside critique always can.

Step 3: Create space, not conclusions

Leave the dissonance unresolved. The content presented the contradiction and stopped. No mocking, no forced conversion, no closing argument. The design held the silence around the contradiction long enough for the person to find their own answer.

The emotional design layer

Every visual decision had an emotional intent.

Typography. Warm and bookish, not clinical. The type signaled we're thinking together, not I'm proving you wrong.

Color. Dark, archival, restrained. The red accent only marked the contradictory phrase inside the quote. The palette read as primary source material, not attack ad.

Card format. Built for sharing, not reading. Standalone image, citation legible at social-media resolution, source verifiable in under 30 seconds.

Pacing. Slow release. No firehose. Each piece had time to breathe and be discussed before the next one arrived.

Defensibility. The first defense was always going to be "that's anti-Mormon distortion." The citation wasn't supporting metadata. It was the path from "that can't be true" to "I can check this." That path was the whole game.

Anatomy of a card

Evidence architecture built for trust.

Every element earned its place against a specific defensive response. The system had to make dismissal harder than verification.

1

1. 01
   Source authority

   Anchors the claim inside an official source. Reduces the first defense before it can fire.

2. 02
   Background treatment

   Historical portrait at low opacity. Tonal gravitas without competing with the quote.

3. 03
   Primary quote field

   Large, high-contrast type for social-media legibility. The quote is the artifact.

4. 04
   Contradiction marker

   A single red underline isolates the tension. The only chromatic note on the card.

5. 05
   Citation block

   Publication, year, page. The path from "that can't be true" to "I can check this."

6. 06
   Brand signature

   Quiet ownership across a high-volume system. The only marker this isn't official material.

How people used it

Beyond the platform

The project moved beyond social media. I presented at the 2018 Sunstone Symposium, which led to a feature article in Sunstone Magazine — "The Memeing of Mormonism" — and the methodology got attention not as advocacy but as a case study in design and persuasion.

I also wrote and published the book.

After four years inside the work, I handed the platform to a team willing to carry the methodology forward. It still runs at missedinsunday.com.

Volume One

Moral Authority

An Examination of LDS Doctrine — Stuff You Missed In Sunday School

The same methodology in long form. Sourced examination of the church's historical positions on race, gender, and polygamy, drawn from their own documented record.

View on Amazon→

The transfer

The methodology I built here shows up in everything I design now. Not the religious content. The emotional architecture.

It shows up in how I approach any product where the user resists the thing that would help them: onboarding that asks for vulnerability, health products that surface difficult truths, financial tools that make avoidance visible, AI workflows that challenge existing habits, community products where trust has to be earned before behavior can change. Hiki's consent-first onboarding for neurodivergent users runs on the same principle — enter through the user's existing framework, then introduce the different model.

Meet them where they are. Introduce dissonance from within their own framework. Create space for them to find their own conclusion. Don't close too fast.

Every product I design now has a version of that person in it: the one who resists the thing that would help them. This is where I learned to design for them instead of around them.