"If I intend to make a difference in this dispensation, it's gathering together in one all things in Christ. And I need the understanding of my LGBT brothers and sisters. I need the understanding of ex latter-day saints, because they can show us our blind spots in ways no one else can. I need the experiences and perspectives of everyone, until we form one great whole of truth. Until we can say to our parents in heaven "we are all coming home" and that to me is what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about."
Come Back Podcast
Transcript
ASHLY
00:00
Well, Brother Halverson, we're so excited to have you on the podcast, you're very loved by a lot of people. And so it is just such an honor for us to have you on.
JARED
00:27
The honor is all mine, actually. Honestly, it's a blessing to be with you two. I'm fanboying. As we speak, I was just telling my BYU students about your podcast, it's such an important thing to have these stories told. And so to get to be a small part of it today is really a privilege for me. So thank you and your listeners, anybody that's drawn to this kind of content is a friend of mine as well, whether you're listening because you have a story that similar or whether you're angry at that these stories are being told, I love you, whoever you are, and whatever, wherever you're coming from. And so the chance to talk about important things with wonderful people. That's always a blessing. So thank you.
ASHLY
1:08
Awesome.
LAUREN
Thanks. All right. For those of you who don't know who Jared Halverson is, I'm going to read his bio. Jared Halverson is an associate professor of ancient scripture coming to BYU after 24 years of serving in the CES system. He was raised in Texas and Southern California. He came to BYU originally as a presidential scholar and wide receiver on the football team, leaving a served mission in Puerto Rico and returning to teach at the Missionary Training Center. He earned a BA in history and an MA in religious education from BYU and an MA and PhD in American religious history from Vanderbilt University focusing on secularization, faith loss and anti-religious rhetoric. He is frequently involved with interfaith dialogue, has been a featured speaker in both devotional and academic settings from coast to coast, and hosts a popular YouTube channel and podcast called Unshaken. He also works one on one with people around the world experiencing faith crisis. Jared’s wife Emily is a writer, editor, and substance abuse disorder counselor. They were married in 1999, and have five children. In addition to his family, Jared loves sports, architecture, the ocean, and anything covered in barbecue sauce.
JARED
Guilty as charged.
ASHLY
02:16
Love it. Love it. So we have gathered quite a few questions. It's crazy, because when we announced that you were going to be coming on the podcast, we just got flooded with questions. And so we have, we had to kind of sift through some, you know, TO keep this relatively, you know, within the hour, but
JARED
02:46
I was afraid that might be some of their questions like, how does that guy talk for like four hours straight? Right. So I will try to keep it within reason today.
ASHLY
02:47
Awesome. Awesome. So um, yeah, I mean, and just before we start, I listened to your YouTube video about don't waste a good faith crisis. And it just resonated so much with what you talked about, regarding the creation, the fall and the atonement. And I sent it to pretty much everybody in my contact list. And I was like, “This changed my life! Oh, my gosh!” And so I'm so excited to hear how you answer these questions. There's a lot of hard questions that people have. And I'm really excited to just hear your take on them.
JARED
03:25
And honestly, Ashley, more than changed your life. I imagine it probably described your life. Yeah, because what I, and again, what I love about the approach that you take on this podcast is you are letting people tell their stories of creation, fall, atonement, and, and to let people know that they don't have to settle down permanently East of Eden. But that there's, they're not going to go back into the Garden like it was before. That's not the purpose, and to see the strength of you two, to see and feel the strength of the people that come on to tell their stories—If that's the result of a fall forward, that then allows for continual progress, then bless the … what's the what's the old song? “God Bless the Broken Road,” you know? It’s not broken, and you're not broken, and people aren't broken. It's, to me, I just trust the process. I trust them, I trust the person. I trust our Father in Heaven. And I'm just amazed to watch them unfold. So it's beautiful.
ASHLY
04:25
I love that. And something else you said was, if you have a family member that leaves the church that can be really painful. And you said something about, you know, they're going through their fall. And, you know, that doesn't mean, we don't know. We can't say where they're going to be, we just have no idea. And so, you know, it can be a beautiful experience to watch somebody go through that. And so I just, I love that. And I think it gives a lot of people a lot of hope. So, yeah.
JARED
I appreciate that.
ASHLY
Yeah, so we'll go ahead and get started. So question number one.
05:00
What can we say to people that use Joseph Smith’s flaws as a reason to not believe in The Book of Mormon?
Excellent question. To which I actually remember talking to an an anti-Mormon I study their work and so I get to meet some on occasion. And one of them said that: “How can you believe in the Book of Mormon at all, when the book itself announced and announces and admits its own mistakes?” As boldly as on the title page, and elsewhere within, it's not claiming to be an inerrant text. And what he saw as such a weakness, I actually said to him, that's actually one of its strengths. Because as I've studied faith loss throughout history, especially those that attacked the Bible for similar things, to me, it's fascinating that The Book of Mormon and the Bible rise and fall basically on the same types of criteria. And what I've seen so often is when people attack the Bible, they're almost banking on someone approaching the text with such an inerrantist view, that there can't be any mistakes there. They've tried to burnish the text of any human fingerprints. And as a result, anytime there is anything that smacks of humanity rather than divinity, the whole thing falls apart. I compare it with, the way I usually describe it to people is, I would take a flexible faith over a brittle belief any day. And so it, to me, it's not that The Book of Mormon admits its weakness in a bad way. I wish the Bible had admitted its weakness more openly, and nobody's a bigger fan of the Bible than I, but to see that humanity poking through the divinity, or vice versa, to me, it's one of my favorite controversies to prove. I always talk about these paradoxes. And the humanity-divinity paradox is one that runs deep. And that's definitely the case with Joseph Smith. I think it was Truman Madsen that said that Joseph spent half of his time convincing people he was a prophet, and the other half convincing them that he was just a man. So he was trying to walk that balance of humanity and divinity, as far as his calling was concerned as well. I will say this too, as one that spends a lot of time reading what people say about Joseph. So many of the things that people bring up, are so overblown, or decontextualized, that part of me wants to talk to whoever asked this excellent question, and say, help me understand where you're coming from, as far as the flaws that you see. I see some too. Many. He saw plenty in himself. But are they the same ones? Or are they ones that you've picked up from conversations with people that want to blow those flaws completely out of proportion? I will say this: in 2005, when we were celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the bicentennial of the birth of Joseph Smith, and I decided that year I wanted to read a book about Joseph Smith every month for that year. So I was going to read 12 books about the prophet that year. And I did them from all different perspectives, members of the church and non members of the church and pro and con, more devotional ones, more academic ones, it was a ton of reading in 2005. And I remember approaching the end of November, and wondering, “Okay, I've read … I'm about to finish my 11th book about Joseph Smith. And I only get one month to go. Now, this isn't the end of my Joseph Smith's study in my life, but the end of this year with the Prophet. What should I study?” And I still had a bunch of titles on my shelf and ones I could go to. And as I pondered and actually prayed about it, what of all these books that I have left would be the best one to study? And the answer came crystal clear. You want to know Joseph Smith, then read the Book of Mormon this December. And I thought, I've read that book like 50 times. Really? Read it again? And said, “Yes, read it again, this time to understand its translator.” And it was an incredible read of The Book of Mormon, that December 2005. And, again, I would caution people about their sources. When it comes to … I'll put it this way, I study enough anti-Mormonism to see just how unfair it usually is. And I describe it as the three S's of anti-religious rhetoric and it's true and anti-Mormonism, it’s true in anti-semitism, it’s true in anti-Catholicism, it’s true across the board. And those three S's are: it's typically sensational, it's superficial, and it's selective. And the sensationalism is, “Let's talk the shocking all kinds of things” about the usual suspects: about plural marriage, and about race and the priesthood, and things like that because “ooh, there’s sex and violence,” or “there’s sex and race.” And there's the kinds of issues that sell movie tickets in Hollywood, for example. It shifts the approach from an intellectual to a purely emotional one. And we don't often make the best decisions that way. And then it's typically very superficial. It will give you just enough to to concern you, but not enough of the rest of the story to help you get your feet back underneath you. And then it's typically very selective—that we're only going to tell you the worst things. And so I'm aware of Joseph's flaws, he was too. The writers of The Book of Mormon themselves were aware of their flaws, and they regretted them. Personally, I'm grateful because they, it makes it so much more relatable. And to see the beautiful divinity flowing through the pages of The Book of Mormon. That's the best thing I could ever know about Joseph is that.
ASHLY
10:40
I love that, so much. So kind of, moving on. Something that kind of is tail end question to that is, a lot of people have a lot of concerns around the Book of Abraham and how it, just in general, and the papyri and how that came to be. And so what would you say to somebody whose testimony is shaken because of that?
JARED
11:02
Great question as well. What's interesting to me is in both The Book of Mormon as well as Book of Abraham, any of Joseph Smith's translation projects, historically, people have been more concerned about the coming forth than about the contents. And it's more about the provenance, it's called, than it is about the principles on the page. And so to people in the early days, when The Book of Mormon story first came out in the press in late 1829, and then in the 1830s. Hardly anybody ever cracked the book open. And it's as if they refused to read it, because they were so put off by stories of angels and, and a gold Bible and stone spectacles and so on. Sadly, in a similar way, people approach the Book of Abraham, only knowing stories about its provenance, only knowing stories about papyri that were discovered in Chicago, and then at the Met, and to see, there's a part of me that just says, but have you actually opened the book and seen what Joseph translated from it? To have our best understanding of premortality there is amazing to me. To understand the the link between stars and spirits and understand the the orbits of our interhuman relationships is amazing to me. To see the backstory of Abraham's own experiences, that adds so much depth to the Akedah, the experience he has with with Isaac on the mountain, the creation account solves some of the problems that science has posed to creation story, and as far as the age of the cosmos, and so on. So the contents of the Book of Abraham is absolutely breathtaking to me. Now, that's not to try to escape the challenges behind this translation. But I do worry sometimes that people see the Book of Abraham as the smoking gun. And that since we now have proof—is what they'll typically say, “We have absolute proof” that Joseph didn't know what he was talking about when it came to translation, because now we have the scraps of the papyri. And we can have Egyptologists turn to this and prove Joseph was not an Egyptologist, he couldn't translate Egyptian correctly, to which I would say, “Amen. He was not an Egyptologist and never claimed to be.” And if a prophet is looking at something, and a scholar is looking at something, I have a feeling, they're going to describe them in two very different ways. If a, if you asked a doctor, “What was it like to fall in love?,” they might talk about increased heart rate, and flushing of the capillaries in the in the face and hands becoming a little sweaty. Personally, I'd rather not have a doctor describe how I feel about my wife, I'd rather have a poet do that. And to see what I mean, you see it in what Abraham, excuse me, what Isaiah talks about— “take it to a learned man, and the learned cannot read a sealed book.” And yes, he's talking about the literal sealing of The Book of Mormon, but to have truth that's sealed to purely rational investigation, as a learned man or woman is not going to see what's been sealed there. And so to me, instead of proving that Joseph Smith couldn't translate, to me the beauty of the Book of Abraham, when I'm so grateful that the Egyptologists have helped us see, because without their help, I don't think we would have seen this, is I think it helps prove that our understanding of what translation consisted of was very basic, and it was too narrow in terms of what Joseph Smith is really doing. I speak Spanish, for my mission, and I can translate Spanish, but what I'm doing is taking a language I know and turning it into another language that I know, but to think of Joseph going into a language he had no knowledge of, he doesn't know Egyptian, in The Book of Mormon, he doesn't know reformed Egyptian. And so, of course, he's not going to be able to translate it the way a scholar would. There's no lexicon for him to turn to, but for him to understand by way of the Spirit, what is it that the Lord is trying to convey to a modern audience, however closely, or loosely, it's related to what's actually on the papyri themselves. There's, in fact, if you were to look up the word translation and the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, such a blessing that the first American Dictionary, we have freezes language during the time of Joseph Smith. So we can see when they used words, what might they have been thinking. And if you look at translation, the idea of turning things from one language to another is on the list. But I think it's only number six, or seven. And all of the earlier definitions of translation are not some kind of scholarly linguistic work, but rather, a sense of, of changing time and space, if you think about a translated being, and to think of that kind of experience that Joseph is having, and that He wants us to have as well. So if that means that, that Joseph is not looking at specific Egyptian characters, and doing a one-to-one relationship, like a scholarly translation would be, I'm so glad that the Book of Abraham has cured us, at least it's it's getting there cured us of thinking that translation is a non revelatory kind of exercise. And that's true of Joseph translating The Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith Translation, and any of us trying to translate scripture into our own lives. If it's not a revelatory experience, if it doesn't connect us to heaven. If it doesn't feel like we are getting translated, then we're missing something. And we might as well be reading some other ancient text that has merely been translated in the scholarly fashion. There's other things that scholars have dealt with as far as the size and scope of the papyrus scrolls compared to the amount of fragments we have, and could have been translated from something else. And so it's not a one-to-one, Apples-to-Apples kind of comparison. That's possible. That's fine. But to me, I think rather than trying to find a purely humanistic explanation for what has become a purely humanistic question, let's try to connect with God and understand what he's doing here. And to me, that's the beauty of all that Joseph gives us as far as translation is concerned, you read section 21, of the Doctrine and Covenants. And when he's given all these titles at the first conference of the church, the day of its organization, he's called an apostle and an elder, but he's also called a prophet, seer, and we would think, revelator, because that's what pops into our head, but a prophet, seer, and translator.
ASHLY
Mmm.
JARED
And it's interesting to think of translation and revelation, being synonymous in those terms. And that's exactly who Joseph was. I pray again, personally, I love the Book of Abraham, and the controversy has pushed me to understand better, what is Joseph trying to accomplish through his translations? And it's working for me, if I am feeling feeling translated, by the experiences I have with scripture,
LAUREN
18:14
You know you reminded me of something that actually happened to me like a week ago, I have been, for the first time, paying more attention to anti content, because I'm interested in listening to people's exit stories. And I wish I could remember what it's called, you're gonna know what I'm talking about. So you can help me out here, but somebody mentioned something that I had never heard of. And so I researched it. And by researching it, it made me have even stronger faith in the Book of Abraham. And it was, oh, what were they called? The plates that those some guys had buried to fool Joseph Smith.
JARED
18:41
Kinderhook Plates?
LAUREN
18:42
Yes, Kinderhook. And so I had never heard of that. And so and I looked it up, and I even clicked on like the Joseph Smith translation documents that you can see online, and you can see, like he mentions them, he attempts to translate like one single symbol, it shows you the symbols that and everything, and then he just forgets about them, because they weren't from God. And to me, that just built my testimony even more about the Book of Abraham, because, like, if the Book of Abraham wasn't real, then he probably would have forgotten about it. But it was real. And these were proven later on to be a fraud. But he dropped them before he knew that.
JARED
19:33
Well, what I love too— that's a great insight, Lauren. What I love also is, I think it was Emily Dickinson that said, that every bush is burning, if we have the eyes to see, right? That if we have the eyes to see we’ll turn aside and we'll see every bush aflame with God. And I'd get that sense from Joseph that he was one who could see God everywhere he looked, or at least wanted and intended to find heaven, in every piece of Earth. And so if somebody brings him anything, I can picture his mind immediately going, “Can this teach me anything about God?” I'm going to explore, I'm going to try, and to have that kind of openness. He was open to all the religions that he explored. In his youth he was open to people of other faiths, coming into Nauvoo and preaching right alongside him. He was so open to truth outside, he loved smelling flowers in other people's gardens beyond the scope of so called Mormonism. It was so expansive the way he saw things. And so to give it all a try, I'm open to that. And to explore, it reminds me of section 91 as it describes the Apocrypha, and he's like, “This, some people consider this scripture. Should we, should I translate this?” And the Lord says, “Okay, it's not on the same level as what you already have canonized. So let's not spend as much focused attention on that.” And there are some interpolations of men there, there's some falsehood, but there is some truth. And if you have the Spirit, you'll tell the difference between the two. And you'll gain a lot of insight from what you study. And when I study the Apocrypha, that's how I approach it. But it's also how I study world literature. It's how I study movies and TV, it's how I listen to song lyrics. It's how I engage in interfaith dialogue. It's with an understanding, there's going to be truth there. And if I have eyes to see and the Spirit to discern, I can bring it in and accept it and add it to my own canon of truth that God has given. And Joseph tried it and gave people the benefit of the doubt and was willing to explore Kinderhook Plates and look at papyri and I just, he wanted to see burning bushes any chance that he could.
ASHLY
21:40
I love that, because one of the questions that I've had is, with the church, if the church is the true church, why are we such a small group of people? You know, why? Why is it that we … I'll never forget when I was a kid, and I said something to my mom about most people being a member of the church in the world. And she's like, “No, no, not even close.” And so that, I mean, that's also something that Terryl Givens mentioned when we had him on the podcast was that, you know, there's truth to be found everywhere. And so I just, I love that.
JARED
22:23
Well, you know, what I love about it, too, is, in some ways, it adds a second dimension to what Nephi tells us. Because in Nephi’s visions, based on his father's dream. He sees that in the last days, the church of the Lamb will be small. He says, it'll be everywhere. So you get these little pockets of saints, you have leaven spread throughout the lump to be able to rise to raise the whole loaf, right. But one of the things that Nephi says there is that part of the reason for its smallness is because of the wickedness of the great and abominable church, which is not some church out there, but rather worldly philosophies. It's just Babylon and all of its guises. But what I love about what we see, what Terryl was describing, what I'm trying to explain here is, are we small because of the world's wickedness? In part, yes, but a more expansive answer would be we're small because of the world's goodness. And to think about what is our monopoly, it's not truth, it's not goodness, its priesthood authority for saving ordinances. Its prophets and apostles, through whom institutional revelation will flow. But there is so much goodness and truth scattered throughout the world's religions, the world's philosophies, incredible poets, and philosophers and thinkers and artists, of all cultures and all times that have added truth. And if that's all it takes to live a life of goodness and light, it's gonna be a pretty simple thing for us to offer saving ordinances through the priesthood authority that has been granted us and we can do that in the temple. And we'll continue to do that in the Millennium and so on. There's just so much— I think people that wander that have too narrow a view of truth, thinking that the Latter-day Saints have it all and no one else has any and so how unfair of God to give it all to so few. When in reality, how generous of God to give so much to so many.
ASHLY
24:22
Wow.
LAUREN
That's awesome.
ASHLY
That is awesome.
LAUREN
I love that. Okay, I'm gonna so these two questions were kind of from me, these were actually from, I started watching this YouTube channel called “Hello Saints.” Have you, I don't know, Pastor Jeff? Yeah, I love his channel. It's so good. I'm learning so much.
JARED
24:44
Not only content, his approach is a good example of what interfaith dialogue can and should be an openness and agree to disagree, but never become disagreeable. Now, I think he does a great job.
LAUREN
24:43
So maybe you've seen this episode where he gets through second 2 Nephi because he's currently reading The Book of Mormon, and as he does, he's coming up with his own questions. And some of these questions I wouldn't ever think of because I'm not a historian. I'm not a scriptorian. And I don't know these things. And so I thought they were really interesting. So one of them He asked was, “How do you respond to questions regarding words in The Book of Mormon that reportedly didn't exist at the time?” So like in 2 Nephi, they use the word Bible, Jesus Christ and talk about crucifixion when that hadn't happened yet.
JARED
25:12
Wonderful question. And again, that goes back to the idea of translation. There's one thing that is called semantic shift, that word definitions will change over time. But also words that didn't exist at one time and do exist in the other. If they exist in my time, am I not allowed to use it? If I were to see something that was described in the ancient world, I mean, picture a Prophet describing something in our day that he doesn't even know what to call it. And so is there, there's gonna be some circumlocution. You can see hints of this in Isaiah, or in Revelation, for example, the really, really prophetic, foretelling kinds of books. Am I going to limit myself to that? Or if I'm trying to, I mean, you hear this all the time when you're speaking with someone in a foreign language, and they don't know the word, but they're describing it. And as soon as you tell them the word, it's like, “Oh, you mean this?” And they're like, “What? What does that word mean?” And you explain it back. “Yeah, that, that, that whatever that word is, I'm sorry, I didn't know it.” Okay. So there's always going to be those kinds of issues across linguistic lines. And so when Joseph Smith, actually, can I tell you a quick story. When I was on my mission, we were teaching a guy who was wonderful, kind, open. He was in charge of all of the youth programs for the Seventh Day Adventist Church on the western half of Puerto Rico where I served. And we were teaching him The Book of Mormon and he seemed really open. But one day we came back and he said, “Okay, I got a question for you elders. Joseph Smith once said that there was no Greek on the gold plates, which would have been true if it was written 600 BC, then, of course, the Greek Empire hadn't expanded then, and so there wouldn’t have been Greek. However, the word baptism appears in the Book of Mormon. And baptism is a Greek word. So how do you reconcile the fact that the word baptism exists in the English translation, but it's a Greek term, and Joseph said, there was no Greek commonplace. Now, I'm a 19 year old kid going, we didn't cover this in the MTC. And I, I've never heard of that quote from Joseph Smith. And I didn't know that baptism was a Greek word. Because I speak English, and some Spanish by then. But I know what baptism is. I don't have to know Greek, to know what baptism means. And I certainly don't need to be able to do the etymology back to its source language. I tried to explain to him, “Well, I'll take Joseph at his word, if you if he said there was no Greek, I'll accept that.” There would have been some reformed Egyptian word that meant a ritual immersion in water for the remission of sins. And you picture Joseph looking at that word and reformed Egyptian that defines exactly that, and what word is going to pop into his head, a farm boy that knows no Greek, what English word will pop into his head? Baptism? And then you picture, Mormon or Alma or Abinadi going, “Yeah, whatever you just said, if it means this, then yeah, that's the word to use.” And I tried to explain this to him. And then the irony, I said, then all of a sudden, it crossed my mind, wait a minute. I confronted him gently with this, I said to this friend, “Are you? Do you expect me to believe that you happen to to just be reading the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and because you're sincerely seeking truth, and you happen to stumble across this incredibly obscure quote, about no Greek on the gold plates. And then with your incredible Greek knowledge, you went back into your sincere study of The Book of Mormon and found the word baptism, and you put those two very disparate dots together, and you now have a sincere question that you're wondering about …” And he started to get a little, you know, embarrassed. And I just said, “This isn't really your question, is it? Where did this question come from?” And kind of sheepishly he said, we have whole books that have like how to stump the Mormons and questions to ask the missionaries.” It’s like, “Thank you for finally being honest.” And like, “You're welcome to ask any question you want. But please let it be your own question. Be a legitimate, honest question.” And I'm not saying anything about Pastor Jeff. But what to me is interesting is again, it it's confining things to some kind of linguistic, oh, narrow mindedness, that that's the exact word it had to be. Whereas by the time Joseph is translating for his people, there's always the tension between strict and loose construction when it comes to translation. There will always be that. And so if I would prefer a word like Bible, I would prefer a word like baptism that I understand. And every translator … In fact, if you speak to the deaf community, they're not called translators, they're called interpreters. Every interpreter is forced to decide who will I be truer to? Truer to the original language, in which case I'm going to have to strip it of all of its beauty and its and its flow and its rhythm just to make exact word for word equivalence? Or will I be more true to the spirit of the text? The intention of its author, the understanding of its audience. And that's the approach that Joseph Smith seemed to. If you're going to err on any side, I would err on that side. Because if the book is meant for us, then I want it to be understandable to us.
ASHLY
That is so good.
LAUREN
30:48
Yeah. Another one of Pastor Jeff's questions, which—I remember you talking about this in one of our lessons at the Institute— How do you explain that in 2 Nephi 5:21, when it talks about the skin of blackness and its negative connotations?
ASHLY
Yeah.
31:07
That's a tough one. But again, I worry sometimes that we don't do the texts sufficient justice, to really take it apart and put it back together and understand what's being said, and what isn't being said. I love the take that Ahmad Corbitt has taken on this, an African American convert to the church, now in the Young Men's General Presidency. And he from his background has said that no text of scripture he's aware of, has a greater potential to heal racial divides than The Book of Mormon. And to me, it's profound to think of his experience with it as a convert to the Church and understanding the fraught racial history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to read The Book of Mormon and see those kinds of things and wonder as a take personally. But also to see that this is a book of Scripture that has people specifically reaching across racial divides, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to see the Lord Himself come and clearly eliminate racial divides, so that there's no more “ites” among them, to see people of one race reach out to people of another. And at times, it's light to dark, and at times it's dark to light. It's profound what The Book of Mormon can become, if we allow it to do what it's designed to do. As far as those texts in 2 Nephi 5, and there's others that are scattered throughout the book as well, I think what we need to do is be extremely careful, or I should say, be as careful as Nephi was, and as careful as Mormon was at distinguishing between mark and curse. And almost, there's a couple of rare exceptions, but those can be understood if you go to fit down those roads as well. There is a difference between mark and curse. And the writers are really careful in almost every instance, to distinguish between the two, with the curse being separation from God, which is what Laman and Lemuel and their posterity decided to do, to separate themselves from prophets and from priesthood and from revelation and from scripture from the people of God. And as a result of that curse, God then decided to place a mark, it's really interesting, even the articles: curse is always given the definite article “the” and mark is typically given the indefinite article “a”. So there's going to be a mark, that could be any number of them, there will be the curse that's going to be the same throughout. And then a mark was given just to aid in differentiation, you'll see that kind of need for differentiation in the Old Testament as well, as far as maintaining covenant lines, and so on. And the Book of Mormon grew out of that type of culture. But to me, what's interesting is, if you read 2 Nephi 5 through the lens of Alma 3, this helps. Because in 2 Nephi 5 we're told anyone who mixes that with the seed of the Lamanites will receive the same curse. Well, in Alma 3, you finally get an experiment when that exact thing is happening. And you have the Amlicites that dissent from the Nephites and join the Lamanites. And if we were running an experiment on curse versus mark and trying to decide what is the curse that we're talking about here? —because too often we're not careful, and we conflate the whole thing and just say they were cursed with dark skin, ergo dark skin must be a curse. No. Carefully read it. And when you meet the Amlicites we get a chance to see, okay, they're mixing and mingling their seed with the seed of the Lamanites. God said they would receive the same curse. If the curse is dark skin, let's see what happens to the Amlicites. And there's no mention of skin color changing among the Amlicites. It simply says they marked themselves with red upon their foreheads. And it's as if God could say, “Oh, you took care of the mark yourself. Thank you. I won't need to do a thing. You'll be able to distinguish yourselves and others will distinguish you as well. But you did get the same curse because you've cut yourselves off from God, and my presence.” And so, again, I would just be cautious and careful when people jump to conclusions. If you want the absolute clearest text in The Book of Mormon, then look for the end of 2 Nephi 26, where he says that all are like unto God, and specifically lists male and female, Jew and Gentile, black and white, all are alike unto God. When you see again, Samuel the Lamanite by the time the book of Helaman comes along, and in some cases, in some ways, you would say that lighter skin was the mark of cursedness by then because the Nephites were the wicked, and the Lamanites were more righteous than they. So again, there's, when I teach those chapters in The Book of Mormon, I tried to do it very slowly and very carefully. There's all kinds of other interpretations that are out there from other students of The Book of Mormon students of the text. But I am grateful for the carefulness of the writers. I just worry that sometimes we don't read as carefully as they wrote.
ASHLY
36:11
Mmm. That is so good. Okay, so are there any scriptures in the Bible that testify of The Book of Mormon?
JARED
36:22
We see, we would say yes, and we see them. But I think other people that don't have an eye to The Book of Mormon or don't have, they can't allow for it, the possibility will definitely interpret those scriptures differently. And they have the power to do so. And I'll bless them in their attempts. What's amazing, so for example, we read Ezekiel 37, about the two sticks, and we see the stick of Judah and the stick of Ephraim. And we see the Bible in The Book of Mormon in that passage, and we bind them together, and they're one in our hand. A biblical scholar or a non-Latter-day Saint Christian or Jew would look at that and say, you're reading something into the text of the text never intended. They would say that's simply the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom joining together. To which I would say, correct, but that's not all that it can contain. That was part of the promise, but that's, we don't have to confine ourselves only to that. I think too often, Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints will butt heads over scriptural interpretation, and say, “I'm right and you're wrong.” And the opposite says the same. When there can be more than one interpretation of things. And that's typically the disagreement that we have with scripture, is over that. I mean, to see what the so called Patriarchal Blessing of the tribe of Joseph was on Ephraim, in Genesis 20:49, when Jacob is blessing his 12 sons, and to speak of a tribe that is a fruitful bow that grows over the wall, we see in that the spread of Lehi’s family across the ocean, to see so much of what the Bible says about the gathering of Israel. That's a huge component of The Book of Mormon as well, to see Isaiah chapter 29. And its promise of a marvelous work in a wonder, no wonder so much of Isaiah 29 is reproduced in 2 Nephi. Because Nephi saw himself in that chapter. So do I see The Book of Mormon in the Bible, frequently. But I will not force that interpretation on people that can't see it. And I understand why they can't or why they won't. I will say this, though, to those that are more skeptical and would refuse to allow for it. The Book of Mormon was very self aware, in terms of it talks about itself, in interesting ways. And people like Mormon would write about the purpose of the plates. And Nephi was very overt in establishing his thesis statements of the whole purpose of these plates are for this, to bring people to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to be saved. When Nephi at the end of 2 Nephi says, If you don't believe these words, that's fine. Just please believe in Jesus, because that's the purpose. And if you believe in Jesus, then the purpose of the text has been served, even if you didn't like the text along the way, or need the text. So it's very self aware. But the amazing thing to me is it's not self absorbed. Yeah. I mean, you know, people that are not self aware, but are very self absorbed, they're hard to have conversations with. And The Book of Mormon doesn't care about itself, quite so much. It knows what it's trying to do. But there's a higher end that it's pointing to, and it knows that it's just the means to that greater end. And so for someone that would ask, can you show me where The Book of Mormon is in the Bible? I would say, Well, I can give you a few examples that you probably won't agree with, and that's fine. But “What's the Bible for?” might be a better question, because in some ways, if they were to say, “Show me The Book of Mormon in the Bible,” you could respond, “Show me the Bible in the Bible. Where does the Bible talk about itself?” The Bible is even less self aware than The Book of Mormon is because the book hasn't been compiled yet. There's no final Mormon that's assembling all of the parts. And so the Bible doesn't really talk about the Bible much. You'll find some places where Paul talks about scripture. But what's “the scripture” he's talking about? Jacob, or Joshua talks about scripture. But what scripture is he referring to? Not the whole text. And so to me, what's interesting is what's rather than “What's the Bible?” The better question is, “What's the Bible for?” And “Can you find Jesus in the Bible?” And I would say practically every page, to which I would say, then, can I find the Bible's purpose in The Book of Mormon? Everywhere? Can I find The Book of Mormon’s purpose in the Bible? Everywhere. And neither book is trying to prove itself, both books are trying to invite us to come into Christ. And I am grateful for every Bible believer who sees that message in its text. And I'm grateful for every Book of Mormon believer that sees the same because that's, for the Bible and Book of Mormon to grow together in our hand is one thing, but for us to grow hand in hand together with God is a far greater purpose. And I'll take any scrap of scripture I can that will help me achieve that.
ASHLY
41:36
Wow, that was very. Um, okay, so I'm gonna kind of cherry pick some of these questions, because we're moving along with time. So how can we best help someone who is going through a faith crisis?
41:55
Oh, go through it with them. Not in terms of crisis, but in terms of walking the path going on the journey, just being there for them, listening. I think so often, we get so defensive, because it feels like they're letting go of something that we treasure. And instead of holding on to their hand, once they'd let go of the iron rod, we tried to rip the iron rod away and start beating them with it. And that doesn't do anybody any good. I've had some people say, but when they leave my family, they're breaking up my eternal family, when they leave the church, they're breaking up my eternal family, and gently, cautiously I have responded. Are you sure it's not us, that are breaking up our eternal family in the way that we respond to them, when they're struggling? don't pin it on them for their spiritual departure from the faith. “Lord, is it I?” And is part of this, owing to my emotional departure from them, when they've chosen to leave? The parable of the prodigal son needs to be engraved on the fleshy tables of our hearts. And what amazes me about the Father in that story is that when the son says, “I'm leaving,” the dad lets him go. In fact, it's more than just leaving. It's “I want my inheritance right now,” which means you're like, “Son, that that's not how it works. You don't get the inheritance until I die.” And you picture the son going exactly that. And you just, “Seriously? You're treating me like I'm dead.” But amazingly, the father honors his agency and treats him in such that he doesn't get the last word in edgewise, doesn't try to get one yell out one last dig. As he goes, you know, goes over the crest of the hill, he honors that agency, and must have kept his eye on the horizon. So that he would be the first to see once his son comes to himself and begins the journey home. As soon as that happens to the prodigal, he thinks of home and has positive feelings. Like, “My dad will let me at least come home to be a servant, and he treats the servants really well.” I worry that sometimes when someone's in faith crisis, we treat them in such a way that when they eventually think about coming home, like all of your interviewees have felt, like you have both felt, I fear that their feelings won't be positive. Because we did something to slam the door. I found that if we— I'll put it this way: people come out, contact me constantly. “Can you talk with my loved one?” “Will you sit down with me?” “Can we set up a Zoom call and go through my faith crisis and ask my questions?” And I wish there were more hours in the day to do it. Because I can't keep up with the requests. Because they take a long time. I have to hear somebody's story. It's not just “Oh, that was your question? Well, here's an article to read.” It's, “Tell me your whole life story. Tell me what got you here and, and I'll validate every experience I can. And I'll empathize with every emotion that I'm able to.” And I'm amazed at how infrequently my so-called area of expertise is called upon. Where I mean if you have to, if we're going down the rabbit hole on historical plural marriage, I'm happy to do it. If we need to retrace a two century or a century and a half of Mormon race relations, I'm totally willing to go there. But I'm amazed at how infrequently that's what people need, and how infrequently that's what people want. They may bring it up. Because so often those are the easy things, because they're at arm's length, and it's like the church has some explaining to do, and I'm not implicated in it. And it's like, “Really, you're losing sleep over history. I'm excited. I'm a historian. I do too. Do you really geek out over history?” And when they realized no, like, “Well, what do you care about? Personal experience? Me too.” We all do. And so tell me about yours. And there honestly have been times after a two hour zoom call with someone. I've gone to back to my wife and apologized for taking two hours away from her and the kids. As I said to her, the conversation I just had was beautiful. They felt understood. I think they're in a better place now emotionally and spiritually. But that conversation could have been had with a ministering brother or ministering sister, it could have been had with a parent or a friend or a sister, brother, it's, they don't need PhDs and anti-religious rhetoric. They need open minds, and caring hearts, and listening ears. And as much validation and empathy as we can of. Somebody got hurt, and help me understand the source of those hurts. And I'm not saying that to try to avoid the historical, doctrinal, social, theological kinds of issues. But can we get there after we stop the heart from bleeding? And I just think, if we're willing to go there, and we have the courage, and the compassion, I don't think we lack compassion. I think we lack courage. And we think that courage is what, that expertise is what's required. If you have compassion, that's enough for the first steps and just be willing to mourn with those that mourn. It's hard to go through faith crisis, it's scary, and your whole world is falling apart. And if you can't get compassion from people that are supposed to be Christlike, I just worry that so often, we're the older brother in the story instead of the Father. And no wonder the prodigal son doesn't want to come home. We've all got some growing up in God to do. And I just hope that if we can help enough people navigate from, through the fall … They got themselves out of creation, or unfortunately, other people in the fall dragged them out prematurely. But if we can help that same critical mass move on to Atonement, the church will be a kinder, more compassionate place for everyone. To me, it will be millennial, it will be Zion. And you two are doing an amazing job of helping pave the way of that highway that's supposed to be set up. You’re exalting valleys and bringing down mountains and making rough places smooth. And I just hope that people that listen, and that people that come on will feel that there's a way home, and it's home that we're headed to. Again, what do you do in faith crisis? You love, you treat people like investigators, you consider it an interfaith dialogue. The answer is always be like Jesus. And if we can't do that, then shame on us for scaring people away from the so-called church of Jesus Christ. If they're going to come back, they need to know that this is the church of Jesus Christ. So we better be Christians.
ASHLY
49:04
I have to ask you one follow up question that is off script here. Well two, actually. There is one topic that really is near to me, because I have a family member who I love so much, and this is something that he struggles with, and I've kind of seen his faith be really challenged because of this. And I'm just really curious to know. And I know, this is not just him, it is many, many, many people because of the DMs that I get and emails and everything. So with the conversation around LGBT Latter-day Saints and just people feeling like there's no place for them here: you know, Lauren, and I, we have really try to— we want to hear the comeback stories of people that are members of the LGBT community because it's so incredible to hear how they, there is a place for them here. And we want to share that message but I'm just curious to know, with like particular individuals that just struggle with the idea that you know, if their kids ended up as part of the LGBT community, what, you know, how … What are your thoughts on that?
JARED
50:23
My … speaking of, well, I've said this before to people: you can take the entire acronym of LGBTQIA+, and I have names and faces for every letter of people that I love. And family members and friends and students and people that have been sitting across from me in my office in tears, that represent one of the letters in the acronym, and trying to reconcile things and wondering, “Where is my place?” And, again, the answer is for us to be like Jesus, who, whenever there was a gap, pardon me for being emotional, whenever there's a gap between divine standard and human reality, he never collapsed it prematurely. The world wants to collapse it this way, and eliminate all standard so that everyone feels completely comfortable wherever they happen to be. That as an end goal, it's come as you are, and stay as you were. The first half of that statement is beautiful. Come as you are. The second half of that statement is never anything Jesus taught. It was always,”Come unto me. And I'll carry you, I'll lift you, I'll change you.” But the interesting thing is, if Jesus was unwilling to bring down the top line, neither did he force the bottom line to prematurely get into line with the top. I call this the guilt gap. Because we feel that guilt, if we're falling short, or sometimes it's cognitive dissonance, it's filled with something. It's filled with shame, it's filled with fear, it's filled with lost potential in someone's mind. It's filled with a lot of hurt. But what Jesus does, He doesn't give you the easy option of “eliminate the standard.” But He doesn't wipe away or wish away human reality and what you're going through, instead, He takes all of that pain and refills the gap with grace. And to the woman taken in adultery, it's, “I can't condone your sin, but I will not condemn it— I will not condemn you for committing it. And I'm not passing final judgment right now. You take as much time as you need, with as much grace as I can give, and just keep living according to however much light you're open to. And then let that light grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. I think we underestimate God's patience. Time is on God's side. He's eternal. And if there were ever a church that has the theology to back us up in our patience, it's ours. I always talk about proving contraries and balancing these paradoxes. And to me the ones that we need to balance best, when if I'm in the LGBT community, or I am an ally, or I have friends that are in the community. It's, we see love and we see law, we see truth, we see tolerance, we see chastity, we see charity, we see unity and diversity, we see community and individuality and to see what we're trying to accomplish. And balancing those two is a profound thing. And we need the perspectives and the experiences of our LGBT brothers and sisters. I had the privilege of being asked to give the keynote address at the North Star Conference last summer and to be surrounded with brothers and sisters who are striving to keep their covenants by sacrifice was truly humbling for me. I just felt like I was in the presence of my spiritual superiors that were, for being graded on a curve—talk about the high marks that they are being given by God. I would say this, my wife served her mission in France. And I remember in the midst of one of the controversial times surrounding church policies and so on. I said to her, “If you met someone in France that said, “I'd love, I'm interested. Would you come teach me in my home?” My wife was like, “We're talking about France here, right?” “Okay. Just imagine with me. And you went and knocked on the door and he opened the door and you expected him to invite you in to introduce you to his wife and children. And instead you introduced him to his— he introduced you to his husband and children. What would you do? Would you teach them?” She thought for a moment and said, “Of course I would.” I said, “Yes, of course you would. Would you start with the Law of Chastity?” And she said, “No.” I said “Correct.” We don't start with a law of chastity with anyone. Because outside the context of the Plan of Salvation, it means nothing. So we wouldn't start with the Law of Chastity, we would teach the Plan of Salvation, we would teach the grace of God, we teach redemption through Christ. Would you avoid the Law of Chastity forever? And she said, “No, I wouldn't be able to.” I said, “Correct. When would you teach it?” She said, “When they're prepared to hear?” “Would you drop them if they couldn't accept it at the beginning? Would you bar the doors and not let them come to church? No. So what would you do in the long term?” And it was interesting, the more we talked about it, I wondered, maybe this is overly simplistic, but I don't think it is. Maybe the ultimate answer really is just treat everyone like an investigator. Because nobody gets treated better by Latter-day Saints than investigators. And we’ll serve, and we’ll bless, and we’ll help, and we’ll be patient, and we’ll just love and lift and, and it goes at your pace. I should say treat them like an investigator, if you're a member missionary. Full-time missionaries can sometimes be a little too zealous and pushy, okay. But with the patience of a member missionary, which is—and we're supposed to be doing the heavy lifting of missionary work anyway. If we treated everyone like investigators, if we treated ex-Latter-day Saints, like investigators, if we treated people of other faiths, like potential investigators, if we treated everyone ourselves, we're all still investigating. And God is patient with us. There's a lot more to this. This is something we I think we—it behooves us for our friends sake, as well as our sake, to wrestle with this more. But I don't think, I'll put it this way. And this goes back to Bible and Book of Mormon, it goes back to our faith and other faiths goes to the splinter groups within our larger community. More and more lately, I've fallen in love with a phrase from Ephesians chapter one, where it says that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, which is ours, which is this one, and if The Church of Jesus Christ is the custodian for the dispensation of the fullness of times, then this, to me, is the purpose, the mission statement of, or at least one of the mission statements of the church. It says, “In the dispensation of the fullness of times, all things will be gathered together in one in Christ.” And so for me, if I intend to make a difference in this dispensation, it's gathering together in one all things in Christ. And I need the understandings of my LGBT brothers and sisters, I need the understanding of ex-Latter-day Saints, because they can show us our blind spots in ways no one else can. I need the experiences of Pastor Jeff, and I need the experiences and perspectives of everyone until we form one great whole of truth. Until we can say to our Parents in Heaven, we're all coming home. And that, to me, is what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.
ASHLY
58:33
Wow, that was so beautiful. Thank you so much. We're out of time now. So but I feel like that was the just crowning jewel of this episode. I know that just on the podcast, we have had many members of the LGBT community. And sometimes we don't even know until they're on, sharing their story. And so it's just something that Lauren and I both have, really, it's been on our minds, and we really care about it, and especially just caring about them feeling like a part of this church. And it's just so important. And so I just really appreciate you, just putting that into words. So thank you so much.
JARED
59:25
No, and again, at the risk of extending our conversation even longer than it has already, which I apologize—sorry, not sorry, I hesitate to bring up the parallel because I don't want anyone in the LGBT community to feel broken or less than or in need of some kind of healing. But the story of the man born blind in the book of John, is so powerful to me, and I think I misread it for the first 40 years of my life. Because when the apostles say, “Who sinned? Whose fault is it that this person came to Earth broke him?” And the first thing Jesus says is, “Take that off the table. Quit pointing fingers. There's no sin involved here. This is a part of the mortal condition for this particular person. And it's not about whose fault it is. So take that off the table.” Then the second thing He says, which I love, He says, This is so that the works of God can be made manifest.” And in my misreading, I always thought, Oh, of course, because he's about to heal him. He's about to change everything, and that God needs broken things to show what he can fix. But what was amazing to me, as I've wrestled with that narrative, what if he didn't heal the man born blind? Could He still have said the same thing and wouldn't have applied? Could He still say, the condition that this son of God finds himself in is a chance for the works of God to be made manifest, and then walks away, and leaves things. Because the way if you keep reading the story, and see his personality traits, his attributes, this guy's golden, and it came as a result of his blindness. And I think, the differences that we find ourselves in, are a chance for the works of God to be made manifest in that condition, not just in an escape from that condition. And that's true of all of us in whatever condition we might find ourselves in. And whether that's a chance for us to show the works of God in our determination in our obedience to covenants, by way of sacrifice, or it gives everyone else an opportunity to make the works of God made manifest in our kindness and our compassion and our treatment of other people that are different from us, it's God's hand, all through the whole thing. And I think, obviously, we have a long way to go. But I think we have the doctrine and the example in Jesus, of being able to navigate this. It's just too easy to opt for law at the expense of love. And in some ways, in our day, it's even easier just to opt for love at the expense of law. And we have to strike the balance. That's what Jesus is calling us to do.
JARED
1:02:05
My friends, I am so grateful, again, grateful for you. If—I promise, last thing. You want to know this though. In grad school, so I studied anti-religion, right? I study faith loss and regain and all this kind of stuff from an academic side. And in grad school, I read a book called Crisis of Doubt. That is your story. It's an academic book. It's not for general, you know, it's not a page turner. But it's the story of a bunch of secularists, humanist leaders in 19th century Great Britain. I mean, doesn't that just sound fascinating? Historical nerds like this stuff. But it's the story of all these people that were editors and writers and speakers and organizers in this fledgling Humanist Movement in Victorian Britain. And they were out there to take down faith, were trying to eliminate Christianity. And this book, this scholar went through and found the stories of people in the leadership of those communities, who ended up returning to Christianity. And they, at some point of their journey had this crisis of doubt, like, “What am I doing? I'm only tearing things down, I'm not building things up. What's causing me to do this?” They were sufficiently self aware that they started second guessing their doubts, and they turned things around and returned. It was a fascinating read.
ASHLY
Wow.
JARED
And honestly, there's a huge academic part of me that wants to study every person you guys have on this podcast, to see the common threads. It's a beautiful thing. So I again, I'm geeking out with you on multiple reasons. The personal, the spiritual, the academic, I just applaud you and your listeners, I applaud the people that have the courage to come on board. It's creation-fall-Atonement, and they're ascending to the Atonement, and it's a beautiful thing. So bless you, my friends.
ASHLY
1:04:00
Thank you so much. You are just amazing. And we just appreciate you taking the time with us. So thank you.
LAUREN
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.
JARED
It’s been my pleasure.
