"The witness more powerful than sight applies especially to the roles of actual, demanding experience and developing a witness that one knows the Savior. It's one thing to know about Him, or even to see Him, but quite another to know Him. And that higher degree of knowing usually comes after complexity - often it comes because of the complexity."
Come Back Podcast
Transcript
ASHLY
00:14
Okay, well, let's go ahead and get started. We're, we're so excited to have you on. I know I mentioned this, but we love your book. And I, it was one of the first books that I read when I had the idea for the podcast. And somebody suggested it to me, that I had on the podcast, or as I was starting it, and I read your book, and it was like a light went on in my mind about, you know, just overcoming faith crisis. And because previously, it was like, I hadn't really heard of anybody talking about going through a faith crisis, and then coming back, or I hadn't really heard a lot of stories like that. And when I read your book, I just thought, oh, my gosh, wow, having questions like this can actually help strengthen your testimony. And it can be the building blocks of something really amazing in your life, if you turn to the right sources, and if you turn to Heavenly Father for answers, instead of just struggling, and going the other way, and it can actually be something that makes your testimony even stronger. And so I just, I love your book, I just adore you, too. And Lauren and I are just so excited to have you guys on the podcast.
BRUCE
01:43
Thank you, Ashley and Lauren. We've enjoyed getting to know you guys. And we're very interested in learning what you are learning from your podcast experience, because we're, we share your interest in trying to help anybody who might want some help.
ASHLY
02:01
Yeah. Love that. Yes.
MARIE
And I think what we would say is, we wish you were here sitting around our dining room table with us. So we could just have a little chat.
ASHLY
02:12
Yes, I know! Well, maybe we should plan that. That would be awesome.
MARIE
Maybe we could say that, that our hope today is that those who might be listening, that it raises their hope, and their confidence in their own faith crisis or journey, so that they feel like they've got some hope they've got some confidence they've got and maybe we can offer some tools that will help them on their way.
ASHLY
02:40
Yes, yes. And I know that we have a lot of listeners on our podcast and on our YouTube channel. And I know that our listeners have heard me mention your book many, many times. And I think you know, some people maybe they're not readers, they're more podcast listeners. So what better than to have the authors of this incredible book sharing little spiritual nuggets from your book and kind of some tools that they can use? So yes, we're so excited to get started here.
LAUREN
03:14
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and read their bio, and then we can ask some questions. Does that sound good?
MARIE
Sounds good.
LAUREN
Okay, so, Bruce Hafen grew up in St. George, Utah. After serving a mission to Germany he met Marie Kartchner from Bountiful, Utah at BYU. They were married in 1964. Elder Hafen received a bachelor's degree from BYU and a juris doctor degree from the University of Utah. After practicing law in Salt Lake City, he went to BYU in 1971. As a member of the original faculty of BYU’s new law school, he taught and published research on Family Law in Constitutional Law. He served as the president of BYU Idaho from 1978 to 1985. Then he was dean of the BYU Law School. He was called as a full time general authority in 1996, serving in area presidencies in Australia, North America and Europe. He also served at church headquarters as an advisor to the priesthood department, the general auxiliary presidencies, church history, and the temple department. He became an emeritus general authority in 2010, then served as president of the St. George temple. More recently, he served as chairman of the Utah LDS Corrections Committee overseeing the church branches in Utah state prisons and county jails. He is the author of several books on gospel topics including the biography of Elder Neal A Maxwell and books on marriage, the temple, and the Atonement, including The Broken Heart and Covenant Hearts. Marie K. Hafen is a homemaker and teacher. She has a master's degree in English from BYU and has taught Shakespeare, Freshman Writing, and Book of Mormon at BYU Idaho, the University of Utah and BYU. She was also on the Young Women General Board, the Board of Directors of the Deseret News, and was matron of the St. George temple. She has edited and co-authored books with her husband, including The Contrite Spirit and the most recent, Faith is Not Blind. The Hafens have seven children and 46 grandchildren.
ASHLY
Wow.
05:15
MARIE
Yeah, I know most of that is ancient history. But maybe the most important part is that we care about your audience and what their experience is, and that we hope what we have to say today will be helpful.
ASHLY
Love it.
LAUREN
Absolutely. Okay. So first question we're going to ask is, why did you decide to write Faith is Not Blind?
BRUCE
We began to notice, some years ago, that students of the college age, had trouble with questions who raised new issues for them. Now, they weren't all religious issues. But for some of them when we were at BYU Idaho, some of them were issues like, how do you register for classes in such a big school? Or what do you do if your computer puts you in the wrong class, and there was a lot of frustration from these kids who seemed to have a kind of single track mind. And when things didn't go as they expected, they would get surprised, and they didn't know what to do. That's sort of the short version. As we watched that we finally decided I was characteristic of that age, to have trouble with surprises, especially if they were from homes, like the homes of the kids that went to BYU Idaho. And that I think got us going first. In fact, I gave a devotional at then Rick's College–the subject was on dealing with uncertainty. You order something and you get a mistake made, and what you get from your online order, though they didn't do online in those days, but they couldn't handle it in so many ways. They would have disappointments in their romantic life, they would have disappointments in their academic life. And it just became very hard for them. And so we gave that talk. And then, interestingly, years passed after that talk was published. And then here came the internet. And the internet began to raise all the questions we're seeing now about faith issues. And we were surprised at the number of people who would tell us they had seen that article on uncertainty. And it helped them with these faith issues. And we began trying to understand that, because we really hadn't been talking about religious faith as such. But we could see how the approach could make a difference and just opening up the way people would think, and feel. And so that led to the book. On the way we began to understand our own lives better, we'd had our own faith crises of one sort or another, as you said earlier, Ashly, you know, as both of you, you've been through your own version of whatever it was.
08:13
For me, my own faith crisis was when I was getting ready to go on my mission. I realized I was kind of stuck on the issue of belief and knowledge. When it came time for me to give my missionary farewell talk, I wanted to be able to say, I know the gospel is true. But I couldn't. I believed it was true. And I was really concerned that some people would think, “Well, if you only believe it, that's not enough, you better go back and do more homework, and then we'll give you another chance.” But the way I finally said it was, “I believe that my faith will grow stronger as I go on this mission and serve.” And so I sort of made a choice to believe and trust, particularly Alma, in Alma 32, he talked about how faith becomes knowledge. And so I put my trust in Alma. That's how I first learned what it felt like to have a faith crisis. That is what made me feel that the uncertainty issue really does apply to religion, because I was uncertain about the difference between faith and testimony. So that's what kind of kicked us off.
MARIE
09:36
Maybe I could go back just a few years before you gave that talk on dealing with uncertainty, to a time in our university time when we had a class together. It was called Your Religious Problems. Well, we did solve our biggest religious problem by meeting each other in that class, but
BRUCE
10:00
It was a BYU class.
MARIE
10:02
It was a BYU class and the subjects of the class we presented we had to choose our own topics, and our teacher had us do some research on our questions, and then we’d present it to the class and they responded. So we got into that pattern of thinking and talking about a difficult issue. And then how can we solve that issue in a responsible way, and increase our belief and testimony? Because questions in that class were raised, like issues with Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, other church history issues. There were church doctrine issues, policy issues. So we've been talking about difficult things for a long time.
ASHLY
10:48
In your book, you mentioned that class and how and I find it interesting because I've interviewed a few people on the podcast, who– they had no idea about polygamy until they were 18 years old, and they were blindsided by it. They're shocked. And for me, I felt like I was, you know, I grew up kind of knowing about that, it wasn't… And so I was really surprised to hear that people didn't know about polygamy. And other things like the seer stone and the translation of the Book of Mormon, that's something that people really have a hard time with. And, you know, I guess for me, I had already known about it, but for other people, it can be just so blindsiding. And so when you talk about that, in your book, about how you had that class that was a BYU class, all about, you know, religious struggles, and how, and you came up with what the struggle was, and then you work together to solve it, I thought, I don't think it's anybody's intention. And I think you guys even mentioned this in the book, it's nobody's intention to be hiding history or hiding any information. That's not the intention. It's just that, you know, that's not our focus. And we're not constantly focusing on these things in the history of the church or whatever, that you know, the focus is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So anyway, I just think that's really cool that a class at BYU was like, you know, obviously, we're not trying to hide any history here. It's …
BRUCE
12:28
Right. Ashly, let me make a comment about what you just said, I think it's very relevant to this whole subject. The internet has made a huge, huge difference, in what is available to people. And I would pick any one of the topics you've just mentioned, or lots of others like them. Church history topics are often really obscure. And people didn't hear about them because they weren't reading the books that presented them. And they weren't talked about in a seminary class. Well, here's the example that comes to mind. In 1992, BYU was approached by the Macmillan Company out of New York City, one of the largest encyclopedia publishers in the world. They ended up collaborating with some people from BYU, who then with the support of the church, but with the church saying, we don't want to have church authorities writing these articles, we want them to be written by lay church leaders, so nobody can feel like this is an official document. And that encyclopedia has four huge volumes, about every topic imaginable. Most of the topics, polygamy, for example, there's a long, carefully written article about polygamy in that encyclopedia. And when people say it now, 30 years later, they didn't even know there was polygamy, let alone an encyclopedia article about it, very fairly written, including Joseph Smith's polygamy, it surprised them. And I think now, with all that material available, it was available before if you knew where to find it, but now with the internet, by word of mouth, all these surprises come along. That's true, not only of gospels topics in the church, but lots of other things. And that has really kind of fundamentally changed our society. One of the one of the greatest miracles and wonders, and yet one of the great perplexities of the modern age is that there are no limits. Anybody can read about anything. And some of it was accidental. So just a comment on what you said. I agree with that.
ASHLY
14:52
And one of the things also that you mentioned in the book is that something that's written by a scholar that has spent their life devoted to a certain topic, they can say something and then somebody with zero experience on the topic can say something else. Even if you encounter that, it can come across as just as valid as the other because this is a blogger or whatever. And so it's really hard to see exactly what credible source is what. And so we would love for you to share the concept of Faith is Not Blind, and how the principles in the book can give hope to those who may be encountering complexity and do not know how to navigate it.
MARIE
15:37
A basic idea that helps to frame what we're talking about would be what we might call going from innocence and black and white thinking to complexity, difficulty, challenge to something beyond that challenge, which is satisfying and helps you understand. It's more mature, it takes you to a higher and higher level with your testimony with your faith. I like probably the best– what one of the judges, one of the justices in the United States, his name was Oliver Wendell Holmes. What he said was, “I wouldn't give a fig for the …” and he didn't call it innocence.
BRUCE
16:28
I went to law school, this was the only thing I can remember from three years. “I would not give a fig for the simplicity,”
MARIE
simplicity
BRUCE
“on this side of complexity,”
MARIE
complexity or difficulty challenge,
BRUCE
he said complexity, “but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” It's a really thought provoking insight.
MARIE
16:57
So you say his life, he'd give his life, for that kind of simplicity that's beyond complexity? So we have thought about that and think that captures some of what we have tried to do with the book, Faith is Not Blind, is to talk about–and there are a number of stories, as you know, in the book, that tell how people have made them their way from a place of black and white, usually white, to a place of where they were just really in turmoil with a complexity or an uncertainty, and then how they were able through their own work, and their relationship with Christ and with God, to work, work, work, to the higher level of simplicity beyond the complexity. So would you add to that?
BRUCE
Oh, maybe one way to generalize about that is to–and you do this so well, Marie. Can you describe the difference between the real and the ideal?
MARIE
Oh, that's a good comparison to make. Because people in their real lives have difficulties and challenges, but they know what the ideal is. It's like you said, Ashley, you knew from the time you were young about gospel principles and ideas, so you knew what the ideal was. But sometimes, as we reach for the ideal, there is a distance between where we are in the real and where the ideal is. And in the book, we have called that the gap. So we're trying to cross a gap, that would be the complexity, well, how do we get across that gap, especially if we feel like we'd have fallen into it, and we've just tumbled off the edge of some cliff. And we're trying to make our way up out of a very deep and sometimes very dark place. And we know that for a lot of people, it's a place of sorrow and challenge, and sadness that they're trying to work their way out of. And maybe I can mention on the website, faithisnotblind.org, under resources, there is also an animated video that explains the very basic concepts that we're trying to achieve in the book. So if people like animated videos they may want to go to the faithisnotblind.org website and check that out. There are a number of podcasts also showing people going through their challenges.
ASHLY
19:33
One of the stories in the book that I really, really liked was about how sometimes we have to have our own, you know, personal revelation in regards to what we should do moving forward. And you talked about the women in your law school class and how there was a talk given by the president of the church saying that it just meant so much to me because I am a working mother and Lauren's a working mother. And that actually is something that has been going on in my mind like I see the Proclamation to the Family about you know, Mom as being at home, and obviously, I work from home, which is I'm very fortunate to be able to do that and Lauren works from home as well. But, you know, I felt like, “Am I doing something wrong by working? But it's like what my family needs right now.” And when I read that in the book, it was like such an answer to my prayer of just something that has been on my heart and mind for quite some time. And, you know, sometimes we hear contradicting things. You mentioned in the book how you heard from, I think it was the First Presidency of the church saying how women should get their education and how, you know, they have every right to be in the law class and pursuing that. And it was just, it was such a cool thing for me to see and hear, because I thought, you know, there are some contradicting things in the scriptures and Nephi, he was commanded to kill Laban. But we are not supposed to kill people. And so there are just things where it's that gap between, you know, the real and the ideal, where we have to go through things. And we have to, you know, there's things that we have to figure out for ourselves that it's not just a black and white, this is how it works. This is how you do it. This is how your life should be. And so that meant a lot to me, that piece in the book.
BRUCE
21:40
Well, thank you, Ashly. I remember that experience, very vividly. When the law school at BYU first started, we had very few women law students, that's just how it went in the application process. We weren't really thinking much about who was coming to law school. Law schools traditionally mostly attracted young men. And we were just on the beginning stage of the, I guess we would call it the women's movement, where more women, they wanted to go to law school or medical school, or whatever it was. My experience, as the dean, and as a teacher of the classes was that I didn't think much about that. And I also knew that the church had a concern about what you use your term working mothers in that context, a few years into the law school. So this would have been, I don't know, maybe 10 plus years after the law school started. So now we had more women students, we might have had 15%, maybe. I was teaching a family law class. I came into class one morning to teach and this really delightful woman student who was the president of the Women's Law Student Association, her name was Mitzi Collins. She raised her hand, and she said, “Dean Hafen, can we talk about the talk that President Benson gave?” I think it was just the day before. I knew what the talk was. I had listened to it. And I said, “Sure. Mitzi, why don't you just come and see me after class? And we'll talk about it.” She said, “Could we talk about it right now?" And I, and then I can see the other women in the class that were probably eight or 10 of them out of a class of 30. The women were all raising their hands and nodding, to support what Mitzi said, and I said, “Well, okay,” and because I taught that subject, I felt, let's talk. So we dove in, and I just tried as honestly, and completely as I could to talk about that issue. And, and the women in that class, started to say things that really expanded my understanding of the way they saw it. These young women were very faithful and true, as far as Latter-day Saint women are concerned. And that really kind of got my attention after the class was over. Mitzi and one of her friends came up afterward and said, “Dean Hafen, could you give the kind of talk about that with the women law students?” And I said, “Well, yeah, if you think they're interested,” she said, “They're very interested.” So we decided we'd meet at four o'clock that afternoon in the student lounge, and a few minutes before four, I was leaving my office to go to that meeting. And there was this thundering herd of law students who were going in front of me in the hallway. And I just said to one of them, a young new student, whom I didn't know, I said, “Where's everybody going?” And he said, we're going to the Moot court room–that was our biggest room, held a couple of hundred people. And I said, “Really, what's, why is everybody going there?” And then he said to me, “Because the dean is going to tell us what the prophet meant.” I was horrified. I said, “No!” I don't know how this meeting moved from a little gap session with some women students, but now it was for the whole student body. I was kind of speechless. And I hemmed and hawed and was trying to think, how do we cancel this? “Stop the–stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off.” But I just walked in. It was my job to meet those students and talk. So I did. And I, what I, I told them just to, I think this maybe illustrates how do people find out what they do, and why don't, why aren't things more broadly shared. And that was an issue for a lot of people. I reflected for them on my experience, having gone to meetings of the BYU board of trustees, the First Presidency, several of the 12, and the Relief Society General President and others like that, but it wasn't a large group, maybe maybe a dozen people, they would have meetings every month. I had gone to seven years of those meetings, by that time, because I was the president of BYU Idaho. And I listened to them discuss all the issues that came up, and they were very open issues about women going to school and raising children. And what about the role of men, all of those things came up just the way you would wish and hope they would come up and be talked about around your own dinner table. And let's just assume that that's the dinner table where you've got faithful Latter-day Saint men and women who are just trying to follow the prophet. And that's what we're talking about here. And I had heard them discuss the issue. I knew they felt very good about having women's students at the law school. I had heard, a prime example that comes to mind is President Hinckley who said, on more than one occasion, he just said, “The way things are going in today's world, you young women need to get all the education you can.” And he really emphasized it. And I told the students about that. And the development of that thing, just based on what I had heard the leaders of the church say, I can see the looks of amazement on the faces of some of these young women and some of the young men. And then I kind of switched to the other side of that dilemma. I said, “Look, I've also heard conversations around that table and around our own dinner table about children. Do children matter? Or is our family life just going to be a couple of professionals who leave the childbearing and rearing to somebody else?” And it was very clear about how the brethren felt about that. I don't think I need to explain it here. I was especially interested in, as a teacher of family law, I'd read it for years about what scholars and other people had been saying about the effect of not just not just women, being uninterested, but what happens when husbands and wives are neglectful of their families. And they give priority to other things. So I talked about that, and, and gave them some of the statistics I had read about the effect of that very form of child neglect, if it's over done, as it often is, by husbands or wives or whoever, then it really causes a deterioration of our family life generally. So I said, “What we're trying to do here is balance these two competing interests. And the church supports both of them.” That was something that all those kids could understand. I ended up saying, I do remember distinctly this part: I talked for probably nearly an hour at some questions that I tried to take and answer. And I felt a kind of harmonious spirit. And in the room,
29:19
I felt I'd been blessed. I hadn't said anything that was, you know, outrageous, doctrinally, or personally or anything else. But I was opening a window into the meetings of the leaders of the church, where they are going to be more candid, and they're not going to, you know, they're not going to be subjected to criticism and arguments from church critics, that they can be themselves. And that's all I did was just share that with these young students. But then I said to them, you know, “I've been at a lot of law schools around the country. And I just have a hunch that if all of the women in this room, were to go have a meeting with all of the women students in all the law schools of the country, and if they were to talk about what's important to them, I'll bet the women in this student body would want to talk about how important their families are to them, and then their husbands have to work out the childcare, because it matters so much. And these kids need fathers as much as they need mothers. And the church teaches that is true of both men and women. Now, of course, there are differences in circumstances and roles, but that primary commitment is the same. So what you have here, I think the chapters that you're referring to actually, in our little book is called productive ambiguity. The purpose of that title is to say, when you have to run into issues like this, which you do often, and you do in your marriages, and in a lot of other places, then the process of resolving, how are we going to do this in our family? How will we do this in our school, or whatever it is we're in, that process of trying to work it out so you don't just choose one or the other of two true principles that is good for a marriage, it's good for a society to talk about it, instead of just choosing one or the other of those two principles, and then wanting to go to battle with the people who only see one side of the argument. And I just saw women nodding all over the room. Yes, that's what they would say. And then I put in a little word for the importance of fathers. “And what do you guys do, when you go home, if you have children. They need you. They need you as much as they need your mother.”
MARIE
31:53
I think this is a really good example of moving from kind of a black and white to the complexity that these women and men were facing. And then a possible solution to that, which in this case was more information. And then interpretation of that information by somebody that they respected, who was responsible, who could give them a true and honest interpretation of what they were getting. That isn't always the case, for what's needed to work through from the complexity to the higher level of the simplicity, what we might call the third level. And maybe a little story might help capture that it's one that we told in the book. But I can tell it quickly, and I think it illustrates why you'll hear the word relationships quite often and what we talked about today. And it's something we've become more aware of, since we wrote the book. In this one, Bruce was talking about relationships between mothers and children and fathers and children, and what does a good home look like where children can be raised to be responsible citizens, but also to be aware, just aware of so many things that will be helpful to them in their lives, including the gospel, including the church, including their testimonies.
33:21
This was the story of the young woman we called Holly, who grew up in a very faithful home of simplicity, and her town was very much LDS. And she just went through her Primary and Young Women with superspeed and got her Young Women's medallion early. But by the time she was 18, somebody introduced to her a doctrinal issue that just threw her for a loop. And she was not sure how to handle it, and it gnawed at her so much. And then somebody else kind of supported this gnawing. And eventually, she asked that her name would be taken off the rolls of the church. But when she was 18, she went to school, she went to university, not to BYU, not to BYU Idaho. And there, she didn't think much about her issue. But her roommate got interested in the gospel, had the missionaries come to give her the lessons. And Holly thought, well, I'll sit in on those I, you know, I'll support my roommates. So, of course, those good missionaries in the first lesson said, “Okay, now we challenge you to do some reading. And we challenge you to pray about it.” And so Holly heard this, she went back to her room, and she thought, you know, I haven't prayed. I haven't said our prayers for a long time. So she thought, well, maybe I'll try that. So she knelt down by her bed in her dorm room. And she said, “Heavenly Father …” And the minute she said that, her kind of frosty heart started to melt. And she began to have this feeling. This feeling of a father and a daughter. That hadn't hit her like that before. And she came out of that prayer thinking, you know, there's something to this relationship with him. And she kept on with the missionary lessons, she kept thinking about it. She kept praying, she started to read her scriptures. And eventually, she was rebaptized after several months. And it wasn't long after that before a friend came to her and said, “Well, what happened to that big issue that you had that just kind of knocked you for a loop? You just, you were gone from the church?” And she said, she thought about it and she said, “Well, you know, I started to think about Heavenly Father and my relationship with Him. And I realized, as I'm talking to you, that that issue isn't so important for me anymore. Not that it's not an issue. But it's okay, because I trust Him.” So that relationship with her Father in Heaven was kind of key for her, being willing to say, I'm gonna think about this again, maybe I'm gonna turn around and do something different.
BRUCE
36:24
I just liked the term that she used, if I remember it right. She defined that relationship with her Father in Heaven, which you have described so nicely, she called it the closeness.
MARIE
36:40
And so her closeness, because she fed the closeness, she fed that relationship. And maybe you notice too from a talk from President Nelson recently, where he just said, as you're thinking about your testimony, as you're building it, then feed your testimony truth. Don't be listening to those people who are unbelievers. Listen to the people who have the truth. And I think that's part of the relationship with Heavenly Father. I think that's part of the reason why the how to get out of the complexity and into a higher level is to feed the truth. That and you know, every, you know, where are the sources of truth. So you, you just go, I know, they sound like Sunday School answers, but you start reading the scriptures more, you start reading them with a deeper heart. I can remember Sarah, actually, when she was teaching at the MTC, and she just said, I had students who had questions. Here they were in the MTC, but they had questions. She said, I encouraged them to even open their scriptures. Because she said, “Even when you open your scriptures, you're in fighting a relationship with Heavenly Father and with Jesus.” So she said, “It gave them some strength.” And for some of them who were still immature with their testimonies, to feed them truth.
ASHLY
Just this morning, I was listening to more of the book, when I woke up this morning, and one of the things that I heard in the book this morning was that belief precedes knowledge. And I also, you know, and acting in faith precedes that testimony. And I think even opening your scriptures, that is an act of faith. And it's interesting, because it's a common theme in the podcast, people who have been away from the church for years, and then they think, you know, I'm, I'm in a place where I need help, I'm just gonna pray, I haven't prayed in years, I'm just gonna pray. And that small act of faith, it opens the windows of heaven, to be able to reach them. And I noticed that very frequently. And I have felt that in my own life, you know, just like a little act of faith, and then all of a sudden, all of these miracles started happening.
MARIE
39:12
Started to open up. I think you introduce another idea that's quite important in the book, and in the podcast of the people on Faith Is Not Blind and in your podcast as well. When did they choose to believe? Because you said an act of faith, there has to be a choice, because you have to choose to have a good relationship to establish it, to feed it.
BRUCE
39:38
The research that our Sarah, our daughter, Sarah and her husband, Eric, have done–
MARIE
Yeah, that’s worth mentioning.
BRUCE
on the subject of stories of return, which is close to what you guys have been doing–
MARIE
It’s close to “come back" only they call it narratives of return.
BRUCE
They've been working with us ever since the book was published to develop a podcast approach by interviewing a lot of interesting people, and then having a website that makes their interviews available. Those, the first interviews the first couple of years, were from people who were in the church but they were thinking of leaving. They were not people who had all left the church, sometimes when people have left, and they just want to throw rocks at the church on the way out the door, and they feel that way the rest of their lives. I am, I know about that. And I always wondered what in the world is this about? I'd love to know, they'd love to be able to explore it, Jacob has, and Sarah and Eric Devaney collaborated on this on a project that Jacob initially recommended, and they gathered written stories of people who had left the church and then came back. And they worked for some time on this collection, to analyze, are there any patterns here?
MARIE
What are commonalities?
BRUCE
What causes people to leave, and then what causes them to come back? If we could understand that process better, we would know better how to help people, wherever they are in their journey. And some research from their efforts, has already been published on the website, Faith Is Not Blind. The website address is: faithisnotblind.org. There are segments of that of the site that introduce you to various dimensions of this overall subject. There's a section on additional resources, there's a section on narratives of return, they put most of these in the narrative section, as I recall.
MARIE
And then their analysis.
BRUCE
And they also then included their analysis. And that's what I wanted to get to finally, but I want to say this much. So you know, this conclusion didn't just come out of, you know, picking a random leaf off the tree, it came from a serious, conscientious work to understand what is going on here. And both what leads people out, and what leads them to come back, I still remember that they, after they'd done their preliminary work, and then they confirmed it with doing the complete analysis, they were so interested in finding that the biggest factor was their relationship with God. If they had a genuine relationship, the closeness. Whatever else, the facts varied, of course, with all of the circumstances of their life, but the one constant was that they had a tie, or they developed a tie to their Heavenly Father. And that was a major influence in their stories of return. And that doesn't sound very profound. Because everybody knows we should pray. “Heavenly Father, are you really there?” But sometimes it's the simple truth, are the ones that are the truest. I think that's pretty interesting. You know, if you have some people with graduate school educations, who work on a project like this and say, well, guess what? Here's what we found.
MARIE
Here are the simple truths. Yeah.
ASHLY
43:27
That's so good. I just love that. And it is so true that I think that like, at the end of the day, God just wants to talk to his children. And I think that if we take that step to reach out to Him, it's like, it just unlocks the door to Him coming into our lives. And so it really is such a simple principle, but it's also just so profound at the same time.
MARIE
43:58
I remember being in a sacrament meeting several years ago, where our daughter in law, Joy, was giving a talk. And the title of her talk was about relationships. And the thesis of her talk was, relationships are the only thing you take with you when you leave this planet. But then I thought about it. And I thought, “Well, yes.” Because your relationships in your family or relationships with really close friends, but your relationship with God with his son with the Holy Ghost. I mean, what else do you take with you besides that? And I began to agree with her. It is the relationships.
ASHLY
44:40
Mmhmm. I love that. You wrote the biography for Neal A. Maxwell, correct?
BRUCE
Right.
ASHLY
Okay. One of the things that you talk about in the book is writing that, and that when he was, you know, having medical challenges. It was such a sanctifying experience for him. And I would love if you could just quickly talk about that experience and you know, anything you have to share on that, and sanctification. And then one more quick question after that, and then we can, we can wrap up. But I'd love to just hear your thoughts on that.
BRUCE
45:20
Elder Maxwell is so widely known in the church today, even though it's been, what, 20 years, since he passed away.
MARIE
Yeah, I can’t believe it.
BRUCE
I had the great privilege of working with him on a day to day basis. A long time ago, on a church assignment, and then we remained associated after that, and he worked with the Church Educational System. And as the Commissioner of Education, then he was on the Board of Trustees, for all the Church schools and universities, and in all of that, together, he and I would, we got to know each other really quite well. And then I was called to an area presidency and, and shipped off to Australia, then learned of his cancer. And it sounded quite serious. And I was, I was just knocked over so hard. He was just into his 70s, and I still remember that. One reason I normally talk about this subject is just because, it’s real close to my heart. I still am, still grieving. But that's, that's okay, we all go through it. And knowing that even elder Maxwell could meet a relatively early death as members of the twelve go, is an important signal. Well, he asked me to write his biography. When he knew that his days were numbered, he really didn't know how long he would live. And he hadn't kept a personal journal. And so it was quite a project to figure out how to do this. And without going into all of the details, you have to get really close to each other to talk about the details of the biography project. To answer your question, I, I knew that his love for the Lord was very genuine, it ran really deep. I think that the title of the book is A Disciple’s Life, because it seemed to me that being a faithful disciple of Christ was the most important thing in his life until the cancer hit him. He did everything he possibly could to be faithful, and his ministry, but in his, in his personal life, and his family and his work and everything that he did. He seemed about as faithful a disciple as there could be. But now I'm remembering that he, I guess it was something his wife said to him, Colleen. They had such a dear and close relationship. After they had talked to the doctor, and he had told them that this was a very serious form of leukemia, and that there was no known treatment that would do much for him that will last more than a very brief time that they were talking about the implications of that message. And we're, you know, still sort of knocked over onto the floor and holding on to each other. What does this mean? What do we do? It was Sister Maxwell, who said to him, after he'd already written all kinds of books about being a good faithful disciple, and he’d written, written so beautifully, and books are very true. She said something, I'm paraphrasing, “Well, Neal, you've written all your life, about being a faithful disciple. Looks like the Lord is going to give you a chance to find out what you're talking about.” And then he went through the agony of inpatient chemotherapy intensively, I think it lasted more than a month. They had to take him as close as they could to the edge of death, just to have any effect at all. And they're just using that as a point of departure. I began to notice some things about him that I know other people noticed about his, the way he would talk and behave. I don't know that he was even conscious of his interest in other people, which had always been so keen. It somehow expanded and his the things that he talked about you look at his conference talks after this, the illness hit him he was one of the kind of cardinal beliefs in Neal Maxwell's life was that if we're serious about our discipleship, the Lord will test us with that which is the most difficult thing for us so that we can really get to the heart of it. What is going on here? Elder Maxwell really believed that the Lord teaches us. And being a disciple means a follower who tries to take his teachings to heart. Well, that's what happened to him. And many people who were close to Him saw it. But as you look at his writings, almost indiscernible. But gradually, he kind of became purified. One of the things he told me, I've just a few things that are hitting me randomly. He wondered himself about why. Why is this happening to me? And he told me in a private conversation that ended up that he allowed to have in the book, he was wondering, kind of aloud in his prayers, maybe not always aloud, asking the Lord, why have I been given this obstacle, this problem, this, or this opportunity, whatever it is. And he said that he felt a very strong impression from the Lord, that kind of went this way: “I have given you leukemia, so that you might teach the people with more authenticity.” And I think that's what happened. And that reminded me of what I have seen in other people's lives, if they respond with the same desire of faithfulness, and wanting to believe and wanting to follow whatever lessons the Lord would give them, they'll find it, and it will have the same effect on them. And that's what I realized that he, Elder Maxwell, was sanctified. And it was, I'm sure much more to it than I ever knew. That's what happened. What happened in his life is a beautiful example of what Oliver Wendell Holmes was talking about. Neal Maxwell was this, you know, sort of scruffy high school kid that didn't make the basketball team and get graduate high
MARIE
and raised pigs.
BRUCE
and raised pigs for a 4-H project. You wouldn't have predicted him as the most likely person to end up where he ended up. But he did have a childlike faith, going to Okinawa World War II. In the early 40s, he had enlisted in the Army and went into the infantry. He carried his patriarchal blessing in his Flak Jacket. One night, the shells were about to kill him and he could see them getting closer and closer as the artillery shell triangulated his position, and he uttered the deepest prayer of his life. He went right starting, I think about that from living in a life of simplicity, but a faithful life. He then went through complexities that expanded him, tested him, and came out of all of that, able to say that he would rather have the simplicity beyond complexity, because now he knows what it means. And he didn't know before. And so his life illustrates the three step process we're talking about. And stages one and two, and three, in Faith Is Not Blind.
MARIE
53:40
Maybe just one final comment on that, because I think he chose to make the complexity be a catalyst or a boost, or a deepening of his testimony of God, a deepening of his relationship with God. And I guess maybe that's kind of the core of what we might say is that we're not talking about the what necessarily, today we're talking about the how, how do you have the desire? How do you choose to make complexity, something that can help you climb to a higher level, in your testimony, in your relationships with God? Because what about that higher level? What's after that? Well, I think maybe it's another complexity, because he wants us to keep going, he wants us to keep getting a deeper relationship with Him. Because it's in that development. And again, these, they sound like Sunday School answers, but at the same time, they're, when you're involved in it, and you've been through a really tough, hard situation or you're still in it after years, then you want to have the hope. You want to have the knowledge that what I'm in what I'm dealing with, is a catalyst. It's a strengthening. It’s what's going to help me become who I have the potential to become.
ASHLY
And I think that you don't have to have all the answers to keep going. You don't have to, if you have a question that triggers your complexity. You don't don't have to have the answer to that question to just decide to move forward and just keep going.
MARIE
55:20
Well said.
BRUCE
I think one of Elder Maxwell's favorite scriptures that I heard him quote, numerous times when he would be talking to people who were dealing with very hard challenges in their lives, he would be on the phone, or he would be running up to the hospital, he would, he just paid attention to people who were having hard times. And I several times heard him say, maybe, you know, you're learning about Nephi, who said, when the angel asked him, “Knowest thou the condescension of God?” And Nephi says, “I don't know the meaning of all things. But I do know that God loves His children.” But I think that's when you, when you really go through whatever it takes to discover that, you're on the right path,
ASHLY
56:18
I had the really awesome opportunity to hear President Eyring speak in kind of an intimate setting. And one of the things he said that I will never forget was, “This life is not meant to be easy. It's meant to be purifying.” And it was so profound to me. And when you were talking about, you know, Elder Maxwell, and it just really, you know, isn't that the truth? We there's so much depth to life. And there's so many challenges that we go through, and it's meant to purify us, after it’s all said and done. And so our final question: I just, we have so many family members of people going through a faith crisis that they don't know what to do, or a spouse that's on the other side. And they're hoping that their spouse comes back from a faith crisis. What advice would you give the spouse or the family member of the person that's stuck in complexity?
MARIE
57:20
Two words that both start with L. To start with, first one is L I S T E N. Listen, listen to their experience, want to know, what is their experience? And a couple of questions: “I'm curious to know” or “I'm wondering if” are not threatening. And they say to them, yes, we're interested in your experience. So listen, and not lecture. You can't tell them anything. Usually, in our families. You can't tell them anything they don't already know. But you can listen to their experience so that they know that you care. But the other word, of course, is love. Love, love, love. And we found with one family member who's had some real challenges, that the suggestion was to praise to compliment when you see them doing something that's good, even if it's a really little thing. If you compliment, if you praise, honestly, authentically, just watch how they respond to that, and how, again, it establishes a good relationship between you and them that then you have something to build on it, then they have something to come back to. So those two things to start with. What else would you say?
BRUCE
I've listened to really fine people say something about this subject. I think you probably know both of them. One is Terryll Givens, and the one is Richard Bushman. And they have done a lot of counseling with people who have faith questions. And I have now heard after several years of knowing that that's what they were doing. They both have said recently, you know, I don't really want to give a PhD answer anymore. I know, I know enough about all of these subjects. I know enough about church history, that I can answer any question that anybody can bring to me. But what I am finding is that, depending on their attitude, many of them will come back with another question. And I don't know what that says. How do you shape somebody's attitude, so that they're ready to listen? And that's when the change will occur. And we can't cause that to happen. And somebody's family, you can ask a question about their relationship with the Lord or with the Savior. It's not so much about the question, as it is the attitude. Here it comes– you stirred up my Neal Maxwell memories actually.
ASHLY
Good. I'm glad.
BRUCE
He wrote a little note to one of his, I can't remember now if it was one of his children or grandchildren, who was having his own questions, and I don't know where it came from, but he wanted to know, what do you do about doubt? And I found Elder Maxwell's answer quite refreshing. And it had that ring of truth to it. Doubt can either increase or decrease our faith, depending on our supply of meekness. How do you help somebody become meek? Meek and lowly in heart. He worked on that. It was one of his main tasks of his life. I think it's because he had discovered along the way that it's an attitude issue. Your attitude about what happens is more important than what happens. And it's an attitude that I think Alma was talking about when he said, you know, plant a seed, just do an experiment, and then nourish the seed. But don't squash the seed by your unbelief. And like other things that we've talked about, you've got to choose to believe; it's a choice. Nobody can make you. What causes somebody to have a softening of heart? It just does, we know that it does. And so I guess I would say, first of all, try to have a change of heart of your own, instead of just arguing and telling them off. And as Marie was saying, don't just lecture, that doesn't do any good. Take the time, let the experiences unfold, whatever they are. Be meek and your relationship with them. So that they sense something, that maybe some of them wouldn't sense that it was they're just they're angry, and different people are affected in different ways. But if they have this meek closeness with you, and then just kind of listen to the promptings of that go up to you and don't focus on their their faith issues, don't come back with another lecture, or another invitation to do this or that.
MARIE
1:02:37
or a Liahona under their door. Yeah.
BRUCE
We've talked to enough of them to know that putting the Liahona is great, but when it's put under your door, and that's the only experience you have with the parent who bugs you …
MARIE
It may not be the …
LAUREN
Can I ask a question? What's your favorite Neal A. Maxwell book that he's written?
BRUCE
Oh, my goodness. That he has written?
MARIE
Or do you have one? It's almost a collection. Or do you have one?
BRUCE
Yeah. Well, my favorite book is a big one that has quite a few volumes. It's called The Collected Works.
LAUREN
You can't choose ‘em all.
BRUCE
1:03:34
Yeah. I'm like the people who helped put the collected works of Hugh Nibley together.
MARIE
A lot of their audience may not be old enough to even know Hugh Nibley.
BRUCE
1:03:46
Well, they ought to. If we could give a parting shot, I'd say get acquainted with Hugh Nibley and Neal A. Maxwell. When Elder Maxwell was in the hospital with that serious leukemia, one of the few people that he wanted to muster the energy to talk to was Hugh Nibley. He called him. Hugh was quite a bit older. And we wanted to tell him once more how grateful he was for what he had done. But my favorite Maxwell book, the one that springs to mind was one he wrote … I don't know when it was, in his ministry. Before the the fight, before the Leukemia came along, well before. The title of the book was Meek and Lowly. He was, that phrase just had his attention. And he tried to develop it and think about it. And I think he helps a lot of the rest of us. Seek to be meek and lowly. I can tell you some of his favorite scriptures.
MARIE
I bet they're yours too.
BRUCE
Well, all right. One of them was Mosiah 3:19.
MARIE
The natural man is …
BRUCE
“The natural man is an enemy to God and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and put off the natural man, and becometh a saint through the Atonement.” Did I say that the key part that Elder Maxwell liked so much? “That he will
MARIE
as a child as a child subjected his father,
BRUCE
1:05:34
submitting to his father, yielding to whatever the father inflicts on him. We'd sometimes talk to the afflicted and tell him that.
LAUREN
Thank you for sharing that. That was, I've always been a huge Neal A. Maxwell fan. So I appreciate it.
ASHLY
So maybe we'll have to have a Neal A Maxwell book club choice..
BRUCE
You could do worse.
ASHLY
We have Faith Is Not Blind for our November book club. And so this episode is, you know, the highlight of our November book club and we just, we appreciate you coming on with us so much. You guys are so special and just what an it is, an honor for Lauren and I to have you on our podcast and we just think the world of you. And we know that you guys are just doing so much and I just I keep thinking, Man, I am so excited for my dad to listen to this. It is just, he's just gonna love it. I feel like it's so special for us to have you guys on and you're so incredible. So thank you so much for taking this time with us.
MARIE
Well, it's a privilege for us.
BRUCE
1:06:45
It is a privilege.
