A few years ago, John Dehlin started the Mormon Stories podcast (http://mormonstories.org/). A couple months ago, he posted a lengthy podcast in which he discussed his struggles over the years with the church and explained his recent return to activity.
Here are some excerpts:
Would you say that when you’re using the word decline, you’re thinking in terms of intellectual connection to the doctrine of church, or are you actually thinking in terms of spirituality? I mean is there a connection between the two for you? [1-20:04]
That’s one of the main things I’ve learned, but I was mostly engaging purely intellectually. I had disconnected emotionally in many ways. . . and spiritually. I had just said, what matters is figuring out, in my brain, and I just need to know whether it’s true of false, whether it’s a fraud, or whether the church is what it claims to be. And emotions and the spirit need to be put on hold until I can think it through. And that didn’t turn out good for me, there were all sorts of problems with that, but that’s what I was doing. And so, if I’d neglect the spirit, or neglect people, or relationships, or my own inner work or process, none of that mattered. And so, that kind of, for me, looking back, made it in many ways a flawed endeavor, in terms of how I handled it.
So, you weren’t aware of that at the time?
No.
That is all introspective reflecting now. . .
I felt like God was inspiring me to do this. . . and I can’t even say that he wasn’t. I felt led to do this, I felt compelled to do this. And it was emotionally rewarding. The other part of that ring that I reflect on when I think about Frodo’s ring is how gratifying it was to have all these people tell me I was important, to have all these people tell me I was helping them, to have all these people say, you saved my marriage, you saved my life, thank you so much, that becomes something for your ego, it becomes. . . it’s feeding, it makes you feel powerful, it makes you feel needed, it makes you feel important. And so, in ways, it feeds you emotionally and even spiritually, but I hadn’t done the soul work to be in a really solid emotional place to handle that well. I wasn’t like Frodo, I wasn’t humble and meek and peaceful. I was disturbed inside. And so I was carrying the ring as a really traumatized, inadequate, prideful, egotistical person.
. . . . .
So let me ask about. . . did anyone ever accuse you of not being spiritually in tune? Did anyone ever come to you and say, wow, you know, you seem to be prideful, or you seem to be. . . you know. . . the sins that are associated with questioning, were you accused of that? Or did you. . escape that? [1-25:32]
Well, the pride thing is something I look back on now. At the time I never felt prideful. I felt like I was being humble, like I was just doing God’s will, you know, helping people. So I guess I have to admit that the looking back. . . the pride thing and the lack of spiritual thing, is something that I’m kind of reading back into my history a bit. I think that for sure, even before the podcast started, once I became enveloped by these difficult questions Margie always felt like there was kind of a cloud over me, like the light in my eyes had kind of gone out, and like I was always in my head, and always stewing. . . And even though I can pull out congeniality and warmness and friendliness, as, like a cloak I put on, I’ve been in a dark place in my soul for probably 20 years. But Margie saw it, and the kids saw it. . . I tried to hide it. But it definitely was there in my family, and my siblings, my brother and sisters, they saw it, my mom and dad saw it, so yeah, family saw it, and every time they told me I ignored it, I just said, this is important, this is what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m helping people, there are all these people in need. It was like I just had plugs in my ears, because I knew this was what I needed to do, and all these people suffering, I gotta carry that ring.
. . . . .
[1-30:30]
This was during the time I was working at MIT, and my faith started to unravel completely. And I do remember a day where I was sitting in my hotel room, and I just said to myself, I’m not sure there is a God, I’m not sure there is anyone watching me, I’m not sure that there’s any absolute standard for morality, I’m not sure there’s an afterlife, and if that’s the case, I wonder, I started questioning what was right and wrong, I started questioning to have gotten married when I did, I started questioning my decision to marry Margie. It was weird how all these dominos just fell. It was just like, JS fell, and then Jesus, and then God, and then it went straight to marriage, and yeah, there was a time for several. . . probably couple years. . . where I felt like there probably wasn’t a God, and that probably led up through my interview with John and Zilph (sp?) Larson, probably as recent as last year. That was pretty dark times.
. . . . .
Let me. . . I want to go back and ask a few questions about the situation from your perspective being someone who had experienced criticism, I’m sure, from both sides. Do you feel in terms of the amount of scrutiny and criticism that you received during the situation with the Maxwell Institute and Dan Peterson that it got. . .it reached its worst level, were you prepared for it, or had you already kind of weathered the storm of the debate? [2-12:10]
By the time of all this, I was really spiritually sick. I was trying to save the world with these conferences and these communities. I was emotionally detached from myself, I was emotionally detached from my wife and kids. I was playing the role. I was doing my duty as a husband and a father, but I was checked out emotionally, and I was checked out spiritually. I was totally spiritually malnourished and neglecting that side of me, and I was angry. It’s like I’d put the ring on and I was standing in full fury ready to take down anybody who opposed me. So I was simultaneously sick inside, but like full of righteous indignation, and it was. . .for my soul. . .a sickening sad place to be. And as I look back, I realize that one of the reasons I’d been so angry at the apologist is because I’d been doing so much of what I’d accused them of doing. That I’d been careless, that I’d given bad answer, that I’ve been disrespectful, that I’ve attacked and disrespected belief. . . and. . . you know. . . it was like a mirror, they were a mirror of me, just on different sides of the pole. I hadn’t spent enough time really with thoughtful believers, I’d never showed enough respect to credible belief. You’re only angry sometimes when you see in others your own deficiencies that you hate about yourself. I’m guilty of that. I’m as much of a demagogue. . . I’ve been as much of a demagogue as Daniel Peterson or Lou Midgly (?), in my own way, with the veneer of sincerity and with objectivity. . . and. . . at the time I felt like I was sincere, but I feel like in the soul I wasn’t in a healthy place, so I wasn’t operating from a healthy centered place, I was operating from a broken angry place.
Okay, so now we really to dive into that if you don’t mind. One of the questions as you were speaking earlier, and it goes back to that question of looking the existence of God in the face, and really wondering if there is a God. . . Did you maintain any practice of spiritual development during that time? Were you in a place of saying prayers, did you look for or experience things from a spiritual perspective? How was that side of your living going? [2-14:47]
I’d stopped going to church for the most part. I’d stopped paying tithing. I’d stopped. . . didn’t read the scriptures. Stopped praying. Stopped going to the temple. And I was evening questioning basic morality and whether I wanted to stay married and whether I wanted to stay committed to my family. I was as estranged and ostracized spiritually, morally, as I could be. I still kept most of the commandments. . . but, no, I was completely spiritually neglectful and malnourished and emotionally disconnected from everybody.
Even from the perspective of spiritual practices outside of Mormonism? So it wasn’t like you were trying to replace that with meditation or anything like that? [2-16:06]
In our family, there are phases, but when we went inactive for the first time, we were very committed to keeping all the best of Mormonism. . .
. . . . .
We worked really hard to supplement our spiritually.
But this is one of the conclusions that I came do, when you’re on your own, and especially when you haven’t done the work, the soul work, emotionally and spiritually yourself, it’s hard to maintain that for the family.
So, yeah, I would say I never prayed, or never picked up the scriptures, or never did spiritual things, but I started trying to do that, but because I was around so many people in pain, always on a conquest, always so busy, remember I’m getting my Ph.D., working full-time, and holding international conferences. . . .
I wasn’t spiritually or emotionally in tuned, and I was running from myself. And the way I would run from myself is to work extra hard, believe that I was doing this important mission, saving the world, helping everyone else, but from a broken place where inside I was totally decaying, spiritually and emotionally.
Okay, I want to ask the question then, you mentioned how. . . the. . . you had started doing all these conference. . . maybe you were. . . were you alluding to this idea that you were trying to use these conference as a way to establish some sort of spiritual community again, how did the Mormon conferences. . . okay? [2-18:03]
You know, the angel, the devil on my shoulder would say burn in all down, but the angel said it’s not ethical to deconstruct everyone’s belief and then not leave them with anything to replace it. . . and that’s what exposure to this stuff does. I don’t take responsibility that people struggle in their faith after listening to Mormon Stories, because I didn’t tell the First Vision in nine different ways, that was Joseph, I didn’t translate with a stone in a hat, or marry 14-year-olds, or incorporate Masonic things into the temple, like that’s just fact. . . I didn’t establish the DNA of the Native Americans, or you know, neglect to put pre-Columbian horses on America, I didn’t do any of that, that’s just what I learned. I never wanted to intentionally lead people astray, but I’m aware that’s what happens when you learn this stuff, because that’s what I struggled with, right? The angel on my shoulder said, no, you want humanity to advance, you don’t want people to just throw their morality away. I started seeing people. . . and I was doing it. . . you know.
There’s this weird thing that happens when you lose your faith in Mormonism. You immediately start questioning your morality. Wow, I never had sex before I married. I’ve only had sex with one person. I don’t know anything. What is sex is way better with other people, or in other ways. What am I missing? Is alcohol cool? I’ve still never tried alcohol, but I was like, what if that’s really fun and interesting? Like, and I started seeing there’s this whole world out there that I haven’t experienced. . . and maybe. . . I wouldn’t have married Margie if I. . . you know. . .if I had to do it all over again. Maybe my family would be better off if Margie and I were split, because, you know, we’d be getting along better. . . Why weren’t we getting along? Because I was totally emotionally disconnected. But you start thinking these things. You start wondering, wow, these other women are attractive, or experimenting sexually, and you start thinking about this world, and you see these people. . . sort of. . . it remind me of Lehi’s dream and the Great and Spacious Building, and you start seeing all this stuff, and it’s enticing and it looks fun. But the good Mormon boy in me, and the angel on my shoulder would always say, that’s dangerous, that’s scary, you don’t want to go there, and you don’t want to lead people there. And that’s what it felt like was happening. All these people were just checking out of the church, and then they were dropping their spouse, and they were sleeping around and drinking and doing drugs and doing all this scary stuff and I just felt irresponsible. I felt like that was irresponsible. So I started these communities thinking I’m not trying to create a religious, because there’s no theology or doctrine here, and I don’t want to be a prophet-that was a broken model in my mind-but somebody’s got to do. Somebody has to bring these people together to support each other. So the idea behind the conferences and communities was let’s let people in Houston who are in struggling support each other. Let’s let people in London support each other. And let’s create these conferences where it’s inspirational, it’s tell your story, and it’s let’s sing hymns and say prayers, and still be inspirational, and if it’s secular, let’s have it be spiritual and moral at the same time. And I was just trying to experiment and model sort-of post-literalistic secular spiritually and community, right? Because why did these people no longer deserves to get casseroles when they have cancer, or their wife’s pregnant, just because they learned these things about the church that made them not be able to participate. It felt unfair that they automatically got unplugged from that social resource. So I’d say, let’s create that social resource in 90 cities across the world. Let’s bring general conferences to them where they can feel inspired and uplifted and begin to construct for themselves a positive, moral, even spiritual secular post-Mormonism. That was the goal behind it.
So, I need to ask a few questions about your own thought process. I assume because you have the devil and the angle on your shoulder the whole time, that even as you are kind of exploring the ideas of letting go. . . the morals you’ve always held onto. . . the angel is trying to pull you back, you know, I mean, that must have created quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. Did you discuss that with Margie, did you talk about that with your wife? Was it all internal? Was she aware of that struggle that was going on? [2-23:05]
I kind of just threw down the gauntlet with Margie. . .
. . . . .
[2-35:20]
In some of these communities, they’d hold parties and they’d smoke weed. . .and they. . . you know. . . wives would make out. I wasn’t at these events, I was at a couple, but I never watched people doing sexual things. . . but I would hear about a lot of behaviors that felt dangerous. . . I don’t judge that, like I don’t look at those people as bad, and I don’t enforce my morality on others, and I’m not morally perfect at all, but, like, I just sat and said, I’m glad people are getting together, and I’m they’re having a good spiritual experience, but in many instances I worry that they’ve traded down. That yeah, there are problems with the church, but there are a lot of problems with trying to have an open marriage. You know. To be honest, I would probably pick the problems of being in church versus the problems of trying to navigating an open marriage, or being addicted to drugs, or committing adultery. . .It just seems like that naturally was the outgrowth of so many of these communities. I don’t want to color them as these debaucherous, immoral. . . because that wouldn’t be fair, beautiful moral healthy friendships. . . I mean Micah (sp?) was a part of the communities in Phoenix, and bad things happened in Phoenix, but beautiful things happened in Phoenix, and bad things happened in Boise, and good things happened in Boise, same with Denver, Colorado Springs. . . good things have happened, but I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the bad. And at the end, so much of the discourse in these Facebook communities that I created, they just became post-Mormon angry groups, because it’s really hard to moderate respectful discourse in one forum, but in ninety forums, where people are meeting face-to-face, it’s impossible.
So the who enterprise of Mormon Stories which was we support you if you believe, we support you if you want to stay, but we support you if you want to go. . . all the communities became, in effect, post-Mormon communities. And I felt like, I don’t want to just be another post-Mormon or ex-Mormon community, we don’t need that, there’s plenty of that. And I certainly don’t want to be that. And as much as I had that devil on my shoulder that was angry, I didn’t want to screw with people’s lives, and wreck people’s live, and I felt like it was more power and influence that I had been mature enough to steward. Does that make sense?
Because the come from is so different for me, I didn’t experience any of the negative. You know, hearing you say it, on the one hand, I’m frustrated because that is such a stereotype that is kind of placed on people, if you leave the church that means that down the road. . . that these bad things are going to happen, you’re going to start sinning. . . On the one hand, I feel frustrated because that hasn’t been my own personal experience, that hasn’t happened for my husband and I, but we’ve gotten that judgment. But on the other hand, we have to acknowledge, that does happen, that does happen. So, it’s just interesting. . . yeah. . . I guess it’s hard to look it in the face. [2-37:52]
Yeah, because I’ve gone back and forth, because I was almost there, I was moving in that direction. I’ll go on the record. Can you leave the church and be moral? Absolutely. Can you leave the church and be happy? Absolutely. Does leaving the church mean that you become an adulterous, you know, drug-using, immoral person? No, not necessarily. Does all that happen in the church? Yes, in different places. I don’t mean to stereotype this. I don’t even mean to say that it’s bad. I’m very sure at a lot of these people were responsible, they went through things, they grew from it, and they ended up in happier places. So, I do not say all this out of a way to stereotype or condemn or judge, and I don’t.
But, all this stuff was happening in association with what I was trying do. . . and it felt, like I said, more serious than I was competent and spiritually and emotionally mature to steward and shepherd. I was not, I was not the soul that could lead a movement responsible enough to feel good about all the implications of what I was doing. I just wasn’t a good enough man to be able to do that.
So it sounds like you hit rock bottom? [2-40:30]
Yeah, totally. Yeah, but February March of 2012, I hit rock bottom.
. . . . .
[2-43:45]
The crazy. . . the more awful thing was in my conversations with the SP, I found out that the bishop, having never spoken with me, had initiated an investigation on me where he appointed two members of the ward to start following my things on Facebook, writing down what I write, trying to join some of the private forums I’m a member, and gather evidence to decide whether or not I could still stay a member. My EQP was one of the two people asked. He’d always been someone that I really looked up to and admired, to find out a couple months later that he’d been secretly investigating me without ever telling me was just this awful terrible feeling. So I was on edge and ready to go to war and make it really public, as if anyone really would care, but in my ego, I thought, this will be big. . .
. . . . .
[2-50:12]
That’s the amazing thing. I went into this discussions with my SP thinking I’d go out in a blaze of glory, burning everything down as I went. But he started listening to the podcast, he started. . . he said, “what books do you want me to read, what websites do you want me to go to, tell me all your issues, and let’s talk about them.” So that’s what it was for months and months and months. It was just I want to learn everything that I can learn, and I want to understand as much as you want to tell me, this is your time, and you know. . . early on, I just said, “You guys talk about leaving the 99 to go after the 1, the lost sheep, but you don’t live it.” I basically said to him, “you’ve had these concerns for a while, you’ve never called me in here, you’ve never tried to understand where I come from, I represent a lot of people that are in pain, you haven’t done any work to try. . . my bishop even less.” I’d gotten a new bishop, and he was kind of the same way, he was like “I don’t want to talk about it.” And so, I’m like, you guys are hypocrites, and he took it to heart, and he’s like, okay, I’ll meet with you every week, I’ll meet with you as much as you want, you tell me. And so that’s what we started doing. At first, it was me recording every conversation, eager to some day expose him, catch him in the contradictions, you know, I was in really agitated place. But, over time, he was just loving, and empathetic, and encouraging, and supportive, and. . .
Did he ever show signs of being disturbed by the things you were telling him to read, or the podcast, or did he express any kind of. . .
He expressed empathy. And he would say, okay, I can see why polyandry bothers you or it bothers other people, I can see why DNA evidence is a problem for many. . . Over time, he did the work, he did the emotional work to say, “I can understand your point of view.” I don’t think. . . He started reading RSR, I think he’s still reading it. I don’t think he ever got to the place. . . or at least he never let on, that he ever got to the place where he was doubting, or questioning, or disturbed for his testimony. But I didn’t need that. What I needed was him to say, okay, I know all the issues, I’ve read it, I get it, and they are legitimate, but. . . you’re still welcome here, and I’ll do everything I can to be a positive force in your life, and within the stake, try to help other people as well. That’s kind of what I needed.
But did you, at the same time, feel that maybe he wouldn’t be strong enough either? Did you ever go into it with this idea of, if he reads this stuff, and if he listens to my podcast, he’ll have to question too?
What I thought was going to happen was I would say all these things that bother me, and he’d get angry with me, and he’d lose his patience and hold a court. That was the outcome that I thought. . . I didn’t see him changing. What happened was a little bit surprising. I lost interest in raising problems with him. And he said, can I just start teaching you the equivalent to the missionary discussions of the plan of salvation. Like, do you mind if I. . . now I’ve listened to you, can you listen to me for a while. And so. . . he started with, like, God. He would teach me about his views on God for an hour.
How many months after the. . . you know. . . the sit downs began, did he say that? Was it a few weeks in?
No, it was a few months. He let me just talk and complain and express issues. . .
. . . . .
So I would come to the meeting and I would say let’s talk about this or that problem. And then most of the time, he would try and give explanations, and never were the explanations intellectually satisfactory to me. What I was moved by, and what started changing with him and then with Margie at home and the kids, was his love, and his spirit, and his emotions. He would cry. He’s cried probably every interview we’ve been in, and not in a —- manipulative, unstable-type crying, this is a man who has been transformed by his understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and wants to do good, and love people. So when he cries, it’s because he wants me to be happy, and he wants my family. . . doesn’t want to see my family have so much pain. And he doesn’t want to see someone. . . you know. . . leave the fold. And so his crying and his emotions were sincere, but most importantly, I started losing interest in having intellectual discussions, because he wasn’t moving me intellectually, but he was moving me spiritually, and he was moving me emotionally, and he was displaying a level of love that I hadn’t been expressing for years. He had been transformed by his understanding of the gospel, and it was apparent. I felt the spirit. I felt his love, his patience, and commitment. He showed me that he was a man of character, and integrity, and commitment, and compassion. The conversations changes, where he would want to teach me, but even the doctrine that he taught me wasn’t super interesting to me, but I just kept feeling like I’d made a friend. I felt like this guy loved me, and I wanted to respect what he was trying to do for me, and maybe through this dialogue he’ll be able to help a lot of other people. . .
But then. . . then. . . and this is most surprising at all, I found myself confessing to him. . . sins, you know. . . ways that I had fallen off the tracks, ways that I felt spiritually in decay. The prideful me would have never ever allowed myself to put myself in a position where anyone could judge me, or that they even had a right to know about my private life. But what I found myself doing is trusting him emotionally and spiritually that he would keep confidences, and I started using him like someone would use their bishop to confess and get spiritual guidance and support. And that was a real surprise for me. But I did. I confessed my sins to my SP, and he was really sweet and supportive and nurturing. We’re meeting this Sunday, like the meetings continue.
[3-2:25]
I can’t offer you. . . I will never be able to say to you probably, “I know that God lives.” I will probably never be able to say to you that I know that Jesus died and was resurrected. If that’s a requirement for me to enter back into full fellowship, I could just tell you what you want to hear, but I’m not going to do that, and I don’t think you want me to do that, and I don’t think either of us grow if I just tell you what you want to hear. But here’s what I can offer, you know. . . I have a testimony of love, and of service, and of compassion, and of kindness, and of forgiveness, and of faith, and of repentance. . . and. . . I have a testimony of spirituality, and of the importance of being a good husband and a good father. I rarely get emotional, but at that moment I think I started crying. I said, “That’s what I’ll lay at your alter. If that’s enough for you to want me, for the church to have me, that’s what I’ll lay at the alter, if that’s good enough, then I think I can be a part of this, but if that’s not good enough, then I’m sorry, that’s the best I’ll probably be able to do for the foreseeable future.” He immediately turned to these scriptures in the Book of Mormon and in 1st Corinthians where Christ just says that if ye have not charity ye have nothing. . .and ye can speak with the tongue of angles and prophesy. . . and that was like, I. . . he was able to pull those scriptures out and say it to me, and affirm me, and then he started crying, and he started saying, “that’s absolutely a beautiful offering, and we would be honored to have that and we want you here, and we would be so sad to see you go, and there’s nothing I want more. . .” And tears are streaming down his face, and I’m emotional, and I’m so inspired that then I’m going home, sharing those scriptures with my children and with my clients, incorporating some of those scriptures with some of the LDS clients in my therapy, incorporating those scriptures in, mentioning them in my podcast.
I don’t say that. . . I probably read the scriptures a little bit, but I’m not like read every day or even read every week. I’m kind of looking at. . . My whole view on spirituality has changed. There are times when I pray, but the formal prayers are not super central right now to my spirituality because talking to God as if he’s a bearded man or anthropomorphic or whatever, that’s all still an obstacle for me, because I don’t know what God is, and I don’t know if there’s really anyone listening in some literal sense. . . I just don’t know. But what’s been a change for me is, number one, recognizing that for twenty years I looked at the world through one lens, and that’s the intellectual lens, and everything was about making it work intellectually. Not only was I neglecting the emotional, spiritual and familial aspects of my life, I was almost running from myself, and running from the best opportunities I had for true emotional and spiritual connection.
Margie’s been really patient with me. For many years, she’s was always. . . got the second helpings of what I have to offer as I was saving the world. She would reach out to me and say, “Can we connect? Can we talk? Can we. . . will you listen to this thought I had or this story.” And I would like, in my mind, all right you have five minutes, and then my eyes would glaze over, and I’d start getting tired, and I’d do my best to like. . . move on. The hardest thing is to look back and realize that Margie is this incredibly wise, beautiful, sensitive, spiritual, good soul who for seventeen years has been trying to really connect with me emotionally, and what I’ve been doing is doing everything I could to avoid that sincere true emotional connection. I’d been sabotaging the possibility of that-not intentionally-there was just so much denial. But I was so prideful and so caught up in saving the world that I was missing that. And it wasn’t just her, it was with my children. Over the past couple years, one of the reasons I wanted to leave the family was because I felt like my kids were fighting a lot, and there wasn’t a lot of harmony in the home. I wasn’t connecting with my kids and I kinda blamed Margie that she was always controlling or whatever. But the truth is, I was not emotionally available to my children. I was physically available to my children. I was at their musical performances and I would make them breakfast, and I’d be there for dinner, and would kiss them goodnight, and I’d help them with their homework. But when they’d, like, come into my office and want to talk. . . well, I was editing an episode. And when I could have come home to really connect with them early. . . well, I had to have that one phone conversation with that person in Boston who’s struggling. So one of the most beautiful gifts that’s come out of all of this is that I put all that stuff on as much hold as I could. I stopped the conferences. I stopped the communities. And I started connecting and investing emotional in my wife and my children. I thought I was, but I wasn’t.
We talked a bit about people leaving the church and then sometimes falling into dangerous things or getting divorced. I want to say two things on the record. Number one is I absolutely believe that some divorces need to happen, and some people their lives improve when the divorce happens, and some families get happier when a divorce happens, and some people become more moral when they leave the church, or more ethical, or more happy. I want to make sure it’s explicit that I validate that path, completely. That that is all possible and many people do it.
I also want to validate this. I know many Mormons who get to the place when their faith unravels, they start questioning their love for their spouse, they start questioning the importance of keeping the family together, and most importantly, they start. . . they might find another women that they think might be their soul mate, or they start looking at a lifestyle outside, where they say I wouldn’t have married this person, I wouldn’t have made these choices, and all this other stuff now looks like it was what I was called to do. This person might be my soul mate, or this life will be the true authentic life, and it can feel very real and compelling and enticing. And it can feel like it was what you were meant to do, to cast off the shackles of all these bad decisions that you made in association with the church, and then go live this true authentic soul-mate life, possibly with somebody else. And what I just wanted to also go on the record to say is that. . . uh. . . that can be a mirage, and it is also very possible that the love you’re seeking, the emotional connection you’re seeking, the emotional, and intellectual, and even sexual fulfillment that you think will be found my taking a completely different path can be unearthed and discovered and enjoyed right in the place where you’ve been for five, ten, fifteen or twenty years, if you’re willing to not engage the world purely with your intellect, but you’re willing to say emotion matters as much as intellect, and spirit matters as much as emotion and intellect, and love and listening and connection matters as much as intellect and integrity. . . you can find and discover depths of emotional intimacy and connection and love and fulfillment that you would have thought was not possible where you were. I just want to let listeners know, for anyone who may have experienced anything like me, I want them to know that that also is possible, and the price that you have to pay is to take the intellectual down, raise up the emotional and the spiritual and the family and the community connections, and start experiencing life from a multi-dimensional standpoint, where your integrity and your truth intellectually that you suppose is legitimate and credible is all that matters, is of primal importance, you’re willing to say there’s a spiritual truth that’s also important, a spiritual whispering and influence and nurturing that also must be listened to, and it’s a different language than the intellect. And there is an emotional language that we are willing to often throw out, our emotional care and connection and investment in others, because we’ve got our truth and our certainty and our own pain and anguish, and that’s what it’s all about. If you can plug into that emotions, and develop a relationship of love and trust where there’s a mutual level of emotional connection and investment, and you start, frankly, caring more about people than intellect and ideas and doctrine and theology and history. It can transform your life. I know I’m only six to nine months into it, and I could change next week, or next month, or in six months or in a year, but I don’t think so. . . I think that as painful as this has been, I think I’m committed to this multi-dimensional approach to my life, to my family, and to religion, and to my experiences, that I think is going to stay a while.
. . . . .
Joseph Smith, where do we stand on the restoration? [3-51:40]
I believe that the restoration was inspired by the same force that I call God. And. . . that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t flawed. . . I kind of view. . . Phil Barlow really helped me with this in that thoughtful faith interview I did. He said, “It’s not so much that the church is perfect, occasionally marred by the flaws of mankind, it’s more the church is completely mortal and flawed, it’s one group of people’s attempt to understand and interact with the divine.” I think that every major religion that exists is a group of people trying to collectively understand spirituality and God, and so I believe that Mormonism is as legitimate as any incarnation of a people’s attempt to access the divine, and the power of the divine, and the beauties of the divine. And, yeah, it’s a mess, but every other religion in a mess if you peel back the covers, and secularism is a mess, and science is a mess, and they’re all beautiful, and I see the restoration as a legitimate spiritual and social. . . uh. . . endeavor. . .enterprise.
What about the brethren now, today, in terms of being called and inspired to lead? [3-53:27]
I believe that the brethren are really good men. I believe that they are spiritually in tune in many ways, and live in many ways live of virtues and service. . . and of Christ-like lives. I believe that in many ways, they are enlightened in ways that I am not, and I respect their authority to lead this church, and I absolutely believe that they are attempting to tap into the same divinity that I’m attempting to tap into. . .
So, do I wish they were more progressive on women’s issues, and race issues, and gender and sexuality issues? Yes. Do I feel like they make wrong decisions? Yes. But I respect their character, their manifestations of spirituality, and I think, all-in-all, they’ve done a really fantastic job leading this church to what it’s become, which is over 14 million people, millions of wonderful families and people, and people who go out in the world and do really important and significant things, who are governors, and presidential candidates, and senate majority leaders, and politicians, and mothers, and businessmen. All the Mormons I know are generally just good, kind, loving people, not better than others, but good. I believe that the way the brethren have lead the church. . . you can’t argue with. . . you know, if a factory produces a good product, you have to respect the factory. And the brethren have been the leaders of this organization, and I see it as a positive enterprise, and I respect their mantle.
. . . . .
[3-59:40]
I’m sick of the historical stuff, I’m sick of the controversy. I just want to help make people’s live better, and it’s hard to do that in a way that’s interesting. So I’m. . . I guess I’m making an appeal to people who have visions for how I can turn Mormon Stories into something wholly constructive, and not step on A Thoughtful Faith’s toes, I extend that invitation of ideas, and if it’s just time for us to be like Seinfeld, then that’s okay too.
So, in terms of your spiritual future, what are you looking for? [3-1:00:14]
A way to conceptualize my path is to dig back into my childhood when my parents got divorced. I was just. . . I thought we had a great family and I thought our family was going to be eternal, and I thought the world of my parents, and the idea of anything other than that just didn’t seem possible. So when my parents got divorced when I was in 6th or 7th grade, I think that was really devastating to me. My sisters were way older, so they had gone away to college, so I never really got to connect with them. . .
. . . . .
Thank you for this post. This bishop is an example of the very best in church leadership.