Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 10

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Foreign. Hello and welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast. This is John Dehlin. I'm very excited to have you with us today. Hope you're all doing well. As you may know, Mormon Stories podcast is doing quite well. We're up to around 300, 350 listeners. The blog site MormonStories.org has gotten a fair amount of discussion and postings over the past little while, so that's exciting as well. We sure do appreciate all the email we've received. I probably get an email a week, probably two or three emails a week now with people from all over the world saying how grateful they are for some of the things that they've heard. We recently created a Frapper map where some of our listeners have been able to post their locations. I encourage you to go up to our Frapper map and please post yourself there so that we can find out where you are, where you're listening from, and most importantly, please check us out@mormonstories.org and give us your comments, your feedback, your thoughts and your posts. We, we sure love having that feedback. It drives us to want to continue doing this podcast. Well, for those of you who have listened to past programs, you know that we've tried to interview different types of LDS people. We interviewed an ex Mormon, you know, an anti Mormon to begin with. Hyrum. We've interviewed an apologist and got some, some in depth perspective on what it means to be an LDS apologist today. And that was John Lynch. Today we have a very exciting podcast. For those of you who are part of the bloggernacle or the LDS blog arena, you'll know these next two guests. Their handles in the bloggernackle are Roasted Tomatoes and Serenity Valley. They run a blog called Latter Day Saint Liberation Front. Many of you know it as LDS lf, but I've known them for a month or two now. I've enjoyed my interactions with them, but a while ago they contacted me and, and we sort of knew pretty quickly that it made sense for us to do a podcast because they had some very interesting, very compelling stories to tell. And I'm not going to give those stories away other than to introduce Serenity Valley and Roasted Tomatoes to our podcast. Welcome, guys.

Serenity Valley [00:02:46] Thank you.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:02:47] Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] It's my pleasure. And I should mention that you guys are in the Bay Area. I won't mention anything more. And I should tell our listeners that we talked about whether it made sense or not to reveal identities. And in this case I think we decided that it made sense to keep your handles from which you're known in the bloggernackle. So if it's okay, refer to Serenity as Serenity and to roasted tomatoes as RT because I can't somehow stomach calling you roasted throughout this interview. Is that okay?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:03:24] That would be extremely bizarre. RT it is.

RT's Background and Mission Experience

John Dehlin [00:03:27] Okay, so without any further ado, I think it would make sense to begin with RT telling us a bit about his story as a member of the LDS Church up through his mission and maybe a little bit thereafter. And then we will proceed to Serenity's early story as well.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:03:50] Alright. Well, my story started out as most people in the churches do. I was born to goodly parents, parents within the church, grew up, attended primary, went to seminary and had a pretty standard, straightforward experience. I remember actually the first time I had something that I would have called a testimony of my own. It was when Ezra Taft Benson gave his Flood the Earth with the Book of Mormon speech. It struck some sort of chord with me and I felt really good about it from that point on. I had a testimony the Book of Mormon up until about partway through high school, then had a typical kind of thing, I think. Typical? What's typical? A thing that a lot of people have where I started having some doubts, had some questions about whether really there was really this good God sitting up there watching everybody, all these people starving in the world. It was kind of hard for me to put together, come to find out that this is actually the problem of theodicy, the problem that God is all powerful and capable of doing anything he wants and yet he allows there to be suffering in the world and still we're supposed to think of him as good. So, you know, it's something that a lot of people have thought about and is a difficult problem to resolve. I ran into it in high school and spent a couple of years thinking about myself as, you know, kind of being a bit of an atheist at that point. As an atheist I went to BYU and that was possibly not the optimum solution for me because in addition to having these questions about whether there was in fact a God, I was also and still continue to be towards the left side of the political spectrum, which makes me not fit in too well in BYU culture.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] Was there an honors program?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:05:50] There was an honors program. I considered doing it and actually did spend, I think the first year associated with it. So I did a goodness. They have a program where you some sort of contest that's kind of Jeopardy. With buzzers, college bowl readings and stuff. College bowl. That's it. That was fun, actually.

Serenity Valley [00:06:13] You did college bowl?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:06:14] I Didn't know that. Sure, my freshman year I did, only my freshman year it was really fun, but along with some of the better things like that. For instance, my honors religion class my first semester, about halfway through the professor got sick of talking about the Book of Mormon, I guess because he started talking about Ezra Taft Benson's political talks from the 60s and explaining to the rest of us that we needed to believe this or we didn't belong in Mormonism at byu, whatever. And so I listen to this and I say, hmm, maybe I don't belong. It was kind of an odd and alienating situation. So after about a year and a half of doing this, I turned 19 and it's time for me to go on my mission. So I'm sitting here thinking, well you know, I am an atheist, so that's a strike against but if I don't go on a mission I'll break my parents heart so maybe the mission is a good idea. So I went on a mission, told everybody, yeah, okay, I know it's true, whatever, and went on a mission. And the most amazing thing happened when I went on my mission, which was that my mission president taught me how the gospel worked with Christ actually atoning for our sins and making up for the things we do wrong. And it really, really hit me, it really struck me as something that seemed to be true in a much more profound way than the Benson talk a decade earlier had done. I just totally became converted to Christianity and came back from that really being a believer. The way that I'd found Christ was through my mission presidents explaining to me about the Book of Mormon. There are some other parts of the story on my mission that I actually don't want to get into right now that were a little bit more difficult. But for me that was the key thing for my mission was finding Christ and doing it through reading these Christ oriented texts in the Book of Mormon. I come back from my mission and this is really kind of the place was at when I met Serenity.

John Dehlin [00:08:37] Okay, so you sort of consider yourself an atheist before your mission. I just have to ask you, I mean was it like a conscious lie that you just said I'm going to tell everyone I know the church is true and I'm not and just lie about it or did you sort of use the justification which is, you know, I've been told that if I say it I'll believe it. So this is just an act of faith where I'm going to say that I, that I know or believe even though I may not and hope that I get the answer? Or was it just sort of a callous, cynical sort of, I'm going to

Roasted Tomatoes [00:09:10] lie, you know, I could give you an answer to that, but I wouldn't be sure I was telling you the truth. I don't really know what I thought. I know that I felt, you know, there's the Pascal's Wager sort of thing that I didn't think there was a God, but I wasn't sure. And if I'm not sure, maybe it's best to just act as if. But I was a pretty confused person, a 19 year old. I wasn't terribly happy with my life. I have no idea what I thought.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] That's fair. When you talk about coming to Christ and gaining a testimony of Christianity, was that in sort of a totality in that you viewed Christianity as the one and only path to God and that the other half or two thirds of the world that don't happen to be Christian were just sort of out of luck?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:10:15] Actually, when I say that I was converted to Christianity, but I was also very much converted to Latter Day Saint Mormon Christianity. So if we're going to be all exclusivistic, I was probably in a situation of condemning not just half or two thirds, but billions of people. But there is the nice idea of temple work and redemption for the dead. So it wouldn't have gone that far. But no, that made missionary work seem incredibly urgent for the last 2/3 of my mission. This idea that people really needed, this message that we had.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] Right, okay. Well, that's fair. That's a good intro. Now let's move to Serenity. Catch us up on your early years.

Family, Doubt, and Childhood Faith

Serenity Valley [00:11:01] That's complicated. I was born in Salt Lake City and my family is kind of a complicated situation because my mother was actually severely terminally ill for about 32 years. And so my brother and I were both adopted, which was a difficult thing in some ways because while my parents did everything they could to make us feel very connected to the family at some level, we were always the special children in the family. My cousins, my aunts, my uncles, all treated us not as people who didn't belong, but as the special ones. The ones that the process was different

John Dehlin [00:11:45] sort of grafted onto the family.

Serenity Valley [00:11:48] You know, there always seemed to be concern that we would feel anxiety, which when we were alone with our parents, we didn't really have that because they didn't act that way. And the same thing was true in my neighborhood in Mary Ward. Everyone wanted us to know how welcome we were. And it was even more complicated when we went to church because while my mother's family was lds, they managed to spend most of their time with us without really thinking about the fact that my father was not, or at least he wasn't active in the church. My parents hadn't been married in the temple and there was very little chance that they ever would while they were both or really while either of them was alive.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] Did you ever get a chance to talk to your dad about. Was your dad born in the church?

Serenity Valley [00:12:30] Yeah, actually I found out about a year ago that he holds the Aaronic priesthood, which we didn't know. My mother thought that he wasn't even a member.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Have you ever found out what made him fall away or lose interest or whatever?

Serenity Valley [00:12:45] Yeah, I thought when I was a kid that it was because of a girl he dated in high school whose father hadn't liked him. But he told me about a year and a half ago that what actually happened was that he went to primary every week, that his parents let him when he was a little boy and when he was 12 years old they ordained him and he was happy about it and he went to church whenever he could. But his father was an alcoholic and sometimes he wasn't very nice. And occasionally he would decide that the family had to go on a trip for the weekend. It was time to have fun, you know, just. And that was it. There was no argument. So my father would skip church every third or fourth week. And the bishop sat him down one day about a month after he was 12 years old and told him that priests didn't get to do that. And he could either come to church every week or he could not come to church. And since his choice was pretty much between being beaten and not going to church, his parents hadn't really raised him, so he just kind of didn't go anymore. You know, it was ogden in the 50s. People were very black and white about these things. And so I grew up in a neighborhood full of people who knew my parents and liked them, but were uncomfortable with the fact that my mother was really the only woman in the ward who was married not just to a non active man, but someone that everyone believed to be a non member. And she was one of the only women in the ward who wasn't sealed to anyone. And I think she felt some really deep ambivalence about religion. And so even though she insisted that I go to church and that my brother go to church, and she went to Mutual and dropped us off and made sure we were there every week, during our entire life together, she didn't feel comfortable going to the temple. She never was in doubt. Even after 85. I never understood why. But as I've grown older and thought about it and talked to her friends and, and my aunts and my uncles and my father, I realized that she wasn't sure she believed enough to go. So I was raised in a semi active part member home is the best description. I loved going to church when I was a kid because I was in a family that was loving but a little bit troubled. And I think at some level I lacked a sense of identity and going to church helped that I was a Mormon and everyone in the ward was so concerned about my well being because everyone knew my family was a little bit off in some ways and because my parents weren't sealed and because my dad wasn't active that they showered me with all kinds of attention and praise and they tried their hardest to provide me with a good religious education. My mom used to send me to family home evening at my friends houses a few times a month really. And people would try to invite me into their homes and have me for family parties and that kind of thing. And people would give me scriptures and religious gifts and it was nice, it was a very loving way to grow up. But at the same time there was no one really monitoring what I learned as far as religion went. So we had a cadre of apocalypse buffs in the ward. We actually had one man give a lesson in mutual. When I was 12 years old, I had just gone into mutual. It was a three hour lecture on the apocalypse on the second coming, on everything bad that was going to happen before it filled with lots of phrases like, well, no one really knows what's going to happen, but here's this very careful timeline I'm providing you with and people will burn here and this will happen. It was very. I was raised in this slightly pathological ward in a slightly pathological family and I ended up with the idea that God loved me very, very much, but that if I didn't somehow do exactly whatever it was he wanted me to do, I would die a fiery death and never get to go to the celestial kingdom.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] I just have to. This is your story, but I just have to jump in. This is really interesting to me because my daughter came home from church just a few weeks back, she was nine at the time. And she brought home a flyer that had like 12 little squares on it and each square represented one of the nasty ways people will die during the second coming. So they had flies, they had hail, they had fire and all sorts of nastiness. And, and she said that when the teacher told her this, she said, this makes me really sad. I'm sad to hear what if I get burned or flies come and eat me up. And the teacher says, well, you don't have to worry about it because you're going to be righteous and you're Mormon. And she says, well, I have a lot of friends and family who aren't. What's going to happen to them. And the teacher just didn't know what to say. But it's interesting because I, I worried when she told me how much we can terrorize little kids. And it sounds like that isn't too far fetched.

Serenity Valley [00:17:54] You know, I was an insomniac as a child and I used to sit up at nights terrified that there'd be a nuclear bomb that would go off because that was one of the major themes in this neighborhood I grew up in. The apocalypse was going to be ushered in by a very kind of a total nuclear war. I was just terrified as a child. No 7 year old should have to go through that. But you know, I did. And so I had this very confused picture of God because he was this loving, loving father who was going to kill us all violently. And people were very into the idea that the saints would suffer all kinds of tribulations. And so they used to talk a lot about how much we would suffer, you know, because we were righteous and we needed to be tested and so on and so forth. And there was a theme that came up a lot. They used to tell us that no matter what, we should never pray to die before the second coming. The reasoning was that if God wanted to test you that way, then you needed to be willing to be tested. And I think that everyone thought the same thing that your daughter's teacher thought. We were all going to realize that we were raised in these righteous homes. We were going to be righteous children and grow up to be righteous saints and everything would be okay. And I don't think they thought about the effect this would have on a kid who is parents weren't sealed in the temple, whose father frankly hated religion and whose mother meant well, but she had the occasional wine cooler and she wouldn't go to the temple. It was really damaging, quite frankly. Everyone meant well, but no one ever really talked about the good parts of the gospel unless it was something that was in the lesson manual for that particular week's Sunday school class. And so that's kind of what I grew up with. And beyond that, there was also a lot of pressure, especially for me, because of my situation, because everyone wanted me to go the way they felt was the right way. There was a lot of pressure to have a testimony to know the truth. And it was kind of your old school 1980s Utah version of the truth. It was much more about knowing the church was true and knowing that the prophet was a prophet and knowing that the Book of Mormon was a historical document than it was anything else. And not that there is a problem with any of that. Of course there is not. It is just that those are all means to an end. And no one ever explained that to me. So I tried. I just tried so hard because I was afraid and because I wanted to fit in and because I knew these people loved me and I wanted to respond to them. I tried to have a testimony that the church was true. I tried to have a testimony that the Book of Mormon was a historical document. I tried to have a testimony that the prophet was a prophet. But those things didn't really have meaning to a child who didn't have a basic faith in a loving God and who didn't understand that all the things she did wrong were going to be paid for, were going to be paid by someone who wasn't her, if that makes sense. The world was a frightening, frightening place. That's kind of what my childhood and adolescence was like. And When I was 15 years old, my mother died. I tried very hard to stay active when my mom died, but my father didn't really want me to go to church. And I had so much built up negativity because of these years and years and years of fear and discomfort with God. And then when I got to the age where girls start noticing that there are our gender differences and the way kids are treated in the church, when you really start to notice that kind of stuff. I didn't really have any reason to think anything but the worst about that because I knew that everyone in the church loved me. But when my mom died, people kind of got uncomfortable around me. You know, no one in a family ward is really that comfortable with the idea of someone sitting alone. And the way people often deal with it is to pretend that they're not sitting alone. And I understand it. I find myself doing it now that I'm married. You don't want to bring it up because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. You don't want to make someone feel self conscious. But in the end, I just didn't have any reason to stay, even though I knew that everyone loved me. And I felt a lot of anger toward the church because of the issues with gender, what I perceive as gender inequality, and my father's issues, which were many and varied. And so I left when I got into college. A friend of mine talked her into. Sorry. A friend of mine talked me into going to her student ward with her. And I went because I enjoyed spending time with my friend. I went frequently for, I don't know, a couple of years. And I tried again. I tried so hard. I thought maybe I did something wrong, maybe I didn't do it right. So I tried as hard as I ever had to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, to gain a testimony that the church was true, to gain a testimony that the prophet was a prophet. And still I never really thought about why those things were important. I did have these images of what Christ had done for us, and I had these images of what God wanted for us, but they were all from non Mormon children's books, the Madeleine l' Engle books, the. The Narnia books. And until I was in my early 20s, until I was in my last year of college, I never really thought about trying to integrate those with what I thought of as religion, which was going to church every Sunday and trying to convince yourself that you believed that whatever people were saying on the pulpit was true. I asked God, I asked over and over again, is this true? Is this true? Is this true? But I never got any response. I tried really, really hard. I tried so hard. The thing is, trying doesn't actually work. You can't convince yourself of anything. And I don't think God wants people to lie to themselves. And that's what I was trying to do, because I wasn't trying to have faith in what I was supposed to have faith in, if that makes sense. So then I had a very bad romantic situation where I. I had a friend from high school who we hadn't ever dated, but he went on a mission and we wrote the whole time. And people kept telling me that he was my missionary, even though at the beginning, when he left, I knew he wasn't. I knew we weren't romantically involved, but I think we both kind of began to feel like we must be over the two years that we wrote to each other. And then he came home and we got engaged, and I didn't want to marry him, but I didn't know how to say that. And then we started planning the wedding, and one day I realized he was gay. Yeah. And I said, are you gay? And he said, yeah, I'm gay. And I said, I'm not going to marry you. And he said, you know, I don't think it's a good idea either. And the thing is, I ended up blaming the church for that too, because he had been told by his mission president and then by his bishop that the way to stop being gay was to get married as soon as he got home. And I know the church does not give this advice anymore. I looked it up. They don't say this, but there are still a lot of people who think that they do. Because a long time ago, people thought that you could talk someone into falling in love with another person. And it just doesn't work that way. The church's current attitude is a lot more rational in my mind, and I think it's a lot healthier for everyone involved. So that was not a good thing. But I ended up blaming the church for that too. So I blamed the church for my childhood. I blame the church for my father's problems. I blame the church for my fear of God and my distaste for religion. There's really no reason to stay. So once again, I left. That was just about when I was getting involved with my husband. And he seemed a little bit concerned about my lack of religious sentiment and my utterance abhorrence for the church. I wasn't going out and trying to destroy people's faith. I didn't have any interest in that, but I didn't want to go to church. I didn't like God. I thought I didn't believe in God, which was probably not true even to how much time I spent thinking about how much I didn't like God. It was just kind of a mess. That's when he got involved and he had lots of fun cleaning up my emotional life.

Meeting, Courtship, and an Interfaith Marriage

John Dehlin [00:26:33] So when you guys met, were you completely inactive?

Serenity Valley [00:26:39] Well, actually, I was going inactive when we got involved. We had known each other vaguely in high school, and then he came home from his mission, and we kept running into each other at parties. And he just kind of by pure accident, he ended up being at my house one evening after everyone else had left a party right when I was about to have a breakdown because of my engagement to the gay guy. And he just sat me down and let me have the breakdown. And that was actually kind of how we got involved. We didn't start dating right away, but that was how we got involved emotionally. So he heard a lot about my feelings about the church. And that's just about when I stopped going to church entirely. I just couldn't sustain it anymore. I had so many friends who wanted me to go and I didn't want to disappoint them. And I was still deeply, deeply afraid of what would happen to me if I didn't go to church every week and pay my tithing and all the things that I'd been told I should do. But that's right. When I stopped, we moved out to California. Well, we didn't move out together, obviously. He was all religious. He was thinking about where to go to graduate school. And I wanted to move out to California because I didn't like Utah very much and I kind of wanted to be on my own away from my family. And a friend of mine was coming out to San Francisco for law school, so I knew someone who was coming out here and roasted tomatoes, got into a program out here and we just decided to share a moving truck and we moved out to Berkeley and lived a couple blocks away from each other for about a year. We got engaged on the drive out, right before we got in the car, basically.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Wow.

Serenity Valley [00:28:30] Yeah, it was wonderful. We had a lot of fun that first year planning our wedding back in Salt Lake from California.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] So was this a temple wedding or a non temple wedding?

Serenity Valley [00:28:44] Oh, heavens no. I made a complete break with the church. I actually. I decided that the only way I was going to get over the hostility I felt toward it was to put it behind me completely. And I didn't want to feel the kind of anger I felt toward people that I did love, people I knew loved me.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] So, rt, as a returned missionary, what were you doing entertaining thoughts of marrying someone whose trajectory was outward, not upward, so to speak.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:29:12] No, I mean, yeah, I understand. Well, look, there are two things about it. First of all, I was in love with Serenity. I was totally in love with her. And second of all, from the very beginning, when I first got involved with her, in my own defense, as a sort of good Mormon credentials person, she was going to church when we first started dating. So when I first got involved with her, that sort of conventional Mormon don't date outside the fold thing, I met the rule, I met the criterion. But when things went further and when it became clear that she was actually not interested in the church, I was in love with her and we were involved and. And it just felt right to me to just continue with that. It felt to me that that was the right thing to do. Not to be all silly about this, but I prayed about it and it felt right. I thought about It. I talked with my bishop. I did all of these things, and it just felt like the right thing to do. Actually, my bishop was wonderful about it. He told me that. That no one on earth other than me had the right to have revelation about who I should marry. And that if I felt like it was the right thing to do, then he felt it was the right thing to do, too. I'm not going to say I didn't have nightmares. I mean, good grief. For this whole year that we were engaged, every week or so, I would have these things where I'd wake up in the night in a cold sweat that I was going to die or she was going to die and we were going to be apart forever. And all the melodrama. But I just stuck with it.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] And how was it received back home? Not well.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:31:14] Not well.

Serenity Valley [00:31:16] My father was actually kind of concerned because, you know, he liked rt, but RT was Mormon. Was this a good idea? I had just gotten out of the church, you know.

John Dehlin [00:31:27] Right.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:31:30] And my parents were very concerned. My parents actually tried to explain to me that they had had a revelation that this was not the right thing. That's one of the places where my bishop really just was very helpful. My dad actually called my bishop about a week before the wedding to see if the bishop could talk me out of it. And the bishop explained to my dad that, you know, what we do in life is we do our best and we teach our kids, but when they become adults, we have to let them try to make the right decisions for themselves. And that it just wasn't my dad's place to make this decision. I'm just so glad he did that for us.

Serenity Valley [00:32:13] Yeah, they did come to the wedding. We were briefly concerned that Jay's family would not attend. And I don't think we really blamed them for that. It was very difficult for them, and we knew that. But eventually they looked very sad. But they came to the wedding and they paid for our honeymoon, and they've done a very good job since then. By the time we actually got married, they stopped trying to resolve my doubts and things and just kind of let me be and were very kind to me and loving. And they were thrilled when we called them and dropped the bomb that we were going to be sealed in a few months. But until we did that, they never looked.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:33:00] We're kind of jumping ahead of ourselves here. I'm sorry, but I wanted to say I've always, always wished that there had been a way through this that hadn't involved my family feeling the very real pain that they did feel. I mean, I've always felt sad about that. Not guilty because I think I did the right thing, but sad that they had to feel that way. I really wish that that had been different.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] Yeah, I can totally relate to that. But I'm also thinking about me putting myself in your shoes, rt, and wondering how fundamentally guilty or scared I would feel for, in essence, trading your birthright, you know, you know, the way you're raised, that's kind of how you might feel. And then I have a follow up. And that would be, do you think that there was some hidden understanding that at some point serenity had to kind of come along because you're willing to make this jump, but it was sort of with an unspoken understanding that at some point it needed to be reconciled in the right direction? Is there any of that going on?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:34:10] No, it wasn't really like that. The idea here, it's sort of what Joseph Smith said about how if God tells you to do something, even if he always said it's wrong before, as soon as he tells you to do it, it's right. I felt like for me, the voice of God. This sounds so pretentious, but the voice of God in me said to me, this is right. So whatever other commandments or rules or ideas are out there, they no longer apply because that message to me says, this is right.

Spiritual Experiences and a Conversion to Christianity

John Dehlin [00:34:53] Was this a mode of communication from God to you that you had experienced prior, or was this, you know, given that you had been an atheist and then your mission, you found Christ? But, you know, I personally don't know that I can ever say I felt, you know, strong indication that God, you know, there are things I felt good about. But to be able to say God told me to do this, you know, you're using some pretty affirmative language. And so was this sort of a unique spiritual experience in your life where God made something clear to you in a way he never had before and maybe hasn't seen sense? Or was this sort of a pattern that had developed once you found Christ, so to speak, you felt like God was communicating to you more clearly?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:35:39] Look, it isn't by any means an everyday sort of thing, but I can count. This is going to sound like a lot. I can count five different instances where I would say that there was definitely something like that. The first would be the time when I was converted, which was for me a pretty subjectively impressive thing. There was a time during my mission when I was dying from a mosquito fever. I called the mission doctor and he sort of told me to take Tylenol and call him in the morning. But I was actually losing sensation in my legs and arms. It turned out that my fever was something like 108, 109, and it had been for several days. I was totally dehydrated and my body was starting to sort of shut down. And I was thinking back to a blessing I'd gotten during my mission that said that as long as I did what I was supposed to and was obedient, I would be okay during my mission. And I'm thinking about that to sort of try to stay calm as all this happens to me physically. And there was an actual. So people are going to hear this and say, yeah, he had a fever, so whatever. But for me, it was really very real, that there was actually a voice in my head that said to me, yes, you will be safe if you do what you're told. And I'm telling you to get to the doctor right now or you're going to die. So I did. It turned out that it was true. If I'd waited until morning, I might well have not been okay. There have been a couple of these things in my life. The idea that not every decision, not every even important decision by far, but a couple of times when it really mattered, and this thing with marrying Serenity was one of them.

Serenity Valley [00:37:29] I don't think he ever said to me. From the day that I told him I was sending my exit letter, in which I did do, to the day I walked up to him and announced, by the way, I have to be baptized, and then we are going to be sealed. I don't think he ever said to me in the, I don't know, four years between those two days, anything, anything coercive or even suggesting that it was more than a little bit important to him that I go back to the church. He always told me I was welcome to go with him, but that was all. And I don't think I would have gone back or even married him if he'd done it differently.

John Dehlin [00:38:06] So, RT was this you knowing that she would eventually come back, or you saying, I'm leaving it in God's hands and I'm open to whatever the results are.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:38:18] Yeah, definitely. Definitely the second one. I had no idea what Serenity is. A person with her own ability to make choices and goodness. I know that it's hard to get her to do things she doesn't want to do. If anybody on Earth knows that, I do. So I felt confident that. That, you know, I wasn't going to be. It seemed Like a good thing to do to marry her. I love her and I was happy with her. And at the end of the day, that was just that, you know, if it was a good thing to do, it was going to be a good thing to do. And you know, I don't know everything. I don't know the end from the beginning. And so I was just going to take it on faith.

John Dehlin [00:39:04] Excellent. So what were your first years like as being sort of a mixed faith couple? I'll leave it to either one of you to.

Serenity Valley [00:39:15] They were, they were a little bit tricky. When we moved to the Bay Area, I found myself living about a block away from a very small Episcopal church. And it was appealing. It was this run down, dingy little building that needed paint badly and it was basically just a sanctuary, just a, a chapel with nothing else and a little house nearby that they used to have parties in and they would ring the bells every Sunday morning. And you know, Jay was usually at church anyway, so there was nothing for me to do. So I began going over and walking into this church and eventually I began attending pretty regularly. And after a while, the woman who ran the church, she was the vicar, basically, she, she came up to me and said, I've seen you here. Would you like to be a member of the church? She hooked me up with some catechism lessons. I still had some pretty big issues with the whole God thing, but I liked going to this church. It was pretty and it was peaceful and there were a bunch of happy kids playing in the front during the service. They let me take communion even though I wasn't a church member. So I said, sure. I, I took these catechism classes and one of the things she had me do was to read this book called, I think it's called the Truth About Love by a man named Bill Countryman. It explained in very simple terms basically the idea about Jesus that I managed not to get somehow in 22 years of being Mormon. I don't know if I was just stiff necked or what it was, but it just got everything across to me. So this was a process that took about four years. Jay knew that I was going to this church and very occasionally he would go with me and sometimes I would go to his ward with him. We tried not to fight about religion, but I don't think he was really comfortable with my being an Episcopalian until I was confirmed. Because when I went and did the confirmation, it began to mean a whole lot to me. I don't know, rt, how did you feel about It. When I got involved at that parish,

Roasted Tomatoes [00:41:40] It was a complicated thing. The first and foremost thing was that I was just really glad that you'd found a way to be happy with God. That was the really important thing. But there were other things. The silliest thing in the world. I had this idea that lots of us have in the Latter Day Saint tradition that having a minister who's paid for work is just a really bad thing. So the woman who ran this parish, she got paid about $25,000 a year for her work there. And I just felt very, very worried about that, that this was really corrupting or bad because she was getting this money for teaching about Jesus. And it took me a little while to realize that actually it was barely any money and she had to have a whole other job to be able to even just live. And she was putting in all this time. And so, I mean, come on, what's the big deal? Why should I be so worried about this? Actually, I guess it was a really good thing in a lot of ways. It made me broaden my horizons. Still couldn't get past the English thing, though.

Serenity Valley [00:42:55] Yeah. RT is Irish American. His whole family, on both sides, comes from Ireland. And he was not happy with me about that. It made him feel very nationalist, I think, actually, when I began going into the Anglican Communion. But we tried not to fight about it, and we didn't really fight very often. And as I said, we occasionally went to each other's churches, and neither of us was particularly comfortable doing that, but we tried. And we didn't talk about religion at all. Even when I was confirmed, we didn't talk about religion. We didn't talk about God. It was just something that we did not talk about.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:43:40] Yeah. But, you know, as I said, it just felt to me like. It felt to me like Serenity was in a better place than she'd been. I really was really happy. And I think. I think. Yeah, and I think it made it easier between the two of us than when you'd had a harder time, you know, with religion.

Serenity Valley [00:44:02] Well, you know, I haven't really talked about my actual conversion yet, but when that happened.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] Tell us about that, you know.

Serenity Valley [00:44:13] Well, what actually happened was that my rector had given me this book to read by Bill Countryman. And it was a very simple book. And all it said was over and over and over, that no matter what you believe or no matter what you've been told, no matter what you think, God loves you, God really, really loves you, and God forgives you of your sins, even if you don't accept that and you keep on sinning, then you are not going to be in a place where you can get good things out of that. But God loves you, and God forgives you of your sins, even if you don't understand what. What your sins are. If you feel like you lived a really good life, God forgives you of your sins. It talked about why. It talked about what Jesus did. I began thinking a lot about this as I took this catechism course. And it just began brewing in the back of my mind. I still had all the feelings I had had before. All of the anger and all of the fear and all of the pain. And even with roasted tomatoes, even with our marriage, I was still very, very unhappy. Just because I was an unhappy person. Things were bad for me. They had always been bad. I don't think I understood that at the time. I thought it was just the way life was. But I found the Evangelical Christian TV channel, and I used to watch it because they played all of these horrifying apocalypse movies about how the Rapture was going to happen. I don't know about evangelical beliefs, but the Rapture was going to happen, and everyone who didn't agree with them was going to be left here horribly. Yeah. And they used to play these, especially from the 70s. These movies just relished the bad things that would happen to all of us. I used to watch these late at night because I think it confirmed to me how hateful people were, religious people at some basic level. Even though I was trying to be a religious person in my own way, and even though I loved my husband and knew he wasn't hateful, one night I watched one of these movies, and I don't know what happened. I just cracked. It was just too much. There was too much hatred in it, and life was too hard. And we had begun traveling to South America with some frequency for roasted tomatoes research. And I'd seen what life is like in the Third World, and I'd seen what real poverty is like. And I'd seen what people with giant tumors eating up their faces look like. And I'd seen what starvation looked like. And I grew up in Utah. I'd never seen those things. And I was beginning to understand what a dark and ugly place the world can be, at least without God. And I don't know. I just cracked that night. I felt so sick, and I couldn't do anything. Roasted tomatoes was already in bed. So I just went and I got in bed, and I lay there in the dark and he was asleep. And I couldn't handle it anymore. Yes, I had some kind of existential crisis, I don't know. But the despair that I think had always been with me every moment of my life as far back as I could remember surfaced and I couldn't handle it. And I couldn't handle the pain that I felt and I couldn't handle the anger that I felt and I couldn't handle the fear I felt about God. And suddenly my only choice was just to give it all up. I mean, I could keep on holding onto all of this stuff and suffer forever basically. Or I could reject it all, just throw it all away, just drop it into firely. And it was a scary, scary thing because the only way I knew to do that was what I'd been reading about as I read the New Testament for my catechism class. And what some friends of mine who hadn't even been Mormon, but at least they'd known what planet they were on as far as God was involved, had told me when I was in college. You have to have faith in Christ. And if you have faith in Christ, then that's the starting point and everything's going to be okay. And I just realized that I wasn't basically worth anything the way I was. Not because human beings aren't worth anything, but because I couldn't do anything. I was useless to myself and everyone else and I was unhappy. And suddenly I just knew that I had this choice. I could accept God and God's love. I could accept it in the form of Christ's atonement, His death on the cross, his resurrection, his payment for my sins. And I could give myself over completely and totally to his will, to God's will, I mean, and to Christ's sacrifice and their love. Or I could be like I was forever. I had to do one or the other. I couldn't not do one and get anywhere. I was really frightened because I think at some level in the back of my mind I'd always felt like really, really giving myself up to God, really giving away my sins the way that guy in the Book of Mormon says I would give up all my sins to know thee. I think I felt like doing that would lead to some kind of disillusion of my personality. I would stop being me because those things were me. I felt like those things were me. And I felt like the pain. I just felt like it was all me. And I suddenly realized as I lay there in bed that I would rather cease to exist than go on the way I was because I wasn't a bad person. I didn't go out and do anything that I thought of as bad. I tried to be good and loving and kind, but it just wasn't working. And so I just decided to give it all up. And I didn't want any of it anymore. I didn't want a single bit of it. I just turned over and I thought, okay, it's yours. I'll do whatever you want. Just tell me. And it fixed everything. Suddenly, it's not like the bad things in my life went away. It's not like all the pain I ever felt went away. It's not like I no longer felt guilt. It's not like I no longer sin. It's not like I no longer worry about my relationship with God. But I just suddenly knew that that was the right thing to do. That God did love me. God does live. That Jesus did live and did die. And he does live and he did fix everything. I don't think I've ever doubted it since then. And that just changed everything for me. I didn't tell Jay about it for a couple of years because I didn't know if he would understand.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] For a couple of years?

Serenity Valley [00:51:26] Yeah, a couple of years. Well, you know, I had this experience. I had this spiritual rebirth that I'd only ever heard described by evangelical Christians. And a few people at my church, because people in the church I grew up with didn't talk about that kind of thing. I don't know. I think it isn't that uncommon, but I think people think it's too private to talk about. And I know Jay wasn't going to talk to me about his experience because I wasn't very receptive for a long time. But, yeah, it changed everything. You know,

Roasted Tomatoes [00:52:13] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

Finding the Way Back to the LDS Church

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 11

John Dehlin [00:00:12] So how did this experience with Christ and God and Christ's love and being saved, how did that then eventually orient you back towards the LDS faith? Because you very well could have stayed Episcopalian.

Serenity Valley [00:00:25] Yeah, you know, I thought I was going to. I thought God was going to be perfectly happy with me as an Episcopalian, because that's where I. He fixed everything while I was an Episcopalian. Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:00:41] Sure.

Serenity Valley [00:00:43] I was even running the kids program at my parish, and I was having a wonderful time. And then, I don't know, over a period of maybe two months, maybe a year after my conversion experience, I began to feel more and more strongly like I wasn't supposed to go to the parish anymore. And I didn't really know why. And I actually thought that what was happening was that I was tired of running the kids program and that I was looking for a way to get out of it and leaving the parish would be a way out of it. We didn't have very many people there who were willing to do anything. Honestly, it was a really small group and it was hard to extract yourself from one of the volunteer jobs. It's not like a calling in the Mormon Church. You volunteer to do it, but then no one else is going to volunteer to take it from you. So it's not like they rotate you. But I don't know. After about two months of feeling more and more like I didn't want to go and more and more like I shouldn't go and less and less comfortable there, I kind of stopped going and thought I was just taking a break for a couple of weeks. And then one Saturday morning, I woke up. I mean, literally, I just sat bolt upright in bed at about 6:30 in the morning, and I looked over at Jay and he was unconscious. And I thought, I can't go back there. And I was filled with this intense, intense dread of going back there. And it was really weird, actually. I woke him up and I told him about it and I said, I just can't go back. And we talked about it for a while and, you know, it's private, but I figured out that I actually, you know, I'd actually been ignoring a message. And I did agree when, you know, when I converted to do whatever God

Serenity Valley [00:02:25] said,

Serenity Valley [00:02:27] I just hadn't realized that I didn't know what it felt like.

John Dehlin [00:02:31] That little thing there that you promised.

Serenity Valley [00:02:34] Yeah. You know, and it was this. It had begun as this little nagging, the kind of still small voice, and then it had escalated up to shouting and everything else. But I just thought it was me being lazy. There's an experience, yeah, the Holy Ghost sounded like me being lazy, but there you have it. So I stopped going. I don't know, about another year after that we were down in Venezuela and I hadn't thought seriously about going back to the church. About three weeks before what I'm about to tell you about happened, a friend of mine in Venezuela said, so you grew up Mormon. Do you think you'll ever go back? And I said, no, I don't think so. You know, they're nice and everything, but I really don't think I belong there. And then one day I was sitting in the living room and I suddenly felt this intense, intense compulsion to rejoin the church. I hadn't thought about it and it was this intense wait, I had to rejoin the church. I had to. And I thought, I don't want to rejoin the church, I'm not going back to the church, I don't want to be Mormon. And suddenly I thought, well, gee, either I can go back and be Mormon or this feeling will go away and I'll never have it again. And I didn't want that because it was a nice intense wait, if that makes sense. So I went into the bedroom where Roasted Tomatoes was watching a basketball game on tv and I said to him, rt, when we get back to the US in three weeks, I need to be re baptized. And his jaw kind of dropped open. Yeah, rt, why don't you take it from here?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:04:15] Yeah. Jumping back, I guess a year or two on this when we got married. From my point of view, the experience of being a married person who is married to someone not in the church was interesting. I mean, people don't really know how to respond in a family ward to some 20something guy who's got a wedding ring on but no visible wife who's attending every week.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] Right.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:04:50] So I'm sitting there in the back row in sacrament meeting, whenever going along. Fortunately I had a couple of friends in the ward, people that I'd known from previously and whatever. And so I was able to fit in and eventually even got a calling. There was the gospel doctrine teacher. I had a, a fan club, no less, as the gospel doctrine teacher. There was a group of, ooh, can

Serenity Valley [00:05:09] I tell him, can I tell him?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:05:11] The blue haired. Yes, sure.

Serenity Valley [00:05:14] Okay. So the few times I went to the ward with him, it is the Bay Area, it's a little bit different. This group of four elderly widows, they were all, I would say, upwards of 75 years old, kept running into me. And when they figured out who I was. They grabbed onto me, grabbed my arm and they said, oh, you're RT's wife. We love RT. He's our favorite teacher. And then one of them said, just so you know who we are, we're the ward's Marxist feminist contingent. And I looked at them and realized they were serious. They were these 80 year old Marxist feminists.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] Wow, Sounds like a Monty Python skit.

Serenity Valley [00:05:56] It was pretty cool.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:05:58] Did I ever mention that my.

Serenity Valley [00:06:00] I really like our wardrobe. Yeah. I do want to add one thing

Roasted Tomatoes [00:06:05] though,

Serenity Valley [00:06:07] which was that the first thing out of Jay's mouth that night that I told him I was going to be rebaptized was, but Taryn, if you do that, then someday I might be a bishop.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:06:20] That's true. I'd always kind of figured that I would never have to worry about any of the really heavy callings because, you know, I mean, people didn't know how to deal with me. And so I figured, hey, it's going to be a whole life of cub master and gospel doctrine teacher. I was actually, in a way, I was kind of happy with that. So when I found out that Serenity was in fact going to be coming back to the church, well, it was actually in a way, standing outside the situation and looking in. I'm suddenly this kind of faith promoting story, missionary hero, right? I mean, I married this woman and I brought her back into the church and saved her or whatever. But in actual reality, I just kind of stood there the whole time. I just kind of stood there and watched. And I wasn't really quite sure what my new role was. Right. I mean, suddenly we're both going to be active Latter Day Saints and how do I do this? Are we going to be reading the Book of Mormon together before bed? How is this going to work? It was this whole new thing to negotiate through.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] You thought you'd been exonerated from all that extra stuff.

Serenity Valley [00:07:47] Big changes, you know. Also, I remember when we went to our ward when I began going with him and when we would talk to both sides of our extended family, people kept kind of guilt tripping RT because they were concerned. You know, he's not exactly orthodox. He never really has been.

Rebaptism and Life After Returning

Roasted Tomatoes [00:08:13] Right.

Serenity Valley [00:08:15] They were concerned that something that he would say about church history or about theology or something else would disillusion me. And I would leave the church, not realizing that I was coming back after hearing every negative thing anyone had ever said about the church and that my faith was not in the organization. Even though I love the church, I think it's as Good. A church, as you're going to find on the earth. People were really worried about that. Do you remember that? RT yes.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:08:46] People kept telling me about how I have to be careful not to damage Serenity's fragile testimony. And I'm laughing in the back of my mind. Here is a woman who has been bonked on the head by God because she didn't get morbid quick enough. And somehow something that I'm going to say is going to get in the way of that. I don't think think so. This was. I don't know, it was really kind of an interesting thing. My favorite part of this, in a way, is how hard it was for us to get Serenity baptized when she had left.

Serenity Valley [00:09:29] It was impossible almost. The bishop was thrilled. I went to this guy's office and I said, hi. Three years ago, I had my names taken, my name taken off the records. I need to be rebaptized.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:09:40] I need to be re.

Serenity Valley [00:09:41] Baptized now. And he said, why? And I said, God wants me to be rebaptized. And he said, okay. It took the missionaries four months to get me baptized. He was actually calling them, asking them what was going on.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] So it was Salt Lake.

Serenity Valley [00:09:55] No, it wasn't. The church had no problem with,

Roasted Tomatoes [00:10:01] was that the missionaries just didn't do a baptismal commitment. They didn't. They came over and did the first discussion, and then they came over and over and over again, sort of intermediate thing. And then they came over and did a little thing where they did stacking paper cups to show us the organization of the church. And then they finally gave us the second discussion. And here I am. I was Mr. Missionary. I knew, yeah, okay, here we go. At the end of the second discussion, we'll give baptismal commitment. We can set up a date, and then we'll have to get things moving. So. So we get to the end of the second discussion and they've done the whole thing and talked about how we need to be baptized so that we can follow Christ. And then they don't issue a baptismal invitation.

John Dehlin [00:10:42] Oh, my goodness.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:10:43] It goes on and on and on for months.

Serenity Valley [00:10:46] We figured out eventually how we get

Roasted Tomatoes [00:10:48] them to set a date.

John Dehlin [00:10:50] Dang.

Serenity Valley [00:10:51] We figured out eventually that what was going on probably was that these kids never got people who really wanted to listen to them in this area in Northern California. They sure didn't get people who called them up and said, I need to be baptized now. Now.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:11:06] Did you hear me?

Serenity Valley [00:11:07] I think they were drawing it out because it gave them something to do, right?

John Dehlin [00:11:11] Oh, Gosh.

Serenity Valley [00:11:15] We actually went through three sets of companionships.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] Wow. Oh, my goodness. So those first elders, blue and they could add.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:11:25] Yeah, probably nearly the only one they'd have gotten during the mission. But we finally did get through and we got to do the re baptism. I actually got to baptize my wife. Not too many people get to do that, you know, it was really kind of nice. And when we did it, right after I pulled Serenity out of the water, I gave her a kiss.

Serenity Valley [00:11:49] And not thinking anything of it in

Roasted Tomatoes [00:11:51] the chapel, you know, I always kissed her anyway. But anyway, everyone in the baptismal font area sort of sighed. And for weeks after that, people came up to us and said, oh, you're so romantic. So it was a nice thing.

Serenity Valley [00:12:08] Women were coming up to me for about six months afterward asking me for marital advice, asking me for, you know, how does your relationship with your husband so good. Because a lot of the word was at the baptism since it took me so long to get the discussions and they all knew me, right. And they all saw. It was kind of weird. I was this 25 year old woman and there were women almost twice my age asking me about how to talk to their husbands. It was a little disorienting.

John Dehlin [00:12:37] Interesting. Well, that's a neat story. So where are you guys now? How are things going now? And how have things shaken out post baptism?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:12:50] Quite well.

Serenity Valley [00:12:52] Yeah.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:12:53] Well, we're totally Mormon.

Serenity Valley [00:12:55] My theory is that things must be going well because God hasn't tried to frighten me lately with strange emotional experiences. I had a couple of flaming swords through the heart and I figured, that's not happening. I must be listening.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] Okay, that's good to know. How long has it been since your baptism then?

Serenity Valley [00:13:17] I think it's been about two and a half years.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:13:20] It must be two and a half years because we got sealed about a year and a half ago.

Serenity Valley [00:13:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] Wow. So preparing for the temple, you guys prepared for the temple? You were sealed? You had RTS prepared family there, I imagine.

Serenity Valley [00:13:38] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:13:42] And our home teacher. And after we got sealed, we both congratulated the home teacher.

Serenity Valley [00:13:47] You know, we ended up in a reception line.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:13:49] So we said congratulations right back to him.

Serenity Valley [00:13:53] He looked at us like we were crazy. But, you know, it had been such a long day.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:13:58] Yeah. My family was so happy. I mean, you know, it was. It was the thing that I think they'd been praying for for years. And that was a great. It was really nice for us to be able to make them that happy. I mean, It was something that everybody wanted Right. Well, everybody except for Taryn's family, but

Serenity Valley [00:14:21] that's a different story. Well, you know, my brother was like, oh, so you're religious again. Cool. He's, he's a lapsed Catholic at this point, so he's pretty much cool with anything. My stepmother is a double lapsed Catholic who didn't grow up in Utah. She likes Mormons. She's not interested in joining the church, but she likes Mormons because they were so nice to her when she moved out to Utah, I don't know, 15 years ago, and she was all alone, so she was very positive about it. My dad has tried to be part of positive about it. He's not comfortable with it. But on the other hand, he's recently taken to doing things like announcing that he's got the Aaronic priesthood. So I guess he's having some kind of Mormon identity thing going on. And my rebaptism in our ceiling seems to have influenced that. So it's going pretty well, I think.

Doubts, Beliefs, and Views on Church Doctrine

John Dehlin [00:15:16] Okay, well, this has been absolutely wonderful to hear both of your stories and how you've come together to be unified in your faith. I, I know my listeners are gonna, are gonna love having listened to it, but I, I'm not. Even though it's midnight here in, in Logan, Utah and it's 11 o' clock there, I'm not quite happy ending this podcast because one of the things we believe most strongly at Mormon Stories is an open forum that people can be open about their views and thoughts without any fear of getting dirty looks during gospel doctrine class or without any fear of retribution. And we believe in an open forum not just to let people feel the catharsis of being open and honest, but. But there are a lot of people suffering in silence out there who maybe have a non traditional view of the church or struggling with certain issues and wonder whether they really fit, whether they really belong and wonder if they need to leave because they see things differently than the average vocal sort of zealot guy in Sunday school or in priesthood. And they say maybe this church really doesn't belong to me. So I happen to know through your guys blog postings and my relationship with you guys over the past little bit that you guys while you're active in the church and faithful, I wouldn't necessarily peg you guys as having mainstream, run of the mill, simple testimonies. I would Describe at least RT's testimony is being somewhat nuanced because we've chatted back and forth a bit about that. So I would love to take some time and just ask you guys. I'll pepper you guys with some questions about your faith, ask you to sort of tell me where you stand. Maybe I'll rotate between the two of you asking you some questions. And, you know, if the other who didn't speak is in agreement, we'll just move on. But if the other wants to sort of supplement or views things differently, then we'll welcome them to respond as well. So let's go ahead and just start right from the top, as it were. Would you guys describe your belief in God as being an absolute knowledge that there's a God or more of a faith and a hope? You. You've spoken about receiving manifestations or clear signals from God or clear communication. So does that leave you in the category of saying that, you know, God lives? Where do you guys stand there?

Serenity Valley [00:18:12] You know, that's a very tricky question, right? I mean, I think. Look, to be perfectly honest, I would be lying if I said I didn't have doubts. I mean, there are days when I sit there and think, wow, maybe we're just going to die. It's the end. But I have faith that God lives and that there's something more going on. And, you know, it's not sort of crazy nutso faith. I feel like it's grounded in a real experience, a subjective experience, but a real one. But I would say, you know, and there's a way that in the Mormon tradition, we like to call that kind of faith knowledge. And so I can say, yeah, I know that God lives, but in another sense that it is really kind of a faith.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:18:57] Now, for my part, I think that I really know that God lives, but it never really leaves my mind that there's an outside chance that I'm completely delusional. And I guess it just doesn't really bother me because I can't live like that. So I think I know that God lives. And functionally, that's knowing God lives, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] Sure, sure. Okay, so the next step is Christianity. You know, we talked earlier about if Christianity is true, over half the world is kind of hosed. Unless, of course, the Mormon exceptions for proxy work for the dead become legitimate in some significant way. Do you guys see all the world in the hereafter funneling through Christ? Or do you sort of take the many ways up Mount Fuji approach where some people can be saved through Muhammad and some through Buddha and some through even agnosticism? Carl Sagan, whatever. Or do you literally see every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus is the Christ, etcetera Yeah, for

Serenity Valley [00:20:05] me, personally, I really am a believing Christian in my feeling of this. Christ is the truth, the way, the life. For me, that's the only way that I know of to really connect to God. Now I know that other people experience God in other ways. And, you know, I obviously can't say what God is going to do with respect to those people, but I know that for me it's very important to have that connection to Jesus. And I think it's important for me to try to share that with others.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:20:43] Yeah. And I guess it's always there, the thought that, hey, if God can fix me, God can fix anyone. And I'm really not someone who should be arguing with how he chooses to do it. But I do tend to think that he's going to do it for everyone else the same way he did it for me, because I don't really feel like I'm particularly special, if that makes sense. I guess I. I think there's probably that, you know, probably is Christ that we're going to be. I think everyone needs to know about Christ.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Yep. Okay, that's good. Well, so that then if we keep sort of narrowing down the funnel, the next question sort of comes to, you know, Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church because we've gone from, you know, a population of 6 billion down to a population of maybe 1 or 2 billion. And so the next question is, do you guys view the Mormon Church as God's one true, blessed, official franchise sort of church upon the earth? Which means that we've narrowed down from 2 billion down to 12 million, but really only 5 million of those are active. So do you guys literally view the church, Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints, as God's only approved, official, sanctioned church on the earth Now?

Serenity Valley [00:22:08] I mean, before I answer that, I'm going to point out that there's a huge. I mean, there are a huge range of different things that people within the LDS Church actually think about that question. I mean, prophets have written different things about whether people will have second and third and fourth chances in the next life and so on and so forth. So, so that's the way of establishing the fact that I'm going to say that, you know. No, come on. I mean, if you manage to get a connection with Jesus and you do it without ever having heard of the Mormons, I think you're going to be fine.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:22:44] I guess. I think my story speaks for itself. Jesus saved me when I wasn't Mormon and he, you know, God told me to come back here and it was that or, you know, not have God anymore. But I don't think it was because that was the only way God could save me.

Serenity Valley [00:23:04] I mean, it is the case that, well, the both of us find our relationship with Christ nowadays through the LDS Church completely.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:23:13] Really?

John Dehlin [00:23:14] So do either of you bristle or shudder or take umbrage in, you know, the conference talks where you just hear it emphasized over and over and over? We have the keys. We have the authority. We're the one true church. Does that send chills up your spine? Does that frustrate you? Or are you immune to that, or where do you stand on that?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:23:39] I think it sounds weird, honestly. I don't mean a church is a collection of people. How can you have a true collection of people? The church is the body of Christ. How can you have a real body of Christ and a fake body of Christ? I don't think that works. I just think it's a very poor choice of phrasing.

Serenity Valley [00:24:01] I mean, I absolutely accept that the leaders of our church have authority to lead our church. They obviously do. God doesn't call you to do something without giving you authority to do it. They have the authority to do baptisms and temple ordinances and, you know, absolutely. I absolutely accept that. And, you know, subjectively, for a lot of people, I understand that the LDS Church is the only true church from my point of view. For a lot of us, it may be the only true church in the sense that it's the church that God wants us to be in.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:24:34] Yeah, for me, it's functionally the only true church because, you know, I can't leave it.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] Right.

Serenity Valley [00:24:40] But if someone says to me that they found a relationship with Christ through the Catholic Church and they're very happy there, I'm happy to have a dialogue with them. I'm happy to see if there's anything I can add to what they have. I'm happy to see if there's anything they have that they can add to me, but I don't feel like I need to sort of twist their arm into anything.

John Dehlin [00:24:59] Right. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. So let's move to Joseph Smith then. You know, it's obvious that you guys have read a considerable amount about new Mormon history, about all the different controversies and issues surrounding Joseph Smith's early life. How have you come to reconcile all the glorious charisma and power that clearly was manifested, along with all the incredible foibles and mistakes and sometimes grave issues that also seem to pop up in Joseph Smith's life? Where do you guys stand on the prophet.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:25:43] I think that if he hadn't been a human and potentially a human who did all kinds of weird things and maybe even some bad things, the only other way for him to have the rest of what you were talking about would have been to be a resurrected perfect being an angel, then he wouldn't have been a prophet, you know?

Serenity Valley [00:25:59] Right, Yeah. I mean, I totally believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I mean, in a way, in fact, that we haven't seen since he was standing up there and teaching Jesus to the heathens. Really? In a way. If you look at the early 19th century America, there were a whole lot of people who didn't have a church and didn't have a religion, and he was standing up and saying, no, look, Jesus is the way. And here you go. And that is what a prophet is. I mean, I totally. Anything about. We want to talk about maybe, you know, the search stones in the Book of Mormon. Okay, that's a little funny to me. It's an interesting story, the polygamy thing. I have serious doubts that God wanted polygamy to happen, but all of that, I can say all of that and still say, yeah, he was a prophet because he did bring a whole bunch of people to Christ. And you know, you can't do that without God wanting you to. Right.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:26:54] You know, beyond that, hey, you know, the seer stone stuff, that kind of thing. So, you know, God talks to me through funny feelings and compulsions and. And creepy movies, quite frankly.

John Dehlin [00:27:08] Right.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:27:10] You know, I just don't have a problem.

Serenity Valley [00:27:17] I'm not one of these people like Michael Quinn who's going to stand up and say that I absolutely believe in the seer stones. You know, I'm just not sure. It seems a little funny to me. But on the other hand, who cares? It's a good book. I mean, it's a book that brought me to Christ. Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:27:35] Yeah, I think it could do that if it weren't from God.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Okay, so that takes us to the next big question as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Where do you guys stand on that?

Serenity Valley [00:27:44] Well, I actually said online today that I am trying to advance. My new agenda is to advance in Andean limited geography with alpacas as the horses, because frankly, they're far more horse like than sloths. That's where I'm going to stand on that.

John Dehlin [00:28:04] Okay. Is that tongue in cheek or are you serious?

Roasted Tomatoes [00:28:06] He's joking.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] Okay.

Serenity Valley [00:28:09] No, look, I like to read American Anthropology. It's A hobby of mine. I study Latin America for a living. Not in the ancient past, the present, but in terms of, you know, I have a total interest in the region, and I'm not a professional at all. So I'm not going to render sort of independent judgment, but I haven't seen any evidence that compels me to believe that there were ancient Hebrews in Middle America.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:28:40] And beyond that, you know, I gained my testimony. I was converted by reading the New Testament. And even before I read it, I knew how it was written. I knew that most of it was written long after the people who were the claimed authors actually lived. I knew that it was written often in committee, and I knew the way that the New Testament was actually collected and constructed by the early Christian church. And that didn't bother me for the most part. The documents in the New Testament weren't actually from the people they claimed to be, but they were clearly what needed to be in the New Testament. I guess I don't care if Joseph Smith got a revelation that was a direct translation of an ancient document, or if Joseph Smith got a revelation that was a story that was some kind of universal truth rather than Bob and Nephite's journal. You know, I don't care.

Serenity Valley [00:29:44] Amen on that one. You know, I'm not going to stand up and say that it didn't happen. The evidence can never definitively prove this sort of thing. And just in case, I sort of don't want to hurt Nephi's feelings because he says he's going to see us at the Judgment Bar. But if it turns out that it was inspired fiction, if it turns out that it was pseudepigraphic, just like Serenity said, that doesn't make something not scripture, right?

John Dehlin [00:30:11] Yeah, it's God speaking to us through whatever veils he can speak to us through.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:30:17] Exactly.

What Would You Change and What Reaffirms Your Faith

John Dehlin [00:30:19] Okay, so I'll end, if it's okay, with two final questions. I would love. So you guys have sort of strayed and come back, so to speak. These are my words, not yours. But you've each had your journeys where you were in, and then you felt distanced and removed and detached in certain levels, and then now you both sort of feel like you're stronger and more committed and closer to the LDS faith than you've ever been before. So I'd love to hear a sort of a candid review on both your parts of the things that still frustrate you, the things that you wish could change. If you could go up to the prophet and say, hey, prophet, here are five things I need you just to fix. What would be the things that you feel would make the church move a lot closer towards Zion, towards what you would really love the church to be. And then I'll have you each sort of flip that coin, and we'll end by you saying, what are the things that just bring you the most joy? The things that reaffirm to you your faith and your conviction and your certainty that you've made the right move back towards the faith again. What are the things you love most about the church? So I'll have you take both those questions as we wrap up.

Serenity Valley [00:31:46] Okay. Starting out, as a lot of people would be, I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I am not a person who's been called by God to run the church. And so I'm a little bit uncomfortable saying what I would change. But another way of trying to answer that question would be to say something like, the things that, in my experience, are a little bit hard. And I can say, I can answer that. I think I find it a little bit hard to relate to our current stance towards gay and lesbian people. I find it hard to relate to our current stances on some women's issues. I find it very hard to relate to the way we've approached multiculturalism, which is to say that the way we are avoiding approaching multiculturalism, these may be the best decisions that the people in question can make. And, you know, who am I to say that I could do better? But they are things that frustrate me,

Roasted Tomatoes [00:32:59] I guess. Putting in the same disclaimer as Jay, you know, I'm not in charge of the church. God hasn't given me that kind of responsibility. I'll tell you what I wish we did and what I hope that we will see in the future, because, you know, it would be great. I wish that we could figure out a way to welcome especially our members in the third world into the church more completely than I've seen us doing while we've traveled. And I wish we could find a way to even out the distribution of fast and testimony, because the way it is now, the US Is actually a net importer of fast offerings, which is. Isn't that true?

Serenity Valley [00:33:49] That's a story that I've heard. I have been unable to get it definitively, either confirmed or denied, but it doesn't.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:33:56] I guess at some level, it doesn't really matter. At the very least, we certainly aren't sending the kind of help that could be useful to many of our members in the third world out of the country. And I understand that's because we're taking care of the saints in this country. But I hope that someday we'll be so righteous that the leaders can say, hey, we have all of this extra stuff in the us let's send it to the people in Peru. Let's send it to the starving saints who can't afford to buy scriptures in Caracas, Venezuela. These are true things. I hope that someday we'll be able to see that.

Serenity Valley [00:34:30] Amen and Amen.

Serenity Valley [00:34:33] Very good.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:34:34] I think that might partly be a problem with us members, with how we think about these kinds of things more than anything else, more than the leadership.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] Right.

Serenity Valley [00:34:43] So you also asked us to talk about what really reaffirms our faith.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] Yes. Let's end on the very positive note.

Serenity Valley [00:34:50] Absolutely. So for me, there are lots of things. One is taking the sacrament. That moment of sitting back and reflecting on Christ and my relationship with God through Christ always brings me back to what really matters in this. Another thing, and this may sound funny to people, is church history. You know, I mean, for everybody, this is a big issue. The church history you can study your way out of. No, no, this is our heritage. This is who we are. I mean, you look back at these people who cared about the church enough. I was reading William McClellan's journal and this guy, he ran into missionaries and immediately left his home and ran off to investigate the church and basically never went back. And I mean, the kind of belief that would lead you to do something like that, it's awe inspiring. That is one of these things that really, really brings home to me why I'm doing this stuff. And then last but not least, it's, you know, the wonderful people in our ward, the people we know online, and these people who reflect the love of Christ back to me also, also remind me why we're sort of doing this.

John Dehlin [00:36:08] That's very nice. Very good.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:36:10] When I came back to the church, I was really anxious about talking to people about why I came back. I didn't want to tell them that God had told me to because I found that it implied for people that God had given me some kind of witness of the church and he hasn't. And I think that's probably because I'm someone who needs to depend totally on God and totally on Christ and not on anyone else, and just trust them that this is where I need to be and just trust them that the things that the church wants me to do are things I should do. Trust God and Christ, not really trust the people around me, because God and Christ are the ones I avoided for so long. I was worried about telling people this. I thought that they wouldn't understand me. And if they did understand me, they would think that I was denying the church somehow, or they would think there was something wrong with my testimony. And I had a couple of bad experiences where people asked me to bear my testimony, and I did. And I just, you know, I just told them the bare bones of, you know, my faith and the atonement and God. And they got kind of upset because I didn't even think about it at the beginning, but they felt like I was leaving the important stuff out. I was leaving the truth of the church and the prophets and things like that. Partly things that I felt were kind of implied, honestly, in my belief that God wanted me to be Mormon. And so every single time I bear my testimony and someone says, I understand, or they say, that sounds like something, that. That sounds like me or that sounds like someone I know or, wow, that's really different from my experience. But I'm so glad it happened. Whenever this happens, and it happens every time I talk to anyone about. Makes me feel so good to know that people want me to be here. God isn't the only one who thinks this is the right thing for me. It makes me feel welcome and it makes me feel loved, and, you know, that that's Christ's love, and that reaffirms my faith in Christ and my place in the church.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] Well, beautiful. Now, I'm going to violate what I said before and I'm going to ask one last question.

Serenity Valley [00:38:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:38:18] This is, you know, you could consider this a question for me, but I think there's a lot out there who could really use your perspective in giving an answer to this. There's a lot of folks out there who. Who have read the church history, the new Mormon history, and feel like it's not being discussed candidly in church and that it's even being glossed over a bit. And they go to church and they feel like sort of the dogmatic, zealot type folks have the microphone most of the time in sacrament meeting and are the most vocal people in Sunday school and in priesthood. And they really feel out of step with the mainstream church. They almost feel like they don't belong. They almost feel like it's not their people anymore. And so you guys have obviously found a way to bridge that, to feel at peace. What advice can you give people who are struggling to feel like they still fit in, to feel like this is still their church? What advice can you Give them coping mechanisms or perspectives so that they can find peace and happiness in the faith, feeling at times so different from the mainstream.

Serenity Valley [00:39:33] Just don't let them take the church from you. This is our church. It's all of our church. Don't let anyone define you out. This is our community. Look, it's absolutely true that we don't talk about our history as openly as maybe some of us would like to at church. We had a meet Sunday school lesson just recently on the polygamy period in Utah history, in church history, and we never talked about polygamy even once. We never talked about theocracy. None of these things happened. You know, we somehow went through this entire lesson with the succession crisis with the church in Utah period, and no one mentioned the Council of 50. And, you know, I sit there and I feel really frustrated because we're missing a big part of the story here. You know, no 19th century Mormon would have recognized the story of Mormonism without the temporal kingdom of God and polygamy in the mix. That was a big part of what they thought they were. And somehow for us, we've redefined that period as not being about that. And, you know, I feel my frustrations and I sit there in the back of the room and I say to myself, these other people in the room don't know about this stuff. And if I were to say something, they would think I was just being aggressive. It would disrupt the meeting. And so I just sort of sit there and Serenity and I go home and complain afterwards. And then we write a post and put it on the Internet where a bunch of other people who know exactly what we know be able to look at it and everything will be fine. You know, no one can say that we don't belong other than God or someone God sent to say that. And as long as we want to stay. And I'm not saying by we, I don't mean, you know, me and Serenity, but come on, there's a larger we out there. The people who feel like there's maybe a pressure to not be like that in the church, you know, to not really understand that Joseph Smith had a bunch of wives or something. Come on, we can combine a real understanding of our history and a real awareness of the problems with belonging to the community. All we have to do is just decide we're going to do it right.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:41:51] There's one thing I'd like to add to that, which is that, you know, my habit is to get annoyed with people who I feel like are trying to avoid this or trying to get the rest of us to avoid this. You know, I read, you know, occasionally I'll read Meridian Radiant magazine, for instance, and I go, oh, how can they ignore our history? And then I think, wait, I'm supposed to treat these people with love and respect. And if I met them or talked to them, I'm fairly sure they would treat me that way. And, you know, it helps me a lot to remember that if someone knows about this stuff and is avoiding it, it's because it genuinely causes them some kind of anxiety. And we're going to have to work a way around that as a community. And if they don't know, you know, it's not their fault that the whole thing, you know, the whole thing is weird for me, the way we're dealing with it. So that helps me a lot, you know.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] Right. In other words, the church isn't just the place where we witness Christ like acts, but where we actually learn to become more Christlike.

Serenity Valley [00:42:50] Yes, I would hope so. Yeah. And this is Serenity's take on this is just great. I think this is a great way to be Christlike. And, you know, I mean, the other thing to remember is that when we think about the history, we have a temptation to think about it as, does this prove the church is true or prove it's false? That's a really reductive and unhelpful way to think about history. I mean, it's history of a bunch of people trying to do God's will. And there are also a bunch of really interesting stories. And, you know, there are a lot of ways to approach this other than, well, did Joseph really have the first vision? I mean, come on, let's. Let's keep. Let's move on.

John Dehlin [00:43:29] Right, Right. Well, Serenity Valley and roasted tomatoes. I can't thank you both enough for your patience and your willingness to come on Mormon stories. I've certainly thoroughly enjoyed both of your stories and your perspective.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

Serenity Valley [00:43:50] Well, thank you, John. This has been a lot of fun.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:43:52] Thank you. It really has. It's been great.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] Yeah. And I want to encourage everyone to please visit the Latter Day Saint Liberation Front website. What's the exact URL, guys?

Serenity Valley [00:44:04] It's ldsliberationfront.blogs.com or you can find us through the ldsblogs.org list.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] And I'm pretty sure we link to you from Mormon stories as well. Yeah. So again, you guys have an inspirational story. I'm inspired by it. So I appreciate you taking the time to share it with us. I know our listeners appreciate it. Well, please, those of you who are listening, please go up to MormonStories.org and post your thoughts and comments. We'd love to hear from you. If you, if you like the things you've heard, please let us know. If you have follow up questions for Serenity Valley or Roasted tomatoes, please feel free to post those, too. I'm sure you guys are willing to monitor that and chime in as necessary. Is that right?

Serenity Valley [00:44:56] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] And once again, we'd just like to thank you most of all for coming on. We hope to have others of you come forth to share your stories as well. Well, but with this episode, we'd like to go ahead and come to a close and invite you to please join us next time here on Mormon Stories. Thanks so much. And again, thanks to you both for coming on.

Roasted Tomatoes [00:45:18] Thank you.

Serenity Valley [00:45:19] Okay,

John Dehlin [00:45:24] The depth of your dreams, the

Roasted Tomatoes [00:45:27] height of your wishes.

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