Introduction to the Episode

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 7

John Lynch [00:00:09] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

John Dehlin [00:00:14] Hello, and welcome to the Mormon Stories Podcast. My name is John Dehlin. I'm very excited to be with you today. It's been a little bit of time since I've done the last podcast. I've been Busy over on sunstoneblog.com helping out with their stuff and preparing for the Seattle Sunstone Symposium. But I hadn't forgot about you.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] I'm very excited to continue Mormon Stories, and I'm sorry for the pause, but here we are today. We have a very exciting presentation for you. But before we begin, it appears as though Mormon Stories is doing pretty well as a podcast. I think we have around 250 subscribers formally, and I would estimate around 300 listeners worldwide.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] So that's quite exciting. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please remember to email us with your thoughts or questions@mormonstoriesmail.com but more preferably, we'd love you to go up to MormonStories.org, our blog, and comment post. Comments. When we post this podcast, go up there and start a conversation. We want to have a little community that continues to be nurtured around discussing these stories and their relevance and importance to you and to the overall community.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] So with that, I'd like to go ahead and begin this podcast. I'm very excited about today's guest, but before I introduce him, let me just give a brief introduction. Some of you may have listened to a previous podcast that I did where I interviewed a young man named Hyrum who has left the church, the Mormon Church, and who runs a website now called thechurchisnottrue.com and that podcast was called Inside the Mind of an Anti Mormon. And what I tried to do was not bash with Hyrum or denigrate him or anything of that nature, but. But I just tried to discuss his perspective and why he does the things he does and why he feels the way he feels.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] And if you remember that presentation, I started out by saying that I wasn't crazy about labels. That I think within the context of Mormon studies, labels can be quite damaging to conversation, to understanding, to empathy, etc. And I mentioned that I wasn't crazy about the term anti Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Well, up until about a year ago, I viewed the term apologist with as much sense of it being a pejorative as anti Mormon. But it turns out that there are many people who actually bear that moniker with pride, the apologist. And so what I wanted to do is bring someone from, let's say, the other side of the philosophical or doctrinal spectrum on Mormon stories to tell their story.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] And so today I have invited a man named John Lynch. John lynch is from Campbell, California, which is in the Bay Area. He is currently semi retired, formerly has worked as an executive in high tech companies. He is a former proudly married, 17 years of marriage actually, with three wonderful children. He tells me he studied at Brigham Young University, studied international relations there, and he's currently serving as the chairman of the board for fair, which for those of you who don't know, FAIR is the foundation for apologetic information and research. You can go up to FairLDs.org and check out what they do. But without any further ado, welcome to Mormon Stories. John Lynch.

John Lynch [00:04:17] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:04:18] Yeah, I'm personally very excited to have you on. I'm very grateful that you accepted this invitation because I guess you don't know who's out there when they're asking you to come on their program, huh? It's kind of a shot in the dark, would you say?

John Lynch [00:04:33] Yeah, that was one of our concerns when we first heard that you were asking for someone from FAIR to come on to your show. But you know, you've proven yourself to be a pretty even handed guy with people and so we're happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:04:46] Well, thank you very much. Well, the way I'd like to begin, and for me it's about the most valuable part of the whole presentation, is just to hear a bit about your story, your journey, you know, tell us about how you were raised within the context of the church, what your experience was as a child, as a teenager, even as a young adult. And what led you into being interested, into apologetics and ultimately to fair.

Guest Background and Conversion to Mormonism

John Lynch [00:05:18] Well, I guess my story basically begins with the fact that I'm a convert to the church. I was not baptized or raised a Mormon. My family was traditionally Catholic. But I was raised with a very sound, fundamental belief in God. And I never questioned that. And as I grew up, I found myself with a number of questions that needed answering and things that I had contemplated. I remember a teacher one time mentioning the fact that poets try to answer the question of life. And I thought, well, I'm severely disadvantaged because I don't even know what the question is.

John Lynch [00:05:55] But as I started to think about it, the question for me was why? And as I thought about it more and more in kind of a universal perspective, I realized that the question of why was, for me at least, was why is a world that has so much opportunity and yet so much pain? Why would a God, if he was just and all powerful and all knowing allow pain and difficulty to take place.

John Lynch [00:06:22] And the only reason that I could conclude was that he wanted us to learn. And as I thought about that more, the whole idea of learning and developing and growing said to me that this was a God who wanted us to be more like him, to progress and to improve ourselves to the point of perfection, whatever that might mean for you.

John Lynch [00:06:44] And that, you know, served me. That was one of the gotcha items that kind of came on in my mind later when I studied. When I had a friend of mine who came about who was an inactive Mormon, came to my father's house and would hang out just to be with friends and began to talk about this golden Bible or something. I didn't know what he was talking about that fell from the sky or something. I wasn't sure what it was my father who had taught me to be questioning of things and to be.

John Lynch [00:07:16] To reason with your mind and that sort of thing. I decided that I would take him as my project to pick him apart a bit. The more I attempted to argue with him, the more I realized that the things that he taught me were things that I variable that I actually believed. Things like the notion that the purpose of life is to learn and that we are to improve ourselves while in this life and that our ultimate objective and the objective of our Father in heaven is to help us become like him.

John Lynch [00:07:48] So those things rang very true. And another, I think, pivotal element of my story was the fact that when I was six years old, my mother passed away. She died of lung cancer. And I remember an event. Several of the relatives had come over to the house and we're sitting around with my father trying to help him figure out what he was going to do with the five young boys that he had to care for now without a mother.

John Lynch [00:08:15] And they were sitting at the table. And as a young boy I was supposed to be in bed, but I was sitting in the hall back a bit where people couldn't see me very well and was watching. My father had his head down and was staring at the table as this conversation seemed to bounce around without him. As one aunt offered to take one child and another one said well, I could take a couple here and that sort of thing. I remember watching my father suddenly straighten up and he became resolute and he slapped his hand on the table and he said no, this family is together and it will stay together.

John Lynch [00:08:44] And I remember the impression that that made on me as a young six year old boy. And it stayed with me and later in life, when I learned that the Mormons taught that marriage was an eternal principle, that families were intended to be together forever, that range so very true with me. And so, you know, basically, when the circumstances then permitted, and I learned as much as I could about the Mormon Church, I joined.

John Dehlin [00:09:10] At what age were you learning about the church?

John Lynch [00:09:13] I was 19 years old when I first started to learn about the church. I was actually engaged to a young woman. Unfortunately, a friend of mine had informed me that you had to be married in order for this temple marriage to be effective. You had to be married only in the temple. Our original plan was we would get married, we get baptized, and then we would go to the temple. And he, not being active in the church, mistakenly told us that, no, that wasn't possible. And so I told my girlfriend, well, I guess we're going to have to postpone the wedding, because for me, I wasn't willing to contemplate anything else.

John Lynch [00:09:52] And that broke her hard in some ways, I suppose. But, you know, in retrospect, it turns out to be one of those things for the best she had. She had some very difficult circumstances in her life, and she ultimately ended up breaking off our relationship. And I went on and joined the church and then later served a mission in Panama.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] Wow. Okay, great. So was that weird to kind of go on a mission as a recent convert?

John Lynch [00:10:23] It was a little bit. It's kind of funny because the greatest thing that happened to me on my mission was that I kind of transformed from being somebody from the outside, feeling like I was on the outside looking in, and I kind of became somebody that felt like he was on the inside, that I kind of felt that I gained a level of acceptance.

John Dehlin [00:10:42] Yeah. So how much were you able to study the church history and doctrine before joining or even up into your mission?

John Lynch [00:10:51] Well, prior to joining the church, I'd read most of the Book of Mormon and I'd read Gospel Principles. Those were books that my friend happened to have laying around. And so I read those. I was fairly conversant with the teachings as far as on my mission. You know, I had read the standard works by the time I had gone on my mission. While I was at the Missionary Training Center, I read anything I could get my hands on that they'd let me read. Jesus the Christ, you know, all of the standard books. Marvelous work and a wonder, all that sort of thing.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] Right. So how did you go from mission to apologist? What was your path?

John Lynch [00:11:31] Well, when I returned from my mission, my desire was to actually work at the Missionary Training center while going to byu, and I was fortunate that I was able to do that. While I was at the Missionary Training Center, I had the privilege of working as a trainer and as a trainer of trainers, I even had the opportunity to work with the training on a couple of occasions of the mission presidents and that sort of thing. I loved missionary work.

John Lynch [00:11:55] I gained a lot in terms of my own spiritual development while I was a missionary. I loved working with missionaries themselves. I could have the worst day, go to work at the MTC and come home and I would be on cloud nine. It didn't matter.

John Lynch [00:12:11] I loved missionary work. I'm a people person by nature anyway. When I left byu, I ended up serving on a couple of different occasions as a stake mission president, once in Los Altos, Los Altos Stake in California, once in the Santa Cruz stake, served several times as a ward mission leader and that sort of thing. And a member of my ward was involved with FAIR and was looking to publish a book on behalf of FAIR and needed funds in order to get it started. And so I put forth the funds. I agreed to put forth the funds to help publish the book. It was a Barry Bookmore book, Restoring the Ancient Church.

John Dehlin [00:12:57] And how did that book do?

John Lynch [00:13:00] It did fairly well. It sold several thousand copies and like all books, it had its run. I think it's a very useful book. I think it's a very good read as well. It's got some great insights in it as far as what organizations were in place and making the argument that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not the emergence of some new or different type of Christianity, but it's actually a restoration in the organizational sense and otherwise.

John Dehlin [00:13:32] Right.

John Lynch [00:13:33] But anyway, when I made that contribution, I was invited to join the board. And there you go. Huh.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Interesting. So how much have you. How much time have you spent either before or after delving into sort of early church history or deep doctrinal issues that maybe become the nucleus of the types of issues that FAIR gets involved with.

Approach to Church History and the Origins of FAIR

John Lynch [00:14:02] You know, I've always been one that was curious and desires to learn, but I've never been one that felt that I wanted to chase minute or pet issues. I'm a generalist in that sense that I'm curious about any and all things. I love to read. My daughter gets on me because she likes to write fiction. And I keep telling her I find history much more fascinating than I do, than I do fiction. And so I just can't bring myself to spend any time on fiction. So I spend a lot of time. I've read a lot of church history, a lot of the biographies of the prophets and early church leaders.

John Lynch [00:14:38] Leaders and that sort of thing. So, you know, in terms of how much have I delved into it, I have no way of quantifying it. You know, it's a curiosity. It's an impulse in some ways, just out of. Just out of love of learning.

John Dehlin [00:14:54] Sure. Okay. Well, good. Well, I've written down like a hundred questions I've wanted to ask. So how much do you know about the history of FAIR as an organization?

John Lynch [00:15:08] Well, what would you like to know?

John Dehlin [00:15:10] Like, when did it start? How did it start? Who started it? You know, I guess we can start there.

John Lynch [00:15:17] Well, it was basically started by a group of individuals that were frequenting the AOL message boards. And what year?

John Dehlin [00:15:26] Around what year was this?

John Lynch [00:15:27] No, I want to say this is around 95.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] Okay.

John Lynch [00:15:30] About that time frame. And a number of these individuals started to realize that there was a need to share information in order to be effective in their attempts to provide adequate answers to those that they were dealing with. And so the idea was presented that they could create a website and they could begin to share information. That evolved into the notion of it being a nonprofit organization that could actually, perhaps even do more and help sponsor the gathering and actually pinpoint what information could be brought to bear on particular arguments against the church. And that was kind of the nucleus. That's what got it all started.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] Okay, so what, what. How would you define apologetics?

John Lynch [00:16:15] Well, apologetics by definition is the defense of a faith.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Defense of faith.

John Lynch [00:16:20] Yeah. And I would say that that's. That's exactly what it is. I would say that FAIR as an organization is dedicated to trying to give people who are seeking to have room for faith the opportunity to have that faith. That in light of those who, for whatever reason, have arguments against a belief. In this particular case, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints being the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ or the restored church of Jesus Christ upon the earth.

John Dehlin [00:16:55] Interesting. So when you. A lot of times in the church today, members characterize their testimony more as a knowledge than as a faith. But you talk about providing fertile ground for faith. How do you see? Are you trying to defend people's knowledge based testimonies or faith based testimonies, or how do you sort of see that, that chasm or spectrum between faith, belief and knowledge?

Faith, Knowledge, and the Role of Apologetics

John Lynch [00:17:26] Well, I don't think that having knowledge negates the demand for faith. There are a number of instances in which Joseph Smith taught the continuing integrated role of faith in driving a person to continue to act. It's a principle of action in all intelligent beings. It's, etc. I don't believe that all testimonies necessarily are born purely of knowledge. I believe that many of them are based on faith, that many individuals continue even despite the fact that there are things that they don't have answers to, things that they don't have sure knowledge of, but yet they have strong fundamental belief in these things, certain areas perhaps, that they do have knowledge of, spiritually confirmed knowledge, and they use that to rely upon in order to help them based on faith to bridge the gap over certain things in which they don't have as much assurance. Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] There's this primary song that's relatively new where they say faith is knowing. I've always struggled with that a bit because I thought the Book of Mormon define faith as hoping or believing, not knowing. And then I had a CES instructor. My word really get on me when I said that faith was a hope or a belief. And he said, no, faith is knowledge. How do you come down on that? I mean, you kind of just explained it, but if you had to. I'm not asking to disagree with the church or the hymn, but I mean, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that.

John Lynch [00:19:07] No, it's okay. You know, for me, people have different views, and a lot of it has to do with what a particular word means to you and how it's been used in your particular experience. For me, faith has always been.

John Lynch [00:19:24] For me, it's always been what Joseph Smith described it. It's a principle of action. And that principle of action can be based upon a belief, not a hope. I do hope that believe that hope is completely different. When I was a young missionary in Panama, I learned that the word for hope in Spanish is the same word as to wait, esperanza, esperar, esperanza or esperar. And with that realization, I came to the conclusion that hope is a passive experience, whereas faith is an active experience.

John Lynch [00:19:56] When you have faith, you act on a belief, whether that belief is rooted in knowledge or is rooted in some other driving force that causes you to act in the absence of knowledge. To me, it doesn't matter. It's that principle of action.

John Dehlin [00:20:11] Okay, so tell us, what is the structure of fair? How is it organized?

John Lynch [00:20:20] Well, some people would claim it isn't. Now, to be honest with you, FAIR has a governing board of directors. There are three board of directors, and we have A president, Scott Gordon. We have a few officers that function under it and then it's pretty much all volunteers. So it's a pretty flat organization from that standpoint. And the volunteers step up to help with areas that they have expertise, where they have knowledge or where they have a desire to contribute. And you know, things kind of get done based on what people are able and willing to do.

John Dehlin [00:21:01] What's the role of the president?

John Lynch [00:21:04] Scott is. Scott's our fearless leader in a lot of ways. He's the guy that kind of makes sure that things happen the way that we as a board have chosen to kind of drive, drive it in terms of direction, in terms of policies and that sort of thing. He's very active in making sure that our annual conferences are well organized, that we have appropriate speakers. He takes a lead role on that, makes sure that the website is up and running and the lights are on and all that sort of thing. So he's very much of a, of an administrative facilitator, making sure that things are running the way that they need to be. And he's also one that helps communicate the vision down to those people that are trying to help.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Right. So is he like full time salaried kind of thing or is it more volunteer? Is he volunteer too? Is there any staff at fair that's funded by some type of central source?

John Lynch [00:22:10] There is no paid staff at fair.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Wow. Not at all.

John Lynch [00:22:13] None.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] So Scott's just volunteered. Does he like have his own job?

John Lynch [00:22:16] He, he does. He's a, he's a, a dean at a college in Northern California.

John Dehlin [00:22:22] Oh, cool. Okay. So you know, why let's say the fair didn't exist? You know, would. This is going to be a loaded question, but I mean it sincerely. Would that be a bad thing? Why is fair needed at all? So I'll ask you a different way as well. You know, the brethren are sustained as prophetseers and revelators. Very smart men, very good men, very inspired men, very capable men, former CEOs and heart surgeons and lawyers and PR people. You know, one could, an observer from the outside could make the argument. You know, these are big boys. These, these are boys who know what they're doing. They're inspired, they have the mantle. They can handle the church on their own. Why does fair even need to exist? So what would your answer be?

John Lynch [00:23:17] Well, in the light of the way you just put it, I'd probably say that we didn't. But no, let me make a couple of points here that maybe could give some clarification as to why we do exist. First of all, let me just make the statement that we are not affiliated with the church and we don't claim any affiliation.

John Lynch [00:23:40] That being said, you raise a very good question as to. And I think that what you're really driving at is what difference do we hope to make? And even in that regard, let me just make another comment. And that is that there is a tendency amongst people to try and steady the ark. In other words, to counsel the brethren and tell them what they should be doing. We are not that we do not attempt nor do we desire to speak on behalf of the church, to stand up and say that this is the way things are, should be. Rather, what we look to be is a resource, a resource of information which helps to gather things that gather information and arguments that can be used by individuals who are having their faith challenged by those individuals, well meaning or not, that for whatever reason bring up issues that challenge their faith, that cause them to question the church and that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:24:46] We defend the church, we defend its doctrines and practices, we defend its leaders. And that's not to say that we speak on their behalf. It just simply means that when something is brought up as an issue on our part, we seek out those who have information that we think would be relevant to those people that are going to seek answers on that issue and make it available to them.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] So when you say not affiliated with the church, there have been people who have maybe spread rumors or said that the church funds you guys in some way through donations, through support, you know, Is that true? Not true.

John Lynch [00:25:32] Absolutely false.

John Dehlin [00:25:34] So there's no church funding supporting you guys in any way?

John Lynch [00:25:38] None whatsoever.

John Dehlin [00:25:40] How about through paying faculty at BYU to be a part of what you do? Is that even remotely fair or not fair? No pun intended? No.

John Lynch [00:25:53] You know, the people that participate from BYU do so on their own. Oftentimes what will happen is we will come across an issue that we believe needs to be addressed and we'll sit down together and we'll say who are some people that we think might be able to bring some appropriate perspective on this particular issue where they have some expertise and can actually help shed light. And we'll go and we'll reach out after them.

John Lynch [00:26:20] We've brought people into our conferences as contributors who have come from church educational system, who've come from farms, from byu and we've gone outside in many instances where we brought in individuals who were experts in completely divergent areas in the fields of science and DNA, that sort of thing, that are not related in any way to Anything associated with the Church, One of the things that we feel is beneficial to the cause is actually the fact that we are independent. Not in the sense that there's any shame if we were associated with, but only in the sense that our independence from the Church allows us basically to answer critics without it being accused that this is somehow automatically biased by the fact that it comes from the Church that we are somehow tainting and that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:27:18] I suspect that we will probably make mistakes as we go about this. We may say things that the church that certain members of the leadership of the church wish that we hadn't said, and in those instances, we like to have done better, I'm sure. But, you know, by not being affiliated with the church, we don't bring any taint to the Church in the event that we do make a mistake.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] Right. I mean, that makes sense, I would think, from the Church's perspective, to make sure that what you guys did wasn't officially associated with the Church. But this is one of my main questions that I have more for the Church than for you, but I'd love your thoughts about it.

Why FAIR Exists and Who It Serves

John Dehlin [00:27:58] You know, there's this sort of popular personal essay that Steve Benson wrote, the grandson of President Ezra Ty Benson when he left the church, where he talks about how he was struggling in his faith and he didn't, you know, he needed answers and was really feeling like the church wasn't what he thought it was.

John Dehlin [00:28:19] So his, his father, I think, who was a stake president in the Salt Lake area, arranged a meeting between him and Elder Oaks and then Elder Maxwell, I believe. And, you know, the intent of the, the meeting, according to Steve Benson, was to ask all these hard questions, you know, the typical ones that you guys have up on your website.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] So, you know, he faxes his questions ahead of time. He goes to the brethren to meet with them. And, you know, by his account, which obviously is his own account, and only his, you know, he said maybe his wives. But he's like, for many of the questions he asked, the answer was, we don't know. We don't know. We're not sure.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] And, and you know that I've always wondered because, you know, you. These, these attacks against the Church are not new. You know, take Adam God or take polygamy or take Book of Mormon authenticity or whatever. They've been around for a long time. And one very easy approach for the Church to take, you would think would be, hey, okay, there are all these attacks. You know, we have church archives at our disposal. We have all these scholars, we have inspiration from God. So we're going to put up a big old directory on the church website, all the attacks and the issues, and we're going to dispel the myths, we're going to clear the air.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] We're going to acknowledge where things are valid or where they're illegitimate, and we're going to just deal with these issues front and center. You know, that's something that personally, you know, selfishly, I would love to see, but they don't do that. Instead, you know, you guys do that. And so this is sort of the question that I tried to ask before, just spun in a different way. But can you speculate as to why the church itself doesn't answer its critics more directly?

John Dehlin [00:30:14] Or is it potentially because a lot of these issues there really aren't answers for and require faith? And if that's the case, then again, why do you guys exist? Because if the church doesn't want to answer the questions and it's really a faith issue, then why even spend time on the issues? I know it's a huge question, but it's a sincere one that I have.

John Lynch [00:30:41] Well, you bring up several things that I could comment on. Let me first state that if the brethren say that they don't know, it's not my place to try and say what they should or shouldn't know. But having said that, and I'm not going to go on now start to say what they should know. I would only say that I think that the role of the church, and I think that rightfully so, is to bring people to Christ and their focus is a forward and onward focus. It is not necessarily a focus where they need to allow themselves to get bogged down and tit for tat back and forth as to.

John Lynch [00:31:26] Well, you say that this particular issue is a problem. The church comes out with what they believe is a reasonable answer, then somebody finds what they believe is a chink in the armor and that sort of thing, and it's back and forth. I don't believe that that is becoming the purpose of a servant of God in the sense that their goal is forward and onward.

John Lynch [00:31:48] Having said that, there are a number of church leaders who of course, have addressed issues throughout the history of the church. John Taylor himself was president of the church, as you know, as an apostle, as a missionary and otherwise was famous for the many tracts that he wrote that were in direct address of attacks against the church and hosts of others who really sought to address the more challenging issues that challenge people's faith.

John Lynch [00:32:24] For me, what I can Answer is the purpose of fair and the purpose of fair. And what we hope to accomplish by being in existence is to provide information that balances the negative information that's out there in a faithful way that allows people the room for their faith to grow, to continue.

John Lynch [00:32:45] I think that there are times when someone can be at a moment of personal weakness, for whatever reason, for whatever their circumstances may have brought them to, and they come to begin to question things. And when they begin to question, a lot of times they go looking for answers. I can't address. You mentioned the issue of Steve Benson. I can't address his specific circumstances. I, in fact, had tried contacting him recently because I wanted to sincerely understand what his experience was. I wasn't familiar even to where to look.

John Lynch [00:33:21] In fact, I'm just now starting to read some of the things that he went through, so I can't speak specific, for example, to him. But I do know that individuals, when they come to moments of crisis of faith, when they hear things that make them say, wait a minute, they stop and they pause, they want to know that there's answers out there. They want to know that there are reasonable responses to reasonable questions and reasonable inquiries.

John Lynch [00:33:48] And some of the things that we deal with are reasonable questions. Some of them are what I would consider unreasonable questions. And we deal with a lot of those. But in the sense of those reasonable questions that people have, our desire is to put things into context and to help people understand the circumstances around the particular question or issue or even the answer and how the church can still be true.

John Lynch [00:34:19] And to answer your question, I think that if the brethren say that they don't know, I think it's because they're sincere, they don't know. In one part. It wouldn't surprise me if they would be hesitant to even proffer their own ideas, to put them forward. Because it is so common for individuals to latch onto a particular comment of a general authority and try and cause, you know, even try and use that later against them by saying, ah, well, so and so said. I mean, if you were to look at the history of the church and all of the comments of all the general authorities, which are so, so well documented and are so readily available to everybody.

John Lynch [00:34:59] If you were to go back and read everything that's ever been published, you'd find lots of reasons to hear five different perspectives on just about any issue you could raise. So I think that it would be wise for the leaders in today's world of the Internet and instant information and communications and recordings and that and the like when they don't know and they don't want to speak on behalf of the church that they say they don't know, they might have their own opinions and leave it at that and just say that, you know, the answer is not definitive, then leave it as being not defined.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] Sure. Okay, well, that makes sense. I think that's a really good introduction so far. Let me ask one follow up question. Try and paint, paint an environment and ask you whether you empathize with it and what your thoughts are about it. It's sort of related to the previous question. But, you know, one of the biggest challenges I see is the huge chasm between what is taught in the church in Sunday school and primary, at the pulpit, even general conference and in seminary and church education system. The chasm between that sort of the other information that's out there. So let me tell you what I mean.

The Gap Between Mainstream Teaching and Church History

John Dehlin [00:36:21] If you went around and pulled most Mormons today, for example, and asked them, you know, how many wives did Joseph Smith have? I think almost all Mormons. Well, I'm sorry, I think more than half of all Mormons would say Joseph had one wife, Emma, if you asked them to name the number of wives or how many, or they wouldn't be able to.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] Yet you can't really claim the church is hiding that because if you go up to familysearch.org and search on Joseph Smith, you'll see a bunch of names. But it, you know, to me it's, it's, it's strange or uncomfortable or something that there's such a broad unawareness about something so fundamental as the marital status of your founding prophet, the man who you have birthdays for a whole general conference around.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] And if you go down the line, you know, the translation process for the Book of Mormon. Most Mormons believe that, you know, there was a veil and that Joseph was behind the veil and that it was using some type of magic breastplate and Urim and Thummim and translating characters. Yet even, you know, Russell M. Nelson in the Ensign acknowledged that, you know, at least in some parts of the translation process, there was a stone and a hat and the face and the hat and the plates might not have even been in the room.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] And you could, you could go down the list and probably name 10 or 20 what I would consider to be majorly fundamental historical facts or, you know, doctrinal facts that, you know, the average Mormon is just totally unaware of. And so what happens is what happened to me, I was called as a seminary teacher and I wanted to teach doctrine and Covenants better. So I started reading church manuals and then I wanted to learn more. So I started reading Leonard Arrington and then, whoa. I wanted to learn more. And then I started reading, you know, you know, Bushman and then Quinn and then Brody, and then before I knew it, I felt deceived.

John Dehlin [00:38:27] I felt like I wasn't given the full story. Like I had spent 35 years in the church seminary, you know, education at BYU, just Sunday school, three hours of church every Sunday. Yet these really fundamental things I never knew, or a black person who joins the church and then finds out afterwards that blacks were denied the priesthood for 100 and whatever years.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] So can you sympathize with people who experience that deep chasm between what they're taught and then what they find out? And do you have any thoughts or comments about that?

John Lynch [00:39:06] I absolutely can sympathize. You know, I think that what you basically described there is what I think a lot of people who come to FAIR are experiencing. They're looking for a reason, a why, and that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:39:25] I think that one of the things that is important to keep in perspective when you are looking at. And this comes back to the issue, what is the purpose of the church and the aims of the church? Keep in mind that this is an international church where I would venture to guess that the vast majority of the members that are alive today have been converted in the last 50, 60 years.

John Lynch [00:39:47] So the vast majority of the church members are converts to the church. Consistency and that sort of thing is an important element in trying to communicate people, is it's a question of what do you include? Take, for example, this is an issue of criticism that has been raised by individuals.

John Lynch [00:40:09] I've heard apologists raise questions about this, people that are associated with fair. And that is the question of how much did the church mention about polygamy. You brought up Joseph Smith, for example. Well, take for example, any of the other presidents of the church we are now going through in our priesthood and Relief Society manuals, studies of the teachings of a variety of the presidents of the church. And what oftentimes is not included is information about additional wives, for example.

John Dehlin [00:40:40] So like in the Brigham Young manual where it says, brethrens, take care of your wives, and it's maybe changed to, say, your wife, or it mentions Brigham Young's wife, but it never talks about the others. Is that kind of more the latter?

John Lynch [00:40:52] Yeah, where he, you know, there's more an exclusion of information and that sort of thing. And you know, you have to look at polygamy is A hotbed issue. And I don't think that we can even hope to cover a portion of it here today. But if you look at it from the perspective of, and let's just go with the assumption that it was practiced as instructed by God and that it was terminated as instructed by God, and that now you have individuals who, contrary to that current instruction of God to not participate, try to look back at the history of the church and use it as justification for their continued practice of it, for their justification for criticizing the current church leaders who teach against it, that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:41:40] Now, all of a sudden, and on top of that, as a worldwide church, let me also add that you have a body that is looking to reach as many people as possible. Those that lead the church, those that follow them, believe sincerely that this is the Church of Jesus Christ restored, and that the mission and the goal is to bring our Heavenly Father's children from the four corners of the earth to Christ, that they might receive the blessings of his sacrifice and his atonement, that they might be saved by the grace that he provides.

John Lynch [00:42:15] When you look at the Church's effort and desire to move people in that direction, to have something like the issue of, of polygamy, which is now not an issue in the current teachings of the Church, to have individuals try and look back and justify it based on other teachings, is this something that you want to propagate or that you rightfully should let simmer? And I think that not including all that true information in a church publication whose goal is to bring people to Christ is necessarily the right thing to do.

John Lynch [00:42:59] So I guess what I'm saying is that there are instances where bringing information which is true and correct up at the very first comment in the very first introduction, is not necessarily going to help you to achieve your goal of bringing people unto Christ.

John Lynch [00:43:16] Now, a lot of people accuse the Church of deception by omission. I've been accused of that myself in my conversations with individuals who later learned that I was associated with fair, for example, because of the fact that FAIR helps to defend the Church.

John Lynch [00:43:38] They discounted then all of my very genuine remarks prior to that. Well, I could easily see that the Church has to make difficult decisions about how much information needs to be put up in headline form and how much needs to be made available. The interesting thing to me, and this is a great credit in my mind, a great credit to the Church, is that most of the criticisms that people raise against the Church these days, the most credible ones in terms of the ones that people can actually Point back to. You mentioned Joseph Smith and his polygamous wives and that sort of thing. The most credible evidences that people get, they found on church publications, things made available from the church.

John Lynch [00:44:29] They found them in the BYU archives or they found them in the Journal of Discourses, or they found them in some other publication that you can, you know, we joke at fair that, you know, when people accuse the church of hiding information, we say, you know what they got us. We hide them in these secret dark chasms called LDS bookstores. You know.

John Dehlin [00:44:46] Yeah. If you can believe it, I, just a month or two ago, I teach elders quorum in my local ward. And, you know, I was seeing this happening. I mean, people were learning things on south park about the church that they never learned in the church. You know what I'm saying? And, you know, and people are leaving over this stuff.

John Lynch [00:45:04] So I, well, let me just, let me just comment. You know, south park, from what I understand, also had an episode where they declared that the church was true.

John Dehlin [00:45:13] That's true. Yeah. That's a really funny. That's a really funny episode. That would. The exact quote was. That would be the Mormon Church. Yes, the Mormon is the correct answer.

John Lynch [00:45:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] No, but so, so I actually gave it. I actually gave a lesson once. The lesson was three things about Joseph Smith you should all know before you hear it from an outside source. And the three things were he did. He was engaged in sort of, you know, gold seeking or silver seeking or treasure seeking as a young boy. And he did it with Seer Stone. That was number one.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] Number two was that the traditional view of how he translated the plates, you know, isn't exactly all the information we have. And the third was, was that his martyrdom or his incarceration was tied to the plural wives thing and William Law and the Nauvoo Expositor and then his destruction of the printing press. Well, most people don't know those three things, but would view them as very fundamental. And the way that I gave that lesson without being totally kicked out of the church is that I quoted from the Ensign. I quoted a talk by Elder Nelson where he, where he talks about Joseph Smith in his early years.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] I talked. I quoted a quote from Dallin Oaks where he talked about, you know, the martyrdom and, and I. And then about the polygamy thing. I used LDS FamilySearch.org and just showed the wives listed under Joseph. And, you know, you're right. The church is not hiding this stuff.

John Lynch [00:46:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, that's a, That's a criticism that we often get. And again, like I said, I think it's a tribute to the church and to the leaders, to their dedication. You know, a lot of people claim that the church is dishonest. You know, I think that there is a difference between being dishonest and offering up to your critics, you know, ammunition against you. Ammunition against you. And, you know, the church doesn't shrink from its history. I think that the church does a better job than probably any other religious institution in the world in being very open about its own past.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] Right. Well, I'll express a wish and then I'll ask you if you have a comment on it because obviously we don't want to be arc studiers here, but I personally totally see why the church doesn't start with the meat, especially with investigators and young people and young members. What I struggle with is, you know, some people would call the meat, you know, the central meat of Christianity being things like service and the very simple things, because those are the most hard. But let me just redefine meat for a second and say it's finding out a way to deal with some of these tougher issues. Right.

John Dehlin [00:48:08] I wish that there were an advanced institute class or an advanced Sunday school class or something where you could just get the skinny on polygamy and get the skinny on the black thing and get the skinny on the, you know, basic arguments about archaeology and geography and the Book of Mormon and DNA, you know, where you, where you could get at least a church sponsored sort of next step, understanding, acknowledgement and reconciliation. Because I don't think that exists anywhere in the church. And so, yes, it's fair to say, don't introduce all this stuff to young people or investigators.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] But what about those who are leaving because of these issues? Where do they go that they can feel is actually church sponsored to, to get answers? I mean, other than you could say the Holy Ghost in prayer. But there are a lot of people who that's it's not working for them. They need people to talk to. And frankly, most bishops don't know about these issues. And so they go to their bishops and either the bishops become disturbed about these issues or the bishops just say, I can't help you, or they, even worse, make them feel bad for asking the questions to begin with. Do you ever wish that there were a place people could go that was officially sponsored by the church so that they could know that this was official support and not sort of secondary?

John Lynch [00:49:32] Well, first of all, let me say that I think the fact that things show up in the ensign, such as what you've mentioned, where you got some of the information for your elders quorum lesson. I think the fact that some of it shows up is an indication that the church does address issues. I think that what the church doesn't do is they don't say somebody brought up an argument that the church, church is false because of blah, blah, blah. Well, here let us tell you why it's not.

John Lynch [00:49:54] That's just not the way that the church operates. From my experience, the church has always been one of being those that promote faith. Doesn't necessarily give audience necessarily to those who would criticize, give credence to them by turning around and saying, well, we better address that necessarily. That's done on an individual basis. That's the way it's been addressed actually since the early days of the church, I think where leaders of their own accord took it upon themselves to address a particular issue. That's why John Taylor, for example, as I mentioned before, was such an ardent defender of the faith because he took the initiative on his own.

John Lynch [00:50:32] But having said that, I think that inasmuch as the people have a need to find answers, there are resources that are developing. One of the problems that I think that the church faces is that inasmuch as people want an official answer, the church can be just as trapped by official answers.

John Lynch [00:50:58] If you look at the history of the church and the things that take place, and I imagine that my comment that I just made will probably become fodder for critics or people that take issue with fair even. But one of the things that I think takes place a lot of times as the Church looks to give responses is that those that are dealing with the answers aren't necessarily those same people that created the question to begin with. If you could go back and you could question Brigham Young on some of the remarks that he's made that people have used to criticize the Church, I think that you would get some very insightful answers that would probably set great greatly at ease the concerns that individuals have about those remarks and the way that they were recorded.

John Lynch [00:51:41] We don't have the benefit of that. We don't have the benefit of all the accuracy of the historical records that take place for the Church. The history is out there. What's been recorded has been recorded. The church doesn't hide it, they make it available. But for them to go through and begin to interpret and to say that, well, this is the way it is or this is the way it isn't, it opens room for criticism later. If in fact, that turns out not to be the case. A good example of that for me would be the hemispheric theories versus the limited geography theories of the Book of Mormon.

John Lynch [00:52:16] There is evidence that we have that indicates that from the very earliest days there was a belief in a limited geography theory. But at the same time there were people making comments about the Lamanites referring to pretty much any American Indian, as they were called, as being a Lamanite. And I think that for most scholars today, LDS apologists and the like, most of them, probably not all, would say that there's a greater credence to a limited geography theory than to a hemispheric model for the Book of Mormon.

John Lynch [00:52:54] And so what you end up with is if the Church had come out and said, well, we believe that it took place on the American continent and that it certainly included north and South America. Now all of a sudden we can later find, for example, that there are evidences of Afro Asiatic languages, for example, and commonalities in verb migrations and adverb migrations and that sort of thing with the UTO Aztecan languages, which would actually lend credence more towards again, a limited geography theory.

John Lynch [00:53:27] As we see those things, those things can then be used against the Church. So I don't think it behooves the Church necessarily to go out and make a bunch of definitive statements. I think that the history is what it is. The purpose of the Church, the purpose of the leaders are to be, for example, the apostles are to be a special witnesses of Jesus Christ.

John Lynch [00:53:47] They're not to be a special witness as to the geography of the Book of Mormon or a special witness of how many wives Joseph Smith should or shouldn't have had when he did or didn't get married. Their focus is on Jesus Christ, the atonement that he brought and the things that he accomplished there. And I believe that that is what they should be focused on. Now that doesn't again, that there aren't questions that can have reasonable reasoned answers provided. But I don't think that that's the goal or the mission that the Church has is to answer the critics. But if they were to go out and try and answer the critics, their focus becomes on the critics and not on their real mission, which is to bring people to Christ.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Yeah, I would say that in worldly terms, that would be playing on the defensive versus the offensive. It would be letting other people set your agenda versus setting your own agenda.

John Lynch [00:54:39] Yeah, and I think that that's a fair characterization. If you want to put it in those terms. And really what it does then is it causes the Church to keep a very tight focus in a particular direction. And that doesn't mean to say that the questions that are raised aren't valid. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't seek to understand and define responses. And I think that that's one of the reasons why there is a role for an organization like fair, which is not affiliated with the church, to go out and to seek those answers and to speculate as to responses. You know, some of the things that are put out by FAIR are people's best estimates, best guesses.

John Lynch [00:55:19] Some of them are statements of fact that refute our critics. But, you know, needless to say, being an apologist doesn't necessarily mean that we're always right. You know, it's just that we believe that the Church isn't wrong, let's put it that way, that the Church is true. And that's what I mean by the church isn't wrong. The church is the place where the priesthood keys have been placed and confided by our Heavenly Father to help us to progress, to be able to return to him and ultimately to be exalted.

Responding to Criticism of Church Leaders

John Dehlin [00:55:51] So I'll just ask one last question on this sort of area, and then I want to move on and, and talk a little bit more about fair. But some would argue that it almost feels like that the brethren want it both ways. On the one hand, they want to say, you know, we're prophets, seers and revelators.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] We are special witnesses of Christ. We have the keys and authority unlike any other men or women on the earth. We get, you know, you as members of the church should trust us, should follow us to and obey us. And when I say us, you know, the guidance that we get from God and Jesus, that we communicate to you.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] And by the way, you know, we have a history that is worth remembering. And here's all this good about our history, and here's all these great things about past prophets and leaders. What a wonderful legacy we have, what inspired, you know, leaders and great leaders.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] So that's on the one hand. And then on the other hand, you know, critics could say, oh, but, you know, don't, don't hold us too accountable for what we say. If it's a past prophet, you can kind of ignore what they say. But if it's me now, well, you have to obey me now and listen to what I say.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] And, you know, if it's bad history, we're not going to emphasize it as much. But if it's really good history, then we're going to talk a lot about it. So some would argue that there's sort of this, you know, it's a tough line to walk that they're kind of saying don't look at the bad history as much, but look at the good. We are special, so follow us, but we're not perfect because, you know, etc, etc. So what would your reaction be?

John Lynch [00:57:50] I would say that it is a fine line and it's a difficult one to walk. And I fully empathize with the leaders of the church and you know, I think that they probably have human tendencies where they would like to address some of these issues. And I think that they feel that it's best that they don't, you know, for whatever reason and, you know, you know, as far as the fine line is concerned and how do you walk it?

John Lynch [00:58:18] That's something that they will be accountable for themselves. And I don't mean that in an accusatory fashion. I mean it in the sense that they are not accountable to me, they are not accountable to you, they are not accountable to any anti Mormon or ex Mormon or anybody else. They are accountable if they have been called by God or by Jesus Christ. They are accountable to Jesus Christ and I would not want to be one to stand and criticize them when they have such a weight of responsibility upon their shoulders.

John Lynch [00:58:55] I am fully happy to let them do the best that they can and for me to be the best follower I can by sustaining them, helping them be successful, regardless of what flaws they might have in their own personal character or what have you.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] Well, we'd like to thank you for tuning in to Mormon Stories podcast. We hope you're enjoying part one of Inside the Mind of an Apologist with our special guest, John Lynch. Per your feedback, we've decided to go ahead and split this podcast up into a few segments because anything over an hour from what we understand is too long.

John Dehlin [00:59:47] So please look for us to come out with part two quite soon. Please give us your feedback@mormonstories.org up on our blog site. Tell us what you like, what you didn't like. If you want me to have John lynch back to ask him some follow up questions, I'm sure he'd be amenable.

John Dehlin [01:00:05] So post those follow up questions as well. If you think I let him off too easy or was too hard on him, let me know. And we hope you'll tune in to part two and three. Thanks again for joining in with us in Mormon Stories. And we hope to hear from you again soon. Take care.

John Lynch [01:00:28] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

Part Two Opens: Flawed Leaders and Personal Reflection

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 8

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to Mormon Stories. This is John Dehlin. I'm very excited to have you with us today for part two of Inside the Mind of a Mormon Apologist. My interview with John Lynch. We would like to remind you to please go up to MormonStories.org and. And comment on this podcast. Tell us what you like, what you didn't like, etc. And without any further ado, let's continue with this interview with John lynch from fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research.

John Lynch [00:00:44] I had a bit of an epiphany last evening, in fact, while I was driving home as I was thinking about and contemplating some of the. Let me just put this in context. I was just reading the book on David O. McKay and the Rise of modern Mormonism. And as I was reading the book, I felt to criticize the authors in my mind about how much they seem to expose some of the real struggles within the leadership of the church. In particular, for example, President Benson, when he was.

John Lynch [00:01:22] When he was coming back from his political hiatus as Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower, and he came back into the Quorum and he led a very dogged fight declaring against communism. And he made some comments, for example, that were unflattering to some of the members of the church who were Democrats, including Hubie Brown and Eldon Tanner, who were both members of the first presidency who were Democrats. And here he made a statement equating socialism, equating socialism with communism and being godlessness and that sort of thing. And you know, that people, I think even he associated with the John Birch Society, which criticized even President Eisenhower of being a communist and this sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:02:13] And this made these very uncomfortable. And as I read these sorts of things, President Benson later served as President of the church. And he was, in my mind, he was one of the most benign presidents that served in the church in the sense that everybody feared that he would bring out these political views as soon as he was made president of the church. And that simply did not manifest. I think when the mantle of responsibility fell upon him, he fell very comfortably into that role and filled it quite wonderfully. But as I read that book, I realized you could see evidences of the characters of men.

John Lynch [00:02:55] And as you read the book, you could also see the evidences of inspiration within those men and their desire to guide and to lead things correctly. And as I read all of that, it struck me that the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is not necessarily simply a parable of the good followers and those wicked people who will, at the end of the world be burned.

John Lynch [00:03:21] I think that there's as much wheat and tares within us as individuals as there are between us as individuals. Some of us are wheat and some of our tares, as the parable goes. And I think that the same could be true. The parable says basically that we'll let the wheat and the tares grow up together, because if you try and pluck up the tares right now, you'll uproot the wheat also, and basically you'll lose the field.

John Lynch [00:03:49] And in that sense, what you're really driving at is the question of is it possible for flawed men or men with flaws of character and personality and otherwise to be inspired? Men who truly are entrusted with the keys of God in hand when necessary, can act as oracles. And I think the answer to that is true, is yes, that flawed men absolutely can lead this Church. And the Lord did not come down and say, now that the Church is restored henceforth and forever, all leaders will be perfect. He never made that statement. And I don't think that we should. It's unfair for us to expect that once a man has had hands laid upon his head and he's set apart to an office or ordained to an office in the priesthood, that all of a sudden his flaws of character should diminish.

John Lynch [00:04:38] And I think that Heavenly Father allows even some of our weaknesses and prejudices to remain, because if he was to uproot them, then he might take away a great deal of good at the same time. And so I think that that's kind of a long response to your question.

John Lynch [00:05:03] I think that, in short, these brethren have a difficult line to walk. They indeed are human, given a great deal of responsibility that they need to execute. They need to focus on what is good and right and true and point towards that.

John Lynch [00:05:21] And I'm not going to be one to judge them for how they do on that. I leave that to those to whom they have to respond, and that is to Christ Himself. And I will leave them to answer to that. But I will say that I understand, I think, why they would have desires and tendencies one way or another. And I even understand why perhaps the Lord allows men with certain weaknesses in areas of their lives to be called as bishops, stake presidents, seventies apostles, or the president of the Church, and still be those individuals whom the Lord has chosen and entrusted with keys and powers and rights and privileges to receive inspiration.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] I just have to say I totally agree with you. First of all, I believe the brethren are incredibly good, good hearted, honest men. And I believe their Job. Their jobs are some of the hardest jobs I could ever imagine. So I. I do think they deserve a ton of respect, infinite respect for the, the decisions they have to make every day. When you. I just want to ask one clarification. When you were talking about the Greg Prince book, The David O. McKay book, are you saying you were frustrated or sad that he talked about the weaknesses or the struggles within the Quorum?

Evaluating Historical Scholarship on Church Leaders

John Lynch [00:06:50] Well, I think that the way I would describe it is that I found myself questioning what is their aims. I began to question why are they including this? And I thought that it was a little bit of airing of dirty laundry and that I thought the way that they wrote the book, in all honesty, is written kind of in a. This is a historic perspective. Yes, we had access to, you know, kind of inside information, but it's really for Mormons and non Mormons alike. If it was directed to a purely believing audience, then those things that were included, you know, for the most part, people would say don't include them, that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:07:33] The more I read it, the more I realized that, you know, there's nothing to fear by including them. And in fact, it actually confirms for me what I just said, that these, that these men with their own strengths, you know, mixture of strengths and weaknesses, can indeed be divinely inspired.

John Dehlin [00:07:54] Yeah. And I just want to second that. I know Greg Prince really well. I had him in my home last week, actually. He was here. And I not only had him teach Elders Quorum for me, because it's on David O. McKay and there are a few people who maybe know him better, but also we held a fireside here in Logan where he spoke. And I just, I think that there's a value in talking openly about the Brethren and the struggles that they have because how better to teach that lesson that these Brethren are incredibly good but have weaknesses and we should all become immunized to that fact and not surprised by it.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] And the only way to teach that lesson is to actually talk about some of the struggles and weaknesses and give them perspective. But I can guarantee you that when Greg Prince talks about any of the Brethren, he does it with a net communication of respect and admiration and testimony and inspiration.

John Dehlin [00:08:57] But. But sometimes, you know, I've often wished there'd be a lesson on, hey, don't expect the prophets to be perfect, you know, because then we'd be talking about it openly. But there are still a lot of members who kind of never figure that out on their own because it's never taught or discussed in a, in a church. Setting?

John Lynch [00:09:17] Well, I think that the lesson that would be helpful would. Would be a lesson on what makes a flawed man a prophet as opposed to what allows a prophet to be a flawed man. And I realize that that may sound like a bit of an argument of semantics, but for me, it's an important distinction. Because we start out as flawed individuals, we're called to positions of responsibility, and then we seek to fulfill those responsibilities based on our experiences and nature that we've developed to that point.

John Lynch [00:10:00] We don't leave who we were when we're called to these positions, and we oftentimes grow into those positions over time. And I think it's important for people to understand that there's a difference between Christ himself, who would come down, who has the benefit of the visions of eternity, for example, and how he might conduct himself versus a man whom he would call up out of the world and ask him to come and be his witness and to help drive and direct a work which is simultaneously challenging, inspiring, difficult, and saddening all at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] I just wish I agree with you. I just wish we as a people were a little more comfortable with this conversation. If I tried to have a conversation sometimes in Sunday school or elders Quorum, and I've done it, I once had a lesson on this exact topic. And there's still a high level of discomfort with any sort of reference, even though Joseph Smith himself, you read his personal history, he mentions his weaknesses a ton, and he talks all the time about being chastised by the Lord and having to repent for his weaknesses. He seemed quite comfortable talking about his weaknesses.

John Lynch [00:11:19] Well, how many times was he chastised in the Doctrine and Covenant? Yeah, a ton put out there for all the world to see.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] Yeah. I'm just saying culturally within the church, and I don't have any suspicion or feeling of conspiracy by their brethren at all on this point. I do wish we as a people were a little more comfortable talking openly about this issue so that we could sort of culturally, comprehensively put it behind us and say, look, Peter denied Christ, Judas betrayed Christ, David committed adultery. Get over the fact that, you know, prophets are infallible. They're not. But even being men, they can still be incredibly inspired and worth following to the ends of the earth.

John Lynch [00:12:03] Well, you know, who can read first and Second Peter, for example, and not be inspired by the teachings that he put forward? And yet, at the same time, we read how he had very serious reservations about extending baptism and full fellowship to people who were not proselyte Jews, who had not already converted to Judaism prior to being converted to Christianity, even after he received his vision on the rooftop, which taught him that the Gospel was to be brought to the Jews and the Gentiles. Even after that, there was an instance in which Paul took him to task for the fact that he sat aside from the Gentiles in deference to the Jews for fear of offending the Jews.

John Lynch [00:12:59] And Paul took him to task. Now, whether or not that was Paul's rightful place to do that or not, I won't say. But I will say that it demonstrates even in the New Testament times that these were great men who had brought with them their own set of circumstances and experiences that caused them to react in understandable ways. And there were ways that maybe we do or don't agree with today, but how can we look back with the benefit of hindsight and criticize those people who didn't have that benefit of hindsight at the time? I think it's a mistake on our part.

Standards and Pitfalls of Mormon Apologetics

John Dehlin [00:13:38] So let's shift gears a bit. I'd like to talk a little bit more about FAIR in particular, and I'd like to begin by asking you. Well, I'll give you a little context. When I read Fawn Brody of no Man Knows My History, I was obviously really disturbed.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] But I had consolation because I knew the Hugh Nibley had written a response called no ma', Am, that's not History. So I was super excited and I had a ton of faith. I thought, Hugh Nibley's our man. He's a genius, he's brilliant, he's a scholar.

John Dehlin [00:14:15] Hugh's gonna take care of me on this one. And I opened up his pamphlet or book, and I can't say he helped me at all. I felt like it was more of an ad hominem attack. I felt like it was esoteric. I didn't feel like he dealt with any of the merits of the accusations or claims in that book.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] And in the end, I was really disappointed in that response. Now, on the other hand, you know, I've had many friends leave the church over the Masonic Lodge issue. And I interview Greg Carney from fair and I walk away incredibly uplifted, totally inspired. Made me feel as though the Masonic issue not only is a non issue and shouldn't affect people's testimony at all, but that in some ways I felt convinced that our connections with the Masonic Lodge was actually a blessing to to our Church. And so my question to you is, is there such a thing as bad apologetics? And if so, how would you characterize bad apologetics versus good apologetics?

John Lynch [00:15:25] Well, the answer is yes, there's bad apologetics. There's no doubt about that. I mean, well intentioned individuals who feel the need to fill an answer oftentimes fill the question with an answer that is in retrospect not the right one or not as accurate or not put in the tone the thing should be.

John Lynch [00:15:48] So, yeah, I think that there's bad apologetics that takes place. I think that to the question of Hugh Nibley, Hugh Nibley made the statement. He says, I refuse to be held responsible for anything I wrote. More than three years ago, He was a firm believer that the objective was to move forward and he readily admitted that what he was really doing was he was seeking to find answers.

John Lynch [00:16:17] I had a friend of mine who, when we got back from our missions, he was my first mission companion. When I met up with him, he told me that he was in a local ward in Provo, I was in a student ward. And I asked him how he liked it. He said, I like it very much. He says, but I have a hard time with my Sunday school gospel doctrine teacher. I said, well, why is that? And he says, well, he's a professor at byu. And he says the problem is that he says it's like he's using us as our guinea pigs, trying out his pet theories.

John Lynch [00:16:46] And he says, it's all over my head. I said, well, who is he? He says, hugh Nubbley or Knobbly or Nibley or something like that. I came unglued. I said, you've got Hugh Nibley as a gospel doctrine teacher and you're complaining about it.

John Lynch [00:17:01] I think that Brother Nibley did a great deal to bring scholarly, reasoned approaches to apologetics in the church. Just as I wouldn't hold the Brethren to any standard of perfection, I cannot hold Brother Nibley to it. I'm sure that there are mistakes that he made, conclusions he arrived at that were wrong. I think that what he did do is he brought methodical reasoning, deep research, professionalism to the defense of the church in ways that is still impacting us today. I think that the gentlemen at farms who are criticized on the one hand and acclaimed on the other, I think that for my part, they do a fabulous job.

John Lynch [00:17:47] I think that what they do is remarkable. I think that guys like John Gee and John Tvetness and others, Lou Midgley and the like, in as much as they're right, they're doing a fabulous job. And in as much as they're wrong, they did a pretty good job because they're a Lot smarter than I am.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Wait a minute, I have a joke coming on. Are you apologizing for the apologist?

John Lynch [00:18:12] Well, you know, it's funny because we've done a few firesides and when I put up what's an apologist? On the slides and things like that, the first thing I tell them is that being an apologist is, is not. Is not having to say you're sorry. But no, you know, I wouldn't apologize for the apologist, but I would say that, you know, don't expect us to be right. This is, you know, okay. This is something that's moving forward.

John Dehlin [00:18:35] Okay. So. Yeah, and I like Hugh Nibley. I think. I think especially his writings like Approaching Zion, where he talks about materialism, environmentalism. I mean, I think he's inspirational, what true Christ centered living is. So my question actually had nothing to do with Hugh Nibley, although I do appreciate your thoughts about him and perspective. But I want to make sure you understand the question wasn't so much about Hugh Nibley. I'll restate it or rephrase it in a different way. If you were to sort of counsel the next generation of apologists on what the right and the wrong approaches are, what would be the things you say don't do? If you're an apologist, stay away from doing these five things. What would those five things be?

John Lynch [00:19:20] Boy, you kind of put me on the spot with that.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] I don't mean to put it.

John Lynch [00:19:23] No, it's okay. I'll answer the best I can and just understand that it's an off the cuff response. I don't know if I can come up with five, but I'll tell you a couple of things that I would recommend to anybody that's looking to be an apologist. The first thing I would say is when you're dealing with those people with whom you disagree, don't attribute motive to their actions. I think that as soon as you begin to attribute motive to another person's actions, you begin to interpret their actions and cut off from yourself a level of understanding that allows you to approach the issues appropriately.

John Lynch [00:20:05] That's one thing, I think the other thing is you don't have to address the attacker. I think that inasmuch as somebody is perhaps attacking. And there I go, and I say that as if I'm attributing motive, Right? But inasmuch as somebody brings a criticism, focus on the criticism, not on the messenger.

John Lynch [00:20:27] If somebody is open to dialoguing with you to gain understanding, by all means entertain them and do what you can. To bring that. The second thing, the third thing I would say is.

John Dehlin [00:20:40] So are you saying don't do ad hom minima tax?

John Lynch [00:20:43] Basically, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] Okay, I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

John Lynch [00:20:46] Absolutely. I think that they're counterproductive. Now, that's not to say that there aren't valid reasons for bringing into question. If somebody comes out, for example, and says, well, I've examined this evidence and my professional opinion is that it leans to the left.

John Lynch [00:21:02] And yet you come along and you find out that the credentials which cause you to believe that their opinion is worth valuing is actually discredited, that they don't have the credentials that they claimed, then to bring that out, I think is a valid statement to make. But that doesn't change the fact that whether or not their argument is true, whether it's truly leaning left or should be leaning right, the fact that they don't have those credentials is irrelevant. But if you look at any reasoning, if you're going to rely upon a person and their opinion with a greater weight than your own opinion because of some experience or credential that they have, I think it's reasonable to question those credentials.

John Lynch [00:21:45] I think in some cases it can be reasonable to question motives in instances where a person is approaching, for example, a subject as an open minded, nonpartisan, when in reality you go back and you look at the history of their behavior and, and you find that no, in fact, they're not nonpartisan.

John Dehlin [00:22:04] Okay, so you're saying if someone's misrepresenting themselves, you can call them on it.

John Lynch [00:22:08] Absolutely. And I think that that, that goes, that cuts both ways.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] Right, okay, but, but you know, in general, you agree that ad hominem attacks are bad, they're counterproductive, that the arguments should be, you know, evaluated based on their merits.

John Lynch [00:22:26] Clearly we are better served when we

John Dehlin [00:22:27] not calling names or, you know, acting unchristlike to the people who are discussing the issues.

John Lynch [00:22:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:35] Okay, cool. So that was. You were going on the third thing and I.

John Lynch [00:22:39] Well, the third thing which I was directing towards was that when people are doing research, don't do your research. One of the nice things that I've. One of the things that I've really enjoyed about the presentations that I've seen at fair, for example, have been that the very people who are doing the presentations are oftentimes pointing out the weaknesses in their own arguments.

John Lynch [00:23:05] And they're doing that because I think that we're improving in our scholarship. They're not coming in with a preset bias and they're looking at the world in such a way as to prove that all things are evidence of the Church being true, for example, but that they come at it and they say, all right, for example, A particular scholar might come out and take an argument on, I don't know, pick a subject, any subject, DNA in the Book of Mormon, for example, and they might be looking at why they believe that it's a non issue. And as they're going through their arguments, they actually bring out the fact that, look, as we're looking at these things, we have to accept the fact that, yes, the evidences are that the vast majority of the studies conclude that the American Indians have Asiatic descent.

John Lynch [00:23:59] But then they go on to point out why even with that evidence, it is not something that proves the Book of Mormon false. It just leaves it again in the category of inconclusive. Science does not back it up one way or the other.

John Lynch [00:24:15] If I was to make a suggestion to an apologist, whether or not he's an apologist or a researcher, and I think that there's a difference too, by the way, there's a difference between a researcher and an apologist. An apologist is somebody who goes out and looks for researchers research that basically confirms the fundamentals of what their belief is, that helps them defend. Whereas a researcher themselves is just interested with facts.

John Lynch [00:24:38] In as much as you're a researcher who happens to be an apologist, I would say don't let your tendencies as an apologist influence your research. Let your research stand on its own. And if it happens to coincide, accept it. If it happens to contradict it, then deal with it appropriately, put it on the back burner, let it settle until you gain more information and see how it really comes through.

John Lynch [00:24:59] The thing that I'm looking at as an apologist is that I'm looking to help bridge the gap of time between a person coming to a question and then finding an answer. Because it's not always there, it's not always immediate, sometimes it takes a long time. Are there issues still in the back of my mind where I am saying I don't have all those answers? Yeah. And I've heard, I'll tell you, I've heard probably just about every argument against the church.

John Lynch [00:25:29] And that's not to say that I feel like every answer has been like loctite, fixed and bundled up. But I have such a basis of faith and experience within me that confirms for me the authenticity of the restoration, the truthfulness of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and the restoration of the Keys which reside to this day in the leading men of the church, including Gordon B. Hinckley. I have such a faith in those things that it allows me to bridge the time between when I developed the question as to, well, now wait a minute, how does this fit? Not knowing where that puzzle piece fits and waiting until other pieces fill in around it to where I can see how it plays into the picture.

John Lynch [00:26:14] So those are three things. If you press me, I could probably come up with a couple more, but I would say that those are the three top.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] That's good. I just want to say from the communities that I'm involved in, it's sort of unfair, but I think the critics of FAIRE sort of expect FAIR to live up to a higher standard of comportment than even they're willing to live up to. And, you know, obviously there are a lot of places that are full of slanderous, you know, verbiage and ad hominem attacks. Yet I do think that the times when fair folks do resort to ad hominem attacks, they do themselves a disservice.

John Lynch [00:27:01] I would say, for the most part, I agree with you that if a person feels like they have to resort to anything that I would consider to be unchristlike behavior, they do themselves, they do the church, and they do fair to serve us.

Membership Retention and Why Members Leave

John Lynch [00:27:14] One of the things you asked me, one of your first questions was, tell me about fair. How is it structured? How is it organized? And I told you that, well, some people would claim it isn't. The reality is that FAIR is a group of.

John Lynch [00:27:28] It's not a homogeneous group, as some of our critics call not just fair, but the church in general. The morgue. Like it's some cybergenic Mormon organization called the morgue, that everybody acts and marches the same way. There's a great deal of diversity of opinion and thought within fair.

John Lynch [00:27:50] When I first became associated with it, I was surprised because there were a couple of individuals that were associated with it that were very much antagonistic in their approach to non Mormons. And I didn't like that. I didn't care for it much. I've tried to exert my influence to lessen that wherever I can and to encourage FAIR to be a safe place for people to come to get answers. And even the one thing that we don't do, in fact, one of the things that we made a conscious decision to do several years ago was fair as an organization will not answer critics.

John Lynch [00:28:30] We will find answers for criticisms, but we will not answer critics. And I don't think that that's our place. There are people associated with fair and they join faire sometimes because they like the answers and it gives them fodder for them to go out and in some ways attack the critics that they feel attacked by. And they seem to get some glee out of that. I, for one, I don't get satisfaction out of that sort of thing. And I think in some senses that's reflective from my past that I've been a missionary more than I've been an apologist. In a lot of ways, every missionary is an apologist.

John Lynch [00:29:08] They are out there to defend and proclaim the truth. But the reality is that attacking other people does little to engender confidence, trust, or faith. I think for the most part, it is counterproductive.

John Dehlin [00:29:23] So don't bash. As a missionary or as a fair

John Lynch [00:29:26] presenter, what good would it do?

John Dehlin [00:29:28] I'm with you.

John Lynch [00:29:30] Other than to close a mind or harden a position.

John Dehlin [00:29:32] I'm with you. With you. So you know, how. How big is your assessment of the problem of people leaving the church over intellectual issues? If you had. So I'll ask you the question in two parts. If you had to estimate how many people annually are leaving the church, what would you guess a number would be? This is sort of answering the question of why you believe it's important that you exist. And then, you know, can you talk about your success rate as an organization or even some anecdotal stories about how you're helping to stem that tide?

John Lynch [00:30:15] You know, I guess, first of all, I'm not privy to any kind of statistics from the church or otherwise that would lead me to believe that there is any actual number that can be attached to why people leave. I know that the church performs its own studies on activity rates. I do know you can go back and you can look at some of the statistics and data that the church itself has put out in terms of its growth and that sort of thing. There's been other publications put out by individuals in the media that indicate the same.

John Lynch [00:30:49] For example, in Germany, there's actually been negative growth in the church. I know that Germany has suffered a great deal because of online attacks in German against the church. And it has been a great challenge for a number of the German saints.

John Lynch [00:31:05] Statistically, I couldn't tell you how many people. Doctrinally, I would say that maybe what Pharaoh is really trying to do is to provide a reason for return for the 1 while the 90 and 9 are safely within our chapels.

John Dehlin [00:31:23] So would you say it's a. Okay, so you're. So I agree that the one is super important. But would you, would you characterize the problem of sort of Internet anti Mormonism as being a statistically significant problem for the church or insignificant? Is it a big problem? Is it a little problem? Is it something.

John Lynch [00:31:44] I think it's a growing problem.

John Dehlin [00:31:46] So it's getting bigger.

John Lynch [00:31:48] Well, I think it has the potential to as more and more people become accustomed to gaining information online. If you go online and you type in Mormon or Latter Day Saint or Brigham Young or something like that, there's generally a lot more unflattering sites that come up than there are flattering ones. Those that would attack and undermine the faith of the church or the faith of members.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] I just did it in Google. If you type In Mormon, the mormon.org comes out first, then lds.org second, then familysearch. And the fourth is recovery from Mormonism. So that's pretty good. I've heard that you guys actually have technology specialists who have worked to optimize the Internet search engines such that that exact sequence happens. Is there a truth to that at all?

John Lynch [00:32:44] No, I wish there was. I'd love to see fair get better visibility out there that when people raise questions that we might be easier to find. For the first several years that we were in existence as an Internet site, people had to kind of go looking for us. Really, it wasn't that easy. A lot of that has to do with the way that websites show up on some of these search engines. A lot of it has to do with how many links that they have to other high volume traffic search sites and things like that. We don't have specialists that are out there trying to get that result, any specific result. But I think it probably wouldn't hurt us if we tried to be better at managing our online efforts and getting the connections out there such that the positive sites rise up.

John Dehlin [00:33:54] So success stories.

John Lynch [00:33:57] Well, you know, there's been a number of things that happen. We have. One of the things that we have on the FAIR website is ask the apologist. And you know, the thing is, the true effects of what we have, we'll never know.

John Lynch [00:34:10] We won't know. The only times that we get positive feedback is when somebody takes the time to tell us. And we've got a number of those. We've got a collection of thank yous from people saying, you know, you have no idea how you've helped me. I could give you one anecdotal story which I find a bit interesting. There was a gentleman up in Canada based on the Ontario mission and this individual was Taking the discussions with the missionaries. And he came upon, because he's up in the middle of nowhere, up in Canada, far north. I don't even remember the location. I could probably find out the city for you.

John Lynch [00:34:44] But he was so far remote that his primary access with the outside world was basically the Internet. He had satellite connection. He started to have questions because of all these things that he found that were unflattering of the church.

John Lynch [00:35:01] And we were actually in contact with the mission president at the time. And the mission president, through his assistance, instruct the missionaries to direct that gentleman to fair. And the gentleman went on to fair and to his satisfaction, got his answers that he was seeking and made the active decision that he would go forward and be baptized. We receive on a daily basis, I would probably say, anywhere from 5 to 10, sometimes serious, sometimes more critical or challenging inquiries into our apologist list. And virtually every time we've got a sincere seeker, when we respond, we're told directly that the fact that we were there made a difference.

John Lynch [00:35:50] Scott Gordon, our president, told one story of him at a fireside. And a woman approached him and said, you know what? I got these four pamphlets. I want to know what you think about them. And she hands him these four anti Mormon pamphlets. And he looks at them and he says, well, I've read this one. This one makes a couple of good points, but you got to understand the context. And he makes a couple of comments about it. He says, this one, he says, I wouldn't even bother reading. That one's garbage. He says, this one's actually kind of funny. By the time he got to the third one, the lady says, oh, okay, that's all I needed to know.

John Lynch [00:36:23] And she was done. Just the fact that she knew that people had answers that they'd been looked at was reassuring. And I guess in some ways that kind of goes back to your earlier question about do I wish that the church had some apologetics school or something, the difficult questions type of thing for institute.

John Lynch [00:36:46] I'll go back and just say that I don't think that that's the role of the church, although I do think that BYU gives opportunities for individuals to study that type of thing if they choose to. But in some ways, that experience of Scott with that woman, just her having the assurance that there's people out there that have looked at these things and whatnot, was enough for her to say, all right, I'm going to let my faith continue to prosper. It's probably not unlike your experience with Nibley. Oh, Nibley's Got my back on this one. When that one particular question was when you'd read. Was it Brody?

John Dehlin [00:37:19] Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with you. Just, just when you come upon the issues, to be able to find someone who says, yep, I know all about it, and here's why, you know, it doesn't bug me. I think that's huge. So I totally agree on that.

John Lynch [00:37:35] Would you.

John Dehlin [00:37:35] Would you say that apologetics poses a risk of being a gateway to apostasy for some who kind of get sucked in and then sucked out? Have you seen that happen where people become arch defenders but then somehow lose their way and become archenemies?

John Lynch [00:37:57] You know, I have not seen that. I've not had that experience where I've seen people try and enter into the world of apologetics. I think that there may have been people who, I guess I could see from a psychological perspective, somebody coming in to FAIR with doubts, finding answers, and then being zealous, kind of trying to continue to feed their justification for staying in the church with kind of feeding off of the information in apologetics and never really fundamentally changing in their heart, never really strengthening themselves in a faith standpoint, but kind of just treading water, and at some point they maybe stop or pause for a moment and they stop treading water.

John Lynch [00:38:44] I suppose that thing could happen, but I don't think that that would be caused by apologetics. I think that, quite the contrary, apologetics was what allowed them to continue to tread water for some time, and it was the fact that they perhaps were inevitably going to sink any.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] We'd like to thank you again for joining us at Mormon Stories for this interview with John lynch from fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research. Inside the Mind of a Mormon apologist. Check out fair@fairlds.org and most importantly, please check us out@mormonstories.org Comment on this podcast, tell your friends about us, and stay tuned for the part three of this interview with John Lynch. Thanks again for tuning in. Bye.

John Lynch [00:39:43] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

Part Three Opens: Major Challenging Issues in the Church

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 9

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. My name is John Dehlin. Again, I could not be more excited to have you with us today. Today we conclude our three part series entitled Inside the Mind of a Mormon Apologist where we interview John lynch from fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, which is the Mormon apologetic group. We hope you've enjoyed the first two installments of this three part series. If you haven't listened to them yet, I recommend you back up and listen to those.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] And without any further ado, let's continue with this interview in progress. So what would you say? What are the five or ten? If you, and this is just sort of, just to get a pulse, if you say what are the five or ten biggest issues that people are struggling with today, the ones that FAIR gets the most questions about or the most angst over, what would you say the big ones are?

John Lynch [00:01:12] Oh, not in any particular order. I would say that some of them have to do with, you know, the blacks in the priesthood, police, polygamy. Those are Joseph Smith and the occult. This whole notion that Joseph Smith was a gold digger and things of that nature.

John Lynch [00:01:34] Those are probably some of the more fundamental issues you ask for. 10. I guess I could probably just rattle off the 10 latest that I heard kind of a thing and it would probably hit fairly close to the mark. But one of the things that we see as apologists is that really the arguments and the attacks against the Church are usually recycling of old material, maybe with a little bit of fresh paint on it, that type of a thing. But for the most part, the arguments are the same ones that were being dealt with dating back to the time of Joseph Smith. The true origins of the Book of Mormon.

John Lynch [00:02:11] For example, you brought up, for example, the method in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Did he use a peep stone? Did he have the plates in front of him when he translated? All of that sort of thing, things that have to do with the presentation of the Church's history and that sort of thing, Those are generally not too difficult to answer because it's easy to demonstrate that this information has been available, that it's not a hiding of the Church, but rather a question of what should the Church really focus on that type of a thing.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] So are there. Okay, so go ahead.

John Lynch [00:02:45] No, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] So are there? I was going to ask, as a follow up, of the big ten issues that exist, are there any that, that you should, that you just feel like these are non issues? You know, I know there are others where you think, yeah, these are, you know, without, without the presupposition of faith. These are a little bit harder, you know, but, but these, you know, there are four or five issues that no one should leave the church over if they have the right data and the right explanation. Are there any of those that you would just say are red herrings from your perspective?

John Lynch [00:03:19] Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that.

John Dehlin [00:03:21] Do you think they all are or do you think.

John Lynch [00:03:23] No, no, absolutely not. I think that there are legitimate, but I think that there are some that are, at least in my mind, are more easily dealt with.

John Dehlin [00:03:30] So what are those?

John Lynch [00:03:32] Well, for example, Joseph Smith is a gold digger. Look, if you look back at the history in those times and, and what was common practice? It was an employment that he was doing people using divining rods for looking for water. Today that happens pretty much everywhere. Right now people still use divining rods to find water. And there's people that will claim that it works. I don't know, I've not done it myself, but those types of things, I kind of put that in the same grouping.

John Dehlin [00:04:05] Okay, what else? Any others that you see as red herrings?

John Lynch [00:04:09] Well, I think that the, for example, the accounts of the, of the first vision, I think that that's easily dealt with.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Okay.

John Lynch [00:04:18] You know, the fact that Joseph Smith told it different ways to different groups of people or, and he had a different purpose is perfectly understandable.

John Dehlin [00:04:26] Okay, Any others? I mean, this is good. I like it, I like you doing this. So are there any others? I'm just, I like to hear things like this.

John Lynch [00:04:33] Well, I guess like for me, the

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Masonic thing, Greg, he killed that. In my mind.

John Lynch [00:04:39] Yeah, that's a non issue. You know, it's kind of funny because a lot of these things, when you hear them for the first time, because they're new, they tend to be more sensationalistic to us once you get into the information. See, that's the thing, is that it's easy for somebody to throw out an argument. And this is where the apologist's job is very difficult. It's easy for somebody to throw out an argument and say, I bet you didn't know this. No, I didn't, I didn't know that. And they raised this doubt. And oftentimes the response to it isn't just a two sentence response. Sometimes it's a few paragraphs or more pages in order to understand the context and things like that. So the Masonic thing is a non issue for me.

What Apologists Can and Cannot Concede

John Dehlin [00:05:28] Okay, so let me then flip the, flip the question. First of all, is an apologist allowed to say, yeah, That's a problem. Or, yeah, this one I struggle with. Or, you know, and so that's the first question. Can an apologist even do that? Or is that sort of anathema to what you're allowed to do or supposed to do with that title? And then are you comfortable sharing with us any of the issues that you do either struggle with or don't understand, do have a good answer for or just decide to put on a shelf? Can you be that candid and that open, or are you not allowed to by virtue of your position?

John Lynch [00:06:09] I don't want to be somebody that sits here and sows seeds of doubt for people.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] No, I'm not asking you to do that. I'm not asking.

John Lynch [00:06:14] No, no, I understand. I'm going to answer your question, but I'm couching it. I don't want to be somebody that sows seeds of doubt for people. I do have a firm belief in. In the restoration of the gospel and that sort of thing. But that's not to say that there aren't things that are legitimate. Legitimate questions or legitimate issues. That is not to say also that the fact that they are legitimate means that they rise to the level that someone should leave the Church because of it.

John Dehlin [00:06:47] Right. Well, obviously, because you have it.

John Lynch [00:06:49] Right. So, for example, the issues that I think are. Are legitimate. For example, Mountain Meadows Massacre was a horrible tragedy. I think that the people that were involved in it regret it, and I think that they will be judged for it. I think that there are circumstances surrounding it that make it understandable but not defensible. I think that.

John Lynch [00:07:17] But, you know, having done that, what I have heard, and I understand that there's publications that are expected out next year which will address it directly. But having said all of that, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the great criticisms is that Brigham Young was involved from the very beginning. I don't believe that the evidence points in that direction at all. I think that Brigham Young's communications to the Saints down there in that area was pretty clear. It was just late that let them pass unmolested and unfortunately they didn't do that. Can I understand why? Yes. Can I justify it? No. Is that reason why I would leave the church?

John Dehlin [00:07:56] Of course not. Okay. Any others that you feel could help

John Lynch [00:07:59] blacks in the priesthood? I struggled with the notion as to the reasons why. Not the reasons, the real reasons as to why it was, but some of the justifications and the reasons that were put forth by the leaders.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] By certain leaders of the church, the attempts to explain.

John Lynch [00:08:18] The attempts to explain And I think that in fact that's one of the reasons why. I think that the brethren don't go out and say, well, here's the reasons. If you look at that issue alone, that should be justification enough. Why, if they're going to come out with a policy and they're going to state it, stick with the policy, don't worry about the explanations, move forward and let people like us to stick our feet in our mouths, not the brethren.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] Right, right. Okay. Those are good. The Book of Mormon stuff or the polygamy stuff?

John Lynch [00:08:54] Well, you know, you talked about stuff that's easily answerable. You know, I'm not going to lose sleep over, for example, the translation of, you know, King James language in the Book of Mormon. You know, I think that there's a dozen plausible explanations as to why there's King James language, the Book of Mormon and I'm okay with that.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Well, okay, so do you think that someone, and this is just, I know it's going to seem a bizarre question, do you think it's, it's valid for someone who wants to be a Mormon, who even believes they have a testimony but doesn't necessarily have a conviction that the Book of Mormon is historical? Do you think that's a tenable position that God would be okay with? Or do you think that person's sort of under condemnation or in a really troubled spot? And do you know any apologists who may even have that position that the Book of Mormon may not necessarily be historical but can still be inspired but not historical?

John Lynch [00:09:56] I do not ascribe to the notion that the Book of Mormon is inspired but not historical.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] Right.

John Lynch [00:10:04] I think that, you know, if you read Givens latest book by the Hand of Mormon, for example, you know, she did a fabulous job on that book, by the way. I think she did a very good job at presenting arguments against and the arguments for and what I believe is a very even handed way. In fact, if you were to look at a work that openly kind of shows the arguments against and deals with them, Hearst could possibly be a very good role model if you wanted to go out and do that with other issues besides the Book of Mormon. But more specifically, I lost my train of thought here.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] You were just talking about the Book of Mormon and historicity.

John Lynch [00:10:49] Oh, the historicity of the Book of Mormon. One of the things that she points out in her book is, and I think it's a very good point that she makes, is that Joseph Smith claimed believability in his first vision and in the restoration of the gospel. By pointing towards the Book of Mormon and saying, look, look at what came forth. Because of this, the Lord used me as his instrument and the Book of Mormon kind of became his test proof. So you have to ask yourself the question, if the Book of Mormon and prophets for years have said we stand or we fall on the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon is true, then the Church is true. If the Book of Mormon is false, then the Church is false. Is it possible for the Book of Mormon to be inspired fiction? In my mind, no.

John Dehlin [00:11:49] That's fair. So if you think about those that you know of who have left the church, what do you see as the mental process they go through that leads them out? Do you sympathize with them at all? Do you empathize with them? Do you understand how that happens? And how would you. If you were to speak to someone before they're about to take that jump, or even if they've already taken it and jumped, do you have any advice or thoughts to offer that could either help someone make that decision, help someone keep someone from making that decision, or bring them back, you know, what advice do you sympathize with an ex or an anti Mormon? How do you see it happening to them and what advice would you give to them to reconsider?

Understanding Why Members Leave and How to Respond

John Lynch [00:12:47] Well, you actually asked a very pertinent question, kind of prior to that string of questions actually, where you asked, do I understand all the reasons? And I would be dishonest if I said that I did understand them all. I don't understand them all. I would like to understand. I would like to have a better view.

John Lynch [00:13:07] That's not to say that I don't understand why some people leave. That's not to say that I don't understand the processes. I was corresponding with somebody who shared with me some very difficult things that happened to them by individuals who were in positions of responsibility and authority over them.

John Lynch [00:13:32] My heart was wrenched. It really affected me. I thought, I think back to my entrance into the church and as I was developing in my faith, if these things had happened to me, it undoubtedly would have shattered my perspective and my faith, at least from the perspective of these individuals.

John Lynch [00:13:59] Could I see myself saying, oh my goodness, I can't continue to be associated with this? Yes, I could. So can I understand? Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. I'd like to understand better. I'd like to know what it is that causes people to leave. My heart is broken when I see it happen. Some instances, I think that people leave the church to justify to themselves why they don't want to continue, whether it be because they feel that the church is controlling and domineering, that whether or not they feel that the church's standards are too stringent or somehow because of the church's standards, that the church is judgmental and is focused on inflicting guilt rather than on inviting people to God's grace and that sort of thing.

John Lynch [00:14:47] I think that when individuals go through and look for reasons for doubt, then I have a more difficult time understanding. So, you know, I guess a lot of it has to do with the perspective that they're coming from within themselves.

John Lynch [00:15:09] And, you know, what, what, what, what motivations they have. And that's something that I can't get into. I can't get into somebody's head and heart.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] I can't tell you. I've talked to enough people who are struggling to know that there's a huge sensitivity about this common perception that someone who leaves the church does it because they want to have illicit sex or because they're gay or because they want to drink alcohol or smoke marijuana or whatever. That's something that a lot of people find really offensive. And I, I'm. I know that has to exist. Right? But, but most of the people that I talk to, it's very simple. They were taught sort of things were one certain way, and then they find out things are very different. Either that or they have something really bad happen to them.

John Lynch [00:16:02] Yeah, I would say that the reason why people leave the church generally, my experience, is a violation of trust. And whether that violation of trust comes because a person should have conducted themselves in a particular way and didn't physical, emotional or sexual or whatever type of abuse from a position of authority or strength, or whether that violation of trust is more perceived in instances like we've already addressed, such as, hey, there's issues of church history which is not proclaimed by the church, but which are out there and they didn't know about it. And then when they begin to hear about it, it causes them to feel like there's been some.

John Lynch [00:16:42] There's been some deceit that's taken place, wherein in reality, it wasn't the intent or the purpose of the church to deceive. It's been out there all along. But yet the perception, and that's a valid perception. Do I sympathize with it? In a way I do, because I can understand how that would affect a person in a way I don't, because it has not caused me to leave.

John Lynch [00:17:05] I feel very fortunate in that I think that one of the things, too, if I might interject here, and I know that we've run long here, but one of the things that I think is a question that you haven't asked, that I want to answer anyway, is if I had advice to somebody who had a friend or a family member who was thinking of leaving.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] No, I just asked. That's what I just asked, actually.

John Lynch [00:17:28] Oh, I thought you asked. No, I thought your question was, if I knew somebody was leaving, what advice would I give the person that's leaving leaving? My advice is to the person who has a friend that's going to leave. If you have a daughter or a son or somebody like that, what advice would I give to that person?

John Lynch [00:17:46] Because I'll tell you one thing that I do see that I think happens which saddens me a great deal, and that is that for whatever reason, when a person exercises their agency and chooses to leave, when we apply unrighteous dominion and pressure upon them and belittle them, or belittle their experience or their emotions or their feelings and tell them they're wrong, or we attribute motive to them, such as, oh, well, you just want to go out and sin. You bring up a very good point.

John Lynch [00:18:15] A lot of people leave the church, and it's not an issue of sin for them. They're good, faithful members from that standpoint. They keep the standards. They don't drink, smoke, have illicit sex and all that kind of stuff. They leave for other reasons. But when a person chooses to leave, the reaction of the leaders, the reactions of their family, can do more harm than the original reason why they chose to leave.

John Lynch [00:18:43] That, for me, is very unfortunate. So I think that there is a message to be given to people who are dealing with and around those people who are choosing to leave. And my first message would be, number one, acknowledge that these people have a right to feel what they feel, to think what they think.

John Lynch [00:19:03] Give them the freedom to have doubt in the sense that you don't have to tell them that, well, if you're doubting, you're an evil person. I think that it's natural for us to have questions and doubts. What do we do with them? What do we do with them? From that point, if we're too harsh in our reaction, we don't leave room for that person who's having the doubts to come back and to find the answers. Oftentimes what we do is our personalities come into play and histories of relationships and prejudices and biases come into play, and people harden into positions when that happens, minds close eyes Close hearts, close.

John Lynch [00:19:46] And people oftentimes then leave the church. And then it becomes a seeking of continued justification for why they left. And I think they begin to heap upon themselves even the farcical reasons for why they shouldn't believe. A key message I would give is don't be critical of the people. Tell them that it's okay to have questions. Tell them that there are answers.

John Lynch [00:20:13] Let them know that you love them and that you're going to love them anyway no matter what happens as they go through it, if they choose not to follow your advice, it's okay. It's heart wrenching, but it's okay because that's their choice. You can only do what you can do.

John Lynch [00:20:29] I would encourage them to take and break down usually a person's question. Our experience is that a person's question comes from a very specific approach. For example, somebody might bring up five issues about Joseph Smith and what they're really questioning is whether or not Joseph Smith was morally qualified as a prophet. Polygamy is an issue. They might bring up the issue of the peep stones and things like that. They are the gold digging. So they bring up these issues to question Joseph Smith. So it is a question of Joseph Smith. Other times it is a question of the Book of Mormon. And so the answer that needs to be given from an apologist is not only to give answers to a number of those questions, but also on top of those answers, to give additional reason to believe to help reinstill that faith.

John Lynch [00:21:23] I gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon because of the teachings that it had, not because there is chiasmus. The message of the Book of Mormon is vastly important. When you read the Book of Mormon, how does it make you feel?

John Lynch [00:21:40] What are the teachings? What are the sublime messages that you get out of it? I read King Benjamin's talk and every time I read it, I am brought to tears by the message of compassion that was delivered when he gave his talk.

John Lynch [00:21:56] All of these types of things. I think that it is important to not only give response, to break it down and help people understand. Is the Book of Mormon true? All right, you, you've got questions about the Book of Mormon because of these five questions that have been answered, we'll address those questions, but let's go to the big one. Is the Book of Mormon true? How would we know that it's true and address it not just from the standpoint of those questions, but from the standpoint of the larger picture of the whole issue of the Book of Mormon? Same thing with Joseph Smith. Same thing with the modern day prophet or anything else that somebody wants to attack.

Advice for Those Struggling with Faith

John Dehlin [00:22:29] Very good. I'd say shout hallelujah to your comments about how to treat it is sad how marriages get destroyed and families get broken up over people leaving. That's one huge motivator for me to try and build bridges because it tears me apart to see that happen. I do think that a lot of members of the church, you know, don't know a lot of the history or doctrine historically and are maybe scared by it. And so a natural reaction if somebody's getting into that stuff is just to try and wall yourself off because you don't want to learn stuff that's gonna make you scared too. So sometimes I feel like that may be a bit at the heart of why some of that separation happens, but I sure hope it discontinues as much as possible.

John Lynch [00:23:16] Yeah, it could be.

Rapid Fire Questions and FAIR's Future Plans

John Dehlin [00:23:18] So I just have a couple really quick questions. You can answer them really quickly if you want. Some of them are pretty quick. Do you guys have any podcast plans at all? Seems like you guys would be well served to do a podcast.

John Lynch [00:23:30] You know, since you asked me, invited me to come on, we begin those discussions and I would not be surprised if sometime in the not too distant future we started doing some podcasts. I think it would be helpful.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Me too. That's good to hear. How do you. Do you have any quick thoughts or comments about Sunstone and Dialogue as publications? As symposium, their role in the church? Do you condemn them broadly? Do you think there's some good and some bad, or do you think, hey, they're great, we're sure glad they're in the community. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on that, either as a person or as a representative of fair?

John Lynch [00:24:11] Well, FAIR is not anything like either of those two publications. I think that there's good that comes out of those publications, and I think that there's some things that are damaging. On a couple of occasions, I've read some things that I wholeheartedly disagreed with as a forum, a place for individuals who are seeking a voice. Is there a place for that? Yeah, I suppose that there is.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Cool.

John Lynch [00:24:38] But I don't criticize them. We actually link on a number of occasions from the FAIR website, for example, to Dialogue and to Sunstone. Like I said, there's good in them, but it doesn't serve the same purpose that FAIR does. And fair's purpose is really to concentrate on providing answers from a faithful perspective. That's a limitation that we place on ourselves that Sunstone and FAIR don't place

John Dehlin [00:25:12] on themselves and dialogue.

John Lynch [00:25:13] Yeah, excuse me, dialogue.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] I've heard it and thank you for answering that. I've just been nominated to the board of Sunstone, but I don't believe in factions and enemies. And so I'd like to hear as much bridge building as possible because that's what I think is going to help us get to where we need to go. I've heard a little bit discussed about a fair wiki. Is there anything you can do know or can talk about that? Because I'm very fascinated about that.

John Lynch [00:25:42] Yeah, we're working on one.

John Dehlin [00:25:44] What's it about? How's it structured? When's it going to be released? What's it going to look like?

John Lynch [00:25:49] It'll be released? When it's reasonably well advanced. We're a group of volunteers for those. I don't know how many people are familiar with a wiki, but really what a wiki is, it's a place where it's kind of like an encyclopedia, where people can collaborate on the answers.

John Lynch [00:26:11] We're using it right now to help gather responses and things like that, to be able to provide good links. We're putting it together. It's at an early stage. We've got a number of answers that are in it, but we're not comfortable that there's been sufficient peer review in order to put out even the few articles and things that are already in there. But our view of how it can be used is an optimistic one. We think that people will be able to go on to it and be able to get a quick overview as to what the arguments, a particular argument against the church might be, what the answer is, what the relevance.

John Lynch [00:26:49] Additional reading that's recommended, being able to link into more detailed articles. So it's kind of, you know, we see it as kind of being a. If you were peeling the onion, so to speak, it would be the first. The first layer of the onion with links to all the different layers down.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] How does this differ from the directory that's already on fair right now?

John Lynch [00:27:09] It's going to be much more easily searchable. It's going to have a lot more of a collaborative effort to it. There's not going to be any individual who's authored it per se, so there will be inputs from a lot of different people from a lot of different disciplines, and it will link to a number of articles that are out there. So, for example, you might have an article. Let's just take the issue of polygamy. We might have a very good article on one aspect of polygamy, which goes into a great deal of detail that talks about the experiences of women who were involved in polygamy and that sort of thing and maybe takes that particular perspective, but is only a one sentence mention in the wiki itself.

John Lynch [00:27:54] Because the wiki is taking a much higher view. It's not going into the levels of detail. So, you know, there's a number of things that, when approached, might require a greater degree of detail if it's an issue for somebody. But, you know, from an overview of the issue and the question and us addressing it requires a more succinct answer.

John Dehlin [00:28:15] Right.

John Lynch [00:28:15] The wiki provides that succinct answer.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] So I have always wanted to do something similar. So I'm, I'm excited to see this when it comes out. And, and well, join Fair.

John Lynch [00:28:28] We'd love to have you contribute.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Yeah, okay. I'm totally open to that. Let me just say if I can give you one piece of humble, unsolicited advice. Sure.

John Lynch [00:28:40] When.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] When, you know, let's take the Masonic issue. You know, the thing that you're normally told growing up in the church to counter that is, oh, there were Masons who worked on Solomon's temple. They snuck in, saw the ceremony, preserved it through the Masonic ritual. Then that's how the Lord communicated it to Joseph. Right. Something that historically is pretty much unfair, you know, not factual. And even a Mason will tell you that's not how they see it.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] That's what Greg said. It was just so beautiful for me to have him go. This is the common perception that's broadly believed and taught in the church. And it's wrong. But, you know, here's the facts and then here's why it shouldn't trouble you being able to say, call a spade a spade, Acknowledge something that's been taught that's wrong or acknowledge something that's difficult and say, yeah, you know, yes, Joseph Smith denied that he practiced polygamy or, you know, whatever the issue is. Yes, it's a fact. But here's how you can deal with it. That is just so. It's like a. It's like being in a shower.

John Dehlin [00:29:57] It's so cleansing and sanctifying. I hope that you guys will try really hard and if I or others of us join with you to be willing to just call a spade a spade, but then talk about why it shouldn't be a problem versus any attempt to hide or cover up or justify unnaturally a position on something, does that make sense?

John Lynch [00:30:20] It does. And I appreciate the comment. I think that you Know, just I can tell you from my perspective, the individuals that are directing the affairs of FAIR are focused on that very objective of providing right answers, not necessarily answers that sound right.

John Dehlin [00:30:44] Yeah. Another example is the people practice polygamy because there were more women than men on the frontier.

John Lynch [00:30:49] It's not true.

John Dehlin [00:30:50] Right. But to openly say this is generally taught it's wrong. Now let's talk about the real situation. It's just so refreshing to me. So anyway, maybe it's troubling others. So I self serving of a request, but I just wanted to make my little vote there.

John Lynch [00:31:05] I appreciate it very much.

Church Historians and the Boundaries of Faithful Scholarship

John Dehlin [00:31:06] Okay, two last questions. And this is just a personal interest more than anything else, but I've done a lot of reading about the Leonard Arrington years and the Lowell Bennion era and the Te Edgar Lyon era in the forties and fifties and then the, the Leonard Arrington years in the seventies. Do you or the FAIR people, how aware are you of that history of what happened to Leonard Arrington and Lowell Bennion and those guys? Do you view them favorably? Do you view that as a shining moment in the church, as a dark tragedy in church history? How do you look upon folks like Leonard Arrington and Lowell Bennion in fair?

John Lynch [00:31:46] Well, I'm not particularly myself all that versed in the controversies that you're referring to. I'm vaguely aware that there were questions about in terms of how they tried to treat the history of the church and that sort of thing and some of the reactions. I don't know enough about it to comment. I would only say that. In as far as the Brethren have, this is a church that was born of persecution. And I think that because of that the Brethren tend to be very protective. And I think that I don't begrudge them that. That's their calling. That's their call. That's what they are called to do. And I will allow them to do that and not be judgmental of it. I think that in as much as histories can be dealt with in a forthright way and maintain people's faith, it benefits us greatly.

Polygamy, Deification, and President Hinckley's Public Statements

John Dehlin [00:32:51] Well, this has been good. I really appreciate all that we've talked about so far. Let me just if I can wrap up maybe with one final question, if that's okay. Over the past, let's say three to five years, President Hinckley has been interviewed a few times, I believe in the Los Angeles Times, in an article, maybe in Timer, Newsweek, and definitely on Larry King Live, where he was asked basically two questions.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] The first question had to do with polygamy. And the second question had to do with man becoming gods. And as I recall it, the polygamy question was basically, you know, what's your stance on polygamy? And his response was, I believe the quote is, it's not doctrinal.

John Dehlin [00:33:57] And the sense was that he really wanted to, at least at a minimum, really disassociate today's Mormons from the practice and definitely probably respect the law and make sure that he didn't offer any encouragement to those who are practicing it still today.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] And the second one about God being a man and man becoming God, I believe that the quote was something like, I don't know much about it. I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it.

John Dehlin [00:34:39] There's a lot of people out there who feel like, you know, this wasn't the whole truth. This wasn't the complete truth. That in the polygamy instance, certainly polygamy is doctrinal because it hasn't been renounced. The temporal practice has been halted by force.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] But, you know, even today, people are still being married polygamously in the temple if a previous spouse has died and a husband or wife takes on a second spouse. And so a lot of people feel like it is still doctrinal and the full truth wasn't being told, especially given the fact that in the 19th century it was taught that polygamy was not only highly recommended, but a requirement for the highest degree of the social kingdom.

John Dehlin [00:35:31] And then back with the man becoming God, or God being a man and man becoming God, that this was almost sort of a desire to not seem heretical to the Protestant Christian folks out there who would see these teachings as being completely unacceptable.

John Dehlin [00:35:50] Yet the notion of God being a man has been taught since the 1800s, I believe. And the notion of men becoming gods is sort of woven into to our deepest doctrines, men and women. So, you know, I don't expect you to be able to speak for President Hinckley. I have no interest in trying to trap you or make it sound like, you know, he's being deceitful, because I totally don't believe in making those presumptions. But I would be interested if you or fair, have thoughts or comments or ways to help us think about, you know, the image that President Hinckley is trying to convey and the way that he treats those two subjects.

John Lynch [00:36:38] Well, you know, I'll speak for myself probably more than anything here, but you bring up two very important issues. And I think that one of the underlying Issues here is really what is the responsibility of the President of the Church in regards to the statements that he makes relative to the history of the Church and the past and that sort of thing versus versus what he's trying to emphasize on a forward looking basis for the church.

John Lynch [00:37:04] On the first instance of polygamy, I think clearly he's trying to distance the church from that practice, if only to encourage members to remain faithful. If you look at instances today in Utah where fundamentalists, when I mean fundamentalist Mormons come out and actually glob onto the comments and remarks of previous leaders of the church and use that as justification for practices that today are not considered a practice of the Church, then I think it is wholly appropriate for him to use his judgment to do that. Now the one thing that you mentioned there is the question of his statement, something about that I think it is not doctrinal or something along those lines.

John Lynch [00:37:50] It really begs the question as to what. What by definition is doctrine. If you look back in past histories, the only tribe of the House of Israel that was allowed to practice the priesthood was the tribe of Levi considered the Levitical priesthood.

John Lynch [00:38:13] Today, that is not a restriction. So was it doctrinal then? Yes. Is it doctrinal today? No. By the same token, polygamy could still be a doctrinal principle that has its roots in eternal concepts, but is not necessarily something that is doctrinally accepted today in the sense that it is something that should be practiced and condoned.

John Lynch [00:38:36] The doctrine, along with the whole notion of polygamy is basically that it is acceptable when commanded, when we are not commanded, whether it be because the laws of the land will not permit it or otherwise, then it is to be obeyed.

John Dehlin [00:38:51] So you're sort of taking the way he was using the word doctrine to mean what is actively taught and acceptable as the Church is currently being governed today.

John Lynch [00:39:05] That's my understanding of it, yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] Okay, that's a fair interpretation. But there are going to be some who say, but the whole truth is it's still being practiced. It's still believed that it's going to be in effect in the afterlife. So at a minimum he can say, okay, look, we don't believe in practicing it today, but we certainly are practicing it in the temples and believe that it will be in full effect in the afterlife. So I mean, I guess he could say that, right?

John Lynch [00:39:37] Well, I suppose so. I would be a little bit careful about the characterization of it being practiced in the temples. I think I understand what you mean by saying that by referencing the fact that If a man is married to a woman and his wife passes away, he could take another woman to the temple and there be sealed to her and in effect, that marriage would result in a polygamous relationship in the hereafter. In that sense, yes. Then clearly polygamy is still practiced in that limited sense. But it is not something that is a doctrine that we should go out and practice it where we should take multiple wives while both are still living.

John Dehlin [00:40:17] But why not give that full. I don't know. I don't expect you to really know.

John Lynch [00:40:23] Well, I can't speak for President Hinckley. All I can say is that, you know, I think that when you're in a sound bite world of an interview on national television with Larry King Live, you don't necessarily want to muddy the waters with too much of the nitty gritty details. You know, I think the message of emphasis here is that it is not a practice today that the church indeed is distancing themselves from that standpoint. I think that President Hinckley's remarks are probably appropriate. I'm sure that it's a very difficult position to be in weighing exactly how much of the detail do you get into in these doctrinal issues versus how much do you keep on the surface level and convey the assurance that polygamy is not a practice of the church today?

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. And I totally don't stand in condemnation in any way of President Hinckley. But I do have friends who feel like there's one set of dialogue and discourse that happens to the membership of the church, while there's sort of a different set of dialogue and discourse that happens through the PR channels. And there's some who feel like they wish it was the same dialogue. And maybe that's unfair or unrealistic. I know that there's milk before meat, and that's probably the best argument against that logic. Right. But can you sympathize with the feeling that maybe a purist person might wish that it was the exact same dialogue between the public face and what we say in General conference or behind the doors?

John Lynch [00:41:56] Oh, I can certainly understand their feelings.

John Dehlin [00:41:59] And.

John Lynch [00:41:59] And, you know, all I can say is that that's a judgment that President Hinckley, who is infinitely more qualified to make, it's his responsibility to make.

John Dehlin [00:42:10] Yeah. So what about the second issue?

John Lynch [00:42:14] Well, the second issue, if I understand it correctly, was, you know, a statement made. It was actually debated. There was people that actually wrote letters to President Hinckley's office and to Time magazine. To kind of clarify it, wherein he made a statement, something to the effect relative to what would be considered the concept of deification. And people jump on it and say that they don't know that President Hinckley said, I don't know that we teach that. I don't know that we emphasize it. I don't know much about that, or something to that effect. As I recall, the question that was actually asked him was not about deification itself, which is a doctrine that I think can be pretty substantially defended. We have many of the early traditions.

John Dehlin [00:43:06] Tell the listeners what you mean by what deification means.

John Lynch [00:43:10] Deification is a concept that man can become like our Father in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] Okay, so you are splitting out. You are splitting out sort of two concepts. Tell us what the two concepts are.

John Lynch [00:43:20] Well, the two concepts would be. There is an old couplet that was coined by one of the leaders of the Church following Joseph Smith. It essentially says, as man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may become. Deification would be the latter. The second part of that statement. Men becoming like our Father in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:43:45] And you are saying that is defensible.

John Lynch [00:43:47] I believe that is wholly defensible. We have many of the Church fathers, Irenaeus and Athanasius and Augustine, all of which have made comments that are substantially similar to that. Basically that if we have been made sons of gods, then we have also been made gods and things like that, that Christ came, that we could be enabled to be made gods.

John Lynch [00:44:11] There are some limited qualifications that you might want to put around that depending on the particular doctrinal approach that you are taking. But I think there is a lot of historical precedents for that concept. Christ himself said that, commanded us to be therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect and things like that. So there is precedence. There is early Church evidences that it was taught in the early Church. I think the part that seems more heretical to other people is this notion that God was once less than what he is like. We are diminishing the capability of God and making him less than that by stating that he was once a man.

John Lynch [00:44:50] I think that while there have clearly been teachings in that regard in the Church that it is not something upon which our eternal salvation is based. We are here to become like our Father in heaven. The forward portion of that is clearly a doctrine. It was a doctrine that drew me into the Church. The whole notion that I could become like my heavenly Father. I used to always think that if I became God, heck, the last thing I would want to do if I became perfect was sit up on cloud nine and play harps all day.

John Lynch [00:45:22] My idea, if I was to progress, my idea of being an enlightened person would be to help other people become enlightened as well and become more like me. I. I believe that that portion of it is completely defensible. The problem arises, at least in the debate here, was basically where they asked the whole question of was it a teaching of the church today that God the Father was once a man like you and I are?

John Lynch [00:45:59] I think that his emphasis was to de. Emphasize that whole notion of diminishing God because it isn't something that is taught. It is clearly taught actively in the church today that we can become like our Heavenly Father. And that is one of the aims and purposes of our existence. But all of the questions and the complexities surrounding the existence of Heavenly Father and how he may have come to be who he is, that is something that is a deeper doctrine that is not necessary for our salvation. It isn't something that is emphasized. I don't know how long it has been since I have heard something like that even discussed in any great detail in a priesthood lesson, at least to my experience.

John Lynch [00:46:45] I don't know, maybe your experience has been different in that regard. I think that the whole notion of people criticizing President Hinckley for making the statement that I don't know about that. I don't know that we teach it. I see it more as he was just trying to say, look, that is kind of a fuzzy area, this whole thing about how God was. I think if he had come out and said, do you believe that God can become like. Or that man can become like God? I think he would have come out directly and said, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:47:20] So I can see, first of all, I think, the distinction you make between man becoming God. I still think many are going to see men becoming God as heretical. Probably the majority of Christians. But I can see where you'd say it's defensible. And I definitely think there are scriptures where, if taken literally, can support that. And I definitely agree there have been past Christian leaders who have thought or believed around that area.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] But, you know, it seems if he's saying. If President Hinckley's saying that God once was a man is not necessarily doctrinal, what that sort of does is put him at odds with Joseph Smith. Because I think that in the King Follett discourse, he basically said God himself was once as we are now.

John Dehlin [00:48:10] And. And for me, to be honest, I don't have a problem with A modern day prophet overriding an older prophet. I do wish that when they did that they would be explicit about it and just say, hey, you know what? Brigham Young said this, but I'm telling you that this is the way it is. But they don't. They just sort of say what the new thing is and let the old thing lie. But I do think that Joseph Smith taught that in the king fault discourse. So what would you say to people who would say those two now are at odds?

John Lynch [00:48:44] Well, you know, the real question that you're bringing up is can, you know, the whole notion of can a latter prophet trump a prior prophet? And if that's the case, then which one was the false prophet? That's one of the big things that gets thrown up quite often. And to be honest with you, they don't have to be false prophets. There are growth of understanding that is taking place within both men. You have to understand the principle of revelation, that it is based upon an inquiring, it is based upon reason of your own and a seeking of an affirmation from your Father in heaven that the thing that you are bringing and presenting before him is true and correct.

John Lynch [00:49:23] There clearly were teachings along those lines. And I don't think that President Hinckley is attempting to come out and say that those teachings were false. I think that what he's saying is that it's not. At least this is my take on it. And I don't want to speak for President Hinckley. I want to emphasize that very clearly. But I don't think that he's trying to say that it's not a teaching. I think that he's simply stating that we don't know enough about it to make a doctrinal statement. And that's okay for me, President Hinckley's understanding of it could be different than what the understanding of it was at the time of Joseph Smith and by Joseph Smith himself.

John Lynch [00:50:03] I understand where people would look at these types of issues and ask themselves which one is right and which one is wrong. And the tendency is to pick one that is wrong. And then basically from that point forward, the church is false or something along those lines, at least from the context of those that would criticize.

John Lynch [00:50:22] I think that's an unfair assessment to make. It is possible for a leader of the church to make a mistake and it's possible for someone to correct it. It's possible for understandings to improve as time goes on. It's also possible for understandings to diminish. Joseph Smith may have known Something that we didn't and that President Hinckley doesn't. I don't know. I can only speculate. But I. I do feel that the statement that President Hinckley made was probably a fair and accurate one. I think he was saying, look, I don't know that we really emphasize it, that we teach it.

John Lynch [00:50:57] I don't think he was pleading ignorance. I think he was being kind of vague and not really knowing how to describe it. That was my take on it.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] I hear where you're coming from. I think that's. That's a reasonable position. I do think there's. I just think that one thing that I'm learning. I guess there's two things I'm learning. I'm reading Rough Stone Rolling Right now by Richard Bushman, and I'm learning that being a prophet isn't as simple or as simplistic as we're able to teach it and understand it in Sunday school. So there are these expectations that basically the prophet calls up God and says, hey, God, what's the scoop? And then God sort of says, all right, take notes. It's clear that it's a lot less simple than that. Would you agree with that?

John Lynch [00:51:56] I would agree with that. I think that there's a lot of expectations that people have as far as the performance or the comportment of a prophetic that are probably misguided. We have kind of coined a phrase that a lot of people expect prophets, for example, to be casino prophets. In other words, they can walk into your average casino as a man is about to roll the dice and declare as he rolls the dice, what the numbers are going to be.

John Lynch [00:52:27] I don't think that is the way Heavenly Father functions. That is certainly not the way I understand that a prophet functions. People expect that a prophet should have a certain somber comportment. Joseph Smith was criticized continually about being too jovial. He loved to play with the kids. He would get out and wrestle with them and stuff like that. There is a lot of perceptions that people have as to what a prophet should or should not be. And I think a good many of them are actually incorrect.

John Lynch [00:52:54] To me, what qualifies a person to be a prophet in the LDS Church is that they are worthy and entrusted to hold the keys of priesthood authority, to exercise the priesthood and the ordinances of the gospel to enable us to be able to return to the presence of our Father in heaven and become like Him. In that sense, then it is a much more limited role. President Hinckley basically said that his role as a Prophet is to be a teacher, to be a defender of the truth, to be an example.

John Lynch [00:53:27] In that sense, the role of a prophet now becomes even more clearly defined. It actually becomes more human, in my view. I think that people have this tendency to think, like you described it, that the prophet is a teletype machine and he plugs in his modem and all of a sudden he starts getting verbatim information. It is not that at all. My experience is doctrinally from the Scriptures and from my own personal experience and from what I have read and been able to glean from histories of the Church is that revelation comes through a process of seeking, thinking it out in your mind, coming to a conclusion of your own, bringing it to Heavenly Father and being humble and open to reception at that point where you are willing to accept the answer that Heavenly Father is going to offer you or going to give you whatever you are capable of receiving.

John Lynch [00:54:22] So it has a lot to do with our individual capacities. Our humanness doesn't go away. I think it's unfair for us to expect that as we ourselves are called into positions of leadership and otherwise we don't expect our humanness to go away. Why should we expect the humanness of a prophet to go away as well?

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Right. Yeah. And that takes me sort of to the. And this kind of brings our conversation full circle in a nice way. You mentioned earlier on that for most of the people that fare deals with, they're struggling because of some type of breach of trust. And I think probably the biggest thing that we all face, you and I and everyone who's sort of in this field of Mormon studies face, is just this chasm that we talked about earlier.

The Chasm Between Member Belief and Church Reality

John Dehlin [00:55:16] Because if you surveyed. I'll just tell you this for sure. If you surveyed Mormons today, active Mormons, and you asked them two questions, these are just two examples. Number one, is polygamy doctrinal? They would say yes. And if you ask them, was God a man and will men become gods? They would emphatically say yes. So to them, to Mormons, there would be no question, because that's how it's been simplistically taught. Now, I don't fault the brethren for that.

John Dehlin [00:55:56] I have a very realistic view now. But it's very easy for someone to sort of take everything at face value, how they've been taught, how they've been culturally raised, and just be very disappointed at the chasm between what they thought their whole lives and then what they discover on the Internet or in a Larry King interview. And I wonder how we can bridge that gap so that the right beliefs and feelings and perceptions can match what the reality is at the highest level.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] And so that. So that what the facts that we know about Joseph Smith, for example, are the ones that are taught. And there's no chasm between how he's portrayed in Sunday school and what Richard Bushman writes in his book. How can we get there? How can we get to the point where the average membership knows the basic facts about Joseph Smith, knows the basic facts about church history, knows what really is doctrinal and what isn't, Especially when the church doesn't seem like they want to give us a definitive canon on what is doctrinal and what isn't. They give us the Scriptures, but the Scriptures are open to so much interpretation.

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Where does that leave us? That's my goal, actually. And that's the challenge I want to issue to Pharre and ask you to make your final comment about what can we do to eliminate the chasm between what people's perceptions are in the church and what reality is.

John Lynch [00:57:38] Well, I think the biggest thing that we can do is to help the individuals themselves stand on their own two feet. I seem to recall. I don't remember the exact quote. Brigham Young made some statements basically that if any man believes a doctrine because I said it, he is a fool. Something along those lines where he was basically saying that we should go and find out for ourselves. Basically, don't follow me just because of my position as the person prophet. Follow me because you've sought to gain an understanding and a confirmation that the things I'm teaching are true and that therefore your practice should conform to the guidance that I'm giving.

John Dehlin [00:58:18] Do you hear that message being emphasized today?

John Lynch [00:58:22] What do you mean, like a general conference?

John Dehlin [00:58:23] How often do you hear Think for yourself. Don't just take our word for it. Make sure that you really have a conviction of the things we're teaching. Don't follow us unless you really feel good about it. Do you hear that today?

John Lynch [00:58:40] Well, I don't hear. Actually, no. I don't hear that a lot. It's been some time since I've read it in discourse, but I don't think that that diminishes the value of the recommendation. I think that we do need to help individuals become stronger. If you look at the hierarchy of the things you need to focus church leader and you need to help people and you are dealing with a worldwide church that is struggling with all different levels of morality and cultural practice that in some ways conflict, in some ways propels people along the path of conformity to the doctrines and the teaching of the church.

John Lynch [00:59:21] I think that when you are running a church of that nature, it is very difficult to on the one hand say, look, here's the way it is. I'm a defender of the truth. This is the way it needs to be. And this is how you should practice versus by the way, now that I've said that, don't listen to anything I say. Go get your own confirmation from it.

John Lynch [00:59:43] It's a dichotomy that I don't know how easy it is going to be to reconcile. And I don't know that the chasm that you speak of is easily. Is easily bridged. I think that what we're going to find is that as individuals themselves mature spiritually that they will become better adept at understanding the principles and being able to adhere to them. And the brethren will then be able to be more liberal and open even in the way in which they teach us.

John Lynch [01:00:14] There's a milk and a meat issue here. You can't kind of speak all things to all people at all times. You know, it's the old quote. I think it was Lincoln that said, you can please some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time. You can't please all the people all the time. And from a doctrinal standpoint, I think it's very difficult to give everybody the same satisfaction. We've had conversations within fair. Some of the members that participate in FAIR have raised the issue of the.

John Lynch [01:00:46] The way that our Sunday schools are run. You've got people that are very well versed, very well read in the church history and that sort of thing. And they're sitting down trying to put together a lesson and being encouraged to kind of stick to the lesson manual.

John Lynch [01:01:04] The items in the lesson manual are extremely basic in some regards. So you've got some of the members that go out and they stand in the hall or they read their own book and this sort of thing. Because the emphasis is on the basics. You do have a dichotomy here where you've got some people that have progressed further and I don't know that you can mix it. Maybe something that the church might see fit to do at a later date would be to have an advanced kind of gospel doctrine on Sundays, that sort of thing. I think that the emphasis is going to. But that's got its own dangers.

John Lynch [01:01:38] You start to have an advanced one. Now everybody wants to go to the advanced one and it becomes elitist or separatist. Or, you know, all this kind of thing. So it is a tough one. And I don't know that it is one that is easily done. I will tell you that I think that the one thing of all the struggles that the brethren have to deal with is trying to help people live their lives in a way that their practices, their daily walk is in conformity with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

John Lynch [01:02:10] Some of these other doctrinal issues are less important. Even some of the historical issues are less important. They take a back seat to that. That's not to say that they're not important, that we shouldn't have a means for people to learn them. And they do have a means to learn them. We have wonderful institutes of religion. We have Brigham Young University. We have basically institutions of higher learning that people can go to and can study these things out. But in terms of what the Church is focused on and what it should be focused on, in my opinion, is helping people come unto Christ and to live a Christlike life.

John Lynch [01:02:41] Those teachings that support that should take first priority. That in itself may invite, in part, some of this chasm that people experience when they begin to learn some of the more detailed elements of the Church's history and teachings.

John Dehlin [01:03:01] Yeah, okay, I can see where you are coming from there. Let me just. I had this really interesting experience just two weeks ago, and I think maybe it would be interesting to end on this note. I walked into Deseret book here in Logan, and I was almost taken back as I walked in the door. There were like 500 books of rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman. I mean, stacks and stacks, tall stacks, you know, up to my belly, stack after stack after stack of this rough stone rolling book on sale, prominently displayed.

Accessible Scholarship and Closing Thoughts on Faith

John Dehlin [01:03:41] And I'm like, oh, okay. You know, Bushman, he's pretty benign. That's not a really bold move. You know, he's a devout member. And I'm sure the books. You know, I'm sure it tells a blemish here or there, but, you know, so I bring this book home and I start going through it and. And, you know, he mentions that. You know, I think he mentions that Joseph Smith drank wine, you know, the night before his martyrdom. He mentions that the watch that John Taylor was wearing didn't actually get shot, but instead, you know, hit a ledge and got smashed that way. In other words, that the story about the bullet wasn't necessarily, you know, the right way that it happened.

John Dehlin [01:04:21] He mentions that. He tells the whole Masonic Lodge thing. He. He doesn't pull any punches. The whole Nauvoo expositor thing. He tells all about the gold digging, the money digging and the peep stone. And I was just totally floored on the chapter of the translation of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:04:41] In the heading of the chapter, the very first quote you see is the quote from Emma that says Joseph used to put a peep stone in a hat and stick his face in the hat and would translate that way. And I am just shaking my head because it's true. You hear a lot of anti Mormons or ex Mormons or people frustrated with the church or even liberal Mormons. And I hate labels, but I'm going to use them anyway because I don't know any better way to say it. But you still hear accusations, saying the church is hiding things, the church is dishonest, the church isn't upfront and candid.

John Dehlin [01:05:17] But I can't see how this Bushman book isn't anything other than a monumentous event, a monumental event in the church making a giant leap forward in openness. I have to believe that the people at the church reviewed this book before Deseret Book agreed on promoting it. Somebody read it, that they know what's in it. They're not fools. They. They wouldn't promote it to such a degree.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] I'm just wondering whether you see it the same way I do and whether you have any final words about openness and the future as it relates to the church and its history and culture and stuff.

John Lynch [01:06:01] Well, I think as I said earlier, this is just evidence of what great lengths we'll go to, to hide our history. We put it in books in Deseret Bookstore and put it there for people to read. What you are bringing up is a very interesting point.

John Lynch [01:06:16] I don't know that the church is becoming more open as much as the information is just simply being gathered and being more easily presented, perhaps. I know that, for example, I recall that during this last general conference, the BYU broadcast, at least the portion that we received, had some.

John Lynch [01:06:38] Had a program running in between the two sessions that was because of Joseph Smith's birthday, was going through a number of the events in the early history of the church. And they came right out and they addressed, they brought up a number of the issues, the gold seeking, the money digging and all this sort of thing. I was kind of taken aback by that as well. I thought, oh my goodness, you wouldn't have thought that the church would typically go out and make, make that openly known. This was put out by byu, which is clearly church affiliated.

John Lynch [01:07:13] That to me was. I was Pleasantly surprised to have seen that. Not because I felt the Church was making some kind of a turnaround, but just that the information is getting out there. I think that type of thing coming out from the Church will help. It will help inoculate people in the sense that it won't be some strange thing that they hadn't heard. I think that the Church has had a tendency to give primary level messages.

John Lynch [01:07:41] I don't know if it is a PR front, but on an initial basis, the fundamental principle is Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. Well, does that mean a peep stone? Does that mean a Urim and Thummim? Is a peep stone any less mysterious to an outsider than is a Urim and Thummim? I don't think so. That's at least my opinion. There's a lot of things about the history of the Church that don't necessarily aren't problematic when you understand the circumstances around it, but it's not necessarily the thing that you put forward first. I think the fact that these things are coming out by respected individuals.

John Lynch [01:08:22] I've got tremendous respect for Bushmen. I've recently purchased his book. And by the way, I picked up my copy. I purchased two copies and the one that I got first I actually picked up from Barnes and Noble. And it was sitting. There was a stack of about 30 or 40 copies in Barnes and Noble. And so for me it was.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] And you're in California, right?

John Lynch [01:08:44] And I'm in California, yeah. So it's not as the church membership is still strong here, but it's not anything like it is from a saturation standpoint of membership in Utah. But I think that the church really. I think it's a false accusation the Church hides from its history. Does it emphasize elements of it that are more problematic that take 10 minutes to explain versus the 10 second sound bite that's positive? No, I don't think that the church does and it depends on the audience that it's talking to. But it's never hidden its doctrine, it's never hidden its teachings, it's never hidden its history.

John Lynch [01:09:24] For the most part. I think that it's to the Church's credit that most of the information, if not pretty much all of it, that is used against us really comes from the Church's own researchers, our own history, and our own documents made available to the public.

John Lynch [01:09:39] I'm glad to see that things like the Bushman book is getting out there and that the program, such as the one that that aired between the sessions of conference was open about many of the elements of the early history of the church that is not as familiar to many people.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] Very good. Well, before I wrap up, I'm done asking my questions. Is there anything you want to say to our audience? Do you want to bear your testimony? Do you want to give parting words, or do you feel like you've talked way longer than you ever wish you had?

John Lynch [01:10:12] Well, I'm sure I talked more than I've then. People are, you know, their attention span is allowed. So I'll just say thank you very much for letting me come on. And if, you know, if there's anybody out there that's listening that thinks that there's reason for doubt, I would tell them that there's reason for faith and reason to believe.

John Dehlin [01:10:37] Very good. Well, I am with you. I agree on that point for faith. So with that, John Lynch, I want to thank you very much for coming on Mormon Stories. I think we're going to have to break this up into two or three episodes, but there's no harm in that. I think there's enough good content here to value people's time, at least for some people. I want to remind our listeners to check out fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research. You can locate them@fairlds.org up on the Internet. So thanks, John, for coming on.

John Lynch [01:11:20] You're very welcome and thank you.

John Dehlin [01:11:21] And I'd just like to conclude and again, thank you for listening to Mormon Stories. Please go up to our blog site@mormonstories.org and provide your comments and feedback. Engage in a dialogue around the things we discussed. We'd also love to have you tell us what you like and don't like about these programs. Also, if you have any ideas on future guests you'd like to listen to, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you. And most of all, we'd like to encourage you to keep tuning in and keep the faith. Of course. And we hope to hear from me again. Thanks a lot. And we'll see you next time.

John Lynch [01:12:09] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

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