Pints With Aquinas - From LDS to Catholic w/ Isaac Hess

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Former LDS missionary Isaac Hess joins the show to talk about his journey to Catholicism. From doubt about Joseph Smith, to questions about the history of the LDS Church, to Orthodoxy, and finally to Catholicism. This quest for Truth will inspire and inform. Show Sponsors: https://strive21.com/matt https://ascensionpress.com/fradd Join Matt in Austria: https://austria.franciscan.edu/austria-summer-experience/ Contact Isaac: [e-mail]  

G'day everybody, Matt Fradd here. I have some very exciting news. I would like to invite you to spend three weeks with me in a 14th century monastery in Garming, Austria, where we will study philosophy and theology together, May 20th to June 7th. Space is limited, so there is a link in the description for you to click and to sign up for this. It's $3,850, which includes room and board, plus day trips to Vienna and Salzburg, plus an optional fourth week in Rome and Assisi. The class I'm teaching is called ABBA, the call to parenthood.

Now for college students, you'll receive three credits for this class, but you don't have to be interested in the credits to come. So again, click the link in the description below and I hope to see you in Austria. May 20th. I will do it now. Thank you, Isaac, for being on the show. Thanks, Matt.

I'm happy to be here. I think in America you say Isaac. Isaac. In Australia, it's Isaac. Oh, really? Isaac. Just thought I'd open with that to group people. You know?

Nice. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I asked Steven Johnson back in the day if he'd come on my show to discuss Mormonism and to his Credit he prayed about it said I maybe have Isaac on instead and so we had him on anyway and But it's wonderful to have have you want to discuss. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm very flattered to be invited cool I want to give people kind of just a heads up as to where you are now. OK, you know, I don't want to. So you were LDS.

I was raised LDS. Yeah. You can you you you started to have doubts. You started to explore. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. Yeah. You know, like the very high level. Give us that real quick. I was raised LDS. I served a mission, went to BYU,

got married to my wife in the LDS temple, kind of had a very long, slow process of doubt and that sort of thing, and then became very interested in Eastern Orthodoxy for probably about, well, about five years or so, and then eventually became Catholic. I was baptized at the Easter vigil in 2021 wonderful and your beautiful bride is still LDS. My wife is still LDS. Uh-huh. Yeah, we've got four kids I don't know if I said that already, but yeah I you know whenever we do a show like this, you know

Maybe I'll interview a Protestant or a former former Protestant or a former Mormon You know Like I really want to say in good faith what I love about their background or who they used to be a part of. Yeah. And it's really not well, I don't think it's to soften the blow. Like it's sincere. So I just I just want to say like, even though I have very strong opinions about the LDS scriptures and things like that, I have tremendous respect for my LDS friends and the work that they're

doing. I used to speak a lot on pornography and all the giants, like just refuting pornography, helping people overcome pornography. Many of them are LDS. I'm so grateful for them. Things like VidAngel was started by LDS. Yeah, they're based in Provo, Utah. I just, the other night was watching BYU with the kids because it's like really good entertainment. It's gripping. It's not preachy.

Like I think a lot of Catholic kind of entertainment would just come off as like bad. I mean, I'm sure there's some good stuff out there, but so I am really grateful for the work that Mormons do. And I just, I want that to be clear. That, and I'm sure you would agree with me, like nothing we're gonna say today about our Mormon friends or is meant to be a personal attack on anybody.

No, absolutely. And I think that, I mean, I'll echo that too. I, and when we get into this, I absolutely loved growing up LDS. It was such a beautiful and blessed childhood and just, it gives such a structure to your life and it helps you encounter so much good. There's so much good in the LDS community and the LDS faith and I think there's a lot of areas where Catholics could learn from LDS brothers and sisters and that

sort of thing. So yeah, I do think it's possible to disagree and to express disagreement in ways that's like respectful and loving and- I'm not sure though if it's possible to express disagreement respectfully or honestly in a way that's taken as if it were respectfully. Like that's just a difficult thing to do. I think it's possible. I do. Okay, I agree that it's possible objectively, but you cannot obviously interfere with the subjective reception of what you're saying. You can't guarantee how it's going to be received by another person. I would agree with that. But I was at Target a couple of years ago and my wife came out and she went,

ah, there's this big family. I think it was my wife, this big family in Target. And I'm like, were they well put together or shabby looking? She went, well put together. I went, okay, Mormons, that's awesome. If they were shabby, I was gonna go Catholic, you know? Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, and one thing that I wanna say as we get started, I know that, I don't know if you're aware, but the LDS church over the last couple of years has been really trying to get rid of the word Mormon as like a reference to them, to themselves. They've asked specifically that people refer to them as... And why do you think that is?

The reason they say is because... So the name of the church, I'm sure you know, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And when people call them the Mormon Church, it kind of like removes the name of Jesus Christ from the church and they want to have more emphasis on Jesus. When it comes to nicknames of the church, the most glaring omission is the absence of the Savior's name. I don't like that because I think the Jesus that Mormons talk about is not the real Jesus. And so to me, it just seems like a PR move where we have to put Jesus from the center. Yeah. I. But respecting what people want to be called fine.

Right. I mean, just as a name. So I just wanted to say like during the interview I'll try to refer to them as Latter-day Saints, LDS Church. I'll do the same. The church's name is a bit of a mouthful so it's not practical to say the whole thing every single time. But yeah, I mean, I think we can get into this later too, about the question of like,

the Jesus LDS people believe in versus the Jesus of Catholicism or traditional Christianity. Certainly there are aspects that are very different in terms of like the nature, Jesus's nature and that sort of thing. But there is also commonality in the sense that both Catholics and Latter-day Saints believe in a historical figure who lived 2,000 years ago, whose works are recorded in the New Testament, and they study the New Testament, and they try to follow his teachings, you know what

I mean, as they understand them and that sort of thing. So while there's certainly like, oh, there's aspects of this historical Jesus, aspects of your belief that we think are incorrect. There's also, it's also not like they believe Jesus is, you know, like I've heard someone say, maybe it was in you, like, oh, what if they said, you know, I believe in Jesus, but they mean this guy who works at the Mexican restaurant down the street.

Well, it's clearly not a case of that. Like, both people were pointing to the same historical figure, but there's aspects Theological aspects and things like that about that person that where there's this very significant. Oh totally significant disagreement. Yes I agree with that. Okay. So what was like growing up in Mormon? I was amazing. It was amazing for me It's not amazing for everybody. Sure, but I loved it. I mean, so I grew up in a very very LDS family, very old LDS family. Like all my ancestors are LDS. If you go back to like, you know, if you look at my family tree and

you go back like four or five generations, I think at that level, every single one of my ancestors was like born and raised LDS. I don't know how far back you have to go to find someone who joined the LDS church. I'm named after my great, great, great, great grandfather who was an early LDS convert, like in the days of Joseph Smith and traveled with him across the West and that sort of thing. So it just was like, it was just everything everything Every aspect of our life was infused with the church. So we did all they're very like kind of classic home observances that you have in the LDS faith Like they they encourage reading scriptures as family every single day, which we did that One night a week and this was more emphasized when I was a kid

I don't know if I haven't heard it emphasized as much recently, but we would have something called Family Home Evening. Love it. Where every Monday night, the family would get together and it was structured. We would start with a prayer, we'd have some songs that we'd sing together.

So one of my parents would present like a short gospel lesson, you know, like teach us about the faith. And then we would play games and have a treat. That was Family home evening. And we did that very consistently, all growing up. We ended up having a big family. I'm the second oldest, so in my younger years,

we were small, just a couple kids. But we were eight kids in my family by the time I graduated from high school. And it was just fun, lots of good friends. I grew up in, we moved around a bit when I was little, but by the time I finished elementary school, we lived in Utah, in Orem, Utah, which at the time was probably about the most LDS place in the country. In my high school, for instance, I had a very large group of friends and I knew one, I had one friend that wasn't

LDS and she joined the LDS church my junior year. I actually baptized her. Really? Yeah. Interesting. It's important to say this, right? Because I know people, I mean, certainly a lot of people will come out and say how horrible it was being raised Catholic. Yes. And it's like, fair enough. People have different experiences and people also have different parents and some parents are horrible and some priests are horrible. And some people are horrible, but it's good. You know, it's like when people tell me how they've only had horrible experiences of priests. I can say with full objectivity that I never had a bad experience with a priest. I mean, the only bad experience I may have had is when I felt like he was a heretic,

which is terrible, but never in the sense of, you know, when I go to confession, I was never yelled at. I never had a priest like come onto me as you hear people kind of never, it was always good. So it's important that we absolutely. And I mean, I've known lots of people who have talked about, so, you know, LDS culture can be very moralistic at times. And some people find that very difficult growing up. I didn't, I always just kind of had that heart of like, I wanted to, being LDS gave me this vision of like who I was and who I could be and I just wanted it, right? And so even in the times, you know, as a teenager

when I struggled with the things that teenagers always struggle with, you know, sexuality and that sort of thing, to me, the teachings of the church and going through process of like trying to overcome vice was really life-giving. I thought it was great. Even uncomfortable things like meeting with church leaders to talk about things I was struggling with.

For some people, they end up carrying on those deep shame and that just wasn't my experience. It just- You were met with understanding, compassion, encouragement. Yeah, so it helped me and I was able to overcome those things pretty easily at a young age. And so I was like, great.

I'm, you know, I, and I had this, I mentioned my big group of friends, some of which, some of whom I'm still friends with today from high school, you know, 25 years later. And we would, you know, we just did all sorts of like silly, dumb teenage things, but we would also do things like meet every week to read scriptures together and go to church with each other and that sort of thing. So it was just a really beautiful way of growing up and grew up in a really great place in a really nice time in the 90s,

just as the internet. Yeah, ruined everything. Just as the internet ruined everything, right? I remember sitting at home chatting with my friends on A well instant messenger in like 10th 11th grade something you is MSN messenger I don't know I will may have not made it across to Australia by the. So yeah that's kind of a high school is like just don't quick quick so I don't remember when you would turn the modem on it would make that terrifying sound oh yeah that was my accountability software back in the day. terrifying sound. Oh, yeah. That was my accountability software back in the day. Before couple of hours, two in the morning, trying to turn that thing on. That's right. Yeah. I mean, what I remember is, you know, trying to download a song from Napster. Yeah. And it would take like 20 minutes to download one song. And just when it was like

95% done, my mom would pick up the phone upstairs and kill the internet connection. And it's like, Mom, I almost had this like Weezer B-side that I was so interested in getting, you know? Yeah. The early internet was awesome. Is it the expectation of, I think it is the expectation that, uh, that male Mormons would go on a mission. What is that thought of? Is that thought of something like a rite of passage or just a way that you're expected to serve or how is that? Yeah, all of the above. Yes. So for me

Even from when you're a little kid we were taught that all of the males were called to be missionaries and The females like the sister we can you know elders and sisters for the young women could serve missions if they wanted to But that was more of like a personal discernment for the young men, it was, you're called. So when you become of age, which when I was growing up, the age was 19, you're going to be expected to serve. And this is another area

where there's a lot of cultural pressure. I had some friends who served missions, but afterwards ended up confiding in me that they really wish they hadn't. Like they didn't wanna go go, but you know, the social and cultural detriment that you would experience if you like, hadn't been a missionary was really severe. If you didn't have a good reason.

If you didn't, even if you did have a good reason, like, and that's gotten a lot better, you know, people who can't serve for health reasons or whatever. But yeah, if you, it was kind of like a mark of shame to not serve. But for me, I just wanted to. I mean, I mean, looking at it in a really charitable way, I love the idea. It's like we're all called to be missionaries. And yeah, how many Catholics by the time they get confirmed, let's say, yes, they just think that's it. And they're not told to evangelize. Oh, absolutely practically speaking the time after high school is a really tumultuous time for a lot of people especially young men where and it's so nice to have this

structured thing that you go do for two years. Well dude that's what I did with net ministries. I was a missionary with this group called net up in Canada where we traveled the whole country as a team of 12 young Catholics evangelizing. That's exactly what you were saying. Like it is a tumultuous time, a time when a lot of young men might be aimless or just in their basement playing Xbox or something. I got to do this wonderful thing. Exactly, it gets you outside and you learn to grow up a bit.

You learn some basic life skills. You know, some learn them better than others on your mission. But you know, you're kind of living by yourself for two years where you have other missionaries you live with but there's no other adults around telling you what to do. What's the training like? How does that work? Do you show up as a group of missionaries to be to be trained to then go out? I want to get there, but can we go back to high school for just a moment?

Is that okay? Yeah, of course. I want to talk about just like an experience I had when I was like a sophomore. So, you know, growing up, growing up in Utah especially, everyone's LDS. And because everyone's LDS, I used to joke with some of my friends because I knew people who lived outside of Utah. And they said, the thing I hate about Utah is there's so many like non-practicing,

like people who say they're LDS but don't live like it. And I would always say, well, yeah, I think it's, I think in like the the high school, in high school in Utah, it's like you have, you're really good kids, you've got your druggies, you've got your jocks, you've got all these different people. The difference is everyone's LDS. And so I remember in high school having this time

where it really weighed on me when I was in 10th grade, like what kind of Latter-day Saint do I wanna be? Right? Like, do I wanna be someone who like really takes my faith seriously? Is it just kind of a cultural thing for me? It was no question of like, am I gonna be LDS? Like of course I was, that was my whole world.

But what kind was I gonna be? And so I spent, I had some time where I was really like taking this seriously. This gives you like an insight to the kind of kid I was. I was also really silly and dumb, but it loved fun. But I had this kind of spiritual, I don't know, sense and desire my whole life growing up. And there was this, I was reading the book of Mormon once and there was this during that time. And I came on this verse that talked about How like God called it's in the book in the Book of Mormon called Omni. Sounds strange. I'm sure but it is what it is

And in that it talks about how it says God wants us to offer our whole souls as an offering to him and this really just impacted me and That was a time where it was it was a real pivot point in my life where I was like, that's what I want. I want to make my whole life like an offering to God. I don't want it to just be like, oh yeah, I'm Mormon, I go to church and I do the things that they ask, but you know, don't take it that seriously. I really just decided to take it super seriously at that time. And I think that in many ways that was kind of like a pivot point for my life leading up till now, you know. And it really made me desirous to serve my mission, not just because it was a cultural expectation, but because I was like so excited to get out there and tell people about Mormonism.

I was very naive, I think is a safe way to say. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, I've been I read the Brothers Karamazov all the time. There's this beautiful section where the author is talking about Alyosha, the protagonist, and he's talking about his like, his passion and his effusiveness and his desire to love radically. And that any points out that this could be looked at as kind of naive and silly, but it's like, but if a man is not going to act radically and naively in his youth, when will he get to do it? Like, this is the appropriate way. And just like when I came back from Rome, became a Catholic, I was really over the top in many ways, but praise the Lord for that. You know, it's it's like love.

You mean well, even if you don't have so much passion in the young and it's such a beautiful thing. And this real belief that you can kind of change the young, and it's such a beautiful thing. This real belief that you can kind of change the world, and it's that simple. Oh yeah. Yeah, when I went on my mission, I was just, to me, the truth of Mormonism was so obvious that I was truly convinced that any person of goodwill

who sat down and studied it sincerely and prayed about it would come to believe in it. And that, partially that goes back to kind of this very basic LDS belief about like the witness of the Holy Spirit. And that's how you come to know that Mormonism is the true faith. So there's, even when we were growing up,

that was just what was like drilled into us. Like, you need to have this experience yourself. And so part of this is very good, right? They're like, you can't just rely on like the faith of your parents. You can't rely on the faith of your teachers or your friends. You need this experience. And, you know, it's very explicit in the Book of Mormon at the very end. It tells you like, hey, when you read this book, pray and ask God if it's true

and by the power of the Holy Ghost, he'll tell you that it's true. And so all growing up, I kind of like sought after this experience of, you know, kneeling down and being like, Lord, like is Mormonism true? I really love it and I really believe it, but like I want this experience. And the truth is I never really had it,

at least not in the way that I kind of expected. And I found that this ends up being true for a lot of Latter-day Saints, where they say that prayer, and they kind of have this general sense that it's really good and beautiful. And there's other parts of the Book of Mormon that talk about how faith is like a seed that you plant

that grows in your heart and eventually grows into a tree where the good fruit comes and it's more gradual, more gradual when you taste the fruit, you kind of know that it's good. And so for a lot of people, that's kind of like, they kind of say, well, that's my witness. Like, that's the Holy Spirit telling me that it's true. This is, I mean, this is, there's something similar in Catholicism and Protestantism, right? Where someone might say to you, like, do you know Jesus Christ? You know, and if you can't say yes, you've never met him yet.

Or you'll think about these more charismatic strands of Catholicism where people talk about getting the gift of tongues or the gift of the Holy Spirit. And it does put a lot of pressure on the person because then you feel like, well, if I don't have this, am I really a fully sold out Christian? And then you might accidentally manufacture the experience. And at the time, you're unaware of that maybe, but you look back and then you question everything. Yeah. Yeah.

It can be. As I prepared for my mission, this like really weighed on me. I had this night, I remember where I was praying so like fervently for this, right? I was like, I want this experience. I want to be able to go on my mission and say, I know that this is true. That's a phrase that Latter-day Saints use a lot when they talk about their belief in Mormonism. They're like, I know it's true. And what they mean is I've received a witness

from the Holy Spirit telling me it's true. And if the Holy Spirit witnesses something to you, how could it be wrong? And I remember praying about this really sincerely and just wanting it so bad and just nothing was happening, you know, I mean, I don't know if I was trying to manufacture an experience but just wasn't coming and I had this moment we're almost in frustration I was like, come on, Heavenly Father, that's usually how you know, Latter-day Saints refer to God, Heavenly Father, I know it's true,

just tell me, you know, I remember thinking well if I think I already know why am I bothering asking, you know, so I was it's true, just tell me. You know, I remember thinking, well, if I think I already know, why am I bothering asking? You know, so I know it's just kind of good enough for me. What was the experience you were hoping for? Well, what they usually say is like a feeling of just like immense like peace and assurance. It usually is kind of given in kind of emotive language, just like a kind of like feeling in your heart, sometimes even followed with like a physical sensation of a kind. I don't know, I mean you've probably had spiritual experiences before where that kind of happens. You just feel this like incredible peace, you know, maybe you're just kind of body feels a little on fire, you know, in another LDS scripture they talk about like the burning in your bosom and that sort of thing.

And so that's kind of I, what most people are looking for. And certainly, I had lots of those experiences growing up, just like being LDS, right? Like singing a beautiful song or being around people talking about our faith where you just kind of had that like peaceful assurance. And you know, and we were kind of taught to think, this is the Holy Spirit telling me that Mormonism is true. And that really like reinforces your sense. Like, I really believe this. Like, it's got to be true. The Holy Spirit telling me that Mormonism is true. And that really like reinforces your sense. Like, I really believe this. Like, it's got to be true. The Holy Spirit is constantly telling me that it's true. Okay. So can we move on to the missionary? Because I am fascinated by that. I

mean, the only thing I have to compare it to is my experience as a missionary in Canada, where there was like 70 people all get together and we had like six weeks of training, you know, and it had to do with the basis of our faith, how to evangelize, how to behave in host homes, like everything. So what's it like for Mormon missionaries when they, the trainings? Yeah. So you go to a missionary training center, they call it MTC. That just must be cool. It's super cool.

It must be wildly fun. Yeah. Just to get together with a bunch of like-minded people, presumably. it MTC. That just must be cool. It's super fun. Yeah. Just to get together with a bunch of like-minded people. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We were, so I was 19. I'd done one year of college already at BYU. And then I got my mission call to go to North Carolina. That's where I served my mission. And I was very disappointed because I wanted to go somewhere foreign and exotic and learn another language. And so, you know, when I was, when I opened it up, I was kind of like,

North Carolina, come on. Although I will say this and you know, if any North Carolinians are watching, I love North Carolina. And it did seem, I thought, well, if I was going to stay in the U S going to the South is probably about as foreign as I can get. Um, and certainly certain parts of North Carolina. Are you, are you paired up at this point, or is that only after? So individually, you get told where you're going.

That's right, individually you get told, you just say, so you put in your papers ahead of time, you fill out all these forms, I'm gonna serve a mission, and you tell them all about you, and then you just get a letter in the mail, and it's a big thing, people will gather with friends and family to open up the mission call, they call it and they read the letter

and you have been called to serve in the, and you read it off and everyone cheers, the North Carolina Raleigh mission, that was my mission. And then they tell you the day, you're expected to report at the Provo MTC on this date. My date was July 2nd, 2003, was the day I reported to the missionary training center. So on that day your parents take you to the MTC with a whole bunch of other missionaries that are being dropped off that day.

Wednesday is always the ingestion day, you know. So there's probably, there were probably, I don't know, hundreds of missionaries that entered the same day that I did. Did you, but, but what is there anything specific that they were teaching you in the, obviously there's a lot of specific things that were teaching you at training, but what's something that stands out? So you, so you, you study the lessons that you're going to teach prospective members. You study those a lot. People arrive at the MTC with like a wide variance of how well they

know the faith, right? So like I knew the faith extremely well because I loved to study, I loved to read. I'd probably read the Book of Mormon like 10 times all the way through before I got there. Some people show up and they have never, you know, like hardly cracked their scriptures open. Did you get the sense that some people showed up out of obligation? Oh, totally. Yeah, for sure. And does some of them not make it? Oh, yes. Yeah, my companion.

So you get paired up when you get there. My companion in the MTC went home after like six days or something like that. So that definitely happens. Mm hmm. So, yeah, I mean, you basically spend the two weeks. So if you're learning a foreign language, which I wasn't, the you get intensive, immersive language training. It's actually one of the best immersion language trainings in the world. They've patterned it after, and I think other people have patterned their language training

after what they do, because in something like six to 12 weeks, depending on the language, missionaries will come out of there with relatively basic language skills, enough to kind of converse on the street, you know So but for me though because I was English speaking we spent our days mostly in a classroom just studying and practicing teaching, you know, so we would practice teaching each other and We would go to they had like a special room where people would come in and pretend to be non LDS people and you would like practice teaching lessons. They would ask questions and that sort of thing So you just kind of do that. I was only there for about three weeks. Okay, that's not long

Yeah, no, not too long and they and they prep you like missions are have a lot of rules And so they prep you all about like how to keep the mission rules how to be an obedient missionary some of the rules Oh my gosh, they give you a handbook when you get there. It's like, you have to actually carry it with you at all times. Okay. And, or at least you did. I mean, I sort of mentioned 20 years ago. So some of the rules have changed.

There's a very strict schedule. So when I was there, it went like this. You had to be up at 6.30 in the morning, and then you had like half an hour to shower and eat breakfast or something like that. And then you would study for a few hours, and then you were expected to be out the door by 9.30, I think it was 9, maybe it was 9, 9.30 in the morning.

And then you would basically go out and proselytize all day with one hour break for lunch, one hour break for dinner, and you come back at 9.30 p.m. Other than that, you're expected to be out preaching the gospel. It's amazing. And then from 9.30 to 10.30, you kind of like come home, you're expected to be out preaching the gospel. It's amazing. And, uh, and then from nine 30 to 10 30, you kind of like come home. You're supposed to check in with like your leaders every single night. You call them up, tell them how your day went, make sure that you're alive. And then you go to bed and it just repeats day after day. You get the weekend off or one day off one, like half day off a week.

It sounds exhausting. Oh my gosh. It's very exhausting. Yeah. It's um. And it must take, I mean, there must be some sense of nervousness knocking on that first door. Oh yeah.

I. Especially if you have a bad experience and you're traumatized by it and you got to keep going. I never got used to knocking on doors. I remember everyone telling us you'll get used to it, but I just never did. I remember at the very end of my mission, you know, knocking doors, first of all, knocking doors is very ineffective.

Yeah. It's just so rare that you find people just by randomly knocking doors. And they tell you this, right? Maybe 50 years ago. When they tell you this while as a missionary, they say, hey, this is the least effective way of finding people.

Like it's much more effective, for instance, to get referrals from people who are already members, like for friends and family, or to, I can't remember all the things we did, but so they have this whole list, here's in order of effectiveness, but you just sometimes find yourself with nothing to do, and you're expected to be spending your time preaching,

so when you find yourself nothing to do, you're just like, well, how about that street? And you just go knock on door after door after door. And yeah, I, when I got there, I was full of zeal, right? I, so I remember the first day I arrived, like we, we kind of, you fly into like a central location and then the people, your first companion, who's going to be your trainer, your training companion takes you back to the spot where you're gonna be serving I was in Burlington North Carolina and the day I arrived it was

pouring rain and excuse me my companion was like well we had an appointment scheduled for tonight but we don't have a car and you know I don't want to ride my bike in this rain because, and he said, she's not going to be there anyway. Who's she? The woman with whom we had an appointment. Okay. And he said this out of a lot of experience.

There's a lot of times you meet people like, hey, can we come back next week and teach you a lesson? Oh yeah, absolutely. Make sure I'm away. What time? This time, right? But as a brand new zealous missionary, I thought, no, none of that. There is someone who wants to hear the gospel. We've got to go there. And he said, well, how? I said, we're going to ride in the rain. So I made him get on his bike and we

rode through 20 minutes of pouring rain to the other side of town. So cool. And we got there and she wasn't home, just as he had predicted. And so we rode all the way back, but I felt like a million bucks, right? I was like, yeah, I way back, but I felt like a million bucks, right? I was like, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm a missionary. Like I'm sacrificing for the gospel and going through the pain of that. So yeah, it's, you kind of get cured a little of that zeal after a few weeks or months. You kind of, the practical realities settle in. You kind of the practical realities settle in you kind of understand better what it's like to be a missionary and Just kind of the low success rate that you typically have but you know They call it the greedy enthusiasm when you're very green. I don't know if that universal term to say someone's green

Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, I get I get the I get the point. Yeah, did you? Did you have any kind of more aggressive encounters? And then did you have encounters with Christians who knew their faith and were just waiting for a Mormon to knock on their door? Oh yes. Sorry, LDS to knock on their door. Oh no, that's fine. Oh, very much so.

Yeah, especially in the South. We would knock on the doors of Baptist pastors, not infrequently. Some of them- I'm sure you were afraid when you saw their excitement. Like I had this one experience where I was taking a nap in San Diego. I was literally sleeping in San Diego. I was having a nap and my wife knocked on the door just as I was getting ready to fall asleep. She went, honey, sorry to wake you up, but there is some,

there's some Jehovah's witnesses at the door. And she knew that that would excite me. And I got up and I was so pumped. I'm sure whenever you encounter people who are just too excited, you're like, back away, back away. No, I liked it. Okay. So I knew, like I said, I was a very studious kid.

So I knew my scriptures pretty well. So the LDS ones, and I knew the New Testament, at least well enough, I would say, so I would say now that I did not truly know the New Testament, but I knew kind of like the LDS reading of the New Testament. I knew my proof texts. I knew the proof texts they would use.

I knew my proof texts. And so I actually kind of enjoyed the tussle of getting into, I mean, I'm sure I came across as the most impertinent, arrogant 20-year-old kid. You know, you get this 40-year-old Baptist pastor who's been doing this for decades and he's explaining things to me and I was like, no, you're wrong because of this scripture, right?

And we'd kind of go back and forth. And we had some aggressive but respectful conversations. If it got to the point where people were being really rude, we would just stand up and leave. Sometimes, I mean, a couple of times I remember just walking out. I remember one time being, meeting with the, I think it was a pastor,

and he said something extremely disrespectful. I won't even repeat. Like it was so, the type of thing that I don't think you should ever say to anyone else about something they hold sacred, even if you think it's terrible. So we just stood up and walked out. And as we're walking down the street, he stood on his porch screaming at us as we walked down yelling, the devil can appear as an angel of light. The devil can appear as an angel of light. And well, let's just say- He's not wrong.

He's not wrong. That's from the New Testament, Paul says that. But let's just say that that's not, it was not an effective way to reach us. It was all conducive to helping us see the ways. We walked away just thinking like, what a moron. Yeah, well, if anything, it kind of confirms you. Yeah.

Like what we're doing is the truth, and Christ said we'd be persecuted. Absolutely. Yes, that very much happens. Wow. Did you ever encounter, yeah, it's difficult being part of just, I'm just thinking like sociological, right? Just thinking about being a part of a faith group, you know, like, what do you do when

someone raises a question that you don't know how to answer? It's like, well, you don't worry because you then ask people who are smarter than you and you just hope that what they have to share with you will put you at ease. And honestly, I think when you're in the kind of the enthusiasm of the faith, like you were or like I was, you know, even if no one has a satisfying answer, you just assume that it's out there and or you just brush it aside or. No, I had a few interactions on my mission that kind of shook me a little bit. Right.

I mean, I grew up in Orham, Utah. Everyone was LDS. When you're surrounded by that kind of cultural homogeneity, you don't really question very much. You kind of just think, you know, like growing up every now and then I would encounter what we were taught to think of as like anti-Mormon talking points, right? And they always seemed so ridiculous to me

because they were so foreign to my experience, right? And they were, then I was told that they were lies, right? And so I'll give you an example of like a few things. You know, people, I remember one time going to what we call General Conference in the LDS faith. It's like twice a year, church members gather in Salt Lake City and all the church leaders speak there. All the prophets and

apostles and all that. It's a very big deal. And there's always people out there protesting. And I remember one time being there with some friends in high school and one of them handed me this flyer and I remember reading it out loud to them and just laughing, you know, they're like, because it said on their Mormons believe that Adam is God or something like that. So I mean, you know, fast forward, I kind of found out later that this actually used to be something that LDS prophets taught. I advanced a doctrine with regard to Adam being our Father and God. It is one of the most glorious revealments of the economy of heaven.

Brigham Young, 1861. But at the time, I just thought, where do they get this stuff? You know, like, how ridiculous is that? When you go on a mission and you're encountering people, especially in the Bible Belt, some people at least know their faith well. Not as many as is advertised. I remember, in my mission I used to joke they call it the Bible Belt because most people have a Bible somewhere in their house. But every now and then you would encounter people who really knew their faith. In fact, I remember encountering a Catholic on my mission

who challenged me on the LDS view of the fall of Adam and Eve. Because in LDS teaching, the fall is kind of seen as like a good thing, like something that God wanted to happen. It was part of his plan from the start. And there's a sense in which a Catholic can affirm that. Like, you know, God sees all from the beginning,

all things are present to him at once. And so, you know, God sees all from the beginning, all things are present to him at once. And so, you know, in his providence, the fall is something that he knows about, right? Oh, happy fault, which merited us from. Yeah, oh, happy fault that merited for so great a savior, as we say at Easter. And, but in the LDS sense, it was just sort of like, no, it was like a necessary thing.

Like, it had to be this way, because this is like the eternal scheme of things that, you know, were pre-mortal spirits that live beforehand and God creates this new world and people have to come here. And the whole reason we're coming here is in order to have a mortal experience where we experience like the hardness and the harshness of life to help us grow and to become more God-like. And a necessary precondition of that is the fall.

And so it sort of seems like a good thing. And I had a Catholic that I was, you know, this is from door knocking, you know, and he said something like, how could a good God command them to not do something that he kind of like secretly wanted them to do, Adam and Eve, right? Yeah.

And it was like the first time I had a question I didn't have a ready answer for, I thought, I don't know. I don't know that. And for days it just like bothered me just kind of mulling it in my head, you know? I have another question as you're speaking, I was thinking this through. So, and I don't want to get into the weeds here because I want to go the trajectory of your story. But am I right in thinking that Mormons believe that God, who we worship, as who Mormons worship, was once a man? So I'll give a qualified yes to that, which in the qualification is this. It used to be totally yes.

Like when I was growing up, that was talked about openly all the time. You know, we had this little couplet, it was like, and this was taught by an LDS prophet, as man is, God once was. As God is, man may become. And so totally that was, and that was the explicit teaching of Joseph Smith toward the end of his life that God, and they still teach, it's in their scriptures, that God has a physical, corporal body, as tangible as man's, it says, like the Father. The Father specifically has a body as tangible as man's. I would say that they don't emphasize that as much now

as they used to. So I think some Latter-day Saints, if you were to ask them, would kind of give a like, I don't know, like if God was man the same way we were, certainly plenty would still say yes. But yeah, go ahead. Well, here's what I was going to say.

I mean, if it's true that the father was once a man, like we are, and if sin is sort of a necessary condition to, to advance to Godhood, wouldn't it follow that God was once a sinner? No, not necessarily. It's not necessary that you sin, but it sort of was necessary somehow that like, and they don't actually describe the fall as a sin. Okay. Um, they use the word transgression, which I think is more like kind of King James language. Um, definitely LDS scriptures talk about like the transgression of

Adam and Eve. And so it was almost, it's almost presented and some of this gets into like LDS temple theology. Cause just want to back up. So it would, it would have Mormon who affirms that God, the father who Mormons worship today, if they affirm that he was once a man, would they say, but as a man, he never sinned? Yeah. Well, Jesus was a man, but never sinned. Yeah. Right. So I'm talking specifically about the father. Well, he could have been like that. That's what I'm saying. It could have been like that,

but it seems to me like you should get that right if you're gonna say that God was once a man. They would definitely say he could have been a sinner. I think that that would not, because they believe that every person can become like God the Father pretty much in all respects. Like God's nature in Mormonism is not different than ours. We have the exact same, we don't share one nature with him,

like not in a Trinitarian sense, but we are the same kind of being as him. Exactly the same. Like there's no ontological difference between God and us. He is just a more, this was Joseph Smith's later theology, he's a more progressed and advanced human, essentially. If I'm getting into something you want to talk about later, just tell me. OK, but I guess the question I would have is if I were a Mormon and the Mormons

around me say, well, look, we don't know like this a mystery there. We don't know if God the Father was once a man, let alone whether he sinned. That's not something fair enough. But if you've got the prophet, quote unquote, saying that that's the way things were, wouldn't that cause you some trouble? Like, yeah, it caused me a little trouble. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, that's. And then how would, how did you deal with that? Maybe when that. I think so. Let me, let me, I'll say one thing about my mission directly relating to this,

and I'll talk about kind of how I dealt with it. So I talked about how growing up I was exposed to these kinds of things that I were told was told were anti-Mormon lies, right? Like, Oh, you know, you don't have to believe, don't worry about those things. Like, that's just a lie. Like, um, you use the example of Adam, I use the example of Adam being God or like say even Joseph Smith practicing polygamy growing up. I was told that's just a lie. He didn't do that. Part of this was like I was the last generation of Latter-day Saints that grew up pre-internet or at the very very beginning of the internet. Right. Most Latter-day Saints now growing up, they all know that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. The church is, and to their credit, you know, is much more clear about its history than

at least that I received growing up. You know, but I was a very studious kid and there are all sorts of things that I encountered and when I would ask my leaders, they'd be like, no, that's a lie. Joseph Smith was never a Mason, that's a lie. Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy, that's a lie. You know, we never taught that Adam was God, that's a lie, those types of things. And then on my mission, I was in an apartment with some other missionaries and one of them had a little like kind of like handbook of Mormon apologetics. And I've always been like a very voracious

reader. So I grabbed it and I read it cover to cover. And it exposed me to a lot of these things. You know, it was basically like these things aren't lies. They actually are true. And you've got a Mormon telling you it's true. Yes, right. Along with apologetic responses of like, here's how you can respond. They concede the point. Yeah, they concede the point, but then help you kind of like contextualize it

and understand it. But that did rock me a little bit on my mission because it was the first instance that I had where I realized that the LDS church and history that had been presented to me as a kid might not be fully accurate, and that I might not always be able to depend on the church to give me like a full accurate account of its own history. But at the time, you know, how did I deal with these things? You know, like let's say, so like Brigham Young taught pretty forcefully that Adam was God the father

They call it now the Adam God theory, although more properly I would say Brigham Young talk he taught it as a doctrine He'd be like he put it as it was part of the temple ceremony like he preached it from the pulpit He said that man's salvation depends on him receiving this doctrine, right? And he was a prophet of the church. At the time though, I think there's just was this kind of sense that like, we are led by prophets today. As a Latter-day Saint, you believe that, like the guy today is the prophet. So like the most important thing is kind of like, whatever the prophet, whatever's being said now is the most important thing. What happened in the past, you know, there's the, they have this, they take this line from Isaiah

that is in the King James Version is translated as like, I will give my people line upon line, precept upon precept. And out of context, in context, it's talking about kind of like God giving us law. It's, but out of context, like that simple line gets picked up in the Book of Mormon and interpreted as sort of saying like, like God's pedagogy, right? He gives a little here, a little more, line upon line, precept upon precept, you kind of slowly progress to knowing more and more. And this is really central to LDS theology. So you can kind of say like, well, you know, maybe the early Hebrews didn't really fully understand like the uniqueness of God, right? Like they, when he, when God first revealed himself to them,

he kind of seems to present himself as sort of like, um, I am the most powerful of all the gods. And then later, you get to the point where they're like, there's really only one God and it's our God in the same way, maybe Brigham Young didn't really fully grasp everything. He kind of taught some wrong things, but now we're on track or at least we're at the point where God wants us to be. Who knows what will happen in the future? So I think that's how I contextualize a lot of that stuff at the time. Of course, I mean, the problem with it, of course, is because I mean, we believe in the

gradual revelation in Christianity. St. Athanasius knew more about the Trinity, presumably than St. Peter did. There's a gradual understanding of what's being deposited, or even in the Old Testament, thinking about how God reveals himself as a Trinity, but not upfront. But the Christian response to that would be, yes, but none of this contradicts the previous thing. It is actually incremental in a way that doesn't contradict an earlier point. Whereas in LDS, it seems like, no, there's a lot

of contradictions here. So you would either have to say, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that God is just lying to people or saying something that isn't true or revealing something that's actually false to a prophet's because that's all you could handle right now, which seems really problematic. Or you just have to say that prophets can be dead wrong about doctrine. And given that you're calling him a prophet, that also seems really problematic. Yeah. And I think that most Latter-day Saints would take the ladder. Like prophets can be really wrong. You know, I don't, if you know enough about the

church's history, there's not much, not really many other positions that you can take. And the church kind of gestures at this. They'll say things like, don't follow dead prophets more than living prophets kind of thing, you know, stick with the guy who's the prophet today. So, I mean, obviously Catholics don't think the Pope is a prophet, but there's a similarity there, right? And there's sort of like guardrails set up so that when the Pope teaches in a certain way, using certain language, he binds the church to a certain thing.

So over the years then, has something like that emerged within Mormonism where it's like, no, it's not his personal opinion, it has to be very specific or? The only thing that I could think of would be they have an open canon. The LDS canon is open. So the prophet today could make an announcement that he's received a new revelation and that this revelation is gonna go in the church's canonical scriptures.

I think that that would be something more firm, but it almost never happens, right? The last time a revelation was added to the LDS scriptures was like in the early 1900s. Some people count the revelation, the church received quote unquote revelation to start allowing blacks to receive the priesthood in 1978. Some people say, well, that's the last one

that's entered the canonical scriptures. Whether that's like, they call it a declaration. So whether it's a revelation or not, I think is a little iffy. But it doesn't happen often. And in general, they're pretty willing to sort of be like well, you know when he said that He was just kind of speaking as a man giving his best thoughts at the time But yeah, I I would agree. I think you have to accept that

Eldest prophets can teach something false When they're saying that they're teaching by revelation, which I think is a pretty sticky situation to be in. And how did you deal with that? Well, I didn't fully know at the time on my mission. I mean, I kind of knew, I think the apologetic book probably said, I don't remember everything it said,

but probably something like, hey, when Brigham Young was teaching this, he was just giving his opinion. And certainly similar, like if the Pope's giving an interview just somewhere random, Catholics don't consider that like a binding declaration or him using like his highest magisterial office. In a similar way, if you can kind of pass it off as like, Oh, Brigham Young was just being theologically speculative. And at the time, since I hadn't read any of the primary sources, I thought, okay, yeah, that, that, I guess

that makes sense to me. It's kind of weird that he would teach that, but it's not a crisis of faith. Maybe poetic even. Like he meant what he said, but he meant it in more of a spiritual way. Yeah. I mean, he didn't. Yes. But at the time, I kind of just kind of moved on that way and just thought. But it was a beginning of thinking like, oh, my faith is more complex than I thought.

Some of that's just maturity, right? As a kid, if you grow up, you just kind of think everything that's taught you is true. And then as you become an adult, you kind of see how life is more complicated, including faith is a more complicated thing. But some of it too was just discovering more about Mormonism and the history and I came back from my mission with a much more kind of complicated relationship. Still very much a believer, but no longer thinking that it was just a simplistic, obvious thing. So you gave one example of the Catholic challenging you on the Mormons understanding of the fall. Was there something else that you were challenged on that?

Not that I can recall off the top of my head I'm sure there was but because I suppose if I'm a young adult missionary I would just assume that I'm gonna be told things ask questions that I have no idea about or no idea how to respond to so Yeah, I guess I was more arrogant like oh Cut this in I have answers, you know, like you ask me questions, I've got answers for you. Is there a reason, when you read that apologetic book that was written from a Mormon perspective

to respond to arguments against Mormonism, you said that you came to think that maybe I can't trust the church to tell me the real history. Why didn't you just distrust the pamphlet? Why didn't you say, well, even this Mormon- I think it was- Has it wrong. That's a good question. I Mean, I mean I was probably footnoted. I presume. Yeah, I mean it looked like it was written from a LDS believing perspective like

I think it was probably sold in like LDS bookstores like church owned bookstores. Hmm that sort of thing There was just no reason to kind of think, oh, this guy's pulling. And I think partially too, if someone, when you look at history, they talk about the criterion of embarrassment. If you share something that's embarrassing, you're more likely to be telling the truth. And so I think, what motivation would this person have

to lie in this case? He's admitting uncomfortable things about LDS history, so. And then seeking to defend it. And seeking to defend it. So I think in general, like in cases like that, obviously you shouldn't stake your whole spiritual life on something like that without checking sources,

but you know, you kind of give this presumption of like, oh, if he's like admitting it, then probably it did happen, you know. Did you know of any Mormons who were kind of intelligent and knew the faith who started to question it? Not at that time. No, no. Yeah. Not when I was a missionary. So you came home, you say with a more complicated. Yeah. Well, and the other thing that happened on my mission was I got really sick.

You mentioned at the beginning, you said that sounds exhausting. And I said it was, it was also very stressful. I mentioned like all the rules, right? It's like a very regimented, it's almost like religious life in some ways. And because Mormon, because LDS missionaries are young, very young, they're basically teenagers when they start, the church is very aware that young men need structure and they can do very dumb things. And so the regimented life has a very practical purpose, but for some missionaries like me, you can kind of become a slave to the rules

and you kind of think like, and some of this was the messaging they would give us, right, in order to like get us to actually do the things you're supposed to do. They like would harp very hard on like the importance of exact obedience. You know, I remember, multiply of times hearing people say, you know, we were supposed to be up at 6.30.

And they would say, if you roll out of bed at 6.31 in the morning, the Holy Ghost will not be with you that day. Because like, if you're not obedient, why would the Holy Ghost be with a disobedient missionary? And I really took that to heart. So I kind of like, was going through my mission, like almost like a robot sometimes, right? Like, oh, we have to do this now and we can't do this.

We have to do that. And it really, first of all, it really hampered, contrary to the messaging I receive, it really hampered my success. Because as you can imagine, first of all, it really hampered, contrary to the messaging I receive, it really hampered my success. Because as you can imagine, you're not, a lot of people are not attracted to someone who doesn't come across as human, right? That was kind of robotic.

But it also just kind of really stressed me out. And about a year into my mission, over the course of like a month, I developed like two chronic health problems. One was a urinary problem and it ended up being genetic, you know, on that one. I ended up having surgery years later to correct it, but it was something that hadn't really manifested until then where I, my, you know, talking about urinary things sometimes seems embarrassed. It's not embarrassing to me, but. Like I had difficulty urinating

and it was like a constant, you know how you feel when you have to go to the bathroom really bad? Like so bad it's painful. It felt like that 24 seven. Like 24 hours a day. And I went to many multiple doctors to get it treated. They gave me all sorts of medication, nothing helped.

I was misdiagnosed when I was on my mission. They didn't understand. I did have what's called an overactive bladder,. I was misdiagnosed when I was on my mission. They didn't understand. I did have what's called an overactive bladder, but they totally misdiagnosed the cause, which was a genetic physical issue that needed correction. And they were just like, oh, you're probably just like eating too much spicy food or something, you know?

Or you take this medicine, it'll go away and it didn't. And it was just so painful. And then I also developed like a jaw pain. I don't know if you've ever known anyone who has like TMJ disorder or something like that. But your jaw, if it gets out of alignment, and I didn't know at the time, but I was like clenching and grinding my teeth

really hard at night, just probably from the stress and that sort of thing. But it got so painful that there were times when I couldn't speak because it was just hurting so bad. I had like a two month period where I was on an all-liquid diet because I couldn't chew even like soft pasta because the pain was like so intense. And I couldn't find, again I I really had a difficult time getting medical help on my mission. There was a doctor that we could call who like oversaw,

he oversaw multiple missions, right? Like out in the East coast. So I'd call him on the phone and I'd just be like, oh, you know, it hurts really bad. My jaw and you know, and my bladder. And he would be like, oh, take some ibuprofen, you know. So I would, but it wouldn't help. And you know, I would go see,

I went and saw a couple of doctors locally, but TMJ is a very difficult thing to treat. Wouldn't help and you know, I would go see I went and saw a couple doctors locally, but TMJ is a very difficult thing to treat Most doctors most medical doctors for whatever reason don't do almost anything to do with the mouth or the face, right? They send you to dentists or other specialists to handle that area So medical doctors are kind of like I don't know what to do about your job Go see a dentist and most of the dentists would be like, oh yeah, I had a one day seminar on this like two years ago, let me like do this thing

and then it wouldn't help, right? So I just was, and I had never experienced anything like this in my life. I had never suffered prior to this time. I was just like the total happy go lucky kid. And then on my mission, I kind of like, got a little like obsessed with the rules. And then boom, this like double whammy

in the course of like a month, I had these two health problems come up that basically, so I was in chronic pain for the next like eight or nine years, something like that. Wow. And so that- And it's gonna be hard not to speak as a missionary. How did you deal with that?

Were you shown compassion by your leaders that I can't go out today, I can't crack? So we have a guy named a mission president. to speak as a missionary, how did you deal with that? Were you shown compassion by your leaders? I can't go out today, I can't crack. So we have a guy named a mission president. He oversees the whole mission. He was great. The level of compassion that I received from other missionaries varied a lot.

I had one companion who was just like totally uncompassionate, you know. We'd be out walking and I'd just be like, I'm in a lot of pain today. And he would say, yeah, I bet complaining about it helps. I was like, okay, great. So this is what it's going to be like for a couple of months, you know, and then I had others who were much more compassionate and that sort of thing. It was just hard.

I mean, I remember we had this family we were teaching that we got really close to and they, one of them said something like, you know, there has just never hardly ever says anything, right? He's so quiet. And I don't know if you can tell I'm not a very, I love to talk. I'm a talkative guy. And I just remember that made me so depressed, right?

I just thought, yeah, I'm quiet because like it hurts so bad to speak that I won't, I won't speak. I lost a bunch of weight because I wasn't eating very much. You know, I should have gone home. But the pressure to not go home early was so high. And I wanted to stay, right? It's not just that it was pressure. I'm saying that someone should have told me, Hey, you need to go home. And I would have argued against them.

And then I would have gone home. Did you tell your parents what was happening? Uh-huh yeah they knew about it I don't know if they knew the full degree you know. Communication is very limited as a missionary like we were we could only write home we couldn't call okay and we only wrote home once a week and but you know I kind of told them about it. Anyway so that was kind of like that also changed me a lot, as you can imagine. Like I came home much more. I came home having suffered and still suffering. I came home really sick.

And so I was very different person after my mission. It sounded like you change partners several times. I didn't realize that. I thought you were just with someone and that was it for the year or something. No. So on a mission we would go, we measured time by what we call transfers. A transfer was every six weeks. And so you kind of measure your mission in six week increments. Every six weeks you might get moved and your companion might get moved. It just depends on what the mission president wants to do, where he wants everyone to go. So I was in my first area for two transfers,

so about three months, with two different, maybe three, but with two different companions. And then I went to another area where I had a different companion. So I probably had a total of like 10 companions on my mission. Overall. Are you staying in like houses or apartments?

Or are you staying with- Apartments or houses, yeah. Both. Yeah, With other missionaries. So did you ever share your questions or concerns about things that were brought up to you? Like, I hope this is true. I'm a little bit a little frazzled by this question. This Catholic post me. What did you have someone share stuff like that with you? No, no, I never shared it. No, I wanted to be the guy who had the answers. You know, I didn't want to be the one with the questions. Okay. So coming home.

So coming home. Yeah, I got home. I went back to BYU. I'd been there for a year and I, you know, I thankfully was properly diagnosed after I got home on both my health issues. But the treatment for the bladder problem can cause infertility. And so, you know, I elected under strong advice from the doctor, which ended up being good advice, not to do anything about that for time. He gave me some medication that did actually help after a proper diagnosis. He's like, this will improve your symptoms a little. And it did. The jaw thing I spent, and we'll kind of get into this later because I had a beautiful experience later on that kind of led to that being healed. But you know, I went and saw so many specialists that tried everything they could think of, but it was just pain all the time. You get used to it after

a while of being in pain every day. But yeah, I went back to school. I met my wife about a year after I got back from my mission. And we had a very fast, but at the time, kind of standard length LDS courtship and marriage. We met in the summer and got married at Christmas. Love it. I'm a fan. Yeah, when you know, you know, we met in the summer and got married at Christmas. Love it. I'm a fan. Yeah. You know, when you know, you know, right.

And yeah, we just started our lives together. She was a she had just graduated when we got married. She graduated as a nurse from BYU. And I was a English major, English literature. And yeah, we just kind of started living our lives in Provo. I got a job working full time while I was still in school at a software company And yeah, we just kind of started living our lives in Provo. I got a job working full-time while I was still in school at a software company doing customer support. And that kind of triggered most of my later career.

I'm a software engineer now. And yeah, so we just kind of were living our lives. And that was kind of about the time where I really started to have cracks form in my faith. How did that happen? So, I think Stephen, I can't remember if when you had your earlier guest that you mentioned. So there was a book that came out, a biography of Joseph Smith, came out in the early 2000s. Right around this time, you know, I think maybe it was 2005, like right around the time

I came home from my mission. It was called the rough stone rolling and it's, it was written by a faithful church member who's a professional historian. He's a professor of history at like Columbia or something like, you know, some prestigious university LDS guy and the, and he kind of wrote the biography with the blessing of the church. So when the internet goes big, you know, everyone has access to all the information. And so the kind of very, you know, standardized account that I'd been given as a kid, and even the author of

this book, whose name is Richard Bushman, he like has this famous quote that people bandy about where he says something like, you know, the narrative that we all grew up with can't hold because it's simply not true, right? It's like, we have to be more honest about our history. So he wrote this book. I remember being at BYU and just hearing people talk about it. It's like, it's kind of like this thing like, have you read this?

You know, have you read this? Were they shaken by it or? Oh yeah, a lot of people were shaken by it. Yeah, cause it was, so it was definitely written from a faithful perspective, a believing perspective, but it, you know, to the book's credit, to the church's credit, it deals with all the messiness of Joseph Smith's life. Yeah. It just lays it all out there. And, you know, the book gestures often to sort of like ways that a faithful

Latter-day Saint could understand these things. It's not a book of apologetics, although it has a lot of kind of apologetical impulses in the way it tells the story. It wasn't published by the church, but it was sold in all the church's bookstores. So it kind of had this like tacit stamp of approval, like it's okay to read this, because growing up we were always told like stay away from anti-Mormon sources and anti-Mormon literature. So you're kind of like, well we can trust this, The church sells it. And so I was kind of afraid to read it, right? Cause I would hear people read it.

I heard of people like, oh, they read this and they left. Like Mormonism. Well, just to offer an analogy, sorry, if it's annoying that I keep doing this, but I keep trying to apply my experience, your experience, right? And I say like, okay, well in the church, right? We had this big sex abuse crisis

where we have a lot of homosexual priests who are doing evil things with younger boys. And I'm sure when that first came out, it was like, this didn't happen. Like this is, this is probably just a tax, you know, and you should expect that, right? I don't personally remember people saying that, but obviously Catholics were saying that. Same thing is true if you have the head of a religious order, like the legionaries of Christ turn out to be a psychopath or something, maybe not a psychopath, but a really bad guy. The initial impulse is like, no, that's false, that's lies. But then you actually have great respect when someone says, well, look, I'll show you just

how confident in my faith I am by exposing the dirt to you. I mean, that really is a good thing because if you're not doing it, it's gonna come out Oh, yeah, and the church recognized that right which is one of the reasons why I think they kind of I don't know I used to know more in detail what the relationship between the church and Bushman was during the production of this But I think at a minimum they were very encouraging or sort of like the church has your back here Yeah, write this book and produce it. We need something like this to exist. We're confident in our faith.

We don't want it to seem as if we're hiding anything. And there were, and I have met people who have read this book and say, it strengthened my faith, right? But for me, so all I can do is speak to my own experience. Cause I know a lot of people kind of scoff like, oh, you know, if rough stone rolling shook your faith, you never really believed or whatever, which is silly.

Gaslighting. Yeah. When I read it, it was, so when I, my first attempt to read it, uh, was sometime, you know, during this time, within a year or two of being married. And I only made it through the first few chapters before I just had to stop. Cause I, I couldn't do it. Now there are those who are watching who don't know what we're talking about. So could you give us some examples that were outlined in the

book or told about in the book? Jason Krohn Yeah. So the first, the beginning of the book tells the early part of Joseph Smith's life. And growing up, I had been taught like a very kind of hagiographic view of Joseph Smith's life, just like everything about, he was just like this holy young boy. We were given a few anecdotes of his childhood that kind of just, he was very saintly, right? They used to tell us this story,

I'm sure they still do, about how he had a bone infection as a young boy and he had to have surgery to have that infected part of the bone chipped out. And this is in the early 1800s. So you can imagine just how painful that would be. So the story we were told was, you know,

he was offered liquor as like a sedative, right? You know, drink this, you'll want to, and he refused, right? He said, no, if my father will hold me in his arms, that will be enough or something like that. It's a really beautiful story. I don't know how historical it is. I know he did have the surgery. I don't know about, I just haven't looked into it. It's probably, it could very well be true. Those are the kind of stories we heard about Joseph Smith. In this book, the very beginning, it tells a very different story or additional stories about how Joseph Smith was very involved in folk magic and folk, like magical treasure seeking as a young kid.

And this was very common in rural America during this time. Like rural America brought from Europe all these kind of like superstitious magical beliefs that carried on in the rural parts of the country for a very long time. So it was not uncommon even like there's even these great quote by Ben Franklin in like a hundred years before or fifty years before Joseph Smith or so talking about how like in the countryside everyone's like obsessed with finding treasure and they like contact spirits and things like that and

perform all these rituals in order to do so. So Joseph Smith when he was a teenager was what's known as a scryer. He had a mat what he said was a magical stone that he could peer at and the stone through the stone he could see. It was like a seer stone they call it. He could see things that other people couldn't see and specifically what he could see is the location of treasure and so people would hire him to find lost things but specifically they would hire him to find treasure because they were all obsessed with getting rich right? So they would go on these big treasure digs and this is very well documented. Joseph Smith went on a number of these through his teenage years and he wasn't the the only scryer in his town. There were other scryers who could see in stones.

And he would go out there and they would dig holes in the ground and he would kind of be like, okay, yeah, this is where it is. And these are the things we have to do. There's usually like a guardian spirit that was controlling the treasure. And so this is what we have to do to either trick the spirit or convince him to let us have the treasure. And then as they're digging, it would be like, oh, we did it wrong. The treasure is sinking into the earth, right? And then it would be a failure.

They never found treasure on any of Joseph Smith's digs. And this was illegal. It was so known as like a con, it was a con basically, that it was against the law to do this. Is presumably being paid. Oh yeah, he's being paid, yeah. He was actually taken to court as a young man. There's the court documents exist

where he was taken to court and fined as a glass looker, they called it, like someone who looked in these stones. And first of all, that's like a really weird thing to read about your religion's religious founder. You're like, what the heck was he involved? And you can kind of contextualize it in his time and place. Like this wasn't that unusual, but it gets uncomfortable when you realize how close that

story mimics the finding of the Book of Mormon, which was a golden book buried in the ground with a spirit associated with it, which Joseph Smith located using his stone, you know? And you're kind of like, well, now this starts to feel really strange to me, you know? It used to feel very, the story growing up, I felt kind of very biblical, like angels appearing to people, telling them what to do. But now it feels very kind of folk magic-y, right? So that's the kind of thing, right?

You read in the early parts of the book and you're kind of like, yikes. Like, you know, I, I, so I had to stop reading. Does that give you an example of the type of thing? Yeah, wow. And then I suppose it got into his polygamy. It probably got into the the gun battle at his death. Yeah, I didn't read that part yet. At that time, I was still. So I was like really kind

of shaken by that experience of kind of even just starting that book. So what did you do with that shakenness? Who did you go to to help? Oh, no one. Yeah. I don't know. It just felt, it felt too dangerous in some ways to even like think about it. You know, I had like a lot of blocks in my mind, just sort of like, I don't want to lose my faith. I don't want anything to like challenge this thing that I love. And so I just don't want to think about this. Which is funny because I think if I And so I just don't want to think about this. Which is funny because I think if I encountered something similar about atrocities that members of the church have committed or things a pope did, and if it shook my faith, I think the first thing I would do is, since I love my faith and since I believe it to be true, I

would seek to have those tensions eradicated by going to people smarter than me who can help me navigate. Yeah. That's exactly what I would do. And I did do that later. Okay. But at this time I didn't do anything. I don't remember if I even talked to my wife about it at that time.

Were you afraid of maybe seeming like a doubter? Yes, very much so. Yeah. Yeah. And I was, you know, at the time I was serving, so, you know, in the LDS church, you're, you get what's called a calling, basically an assignment to do something, to serve in some way in your, in your local ward, your congregation. And so I was serving as the young men's president. So like the leader of all the, it was kind of like being a youth minister at the time. So there's also the sense of like, I have like important thing that I'm in charge of and like I can't,

I can't spend my time doing this. I have to like help these young people and that sort of thing. It makes sense. So a few years later, I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa. So we we moved out there and this would have been in 2010 and so once again, I was kind of outside of the Utah bubble, right? And encountering other people who were not religious,

people who were, you know, Christian but not LDS, and made some good friendships. And people were like really asking me and kind of challenging me about my faith. And I just thought, I need to read, I need to stop being afraid of the truth, right? Like, and so I decided to like buckle down and read all of Rough Stone Rolling, right?

From beginning to end. And he's like, even if it bothers me, like I have to know this, right? How can I talk about my faith if I just, if I'm too afraid to even learn about it? So I read the book cover to cover and you know, I mean the whole thing kind of proceeded as the beginning in my mind, like seeing Joseph Smith, you know, there, I mean there are a lot of, he was an impressive figure in many ways, right? He started this like worldwide religious movement. So there

are a lot of things that were kind of like, well, that's neat, that's cool, things I didn't know. But there are also so many things just from the beginning to the end of his life that really made me question whether or not he was a prophet. And now of course, this is 2010, right? So we're well past the beginning of the internet and now I can like dig into all sorts of sources, like, you know, defenses, like there's online apologetics

ministries and the LDS faith, just like you have in Catholicism. So I would read, I would read like what critics would say, and I would read the responses from apologists and I would read the responses to the responses just because I wanted to get a sense of the different positions in the debate, right, to try to kind of understand what the truth was, you know. But like, starting around that time, my faith was kind of wounded in a way that it just didn't recover from eventually, you know?

It still was many years, eight more years or so before I really did much about it. But starting around 2010 was when I first really contemplated leaving Mormonism. And it was the first when I really started talking to my wife about it too. It must have been a lonely time. It was very lonely. Yeah.

Yeah. To go through something that's that important to you without having a confident or somebody to help guide you through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was not easy, you know, and I, I really loved the church. Like it worked for me and it was such an important part of my life and my history. And so it was also just really painful for, you know, I kind of like was desperate to hang on to it at the same time. So I, you know, I met with some of my church leaders

at that time. So I did talk to my wife about it. It's kind of like, I'm having, you know, I read this book, I'm having these doubts. I don't really know what to do about that. And she was really supportive, you know, she was like, oh, let's like, let's find you some help. Let's, you know, let's figure this out or whatever. And so I met with some of my church leaders and kind of expressed some of the questions that I had. And they kind of just gave very kind of generic advice, like, you know, focus on the good parts of the faith and kind of rely on that personal testimony

that you have, right? You've had all these good experiences, the Holy Spirit has told you it's true. Kind of like, don't worry so much about that. You know? And there wasn't really any specific defense that I was looking for. I mean, I was familiar with all of the arguments on both sides. It wasn't like, you know, they could have

said like, well, have you considered? It's like, well, yes, I've considered. Like, yeah, I know, I know what the side says. I know what this side says. And I'm kind of stuck in this tension. Mason, Okay. Yeah. And you didn't think to yourself, like, what was the, what was the, what could have been a way forward for you? Because I hear you saying that you wanted to cling to what had so many good elements, you know, that it worked for you. What was the most plausible way forward?

Was it to say, all right, you know, men are sinners and I can accept that and I can still hold on to my Mormon faith, you know? Like, what was... Yeah, I think so. I... A lot of Latter-day Saints, and I did this too in my mind, kind of boil down a lot of the issues with sort of that. Well, people are sinners.

Nobody's perfect. Yeah. And you could also say, well, Joseph Smith was a sinner in his youth. And maybe, like, the Lord revealed the truth of Mormonism him through a method that he had learned. And a lot of that's a lot of the like way the apologists will say it's like, it's sort of like, you know, one, I think Bushman, the one who wrote Reston Rowling was coined the phrase like, it was almost like a preparatory gospel for him. Like it put him in like a

frame of mind so that he would be open to kind of receiving the later revelation that God gave to him. Why wasn't that enough? Was it just that there were multiple things gnawing away at you? Yeah, it's just, there was just too much, I think. It wasn't the one. It wasn't just like, oh, Joseph Smith did this thing. In fact, when I really got down to like my faith transition and kind of like the faith crisis that I went through I tried really hard in my mind to

Extract away sort of like the foibles of joseph smith or other prophets because It's just true that god uses imperfect people. He does it in the old testament. He does it in the new testament He does it today and so just because someone had this history or just because someone made these mistakes or committed these sins, even if they have positions of authority and a high calling from God, it doesn't necessarily mean that what they've taught is false. And so I tried to actually like sequester those things as much as I could. No one's perfect. No one's like, I'm not a computer, but I wanted to focus on like the core issues like are the teachings true? And how can I know that right?

And I do want to get into that in a little bit like at the proper point in the story if that's alright, yeah but yeah at the time so I So I remember at that time when we were living in Iowa in grad school. I had this Experience So I remember at that time when we were living in Iowa in grad school, I had this experience. My wife and I were sitting up one night talking about all this stuff, right? And it wasn't a good conversation. It was very hard for my wife to talk about this and to kind of hear me express all these doubts.

And she had all these fears about, this was right around the time when she became pregnant with our oldest child. And she, I don't know, I, you know, it's totally understandable. It's completely understood. Any good wife would have those fears and anxieties. I mean, goodness, how would I feel if tomorrow night my wife sat me down and says she's having deep doubts about the Catholic faith? What does that mean for my children? What does that mean for our marriage? I mean, it's completely reasonable response. So I, we had this night where we were having this conversation, hard conversation. She kind of leaves, I think like in tears, you know what I mean?

Goes to bed and I was sitting on our couch in our living room in this apartment that we were living in. And you're like a beer would be so good right now. I didn't think that at the time. But, um, I just thought, I, you know, and I was just sitting there just feeling despair, just total, total despair. And you know, at the time too, like I had no, what seemed to me like a viable alternative, right?

I didn't really know where this was leading, but there wasn't the sense of my mind like, okay, if this not true, maybe that like, it was just this or seemed like nothing, right? And I was sitting on this couch. And I had what I can best describe as like a vision almost not I didn't see anything with my eyes. It was all in my mind. Like I totally know that it was all in my mind, but it was so vivid that it was like it was using like the capacity of my sight. And it was like I could see myself standing on this cliff. And I looked over the edge,

I was kind of peering over the edge, and it was like that's where I was going, right? With my doubts or whatever. And at the bottom was just this total sea of just nothingness that was ready to swallow me whole. And it frightened me. Like this experience scared me so much. I was like, it was terrifying to think that like,

I might be jumping into this abyss. And I really recoiled from that. And that experience kind of like put me back in Mormon mode, you know what I mean? For quite some time, because I was like, I don't want to go to nothing. Like, if the option is Mormonism or nothing, I choose Mormonism. You know, like, I know this, there's a lot of goodness here. And so that kind of kept

me in for quite some time, even with my doubts, kind of having this almost like vision-like experience. And did you, what happened with your conversations with your wife at that point? Did you? They ended up just kind of stalling out. You know what I mean? Like you can only talk about that so many times and I wasn't ready to do anything about it really. And so I was just kind of like, well. And still at this point in your journey, you don't know other Mormons who are having the same questions, the same fears. So there are other people who are, you know, I didn't know at the time, but my brother, my oldest brother, was kind of on his way out of the church at this time.

But I wasn't really aware of that. And I think a lot of Latter-day Saints at that time were having that same kind of experience, but like, were so afraid to talk to each other about it, right? Like a lot of people were just suffering in silence and just very lonely. Like you said, because I mean, how is doubt viewed in the LDS community? Um, I mean, in Catholicism, of course, Aquinas will talk about the sin of doubt, but that being like an intentional rejection of what you know, God has revealed perhaps something like that. Right. But, but as far as like fleeting, emotional things, I mean, all human beings have them. So well, you're supposed to know, right? Okay. You're supposed to know that it's true. The Holy Spirit told you. And so to doubt,

that's so much pressure to put on a person. Yeah. There's a lot of it's viewed very negatively, less so now, right? Like the church has now gone through kind of this like 20 year process of a lot of people leaving the church. And so there's a lot more compassion and understanding around people who have questions and doubt than there was then. But like if, if someone opens up to you that they're having questions, like it feels very dangerous to you. Like it's almost like a disease. You don't want to be infected by it. Right. Okay. And so I would not say that that is the case in Catholicism. I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. My experience in general of Catholicism with a lot of these things was very different. Yeah. So that was kind of all going on, you know, and I was still...

So this is like 2011 now, something like that. I'm kind of nearing the end of my first year of graduate school. And I had this kind of this, another kind of pivot point in my life where I had to decide what I was gonna do during my summer. It was a two year program and I had to do some kind of internship for the summer. And I had two options in front of me. And one of them was a very kind of like high intensity

internship in downtown Chicago and kind of seemed exciting, would be fun, but I was really worried that my health would not allow me to be successful at that. Because I was still dealing with chronic pain every day. It very much affected my life, you know. Then I had another offer to do an internship, basically to like stay on campus for the summer and do academic research with a professor,

which was interesting to me. It didn't seem quite as cool, but it certainly seemed more relaxing, right? I wouldn't have to go anywhere. I could kind of just take the summer off, do a few hours. And I was really wrestling in my heart about like which one of these things to choose. And in LDS culture, there heart that like which one of these things to choose and in LDS culture

There's a very strong, you know sense of you know, what we would probably call discernment in Catholicism They would refer to as personal revelation like God speaking to you directly And so I did what an LDS person does and I like went to the temple to the LDS temple to like pray about this about what I should do and to the LDS temple to like pray about this, about what I should do. And so I went to actually a very significant temple in LDS history called the Nauvoo temple. It's located in one of the, the place where Joseph Smith was killed. It's like where the Latter-day Saints lived at that time. It's in Illinois. So I was in that temple praying really earnestly about this question. And I had, well, I think up until that time was probably the most significant spiritual experience

of my life, where I'm gonna sound like such a charismatic with some of these stories. I'm really not, like in my day-to-day life, but I've had some of these experiences, you know? And so I was just in the holiest room in the temple called the celestial room. It's kind of supposed to represent being in the presence of God and being in heaven. And I was probably there for like hours praying about this, agonizing over it, and just agonizing about my health, right? Like, what am I going to do?

Like, what kind of life can I live with these health problems? What is my life going to be like? Am I going to be able to support my family? You know, am I going to be able to be the provider I need to be? All these things. And after like a long time in prayer, I had this like instantaneous experience where like it was like a message was implanted right in my mind is so clear You know again, I didn't hear it But I and but I knew exactly the words that came with the message and the message was don't worry

you will have a normal life and Just like from head to toe, you know I just felt like peace wash over me and that might sound really toe, you know, I just felt like peace wash over me. And that might sound really like a strange message to a lot of people, like a normal life might sound really unambitious, but when you've already been like having chronic pain for like six years or something like that or seven at that point, like that was like all I wanted, you know, I just broke down in tears. I was just like, oh, a normal life, like that's all I've ever wanted. And so I remember just driving broke down in tears. I was just like, oh, a normal life? That's all I've ever wanted. And I remember just driving home,

just pouring out my thanks to God. I just felt this total confidence. And in many ways, that was kind of the experience that I'd always wanted to have about, is Mormonism true? Because I remember just driving home, just feeling totally just like, God's got my. Like this disease will not define my life. I can accept that internship in Chicago and I'll be okay.

And so I did and it was and I was I mean I got through it. I was still in pain that whole time. But about a year so then I finished graduate school and because of that internship I got a job in Cincinnati and I moved there and when I when I when I was When I first got there pretty soon, you know people found out I had this like really bad job problem I came into a dentist when I got there and I was like, oh, yeah, I had this terrible jaw pain And they said oh you should go see this doctor. He's a specialist by that point. Are you sick of hearing?

Right, you know, I'd been to so many specialists for job pain and they had honestly messed up my mouth terribly. Had made it way worse. So I was just like, yeah, no, I'm not going to see anybody. And then I had a second person a month later, he's like, have you heard of this doctor? You should go see him. He specializes in that. I thought, nah, I'm not going to do it. Anyway, after the fourth person over the heard of this doctor? You know, you should go see him. He like specializes in that. I thought, nah, I'm not gonna do it. Anyway, after like the fourth person over the couple of months, it's like, you should go see this guy. His name was Dr. Oakeson at the University of Kentucky. So that was, I didn't, no one had told me that he was actually at the university.

I had dealt with quacks, you know, like the whole, what I consider quacks. But this doctor was like, so I started Googling him and I found out that he is actually like one of like the world authorities on this problem and he was like half hour from my house. Wow. Right?

Yeah. What? So I called his office. I said, Hey, you know, do you have any openings for me to come and see Dr. Ocasin? You know, he has a clinic at the university. They said, well, normally we're booked out like six months, but we actually had a cancellation. You could come in tomorrow if you want.

And I was like, oh, sure. And they're like, keep in mind, our appointments can run up to eight hours because people fly in from all over the world to see him. And so we have to get your whole issue resolved in one visit. That's like our, we try to, Try to get it all resolved in one visit. I'm sure that sounded great too.

Yeah, I was like, sure, I'll take a day off of work to come see him, we'll just see. And in one visit, he cured my jaw pain. How, that's wonderful. Yeah, he just, well, properly he diagnosed it first. Most of the doctors before thought it was a joint problem. So I had been suggested to have surgery on my jaw like a dozen times.

And you didn't? No. Thank goodness. No, because I like to look things up myself. And I saw like, it's kind of like back surgery, right? It's like often causes more problems than it solves. So I'd never done that. He, in like an hour, determined it was just muscular pain. Like I was just having like constant muscle spasms due to

like my teeth clenching that I did at night. So he gave me just like a special device to wear at night. He's like, if you wear this at night, it will relax your jaw. And I remember and I was so skeptical of that. Yeah, what I was and I'm walking around with this little rubber thing from this. It was hard. It wasn't rubber. It was, you know, it was acrylic. What is it? Is it a tooth thing? Yeah, yeah. You kind of just fit it over your front teeth.

You know, so I had worn so many different appliances in my like while sleeping, and none of them had done anything except, they had protected my teeth so I didn't grind them off, but none of them had done anything for the pain. But he was just like, no, I just wear this at night, your pain will go away. And I was like, whatever.

So but I went home that night, I popped it in, and I will never forget what it felt like when I woke up the next morning. You are kidding. Like I woke up and the pain was gone. And my jaw was like, I could move it. And I just thought, how is this possible? And something so simple it's almost infuriating that no one

told you to do it sooner. I know, it's ridiculous. It was just amazing. It was just instantaneous relief. I hope you called him and thanked him. I don't know. You better do that a I think I had a follow up. Yeah. You know, I think I went back and was like, it's better, you know. So yeah.

And I like I really felt like like that, especially like that experience I had praying in the LDS temple kind of like started a series of cascading events that led me to like being right next to the this one doctor who like knew exactly what to do and it just solved the problem. And, and you know I still struggle with like teeth clenching at night and sometimes it gets a little sore but it's just not even close to what it used to be. It was basically better so and I also around that time also had surgery on my bladder which solved that problem so now I mean when people are in pain they can become depressed because it's I know you say that you learn to live with the pain, but sometimes you just start shutting down in other areas. Yeah. Did you ever consider that maybe the reason you were becoming skeptical of Mormonism may have been because you were depressed and now that the God had freed you from this? I'm doing my best here.

Maybe you give kind of Joseph Smith and the LDS another shot. I mean, you hadn't abandoned it. Yeah, I mean, I was still LDS. I didn't really I mean, it certainly didn't solve my questions or my doubts. So I don't think I don't think that was it. You know, I really think it was just a just a, you know, lingering sense of like, I just don't know if I believe this is true. And I got to tell you guys about my new favorite app.

It's called Ascension and it's by Ascension Press this is the number one Bible study app in my opinion and you can go to ascensionpress.com slash frad go there and so that way they know that we sent you it is absolutely fantastic it has the entire Bible there very well laid out the whole Bible is read to you by father Mike Schmitz or just sections of The Bible it has the catechism there. It's cross-referenced. Absolutely. Beautifully It's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is just download it and check it out for yourself It even has over 1600 frequently asked questions about scripture

So if you go to Genesis 1 you might have a question about evolution. Well, there's a drop down right there You can read an article that'll help you understand it. I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth, my jaw was just, it was dropped. It was absolutely amazing. It's had tens of thousands of five star reviews. Again, go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. It also has all of their amazing Bible studies. So I remember back in the day, I had a big DVD case of Jeff Kavan's Bible studies. Well, it's all there on the app.

So go download it right now. Please go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. All right, so yeah, 2012, I was saying the, you know, internet's obviously in full swing. You can not only look up anything about your own faith that you wanted, but you could also look into other faiths, maybe see what objections they have. At that point, as you were beginning to have doubts about Mormonism, was there anything at all that was more attractive?

No. No. No, I, um, as a Latter-day Saint, you're taught that you are in the true faith and all the other faiths are wrong. And you're given just enough superficial exposure to other faiths that you kind of feel like, I know about that. I know that's not true. It's probably true of all religions.

It's not true of all. I don't think so. I think that whenever not the old faiths are false, like, you know, it's very clear to me ever since I've been a serious Catholic that there was obviously some people are closer to the truth than others. It's not like we're right. Everyone else is wrong. Well, where we have the fullness of what God wants for his people and others approximate that. And then some have complete perversions of it. But I think all of us, I mean, we don't have time.

No one has time to investigate the claims of all other religions. Therefore, it's necessary if you're gonna interact with it in any kind of way to have some idea so that you can put that away. Yeah, but I think that some faiths, and Catholicism is one of these that teaches, even if other religions have truth and approximate the truth,

we have the fullness, right? We're the one. You should join us. I think there's a tendency to become very all or nothing about your faith because you've been told, in a way that, say, if you're evangelical, if you might think, well, maybe I could become presbyterian or anglekin someday it wouldn't feel like such a crisis to do that whereas to like leave mormonism or catholicism

it's very totalizing in your mind yeah um and so I I didn't and we'll get into this because then something does come on my radar that um at this time, there was nothing. And then I should just mention to you, this is when our first daughter was born, was when we lived in Kentucky. She was born at a Catholic hospital in a, now I can't remember what city in Kentucky, but I remember she was born on Christmas Eve,

and my mother-in-law was, when we were arriving at the hospital, was very concerned that there was no baby Jesus in the, in the nativity display. You know, she's like, someone stole baby Jesus. And I said, no, I think, I think this is a Catholic hospital. I think they put baby Jesus there at midnight or something. She's like, no, someone stole baby Jesus. Anyway, so she was very relieved the next day when baby Jesus was there.

Yeah. I know I asked Stephen this, but a Mormon baptizes babies than other, right? Starting at eight years old. Is there some kind of dedication or something? I guess I'm trying to get to you call it a baby blessing to what was, what was that like at this point? You know, having your children blessed. I mean, yeah, you're open to that. You weren't so absolutely. Yeah, no. Yeah. I totally was participating. Actually, we lived in Kentucky. I once again, we were on the Kentucky side of the river outside Cincinnati. I was once again young

men's president, you know, leading all the young men in the ward and that sort of thing. No, the baby blessing was beautiful. Like it's a great event. You get together with family and all the men, because you know, in the LDS Church, all the men are priests. And they have what they call the priesthood, and it's sort of seen a little different than in the Catholic Church in some ways. But everyone can act priestly. And so all the men kind of stand in a circle holding the baby, and as the baby's dad, I give the blessing.

That's lovely. And I kind of just say like whatever words come to my heart, you know, to like give the child, you kind of like say like whatever words come to my heart, you know to like give the child you kind of like formally Give it a name So it's kind of like a christening in some ways like I give you a name and a blessing and you kind of Bless them for their life. So yeah, it's really beautiful. Mm-hmm. All right. Yeah, let's get to cracking. Let's do it So I moved home. Well Come to Utah home to Utah. Yeah, we moved back after a year in Cincinnati. I loved Cincinnati, I hated

my job. So a year later I had an opportunity to go back to Utah, so we did. And so it was around this time that I was introduced to Eastern Orthodoxy, just online. Just so I was, I used to read Rod Dreher, you're familiar with him, and he was Orthodox and, and he converted from Catholicism. Yeah. Yeah. But at this time he was Orthodox, right? Okay. And I had never really encountered Orthodoxy before. It was, I had heard of it, right? You know, you kind of grow up, like I'd watched my big fat Greek wedding. So I pretty much knew most of what I needed to know. But I just thought, well, this is interesting. Here's an ancient faith that claims to be the true faith and has carried it forward since the time of Christ,

but they're not Catholic, right? Because I had like a lot of anti-Catholicism just kind of imbibed from my LDS upbringing, you know, because they're the apostate faith. They've ruined everything. That's why the restoration through Joseph Smith was necessary. And so this really intrigued me and it was very beautiful. I was very attracted to the beauty, right? That I would see. So like Dreher's blog was not about orthodoxy,

but it came through. He's a very personal, he's a very open person. He probably shares too much. But I just remember just thinking like, this is so beautiful. And so it kind of became like my hobby, this side interest I had. Like, I would buy icons and I bought an orthodox study Bible. And I just kind of liked learning about it. Is that how you justified your interest in it while remaining a Mormon? Yeah. yeah.

And I was still having more and more doubts. So at this time, my oldest brother- I gotta put this out. This is getting, this is getting too much. Crisis level. My oldest brother left Mormonism, you know? And that was kind of like a crisis in some ways. It's like, whoa, like my own family,

like what's gonna happen to us? What did he live for? Nothing. Yeah. Just, you know, kind of like a rationalist humanism, I would say. And he, you know, he was pretty antagonistic with the church and I was really struggling with my own doubts, but I still really wanted to be LDS. And so this was really hard for me, but it kind of... I don't know. There's just a lot of internal struggles going on. And this was right around the time when certain, you know, definitely what I would call anti-Mormon efforts

were kind of ramping up of, like, people who'd left Mormonism and wanted to compile, like, all the issues with Mormonism into, like, certain documents, and people were sending them around to each other, like, have you read this? Have you seen these things? You know, this is in the Mormon community in the Mormon community. Yeah. And so it was, um, it was, it was like a difficult time. So I was like kind of interested in orthodoxy, still LDS. How was your wife feeling about the icons coming, coming into the house? Not comfortable, you know, um,

I wasn't like doing a lot of like devotional stuff with them. You know, every now and then, I did buy that little red prayer book, you know, that one, the Antiochian one. And every now and then I would like say morning and evening prayer from that. And I just thought it was beautiful, you know? So this went on for a couple of years where I just kind of like, I always describe it as just kind of up and down with my faith. I would go through periods where I would just feel totally at peace with being Mormon and I just loved it. You know, it's like when I focused on the parts that I liked, it was good. It was good community, good values, meaningful experiences, great. And then anytime

I was kind of forced to confront my doubts, you know, parts about things in LDS history or things about like say the Book of Mormon or other things that Joseph Smith produced that made me question, then I would kind of plunge into this like deep spiritual turmoil, sometimes for months on end, you know. So it's not a stable way to live. And so around this time, my wife was pregnant with our second daughter. And she, so she was about, she was 35 weeks pregnant. And we went into the doctor for a routine checkup. And there was too much amniotic fluid, like her amniotic fluid levels were too high.

And so they said, hey, you should go see a specialist, like a neonatologist to get a second ultrasound, just a detailed one to make sure everything's okay. And we thought, oh, that's fine. With our first daughter, this had happened to us. She kept measuring too small. And so they sent us to specialty ultrasounds like four times or something during the pregnancy

So we thought whatever sure, you know, we actually had a weekend trip planned Go up the canyon in Utah stay on the mountains And so we're like we scheduled it so that we would go to this doctor's appointment. We left our daughter with someone else I can't remember who go to this doctor's appointment and go straight up the mountain, right? That's how kind of unconcerned we were. So we go to the appointment with the neonatologist and it turned into like a three-hour ordeal because there were serious issues. He found that like our daughter's brain was not developed properly and that the amniotic fluid level was rising because the baby wasn't,

so babies like process the amniotic fluid. I think they swallow it naturally. And it kind of goes through their body and it kind of gets their digestion going. And that is an important part of kind of like the balance. I'm not an expert, but everything that goes on in the womb. And if that process shuts down, they said she's likely not swallowing,

which is really dangerous. And so the fluid level was like rising, you know. And he basically said, you need to be prepared that your daughter is going to have pretty significant disabilities. It's impossible to tell just from the ultrasound how significant, but it's going to be significant. And so we were just shocked, right? 35 weeks, almost full term. And so it's actually a great blessing that we were able to get in the car and just drive up into the mountains

and have this weekend to process it. And it was really interesting because I think my wife and I both just kind of felt this sense of great peace about it. As we were going, you know, I mentioned I was interested in like orthodoxy and kind of ancient Christianity. I'd been reading the works of Julian of Norwich, you know, who she is like English mystic. And just as we were driving up, she had this, you know, her most famous phrase when she

was contemplating sin, right? It just came right into my head, just like like all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and I just thought I don't know what's gonna happen with this baby, but like You know, like God's got our back, you know, so we went up there and we just talked about it you know at that time we were just like You know, you just don't know what to expect like is this gonna be a child that is gonna be disabled her whole life You know, we just didn't know what to expect. Is this gonna be a child that is gonna be disabled her whole life? We just didn't know.

Kind of ironically, beautifully ironically, we had already picked her name. So I had twin sisters growing up that had died. Their names were Sarah and Emily. And one of them was stillborn and the other lived a few months. And so when we found out we were expecting our second daughter, we said, let's name her after

them, you know, Sarah Emily Hess. And, and so, you know, it's kind of like, wow, like, we even picked the name of this, you know, my sister's who passed away, now she's going to have problems. There's something like, something's going on here that's kind of beyond us, right? Anyway, so we came back from the trip and the doctor had told us that we should expect that my wife would go into labor soon because when the amniotic fluid levels rise, the belly gets bigger and bigger and that triggers labor.

And true to his word, I think it was on Monday, but it was maybe on Tuesday, my wife went into labor. And because we knew that there were gonna be complications, we went to a bigger, to like a bigger hospital than we were planning on giving birth at. That was also a great blessing. If we hadn't known about this, if she'd just gone into labor, we would have gone to our local hospital. Because when our daughter was born, she wasn't able to breathe on her own.

So they would have had to rush her to this other hospital and then my wife would have been here and the baby there and you know. So we went down to this hospital in Provo, Utah and she was born in 2000, this was 2014, and yeah so when she was born she couldn't breathe on her own. They kind of whisked her off to the NICU. And I stayed with my wife, you know, she was born via C-section. And, you know, that night I went up to the NICU to see our daughter and her doctor was there, you know, the newborn specialist. And talking to the doctor, she started using words like,

we want to give you like as much time as you need with her. Do you know what I mean? It became clear that this doctor expected that she would die, right? And that was the first intimation that we'd had, that what she had would be life-threatening, right? And I remember thinking, we've got to get my wife up here. She hasn't seen her baby yet.

And if she dies, what if she dies tonight? And my wife up here. Like she hasn't seen her baby yet. And if she dies, like what if she dies tonight and my wife never holds her or something. So I went down to her room and I was just like, we have to get her upstairs. And they're like, well, she just had a C-section. And I was like, I don't care. Like we have to get her up to see the baby. So we did, like we got her up there.

My wife's a champion. Like she's, she recovers really well from things like that. So anyway, we went up there and over the next couple of days, they ran all sorts of tests, you know, like scanning the brain, testing reflexes and all these things. And her condition was just really bad, worse than even the original doctor had suspected.

Like she couldn't swallow on her own at all. You know, as you can imagine, if you can't swallow, like if you can't process your own mucus, like it's, you can't, you can't really live, right? You're like, your lungs are gonna be constantly filling with fluid, right? She, she on, when she was on the respirator, she was able to breathe.

She wasn't fully dependent on the respirator to breathe, if that makes sense. They can like, I don't know how they know, like respirator's doing 80%, she's doing 20%. It was something like that, right? And after a couple of days, you know, we had like this meeting with the neonatologist where they just said, like, your daughter

just won't be able to survive unless she's hooked to machines her entire life, you know? And so we had to just decide like what to do, you know? And so we spent some time praying about it and we just felt like decide like what to do, you know? And so we spent some time praying about it and we just felt like the right thing to do was to just let her pass away. You know, it's not much of a, we didn't feel like, we felt like it would be selfish for us

to just keep her alive on machines. You know, with like extraordinary care and that sort of thing. So on like on her fourth day live, you know, we once again we gathered around gave her a baby blessing had like all family there and then just you know disconnected her and we just kind of held her in our arms as she passed away. That must have been so brutal. Yeah it was um it was hard I mean you know you can imagine it right? Yeah. And but like the amazing thing was that we, both my wife and I, felt like the presence

of God so closely. It was probably like, I just, I don't know how to describe it. It was like, it was like we were just wrapped in God's love. You know what I mean? Yes. And, um. Was she in pain as she passed? No.

I mean, they don't, they don't think so. She was very calm. You know, it was just, she was just, you know, she was a little weak thing, you know, and, um, just, it was very peaceful, you know, and just that whole experience was just like so beautiful. And which is a strange thing to say, right? Like losing a child, losing a baby like that. But it was just a testament of, it just was a time of love. Like we loved her and honestly, we could sense her love for us,

which I know how that sounds, but they told us that she was blind, but I swear she was following our faces. Anyway, just everyone, just like, the whole community came together. It was just family, community, just love. And I just, God's love during that time just felt like something tangible. It was like something, it was like this moment where like I needed it and it was there, you know? It was like I could reach out and just grab it. And it was interesting because I was in this time where I kind of felt very divided in sense of like

Mormonism, like orthodoxy, you know, like this was very, it was becoming a live option for me. And there was a degree to which this kind of like strengthened my LDS faith because, you know, that was the context in which it happened and I was like oh it's so beautiful. But you know for my wife especially like it was very much like an affirming experience of her LDS faith. For me it was an affirming experience of like God, right? Like I was like oh God is so good, like he's there for us. But it didn't really, it wasn't like tied to Mormonism in my mind.

Anyway, so I share that just because it was just such a, another one of these like pivotal spiritual moments in my life that kind of really defined the way that I relate with God and just how real it all felt. A few months after that was when my interest in orthodoxy really kicked into high gear. I, you know, I kind of like once kind of that settled down, like we're probably like four or five months later, I think, you know, it's hard to remember. This is 2014 or so. And I, I start really deciding to like delve deeper into it. I started making this really close study of the New Testament. I don't know if you've have an Orthodox study Bible or not. Yeah. But it's got this great commentary from church fathers and it just

really opened up my way of like seeing the New Testament with new eyes, right? Probably showed you that there wasn't this great apostasy. Oh, certainly. That seemed like a huge theme to me was like the faithfulness of the early church and like God's promises as the new Israel and how like the church is like this permanent institution. Like that was all starting to sound like really plausible to me as I'm reading the scriptures. Um, but I was still just like too afraid to take any steps toward anything. And then one night I had, this is why I say I'm going to sound like such a charismatic.

Well many of the saints sounded like that too, so I wouldn't apologize for it. But I had a dream. So by this time several of my other siblings had left the church, the LDS church. But I had just found out that my youngest sibling, who had just turned 18, had left the church as well. And I was really worried about him. And so I had this dream where in my dream, my brother and I, my youngest brother and I, were walking along this like row of churches. And when we got to the end of the row, there was a Catholic church on our left

and an Orthodox church on the right. And so we kind of dipped into the Catholic church and I'd never been to mass and I'd never been to divine liturgy, right? And so, you know, in this dreamlike state, we kind of see the mass. I don't remember what it looked like, but I remember we kind of walked out being like, well, that was nice, you know, in this dreamlike state, we kind of see the mass. I don't remember what it looked like, but I remember we kind of walked out being like,

well, that was nice, you know? And then we walked into the Orthodox Parish on the right. And it was just, it was so beautiful and overwhelming that it woke me up. I woke up, it was like five in the morning. I woke up and I thought, I have to go to an Orthodox Divine Liturgy today. It was a Saturday. I didn't know how that would happen in Utah, because you might imagine there's

not a lot of Orthodox churches. But I looked it up and found out there's an Orthodox mission, like 15 minutes from my house, and they were having liturgy that day. They don't have it, they don't have it. They had only visiting priests would come out to serve that mission, but they were having one that day. Not Vespers, Divine Liturgy. Divine Liturgy, Saturday morning. And so I was like, I'm going, like I have to go. Right?

Did you tell your wife? Yeah. Yeah. I said, I have to go to Divine Liturgy today. I don't remember if I told her about the dream or not. And she's like, okay, you know, whatever. Go if you have to. So I went and it was just totally bizarre, right? Like, it was, there was like two other people there,

a priest from Salt Lake City, you know, had come down to serve divine liturgy, Father Justin, and like one cantor, and the music was weird, and the incense was weird and the icons were weird and I remember just kind of sitting there being like this doesn't seem like my dream but it was like my first exposure to it right like the first real experience of liturgical worship and I just remember driving home afterwards just thinking like this is just a strange experience to me. Like just that

dream and going and what a different way to worship. Yeah. Is there no liturgical aspects in the LDS church? None on the regular weekly. So they're kind of like, it's much more Mormonism is kind of like high church theology, low church worship. So they're quite sacramental, right? Like with all men being priests and they give blessings and what they call just the sacrament, is like communion service. It's seen as having like real effect.

It's not just a memorial meal. I mean, it is a memorial meal to them, but like you are renewing your baptismal covenant with your personal covenant when you partake of the sacrament. So it has like a real thing that's occurring when you do it. It's not just, oh, we're just remembering Jesus. I love what you're pointing out though, because I think too often Catholics or Orthodox, I presume, are so enamored by their beautiful liturgy, which is in fact beautiful, that

they just think I'm going gonna bring my mate over here. Just the sheer beauty is gonna blow him away. And sure, sometimes that happens, but if you're not accustomed to liturgical worship, it is, as you say, it's just kind of weird. Yeah, on a regular Sunday, LDS worship is, you come in, you get kind of a pretty informal greeting by like the leader of the congregation.

He's like, welcome to church. We're happy to have you here today. We going to start by singing this song and then the whole congregation sings a hymn and then they'll do some announcements and things like that some like kind of business take care of some business and then you'll move into the call the sacrament portion where you they sing a song they bless the bread and the these water and then they pass the trays around everyone takes it and then you have get a couple sermons and then it's over you know and you sing a song and it's done. So very low church. Yeah I didn't realize that. In the temple it's very liturgical or it's very ritualistic right it's not like it's not anything like a traditional Christian

liturgy but it's extreme it's ritual to end, which is very shocking to a lot of LDS people when they go to the temple the first time, because all your exposure is this very low church thing. And then you go into this, you know, two hour long ceremony that is just totally regimented. And, you know, and you're just like, what the heck? Like, you know. Do you think the experience of many Mormons are,

why don't we do this back there? Or is it, I don't like this at all. So many of them have the second experience where they don't like it. You know, I had a cousin that basically left the church for years because she was kind of traumatized by her first temple experience. What's traumatizing about it? Well, I don't know how much details I want to get into that you don't have to, but why don't you

want to get into details? Because I'd have to to explain what would you found so strange? Okay. You know, um, it's so it's very similar to, there's a lot of Masonic elements in the LDS temple because I mean, there's a lot of things that are like exactly copied from masonry. Wow. Including things like special hand grasps and special hand signs that you learn and that sort of thing. And so to go from, Hey, we're going to sing a song. Yeah, we're going to sing a song and kind of talk about Jesus, you know, kind of like

many LDS services would feel very similar to like many Protestant services on a Sunday, just in terms of what's talked about, just better looking people in better clothes. That's right. That's just my assumption. And then you go to the temple and it's like, we're going to teach you secret pass codes and things like that. I can see how to get into heaven. And you're kind of like, uh, what is this? Can you please tell me our listeners about the temple card, the ID that I presume you have that, cause that's just cool. Yeah. So they have this thing called the temple recommend. So to go in the temple, you have to be like a member

in good standing worthy to attend. It's only for like, um, people who are really living the faith. Uh, so that includes standards like, so to get your temple recommend, you have to meet with your, you have to meet with two people, your bishop and then what's called your stake president, who's like the next guy above him. And they both ask you the set of same questions. And they start with just sort of like, do you believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost? Do you believe in Joseph Smith and the restoration of the gospel? Do you support and uphold the current leadership of the church and that sort of thing? And they say, do you keep the law of chastity?

Do you keep the word of wisdom? Like, do you not, you know, which is mostly means do you abstain from alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco? Do you pay a full tithing, only full tithe paying members? Like a full 10% of your income has to be, you have to pay that in order to get your recommend. So a series of questions like that. When you finish that, you get a little card

that has your name on it, and you have to present that to them to get into the temple. Now, this is not important at all, but is it laminated, is your face on it, how does it look like a driving license? No, you can just Google it and see, it's just a piece of paper. Now, when I first went through the temple,

it's literally just a piece of paper with your name on it. They now do have a barcode system, so when you go there now, they scan it, so that way they can deactivate recommends or whatever if they need to, that sort of thing. But it doesn't have your picture on it, at least I don't think it still does. I don't think that there's a picture of you

that comes up on the screen, maybe there does. Yeah. You know, it, uh, you know, it's a cool idea. I'm looking at a picture of it. It looks like a library card from the 90s. Yeah. Yeah, that's about right. It's, it's, it's a, it's a little, it looks like it's, um, like maybe four by three ratio. It says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints It's got first name middle initial last name This picture is really low quality. Let me try to find one. I can actually see I like the idea I wish we could oh, it's so it's a business card give one to nancy pelosi or take it away from her It's a business. Okay, so it's a business card that gets folded in half and on the back it has

It's a business card that gets folded in half. And on the back it has your signature, the ward you're at, which would be like your parish, right? And then your stake, which is like your diocese. And then the signature of the bishop and the signature of the stake president. And then there's a number on it, which you said now they have barcodes. Now they have barcodes, and so they're,

like they have to be activated via kind of like the computer system before you can use it, that sort of thing. And so they're not that hard to like, you know, there have been times when people have shared them, you know, passed them around. I mean, that's very discouraged and culturally, culturally, it's very frowned on. I'm not. But like, say there have been so there have been some people who've wanted to like kind of expose temple ceremonies and they've snuck in with Cameras and whatever and so sometimes they'll get those, you know, find

Disaffected members and take their recommends and do that sort of thing I don't recommend that. I think that's very disrespectful of something that people hold very sacred. Um, But yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean Safeguarding the sacraments is very important but gatekeeping the sacraments is not good and where you draw the line between safeguarding and gatekeeping is Obviously going to be like difficult to do but I would hesitate to Gate keep the Eucharist in such a way,

if that makes sense. I don't know. I mean, I like the way the Orthodox do it. Like when I was going to the Orthodox church, the pastor, the priest knows all the people in this parish. Like if he doesn't know you, he's not gonna give you the Eucharist. He'll be like, who are you?

You know? If you wanted the Eucharist, you should have come to me before Divine Liturgy and told me who you are and where you're from. Yeah. And when your last confession was, you know. So this first experience of the Divine Liturgy was a bit weird. Yes. Sorry. Yeah. Get back. Get back to that. Yeah. So it was weird, but it kind of like grew on me a little bit. I was like, it's, it's kind of like the attraction of the, of the, of the exotic almost, right? Like, wow, what the heck was that?

You know? Um, do you think if you went to that exact same divine liturgy today, you'd find it rather beautiful? Oh yes, definitely. Cause I mean, it was still very simple. It's still very simple liturgy, right? In the small mission parish with like three people there, no Deacon, you know? Um, so it was a very simple liturgy, but I would definitely find it beautiful now.

and you know, so it was a very simple liturgy, but I would definitely find it beautiful now. Okay, so now let's, we can jump forward to line a lot of like breaking point. I know you keep wanting to get there. Sorry for all the background and stuff. No, it's all been great. So in 2017, I got a phone call on my phone. While I was at work.

And it said the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I was like, what the, actually it said it in German, I remember, for whatever, you know, technology. But I, you know, German's similar enough to English, I was like, the Church of Jesus, the Kirche, die Kirche, whatever. So I answer the phone, and I was like, hello, this is Isaac.

And a woman says, hi, is this Isaac Hess? I say yes. And she says, I'm the secretary of Elder Christopherson and he's wondering if he could speak with you. Do you have a moment? So to explain who this was. Please. The eldest church is led by 15 men

that they consider prophets, seers and revelators. Okay, there's three that serve in like the first, what they call the first presidency, which is so it's the president of the church and his two counselors. That's three. And then there's the quorum of the twelve apostles. Okay, so the, and all 15 of them are referred, you know, the church believes like they're prophets, seers, and revelators. That's like their official title. And so this was one of the apostles calling me on the phone. And I was like, what is happening? I mean, this is totally bizarre.

And what would that be like? Give us a kind of Catholic context for this. Would that be like just some rando getting a call from Cardinal Pell or something like, not Cardinal Pell, but Cardinal, someone who's alive? It would be really weird. It's hard to say exactly because of how revered these men are, you know? Like the best I could say was, we'd be like, cause so like, I would say all 15 of them

in many ways are kind of like at the level of the Pope. Yeah, it's 15. There's not many. There's like 15. Imagine there are like the Pope and he had 14 other people that were Pope like him. Yeah. Yes. There may be one who's like the actual president of the church and had he had 14 other people that were Pope like him. Yeah. Yes, there may be one who's like the actual president of the church and he's the most revered, but all 15 of them are like so revered. So to get a phone call, I mean, I had like twice or three times in my life

met some of them before, just like a moment, like shake their hand when they came to some big meeting I was at. Right. And even that's considered a great honor to like shake the hand of an apostle. I don't want to derail your story, but I was asked to give a big talk in Salt Lake City. I think it was in Salt Lake City in Utah. It was this massive Mormon conference. It must have been 5,000 people there. And the prophet couldn't do it. So they asked me, are you serious? Yeah. And it wasn't a Mormon gathering. It was actually an anti porn conference. Yeah. But what year was this? Oh, gee.

Way before I started doing interviews about Mormonism. I'll tell you that. That must have been about six to ten years ago, some time in there. And I gave this big talk on pornography and it was so little. Like, I'm so sorry. I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm not the prophet. Yeah. Well, not the prophet. No, not the prophet. Sorry. Oh, but someone in the one of the apostles. Yes, I believe so. Okay. Yeah. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that was how it was. Yes. So I said, Sure. So I duck into a conference room at work. And she's like, I'm connecting you now. And the boom, the next thing I hear is like, Hi, this is Isaac. This is Todd Christopherson. And I was just like, my mind is, and I was like, what is going on?

I was like, hi. And he said, do you remember writing a letter to me? And then I remembered. So about a year or two before, in one of these moments of like crisis in my faith, he had given like a talk in what we call general conference. We call them a talk. It's like a sermon.

Call them talks in Mormonism. And I had like really spoken to me. And so I'd sent him a letter, kind of sort of being like, hey, I'm really struggling with my faith. I know you probably get a letters from people all the time. You know, and I said, I don't really expect you to respond, but I just wanted you to know whatever I'm struggling, et cetera.

And so, and this was like two years before. So like, he calls me two years later. He's like, I finally got your letter or whatever. And he's just like, I just thought it was such a lovely thing. He's like, and I'm so sorry. I was wondering if you wanted to talk. I was like, I would love to.

But at this time, I kind of was in a good spot with my faith, you know? And cause you know, I mentioned it was kind of up and down. So it was during one of my up periods. And so I said, I said, you know, I don't really feel like the same urgency that I had. He's like, well, the least I could do is, uh, is have lunch with you. Why don't you come up to salt Lake and have lunch with me? And I thought, absolutely. You know, like how often, you know, this is such a privilege.

Like I remember, here's some context. I remember telling a relative of mine about this and he said something like, I would walk all day and all night if I had to in order to have lunch with one of these men, you know? And I was like, well, I had lunch. I got invited. I took the car. In the, in Mormon culture, in Salt Lake City, are these fellas recognizable? Oh yeah.

Oh, totally. Yeah. People will walk up to them. If they're like out in public, like people will walk up to them and like shake their hand. You know, I mean, if they anywhere they go, I mean, there's enough Latter-day Saints that like these people, if they're just in the airport, people will walk up to them, you know, you, you address them as elder.

And so you're just like, Oh, elder Christopherson, like, I just want to meet you, you know, I'm a Latter-day Saint, whatever. Right. They're very, very revered. So you went out to lunch somewhere publicly or? No, I, so I went to, they have the place where the highest church leaders work is called the church administration building. It's this beautiful old early 20th century,

I think is when it was built. Maybe 19th century building, you know, marble columns, beautiful floors, ornate, just, you know, and they have like a little cafeteria in there. And so he just had me, that's where he works, so I just showed up to lunch and he invited me in and we got some food and we sat down at a table. You know, there were like three other apostles sitting at other tables and like deep conversation. I met the man who's now the president of the church. He was there. His name is president Nelson. And so he's the current prophet.

I met him during that visit and we just had like a lovely chat for like an hour or two where I kind of told him my story. I told him about how my, you know, at this point, three of my brothers had left the church but I was still kind of hanging on, right? I even told him about my interest in orthodoxy and kind of the reasons at that time that I was still LDS. And so it was just a nice conversation.

Like he didn't share, I almost wished that I had gone at a time when I was in more turmoil Yeah, because then I would have gotten more kind of like spiritual advice from him It was more just like a kind of get to know you talk to him for a while But it was just this crazy experience and it actually weirdly enough kind of ended ended up precipitating my finally leaving the church And here's how it happened before that, how did he respond to you saying you were looking into orthodoxy? Yeah, fine. He was like, you know, there's so much beauty

in these other faiths, you know, and he totally understood why, like, I would have some attraction to that. So yeah, I mean, it wasn't like a negative thing. So we just kind of swapped some stories and, you know, kind of got to know him on a personal level. He was just, he was such a kind and good person. You know, sometimes within like the ex Mormon community, people will like, be like, Oh,

these men are evil. And like, they don't actually believe they're just like, putting one on. And all I can say is like, when I met him and met others and I had multiple interactions with him after this too, that like, he just seemed such a sincere kind. You know, you talked about how great Latter-day Saints are. Like, he seemed to embody all of the best things in that culture. And so, so I had that lunch and, you know,

every now and then, like, I would exchange a letter with him or something like that. And then that fall, he gave me another call and asked if he could share my story in his next general conference address that was coming to happen in October. And I was like, kind of blown away by this, you know, because in so twice a year, like I said, they have this huge meeting, it lasts for a whole weekend. They do like meetings on Saturday and on Sunday. It's broadcast to the entire world. They call it General Conference, and every member of the church leadership gives us a talk, a sermon, to just about whatever they think church members should know or should hear. Latter-day Saints take this really seriously because these men are prophets, seers, and revelators.

So whatever they speak on is like for the next like six months in Sunday school, that's what they study, is what they said at the last conference. And so I was like, wow, and they frequently will share, you know, stories of individuals, faith promoting stories, that sort of thing. So I was really honored to be one, someone whose story he shared, right? And so my wife and I went up to the conference. We got to sit in these special guest seats near the front. It was just a cool experience. You had more pictures with him and with some other apostles

and it just was kind of this surreal thing. So he did that and when it was over, I shared that, I shared it with my family, right? Especially with my siblings who had left. I was like, hey, you know, cause it actually talked about them a little bit. Talked about how, you know, he's sort of like a young, he didn't use my name in the story,

but he's like a young man, had several siblings who left the church and, you know, they tried to get him to go to, but he stayed strong, you know, just kind of like that sort of thing. So I shared that with some of my brothers and my oldest brother Kind of emailed me back and said, you know, he's like, you know I would just love to be able to just talk to you about this. He's like we've never talked really about my faith transition and about Mormonism and

You know, he's like I'll admit it's kind of weird to be the bad guy in a general conference talk And He's like, I'll admit it's kind of weird to be the bad guy in a general conference talk. And he's like, I would just love to talk. And I just thought, yeah, let's talk. He and I, we were so close growing up. And when he left the LDS faith, it really kind of put a rift in our relationship. And I thought, yeah, I want to try to connect with him. Let's do it. So we picked a night, and I drove up to Salt Lake

just so we could just kind of chat friendly about the church. And it was a really good conversation. Like, he wasn't mean, he wasn't, like, disrespectful, but he, like, challenged me, right, about the faith and the things that I had kind of tried to put to bed over the years and he was just like You would share those with him then you know, no, but you know, he knew what they were I don't know there's a certain kind of set of issues that he and it but it was more the conversation was not so much about those things but a more sort of like Wouldn't you think that God would want you to like use your mind to investigate, to like understand these things, and to like really know the truth, right?

Like instead of kind of like shutting it off and just being like, no, I can't think about these things, I can't learn about these things, I can't read about these things. He's like, truth is truth, and We should be willing to face even hard truths And this and I just remember my heart just being like yes Right, like yes, we should like I I don't want to believe in something That i'm afraid to examine I don't want to believe in something that that

That can't stand up to the just basic questions of being reasonable. Does that make sense? Complete sense. You know? And I'm not saying at that time I was like, I'm sure that this doesn't stand up, but I had been unwilling to do that kind of inquiry, right? Because it felt unfaithful to me. Like, I was like, well, I have this testimony, right? I have this witness of the Holy Spirit. I will say this. I think a lot of people want to talk the talk about ask the questions. If it's not true, I don't want to believe it.

Yeah, I would say the majority of us who are intellectually engaged speak that way. Yes. But I think most of us haven't been willing to take that and then turn that magnifying glass on the thing we hold most dear. I remember him asking. And and this is a question that lots of ex-Mormons ask people who are still believing members, something like, if the church wasn't true, would you want to know it? It's a great question. If it wasn't, would you want to know it or not?

Don't say yes too quickly, right? And I didn't. I thought for a moment, but then I thought, yes, I would, I would want to know it because I want truth, you know, I want the truth. And so I kind of left that conversation like, really, not so much shaken, but just sort of like, this was really spinning in my head. You know, it was only like a month after I'd had this whole experience where I was like used in general conference. And I just kept thinking and thinking about this, you know, and you know, I was still very much believed in God. And so I was also kind of thinking to myself, like, what does God want me to do? Does God want me to like perform this kind of inquiry?

And I kept thinking about verses in scripture about sort of like, you know, Paul talks about the importance of like testing the spirits, right? And in the first episode of John, he says like, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits to see which are from God, right? Like there's this whole theme in the New Testament, not of like discounting religious experience or spiritual experience, but also of testing the experience.

And I just became like totally convinced that I had to go on this kind of like this journey. Like I had been up and down in my faith so many times and so this conversation got to put me down again and I just thought no more. Right? Like I am going to face this head-on. I'm not going to avoid it anymore. I am going to grapple with this and I'm gonna come out on the other end like a stronger Latter-day Saint or not a Latter-day Saint like Those are my options. Yeah, and I'm not doing anything else and I also I'm gonna stop You know having those dalliance with orthodoxy. I'm gonna like dig into that too, you know, cuz maybe maybe I'll become orthodox

Maybe not but like I don't want to keep making it this hobby I want to know so in like November of that year after Thanksgiving maybe I'll become Orthodox, maybe not, but I don't wanna keep making it this hobby, I wanna know. So in November of that year, after Thanksgiving, I sat down with my wife and had that conversation. And I was just like, I have to do this. I have to really know what I believe, and I have to know about Mormonism, and I have to decide what I believe about orthodoxy.

And as part of that, it's like, I'm gonna stop coming to church every Sunday, because I want to go to divine, I'd never been to a Sunday divine liturgy. And it's like, how can I investigate it if I never even go, right? And the time's conflicted and whatnot. And that was like a very hard conversation to have, as you might imagine.

And but, you know, she was like, OK, I mean, what else could she say? Right. Like. So that that was kind of when it came to a head. This is difficult, right, in marriage situations, because usually the one person who begins to have doubts and to study is doing that maybe privately because they don't want to just upend their marriage and their family if there's no need to do it. I'm thinking of Scott and Kimberly Hahn, right? Like Scott does this deep dive into Catholicism and the inconsistencies and things like soul scriptura and other things. So when he finally has this conversation with Kimberly, even though, you know though Kimberly's a very bright woman, you know,

and let's just not use them as an example. But it's not that the wife isn't isn't as smart or smarter. It's just that you can't actually win an argument with someone who hasn't stopped thinking about this thing from every angle for the last several years. It's it's not a conversation you can win. Yeah. You know, even if you're wrong, it's like if I try to get into a conversation with my dad about why 9-11 was an inside job, God bless him. I can't win that conversation. You know, if you doubted the moon landing, I wouldn't be able to win

because you've done so much thinking about this. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't honestly don't remember. What I have to be in. I don't remember if it devolved into an argument or not, like about, you know, oh, like you shouldn't do this or whatever. I remember she, you know, she was obviously really concerned about like, what's this going to do to our family life? What's this going to do to your faith?

You know, she had seen my siblings leave the church and now I seem to be kind of going on the same journey. So she had kind of justifiable fears. Like, I think she's like, I think she in her mind I know where this is gonna end right like you're probably gonna leave At the time I was still open to the idea of staying LDS but not But not in a way where I was like afraid I was like I have to like know the issues and Would only could only say LDS if I found good resolutions to them.

So this started this very intense period of my life of just study. One of the first things I did was I bought a copy of the Apostolic Fathers and just started reading. Because Mormonism is premised on this idea of a great apostasy, that after Jesus died, his apostles went out and established basically the LDS church. It doesn't have to look exactly like it, but in its essentials, that's what the LDS church

is supposed to be, is like the restoration of the original church. But then sometime after the apostles died, and probably really soon after, the church went into apostasy. So I was really interested in reading the witness of these early Christians to hear how they talked. That was almost as important to me as what they said.

Like, how are they speaking? Are they kind of talking about like, oh man, things are going off the rails now that the apostles are gone, right? Or are they speaking in different ways? And I was just blown away, right? Reading Ignatius of Antioch, reading the Didache, reading the First Epistle of Clement, and all these very early Christian writings. First of all, I was shocked at how much there was, you know. I mean, I know there's not a ton, in one sense, but, you know, the fact that you can fill like a fat volume with the writings of the first generations of post-apostolic Christians

is pretty impressive, given how long ago that was. So like little things like the Didache explicitly makes an allowance for non-immersive baptism. Right? It's like, and that was a huge deal in Mormonism. Like that was like one of the big signs of the apostasy. It's like, oh, they changed baptism. And the dedicate was probably written during the apostolic age, like toward the end of it. And here, no, I mean, you, maybe you could make

this the argument like, oh, well, the apostasy just, like toward the end of it. And here, no, I mean, maybe you could make the argument like, oh, well, the apostasy just started even earlier, right? But at some point, you're just kind of like, what's the most reasonable explanation for this? Probably the apostolic deposit included the... And wouldn't you expect to see seeds, at least, of LDS theology in the writings of the post-apostolic fathers as the apostasy was, it's not like

in one day everybody forgets the true faith and starts teaching something different. You would expect to see elements of LDS theology. And there are some Latter-day Saint apologists who have tried to do this. It usually amounts to like very out of context proof texting where it's like, ah, look, this person kind of said this line that in this specific translation and without context kind of sounds like one of our teachings, right? But my experience was that, so I chased, I tried to be as diligent as I could.

I chased all those quotes down, right? And every time after time after time, I was like, oh, that's not what they're saying at all. Like they're not talking about, you know, XLDS doctrine. They're talking about something completely different. This is just out of context. And then if you consult the body of this person's work, like say, Origen's work, it becomes totally clear that,

like, he does not believe this thing that the latter, that the LDS apologists were claiming is there. You know, I was very affected by the Eucharistic discussions that you find in Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr about it being the body and blood of Christ, about the importance of the bishop and the episcopacy. Like you see these early witnesses to apostolic succession in Ignatius and in 1st Clement. Like 1st Clement has that one section where he's very clear and says something like,

you know, with perfect, the apostles had perfect foreknowledge that there would be this disputations about the office of the bishop, you know? And so, you know, given that foreknowledge, they appointed men and said that when these fall asleep, others should be appointed in their place. So like, instead of seeing people being like, oh man, we're without leadership, the apostles are gone,

and we can't make new ones. Because in Mormonism, the apostolic college is supposed, is like this ongoing body, right? One of them dies, you put in another one. There's always 12. Instead of that, I saw, you know, apostolic succession, like this church being like, we've got the tools, we have what God gave us,

we have successors to the apostles, the bishops. And so, and just the way they spoke, it just didn't strike me as LDS, right? It struck me as kind of like what you might call like proto-Catholicism or proto-orthodoxy, this thing that becomes what later was. And then, so I was like deep diving into like early Christianity and simultaneously I'm deep diving into LDS history. I reread Rough Stone Rolling cover to cover, you know. I am just

like looking up works of other historians, like I'm doing like deep dives into the Book of Mormon and like it's, whether it's historical or not, you know, like what's the evidence for and against this being like an actual ancient record, you know? And similar to like another work that Joseph Smith produced called the Book of Abraham. And if you want to get into either of those things, I'd be happy to and talk like details. I'll leave that up to you.

But I just became away just totally convinced that those things were not historical, that they were products of the 19th century. And so I mean, and that's when I was saying earlier that during this time I tried really hard to not focus on was Joseph Smith a bad person or do I not like him? Or did he say or do some things that I don't like? I tried really

hard to keep it laser focused on like the core issues, the foundational issues of the faith. Like if this falls, the faith falls. In a similar way that like you would focus really laser on like the resurrection or something for Christianity. It would be like if someone comes along and says, for Christianity. It would be like if someone comes along and says, there's really good evidence that Jesus didn't even exist. And if you were like, well, you're just mad because the Pope's a bad person or whatever. They're like, no, no, no, no, I think Jesus didn't exist.

And it's like, if you look into that and you're like, whoa, I think he didn't exist. Well, you probably shouldn't be a Christian. In a similar way, when I became just convinced that the Book of Mormon was a 19th century work. Without getting into the weeds, only because many people who are watching may not be Mormon, obviously we have Mormon viewers as well, help us understand what you think may be the best arguments against these Mormon works that show that they are 19th century inventions. Yeah. So in general, and some of this was like the way I was trained. So like I studied literature in college, you know, and I'm not an expert in this and I don't claim to be.

So I'm not, I'm not being like, well, I studied this in college, so therefore, but it did give me a way of thinking about texts, like reading them closely and kind of looking for things. And there's, you know, if you wanted to date a book, you find a work and you don't know when it's from, right? Like what tools do you use? There's all sorts of tools that you have. And this is an analogy that I've given before.

If someone came and was like, here is a book of ancient Egyptian recipes. And you thought, okay, cool, ancient Egyptian recipes. I like food, I'd love to cook some of these recipes. And you're flipping through the book, and like, you know, they all seem like good recipes, and they all make sense given their context. And then you get like two thirds of the way through, and you find a recipe where one of the ingredients

is a potato, okay? of recipe where one of the ingredients is a potato, okay, you would instantly know that at least that recipe was not ancient because the potato is a new world food. It was in the Americas and they had no potatoes in ancient Egypt at all. So and if the book had always been presented as like a single volume like throughout its provenance through its history That's basically conclusive evidence that the whole books of forgery, right? Even if all the rest of the recipes are good Tasty, maybe even plausibly

Ancient like you can date when that book was written So and that's you know, probably most people know that's called an anachronism is something that's like not in its time, like anachronos, right? Not in the right time. So the Book of Mormon is filled with anachronisms. Some of them are very straightforward. Like it talks about animals existing in the Americas that all the best evidence show were not here.

Like horses. Like horses, like elephants. Yeah. You know, flocks and herds, you know, there were very few domesticated animals that the native Americans domesticated. It's like pretty much like the llama and the alpaca, you know? And there's just not really a way that those animals could stand in for what the book of Mormon text demands of them. There's also, the book is also filled with 19th century Protestant theology.

And this was noticed at the time, right? Like people who read the book at the time were like, oh, this is very convenient that you've basically addressed every hot button theological issue of right now and claimed it's an ancient work, you know, and I know like there are LDS apologists who know all of these objections and have answers to them. And like if anyone's interested, I like totally encourage you like the best the thing closest to Catholic answers on the LDS side is called fair LDS, fair Latter-day Saints. They changed the name recently. F-A-I-R, Fair Latter-day Saints. And you can go there and read their apologetics, and I think people should.

Like, you know, don't just take one side of an issue. Look at both sides. That's important. But their responses always just seemed like so inadequate to me, just sort of like trying to wave things away. They would say for like the Protestant theology, like the Book of Mormon says that it's a book written for our day, right? And so we would expect these things to be in there. But like just the way they talk, you know, all these like long sermons using very common Protestant phraseology, like you can find tons of other sermons from that time period that are using the exact same language. And again, at what time period in history are these events said to have taken place?

So starting, most of the Book of Mormon starts at 600 BC and goes to about 400 years after Christ, so about that thousand year period. Then there's a small section of the book that's supposed to take place even further back from that. But yeah, most of it is during that time. And so it's just really weird to think that there are these ancient Native Americans, Christians running around having Protestant theological

debates in like the year 200 BC, right? That's just, you know, it's much simpler to just say, this is a book from the 19th century that is in dialogue with the theological questions of its day, of the year that it was published, or like the preceding years. And then for me, the biggest issue though, the biggest anachronism is like the plot of the book itself.

So this requires like a little background. of the book itself. So this requires like a little background. The early Americans saw all these, saw evidence of Native American civilization that did not match the Native Americans they saw around them, okay? Then by the time settlers arrived, when scientists now think that a huge proportion

of Native Americans died from disease after initial contact with the Europeans, maybe as close as high as like 90% died in like a 100 to 200 year period. And so many of their, so when people showed up, like this idea we have of like Native Americans like being like very woodland and like rural and stuff. That impression came because there was such a die-off that many of their societies collapsed. And there are suddenly, so the land had been full of towns and villages, they had very sophisticated societies.

I highly recommend a book, it's called 1491, and it looks at what Native Americans were like just before Columbus arrived. Like what's the best evidence? And they were very sophisticated groups but boy they couldn't fight smallpox, you know? And so so when the early Americans saw these like these large mounds and these evidence of like greater society and then they look at these Native Americans who were like very primitive they were thought well they didn't they didn't do this someone else did this there must have been so it was very common in Joseph Smith's day

this is a very common belief that the Native Americans that we see now were not the ones who built these mounds and these cities and these earthen works There was another civilization that was very advanced And was probably white there were lots of people because they were very racist, right? They couldn't be dark-skinned They got to be white like us And many people were like they were probably israelites. They were probably hebers So this was like a common so you can find multiple books from this time period that kind of purport to be like,

this is the history of the Native Americans. Some Hebrews came over, or some Israelites came over to America, and they established society and civilization, but then a savage group came, and there were many wars between them, and the savage group ended up killing off the civilized white people, you

know, and that's who we see today. This was just like a trope. It was a common belief. And that is exactly how the Book of Mormon presents the history of the Native Americans. So it like fits perfectly in its time period. But it does that make sense? Kind of what I'm saying. Like that's the whole overarching plot of the entire book.

There's these Israelites that come over and they end up splitting into two groups. And one of the groups gets cursed with dark skin. And there's like a light skin group and a dark skin group. And over a thousand year period, it kind of follows their adventures, right? And their civilization, they have wars and they fight each other. And sometimes one group is good and the other is evil and it switches back their adventures, right? And their civilization, they have wars and they fight each other.

And sometimes one group is good and the other is evil and it switches back and forth, right? There's times where they merge into one group. But eventually it ends the same way that kind of, everyone at the time kind of believed, which was that the savage group destroyed the civilized group. And that's who's the Native Americans today.

So it was plausible to them because it kind of matched their preconceived notions. When it was published. When it was published, right. But it feels very strange to me to sort of claim like, no that's actually the true story, right. And because of this, you know, LDS Apologists now, so at the time it came out, it was pretty much everyone believed that this was telling a history of all the Native Americans. Now because we can't find any archaeological evidence to support these Book of Mormon societies, and because, and you know, when you look at the geography of North and South America, it's just not plausible that one civilization spanned the whole thing.

Most LDS apologists now will say, well, this really took place in like a very small area with like a relatively small group of people. And that's why we haven't found them. And that's why it's plausible. But if you just look at it in the context of its time, it just totally looks like a product of, like if someone were just to write a narrative a sort of like

romantic narrative of The origin of the latter day of the Native Americans and published it in 1830 Which was in the book was published it just is what you would expect, right? It would tell this kind of origin story just like today you would expect it to tell them walking across the Bering Strait Right during you know during some previous age So to me, that was one of the things that I just thought, there's just no way that this is plausible, you know? What about the use of steel and other metals?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, lots of anachronisms. So it mentions a lot of metal work in the Book of Mormon and there were a few Native American groups that had very primitive metallurgy, but you know, there's a reason why we, what we find is obsidian arrowheads, right? All over because it never became like a dominant. If you really did find, if you really did have a civilization that mastered metal

in the way that these people say that they did, they would have totally taken over, right? They would have been a huge society because if you master metal before your enemies, like, you know, you can't beat an army with metal arrow tips and metal swords with stone weapons and clubs and clubs like you just can't do it then the metal is too powerful so yeah similarly like they mentioned chariots and things like that and there's no evidence that the Native Americans ever used wheeled um because they didn't have

beasts of burden to pull them and so they had the closely you find you find Native American toys ancient toys that have wheels on them that can like wheel around But then there was no evidence they ever had carts that they read chariots or anything like that Wow And as you're going through this and becoming convinced that this is just not what was claimed to be yeah Did you try to present it to other Mormons and be like look? I'm not trying to attack your faith, but you have to my wife about it, right? And it yeah, it just didn't go well like it was try to present it to other Mormons and be like, look, I'm not trying to attack your faith, but you have to admit. I tried to talk to my wife about it. Okay. Right.

And it, you know, it just didn't go well. Like it was, um, it just wasn't, she just, she didn't want to know. You know what I mean? I mean, that makes it sound like too bad. Like, but like that was not, it was a painful topic for her. Yeah. It was hard for her to discuss, you know, as you can imagine, like she wasn't super jazzed about being like, Hey, I'm losing my faith. Can I tell you all the reasons? Yeah, right. You want me to tell

you why, you know? And it was, it was painful for me and it was painful for her. And so we talked about it some and they were not always productive conversations, but so yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Did you chat with your brother about this as you were finding these things out? Not really. I mean, I had another friend of mine who was kind of going through a similar transition at the same time, one of my old friends. And so he and I would talk about it. Just kind of like things we were learning and that sort of thing. Yeah. But he was probably like my main, the person I would vent to and kind of share my was was there a point in which you're like I can't be Mormon any longer or was it just the accumulation of all of these things that just kind of pushed you out

Yeah, it was kind of slowly pushing me out so at the same time I'm starting to go to Orthodox divine liturgy all the time and I quickly you know my first experience as I said I was like, oh, it's very strange but I quickly, you know, my first experience, as I said, I was like, oh, it's very strange. But I quickly fell in love with the liturgy. I just thought I very quickly was like, this is so beautiful. You know, this expression of Christian faith. And so for like more than a year, I attended very faithfully this Orthodox parish in Salt Lake City.

I met with their priests, you know, like once a week and would like just talk through issues. They were very, very available to me. I helped build one of their churches. How so? Well, they were building a church and they would be like, hey, like come down and we're going to put like siding on today and put this wall up and I would go and show up and help them out, you know. And it was a beautiful parish, like this growing parish in Salt Lake, lots of converts, lots of people coming into the faith, you know. And yet during that, you said it was about a five year period that you're investigating

orthodoxy or? Yeah. Well, this kind of acute period was like a little more than a year, like after I said, I'm going to stop going to LDS Church. Okay. So during that year, did you decide you would get baptized in the orthodox faith? Well, no, why not? So I never even officially became a catechumen.

There was just always something that was holding me back. I always had, as much as I loved Orthodoxy, there were questions about it that I still really struggled with. questions about it that I still really struggled with. It's hard to articulate them like now. So there are a couple of things. One was, so this is what I had become convinced of through my reading of early Christian sources

in the New Testament. I don't wanna de-emphasize the fact that I was trying to read scripture really faithfully. I was totally convinced of the Eucharist and the real presence I became very convinced of apostolic succession and like the need to be in communion with an apostolic bishop But it was really troubled by the question of like who should my bishop be right? Like who should be my pastor? Who's the shepherd of my soul on the earth? Like, who should be my pastor? Who's the shepherd of my soul on the earth? This was right around the time of the Ukraine,

or the schism that happened between Russia and Constantinople. And so that was really troubling to me too. You know, and the parish I was attending was an Antiochian parish. And so they were in communion with both of them. So in one sense, it was kind of like a crisis averted, right? Like, um, you join us, we're just, we get the best of all worlds. Uh, you can be in communion with all, but you know, there were also the oriental Orthodox churches

that I was aware of and kind of thought there's a lot of, there's a, there's more than one group with apostolic succession with the Eucharist. Not to mention the Coptics. That's what I meant by Oriental Orthodox. The Coptic, they're like the Coptics and the Armenians and that sort of thing. And I thought, how do I know which one I should be a part of? Like who should be my bishop? And that, so that kind of became like this really important question. There are other things I struggled with Orthodoxy too, like because it's so decentralized,

there were certain times when I would try to understand what the Orthodox teaching was just on some topic. Like what do the Orthodox teach about X, right? And I would get different answers from different people. And sometimes they were very confident, right? They would even say things like, if you disagree, you're not Orthodox. And I'd be like, well, how do you know?

And they'd kind of cite some church father or some monk that they liked, or some aspect of the liturgy. But then the people on the other side would do the same thing. And, you know, and there's a lot of unanimity in a lot of the beliefs, but there were enough. It didn't seem to be a mechanism that could settle the score. That's exactly right. Something I've heard Michael often say in the past. He's like, with Catholicism, you can say, well, the church isn't doing what it should be doing. But you can't say she doesn't possess the mechanism necessary to bring that into effect. Yeah. And so, and then there are also the questions of sort of like, um, the, so they

held that pan-Orthodox Synod, or they tried to in, now I can't remember the year. I don't remember, no. But you know the one I'm talking about really No, oh, so there's a lot of problems in modern orthodoxy A lot of them have to do with jurisdictional problems, right? The Orthodox agree that there should only be one bishop in one city But in the new world when they settled the new world, right? All these immigrants came from their different countries and they all sent their own priests and eventually they all sent their own bishops

So in Salt Lake City there was an Antiochian parish. What is it, Thursta? Pan-orthodox synod took place in 2016? And this was like right during my time or shortly before. Yeah, I was going through this. So like in Salt Lake City, there's an Antiochian parish, a Greek parish, a Serbian parish, a Russian parish, and all of those had different bishops. None of them, I don't think any of them had a bishop in Salt Lake, but they all had different bishops in different places, right?

And the Orthodox recognized that this is not canonical. Like this is counter to their own canons about how the church should operate. There's supposed to be one bishop for one city one church for a region, but you know through historical circumstances You have the situation that you have so they started planning Orthodox synod for 2016 and it was in the works for like decades Right decades and decades and decades where they were like, let's plan this, we'll try to get all the Orthodox churches

to come and we'll be able to settle some of these disputes so that we can have like canonical administration in these different areas and we can standardize like how we receive converts, cause that was also like some Orthodox jurisdictions rebaptized everyone who shows up. Some of them accept baptisms from other denominations and whatnot.

So there was like a whole list of things on the agenda and it just totally fell apart, like right before the meeting, the Russians were like, we're not coming, you know? And the Russian Orthodox Church is by far the biggest in terms of its membership. It's like twice the size of anyone else. And then a couple other churches

that are aligned with the Russians are like, well, we're not coming either if the Russians aren't coming. I, this Wikipedia article is the best I've ever seen. The Russians pulled out because their belief that it was not truly pan-orthodox without the Antiochian church. Oh, it was the Antiochians that pulled out first? Yeah. Oh, okay.

And the Antiochians pulled out Oh, it was the Antiochians that pulled out first? Yeah. Oh, okay. And the Antiochians pulled out over dispute of the jurisdiction of Qatar that was also claimed by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. So you can, I mean, so the whole, so they did hold it. A couple churches went, like the Greek church was the biggest representative, like the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. He, or at least his representatives were there,

and they held a big thing and they came to some conclusions. They're like, we're gonna do these things now, but it didn't get accepted by any of the other... They're like, no, that's not an orthodox... They wanted it to be almost like an ecumenical council, right? We're gonna reaffirm some doctrine, we're going to solve a bunch of jurisdictional disputes and a few other issues that we have that just in the world of orthodoxy. And I kind of looked at that and I just, I remember just thinking to myself, it would be really nice if there was just like someone

who could like be like the locus of unity for this thing. It's like a very natural thought to have. Like, that would be nice. That doesn't mean it's true, but it would be nice. There are some other things like, in all the time I was exploring it, even though I really loved it, it always still felt foreign to me. Like I felt like a foreigner,

kind of appropriating something that wasn't mine. And that's not like a total disqualifying thing, but it was something that kind of gave me a little pause about I just couldn't jump in with two feet, and I wanted to, but I found myself kind of unable to do it. If you're, I mean, the rejoinder would probably be if you're joining an apostolic faith that dates back to the first centuries of the church, it should feel different. It should feel. Well, it didn't feel, it's not that it felt, I wasn't bothered by the fact that it felt

different. I liked the fact that it felt different, but it felt Foreign I don't know. I don't know how else to describe it like, you know I mean is this sort of a natural thing like if you brought up kind of as a man of the West and Then are introduced to sort of like the liturgy of the East. It has a foreign feel to it Yeah, and sometimes it is very attractive to people. As an example, like when, just to skip ahead a little bit, I definitely recognized the sort of affinity for the Western right when I encountered it.

I was kind of like, ah, this doesn't feel foreign. This feels like my people, like my patrimony, my heritage. this feels like my people, like my patrimony, my heritage. So after like a full year of investigating orthodoxy, more than a year, I kind of was just in a rut. I was like, I'm stuck. I'm stuck and I don't feel any closer to becoming orthodox. And I don't want to just be stuck for the rest of my life. I don't want to be a wanderer.

I want to settle somewhere. You know? Yeah. And so that was the first time where I thought, maybe I should look into Catholicism. Like, I haven't, I've never looked into it. The only things I really knew about Catholicism were what I'd learned from Orthodox sources,

because they discuss Catholicism a lot in their works. You know, sort of like, Catholics this, not that, we're not that, we're this instead. Kind of like presenting Orthodoxy in contradiction to Catholicism. Some of which is fair and reasonable and, you know, some of which when you study Catholicism, you're like, that's a misrepresentation or that's a mountain out of a molehill kind of thing, right? So when I finally got to the point where I was willing to look at Catholicism, this was in early 2020. And I bought a catechism, and I remember just opening to the first page

and immediately just being like, oh yes. It's so beautiful. Like this is what I've been looking for, just like, I understand. I had just felt, and this is the very Western part of my mind. I know that lots of Orthodox people will listen to this and they'll say,

you know, the liturgy, you should have just like given time for the liturgy to form you, like it forms you, it helps you understand the faith, we don't need this like clear exposition of everything. There's something wrong with that even, maybe they are like suspicious of it. And I totally get that, and I'm not even saying that's like a bad criticism.

But for me, it's just I'm it's not what I needed You know, I needed something a little more I had questions and I couldn't get good answers, you know I got a lot of people confidently telling me the Orthodox position, but they were contradicting each other sometimes right? Whereas in the in the Catholic Church like ecaticism just was this totally beautiful Exposition of the faith. I read it cover to cover and I was just like, this church is amazing. This wasn't what I was expecting at all, right? So I determined I would go to Mass and I just picked the closest parish to my house and I went there and it was terrible. It was like, I came home afterwards and my wife was like, so how was it?

You know, what'd you think? And I said, it was like James Taylor singing the mass. You know, just like, uh, and I just, I just remember sitting there, you know, like kneeling like I'm apologizing on behalf of my family. Like I invited you to a family reunion. Everyone was crazy. Oh, I mean, I had been going to Orthodox liturgies for like a couple of years. And the church I went to was beautiful, beautiful church. You know,

incense is like so thick. You can barely breathe icons everywhere. Beautiful chanting, beautiful four-part Russian music. You know, and, and then, um, let us build the city of God. Yeah. I don't know what they sang, but it was just a couple of weeks ago. And, um, and, and I don't know what they sang, but it was just a couple of weeks ago. And, and like even just little things like the Tabernacle was off to the side. And I remember being really bothered by that. I didn't know anything about the Tabernacle controversies or whatever,

but I just remember thinking like, you know, they're not acting the way that I know they're supposed to believe. I didn't know how they were supposed to act. I just thought, I know the doctrine of the Catholic Church. I've read the whole catechism at this point, and I know the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist, and I know they affirm it, but it just didn't seem like the liturgy communicated that. And I was very disappointed. Right? I came home and it kind of just like cooled my jets completely. I was just like, I came home and it kind of just like cooled my jets completely. I was just like, maybe this isn't for me. And I just felt homeless again, you know?

And this is so important that you're sharing this story because it's a, it's a very common experience. Yeah. There are people watching, they want to convert and they'll go off to the local parish. They're like, what is this? What is happening? Yeah. Well, and you know, to be clear, as we said before, that can happen with a very beautiful

liturgy too, right? I have known people who have come to even Catholic liturgies with me and sort of been like, that was weird. Beautiful Catholic liturgies. And just be like, I didn't like that at all. So, you know, your aesthetic experience is not everything.

And people have to be, you have to be properly prepared to absorb beauty, even when it's objectively there, I think. If your heart's not really ready to receive it, or if you're just not in a mode to actually receive it, you can't receive it. So it wasn't just that, it was just that, it just didn't seem like they, the way they acted just didn't seem to reflect the doctrine.

That was really the issue. I'm not, I think that you can, in fact, I have been to liturgies where they've had guitarists playing, but like the Eucharist was treated, in fact, I'll give you an example. A parish in Cedar City, Utah. Father, I apologize in advance. The music of the parish is not good. I don't, not for me. I don't like it. But the priest there, who's a wonderful man of Polish descent, he celebrates the Eucharist with such a reverence that even though the music is as, you know, whatever you want to fill in the bank, as novas ordo music as you could possibly imagine, he communicates in every step of that liturgy that the Eucharist is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. Totally. And I love going there when I visit friends there, even though, you know, music,

not my cup of tea. So it can be, but at this parish, it was just so casual. It was so casual. So anyway, I was just kind of like, nah, probably not for me. Did you have the sense that whatever the Catholic church was, maybe it isn't any more? Yeah. Yeah. And I was kind of annoyed by that. You know, it's kind of like you guys lost something, you know? Yeah. But then I went on a business trip to Atlanta. Um, I don't know, a month later, maybe something like that.

This is before COVID lockdown? Just before COVID. So this is still in January. I think it's like late January. I'm in Atlanta on a business trip and I find out that my hotel is like within walking distance of this beautiful Catholic church. It's called, I think it's Christ the King Cathedral in Atlanta. Have you been there before? I used to live in Atlanta, just north of. You know Christ the King, right? It's like this neo-Gothic, just gorgeous church. So I saw it

online. I was like, well, you know, I'm going go there for a daily Mass. Yeah. Just like regular daily Mass, at six in the morning or something, because it was before I had to be in work. And so I walked down to the cathedral, and just it was so... The Mass was celebrated beautifully. It was a daily Mass. There was nothing special.

There's no music, you know? But there were, I mean, there was a shocking number of people there at 6 a.m. I couldn't believe it. You know, it was probably like 50 people at least. And you know, everything was, nothing was sung except I think the hallelujah they did sing that. But again, the way I had this moment just during that mass, the priest when he consecrated the Eucharist and when he did the elevation,

you know, he was facing the people and he's holdingrated the Eucharist and when he did the elevation, you know, he was facing the people and He's holding up the Eucharist were all on our knees. I just had this moment. We're just like in my mind I thought this is true religion like Look at all of us like we're here at six in the morning facing Christ like our gaze is oriented toward him, you know as he's like holding up the Eucharist. And I just thought this, like, this is what I want, you know, like this is what I'm thirsting for is this like Christ oriented sacramental life.

And it just was, it's probably in a way like my first experience of Eucharistic adoration, right? And like the power that can come from just like gazing upon Christ in the Eucharist, because I couldn't receive sacramentally. And so I went every morning, I was there for a week, I went every morning at six a.m. to the daily mass. Because it just affected me so much. I went back home, I tried another parish

kind of close to my house, I was going, I don't know, this one's, you know, the music just did not speak to me, and I was just really struggling until Ash Wednesday came out, came along. And I was in Salt Lake City that day for work. And I just was like, oh my gosh, today's Ash Wednesday. I'd forgotten. And I thought, I wonder if when the cathedral is having mass, so I looked it up, they had a noon mass. And I, so I was like, I'll go just kind of on a lark,

right? I had been kind of dipping my toe in these different experiences of mass. And I, so I was like, I'll go just kind of on a lark, right? I had been kind of dipping my toe in these different experiences of mass. And I go into the cathedral and I don't know if you've been to the Salt Lake cathedral. I've heard of it. Haven't been. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

There's a few. The only thing I criticize is they have these very modern stations of the cross paintings. And my main criticism of them is that they just do not match the rest of the cathedral. The rest of the cathedral is like like this beautiful, painted, like all these bright colors and very, looks likely probably the way it was built in the early 1800s, or late 1800s, early 1900s. Anyway, but it was packed. I mean, there was barely room to sit.

And I was just, I remember this group of army service men and women who were like taking up an entire row, a couple rows in front of me in their camouflage, in their gear. And I just was like, this is cool. Like everyone's here on Ash Wednesday and they had a choir singing in Latin. You know, I still remember so clearly the chant we sang

when the ashes were being given out. The, now I, I was just about to confuse it with the Adorote De out the, now I, I was just about to confuse it with the adorote devote cause it's not that. It was, oh geez, see I'm almost 40. Anyway, beautiful Latin chant. And I just was like, this is,

I just remember thinking to myself, if this is what Catholicism can be, then like I have to take it seriously. Like this is what Catholicism can be, then I have to take it seriously. This is something that I can't write off immediately because I've seen its best expression. And this was a noble sort of liturgy, right? It just was celebrated so beautifully. And so at that moment I kind of determined,

I'm not gonna let the liturgical issues keep me from becoming Catholic. And then a month later, lockdown, you know? And so I'm just like, I spend the rest of the summer like sitting at home, watching mass on TV. I would always watch the cathedral stream because there's nothing else I could, I didn't know any other parish really. And so, but as the time when I kept studying, I was reading books, you know, and, um, okay, I have to think about like how I ordered to share like these kinds of final steps. Were you kind of out of orthodoxy at that point?

Yeah, I had kind of stepped back from orthodoxy. You didn't go back and forth at that point? No, because I, I had like, it's kind of like, I just like, I've tried the orthodox thing and I kind of got stuck. It's the best way to describe it. I just felt like spiritually stuck. And so I was like, it's time to try something else. Did you have a priest reach out to you or do you like a Catholic priest? No, Orthodox priest at the time.

You know, I had two priests, Orthodox priest that I was really close to, and I don't remember kind of how we kind of, you know, and then they didn't, we never like broke contact or in like, I'll never speak to you again. It was just kind of, you know, and then we never like broke contact or like, I'll never speak to you again. It was just kind of, you know, they're busy and I kind of stopped coming. And so we just kind of fell out of communication type thing. And so, but I was starting to gather myself, my own little cadre of Catholic priests, right? Like when I would meet like the priest that said that Mass at the Ash Wednesday, I emailed him afterwards and he became like something of a mentor. And then a few weeks later I went to Mass again at the cathedral before lockdowns and a young permanent

deacon who was about to be ordained was like giving the homily, you know, and I thought wow, he seems so impressive. Like he's young, he's like, you know, young, yeah, she's like in his mid-30s something like that. And so I emailed him and he and I have become like really close friends. Like I visit him most of the time. I go up to Utah. He's ordained now and has this, he's a pastor at a parish up there. So I can understand why, as you were still leaving the LDS church and still unsure of where you were going, that you may not have used the internet. Right. But this is 2020. I mean, did you start looking at YouTube channels?

Oh, yeah. I was probably watching your channel at that time. But I'm not sure. But yeah. Yeah, well, Catholic answers, like looking for questions to. I mean, on everything, I had my method. I would read what people said about it. I would read the critics.

And I would read the response to that. And if there's any response to that, I just kind of like, I want to hear both sides. I want to hear all of it. Because I wanted something that could hold the weight of faith. Something that was worthy of entrustment, of really giving myself over.

And not just sort of like, well, you just have to believe, but like there's good reasons to believe, right? And not just, and not just reasons that were subjective, not just like I've had these experiences, that's good reason to believe. But like I wanted to give my whole person to Christ and my intellect is part of my whole person. Like, yes, I'm a spiritual person, but I'm also an intellectual person. And I needed to have that engaged in a way that worked, you know, not just sort of like It works mostly but then there's this last like 30% that just like doesn't work But if you ignore that then it works, right? It's like no, I need it to work

and um I mean all I can say is that like I found I found that to be the case in Catholicism. Like in every case, you know, and we didn't talk about this, but like I did have a short period of time after I left Mormonism where I was like, is God real? Like is, you know, is Jesus the Christ? Like do these things even back up? And so I'm going to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive21.com slash Matt. You go there right now, or if you text STRIVE to 66866,

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there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive21, that'srive21.com slash Matt or as I say text text Strive to 66866 to get started today you won't regret it. You know and we didn't talk about this but like I did have a short period of time when I left after I left Mormonism where I was like is God real? Like is you know is Jesus the Christ? Like do these things even back up? And so I remember, you know, I read a couple books, I was really

affected by this book by David Bentley Hart called The Experience of God. It was just so beautiful. And just a few other works about sort of like, you know, I read Benedict's Introduction to Christianity. I read some works by Bar Ehrman, right? And then I read a response to him. It was a book by a man named Larry Hurtado called Lord Jesus Christ. It's a scholarly work about ancient Christian liturgies. And sort of his contention is basically like,

Ehrman's like picking apart the New Testament, saying like, well, there's, you know, there's this, the Jews didn't really, they didn't really start with Jesus being God, then he became God. Hurtado's scholarly work is like, if you look at the way they worshiped, it's totally clear that from the very beginning, Jesus was divine for Christians, right? So it was kind of like this counter type thing. And I found that much more persuasive to me. Like you can pick apart the text and try to like, be like, Oh, what did they actually

believe? But like, look, what did they actually believe? But like, look at what they did. Look at who they prayed to. Look at how they worshiped. Like Jesus was divine. So I kind of went through all of that as well. And so I did the same thing with Catholicism. I bought, I read this,

so I read Newman's development on doctrine essay, essay on the development of Christian doctrine. And then I purchased this book by Dr. Ed Shashensky, I think it's Shashensky, is how you say his name. He's an Orthodox scholar. I spent like $80 on the dumb book. It's this fat book called The Papacy and the Orthodox, a history of the debate.

And he's an Orthodox guy. But I thought, if I can read a scholarly account of the papacy from an orthodox scholar and come away thinking that it's a plausible institution, that'll be good for me, you know? That'll be enough to sort of be like, I've done my due diligence, right? And I did.

And he's a very good scholar. His book is very much like Eric Ibarra's book, which I saw you have on your shelf right over here. Which is sort of like Eric Ibarra's book, which I saw you have on your shelf right over here. Yeah, I love Eric. Which is sort of like neither Eric nor Ed Shosinski, I shouldn't call him Ed, I don't know him, Dr. Shosinski, neither of them say, hey, it's totally obvious that this one is the right one. Right. You know, and I actually still agree with that.

Yes. I don't think it's obvious when you get down to Catholicism versus orthodoxy. And that's okay. But when I read the book by Dr. Shashensky, with Newman's model in mind, I was like, I can see the Catholic position here. And I kinda had some priors where I was thinking about my experience in orthodoxy and it would be nice

if there was this person. And I thought, thought well I think there's a really plausible case that there this is an institution of Christ that like he wanted the church there's something that the church operates in this Petrine way. I mean the Orthodox agree that it's Petrine but the Petrine ministry is not just local at the particular church because the Orthodox are like the the diocese is Petrine the bishop is Peter in his diocese and Catholics will be like yes that's right but the Catholic Church says the church is also Petrine at the universal level where the bishop of Rome is Peter to the universal church and the Orthodox typically there's multiple Orthodox positions on this but a very common one is to say

All of the institutions above the particular church are kind of like man-made institutions for the convenience of governing the church on the earth They're not God-given things if that makes sense So anyway, I kind of came across you were asking like did I use the internet?, I read books. I read every I know I kind of gobbled everything up. I probably read way too much, you know, which my RCA director actually told me that directly. She was like, get out of your head. You're like, no, because I yeah, as we were near the end, but as we get close to RCA, I kind of had a panic right before.

What do you think that came from? I think that it came from, you know, if I'm giving like a naturalistic explanation, I think it came from just sort of like the trauma of having left the faith already and fearing joining something that I knew had a lot of problems. And like, I didn't have, you know, some of those problems bothered me. Like, I can't pretend to be like, something that I knew had a lot of problems and,

and like I didn't have, you know, some of those problems bothered me. Like I can't pretend to be like, Oh, I didn't care. You know what I mean? I was kind of like, eh, you know, there's some problems here. And I was just kind of worried about joining something that it didn't give yourself over to it. Like really give yourself over again to something that's just going to fail and fall apart. Yes. Yeah. In fact, I had, this is the thing. I wanted to share this story. Around this time I was at my friend's house,

actually at my friend's house in Cedar city that I mentioned, and I was really, I was close to becoming Catholic, but I had all these fears, you know, and I was kind of like, I don't know what to do. Like if, if I end up not becoming Catholic, what do I even do? you know, and I was kind of like, I don't know what to do. Like if I end up not becoming Catholic, what do I even do? You know, like, am I just going to sit here in this like middle space for the rest of my life without the sacraments? And so, you know, once again, I had a dream and I was sleeping in his basement and in the dream, um, I'm trying to, it was a while ago

in the dream, I, I heard a voice and I'm trying to remember if like in the dream, I'm trying to, it was a while ago, in the dream, I heard a voice, and I'm trying to remember if like in the dream, it was an angel talking to me, or if it was just a voice that I heard. But I heard a voice that told me a prayer to pray. It was like, Isaac, pray this prayer. And hold on, I have it written on my phone, and I'm gonna read it to you.

As you look that up, I just want to share something. I told my wife that I had a dream recently and it was kind of spiritually informative and may have been prophetic if it were inspirational. I said, you know, obviously it means nothing, but she's like, yeah, because God never spoke to anybody through dreams. Right, exactly.

So, all right. Yeah, I mean, I think you gotta be cautious about these things, right? I guess this kind of fits with like my whole mode of like, I think that we should approach all of these things with about these things, right? I guess this kinda fits with my whole mode of like, I think that we should approach all of these things with our whole person, right? Paul says, don't quench the spirit. Don't despise prophesying, but test everything.

Anyway, so in this dream, because I wrote it down in this Google Keep note, which is still there. So did you wake up off the dream? I woke up and wrote it down, yeah, right then. And this was a short prayer, this was, oh God, come and rescue me for I am lost like a wandering sheep without a shepherd. I long for you, Oh Lord, hear my prayer. And I just remember waking up being like, all

right, I'm going to pray that every day. And so I started, it almost became like this mantra. Like when I would have these feelings of like kind of, I would be afraid, spiritually afraid of just sort of like, what do I do? You know, I'd just be like, oh, well, I'm gonna pray this prayer. Like just asking God, and especially that like plea, like I need a shepherd. Like I'm a sheep who wants to be in the shepherd, in the sheepfold of the Lord. And I want like the earthly shepherd to come and guide me. So the interesting experience though that I had with RCIA in general was I found myself being able to take steps one step at a time that I just couldn't do when I was looking into orthodoxy. So like after a few months I just

like joined the RCIA program and I was like, like in the fall. It was all on Zoom, you know what I mean? And I was just like, yeah, I'll just do it. And when I joined, they were like, okay, well you're joining a little late, so if you wanna get baptized at Easter, we have the right of acceptance like next week, you know? And I was like, well, I'm not ready for that yet.

I'm not ready to declare myself a catechumen. And they're like, okay, well, you know, you might miss the boat. And I was kinda like, well, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready to declare myself a catechumen And they're like, okay. Well, you know, you might miss the boat and I was kind of like well I don't want to be rushed. Yeah, so I didn't but after like four weeks, you know I was like I'm ready now and I contacted them and they're like, yeah, you know what? we'll do a one-off right of acceptance for you and They were probably shocked at how much you'd read. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I suspect there might be more catechumens that are well read than I presume. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, yeah, it does happen. It depends. And that's the hard thing about RCIA is you have like people like me where I've already read the catechism and I already knew

there are other people who are actually my wife's Catholic and right. Yeah. There are other people who are like, I mean, I remember the first time I went to RCIA, I was there and another woman who was like, so what's the New Testament? Oh, you know, and I was just like, OK, yeah, it's hard to hold a class for such a wide range of people. No, there were times, you know, like not to toot my own horn, but there were times when they would when the person teaching the lesson would be like, Isaac, is that right? And I would be like, yeah, I think I think that's right.

Like that matches what I've read and what I've learned. Where's your wife at during this whole process of you're leaving once a week, presumably, to go to RCA? Yeah, I mean, she is just kind of. So she's obviously like even to this day, she's an active, believing LDS member. And, you know, but she was overall like she was supportive and trying to be supportive. Yeah. Like it's not always easy. Like we both have had moments of that and don't like wrap us in a lot of glory.

But just overall, she's just like, Hey, if this is like something you need to do and you believe in, then you do it. Right. So she was supportive and you believe in, then you do it right. So she was supportive and you know, you know, we're just kind of work through it. What have you learned? I mean, for those who are watching who are either converting to Catholicism and have their unequally yoked as it were, what have you learned that you would tell someone who's just beginning this journey?

It's not your job to convert your spouse. That's probably the most important thing. Like, do not have that orientation toward your spouse where it's like, my job is to convert you. It's, it's just your job to love your spouse. And that doesn't change whether you are in the same faith or in different faiths or whatever. Like the Holy Spirit, if Holy Spirit, if the Lord wills it, the Holy Spirit will convert them. And you can be a good example, you can live your faith

in as much as it can be a peaceful thing, you can share your beliefs and talk about what you believe and how it's different from what they believe. But if you feel, and this is like a just broad good good marriage advice, don't, it's not your job to change your spouse, right? And like, I'm not saying, I don't share that because I'm totally successful at this. I say it partially, in large part, because I was not always successful at that.

So that's probably my main piece of advice. You have an obligation. And if this gets too personal You have an obligation, and if this gets too personal, you tell me and I'll back off because I want to be respectful, but you have an obligation to raise your children in the Catholic faith. Yeah. How do you do that? Yeah, well how do you do it? Like what does it mean to raise your children Catholic when you're the one who's Catholic but your spouse isn't? And especially if like the kids' lives didn't start Catholic and they started in a different context.

So, and where do you live now? We live in Arizona. Okay. So about a year ago, we moved to Gilbert, Arizona. Okay. So a lot of their friends, Mormon? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Most of the, you know, most of their childhood is kind of like in an LDS context. Yeah. Um, so I'll tell you what I, I'm quite certain it doesn't mean. It does not mean that I go to my wife and say, just so you know, the kids have to become Catholic because I became Catholic and I have an obligation to raise them in the Catholic faith. What it does mean is I have a special obligation to share my faith with them, to make sure that they know my faith, that it like is a live option for them, that they understand it and that they see me living it and they see the beauty of

the faith. And I think that's basically it. You know, like I, there's not much more. Do you teach them the Hail Mary or some other prayer that might be offensive to your wife? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know necessarily how offensive each of those prayers is. But do you and your wife pray together? We pray as a family. Yeah, we don't usually pray like as a couple. And do you sort of make the sign of the cross or do you say, well, I don't need to know. I make the sign of the cross. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so this would be my other kind of advice.

That's something I've kind of learned through hard experience. I'm laughing because I'm thinking of like a parody of the man who has no prudence and just starts putting green scapulas everywhere. You don't like, you can't figure out every single issue. You can't resolve every issue on the first day. Like you take each day and each issue as it arises. Like there's always this temptation, we both felt this temptation of like,

we need this like grand plan, this like grand theory of how we're going to resolve like everything that comes up. Like what if this happens? What if that happens? What if the kids want to do this? What if they want to do that? Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely. And like you can't do that. Well not just that, but I would think even like we just need to have this like one big conversation where we can finally ease the tension and figure out what's going on. Yeah. No, I just, as with like everything else in marriage, an issue comes up, you have to address it with love and compassion and just like figure out the best Way forward that you can think of so like right now in a practical standpoint we This is how we do church. So I mean I go to mass every Sunday. Mm-hmm every other Sunday

The kids will go to both churches So kind of like the kids one Sunday will go to just meet with me with to mass and then we'll go to both churches. So kind of like the kids one Sunday, we'll go to just meet with me to mass and then we'll come home. And then they'll be done for the day. The next Sunday, we'll go to mass in the morning and then my wife's LDS ward in the afternoon. And then the next Sunday, the kids will just go to LDS church and come home.

Cause we don't wanna overload them. We used to go to both every Sunday, it was too much for the kids. We don't want it to become like this burden where they're like, church, I hate church. Anyway, so that's just what we do practically, you know, and we kind of take turns and we try to focus on what we have in common. There are, there still is a lot in common, you know,

in terms of like things that we believe about morality, even just like, you know, we both believe in the New Testament and we differ in some interpretations, but like we both believe in the gospel. We both believe in the sermon on the mount. We both believe in Jesus's parables and his teachings. And like we share those things with our kids. We read the Old Testament together. Like we read, share Bible stories with them and we teach them to pray and all of that. So like, there's a lot that you can still do. If you

like try to focus on the commonalities. What are some things that Catholics can learn from Mormons? Um, and I know this is a general question because there are some Catholics that maybe got nothing to learn from Mormons, right? But, but I mean, just kind of generally speaking, what are some things that we could learn from our Mormon friends? The two things that immediately come to mind are like the incredible value of like home piety, um, and like consistent worship in the home, just like really basic stuff like pray together, read scriptures together, and just make it like a habit that you do all the time. And the value

of serving like in your parish and being part of the parish community. And the LDF, there's a lot of Catholics that do that, but there's a lot that don't. And then just like disengage. And the LDS context, they're very bold. Like part of it's the theology. It doesn't feel bold because they expect it. They're like, we are going to call you to do this. I don't ask. Then they say, will you accept that? I love it. You know? I mean, how would it be if like a new Catholic moved in and the priest was like, Oh, I'm glad you're here. Here's what you'll be doing. Here's what you're going to be doing for us. Will you accept? Yes. Will you accept? And if they say no, be like, okay, well, can you do this instead? Right? Type thing. And so, you know, I try to be involved in the parish. It's just kind of like my Mormon way.

I have a very Mormon way of being Catholic, right? Like, I don't think it's possible for me to do it any other way. Like they kind of laugh at me. It's like, what can I do to help? Like, what can I be involved in? And I'm like, oh, how about this? I'm like, great, you know, so yeah, I would say those are probably the two, the two biggest things. Do you actively try to help Mormons see the truth of the Catholic faith? Um, if they're interested. So I've had a lot contact me online in the past, you know, if I could just like, Are you, are you open to being contacted after this interview? Yeah, I'd be open to it. Sure. Do you have a way in which people could?

I do. Well, I actually created like an email that, oh, and I mean, meant to share. OK, I have two emails I want to share. OK. I know we've been going a long time. I know. This is great. The first. Yeah. Also, just so you know, Stephen, I'm going to have him. He gave me a new email. He just set up. That's the one one of the ones I wanted to tell you about. So I made one, cause I don't want to give out my personal email address, but I just got on Google Gmail. And so

I made one. It's like LDS to Catholic LDSTO Catholic. Okay. At gmail.com. If someone wants to email me, I can't promise to respond. Yeah. But I've had lots of LDS people reach out and be like, Hey, I'm interested in Catholicism. And I've talked to a bunch of them before. So, um, but I've had lots of LDS people reach out and be like, Hey, I'm interested in Catholicism and I've talked to a bunch of them before. So, um, but I haven't, haven't been like, you know, out there being like, Hey, become Catholic, you know? Yeah. It's a saying Jimmy Aiken shared with me once. He said he who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. I think it is. I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, because I think like, I don't I don't want to pretend that I'm more wise when I'm just more lazy as I get older.

Yeah. But you know, there is wisdom that comes from when you were riding your bike through the rain for 25 minutes to now when you're like, well, if they're open. Yeah. So I think, you know, yeah, yeah, for sure. So what are we learning here? Because I'm with you. So like I try to evangelize in very awkward, not awkward, non awkward ways. So I'll say to somebody, if I see them wearing a cross, I'll say, glory to Jesus Christ. Yeah. Just like whether they're Protestant or whatever, Orthodox or what have you. So I was just reading Pope Francis just released. I don't know what it's called. I don't think it's an encyclical.

I think it is a new encyclical. Okay. An encyclical on, um, Teresa of L'Esu. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Oh, maybe we're talking about different documents. Oh, he just released it. Like Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, like yesterday or something like that. That's not an encyclical. He did release an encyclical. I apologize. I'll shut up. It was like last week. So I figured that's what you. Yeah. It was like two. Sorry. Yeah. No, like last week. So I figured that's what you. Yeah, it was like too sorry. Yeah.

No, like just yesterday. I'll see myself out. Yeah. We can cut this. We can cut this. Why aren't you as up to date on Catholic things as I am? Don't you? Haven't you read the thing the Pope released yesterday?

Come on. You just said the Pope released a document and I was my immediate thought was. I haven't finished it, but so far it seems really good. Yeah. And he loved to raise. He I don't know that much. You know, I'm a baby Catholic. I was just in France, kneeling in front of a tomb. I call it Mother Therese.

So this is part and I say that I love her. I'm coming to love her. And she's so good. She's so good. Let me read this paragraph from Pope Francis, because I think it speaks directly like exactly to this question we're talking about. And I know that some of his statements on like evangelization and proselytism and stuff can be controversial sometimes, but just hear what he says and hear how he quotes Saint Therese. He says,

the final pages of her story of a soul are a missionary testament. They express her appreciation of the fact that evangelization takes place by attraction, not by pressure or proselytism. It is worthwhile reading her own words in this regard. So this is a quote from her. Draw me, we shall run after you in the odor of your ointments, oh Jesus. It is not even necessary to say, when drawing me, draw the souls whom I love. This simple statement, draw me, suffices. I understand, Lord, that when a soul allows herself to be captivated by the odor of your ointments, she cannot run alone.

All the souls whom she loves follow in her train. This is done without constraint, without effort. It is a natural consequence of her attraction for you. Just as a torrent, throwing itself with impetuosity into the ocean, drags after it everything it encounters in its passage. In the same way, oh Jesus, the soul who plunges into the shoreless ocean of your love draws with her all the treasures she possesses. Lord, you know it, I have no other treasures than the souls it has pleased you to unite to mine." 24 years old, ladies and gentlemen. Can you believe that? It's unreal. Yeah, doctor of the

church. And that, so I was reading that like yesterday when I was flying out here, and it really, you know, it speaks to this exact question of like, if we really love the Lord, then others will come along, you know, or at least that's our hope in our prayer, right? And so, you know, again, like, if you focus, I can understand the idea of saying, if you focus on, oh, I've got to convert people,

I've got to convert people, I've got to bring this person, I've got to bring that person, that can really come off bad to them. And it can also be just like an unnecessary burden on your own soul. But if you just say, what I've got to do is love the Lord and just like go deeper into the ocean of his love. And I love that she's like a torrent. You know, if you've ever been to the beach and seen like a, you know, I've been almost taken out by them.

Yeah, almost taken out by them. It just drags into the water. Right? Like that, that should be our goal. And that's easier said than done. Like none of us love the Lord in the way that we wish we did. Well, I love what you're saying because you're talking about putting first things first. And often what we try to do is put second things first. I was speaking to this woman who said to me in a moment of vulnerability that she's afraid her daughter hates her. She's so afraid of her daughter hating her. Well, okay, what do you do if you're afraid your child will hate you? You love her. Like you don't hate her. You serve her. Otherwise, all you're doing is manipulating the other. If you're like,

how do I make you not hate me? Yes. I'm putting second things first. And it sounds like you're saying something similar here is like, how can I help my family love Jesus? Well, I cannot actually do that. I feel like that's actually impossible. Yes. So here's what I can do. Like I can, I can love Jesus and I can try to be not off-putting to those I love. Well, and as a parent, you do have a sacred responsibility to teach your children about Christ and to, you know, more than just sort of being like, oh, I'm going to go do my own thing. Right. Right. Like, there's something more that happens there, but there's no constraint with Christ. Christ does not force.

He stands at the door and knocks. And as difficult as it can be to kind of like, when you have someone that you just like want, to like, to join you, right? To be dragged into this torrent with you. Because I'm the dragging, you know, in her thing, you're not the one dragging. I'm not, the torrent is not, you know,

me grabbing someone and yanking them to the ocean. The torrent just is my love for Christ flowing toward him and just naturally others get caught up into it. But it's not through force. And that's so hard as a parent. And I know I say to my children, I apologize. I'm sorry. I am so, I so often do get caught up and just like, we're doing this now. You sit down, we're doing this thing. Like, listen, you're not paying attention. And they don't always catch why, like the love that's behind that.

Totally. Yeah. And that's hard. So, you know, it's not easy being in what you know, we a mixed faith Family in a mixed faith marriage But you know you just approach it with any kind of the same way you would approach any other issue just with grace love Patience, you know respect for each other and just you know, the you tackle issues that arise as they arise and you do the best you can What is the single best book you would recommend to an LDS looking into Catholicism or beginning to question the truth claims of the LDS church? That's a good question.

So I don't think that there's an adequate book right now. And I tried to get Joe Heschmeyer to write one, and he stopped responding to my emails. I really like his book, The Early Church is the Catholic Church, more because it shows kind of like a methodology of how to like read the data that I think is really helpful. And like how to think through how we understand what the doctrine of Christ is. Like that's a question I wrestled with a lot in my conversion was like growing up I was basically taught like here's the doctrine of the church if you want to know if it's true just pray about it and if you have this experience you know it's true done and if later you come to doubt it you should

just rely on that earlier experience really and just kind of don't worry about it kind of thing. That's a little simplistic, but that's the gist. So I was really troubled, like how do I know the doctrine of Christ? And I think there you just like turn to the scriptures and what did the apostles teach? They taught, you know, Paul says if anyone or even if I or even an angel teaches you something different from what was taught, let him be anathema, right? Test the spirits, Lord. Jesus says, not everyone who says to me,

Lord, Lord, we'll go to the kingdom and go, gosh, I can't believe I'm butchering this quote. Right, that really calls me Lord, we'll be, yeah. Yeah, but he who does the will of my father, and he says, like, there will be many false prophets who go forth and say We did all these amazing things in your name and you might even say like we had all these amazing experiences We produced such experiences in other people

but Like there's always a standard of in the new testament what you consistently see is that the teaching of the apostles Is the standard by which you measure? of the Apostles is the standard by which you measure the faith that you receive. So if anyone says this is the faith, you measure it by the apostolic deposit. You know, John is very clear about this when he talks about testing the spirits. He's like, the way you know a spirit, whether it's from God, is if it confesses that

Jesus is the Christ, which in his time was being denied. So he's giving an orthodoxy test, right? He's like, here's a, this is apostolic teaching. So if you're, if you have a spirit which denies it, that's a false spirit. Um, that was a little bit of a tangent, but the point is that like it's a different way of approaching questions of doctrine. And so Joe's book, the, um, the early church was the Catholic church is quite good in that regard. The Apostasy That Wasn't is also a pretty good book by Bennett. I can't remember his first name.

Oh yes, I know who you mean. Yeah. He kind of like shows- Is it Elijah Bennett? No, it's not Elijah. There's the- that's right, look up The Apostasy That Wasn't. The Apostasy That Wasn't. Jeremiah, ah, something like that. No. Oh, sorry.

I anybody who does this is there's only one book named this so that I really don't know. I would strongly suggest reading the New Testament in a modern translation. Yeah. With a good commentary. Yeah. Rod Bennett. Rod Bennett. Thank you. Rod Bennett. Rod. Rod. Yeah. Because that's the other thing I found. So just to to what do

you say to predictable or to that the LDS basically use the KJV. Yeah. With some differences, right. But it's like, well, this just this just happens to be this thing that came out of the Protestant tradition. Yeah. Well, they don't they only use that in English. You know, they kind of like pick a Bible translation in other languages and be like, that's the one we use for Spanish. This is the one we use for that. But even like one way you could show that Mormonism is not the religion willed by Christ is to show that the Apocrypha, the Deuterocanonical books are inspired.

You just have to go into that controversy. Well, I mean, they even have a complicated relationship with how the Bible's inspired, right? Like they believe the Bible contains errors and that it's been corrupted to some degree. That's the explicit teaching of the Book of Mormon, that like there were plain and, as it says, plain and precious truths that were removed from the Bible by some kind of shadowy early Christian church or something like that. But I think studying the Bible, because they read in the KJV, the Bible, the New Testament often is just kind of treated as like a source of proof texts, especially the epistles. You know, if you read the Gospels in the KJV,

it's pretty straightforward. It kind of reads the way you would expect most of the time. But some of the epistles in the KJV are very hard to understand. I mean, they're hard to understand even in a good modern translation. Paul is a sophisticated thinker and theologian. But when you read it with good commentary, you start understanding better the full message of the New Testament and how it differs from LDS teaching. So those would probably be some of the books that I would recommend. Can I recommend a specific translation

that I think has helped me overcome that problem? Sure. I read the Knox for devotional, and I think it's phenomenal for overcoming the issue of the letters feeling like series of proof texts rather than complete works. I like Kyle Keating's idea that the best Bible is the one you'll read.

Yeah. So on my mission, I found a Bible on the shelves, a New Testament on the shelves of one of the apartments I was in. And it was just called the New Testament in Modern English by Phillips is the last name, like J.B. Phillips or something. He was a friend of C.S. Lewis.

And it's very much a dynamic translation. Like, I'm not going to pretend that it isn't, but if you ever... His goal in translating that was he wanted the epistles to read like letters, so you could like... You would experience it in a similar way to how they would have experienced it the first time. And I don't claim he's always successful. I wouldn't make it like the only Bible you read, but it has an amazing ability. You sit down and you read Romans and you feel like you're reading a letter and you totally get the overarching themes of what Paul's trying to say. And so that I love that. I still have that same copy. I took it with me from that apartment. It's on my shelf at home. Have you had Mormon missionaries

come to your door since? I mean, my wife my wife said yes. So they like stop by. Fair enough. They come all the time. Like we've had them over for dinner and stuff. And does this topic get addressed? No. Or are you like, please don't bring it up? Yeah, we've kind of just been like, hey, you guys can come for dinner. And at the end, if you could just share like a generic Christ-centered message, that would be fine.

And then we'll see you later, you know. But do you have any? Because I mean, imagine if one of these missionaries was like you were back in the day You would have just been red meat wouldn't you? Well, if you had a somewhere and there was a there was a Catholic There's a Catholic at table who's informed in that sort of thing. Wouldn't you want to get into it? Well, sure I'd be willing to but like you said like missionaries are here's the thing about missionaries first They're kids or I mean, they're adults technically. I know, that's what I'm, I'm not calling you elder dude.

But they're so young, you know? And so, and they're like out here on a specific mission and they may partially be out there because they feel a cultural pressure to go. They're not in a position in their life where they're like ready to receive all these things. So if you just like get into with them, they'll just going to shut down. I was saying the opposite. I'm sorry. Maybe I wasn't clear. What I was saying is, have you not found one of these enthusiastic young missionaries trying to take you down, trying to help you? No. Well, I find them to be quite respectful. Yeah, they are.

Never had a bad experience with them. Yeah, yeah. They're, they're typically good. And I think I was respectful on my mission too, but I was very zealous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Fantastic, man. Well, thank you. Anything else you wanna Um, no, no, I think this is great. Thank you very much for sharing and Yeah, all right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right