Introduction and Guest Background

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 29, 2025. Happy New Year. And today, the title that we have for this episode is My Mormon Truth. How Truth Began to Challenge My Faith. And specifically the faith of a former Stake presidency member, Stake High Councilman, you know, sort of a higher level leader in the Mormon Church. He is also an immigration attorney in the Fresno area. And his name is Justin Sweeney. Hey, Justin. Welcome to Warmer Stories podcast.

Justin Sweeney [00:00:44] Hey, John. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] Thanks for coming all this way.

Justin Sweeney [00:00:47] Yep. It was good travels. Cold here in Utah, but beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Yeah. A little bit colder in California.

Justin Sweeney [00:00:53] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] So did I get anything wrong with the introduction?

Justin Sweeney [00:00:57] Nope. I'm here asking questions like I've been doing for the last 18 months.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] And you don't love the. A lot of people don't. A lot of ex Mormons or questioning Mormons don't like the faith crisis sort of label. Do you kind of share that?

Justin Sweeney [00:01:14] Yeah. So that comes from, I mean, even the Book of Mormon in Alma 32:21, it says that faith is a hope for things which are not seen, which are true. And so we can only have faith in things that are true. So as we face the truth, our faith shouldn't change. Or if it does, then that thing might not be necessarily true.

John Dehlin [00:01:34] Yeah. So today we're going to be talking about a truth crisis, not a faith crisis.

Justin Sweeney [00:01:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] Yeah. And. And I guess if there's some other themes, it's gonna be. You said something about secondary issues. Why don't we just give you a chance to state your intention? Sure. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:01:54] I appreciate that you let people do this. Cause it's really important to me. The only people that know that I'm here are my wife and my kids. And so. And I'm relatively new to all of this. It's still pretty raw. I still go to church on Sunday with my family.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] So you're still attending?

Justin Sweeney [00:02:10] I'm still attending, yes. And we're still trying to figure out what we do with all of this. And people can assume a lot of different things from people that come onto this podcast. Right. And my intention specifically is to, like, we've already discussed, to speak truth.

Justin Sweeney [00:02:28] And we shouldn't be afraid to dig deep and ask questions. And one of the great. A great talk that I held really close to my heart for a long time was Elder Corbidge's talk about primary questions and secondary questions.

Justin Sweeney [00:02:44] And, you know, he said there was four primary questions. And as I dug deeper, I'M like, how can we answer those questions, those primary questions, without digging deeper and asking secondary questions? And in my job as an attorney, I ask a lot of questions. And you know, my clients typically are hesitant, they are scared.

Justin Sweeney [00:03:09] So you have to dig deep and you have to have meet with them multiple times. And you, in order to be a good advocate, you have to be able to ask a lot of different questions and a lot of different ways to get to the truth. And then again, hopefully we win. But I've become skilled at asking questions in my career and I've never shifted and used those same skills in a critical way towards the church. And so anyway, I finally started doing that and came up with some interesting discoveries, I guess you could say.

John Dehlin [00:03:42] And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Justin Sweeney [00:03:43] That's what we're going to talk about today.

John Dehlin [00:03:46] Okay. And so how recently were you, was your most recent highest calling a Stake High counselor? Yes, Councilman.

Justin Sweeney [00:03:54] I was in the High council

John Dehlin [00:03:57] six

Justin Sweeney [00:03:57] less five months ago.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] Oh my goodness. So we're in January of 2025, so.

Justin Sweeney [00:04:03] No, October. So four months ago I resigned in October.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] You were a Stake High High councilman four months ago and you resigned as a Stake High councilman.

Justin Sweeney [00:04:14] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:04:14] And for those who don't know, explain. Well, you know, let's just say there's eight to 10 wards or branches in your stake.

Justin Sweeney [00:04:22] Yeah, there's 11 units.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] So you were, you were one of 15 men who presided over 11 Mormon congregations in the Fresno, California area, is that right?

Justin Sweeney [00:04:35] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] So that's a high level leader in, in the Mormon Church in Fresno.

Justin Sweeney [00:04:41] Yeah, and I went straight from the stake presidency into that calling. And so you were, you were in

John Dehlin [00:04:47] the stake presidency right before that?

Justin Sweeney [00:04:49] Yeah, and then just transitioned over. And I was over the Spanish branch in the Fresno for obvious reasons, they call the immigration attorney to do that. But yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] Okay, so this is really fresh for you.

Justin Sweeney [00:05:01] Very.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] Yeah. Okay. I love it.

Justin Sweeney [00:05:03] Very raw, very fresh.

John Dehlin [00:05:04] Yeah. Well, I'm sorry and I'm really grateful that you're here.

Justin Sweeney [00:05:08] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:05:09] Yeah. Okay. So where does your Mormon story begin, Justin Sweeney?

Growing Up Mormon: Family and Early Life

Justin Sweeney [00:05:16] So I think it begins obviously with most people, with my parents, my mom and dad. My dad is a convert to the church and my mom had me when she was quite young. And me and my brother and sister are all very, very, very close in age. Just boom, boom, boom, one year apart. And my mom comes from a long line of members of the church, back to the pioneers, basically.

Justin Sweeney [00:05:43] And my dad is a convert. He grew up in a single parent home. My grandma, his mother is a hero of mine, raised him in the 60s and 70s as a single mom, which I don't envy that position.

Justin Sweeney [00:05:56] But I know my dad saw my mom's family specifically, who is. They're just awesome, all of them, and was like, I want that. And so as they started their young family, my dad was baptized. We were sealed in the Mesa, Arizona Temple. I was three or four years old. So sadly I don't have any memory of that, but grew up in Mesa, Arizona. If Utah got wiped off the map, I think that's where the church headquarters might be.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] I've heard like it described as Provo South.

Justin Sweeney [00:06:29] It is. We would joke in the day when people would come visit from Utah, we would always say welcome to Zion when people would visit the Mesa wards.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] Well, the Mesa Temple's one of what, the five old, like five original Mormon temples?

Justin Sweeney [00:06:42] Yeah. I don't remember the exact number, but it's one of the OG old temples. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:47] I, I've been reading through my journal of my high school journal and I grew up in Houston, Texas. Okay. And when I was in, when I was a Mormon in high school, the Mesa Temple was the closest temple. So we did a temple trip to the Mesa Temple from Houston. That was our temple trip my freshman year.

Justin Sweeney [00:07:07] That's a long, that's a long drive. But we would have people from, I didn't know from that far away, but we'd have people from Mexico even come visit. And yeah, it's a big, huge. And one of the original temples.

John Dehlin [00:07:19] And historically it's Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe, Queen Creek. I served part of my mission in the Tempe Arizona Mission, which covered those cities I just mentioned.

Justin Sweeney [00:07:34] Oh, nice.

John Dehlin [00:07:35] So the mission home was in Mesa, but those five cities are very high percentage Mormon if I'm not mistaken.

Justin Sweeney [00:07:43] Very, very high. My high school was probably 20, 25% Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:07:48] So very high.

John Dehlin [00:07:49] And this is Arizona. And of course Tempe is where Arizona State University is. Yeah, correct. Okay. So just for all of you who want to know a little bit about Arizona and it's a great place. Yeah, no, it's. And it's super hot, right?

Justin Sweeney [00:08:01] Super hot. Super hot. Dry heat though.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] It's good. Got up to 126 degrees when I was there on my mission.

Justin Sweeney [00:08:09] Yeah, I remember those days. It's super hot. You can fry an egg on the sidewalk.

John Dehlin [00:08:13] A lot of swamp coolers.

Justin Sweeney [00:08:14] Yes, very much so.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] Okay. So where were you in the birth order?

Justin Sweeney [00:08:19] I'm the oldest I'm the oldest in my family. I'm the oldest grandchild on my mom's family. So there's a lot of expectation that comes with that and a lot of pressure. A lot of attention too, honestly. But, yeah, I'm the oldest. The oldest of everybody.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:08:34] And I'm actually closer because of how early my mom had me. I'm actually closer in age to some of my aunts and uncles than my cousins. So.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] Yeah, so you already said this, but amongst your siblings, you're one of how many?

Justin Sweeney [00:08:47] One of five.

John Dehlin [00:08:47] Okay, so you're the oldest of five. Okay. And you were born what year?

Justin Sweeney [00:08:51] 1983.

John Dehlin [00:08:52] 83. Okay. Okay. So what was your Mormon family culture like? You got sealed to your parents really early.

Justin Sweeney [00:08:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] In the temple really early.

Justin Sweeney [00:09:02] I would say so. Interestingly enough, even though my dad was a convert, I think he was much more. This is his natural personality. He was much more of the disciplinarian, and my mom was a little more flexible, but just a very good, typical household. I mean, we weren't perfect, but we did all the things Mormon families do. I got baptized when I was eight. Deacon, you know, got my Eagle Scout, went to mutual most of the time. All the things that Mormon families R rated movies. No R rated movies.

John Dehlin [00:09:35] Coffee and tea.

Justin Sweeney [00:09:37] No tobacco. No coffee and tea. No tobacco. Swearing, mostly. No. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:44] Family evening, Scripture study every morning.

Justin Sweeney [00:09:48] Yep, yep. All. All that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:09:50] And yeah, so very typical. Very solid, even. Like, no caffeine for a little bit. One thing that I do love about my family is we're able to debate things. So growing up, we had the whole caffeine debate. Is it against it? Is it not against it? And we, like most Mormon families, turn to what the prophets say and look, and it's not explicitly prohibited. My mom has a family member that was like a mission president and a MTC president, and they, like, they didn't partake in, like, chocolate. They were so strict. Like, well, if you think caffeine's against the word of wisdom, you probably shouldn't even eat chocolate.

Justin Sweeney [00:10:26] And so we would just. We would have these kind of, like, debates, and they were. I would say we were orthodox, but also flexible. And we could debate things as a family and talk. As I got older, my life honestly revolved around friends and basketball. And that's all I did during my teenage years. Played a lot.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] So did you play high school basketball?

Justin Sweeney [00:10:49] I did. Oh, I played high school ball. You had. You had someone on recently that I am sure I know somehow, but I didn't recognize his name or.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Oh, yeah, he played.

Justin Sweeney [00:10:58] He played at Highland High School with Anges. I think he was friends with maybe Austin. Yeah, yeah, I was. So Danny Ainge was my club coach my eighth grade year too.

John Dehlin [00:11:06] What?

Justin Sweeney [00:11:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] Danny Ainge, the NBA all star who played for the Boston Celtics, who currently is the general manager of the Utah Jazz.

Justin Sweeney [00:11:15] He was your like AAU coach my 8th grade year. We gotta go have practice at America West Arena. Cause he coached the Suns at the time. Like again 12.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] However, was his son on your team?

Justin Sweeney [00:11:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Oh, which son?

Justin Sweeney [00:11:27] Tanner.

John Dehlin [00:11:27] Oh, okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:11:28] So I mean, just a dream as a kid. Just a dream. And he's a great, really, really great guy. But as a 14 year old kid to go to America west arena and have practice sometimes. I mean, just awesome.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] You practice in the same arena that the Phoenix Suns play in?

Justin Sweeney [00:11:43] Yeah. Cause he'd have to be down there all day and he's like, come to America west arena for practice and we're sure we'll make the 25 minute drive.

John Dehlin [00:11:50] So all the kids would schlep to the Phoenix Suns Arena. Happily to have Danny H. Be their coach.

Justin Sweeney [00:11:55] Happily. It was the coolest thing.

John Dehlin [00:11:58] Wow, that's super cool. Now I have the impression that he's a bit of a hothead. I mean, he played that way sometimes for the song.

Justin Sweeney [00:12:08] Yeah. So the reason I hesitated because. So I was that way. That's why I hesitated, not because of him. So weirdly he would say I am not as skilled as him. So I'm not saying I am as skilled as him. He is way better. But he would say you remind me of me because I was a good shooter and I was a little bit of a hothead. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] How are you compared to him in height?

Justin Sweeney [00:12:28] I'm short. I'm only six one, so he's like six. He's like six six.

John Dehlin [00:12:32] He's tall and he was like. He could have been drafted to like the Toronto Blue Jays.

Justin Sweeney [00:12:36] He was. He played pro baseball and pro basketball.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:12:40] Amazing athlete in Oregon growing up.

John Dehlin [00:12:41] Kim. Oregon. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:12:42] Just unbelievable and amazing, amazing career.

John Dehlin [00:12:46] Played with Celtics and the Sun Celtics

Justin Sweeney [00:12:48] and Clyde Drexler against Jordan. Played with Larry Bird against Jordan. I mean, anyway. Played with Charles Barkley against Jordan. Co. I mean, he's just got.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] And he took the BYU to the final eight, right?

Justin Sweeney [00:12:59] Yeah. Lead eight or something like that.

John Dehlin [00:13:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:02] He's got quite the resonance.

John Dehlin [00:13:03] That's fun. Well, you must have been a really good basketball player because aau. I tried to get into AAU or the equivalent in Texas and I was six' six and I could dunk as a freshman. I, I couldn't make it in aau. You know, it must have been good.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:19] I was pretty good. My high school was pretty competitive, so you kind of had to dedicate a lot. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty competitive if, if you follow BYU sports. So John Beck and Max hall were quarterbacks at byu. They went to both. They both went to my high school. Max Hall, Max hall and John Beck, both back to back BYU quarterback. So like it's just a pretty. It's a really intense sports school.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] So that's what's high school again?

Justin Sweeney [00:13:40] Mountain View High school, Mountain View.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:42] Yeah. So my life just revolved.

John Dehlin [00:13:43] Was that 5A or 6A?

Justin Sweeney [00:13:45] Well, it was 5A at the time, which was the highest level.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:48] I think there is a 6A in Arizona.

John Dehlin [00:13:49] So it's big.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:50] It's big. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] But it was kids who lived in Mesa.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:52] All kids who lived in Mesa.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Fun.

Justin Sweeney [00:13:55] And a lot of Mormon kids. So it was a good, good place. Good place to grow up.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] So did you do release time seminary at the high school?

Justin Sweeney [00:14:02] Yes, I did. So my wife is from California, so we have debates about this. Release time seminary is great because you don't have to get up early, but then you typically have to take early morning A hours to make up for the credits in high school. But yes, I had release time seminary. There's a building right across the street from my high school with.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] So you'd leave high school during the day, walk over to the Mormon seminary and institute building, and then you would take religious instruction as a high school credit?

Justin Sweeney [00:14:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] In your high school? Yeah, it still blows my mind.

Justin Sweeney [00:14:34] Yeah. I mean, as a high school kid you kind of love it, but I mean, the Mesa, it's huge. It's like a small church. That's how big it was, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] Okay, so how do we integrate your love and passion for basketball as a middle school and high schooler with your Mormonism? Other than the fact that your coach was NBA Mormon legend?

Justin Sweeney [00:14:57] Besides that, I'd say so. One debate I guess as a kid that we had was playing on Sunday. It was one of the things we were confronted with as a teenager. Do you play on Sunday? And it's not talked about a lot, but there's talks here and there and articles, you know, don't play.

Justin Sweeney [00:15:11] But here I have this amazing guy who is a member of the church who played on Sunday and coaches on Sunday. And so I remember just again having that as the oldest. Initially it was no no, no. You know, prophets say no. And then there has to be a little bit of flexibility. Right. If you have hopes and aspirations to maybe play after high school. Which I did not. But you've got to be willing to maybe play on Sunday. And so you're. As a young teenage kid, you're kind of dealing with that.

Justin Sweeney [00:15:38] I literally remember going to play on Sunday at a tournament and being like, I think I'm gonna, like, roll my ankle or miss all my threes. Cause I'm playing on Sunday. Like, you have that kind of a.

John Dehlin [00:15:48] God will tweak your performance.

Justin Sweeney [00:15:50] God will tweak my ankle or my performance for the worst. But we did okay. We won the game. So I remember that being a little bit of just internal cognitive dissonance a little bit as a young kid.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] And you debated with your dad and.

Justin Sweeney [00:16:03] And parents. Yeah. Like, should we. Should we do it? And what are the pros? What are the cons?

John Dehlin [00:16:07] And they let you, huh?

Justin Sweeney [00:16:09] Yeah, they let me make that decision.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Okay. Okay. Yep. All right. So when. When does the church start featuring prominently in your story outside of your basketball career?

Justin Sweeney [00:16:20] I. Career, I would say my mission.

John Dehlin [00:16:23] So. Okay, so let me ask some typical high school questions.

Justin Sweeney [00:16:26] Sure. So.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] So you did seminary. Did you have, like. Did you read the Scriptures and pray? Did you try to follow Moroni's Promise in high school? Did you try to get a testimony? Were you even curious about church things or. Not so much.

Justin Sweeney [00:16:41] I had a. I feel like I had a really strong testimony as a kid. I don't remember, like, having a Moroni's promise moment where I read and, like, go pray and get this big revelation. It was more just. I kind of know it's true just because, you know.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:16:58] But, yeah, I did read the scriptures. We did what's called students trying out Moroni's Promise, as in high school, where we would read the Book of Mormon during the summer. And what I will say is, growing up, my testimony was very much based on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. And I think that's what the focus was of the church during the 80s and 90s and even 2000s. It was very, very centered around Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. And so I would say I actually had a stronger testimony of those two things than even Jesus Christ.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] And the Bible.

Justin Sweeney [00:17:26] And the Bible. Oh, 100% for sure.

John Dehlin [00:17:28] So the Book of Mormon was more important to you than the Bible?

Justin Sweeney [00:17:31] Oh, yeah. I had never even read the Bible until I even went on my mission. I mean, seminary would have.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] There would have been a New Testament year for seminary and an Old Testament year for seminary. But for you it wasn't really.

Justin Sweeney [00:17:43] Yeah, not as important. And, you know, I don't know. I was. Book of Mormon was my senior year, so I definitely read it as it became more important and I'm going on my mission, but I never sat down and read the whole New Testament front to back, until my mission.

High School Years and the Church's Influence

John Dehlin [00:17:57] Do you feel like the church kept you out of trouble in your high school years in any way, and. Or do you feel like the church was good for you or bad for you in high school in any way?

Justin Sweeney [00:18:10] Great. The church was great for me. It gives structure. It gives something to do. The church was made for a young man like me, and I thrived in it. I was a leader with my young men, and I did. I loved the church 100%.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] Were there any moments of doubt, faith crisis kind of stuff in high school?

Justin Sweeney [00:18:31] Zero.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] Any exposure to, like, anti Mormon stuff or, like, problematic church history or anything like that?

Justin Sweeney [00:18:39] Besides, like, the screaming people at the temple square during conference when we went, you know, and being told they're telling lies, but, like, literally, that's it. Like, nothing.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:18:48] Yeah, nothing.

John Dehlin [00:18:49] So kind of an idyllic Mormon upbringing through your mission?

Justin Sweeney [00:18:53] Yes, very much so.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] Yeah. And very positive.

Justin Sweeney [00:18:56] Very positive.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] Yep. And a lot of basketball.

Justin Sweeney [00:18:58] And a lot of basketball.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Okay. Did your, like, high school team win the state championship or anything like that?

Justin Sweeney [00:19:03] That's a bitter. That. That's a better thing. So my senior year, we did win our region, but we did lose in the semifinals. We lost. So. But we ranked number one. But we lost, which makes it worse, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] But did you play against any kids in high school that went on to play college ball or NBA basketball that you could think of?

Justin Sweeney [00:19:23] So, like. So Lee Kumard, if, you know, he played at byu. We played against each other rivals. He ended up playing at byu. We played a couple teams on that club team where they went and played in the NBA, but no names stick out. No, I can't. I can't remember the name of the guy.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] Did Tanner Ainge make the NBA?

Justin Sweeney [00:19:41] No.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:19:42] No, he went to byu. Yeah, we didn't play.

Mission Experience and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [00:19:46] Okay, so you said your mission is where some drama emerges.

Justin Sweeney [00:19:51] Not drama from a church standpoint, but the mission is where I would say the rubber hit the road, as far as my testimony goes. Okay, where'd you go? Argentina. Buenos Aires.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] And you had to go through the temple first, right?

Justin Sweeney [00:20:02] Yes. We should talk about that, actually, because the temple plays a key, sort of a key role in all of this. So I went through the temple back in the summer of 2002, and I, again, at that point, had graduated seminary, took a temple prep class, and thought that I was prepared and ready for the temple, and definitely was not ready at all. So back then, in 2002, it's changed significantly since. But you do this thing called a washing and anointing, and you're basically naked underneath this, like, robe.

John Dehlin [00:20:50] It was like a poncho.

Justin Sweeney [00:20:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:52] Yes. You're like, was it open on the sides?

Justin Sweeney [00:20:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:54] It's like a silk poncho open on the sides. Fully naked?

Justin Sweeney [00:20:58] Yes. And so I had been told by an older brother of one of my best friends that you're gonna. All he said is, you're gonna be naked in the temple, and that's it. And then he just kind of laughed and walked away. And I was like, what is he talking about? And anyway, so have the initiatory made me very, very, very uncomfortable. And you're not really told that that is what is going to happen to you before you go in. The wording is beautiful. If you just listen or read to the words. There are some neat things said, but the experience is very distracting to the beauty of the words. And I remember being very, very uncomfortable. And since my initial initiatory, I have never gone back to do initiatories. I've done hundreds of endowment sessions and sealings. I've never gone back. I just did not have the greatest experience with that.

John Dehlin [00:21:51] Yeah, I only did it once. I never did, like, I never remember doing initiatories for the dead. But it's some old dude with some oil, and he's putting a drop of oil on his finger and touching you in your groin, touching you in your chest, bare, naked, touching you on your, you know, different parts of your naked body. It just felt really creepy and weird to me.

Justin Sweeney [00:22:12] It was. It was weird to say the least. So then they, you know, then they give you your garments. Of course, you know, you want to wear them at that point. And in the endowment, you know, again, I'm the oldest, so I have all my aunts and uncles there, my grandparents, my parents, my bishop, people in my ward. And.

Justin Sweeney [00:22:29] But I remember specifically mentioning two things. So one was when at the very beginning, they have someone come on and say, if you want to withdraw or if you want to leave, basically, you can. Now is the time. And I remember leaning over to my dad and being like, but we haven't done anything yet. He kind of elbowed me. He's like, shh, be quiet.

Justin Sweeney [00:22:48] But I thought that was, you know, maybe it's my lawyer brain working at 18 years old, but I'm like, how can I consent? Yeah. Like, I don't even know what I'm doing yet. And we don't talk about the covenants before you go in at all. At least we didn't. And so again, like, after that experience, I was like, what. What am I about to do? You know?

Justin Sweeney [00:23:09] And. But then I will say the experience in the slusher room with all of these great people that you love was beautiful. Like, it's a beautiful building. It's a beautiful environment. It's clean and reverent. And that experience is beautiful. But I think I remember feeling like all of the other stuff is a distraction to what was otherwise a beautiful moment in my life.

John Dehlin [00:23:33] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:23:34] And over the years, I've. I consider myself a pretty thoughtful person. And I was told, like, just kind of ignore the weirdness. It'll all make sense later. Go more. It'll make sense as you go. It's all symbolic. And I just remember thinking, like, well, what is the.

Justin Sweeney [00:23:50] Why do I take my shoes on and off? What is the symbolism of all of this stuff? Why are handshakes really that important to get into heaven? Like, I just remember, like, looking through the scriptures in the slush room over and over and over again over the years. Like, where is this stuff? Where is this in the scriptures? And why can I not find meaning? I mean, I like coming in the celestial room with my wife or my family, but I can't find this anywhere else. Why? Where is this stuff? And I felt. I felt inadequate. Like, I'm just missing something. For 20 years, I'm just not either spiritual enough or not smart enough to figure out what in the world is so awesome about this endowment experience. And it never really connected, and it hasn't over the years. But.

John Dehlin [00:24:35] Yeah. And the two hardest parts about that for me are, number one, you're told that it's supposed to be the pinnacle of Mormon spirituality, being in the temple, and it's the pinnacle of Mormon creepy weirdness.

Justin Sweeney [00:24:47] Yeah. It's so different from everything we do in the church. Everything. Like, we do some weird stuff. But Mormonism in general, if you have a non member come, it's like, all right, this is a little weird, but they sing songs, they talk about scriptures, and it's mostly normal Christian church. But then you go to the temple and it's like, this is way different. And then we're taught it's ancient, which we'll get to later. But that makes it. To me. That makes it worse.

John Dehlin [00:25:10] Yeah. The other two problems. I guess I said there's two, but there's at least three. The second is you find out that all these things come from the Masonic Temple ceremony that Joseph Smith had exposure to, which I know we'll talk about later, but that's a problem because then you just realize all this creepy weirdness just was plagiarized from a weird 19th century brotherhood kind of thing. And then we'd all think, oh, well, it's great because the church improved the initiatory, and now your poncho's sewn up on the sides. But then you ask, well, if it was Revelation, why did they ever have it in a weird way before and why did they change it? Wouldn't God just get the ceremony right to begin with? Those are my thoughts, not yours. For sure.

Justin Sweeney [00:25:54] 100%.

John Dehlin [00:25:55] Okay. Okay. See, but you did the temple thing. Did you just store that in your. Put it on your shelf, put it

Justin Sweeney [00:26:02] in the back burner? Yeah. And it didn't even cause, like in the moment, like a ton of problems. It was just something that I was like, eh, that was weird. That was different. And not. I guess I'll get used to it, you know? Yeah.

Serving a Mission and Encountering Problems

John Dehlin [00:26:14] Okay. So then you go to the MTC.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:17] Go to the MTC. Had a great experience. My MTC experience was great. Mostly Provo. Provo MTC.

John Dehlin [00:26:26] 2 months.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:27] 2 months.

John Dehlin [00:26:28] Learn the language.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:29] Learn the language. Played a lot of basketball in the gym.

John Dehlin [00:26:31] Yeah, that's my favorite part. Did you sing in the choir? Because it's also fun to sing.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:35] We did sing. I did sing in the choir once.

John Dehlin [00:26:37] But yeah, the basketball's pretty epic. MTC basketball is pretty epic.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:41] Oh, I guess I should bring up one experience at mtc. Elder Scott came. So I was in the MTC when Elder Ballard, I think, gave the Raising the bar talk.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] Let's talk about that.

Justin Sweeney [00:26:52] Okay, so Elder Ballard gave a talk in General Conference, I think maybe even in the precinct session.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] And for the Never Mormons, Elder Ballard was a super high ranking Mormon apostle. Towards the end, he was one of the top four high ranking Mormons in the entire world. And I think the church was having a problem with a lot of missionaries coming home early or not confessing sins before they went on their mission or just not performing well as missionaries. So at some point. And Ballard was in charge of the missionary program for decades.

Justin Sweeney [00:27:24] That's my understanding.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] So at some point, Ballard and the church just must have said, we gotta screen these missionary candidates better because too Many problems are happening once they get out in the field. So tell us about the talk.

Justin Sweeney [00:27:36] So I remember being in the MTC watching conference and listening to it, and then he came like a few days later and was like, he kind of made a joke in his little fireside talk. He's like, well, all you missionaries snuck in under the bar, but we got to raise the bar.

Justin Sweeney [00:27:50] You still got to meet the standard. And it was an interesting time because I learned in the MTC the memorized discussions, which I'm assuming you did as well. Those pastel colored pamphlets, you memorize them, you literally have to verbatim recite the words in those pamphlets, which helps you if you're trying to learn a language, I guess in some ways is helpful, but is also very restrictive.

Justin Sweeney [00:28:16] And then later on Preach My Gospel comes out. We're able to adapt the missionary discussions a little bit. And that was actually very helpful and a huge testimony builder for me at that time. And we can talk about that in a second. But I did want to bring up Elder Scott came the week, I think the week after that.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] And he was another Mormon apostle. Yes. Who served his mission in Latin America, spoke Spanish and was kind of like the apostle over Latin America. He came to Guatemala when I was a missionary.

Justin Sweeney [00:28:46] Got it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So he came to the MTC and he gave a talk. And in that talk, at the very end, he said, There are 15. I'm going to quote him. There are 15 men who know beyond faith that Jesus Christ lives and is guiding this church. That is exactly verbatim what he said.

John Dehlin [00:29:03] Meaning.

Justin Sweeney [00:29:04] Yeah, so. Meaning, so meaning if you have faith, if faith is something that you hope for, that you do not see, and you know beyond faith that he lives and guides his church, then you've seen him. Now, did he say, I've seen Jesus? No, he did not say that, but we all talked about it as a district afterwards.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] He dog whistled.

Justin Sweeney [00:29:22] Sure. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:24] And what did he dog whistle?

Justin Sweeney [00:29:26] That they've seen Jesus and that Jesus is the one guiding this church through him.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] That 15 Mormon apostles have all met Jesus face to face. Basically correct. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:29:36] And we sat there as a district and I brought it up in our little meeting afterwards and we all agree, like, that's what we heard, that's what we felt, that's what we understood. And so as an elder, as a missionary, you're going out. You know, that was a few weeks before I went down to Argentina. I'm going out with a call from somebody who literally sees and talks to Jesus Christ and that's a huge, huge testimony builder when you're ready to, like, go to some unknown foreign country and wanting to go preach the gospel. So to me, that was a meaningful experience at the time. Cause problems now, but at the time, that was super, super meaningful.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Okay. Yeah. Well, let's make sure and come back to why that causes problems.

Justin Sweeney [00:30:21] Okay, we will.

John Dehlin [00:30:22] Okay. All right.

Justin Sweeney [00:30:24] So then we get on mission again. Mission. The church was made for me. I did great on my mission. I loved my mission. I came in general, served with great companions, worked hard, baptize people. I don't have really. I mean, this is back in the day before email existed, really. I mean, we were emailing, but that had just started. We only got to call on Christmas and Mother's Day.

Justin Sweeney [00:30:54] But for as. As a person to. To leave the bubble of Mesa, Arizona. And it is a bubble as a. As a human being, as a. As a young man, I. I kind of needed that. I needed to leave my little bubble and go out in the world and prove that I could live on my own, that I could be my own person. And I felt like I grew a lot as a person on my mission. And again, the testimony, as we taught, the discussions, as we're being. We're allowed to be a little more flexible. We started to shift the first discussion and start teaching about the apostasy.

Justin Sweeney [00:31:25] And so we would teach about God and Jesus really quick, and then we would move straight to the apostasy and talk about prophets. Prophets talk to God. They have a direct connection to heaven if they preach commandments to their children. And I actually had a drawing. I wish I could have brought it, but I forgot it. I drew this, like, little chart that showed these prophets that would talk to God, and then they'd fall. That people would fall in apostasy. And we'd bring up Noah. Noah talked to God, and then the people didn't get on the boat, and they were. They were persecuted. And then you get in to Moses and the children of Israel wandering around.

Justin Sweeney [00:31:59] God talks to his prophets, they preach commandments to his children, and they have that direct line. And then they're blessed. And then Jesus comes, they kill Jesus. There's a huge apostasy. And now we're left. And I would show these people this pattern. Look, he's called a prophet that there were prophets before. Where are the prophets now? And they would be like, I don't know. Oh, Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith is that guy.

Justin Sweeney [00:32:24] And so my testimony, specifically of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon was cemented on My mission and those things, teaching a very specific version of the narrative, those things were cemented rock hard into my heart and soul.

John Dehlin [00:32:43] And for our never Mormons who watch Mormon stories regularly, a really important part of, of the apostasy, the Mormon apostasy doctrine isn't just that Mormon prophets, you know, are led by God, meet Jesus, speak with God and lead the church. It's that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only true church on the face of the earth with God's authority. And every other church, Christian church, Catholic church, Protestant church, Muslim, Buddhist, every other church is illegitimate. Every other baptism, Christian baptism, any other religious ritual, any other marriage, Christian marriage, non Christian marriage, it's all invalid in God's eyes. Only Mormon church, Mormon baptism, Mormon marriage counts. And only Mormonism gets you to heaven. Am I wrong? Am I misstating that?

Justin Sweeney [00:33:44] No, that's true. And in Argentina, there's a lot of faithful, mostly Catholic people who have already been baptized who generally believe they're going to be with their family after this life. And so you would tell them like, hey, do you want to live with your family in heaven? And they're like, I already am.

Justin Sweeney [00:33:59] And so you have to kind of deal with, well, okay, well, you think that, but you don't actually know that this is how you're going to get, get that done. Right. And that is the. Those are the pillars of the church. It's priesthood, it's priesthood authority, it's revelation from God and a living prophet. And Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon, like, those are. That's the meat and bones of the Mormon Church. And it's.

Justin Sweeney [00:34:25] You had those one brother. I watched that episode you had with those one brothers, the conceptualization of God brothers. I can't remember their names. Anyway, about the, The Paul brothers. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:34:36] I don't know what church they go to, but that does not seem like the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church is the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith. Prophets who speak to God and their priesthood. That's it. That's why our church is so important. That's what I taught on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] And why all other churches are illegitimate.

Justin Sweeney [00:34:55] Correct. Why you can't go to any other church, even if you like it, even if it's good to you, even if your family is Catholic, you have to join us because your baptism wasn't valid.

John Dehlin [00:35:05] Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. All day long.

Justin Sweeney [00:35:06] Yeah. Correct.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:35:07] It didn't work. It doesn't count.

John Dehlin [00:35:09] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:35:10] Yeah. So the only experience that I had on my mission that was a little bit Weird. I did teach someone at the end of my mission actually, that had an anti Mormon pamphlet, this young boy. And you know, I remember grabbing, you know, he gave it to me and the only two things I remember were the rock and the hat. And I was like, this is. I don't even know what this is. This is definitely not true. The More. Here's the picture that I show you. Like, this is how he did it, right? This is how he translated the Book of Mormon and then it talked about polygamy.

Justin Sweeney [00:35:42] Joseph Smith and polygamy. And I'm like, that's not true either. Polygamy started with Brigham Young. It was to take care of all the women as they're crossing the plains. There just wasn't enough. We had to take care of them so they could survive. And that's my only interaction with anti, quote, unquote, anti Mormon material. And turns out those two things actually were true.

John Dehlin [00:36:04] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:36:05] So didn't find that out for 20 more years. But those two things that I told him were not true were actually true.

John Dehlin [00:36:12] But you didn't realize that at the time.

Justin Sweeney [00:36:14] Oh, no. I told him they were a lie. Anti Mormon lies.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:36:18] And he should throw it in the trash. I am teaching him the truth.

John Dehlin [00:36:23] Because you hadn't been taught the truth.

Justin Sweeney [00:36:25] No.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:36:26] Nope.

John Dehlin [00:36:27] Okay, really quickly. Latin America in the 90s, 2000s, for the church, even the 80s, there was a lot of like, kind of what I call fraudulent baptisms, where you would be able to persuade young 7, 8, 9, 10 year olds to get baptized without testimonies and without their parents involved, just to kind of spike the numbers. But there were super high attrition rates, up to 80, 90% of those kids. So it led to a real inflation of the churches. To this day, the church claims 17 million members plus, but there's really only like 4 million members across the world. Were there kind of fraudulent baptisms or an epidemic of fraudulent baptisms in your mission?

Justin Sweeney [00:37:14] An epidemic? No, our mission president. So we had Elder Holland come down to Chile either right around the time I was down there, or maybe right before or after. I can't remember where.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] He closed 30 stakes because of these fraudulent baptisms in Chile.

Justin Sweeney [00:37:27] In Chile, yeah. And so we got that memo from the church. Like, our mission president was awesome. He was an immigrant, a Mexican immigrant from Texas. Anyway, amazing man. Great, wonderful man and wife. And I still get emails from his wife, by the way, every month. Like, how awesome is that? Anyway, but we were very family centric, like, teach families, teach families, teach families, teach families that was definitely the focus. It was not just spike your numbers. I mean, we wanted baptisms, but it was not. There weren't like rogue missionaries doing soccer games with. Not. Not in my experience.

John Dehlin [00:38:03] Okay, cool.

Justin Sweeney [00:38:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:04] So you left your mission with what type of testimony?

Justin Sweeney [00:38:08] Rock solid. Very focused on again, Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon priesthood and the church itself.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Let me ask you, were. Did you consider the Argentinian people to be Lamanites from the Book of Mormon, descendants of Nephi and Lehi and the Book of Mormon characters?

Justin Sweeney [00:38:24] That's a great question. So, no. And they're actually really proud of that. If you know the Argentine people, they mostly come from Europe, so Italian, German descent, and they would proudly proclaim, I'm not a Lamanite. But many of our Bolivian and Peruvian and other native people are. That are very South America. Correct.

John Dehlin [00:38:43] So there aren't native Argentinian Native American tribes.

Justin Sweeney [00:38:48] I'm sure there are, but I. In Buenos Aires, in the city, I never came across them.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:38:53] They're mostly of European descent, but we did. So I would not tell those people they were Lamanites, but definitely, like, we would teach Bolivian immigrants and Peruvian immigrants. Yeah, 100%.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:39:02] You are. These are your people. This is a story about your ancestors.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] Okay. So it wasn't that they didn't believe that Native Americans were Lamanites. It's just that the ones of European descent pointed to the Bolivians and the Uruguayans or whatever.

Justin Sweeney [00:39:18] Yeah, they're the Lamanites. You're the Lamanites. I'm not.

John Dehlin [00:39:21] They're the dark and loathsome. We're the light and delightsome.

Justin Sweeney [00:39:23] There was definitely, definitely that vibe, honestly. Yep. They're the dark and loathsome. They wouldn't say that. But we are the white and delightsome people. Yeah, 100%.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] Was there a negative judgment on darker skinned by the Argentinian people, or did they view them as the pure blood of Israel, descendants of, you know, the ancestors?

Justin Sweeney [00:39:46] I don't want to speak for them, but I would say there was. They're definitely a proud people. Like, they're proud to be Italian, European. And so I think whether they would admit it or not, a little bit the same way. We suffer from the same thing here in America, too. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] Okay. Okay. But you finished your mission honorably and all that?

Justin Sweeney [00:40:06] Yep. Went to byu, met my wife. BYU Provo.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:40:10] Met my wife. We got married in the San Diego temple. And what year? 2005. Okay, 2005. So we're going on 20 years.

John Dehlin [00:40:21] Okay, congrats.

Justin Sweeney [00:40:22] Thanks. Yeah, 20 years this year. And I won't speak for my wife, but she had a very similar experience to me. She had to go through the endowment, get sealed, and get married all on the same day, which is, in my opinion, an absolute. It's crazy to do all that in one day. That's too much to consume. So she had a very similar experience. And we spent a lot of our honeymoon talking about the endowment ceremony specifically and the ishitory and what does this all mean? And we spent a lot of time over the last 20 years talking about that, but in general, great. So went to byu. Right after I did get married, I got called into a YSA bishopric.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] So YSA stands for Young Single Adult.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:05] Young Single Adult, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] So this would be congregations in Provo

Justin Sweeney [00:41:09] of BYU students of BYU students of whom I was. I was still a BYU student at the time. So it's kind of. I mean, I didn't know even at the time that they did that, but. And I didn't even know the bishop that called. I don't even know how he knew me. I still to this day don't even know. But he was a wonderful guy. Get called to be in a bishopric, serve.

John Dehlin [00:41:28] So you become a high priest. A Mormon high priest.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:30] Well, so they didn't do that for those wars specifically so that I wouldn't be a high priest for the rest of time. They wanted me to stay an elder.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:38] So that when I moved to wherever, I would be in elders quorum rather than in high priest.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Got it.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:42] So anyway. But that was a very unique experience.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] I didn't realize you could be in a bishopric without being a high priest.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:48] I didn't know that either they make an exception for these young YSA wars.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] I had no idea.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:55] At least they did. I don't know if they still do.

John Dehlin [00:41:57] I had no idea.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] Interesting.

Justin Sweeney [00:41:59] Yeah, it is. But the reason was they didn't want me to, like, move to California, for example, and then be a high priest. At that time, elders quorum and high priests were still separated, and I'd be 28 or whatever, sitting with a bunch of old dudes. Older guys. Yeah. So.

Justin Sweeney [00:42:15] But I think another part of my story, too, John, is just the. My whole life I've been. Maybe it's because I'm one of the older ones in my family, or there's a lot of expectations. But I have been kind of a leader. And from. Again, like, a few weeks after I get married, I get called into a bishopric. I did take a little hiatus during law school. We'll talk about law school. In a second. But after that, Elders quorum president, then I got elders quorum president again when we moved. Then stake presidency, then high Council. And it's not, oh, there's a few months break. It's straight from one calling to the next 20 years of just what I would call the LDS grind.

Justin Sweeney [00:42:56] And it's not easy. And as you start having kids and jobs, it becomes difficult. And the reason you do it is because you believe that it's true. When I stand up in sacrament meeting, I say, I know this church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet. We don't stand up and say, I know the church is good for me. I know the church teaches me about Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] I know that this church is one of many paths to Jesus.

Justin Sweeney [00:43:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:24] You don't say that.

Justin Sweeney [00:43:25] No. And I know the church is true. And anyway, one of the hardest things, and I know I'm skipping now, way ahead, but one of the hardest things, looking back now that I have four teenagers, is the time that I lost right as I've gone through all these experiences. And I mean, every Sunday, every Sunday for 20 years, you're doing what? Meetings, like bishopric meetings, training meetings, home teaching for people that won't do it. Stake presidency meetings, high council meetings, state council meetings, elders quorum training, like just meetings upon meetings upon meetings.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] And you're saying that if the church isn't what it claims to be, that's not how you would want to have spent your time.

Justin Sweeney [00:44:10] No, no. 100%, no. And that's the real. We're skipping way ahead now. But that's the realization I came to. Yeah. It's like, what in the heck?

John Dehlin [00:44:19] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:44:19] So anyway, okay. But as a young. As a young couple, you know, we're having. We have kids go to byu, graduate, go to law school. So if my mission was my sort of grow as a person and grow in a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon stage, my law school was where you learn to think. Where you learn to think critically and analyze something. And specifically, we were. That was during Prop 8. So I was in Sacramento, in the capital of California, during Prop 8. We had. that point. At that point, I think we had our twins. We had twins in the middle of law school. Horrible idea, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:45:00] Those weren't your first kids.

Justin Sweeney [00:45:02] No, we had one at byu. We wanted him to have a little buddy, and it ended up being a

John Dehlin [00:45:06] boy, boy, girl, twin buddies, two buddies.

Justin Sweeney [00:45:09] Anyway, so we're there during Prop 8

John Dehlin [00:45:11] and three kids in law school.

Justin Sweeney [00:45:14] Three kids in law school. And I, I, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] That's also the Mormon way, though. Have kids, have them young.

Justin Sweeney [00:45:21] Yeah, it is. It's so hard. So hard. And I had it out. I had the easy part. My wife Maren had the hardest. I mean, so hard to be so young, so poor. That's a hard, that's a brutal part of life. But during Prop 8, I can confirm that, you know, the church was very much involved. We were asked to make phone calls. My wife stood on the corner with signs and passing out stuff and so

Law School, Prop 8, and Church Political Involvement

John Dehlin [00:45:45] you were in law school during Prop 8?

Justin Sweeney [00:45:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] Okay. And that's when the, for those who don't know, that's when the Mormon Church decided that it was going to intervene in a sovereign states legislative process to take same sex marriage away from legal same sex married couples in California.

Justin Sweeney [00:46:03] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] At the time, Obama was running for president.

Justin Sweeney [00:46:06] Yeah. To define marriage as between one man and one woman.

John Dehlin [00:46:10] And so Mormons in California, well, Mormons around the world were asked to donate millions of dollars to fund this initiative. There was a shakedown all throughout the church. Utah, Washington, Oregon, all over. If you're rich, you were asked to give tens, hundreds or millions of dollars. Hundreds, thousands or millions of dollars so that the church could take same sex marriage away from California couples. But then in the state of California, members were asked what?

Justin Sweeney [00:46:37] To donate time and money and make phone calls and pass out flyers and stand at corners and do all those

John Dehlin [00:46:43] things and knock on doors. Knock on doors to do what? What's, what are those conversations?

Justin Sweeney [00:46:46] Like, I actually, I cheated. I didn't do those things. I was in law school, so my wife is the one that would stand on corners and pass out stuff.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] Saying what?

Justin Sweeney [00:46:57] Just yes on eight. Yes on eight. I would wear yes on eight shirts to school. I'm sitting next to a lesbian young woman wearing a yes on 8 shirt in my class.

John Dehlin [00:47:06] Did anybody ask you questions about that?

Justin Sweeney [00:47:09] Oh, yeah. Yeah. So on both sides, you know, you have, what are you doing? You know, feeling like you're gonna get beat up. And on the other side, not beat up, but just hostile. And then other people are like, I'm so glad you're wearing the shirt because I don't want to. You know, but you do it because that's what the prophet is asking us to do. Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Were there any law school colleagues that just wanted a heart to heart with you about, like, why are you doing this?

Justin Sweeney [00:47:32] You know, So I would say that my law school professor in that year of law school, my legal writing professor was maybe inspired the whole year was preparing legal briefs and oral arguments to debate this exact issue. And I was assigned to defend not the Mormon Church specifically, but the church, a church type position.

Justin Sweeney [00:47:56] And so that came a lot more naturally to me. But in debating that and in writing briefs and reading other things and reading legal arguments and talking to my professor, I began to realize, like, what are we doing? Like, why are we doing this?

Justin Sweeney [00:48:14] We can preach whatever we want on Sunday. That is our constitutional right as religion. As a religion. Yeah. I can go to church and teach whatever. Well, almost whatever I want. We can stand in the pulpit and say if we want, marriage is between a man and a woman. But the government is designed to protect all people, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] I think there's a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants that says the church won't meddle in legal affairs. You know, like, I'm pretty sure that's true.

Justin Sweeney [00:48:39] Well, they sure tried. Yeah, they sure tried to.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:48:42] And it was, it was interesting to, like, by the end of the year, I, you know, I had that cognitive dissonance again. I believed I wanted to follow the prophet. Like, I believed that that was true. But like, legally, from a lawyer, lawyer brain, I'm like, this is not right. Why are we doing, like, why are we doing this? Basically, they can, they can do their thing. The Constitution protects them and it protects us to do our thing. And we should be friends and buddies. And what I find interesting is now, 15 years later, again as I'm in the Stake Presidency, the church came out and supported the Equality for Marriage act that was just passed by Congress and signed by Biden.

Justin Sweeney [00:49:25] And they came out in public support of that law. And we had people reach out to us. What's going on? Why would they do this? Why would they change? Why would they come out and support this now? And I think it was Elder Oaks, somebody made a statement that said, this is the better way. They called it the better way to become friends. Basically, like you, you do you and we'll do us and we love and respect each other. And for people that can see around corners, that can see and talk to Jesus that's coming to the meetings that the temple where. Why, why could they not say the better way?

Justin Sweeney [00:50:00] We're going to show you the better way. Rather than get involved in all this hoopla in 20 2008, 2008, whatever year it was, we're going to show you the better way. Be friends with them now. Set the standards at the example now and advocate for their right, their legal rights while they help you advocate for yours and somehow that got skipped over.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Yeah, because I've been doing Mormon stories for 20 years now and 2008 was the first big blow to the Mormon Church's reputation during the past 20 years because Prop 8 caused a bunch of Mormons to leave the church and it caused a bunch of never Mormons to hate the church.

Justin Sweeney [00:50:42] Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:50:42] Like there were protests at the LA Temple. There were a lot of people that wouldn't hire Mormons because they were bigots. All that started in 2008. So if the prophets, like you said at the beginning, prophets talk to Jesus. If the prophets talk to Jesus, If Mormon prophets talk to Jesus, Jesus would say what the right thing to do for Prop 8 was 12 years before or whatever.

Justin Sweeney [00:51:06] Right. Not that far. It's just a few years behind.

John Dehlin [00:51:09] Either Mormons should always fight same sex marriage at all times and in all places forever.

Justin Sweeney [00:51:15] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Or we should leave people alone and let them live how they want to live. But, but, but the long story short is there was so much backlash. The reason why Oaks sang a new song over a decade later is because the backlash for Prop 8 was very harmful to the church, both for all the members that left and then all the never Mormons that saw the church as becoming bigoted and it hurt the church big time.

Justin Sweeney [00:51:42] And again, I won't even, I don't even think my testimony was not shaken by that experience at all. Like, I didn't start doubting then, but it just, it hung with me and it was something again. Yeah, you put it on your shelf. And I began to realize, at least at that point, there are things that I disagree with as a person. And then you start to have those little seeds of, well, if I, how can I disagree with, with somebody that again talks to Jesus? I can't, I can't disagree with that as a person because now I'm not following, following the church, following God. And so that was again, very small thing. Definitely didn't start questioning though, at all really at that point.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Another interesting thing that was a problem was that the church tried to deny any real involvement. Deny or hide publicly, and they tried to hide or deny how much money they were investing. And it later came out that something like 20 or 40 million had been spent. But the church did its best to hide and about that investment before they were called on it, that caused a lot of problems too.

Justin Sweeney [00:52:51] Yeah, I don't remember the numbers, but it was a lot of money. And I think it was Elder Holland too that said not one red cent is going to be Spent or something like that. I remember that. I remember that at the time, but we sure spent a lot of time. My wife specifically. I'm studying in the law school library, and she's out on the corner with three kids, holding up signs.

John Dehlin [00:53:11] We did episodes back in the day. Entire phone banks. Imagine office floors of office spaces where in Provo, BYU students and community members were hired or recruited to go man phone banks, to just call all the citizens of California and to tell them, you know, to vote for Prop 8. Imagine how much money that cost. That's a ton. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:53:36] Yeah, That's a ton.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:53:37] Anyway, for the not. For the not better way.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:53:40] For the not better way.

John Dehlin [00:53:41] For the way that hurt the church and the church would regret later. Yeah. Okay, so that happened.

Justin Sweeney [00:53:46] So. Yeah. Then leave law school, become an immigration attorney. So one thing that I did learn on my mission, too, I gained a deep. Excuse me. A deep, deep appreciation for the people. Obviously, you learn to just love the people that you're serving. But so many of them just wanted to come to the United States so bad. And I had no aspirations at the time to be an immigration attorney at all. But because I spoke Spanish and it was the only job I could find at a law school, and it was just a natural fit. Like, you kind of feel like you're on your mission a little bit. It's not. Yes, it's adversarial in that I fight against the government. You know, I've argued cases all the way up to the Ninth Circuit against the Attorney General.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Like, that's the Federal Circuit Court in California.

Justin Sweeney [00:54:33] Yeah. In San Francisco.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] San Francisco, Yeah. But where the James Huntsman fraud case is being tried.

Justin Sweeney [00:54:38] Yes, I was there the day after that. Yeah, I was there the day after the oral arguments on that case. Anyway, I didn't know it was happening, but. But anyway, I. They. They want to come. And so you realize, like, what a blessing it is to be here. And when you can speak Spanish and you're super passionate about an issue and you want to help people, like, that was just. It was a natural fit. And I started to help. I mean, at this point, I've helped thousands and thousands of immigrants here in the United States. And it's been a huge, huge blessing for me and my family. It's definitely part of who I am. So. But with all that, I left the law firm, started my own business, became elder scorn president in this, like, pretty high, high affluent area in Clovis, California.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Like, is that Fresno area?

Justin Sweeney [00:55:28] Yeah, Fresno area. They call me to Be an elders corn president. Right. After moving into the ward. You know, there's like doctors and other successful lawyers. I was some nobody, Dennis. Like I just felt really, really inadequate for that calling at the time.

John Dehlin [00:55:46] The church is kind of strong in parts of Fresno, right?

Justin Sweeney [00:55:48] Super strong. There's four stakes there.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:55:51] For a non Utah, Idaho, Mesa, Arizona area. It's really, really rock solid. Like really good.

John Dehlin [00:55:59] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:55:59] Great wards, great people.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:56:01] Very conservative area in a very liberal state.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] So Fresno generally is more conservative. Slash Republican, Is that what you're saying?

Justin Sweeney [00:56:09] Yeah. Yes. Especially Clovis, where I live. Like the little suburb of Fresno is very like very, very conservative.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Kind of like Orange county is kind of even.

Justin Sweeney [00:56:20] Even more so.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Oh, wow.

Justin Sweeney [00:56:21] Like, I think you would be hard pressed to find a more conservative spot in California, I think.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [00:56:28] Maybe some tiny little farm town. Some.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [00:56:30] But yeah, it's, it's pretty, pretty hardcore.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] And aren't there a lot of immigrants in that area working on, you know, the farms?

Justin Sweeney [00:56:39] Tons. Yeah. So the Central Valley, when I opened my own business, my wife and I love the water. We're married in San Diego. We want to live in the bay or in the San Diego. Like we love the water, but we just felt strongly about staying there. And that's where, that's where those people are there. There's tons of little farming community. It's called the Central Valley. So Sacramento down to basically Bakersfield, lots of little farming communities. Next time you go to the grocery store, look at your produce. It probably comes from somewhere in the Central Valley. And my clients are there.

John Dehlin [00:57:10] And were the Hispanic church members in Fresno separated into their own wards and stakes or were they integrated into the affluent or middle class white wards and stakes?

Justin Sweeney [00:57:23] That's gone back and forth. Actually. We just. As I was in the stake presidency over the last few years, they, they. There used to be a Spanish ward. Then it got dissolved for like 20 years ago. Then it got dissolved and they were integrated. And then a couple years ago they started to segregate them again into their own Spanish. We have a Spanish branch in the, in our Fresno stake. Okay. And so yeah, they're starting to segregate them again mostly so that I honestly think it's a good decision so they feel comfortable and they can learn the gospel in their own language. I think generally it's a good thing for them. So. I get called into a stake presidency that was shocking, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] And that's one of the top four leaders of again 11 Mormon congregations in the Fresno area.

Justin Sweeney [00:58:19] Yeah. So they have stake president his counselors, and then we had a secretary for each of the three people. So there was a few extra members of our stake presidency, but was not anticipating that. But it was. I served in that calling for five and a half years.

John Dehlin [00:58:35] And did you attend disciplinary councils?

Justin Sweeney [00:58:39] I only attended one because usually the ward clerk or the state clerk is the one that attends those. But he was gone one day, so I did attend one to take notes. And at that point, it had already changed from a disciplinary council to a membership council. So it was just the three presidency members plus myself and the person.

John Dehlin [00:59:01] Okay, was that a good or bad experience? This is where you're basically on trial for your membership, and the likely outcome is excommunication, which is what happened to me.

Justin Sweeney [00:59:14] So I'm not going to share details, obviously, but mostly good. But the defense attorney in me, I consider myself a defense attorney. I would have asked a lot of other questions given what was going on, and. Sorry, I'm not even going to say what their decision was, but I would have personally come to a different conclusion and I would have asked a lot more questions about what happened.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Okay, yeah, normally it's adultery. Normally. And I'm not asking to confirm or deny, but normally someone's had an affair and they're being evaluated for whether or not they should be kicked out of the church.

Justin Sweeney [00:59:49] Yeah, it's usually big stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] Big, big, big issues. So, yeah, in my case, it wasn't an affair. It was apostasy because I wouldn't shut down the podcast, and they asked me to shut down the podcast. I said I couldn't. So that's. That's what happened to me. It was apostasy.

Justin Sweeney [01:00:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:05] So.

Stake Presidency Calling and COVID Era Leadership

Justin Sweeney [01:00:06] So in my stake presidency calling, I don't know how in depth I want to go here, but I gave a thought. So I was in the stake presidency during COVID which was.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] Okay, so now we're2021. Ish.

Justin Sweeney [01:00:20] 2020. Okay, 2020.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Okay. Five years ago. Ish. Four and a half years ago.

Justin Sweeney [01:00:25] Four or five years ago, again, remember, very conservative area of a very liberal state. So California took the pandemic pretty serious and shut a lot of things down, including going to church. And the back and forth of that was interesting to deal with the differing opinions and people wanting to do certain things that, you know, we were asked by the prophet to obey local regulations, local and state regulations, and follow Russell

John Dehlin [01:00:56] M. Nelson, the current prophet.

Justin Sweeney [01:00:58] Correct. Issued multiple letters, multiple letters to us, follow your state and local leaders. He would show up to conference in a mask and he Got the vaccine, all that kind of stuff. But it just became. It was really interesting to deal with from a leadership perspective and try, like, we were being accused by both sides of being too soft, being too strict.

John Dehlin [01:01:18] So, like, more conservative members would get mad that you were asking people to mask up.

Justin Sweeney [01:01:24] Yeah. Or even just, we can't have meetings. And whether we believe that we should be or not, like, we just. We've been asked not to.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] So they were struggling to follow the prophet in essence.

Justin Sweeney [01:01:37] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:01:38] But did they know what the prophet had said?

Justin Sweeney [01:01:43] The leaders did. The leaders did, yeah. And we would be in meetings where, you know, they're wanting to have sacrament, meeting in the parking lot on the corner of the street, just to meet and gather, which I understand the idea of meeting and gathering, but at the time, we were doing the sacrament in our house, and I was like, having the sacrament in the parking lot is kind of disrespectful. Like, we should just keep doing it in our house. And it felt more like political opposition rather than trying to follow our leaders.

John Dehlin [01:02:11] These were bishops.

Justin Sweeney [01:02:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:13] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:02:14] Yeah. And anyway, and our stake president, he's an awesome guy, and I love serving with all of them. They're all great men and women, but it was just a really interesting time to hold a leadership position in the church. And I actually gave a spiritual thought once in stake presidency meeting about being united and following the prophet. And the stake president looked at me, he's like, you're going to give that in a talk? And I was like, okay. I already wrote. I had already written the talk. So my. My dad. In December of 2020, my dad passed away of, well, a stroke, but they think Covid caused it. So this is right before the vaccine and everything came out.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] Where was this?

Justin Sweeney [01:02:56] In Arizona.

John Dehlin [01:02:56] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:02:57] He died in a day. Like, he died suddenly. I didn't get to see him.

John Dehlin [01:03:01] Was he vaccinated?

Justin Sweeney [01:03:03] The vaccine didn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:03:06] It was just.

John Dehlin [01:03:07] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:03:08] Really weird as, like, therapy for myself. I started writing sort of a journal, taking notes. And that was also right around the time of the election. And there was just a lot going on in the world at that time. And so I would take notes, and I had quotes from the brethren, quotes from President Nelson, quotes from Elder Renlund, quotes from Elder Oaks. And I gave that in a spiritual thought. And he's like, you're gonna give that in a talk? And I'm like, I already wrote it. And I gave it in a state conference talk. At that time, we were still broadcasting it on YouTube, and I had People reach out to me from all over the US like people shared it and like I, I can't believe you had the courage to come out and give that talk.

Justin Sweeney [01:03:57] I had some faithful members ask me, where did you get those quotes? And I'm like, it's from General Conference. Most of them, you know, even though. So it directly contradicts their natural beliefs sort of political ideology. But it's what the prophet is saying. We should get in line. Whether it's the vaccine or racism that exists in America or following peacefully the transition of power. Like all of these different things. Like I'm like, we need to get on board and follow these people. They talk to God. Stop goofing around and get on board. These people talk to God. It's time to follow them. And that was sort of the gist of the talk.

Justin Sweeney [01:04:36] We need to be united. We're being divided because we're arguing in these meetings about what we should do. We don't need to argue. We have a leader who again back to Elder Scott, he talks to Jesus. We need to follow him. And so that was a very therapeutic talk to give during that time in my life.

John Dehlin [01:04:56] And that represents a really important moment in Mormon history because you could basically say from 20, from 2004, 2005 to let's just say 20, 20, 2021. I would say the arc of the Mormon Church was towards sort of more liberal progressive theology and openness of its history and even more progressive sensibilities around LGBT people, around race starting to apologize or at least hint towards apologies for things. And, and again, even with COVID supporting Mass, supporting stopping church, supporting vaccines, and then this upswell of I'll just say conservative Republican Mormons, Utah, Arizona, California, sort of rose up and started being really concerned that Mormon church leaders were in apostasy. Basically.

Justin Sweeney [01:06:01] We got called out on that multiple times, right? Yep. That we were talking that we were in apostasy, that the prophet was wrong no matter what he was talking about. Like that's not. They're in a, like literally they're using that word.

John Dehlin [01:06:13] Yeah. And how would they justify apostasy?

Justin Sweeney [01:06:16] Because they're basing what they're believing on other prophets words.

John Dehlin [01:06:21] So that's where it's the Ezra Taf Benson sort of Mormonism where there's this strain of ultra right wing conservative Mormons that have always been there certainly from the 50s and 60s on, where if you quote the right past Mormon apostle, to be a faithful righteous Mormon, you have to be a Republican and you have to be politically conservative and that's not to say we're siding with one or the other, but that's just a strain that really became prominent during COVID to the point where bishops and stake presidents who were following Mormon prophets and apostles were being called apostates.

Justin Sweeney [01:07:03] Yeah. Or they were on the other side and just not following altogether and doing whatever they wanted.

John Dehlin [01:07:08] And at that point, the Mormon church leaders realized if they pushed too hard against, they were already having struggle for 20 years with the progressive liberal Mormons who are questioning the church and its history and its racism and its sexism and its homophobia. And those 20 years were the church trying to address that wing. I think it's when they really realized they had even a bigger problem on the right. Is that right?

Justin Sweeney [01:07:36] I would agree with that assessment, yes. And so there was a shift over the last couple years to be like, oh, no, don't worry, we haven't forgot about you. And there's been little sort of dog whistle talks about. Elder Anderson gave a talk about pro lifeism and those types of. There's just been little.

John Dehlin [01:07:53] And Nolan gave his musket talk at byu.

Justin Sweeney [01:07:56] Right, right after that. Yep. So there's been a few little bones thrown to that sort of crowd.

John Dehlin [01:08:02] And recently Clark Gilbert's been cleaning house at all the BYU's to get the liberal professors out of the BYU.

Justin Sweeney [01:08:08] I've read about that as well.

John Dehlin [01:08:09] Yeah. So the church leadership following these ultra conservative members lead, Mormon church leaders are kind of retrenching in more conservative theological, and I would say political ideologies in response to this, I don't know, MAGA backlash.

Justin Sweeney [01:08:29] And they're in a tough position because they can't make both sides happy. No, someone will be unhappy always. I guess the number one thing I learned as a leader in the church, someone's unhappy always, no matter what you do. And they're in a tricky spot. I don't know what I would do if I were them either, but.

John Dehlin [01:08:44] Well, that'd be really stressful to be in a really conservative kind of MAGA area, but trying to follow your prophets and revelators who speak with Jesus, but they're telling you to do things that's making your membership angry and making them want to apostatize. That would be hard. Was that hard?

Justin Sweeney [01:08:59] It was, yeah. It was hard to set that example and it was hard to give that talk. And I was worried. I was more nervous about that talk than sitting here with you. I was worried about the backlash.

John Dehlin [01:09:10] Was that 2020, 2021. Ish.

Justin Sweeney [01:09:12] It was April 2021.

John Dehlin [01:09:14] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:09:14] My dad died December 2020, and I gave that talk in April 2021.

John Dehlin [01:09:17] Okay. All right, that's three. Three and a half years ago, something like that.

Justin Sweeney [01:09:19] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:09:20] Okay. And what was the response?

Justin Sweeney [01:09:23] I personally, no, I got all positive. So I got all positive response. Texts, phone calls from everybody. But I've heard things through the, through the grapevine that there was maybe some, some backlash. But I don't. I personally. Nothing but love from everybody that reached out to me.

John Dehlin [01:09:41] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:09:42] So.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:09:43] It needed to be said. And if the church is going to move forward, they need to figure this out. They gotta. Yeah. So then that leads to. I guess again, even at that point I was, I disagreed with a few things. I felt maybe because of where I live, I felt a little bit of an outsider. Like, I'm not a Democrat, but I am very progressive. I'm independent progressive. And I don't feel like I fit in really with a lot of the, like the stereotypical church member. But again, I went because I know it's true. There was no. And even when I gave that talk, the goal was to unite around a prophet who speaks to God. And that was my goal in giving that talk. And this, again, this is not even four years ago.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:10:32] And. But I also began to realize during that time with the passing of my dad, maybe being more reflective because of that, that I was starting to like, acknowledge myself and realize, like, am I truly happy doing all of this all the time? Like, am I happy getting up at six in the morning to go to meetings all day and not seeing my family on the one free day that I have? And I, I running a business and, and coaching my own kids. I have four teenagers and a little baby. Like, it's. Life is busy. Do I, do I want to keep doing this? And so I had this, this internal struggle all the time.

John Dehlin [01:11:15] Is it working for you? Right.

Justin Sweeney [01:11:17] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:11:17] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:11:18] Is it? Yeah. Is it working for me and your family? And my family, yeah. And at the time it was just like, is the calling working for me? Maybe it's just the calling. And again, I would never question what's been taught to me, but at that point I was like, is this calling working for me? This is just so much. But I happily did it and I think I did a decent job because again, I know it's true. Like, we're willing to wear, wear underwear, pay 10% of our income, go on missions for two years. Like, we're willing to do a lot because we know it's true.

John Dehlin [01:11:48] 10, 20 hours a week.

Justin Sweeney [01:11:49] How many hours a week, 10 to 20 hours, easy.

John Dehlin [01:11:51] Yeah. In your calling, serving the church?

Justin Sweeney [01:11:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:11:54] Volunteer?

Justin Sweeney [01:11:55] Yes. On top of helping kids with homework, changing diapers, coaching basketball, running legal practice. Legal. Running my business.

John Dehlin [01:12:02] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:12:03] I felt like being a good dad, being a good father, being a good husband, being a good lawyer, being a good businessman, being a good whatever, stake leader. It's like impossible to do all those things.

John Dehlin [01:12:13] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:12:14] And I. And I feel really bad because I see the strain on the membership of the church. It is extremely exhausting. And they're the best people. They're some of the best people that do it. The church asks a lot of us, so it better be true. It better be what it claims to be. And that leads to, I think, where the rubber hit the road.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] Wait, let me ask really quickly. Did you notice a marked sort of permanent decline in church activity pre Covid to post Covid in your ward and stake?

Justin Sweeney [01:12:54] In my ward specifically, Not a ton. A little bit. In our stake, yes. There were some wards.

John Dehlin [01:12:59] Where did you see.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:00] Very hesitant to come back, both because of concerns of COVID like legitimate concerns. And then also when you're again in California, there were times where we would go months without going to church, and then we were kind of on again, and then we were back off again as it swelled back up. And yeah, there were some people that are like, I kind of like not going to church. And they. It was tough to bring them back. Yeah, it was tough to bring them back.

John Dehlin [01:13:28] Yeah. Okay. Did any have any of those wards or branches closed or been collapsed since, just out of curiosity? No.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:38] We tried once for award to consolidate,

John Dehlin [01:13:42] and we were told no.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:43] We're told no.

John Dehlin [01:13:44] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:45] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:46] But it should have happened, but it didn't.

John Dehlin [01:13:47] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:49] Okay. So at that point, you're starting to question whether you want to be in the stake hike in the stake presidency.

Justin Sweeney [01:13:54] Just like, is this working for me? Like, kind of a lot of little things. Nothing huge. Not at this point even questioning my testimony, really, but just like, this is a lot. Like, this is so much.

John Dehlin [01:14:05] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:14:07] And then we. I can't remember what summer. Summer of 2022 or 2023, whenever the D.C. temple open house was, I came home from work and my wife was like, we're going to the D.C. temple open house. And I typically am the one that plan, like, coordinates the vacations and stuff. But she took the reins on this one and was like, she wasn't asking me, she was telling me, we're going and

John Dehlin [01:14:38] it's 2022.

Justin Sweeney [01:14:39] 2022.

John Dehlin [01:14:40] Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:14:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:41] The open house. So basically, two. Two and a half years ago.

Justin Sweeney [01:14:45] Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So got home from work and she's like, we're going to the temple or going to the D.C. temple open house. And she has a really good friend that lives there. So we had someone to visit. And, you know, cool trip, I guess, but she's never done that before in our marriage and never done it since, where she's like, we're doing this, and so we go. And the whole purpose of the trip, though, was to go to the D.C. temple. And we went. The first thing we did, we get off the plane, we go to the D.C. temple. It's a beautiful building. It's a beautiful. It's in a beautiful area. You know, you drive around the freeway and you see this.

John Dehlin [01:15:17] It's in Maryland, right?

Justin Sweeney [01:15:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:19] On the Beltway.

Justin Sweeney [01:15:20] Yep. Yeah, right off the freeway where Margi

John Dehlin [01:15:22] and I were married.

Justin Sweeney [01:15:23] Oh, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful building. And we get there, and we're going through the. There's actually quite a few people there. So they didn't have, like. They didn't have, like, a tour guide or anything. You kind of just walked through the temple on your own. And we went through. Kind of walked up to the beginning of the. Or up to the temple, and we get to the top where the.

Justin Sweeney [01:15:48] The celestial room is. And of all the experiences that I've ever had in the temple, I honestly think this is the most spiritual one I had. We walked into the celestial room, and I just had an overwhelming feeling of love and peace. And there were people from all backgrounds. We were just in our airplane clothes, like we had just got off the plane. I was with my kids, with my wife and all of my kids unendowed. There was people there from all walks of life, all socioeconomic status, all races, all colors, praying and connecting with God.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] But it hadn't been dedicated yet. Rededicated.

Justin Sweeney [01:16:27] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:16:27] So it wasn't technically especially holy building yet. It didn't have the dedication.

Justin Sweeney [01:16:33] It didn't have the special power. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The special magic power. The magic sauce had.

John Dehlin [01:16:37] Just a normal building. Beautiful.

Justin Sweeney [01:16:39] But you felt the most powerful spiritual experience in the temple ever, including when

John Dehlin [01:16:45] you were getting your own initiatories and endowments in a dedicated temple with all the special priesthood power.

Mormon Theology and Celestial Kingdom Doubts

Justin Sweeney [01:16:51] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] Okay. I can see why that might have been disorienting.

Justin Sweeney [01:16:55] Yes, That's a great word. I actually wrote that word down to do in my intro. Yes. This whole thing is disorienting. All of this is disorienting. But I remember specifically feeling. This is going to sound weird, but I remember feeling or hearing the words, this makes me happy. Me, not, not Justin, me, God. Like, this makes God happy. All these people praying. There was a lady that was emotional, you know, trying to connect to God. And so I just sat with that for like a month and talked with my wife and Mary. Like, what does this mean?

Justin Sweeney [01:17:30] There was no. We were not dressed up. We were not. It wasn't dedicated. There were people there that should not have been there. Right? Or, like, would not be allowed now to go in. There are people there that wouldn't have been allowed to go in 1978, before 1978, because of the color of their skin. Like, I was just. How could that happen? How could I have such an amazing, what I would call spiritual experience? I now think it's more of a feeling of love towards these people in that environment. And then shortly thereafter, I was asked to give another spiritual thought and stake presidency meeting.

Justin Sweeney [01:18:12] And I started reading on the church's website, there's a faq. I don't even know why I was there. There's an FAQ section that talks about planets. It's brought up a lot on your podcast.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] But just so people know where it comes from in the God Maker. Well, there's an old Mormon teaching that as man is God once was, and as God is man may become, which the Mormon Church. This is for the Never Mormons, which the Mormon Church for the past couple hundred years has interpreted that we will become God someday. God was once a man on a planet, and then he became a God. And if you become Mormon and you're super righteous and faithful, and then you die faithful, and you go to the celestial kingdom and your ultimate destination is to become a God. And that if, if, if we end up doing what God does, we'll preside over a planet or multiple planets with our spouse or spouses and become like God.

John Dehlin [01:19:10] That's. That's the whole thing. And then when I was growing up in the, you know, early 80s, these evangelicals came up with a movie called the God Makers, which kind of like created this Hanna Barbera cartoon with, like, God and his wife presiding over a planet as a cartoon and sort of mocked the idea, the whole idea, the title God Makers was the idea that the whole purpose of being Mormon was to get your own planet someday and to rule it like a God. And that was made fun of in the Book of Mormon musical. There's a part in the song where it's like. And I believe that someday I'll get my own planet.

John Dehlin [01:19:45] You know what I mean? And so that's. Once that came out in the Internet age, the church created a memoir to address that topic because evangelicals think it's evil. They believe there's only one God and will only ever be one God. So they think the idea that Mormons can become God someday and rule their own planets proves that we're not Christian.

Justin Sweeney [01:20:06] Yeah, it's like it's. Yeah, it's apostasy. Like, it's apostasy. Yeah, it's not. Definitely not something that you should teach. And it's a unique Mormon doctrine. And I. I don't really care, honestly, about the planet thing. Like, that was never like, oh, I'm gonna stay Mormon because I want to plan it. It was part of the reason for justification for polygamy, by the way, too. I was always taught, well, we're gonna need multiple wives, because how. Which is just silly. Like, do you really think you're creating spirits the same way you create human life? Like, anyway, that's a whole nother deep dive. But the faq, the answer to that question is clearly no.

Justin Sweeney [01:20:42] Do you. Do Mormons believe they get their own planet? No. And the answer, it doesn't go on to say something like no, but we believe in creation, and we'll see what happens. And, you know, we're God's an embryo. Jeffrey R. Holland just came out like a week ago and said that. He said we're God's an embryo in a public statement to the church in the church newsroom. Still have that app on my phone, so I got that notification. Anyway.

Justin Sweeney [01:21:06] I think if you ask most members, they still believe it, even though I actually don't think most members have seen the FAQ part of the page. And I brought this up with my own family at a reunion, and everyone disagreed with me. They're like, no, no, we, you know, we're going to become gods. What are you talking about? I'm like, no, we don't get our own planet. Well, if we're going to become gods, but we don't get our planet, what's the point of becoming a God? And in that conversation with my family, I, again, like, light bulbs start coming off when you start applying logic and analysis to the church.

Justin Sweeney [01:21:37] Like what you just explained, John, where the goal of the church for me and Maren is to go to heaven, get our own planet or whatever, and have kids. Well, then in the temple video, we should see Heavenly Mother. But who creates the world in the temple Video. It's not God and heavenly Mother.

John Dehlin [01:21:57] There's no women.

Justin Sweeney [01:21:58] There's no women. It's Jehovah and Michael.

John Dehlin [01:22:00] Yeah. Which is God and Adam.

Justin Sweeney [01:22:01] God and Adam.

John Dehlin [01:22:02] Jesus.

Justin Sweeney [01:22:03] Jesus and Adam create the world together. As two men, they create the bodies for Adam and Eve. It's not heavenly mother and heavenly father. So Jesus and Adam created this world and Adam and Eve's bodies, but now it has to be husband and wife. Like, again, that doesn't make sense. God changes his plan. Changes his plan. The plan of creation that we learn in the temple is not the plan of creation in the eternities.

Justin Sweeney [01:22:34] How does that make sense? It should be my oldest son and Jesus or whatever. Like that world's version of Jesus. That's who gets to create my planet. If I get one. But apparently I don't get one anymore. So you just start to. Anyway, that became like.

Justin Sweeney [01:22:51] And then talking about polygamy, and I hadn't even researched it, by the way. So I'm having this discussion with my family. We're talking about all these things, and the polygamy discussion comes up. And this is at a family reunion setting. So again, my family is pretty open.

John Dehlin [01:23:04] Siblings and your parents?

Justin Sweeney [01:23:05] Siblings and parents? Well, my mom and their spouses. And again, it doesn't ever get heated. I'm the black sheep. But my family, we always can have good debates and leave.

John Dehlin [01:23:17] Wait, what do you mean you're in state presidencies and you're a black sheep? What do you mean?

Justin Sweeney [01:23:20] I am a black sheep in my family? Like, politically. And just. I always.

John Dehlin [01:23:24] Because you're more liberal.

Justin Sweeney [01:23:25] More. Yeah. Okay. Honestly. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:23:27] Okay. And by the way, people are like, john, why do you always bring liberals on Mormon Stories podcast? Did I ask you any questions politically before you came on Mormon Stories?

Justin Sweeney [01:23:36] Zero.

John Dehlin [01:23:37] I don't. We don't, like, filter people based on their politics. Zero. Yeah, you just applied and had a good story and it wasn't related to politics. I just want to make that clear.

Justin Sweeney [01:23:47] Yeah. I get accused of that and I will say, like, I feel like my politics have changed a little bit, as I've learned and met people that I previously didn't know and hadn't ever experienced. I think it's impossible to meet people face to face, learn to know them, love them, help them, and then not change. I think that that's almost impossible. So anyway, we're having this debate, then the standard polygamy justifications are given. Like, we needed it to survive. And. And it.

John Dehlin [01:24:20] Way too many, you know, women.

Justin Sweeney [01:24:22] Way too many women on Planes. Some of them enjoyed it. You know, all the standard.

John Dehlin [01:24:30] Yeah, yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:24:31] The standard justifications. And I didn't have the receipts. I had never dove in. And at that, after that meeting, I'm like, I gave myself permission. I'm. I gotta. I gotta get the receipts. I gotta figure this out. And so that was, I guess, the summer of 2022, if that's when the D.C. temple open house was. Because it was that few weeks later that we had this discussion. Wow, that was a while ago. Maybe. I sat on that a whole nother year.

John Dehlin [01:24:59] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:25:00] Anyway, in any event, I went home. We again, talked a lot with my wife about it. We started to see little pieces of things that we were just like, yeah, this isn't making sense. And I mean, this is where the

John Dehlin [01:25:13] idea of a truth crisis begins. Do we want to introduce what you mean by that?

Researching the Temple, Masonry, and Polygamy

Justin Sweeney [01:25:17] Yeah, I wanted to know that. So I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know the truth about polygamy. I wanted to know the truth about the temple. And I literally started googling because I had heard about the temple endowment and masonry. I'd heard about it. I had never dug deep. Why would you. It's true. It comes from King Solomon's temple, and it's ancient practice from Adam and Eve. Why would I look?

John Dehlin [01:25:41] Which is not true. But that's what we're told, correct? Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:25:44] So I get on Google, evil Google, and I Google something like temples and Masonry, and one of the first links that comes up is your podcast with Mike, the LDS discussions episode.

John Dehlin [01:25:57] Oh, cool.

Justin Sweeney [01:25:58] On temples and Masonry. I think it's even called Temples and Masonry, if I recall correctly.

John Dehlin [01:26:02] Nice.

Justin Sweeney [01:26:02] It was one of the first things that came up, and I'm like, well, I don't know, John Dylan. I'd heard of you, you know, the anti Mormon. I'm like, but whatever, I'm gonna listen to this, listen to the whole thing. And I actually went back. I listened to the whole thing, and then I went back and watched it on YouTube. I think that one needs to be watched for very specific reasons because of the pictures you guys show of the Masonic handshakes and other things. I went back and so I listened to it, and then I watched it.

John Dehlin [01:26:30] And why was that interesting or troublesome for you? Because it spell it out.

Justin Sweeney [01:26:35] It conflicted with the narrative that I had been taught my whole life.

John Dehlin [01:26:39] Talk us through that.

Justin Sweeney [01:26:40] Okay, so if so, in the temple, we learned that the endowment ceremony essentially comes from Adam and Eve. Like, they literally are getting it done. Then it gets passed down through their posterity and through the generations of time, all the way through, it was later taught that it was, that's what they're doing in King Solomon's Temple, even though we now know it's not. It was animal sacrifices. And then that's corrupted by the evil Catholic Church or whatever church you want to blame it on. Through the apostasy, it gets corrupted. And that Masonry was actually the corrupted version of the endowment. And so Joseph Smith needed to see the Masonic ceremony to be like, to have him trigger like, oh, yeah, this is the old thing.

Justin Sweeney [01:27:24] I'm going to perfect this, fix it, cleanse it, and restore it back to the way that it was so that we can all enjoy those blessings. Well, it turns out that that is not actually true.

John Dehlin [01:27:36] Which parts of that is not true?

Justin Sweeney [01:27:37] All of it.

John Dehlin [01:27:38] The whole thing.

Justin Sweeney [01:27:39] The whole thing is that all of it isn't true.

John Dehlin [01:27:42] Because Jews never performed the Masonic ceremony, they preserve their temple rituals. And we know what those are.

Justin Sweeney [01:27:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:27:49] And no one between Jesus and Joseph Smith practiced temple rituals like the Masonic Lodge and the Masonic Lodge. Temple ceremony developed in the medieval times, right?

Justin Sweeney [01:28:01] Yes. Correct.

John Dehlin [01:28:02] There's no evidence that it ever existed prior to kind of medieval times.

Justin Sweeney [01:28:05] Yes. And I was doing my own scripture study in the Book of Mormon. And as I'm doing this, I'm like, again, I've always been asking my whole life, where is this in the scriptures. And 3rd Nephi 11, probably the most common, most read chapter in the Book of Mormon is about when Jesus comes to America.

Justin Sweeney [01:28:23] There's a ton of destruction, there's a ton of dead people lying around that just got destroyed. Jesus comes to the temple and he lays down his law. He says, I'm going to lay down my law and my doctrine. And he basically says, faith, repentance and baptism, that's what he teaches them. He calls 12 apostles, which is exactly what he did in the New Testament. He gives them authority. Not the Melchizedek priesthood, not the Aaronic authority priesthood, just authority to baptize. And he specifically says, if you teach more than this, it is of evil. That's his words, not mine. He's at the temple. Why would he.

Justin Sweeney [01:28:58] And again, if you ask the LDS robot or any member, why. Why is the temple endowment ceremony not in the Bible? They will say, because it got taken out. The plain and precious truths were lost. That is specifically laid out in first Nephi 13. The plain and precious truths were lost because it got taken away by the church that they took out. The. They were. They were the ones that took it out. Well, Then where is it in the Book of Mormon? It should be there. Jesus is at the temple. Why would he say that? His doctrine is faith, repentance and baptism and not say, oh, by the way, we're going to do baptisms for the dead.

Justin Sweeney [01:29:34] There's a lot of dead people around here. Let me help you guys save them. You can. I'm at the temple. Let me show you how to do baptisms for the dead too. And we can also do family sealings and seal people together forever. That would seem to be really great. I think a common response is, oh, it's too sacred. Well, the ba. It's more. Baptism is an ordinance and. Or why not just mention it? Maybe you don't get into the details and the nitty gritty, but you would at least mention it. He would mention it if it was. It just hadn't been made up yet. So that's why it's not there. But you never think of it that way.

John Dehlin [01:30:07] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:30:08] Ever.

John Dehlin [01:30:08] Yeah. Because Joseph, you know, there's so much. And that's why the LDS discussion series is so important. I want to tell everybody, if you don't know about that. It's one of the most important things I've ever done on Mormon Stories. It's like a 55 episode series starting from the beginning, exploring Mormon Church truth claims. You can find it as its own podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And then there's a playlist on the Mormon Stories YouTube channel where you can watch it from start to finish. But we start with Joseph Smith's treasure digging and Peepstone stuff and then go all the way through. But because the reason why the temple ceremony doesn't appear in the Book of Mormon is because in 1830, when Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon, he hadn't yet become a mason and he hadn't yet even developed the Melchizedek priesthood, let alone the temple ceremony.

John Dehlin [01:30:59] So of course it wouldn't appear in the Book of Mormon. Not because Laman, you know, not because it wasn't included by the ancient prophets of the Book of Mormon. It's because Joseph Smith hadn't developed those teachings yet, and so he couldn't have included them in the Book of Mormon. But they certainly weren't ancient. Right.

Justin Sweeney [01:31:16] Yeah. And if they were, they would be there.

John Dehlin [01:31:18] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Jesus would have taught everyone the endowment and had them practice it in those. In Lamanite Nephite temples.

Justin Sweeney [01:31:26] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:31:26] Right.

Justin Sweeney [01:31:26] And Jews retain special articles of clothing as well that they wear all the time. Lots of different things. And Somehow they don't have garments, you know, and so.

John Dehlin [01:31:35] So that's a truth crisis. That's one truth crisis.

Justin Sweeney [01:31:37] Yeah. The temple, the thing that I was told is the most important thing I can do basically on this earth, originates with masonry. And when you go and look at it, which, again, even at the time I thought, this is kind of weird. Like, God cares about handshakes.

John Dehlin [01:31:54] Like, and the handshakes, Masonic handshakes, in essence, are required literally to pass the pearly gates.

Justin Sweeney [01:32:01] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:32:01] And get into the celestial kingdom. That's what the Mormon Church teaches even today.

Justin Sweeney [01:32:04] Correct. And that's not. We're not, like, we're not making a mockery of it. That's literally what it teaches. You cannot pass the angels that stand as sentinels until you do these things. And again, you can get on Google and look it up or watch that podcast. It's there. They're clearly Masonic. The delivery is the same. The wording is the same. And then I learned from the podcast, which I had never known, is they've already taken out a lot of the Masonic stuff that is already really even worse. So the death oaths and slitting your wrist or slitting your throat and slitting your bowels open.

John Dehlin [01:32:38] Because what I went through, you were threatened that if you divulged those secret handshakes, you could have your throat slit and your heart cut out and be disemboweled. That was the threat of a consequence if you ever divulged the Masonic secret handshakes.

Justin Sweeney [01:32:57] Yeah. So when I found that, I'm like, whoa. I was convinced that was left out of the temple prep class. You know, I wonder why.

John Dehlin [01:33:03] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:33:04] But then you learn, okay, well, if they've taken out some of the really bad Masonic stuff, why not just take it all out? Why not just admit it's all Masonic and go to the temple with your family, like I just did in the Washington, D.C. temple, and enjoy a spiritual, happy moment together? Like, why not do that?

John Dehlin [01:33:16] Yeah, that makes sense.

Justin Sweeney [01:33:17] Like, and so that.

John Dehlin [01:33:18] That's kind of too much sense.

Justin Sweeney [01:33:19] Yeah, that's where I was. I'm like, why don't we just get rid of all of it? And I think a very common refrain from members of the church because I've been to the temple with newbies, with new people that are going in for the first time. Everybody says the same thing. Well, this is. This is kind of. It's a little weird. Just. It's all symbolic. You'll get used to it. Just go more often.

Justin Sweeney [01:33:38] And, you know, they're Taking kids to the temple now earlier and earlier and earlier with little kids who do baptisms, and they're really pushing that. But like baptisms for the dead, it's basically just a baptism. It's not anything close to the weirdness, I would say, of the Endowment ceremony. And when you realize that the clothing, the markings, the handshakes, and all of that stuff is Masonic, it loses to me total, all of its value. Like, the covenants are great. So just go to do the covenants. That'll take 10 minutes rather than three hours. Right. Like, we can do all that. But I think one of the problems, ongoing problems with Joseph Smith is he would never just say, I'm revealing something.

Justin Sweeney [01:34:22] I got a revelation. It has to be a restoration. And when you have. When it's a restoration rather than a revelation, and you're tying it to history, that's where it becomes problematic. Because then when you can prove that it's not what he said it is, then, well, now what am I left with? And you can do that with almost anything. With the Book of Mormon, we talked about the Lamanites. We can basically prove that those ancient peoples are not from Jerusalem. We can scientifically prove that DNA and

John Dehlin [01:34:54] anthropology, archaeology, all that brings them from Mongolia, Asia, East Asia, through the Bering Strait.

Justin Sweeney [01:35:02] Yeah. And so the truth, what I was teaching people on my missions was one version. And what I find out as the truth is something else. And the Book of Mormon clearly is not a historical record. I mean, it's trying to teach a history, but it's not a historical document. There are even faithful scholars have even come on this podcast and said that.

John Dehlin [01:35:27] Like Patrick Mason and others.

Justin Sweeney [01:35:29] Yeah, And I think even Richard Bush, if he hasn't said it here, he said it elsewhere. That it's. That it's, you know, I think he said.

John Dehlin [01:35:36] But anyway, Terrell Givens, Richard Bushman, Patrick Mason, they all don't view the Book of Mormon as the translation of ancient records of an actual people.

Justin Sweeney [01:35:49] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:35:49] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:35:50] And so anyway, once that happened, I realized, okay, the people that I had trusted to tell me the truth aren't telling me the truth.

John Dehlin [01:35:59] Wait, was it just. Was it just the Masonic stuff in the temple ceremony and you were done, or did you.

Justin Sweeney [01:36:07] No, not so, you know, did you follow.

John Dehlin [01:36:09] Let's go ahead and take the time to, like. Did you follow other big topics?

Justin Sweeney [01:36:13] So that led as your truth crisis. Yeah, so that led the whole temple thing. Oh, and I listened to. I don't think you. I don't know how I listened to the Tom Phillips Episode that was the second episode I ever listened to about the second anointing.

John Dehlin [01:36:26] Why was that a problem?

Justin Sweeney [01:36:29] I was never taught about the second anointing. What is the second anointing?

Discovering the Second Anointing

John Dehlin [01:36:32] Tell us what you learned. For those who have no idea what we're talking about.

Justin Sweeney [01:36:35] Okay, so the second anointing is a special ordinance that you do in the temple for kind of a special elite, higher up people in the church nowadays. It was much more common earlier.

John Dehlin [01:36:46] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:36:47] But it's. It's where you're calling an election as made sure.

John Dehlin [01:36:50] Which means what?

Justin Sweeney [01:36:50] To a never Mormon, you are saved, basically. It's a get out of jail free card. You're basically saved. Unless you, what, commit murder.

John Dehlin [01:36:58] Murder, yeah. I'll just give you my thoughts. It's like the really wealthy Mormons who have given their lives to the church, who are starting to see their children and grandchildren fall away from the church, are. But. But are rich. And the church wants to keep in the church. They get called to the special secret meeting at the temple on a Sunday when no one else is in the temple, an apostle shows up and he basically promises the husband and wife, not just that they'll be saved in heaven, that they'll become gods, basically. Gods and goddesses and rule over their planets.

Justin Sweeney [01:37:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:33] And by the way, he washes their feet. And the wife, I think, washes the husband's feet. I always forget the exact details. And the wife ends up giving a blessing, giving a blessing to the husband. But it's kind of like almost an indulgence where really rich, wealthy people of high status are promised that unless they murder somebody in this life, they're gonna become gods and goddesses. And by the way, don't tell anyone. And so it's this super secret ceremony.

Justin Sweeney [01:38:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:08] And so you learning that that existed was disturbing, why?

Justin Sweeney [01:38:14] Well, first of all, because it gives. It's like this whole secret layer of elite, like people that already know they're going to heaven. And to me that's really disturbing. Like Jesus is here to save all of us. Why is there this. Mormons are already like 0.1% of the population and think we're the only ones saved anyway. But now there's a 0.1% within Mormonism that has this elite thing done and then.

John Dehlin [01:38:40] And the scriptures say endure to the end, right?

Justin Sweeney [01:38:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:44] So why are these people promised that? They kind of.

Justin Sweeney [01:38:47] Yeah. They also talk about secret combinations like

John Dehlin [01:38:50] the Book of Mormon.

Justin Sweeney [01:38:51] The Book of Mormon does, specifically.

John Dehlin [01:38:53] And you're saying the. The second endowment feels like a secret combination?

Justin Sweeney [01:39:00] Kind of like a secret combination. Like, we keep it secret intentionally from the members, but we're giving the biggest blessing. The biggest blessing you can get is actually not your endowment and your sealing. It's the second anointing in the temple, which nobody really knows about. And so at that point I was like, all right, the church is clearly not telling me the truth about things.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] They're hiding things from you.

Justin Sweeney [01:39:21] I am now going to look. Yeah, I'm now going to use the brain I've been given and the logical thinking skills that I have, sadly, I guess, and use my lawyer brain and look at the church.

John Dehlin [01:39:35] And really quickly for those. If you haven't listened to the Tom Phillips episode, we just re released it all in one episode. Go listen to it. It's audio only, unfortunately, but it's still on YouTube now. It's important. And also, Tom Phillips, who received a second anointing, ended up leaving the church, having these debates with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. It's for sure one of the top five most important episodes of Mormon stories all time, even though it was done before we ever did video. Hans Mattsson, who we've also interviewed on Mormon Stories, who is a Swedish area authority for the church, he's also received a second endowment.

John Dehlin [01:40:11] And then with Brian Buchanan, we recently did an episode on the history of the second anointing in the Mormon Church. And then we had another guy on to talk about him discovering his dad's or his grandpa's second anointing letter. And so we've covered it several times on Mormon Stories in different ways. It's all worth checking out. So we'll have Brooklyn and Julia include all those links in the show notes for those who want to learn more. Anyway, okay, so second anointing was your second major issue.

Justin Sweeney [01:40:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:43] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [01:40:43] And that just. That gave me permission to like peel back the curtain, I guess, or whatever the analogy is you want to use and just look. And I had been very aware of the gospel topics essays, but I had never actually dove in and read them. I knew they existed and I knew what they generally talked about, but I had never read them or their footnotes. And so I dove in and in Those, in those LDS discussions episode, I think the temple one is like 25 or something. It's like in the middle and you always say in there to go back and start from the beginning.

Justin Sweeney [01:41:15] So I did in about a two or three month period. I listened to all 50 episodes. I drive a lot for my work. I go up to the Bay Area, I'm driving a lot I exercise at night for an hour. I got through them fast. I just gobbled them up. And then.

Deep Dive into Faith Crisis Resources

John Dehlin [01:41:31] So you watched all the lds listen to all the LDS discussions episodes in like two months. And do you want to just describe what that was like for you?

Justin Sweeney [01:41:42] Disorienting to use the word you brought back before?

John Dehlin [01:41:45] I mean, we tried to just tell the factual history as best we could, accurately and honestly in a way that the church didn't. And we tried to be objective, of course we weren't. But we tried to be as honest and as straightforward with the facts as we could. And that's Mike from LDSDiscussions.com, nemo. Sometimes Julia Gerardo would appear. But like, what was it like to kind of get a real truth, to follow the theme of like a truth crisis, to get a truthful version of Mormon church history over time?

Justin Sweeney [01:42:17] Yeah, you said disorienting. Disorienting and frustrating and devastating and depressing and like, I mean, you go through

John Dehlin [01:42:25] all about enlightening and educating.

Justin Sweeney [01:42:27] Yeah. So sorry. Not just all negative from a faithful believing standpoint. It's all those feelings. You go through all those emotions. But then, yeah, you're like, I'm glad. Yes. I'm glad I know the truth and that someone has done the work to figure out what is actually the truth. Because we should not be scared of the truth. We should be teaching the truth. And

John Dehlin [01:42:50] we'll include a Link to the LDS Discussions YouTube playlist in our show notes because you should literally, as soon as this episode's done, start binging that.

Justin Sweeney [01:43:00] Binge the whole thing. Watch the whole thing. If there's any faithful family or friends or anyone else listening, watch it again. If we have the truth, we shouldn't be scared of it. Watch the whole thing or listen to the whole thing and see if it matches the narrative that you have been taught or that you maybe even taught yourself on your mission to other people.

John Dehlin [01:43:19] Now, did you use your lawyerly scrutiny to make sure we weren't misrepresenting the facts or lying? Yes.

Justin Sweeney [01:43:25] And I did not come across hardly any lies. And hardly to your credit. No, not lies. You guys would always come back the episode later and say if we made a mistake, hey, we mentioned this. That's what I appreciate. The very next episode, it's like, hey, we misspoke. We said, I don't even remember. There's like a couple. We said this one thing, but actually it was this.

John Dehlin [01:43:48] You tried to be straightforward.

Justin Sweeney [01:43:49] Yes, 100%. There's nothing. It was not. I was not being Lied to. And so. And then again, you can dig into the church's own website and find all of this stuff if you want. This is not me coming to John Dehlin and learning some sort of anti Mormon spin on the truth. It is. You can find everything on the church's website. Now look at Joseph Smith papers, Project

John Dehlin [01:44:16] People, and the Gospel topics essays.

Justin Sweeney [01:44:18] And the Gospel topics essays which have a spin on it. And check the footnotes and then check those footnotes. But yeah, going through that was not fun. I enjoyed. Tickled my lawyerly brain. And it was very interesting. And then you start to see pieces come together. Like at the beginning, you guys talk about the stone in the hat, which again, I remember the young man on my mission who I had told that that was a lie. And I'm like, oh, actually that's true. He did translate it with a stone and a hat. What the heck? And even before I heard the. The Richard Bushman quote, I was already thinking like, what? What are the plates for? What do we need the plates for? Why were they preserved? Why were they polished? Why were they kept? If he's receiving Revelation in a hat from a rock in a hat, what is the purpose of the plate?

John Dehlin [01:45:11] And the plates aren't in the room.

Justin Sweeney [01:45:12] The plates aren't even in the room. Or if they are, they're in. Under a cloth. They're not being looked at. Like every other picture I've ever seen in the history of the church depicting it, including in our stake offices right now, there's a picture of Joseph Smith staring at gold plates with his finger on it. And it's like, that's not a. That is not truth.

John Dehlin [01:45:29] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:45:32] And then you get into the whole magic worldview. Well, it makes sense. It makes sense that he was doing that and.

John Dehlin [01:45:38] Cause he was. Cause he and Oliver Cowdery were super. And his dad, Joseph Smith Sr. They're all superstitious and they're into folk magic.

Justin Sweeney [01:45:45] Yes. So it makes sense. Like now. Well, that. Cause otherwise I get why a random Argentine. If I came to them with this story about a white American looking at a stone in a hat, they'd be like, what are you teaching me? Like, that doesn't make sense. But if I gave them the whole story. Joseph's family was really poor. They were looking for ways to earn money. So he started doing treasure digging to get money from people and he got prosecuted for it. His dad told him it was illegal. It was illegal, by the way. His dad told him to find a different lifestyle.

John Dehlin [01:46:17] Father in law or his Father in law.

Justin Sweeney [01:46:19] And so he started to use it for religious purposes. Like, okay, yeah, that actually lines up. That makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:46:25] But we would, not only would we not do that in Argentina, the church knows its factual history, but it hasn't changed the missionary lessons to reflect in Argentina or the United States or anywhere the truth that it is sharing in the gospel topics essays and elsewhere.

Justin Sweeney [01:46:43] Correct. And a couple years ago, the church came out and said, they have the stone. That blew my brain. Like, they have the rock. So not only this proves that they knew about it. They know the story.

John Dehlin [01:46:55] They had the rock in a vault for a long, long, long time.

Justin Sweeney [01:46:58] And they just didn't want to talk about it until everyone on the Internet found it and is like, well, now we have to admit it. And now we're compare it to an iPhone. Okay, great, if that's what you're going to do. But why? So we had a discussion with my kids who were trying to like slowly just talk about this stuff because I don't want to dump on them. But they had their temple recommend interview, and in their temple recommend interview, they asked, do you believe that the prophet is a prophet, seer and revelator. So we sat down and we said, do you guys know what a seer is?

Justin Sweeney [01:47:25] You know what a seer is? Why do we say seer? They had no idea. They're 17, 15, 15 and 13 never heard about a seer. So we told them, this is what a seer is. This is why. This is what a seer does. This is why it's called a seer stone. This is what Joseph used to translate the Book of Mormon. And they were like, well, we've never heard of that. I'm like, I know you haven't. Now you have.

Justin Sweeney [01:47:49] And if. And I asked them, if the prophet has. If we sustain President Nelson as a seer, which we all, which we do, and he has the stone, why can't we use it? Why can't he retranslate?

John Dehlin [01:48:00] Or.

Justin Sweeney [01:48:01] It's not even translation. Why can't he have re revealed word for word as the dictation accounts explain the 116 lost pages.

John Dehlin [01:48:10] Or couldn't Joseph reveal them, rewrite them at the time?

Justin Sweeney [01:48:13] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [01:48:14] If he wasn't using the plates, he could have just used, you know, redictated perfectly the 116 pages. We could have read it from the

Justin Sweeney [01:48:24] stone and you would have noticed if they try, if Lucy tried to change it. This isn't deleting a word doc and reprinting something. You would have seen the Changes in the hand handwriting, like. I get that. I totally agree.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] And there is 116 pages LDS discussions episode, by the way, for those.

Justin Sweeney [01:48:38] It's great. But even if you buy the whole argument that like, well, she could have come out and said and like destroyed the whole church because. Okay, whatever, fine, I'll buy that. But we're in 2025 now. We have the rock. Let's do it. Let's do the 116 pages.

John Dehlin [01:48:52] Let's get it back.

Justin Sweeney [01:48:53] Let's get it back to the sealed

John Dehlin [01:48:54] parts of the Book of Mormon.

Justin Sweeney [01:48:55] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:48:55] Let's get that. Let's get that back.

Justin Sweeney [01:48:57] Yeah, why not? And if we can't, then why are we sustaining them as seers?

John Dehlin [01:49:02] You know, plus, why doesn't Nelson use the seer stone to get revelation today about anything? For other things.

Justin Sweeney [01:49:08] For other things. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:08] Yeah. Get the temple ceremony. Right. To begin with instead of have to have a wrong temple ceremony.

Justin Sweeney [01:49:16] Change it.

John Dehlin [01:49:16] Change it. Yeah. Or get Prop 8 right. Either get same sex marriage. It's bad or it's good. But why can't the stone just tell them which it is, you know? Yep. So it's a truth crisis.

Justin Sweeney [01:49:28] Truth crisis, yeah. About the. About what I would argue are the fundamentals of our faith. Like there's those great quotes. President Hinckley, I was in the MTC when he gave this talk in 2002 where he said, you know, basically, it's all true or it's a fraud. Right. I have it in here somewhere. But it's all true or it's a fraud and there is no middle ground. And that's the church I grew up in.

John Dehlin [01:49:55] Yeah, me too.

Justin Sweeney [01:49:57] It's Joseph Smith. And if you look at Preach My Gospel right now in your LDS library app, it says the number one conversion tool, it's not Jesus, it's not God, it's not love, it's not happiness, it's the Book of Mormon. Why? Because if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet. And if those two things are true, then this church is true. I would agree with that. Like in law, you have an issue presented. Is the church true? The rule the church sets up for itself is the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. If those two things are true, then the church is true.

Reaching Conclusions About Joseph Smith and the Church

Justin Sweeney [01:50:30] And you have to overlook the weird things with polygamy and the weird. But if they're not, then the whole. I agree with the words of prophets, the whole thing comes crumbling down. And when you can prove that the Book of Mormon is not what the person who Revealed it and discovered it, says it is, and what the church has presented it as for 100, 200 years almost. Then what. What am I supposed to. What do we do with that? When.

Justin Sweeney [01:51:00] And then this gets into Elder Corbridge, who gave a talk about the primary questions and the secondary questions. He says there's only four. There's only four primary questions.

John Dehlin [01:51:11] Can I just give a little context for that? I'll be rusty with it. But basically, once the Mormon blog started emerging in 2004, then Mormon stories in 2005, and then other Mormon podcasts, and then Mormon Think, and then the CES letter and all the things, and then read it, like.

John Dehlin [01:51:34] And I said CES letter just now. Right. Like, once all that starts emerging, people start losing their faith in the Mormon Church in droves. They all start having truth crises to the tune of, like 40,000 people a year, by my estimates, are leaving Mormonism because of truth crisis. And so the church has to figure out how to plug the hole. Like the boat sinking. How do we plug the hole? And so Corbridge was one of the first to try and come up with some rationale or justification to help. I think of it as, like, that moment where Obi Wan Kenobi or whatever says, these are not the droids you're looking for.

John Dehlin [01:52:14] It's the type of talk to tell people those things that this truth crisis that you're having, all these things that you're learning from Mormon stories in the CES letter, they're not important. Let me tell you what really is important. Now you take over. That's how I think of the context.

Justin Sweeney [01:52:30] Yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [01:52:30] Is that right?

Justin Sweeney [01:52:31] Yes, that's 100% right. And as a. Not even questioning at that time when it was happening in 2019, but still, like, kind of a deep thinker, like, I latched onto that because it simplifies everything. Just like you said, you don't need to worry about other questions because I'm going to do the work for you. And the first question is, is God our Father? The second question, is Jesus our Savior? Third question is Joseph the Prophet of God?

John Dehlin [01:52:52] Okay, wait. First of all, we're going to include the Corbridge talk in our link in our show notes. Say those slowly.

Justin Sweeney [01:52:59] Is God our heavenly Father?

John Dehlin [01:53:02] Okay, is God our Father? That's number one.

Justin Sweeney [01:53:04] Is Jesus Christ our Savior?

John Dehlin [01:53:05] Okay, so far, that's all Christianity, but keep going.

Justin Sweeney [01:53:09] Is Joseph Smith a prophet of God?

John Dehlin [01:53:10] Okay, that's important. All right.

Justin Sweeney [01:53:12] And then is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Kingdom of God on Earth.

John Dehlin [01:53:16] Okay, those are the four. Those last two are super relevant as it relates to the church.

Justin Sweeney [01:53:21] Correct. But how do you answer that third question? Is Joseph Smith a prophet of God without asking 531 follow up questions?

John Dehlin [01:53:29] Yeah. And honestly, I think the church would say if you get a warm feeling in seminary or on your mission or whatever, if you're watching General Conference or you're hearing your mom and dad tell a Joseph Smith story and it touches your heart, makes you feel good, you should stop. Check that box. Number three. Criteria is met. Don't dig any further. Right? Is that what Corbridge is saying?

Justin Sweeney [01:53:51] Yes. So he goes through all the ways to learn truth and he basically says, your feelings matter the most. Is that the end of his talk? And I am not dismissing feelings. I think feelings are great. I think people can communicate with God and the divine in any way they want. But if you're having feelings over again, going back to that scripture in Alma, we can only have faith in things that are true. If you're having warm fuzzy feelings about a story that is not true, then you start, you have to question, what are those warm fuzzy feelings? Is it love, maybe that you're feeling? Is it just because God's happy, you're trying to connect with him in any way that you are trying to do it?

John Dehlin [01:54:29] Because the thing is, this was very disorienting for me. I learned about the Holy Ghost. I feel the Holy Ghost in seminary or watching General Conference. Then I'm watching the Muppet Movie and I'm feeling the Holy Ghost, right?

Justin Sweeney [01:54:42] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:54:42] And then I'm like, wait a minute, the Muppet Story isn't true, but I'm feeling the Holy Ghost. That means you can feel the Holy Ghost about things that are just myth that aren't necessarily true. So could that be the Book of Mormon? Could it be that I'm feeling the Holy Ghost hearing Joseph Smith or Book of Mormon stories, when in reality, just like the Muppet Movie, those things could be false. But the teachings resonate because they feel good, not because they're true. Right?

Justin Sweeney [01:55:08] Yeah. And I'll give you an example. This might be offensive to some people, but it's like Santa Claus. Like, I can have warm fuzzy feelings about Christmas and I can teach my kids about Santa. I can talk to people who said they've seen him or heard him. I can have great family traditions around Christmas.

Justin Sweeney [01:55:27] I can talk about Santa with my kids. We can hang pictures of him in our house even. But I can't have faith in Santa. Cause he's not true. And as we get older, we realize, hey, nobody lives in the North Pole.

Justin Sweeney [01:55:41] Reindeers don't fly, and no one could go to every kid's house in one night. So we can prove with our. I don't need faith anymore because I can prove that Santa's not real. And so. But I feel like the Mormon version of that is. Well, now you've discovered that there is no one at the North Pole. Well, we're just going to move. Santa doesn't live in the North Pole. He actually lives in the Rocky Mountains. Or maybe it's the Andes. It's one of those two spots. We don't know where it is.

Justin Sweeney [01:56:08] And, well, they talked about a sleigh with reindeer, but no one actually saw it. They just saw it with their spiritual eyes. It was more like the shadow. It looks kind of like a plane. It could be a plane, maybe that's faster, that could get to everyone's house. Like, so they're trying to change what they're teaching.

Justin Sweeney [01:56:24] And if you had warm, fuzzy feelings about Santa, but you realize that historically that's impossible and not true, then you do have to question those. And that's what I started going through as I'm learning the truth. You and Mike and everybody else, you lay out the facts, the truth, in such a way that it actually makes more sense than the original version of the story. And I understand that that's not the faithful version of the story, but when you know the truth that is now admitted by the church, it's the truthful

John Dehlin [01:57:00] version of the story.

Justin Sweeney [01:57:01] It's the truthful version of the story.

John Dehlin [01:57:01] Which is why this is a truth crisis, correct?

Justin Sweeney [01:57:04] Yeah. And so that just became really, really hard. And if you can prove that Joseph Smith, you know, and we can get into maybe polygamy at some point, but the way he practiced polygamy, again, go

John Dehlin [01:57:16] ahead and talk about why it was a problem.

Justin Sweeney [01:57:17] So that was a big one for me and my wife. Again, the biggest problem is I was taught that he didn't practice polygamy by the church and that it was something with Brigham Young to help bring people here and survive in Utah, on the frozen desert in the middle of Mexico.

John Dehlin [01:57:35] So let's just say by 2022, you're how old?

Justin Sweeney [01:57:41] 40, basically 39.

John Dehlin [01:57:43] So in your 39 to 40 years leading up to 2022, had you ever heard ever in church about any of Joseph's plural wives other than Emma discussed at church in a church educational setting?

Justin Sweeney [01:57:58] Never.

John Dehlin [01:57:59] Not one time up to 2022, even though the gospel topics essays, you know, the church was forced to acknowledge it on the Internet in the essays.

Justin Sweeney [01:58:07] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:58:08] Even though you were in stake presidencies and in stake high councils and in top level leadership positions for the Mormon Church in California and in Provo for two decades. Basically, yeah. You never knew once that Joseph Smith had 30 plus wives, 14 year old wives, marriage sealed, was sealed to 22 women before he was ever sealed to Emma. You had never heard any of that?

Justin Sweeney [01:58:36] No. So I had heard that he had wives. Again, I had like seen the essays, but I had never dove into them and I definitely did not know the details.

John Dehlin [01:58:43] Yeah, that would have been by 2015. So you would have lived a lot of Mormon years before. Frankly, we forced the church to come out with the gospel topic essay on polygamy.

Justin Sweeney [01:58:53] Yeah, that's super late.

John Dehlin [01:58:55] Right.

Justin Sweeney [01:58:55] And I had been through all young men's, young women's, graduated seminary, graduated byu, took religion classes, been on a mission, served in leadership and all those years

John Dehlin [01:59:05] of Sunday school and of elders quorum.

Justin Sweeney [01:59:07] Never. Not once.

John Dehlin [01:59:08] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:59:08] Yeah, not once.

John Dehlin [01:59:09] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [01:59:10] And yeah. So when you learn about it. Okay, well, geez, how do we deal with that? It becomes difficult. Okay, well, I guess it kind of makes sense. DNC132 was revealed by Joseph Smith, so why wouldn't he practice polygamy? And you kind of start going through all these trying to justify it, but then you learn the details and you dive into the stories, the ages. Like he's not even sealing himself to the first, what, 20ish wives. They're just marriages. Like the sealing power didn't exist. He's just marrying himself. Like the justification is, oh, well, he wanted to connect families. Well, why didn't he connect his own family? Why wasn't he sealed? Why wasn't Emma the first in line? Why wasn't he, why was he lying

John Dehlin [01:59:50] and lying and hiding these marriages from Emma?

Justin Sweeney [01:59:53] Yeah, yeah. Like, so the, the sisters where he, he gets married to them and then he tells.

John Dehlin [01:59:59] Yeah, you get married to him.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:00] Yeah, Partridge Sisters, I think. And then they, he tells Emma. Okay, well you can pick them. And then she picks the Partridge sisters. So they go do another sham marriage on the back end to make Emma feel like, okay, I picked them to live with the law of Sarah. Right.

John Dehlin [02:00:14] Even though he had already married them?

Justin Sweeney [02:00:15] Even though he already married them. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:17] So that's a sham marriage is ridiculous.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:20] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:20] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:21] That's not what, that's not what a good person should do.

John Dehlin [02:00:23] No.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:25] And it started all with Fanny Alger.

John Dehlin [02:00:27] Alger, however, before The Melchizedek priesthood or any sealing power would have ever been even given.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:35] How could in 1834, 35, before DNC 132 is revealed, before any of the sealing power was ever given, before the Melchizeder priesthood was even developed, how could Joseph be engaging in plural marriage? It was an affair. Which is what Oliver Cowdery, Joseph's own co president called it at the time.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:53] Yes. And then left the church, which again I had heard like.

John Dehlin [02:00:55] No, not left the church or.

Justin Sweeney [02:00:57] Excuse me. That's right. Excommunicated.

John Dehlin [02:00:58] Yeah. For having a truth crisis. Right. Yes.

Justin Sweeney [02:01:02] I'm giving you the other narrative. He left the church. But yeah. You always heard that Oliver Cowdery left the church.

John Dehlin [02:01:09] He had a truth crisis.

Justin Sweeney [02:01:10] The follow up question is why? Oh well, let's dig deep. Oh, because Joseph Smith had an affair with a living. Oh well, yeah, I'd probably leave the church too. Or be excommunicated or whatever. Joseph Smith's death, again, that was a huge one for me. My wife went to Nauvoo. She was a BYU dancer. They went to Nauvoo. She was never taught any of this. We talked about it.

John Dehlin [02:01:33] What were you taught?

Justin Sweeney [02:01:34] So just general animus towards the members of the church. They didn't like us because we're Mormons. Kind of feeds the persecution narrative that.

John Dehlin [02:01:42] That's why Joseph was killed.

Justin Sweeney [02:01:43] Yeah. And that's why the members were driven out of. Of Nauvoo and all over the place. It's because people just don't like Mormons because we're the only true church and Satan is against the church. Right. And actually the truth is that he was put in jail for breaking the law and burning and destroying the printing

John Dehlin [02:02:02] press, which was exposing his polygamy, which he was hiding. Which was illegal.

Justin Sweeney [02:02:07] Correct.

John Dehlin [02:02:07] The polygamy was illegal. Right.

Justin Sweeney [02:02:09] I would go to jail for the same thing today if I did the same thing. Like he was breaking the law.

John Dehlin [02:02:14] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:02:14] And he had. And then covering it up and he was. Had the biggest militia in the United States and they were threatening with violence. They practiced violence and they were threatening to expose. And not just. Not just a random anti Mormon, it was William Law was his counselor in the first presidency. A good guy who Joseph tried to take his wife. That's why he left. I would have left the church too. And I probably would have printed an article about him.

John Dehlin [02:02:41] And then the worst part is the church hid all this from you and from us for a couple hundred years. Correct.

Justin Sweeney [02:02:46] It wasn't Satan's plan to try to persecute the members of the church. It was Joseph's own wrongdoing that is why he was killed. I'm not happy he was killed. That's really sad. But it was because of the way he practiced polygamy. And then the members of the church, hundreds and thousands of members, risked their lives crossing the plains so that they can keep doing it. And a lot of members will say polygamy saved the church. It allowed them to be. And I'm like, no, I don't think polygamy. I mean, polygamy saved the church in that it forced the Brighamite version of the church to move to the middle of Mexico and stay here untouched for a long time. I guess that is why it saved the church. But it would have been fine without polygamy.

John Dehlin [02:03:33] Polygamy saved the church. Like the unfulfilled prophecies of Jehovah's Witnesses prophets predicting the date of the second coming in the same way that those strengthened the Jehovah's Witness church because the members were blamed for the second coming not happening at the date the prophets prophesied, which made them feel guilt and shame, which made them more committed to the church. In other words, for all the wrong reasons. Did polygamy strengthen the church? Right.

Justin Sweeney [02:04:04] The data clearly shows there were. I think the census shows there were more men than women. A monogamous marriage would have more kids. It was about money, sex and power. That's what it was about. And it's also not the same practice in the Bible. Like Abraham did it differently that the way that the Latter day Saint prophets practice. Polygamy is not how it's practiced in the Bible.

John Dehlin [02:04:30] And God never commands it in the Bible as I understand it.

Justin Sweeney [02:04:32] That's my understanding. Not the way that it was practiced. There's nothing like it.

John Dehlin [02:04:37] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:04:37] And.

John Dehlin [02:04:38] And it's supposed to be a restoration of all things.

Justin Sweeney [02:04:40] Correct. And Joseph gives the game away in the first few verses of DNC132, where he says he's reading about the Bible and he's reading about David and the wives and concubines. And it's like, why did that cause you to go pray about, like, of all the things to like worry about and start to discover and pray and think about, that's what you chose. Like, how do I get in on this?

John Dehlin [02:05:05] Because David ended up killing Uriah, you know, his basic mistress's husband, Bathsheba's husband. That's gonna be Joseph's precipitous for.

Justin Sweeney [02:05:15] Well, Joseph sent men on missions, so that he could take their wives, which again, you can learn. You learn that too. Like, I like her. I'm going to send so and so to wherever and then groom his wife, get married to his wife on the back end. And so that was a big deal because again, polygamy is tied intrinsically to the temple and it's tied to the eternal, our afterlife, like what we're doing. If, if you're a woman in the church, like you have to sit and think about this, like, what does my eternity look like?

Justin Sweeney [02:05:47] Because what I've been taught is that I'm going to be well, my wife covenanted to obey me as I obey God. That's different now. But you are a second class person. And now they want to try and make it more equal. They come out and say that women have equal authority and the garment of the holy priesthood and working under priesthood keys gives you that authority. And I'm like, well, if that's true, then what do I need? When I became a High Councilman, I got ordained to be a high priest. Why do I need that? If I can operate under priesthood keys and I have my garments on, what do I need an office in the priesthood for?

Justin Sweeney [02:06:24] What does anyone need? Why are women still being discriminated against? So anyway, going through all of those, specifically regarding the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, that is what was most harmful for my testimony. And so now I'm left sitting here wondering, okay, now what? Now what? What do I do? What does this mean? I'm 41 now. I have four teenagers and a four year old and I've dedicated 20 years of my life, tens of thousands of dollars, like, of tithe, like, what do you do? It's so hard. All my family's in, all of her family is in. You feel like leaving is gonna just pull the rug out from your kids? You know, it's a really.

John Dehlin [02:07:15] Because you've raised them in it.

Justin Sweeney [02:07:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:17] They're fully indoctrinated, correct? Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:07:20] And it's just really, it's a really tough reality. And to the church's credit, they're trying to come, they're trying to face some of the fact, like my wife teaches a Sunday school class and I help her now because I resigned from my calling.

Resigning His Calling and the SEC Revelation

John Dehlin [02:07:33] You resigned from which calling?

Justin Sweeney [02:07:34] My High Council calling. About four or five months ago, I just.

John Dehlin [02:07:38] Did you first resign from your stake presidency calling?

Justin Sweeney [02:07:40] No, I got called straight from there to the High Council. I was going through all of this at the time. I truly believed that I could work it out. Still, like I actually told my dear friend, who I love greatly, the counselor that I worked with, I'm like, I need. The state conference was the next day, and, like, I need the night to think about this. And he didn't really understand why, but I was like, no, I can make it. I can figure this out. I'll figure this out. I'll make it work. And again, you've just been taught your whole life, you don't say no. You don't say no to callings. And so when you were called to the Stake High Council, I was definitely having concerns.

John Dehlin [02:08:24] Was this a couple years ago or.

Justin Sweeney [02:08:25] No, this was like, last year. Ten months ago. Okay, nine months ago.

John Dehlin [02:08:30] So last year, you. You were transitioned from the Stake presidency to the Stake High Council.

Justin Sweeney [02:08:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:08:35] And you were right in the middle, right in the thick of this truth crisis.

Justin Sweeney [02:08:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:08:39] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [02:08:40] Yes. And.

John Dehlin [02:08:41] And knowing you believed that you could

Justin Sweeney [02:08:43] work it all out, I'm. I. Yeah, I'm still trying to be like, I can work all this out. I'll figure it out. I'll. I'll be the. The bill reel. I'll figure it out. I'll make it work.

John Dehlin [02:08:51] It'll.

Justin Sweeney [02:08:51] Don't worry about. I'll be the one that figures out the puzzle pieces and makes all these pieces line up so that we're good. Like, I'll be the one that solves this problem. No, sadly, hasn't ended up that way. And also knowing that I would be giving up, you know, getting up and giving talks around the stake cause, Stake

John Dehlin [02:09:13] High councilmen tour all the congregations in the stake and give talks, to give talks.

Justin Sweeney [02:09:18] And thankfully, I was asked to give, and I kind of weaseled my way into giving talks, general talks about Happy Jesus Church, you know, Jesus and love and things that I truly still believe in, that I was actually complimented on, like, the great talks, which are parts

John Dehlin [02:09:33] one and two of Corbridge's talk, but not parts three and four, not parts

Justin Sweeney [02:09:36] three and four, which, as a member of the church who still attends church every Sunday, like, right now.

John Dehlin [02:09:42] Today.

Justin Sweeney [02:09:42] Today I went to church on Sunday. I'm gonna go on Sunday. Like, I'm going to church. There is a shift. The church that we grew up in is very. The church now is very different.

John Dehlin [02:09:55] Yeah. It's no more.

Justin Sweeney [02:09:57] It's shifting to happy. My wife and I call it Happy Jesus Church. And if we're going to be Happy Jesus Church, there's a lot of things that Happy Jesus Church just doesn't care about. They don't care about plates and 10% of your income and coffee and your underwear and all that kind of baptisms

John Dehlin [02:10:11] for the dead, temple endowments, two year missionary service.

Justin Sweeney [02:10:17] They don't care about that. Happy Jesus Church doesn't care about that kind of stuff. But they'll never actually make the full shift because when you do that, then why not just go to the other cool church? There's a really cool brand new church in Clovis. Awesome building. They have this sweet coffee house and a volleyball court outside. And this sweet. You would question which church has billions of dollars. Again, this church is awesome.

John Dehlin [02:10:38] You would choose volleyball and coffee.

Justin Sweeney [02:10:40] You would just go to that church because it's a sweet building. It's awesome.

John Dehlin [02:10:42] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:10:44] But yeah, it's been really tough. And I think one other thing I want to mention too, that. So the SEC thing like that was a big deal because again, tell us

John Dehlin [02:10:54] what that is for those who don't know.

Justin Sweeney [02:10:56] So I can't necessarily speak as an expert, but as an attorney, I like to dig. And when, again, when it first comes out that the church was basically siphoning off part of the tithing, the leftover tithing, I guess, and they were creating shell companies under really random fake names. Fake names. And dividing up the wealth that they had. And then they were failing to report that to the SEC properly.

John Dehlin [02:11:24] And the irs.

Justin Sweeney [02:11:26] And the irs apparently. Okay, so. And these are very common forms. It's called the 13F form. It's not hard. The guy that helps Ensign Peak operate has his own, like, hedge fund that he manages. He reported the 13F forms every single quarter, every single time for that. And he didn't. For the church. And there's a reason. And it says in the SEC order, the church, at the church's direction. And if you read the SEC order line by line, and you compare it to what the church came out and said, it is not the same. And the church basically blamed their lawyers and their accountants. And I'm a lawyer.

Justin Sweeney [02:12:01] If I give advice to somebody, if I give legal advice to somebody to break the law, I will lose my bar license. And so as a lawyer, I'm thinking, did they report these lawyers to the state bar? Did they lose their licenses? Because if they're telling, if their lawyers are telling them to break the law, they would lose their bar, their licenses to practice. Yeah, and they didn't do that. And you could bring it up as an affirmative defense too, and before in the negotiations, but they didn't do that because they clearly were hiding it. They were hiding just like they hid the rock for however many years.

John Dehlin [02:12:32] And the golden plates story and the polygamy and.

Justin Sweeney [02:12:35] And the first. Oh, I got a great story about the first vision. The first version of the first vision. Joseph Smith didn't know about that either. And so it's like they're clearly hiding it. And what they're saying in public is not what the SEC order says. It's just. It's was another example, another big crack. Like they are telling me something that is not true.

John Dehlin [02:12:55] It's financial fraud because you're hiding from the government and the members this wealth. And they admitted, thanks to David Nielsen's kind of whistleblowing, that they didn't want the members to know how wealthy the church was. Why? Why didn't they want the.

Justin Sweeney [02:13:10] Because we would stop paying tithing. Why would you pay tithing to an organization that has $200 billion of wealth?

John Dehlin [02:13:17] I mean, some would. Some would, but a lot of wouldn't.

Justin Sweeney [02:13:20] A lot wouldn't. And they know that may not have

John Dehlin [02:13:22] the people in third world countries who can't afford shoes or food. Right. They might think twice.

Justin Sweeney [02:13:28] Yes. If it was publicly known. And that's disturbing to me, that is really. If I was a bishop, if I was ever made bishop, and I took 10% of my ward's tithing and I created a shell company and I invested that money in the stock market over the course of my five years as a bishop, and I made lots of money off of it. I would be excommunicated in two seconds for doing the exact same thing. It's not okay. And there needs to be transparency. And because of the transparency, the church has started to donate a lot more money to humanitarian relief, which is a good thing. Which proves that transparency is a good thing.

John Dehlin [02:14:03] But only after they were shamed and

Justin Sweeney [02:14:05] caught by the SEC.

John Dehlin [02:14:06] Yeah. And U.S. and the Internet. And. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:14:13] So another. Another thing, quick.

John Dehlin [02:14:14] And the church was fined $5 million. Five million bucks, which is rare by the SEC and the IRS. Stuff hasn't come out yet. The church is currently under investigation, also by the IRS, so.

Justin Sweeney [02:14:26] And my understanding is the 5 million is the highest fee ever paid for this type of thing.

John Dehlin [02:14:30] Yeah. By any church.

Justin Sweeney [02:14:31] And it's because it was so egregious. It's not because the government's going after the church because they hate churches.

John Dehlin [02:14:36] It's because the government does not hate churches.

Justin Sweeney [02:14:38] It's because of 20 years of fraud, which is a harsh word to use, but that's what it was. There was an interesting experience, John, just last Sunday in church with the first vision. So another thing. Another Issue is, and I've talked to faithful members of the church who I think are very, very smart about the first vision and they do not understand.

Multiple First Vision Accounts and the Priesthood Ban

John Dehlin [02:15:03] We were all taught that what happened with Joseph smith.

Justin Sweeney [02:15:06] As a 14 year old boy, Joseph went to a grove of trees to ask what church to join. And he was, he was told, well, God and Jesus came to him as separate beings to save him from Satan who was attacking him. And they told him, don't join any church because they're all false and we're going to restore the true church through you.

John Dehlin [02:15:27] And then we find out that when he first told the story in 1832 in an account that was intentionally hidden from us, he said what?

Justin Sweeney [02:15:35] Torn out of his journal. Hidden by whoever you want to blame it on. We think we know Joseph Ealing Smith. Correct. But it was hidden, it was torn out. You can see it on the Joseph Smith Papers project that it was torn out of his journal.

John Dehlin [02:15:47] And it says what?

Justin Sweeney [02:15:48] And it says that he already knew that all the churches were false, that he was going to pray for forgiveness for his sins and that the Lord, a singular person appeared to him and forgave him of his sins, which is a beautiful thing. As a 14 year old boy. I connect more with that story than you know, the other one. But so we had a lesson and to come. Follow me lesson this last week it mentions the different versions of the vision

John Dehlin [02:16:13] in mid January 2025, correct?

Justin Sweeney [02:16:15] Yeah, in January 2025. The new era. It's not called the New Era magazine anymore.

John Dehlin [02:16:20] It's called Ensign probably.

Justin Sweeney [02:16:21] No, no, no, the youth magazine. Oh, the youth version of the Ensign. Whatever that. I think it's called Strength of Youth now. Okay, not the pamphlet. There's a whatever. The New Era magic.

John Dehlin [02:16:29] I should know, but I don't.

Justin Sweeney [02:16:30] I think it whatever it used to be called the New Era when I was growing up. It's the youth magazine Liahona. It's like the Liahona but they make one just for use for teenagers. They address all four versions of the Vision and they admit in that magazine that there's different versions and they admit that different people appeared or didn't appear. And so we, we created a Jeopardy game and with the different versions of the Vision for our Sunday school class and gave it to them and it like, yeah, just they're like what? You know, and it was open book test. So we gave them the magazine and we're using church material from this month to help teach them and none of them knew, none of them had even heard about it.

Justin Sweeney [02:17:14] And, you know, it was. But again, I'm just teaching truth. We're teaching the truth that maybe it's multiple visions, maybe it's all made up, but you have to teach the truth. That's not a bad thing.

John Dehlin [02:17:30] And the church would say, well, see, it's 20, 25, and now we're teaching the youth the truth about the first vision. What's the problem with that argument?

Justin Sweeney [02:17:37] Well, it kind of undercuts the entire purpose of the need for the restoration. And they all can't be true. That's the thing. So, again, as a lawyer who. And someone like immigration lawyers are storytellers, we get like four hours. That's our trial. Trials are four hours long. We get four hours to put our client on the stand and ask questions and tell a story. And if someone waited, if in my position, someone waited 12 years to write their story down, and then in that story, the purpose of the prayer changes who appeared to him, changes what that person said to them, changes whether or not Satan was there, changes.

Justin Sweeney [02:18:16] If all of those material facts change, no one would believe their story. Like, my client would be found not credible, and I would lose their case. And again, if you just apply the same logic to Joseph Smith's versions, unless the church comes out and says these are actually different experiences, which doesn't really help because Joseph said he's sharing the same experience, I don't see any other way around it. And there's no way you can reconcile, again, the key moment in the history of the world besides the atoning sacrifice of the Savior. That is the key moment. I mean, I was told on my mission, you have to get the words of Joseph exactly right.

Justin Sweeney [02:18:55] And if you can't say it right in Spanish, your companion gets to say that part. We're moving away from the memorized discussions, but you've got to get those right, those words right. And so if he just went to go pray about forgiveness for his sins, how is that.

Justin Sweeney [02:19:11] How does the LDS Church grow from that? Like, how is that an impetus to start a whole new church? And how can you trust somebody that is changing their story in very material ways over the course of several years as his own theology, which is something that you and Mike did beautifully, you show that his own theology of the Godhead is changing while his versions of the first vision are changing, while they're

John Dehlin [02:19:36] changing the Book of Mormon, updating it to correspond with his new versions of the first vision story and his new

Justin Sweeney [02:19:44] theology, the Mother of the Son of God versus the Mother of God. Right. That whole Thing.

John Dehlin [02:19:48] So they're changing all of it and the Doctrine and Covenants and they're getting rid of the lectures on faith from the Pearl of Great Price. All that to coincide with Joseph's changing theology. Yes. Yeah, it's a problem.

Justin Sweeney [02:20:04] It is a problem.

John Dehlin [02:20:05] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:20:06] And I don't see a quote unquote faithful way to connect these dots. It just, you can't line it all. You cannot. I have a hard time believing you can learn all the truth and still be like, I'm totally on board with this. So at that point I was like, I had already been feeling as a faithful, believing member. I had been feeling stressed and overwhelmed. And I'm like, I can't. I can't do this to this degree anymore. So I sent my stake presidency an email and I just said, hey, I'm so sorry. I love you guys. I'm not asking, I'm telling you. I'm resigning.

John Dehlin [02:20:42] That was four months ago. Yeah, so that was like September of

Justin Sweeney [02:20:47] October, right before October of conference, a few weeks before their state conference. So they give them time to call somebody, somebody, and it wouldn't look super awkward, a natural way to just call somebody else.

John Dehlin [02:20:57] Did they try and save you? Did they try and ask you what's wrong?

Justin Sweeney [02:21:01] They've been very, very respectful. I asked for some space and then I'll reach out to them. And they've been the only text that he sent me was, hey, Justin, love you. I'm here for you when you're ready. And super loving. I mean, they're amazing men. Most members of the church are the best people in the world, but I also feel like, what am I going to go do? Am I going to sit down and watch LDS discussions with my stake president? Am I going to sit down with my family? I feel in some ways sharing my story is going to cause the exact same thing.

Justin Sweeney [02:21:32] Not that I view it as bad necessarily now, but I don't wish this upon anyone. It sucks. And so in some ways you feel like sharing what's going on and sharing your story. You're perpetuating the very thing that has happened to you. And so it becomes really tricky.

Justin Sweeney [02:21:51] Thankfully, I've had my wife with me the whole time. We've talked hundreds. We read. We just got done with Second Class Saints. We read that book together.

John Dehlin [02:22:02] How'd you like that?

Justin Sweeney [02:22:03] Fantastic book. Not just because of the story, like getting emotional at the end. I think of chapter seven, when they finally lifted the band, but when you can go back the way that he did, through the historical documents and he is using faithful historical documents and journals. And you can see how the sausage gets made that maybe they just like with The LGBTQ Prop 8 issue, maybe they.

Justin Sweeney [02:22:36] If you're a loving God, how in the world do you deny people of African descent with dark skin the priesthood and temple blessings? It is not a priesthood ban. It is priesthood and temple Blessings for whatever 150 years that the church was restored. And that just seems for people that talk to Jesus, like Elder Scott alluded to, how do you get that wrong for so long? And that's what I actually loved most about that book is it shows all of the meetings, all of this. It's like it's a corporate boardroom with. Or it's like going to Congress and trying to get a law passed. You're trying to get the right people in the room at the right time. The room where it happened. Like, I mean, you're trying to, you're

John Dehlin [02:23:18] trying to get people excluded who you think you're going to vote the wrong way.

Justin Sweeney [02:23:21] Yeah, let's send this guy to wherever, South America, wherever he was, so we can get the votes we need.

John Dehlin [02:23:25] It's like to lift the priesthood bed.

Justin Sweeney [02:23:28] I thought Jesus was in the room.

John Dehlin [02:23:30] Yeah, yeah. If you haven't, if you don't know about it by Matt Harris's book Second Class Saints and we did a 17 part series with Matt Harris on that series. I would say it rivals LDS discussions in terms of one of the most important things we've ever done.

Justin Sweeney [02:23:47] It's really good. It's really, really, really good. And a really important part of our history as a people that everyone should learn and know. But yeah, it does. It shows, it shows that it's more like a corporate board meeting. And then, yes, they finally change. And that's wonderful. But then you have to ask a follow up question which is, well, if you're talking to Jesus, why would he want so many of his people to not have those blessings? That does not make sense. And so that becomes tricky. We're reading now we're reading Todd Compton's book called In Sacred Loneliness. We're reading that right now.

John Dehlin [02:24:23] You and your wife. Not you.

Justin Sweeney [02:24:24] Me and my wife. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:25] Which is basically stories of each of Joseph Smith's plural wives.

Justin Sweeney [02:24:30] Yes, yes. And it's, it is, we're about 100 pages in. And it's, it's not the happy fun story that is sometimes is portrayed as. And again, of all the times, why would an angel with a flaming sword come for that reason? I just have a really, really hard time with that.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:24:50] So.

John Dehlin [02:24:52] So you asked to be released from the Stake High Council four months ago. You asked for space. So you and your wife and your kids have just been continuing to learn about Mormon Church history, continue on your truth exploration crisis, but remaining active and faithful.

Justin Sweeney [02:25:13] Yes, because we see there's value in the community. Our kids have lots of friends that are members, and we may get to a point where we decide something different, but there's goodness there. There is goodness there. But I'm also not going to sit back and let. We're going to talk the truth at our house.

Justin Sweeney [02:25:37] And if that means that it's uncomfortable or we address issues that, that aren't addressed in church, that's what we're going to do. And the decisions that my kids make from here on out are going to be based on truth. They're going to know what's going to happen in the temple if they decide to go. They're going to know how Joseph Smith translated the plates and the different versions of his vision. When they go to Guatemala or Argentina to teach on their mission, they're going to know the truth and they're going to make an informed decision rather than be taught one version and then find out when they're 40 years old. Well, most of the stuff you were taught is actually not true because it sucks.

John Dehlin [02:26:18] So a couple questions. First of all, why not? Like, I remember when I was in Logan learning all this stuff, I met this man who I found as an accountant who's like, any of us remember? And he's like, oh, yeah, I don't believe. I know it's all not true, but I don't tell my wife. I just serve in my ward and I don't tell my kids, and I just pretend that it's all true. Just because I want my kids to be raised in the church. I don't want to stress my wife out. I enjoy church. And so I'll just keep it all to myself and fake it because, you know, that's. That's the best for everyone involved. Why not do that?

Justin Sweeney [02:27:06] That's a great question. I think the main reason is because I want to teach my kids the truth. I do not want them to find out when they're 40 years old what the truth is. And again, wherever that leads us, I also am comfortable with the idea that there's goodness outside of the church. So I'm not necessarily scared.

Justin Sweeney [02:27:24] I do not believe my whole life is going to fall apart and the whole world's going to come crashing down. One of the benefits of living in California, even though there's a strong population of members, there's also a lot of amazing families and kids that are not Mormon, that live great lives, that do great things, that go on mission trips or go to college and go on study abroad and learn languages and play sports and have great families and support each other as husband and wife. And you realize, like, we're not the only ones. This is not a uniquely Mormon thing. You can be a great, wonderful person and not be Mormon. So I'm not scared of that. When you feel like your eternal salvation is tied to it. Yes, it's terrifying.

John Dehlin [02:28:08] Or when it's the only way.

Justin Sweeney [02:28:09] Correct.

John Dehlin [02:28:10] Yeah. And these dudes have the bat phone to Jesus to do what they say.

Justin Sweeney [02:28:13] Correct. But once you get outside that paradigm, it's like, okay, there's goodness here. We could go to the cool, awesome, fun church with the coffee house and the volleyball courts and stuff. That would be fun too. And if we choose to do that, great. But I can't lie to my children. I cannot allow them to be taught something that's not true. And I can't allow them. This is what we are struggling with now. Make huge life decisions, going on missions, where to go to college, where to who to marry. These are huge decisions that they're going to be making in the next few years. And I do not want them to make those decisions based on half of the evidence or half of the truth. They deserve to have all of it.

John Dehlin [02:29:00] Yeah, that's valid. I'll also say, to answer my own question, it's super unhealthy to live a lie, to be hiding really important things from the person you love the most, your spouse, from your kids. I've just seen it wreak havoc on people's mental health.

Justin Sweeney [02:29:19] Yeah. And for the first few months, while I was going through this all alone, not scared to talk to Maren about it, but nervous about her reaction. Yeah, it is. It's. It's terrifying. And then. But being able to go through this as a family is a little bit better. And yeah, I just don't think. You can't live a lie. You can't live. You can do it for a few months, but you can't do it. It's not a long term solution.

Navigating Family, Fear, and Life After Belief

John Dehlin [02:29:48] Okay, so my next question is. And you've kind of already answered this, but I just want to ask you directly. So, yeah, don't, you know, tell your wife, tell your kids, make your own, you know, let the Stake presidency know, let your bishop know. But why? Come on, Mormon Stories podcast and like tell the world. Because then you potentially, let's say some missionary stumbles on this or some, you know, Stake Presidency member, or some bishop, or some Elders Quorum president, or some Relief Society president or whoever. They stumble on this. And now you're one of the reasons why they're learning about the church, lying about its history and hiding its history and all the problems with the church's history. Now you're sort of complicit in triggering a potential truth crisis for them.

Justin Sweeney [02:30:43] Yeah, great question. Can I read a few quotes, please? All right. Our whole this is President Hinckley, a prophet of God in General Conference. Our whole truth rests on the validity of that first vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud. If it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work on the heavens.

Justin Sweeney [02:31:07] Jeffrey R. Holland, Apostle of Christ, said everything in the church, everything rises or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and by implication the prophet Joseph Smith's account of how it came forth. It sounds like a sudden death proposition to me. Either the Book of Mormon is what the prophet Joseph said it is, or this church and its founder are false, fraudulent and a deception from the first instance onward. President Joseph Fielding Smith, Prophet of God, said Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall. In the story of Joseph Smith, he was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds the world has ever seen.

Justin Sweeney [02:31:45] There is no middle ground. If Joseph was a deceiver who willfully attempted to mislead people, then he should be exposed, his claims should be refuted and his doctrine shown false. That's the church laying down the binary. So we're just talking about truth. And if that happens to lead someone in or out of the church, then that's not a me problem or a you problem or a truth problem. It's a church problem. It's because the church has not been truthful about their own story.

Justin Sweeney [02:32:16] And I don't see harm in speaking truth, even if it leads someone out of the church. My goal is not to. By the way, you asked me to state my intention. My intention in coming on here is not to lead anyone out of the church. Again, I've said this a few times. I think there's value there.

Justin Sweeney [02:32:32] There's good people in the church. My intention is not to come on here and lead people out of the church. My intention. One of the main reasons why I wanted to come on John is because when you're going through all of this, it's disorienting and frustrating. You're angry and sad and lonely. And your podcast is one of the only places I could go where you're like, wow, there are actually other people that have these questions and have these concerns. And I'm not alone, because I think a lot of people do this alone. I'm thankful that I have my wife who would listen to me and understand me and talk to me, but I know a lot of people don't, and I can't even imagine doing that.

Justin Sweeney [02:33:11] And so I'm just trying to also throw, you know, throw them a bone and have. Allow them to see, like, they're not alone. There's other people that are struggling with these exact same things. And we know the church listens to this. They need to know the types of people that are coming across. And I don't say that. Sorry, that came across probably really conceited.

Justin Sweeney [02:33:35] They need to know that no member of the church is safe from discovering the truth. If anyone knew, anyone that knows me knows, like, all in 100%, like leader in local leader. They need to know that if the truth can harm someone like me because of the decisions that I've made in my life, they need to come up, come confront that, and they need to be more truthful and doing little parts of their lesson where they kind of introduce the four versions of the first vision. That's something.

Justin Sweeney [02:34:12] That is something. But they need to change and start teaching the whole truth. And if that means people leave, then they need to face the. They need to just face the truth or just become happy Jesus Church. And then, you know, I think there are a lot of members would be happier in that version of the church, by the way.

John Dehlin [02:34:27] But there's also that quote that begins the CES letter. If we have the truth, we cannot be harmed. If we have not the truth, we should be harmed. That was a Mormon apostle who said that as well, right?

Justin Sweeney [02:34:42] J. Reuben Clark. And I actually didn't even read this ELS letter till, like, way late in the process. My wife and I read the letter to my wife after we did the deep dive on some of the LDS discussions things. But I don't know how you read the truth and align that with the church's current positions on their truth claims.

John Dehlin [02:35:04] What if someone says, well, you listen to Mormon Stories podcast and that's why you lost your faith. You went to a polluted, dirty source for the truth. And nowadays the church leaders will literally say, be careful where you go don't go to the Internet to learn this stuff. Go to faithful church scholars or teachers to learn about the Church's history. What if you were blamed for just seeking the wrong source?

Justin Sweeney [02:35:31] Well, so again, most of this stuff is on the church's website, so I'm not trying to take away what you and Mike have done. It's been a great synthesis, but a lot of it can be found on the church's website. It's not like, groundbreaking, undiscoverable stuff. And the fact that you put it together in a way that's easy to understand and easy to digest, that, again, it's truth, so what's the difference? And Elder Rendland gave a talk a few years ago, and he likened someone having a faith crisis to, like, a whack, a mole.

Justin Sweeney [02:36:08] And he claims in his story, as he's giving this talk, that he resolved this person's alleged issues with the Church one by one. But he never mentioned it. He never mentions what those issues were and how he resolved them, knowing that there's tons of people like me sitting in the crowd having these same problems. And you're an apostle of the Lord, why not tell us what those issues are and then explain how you resolve them to this person?

Justin Sweeney [02:36:32] And no matter where you go for truth, John, the truth is the truth is the truth. Whether I get it from you or Mike or the church or the gospel topics essays or wherever, the truth doesn't change from the source. And I think us as humans are smart enough to figure out and clear through the BS and find the truth and there's no harm in coming.

Justin Sweeney [02:37:00] I mean, I get that people will say that 100% people will say that you've dove into anti Mormon literature. Of course your faith is shaken. And I'm like, no, I've dived into the truth. That's why my faith is shaken. Because I can only.

John Dehlin [02:37:15] Have you discovered truthful Mormon history?

Justin Sweeney [02:37:17] Correct. I can only have faith in something that's true. And if the thing that I had faith in, I find out isn't true. That's why the church itself is creating the faith crisis by not telling the truth. And then when people find the truth and they explicitly. That's what a. I don't want to use that word. The church shouldn't be telling people they shouldn't be scared of the truth. I was going to say that's what a cult does, but I don't like that word.

John Dehlin [02:37:44] But. But

Justin Sweeney [02:37:47] don't look at Google. Don't look at other resources. We should. If we had the truth. It should all line up. We should be discovering cities in Guatemala with Jerusalem. Yeah, we should be. Are we going to find all of it? No. But when we go, when the church, when the church itself sends archaeologists to the hill, Cumorah, because hundreds of thousands of people died and they had steel armors and steel bows and steel arrows and everything else, they should find something. They should find something. There's nothing there the DNA doesn't like. We should find little bits and pieces that match that. And we would be plastering it all over the church's website.

Justin Sweeney [02:38:21] That's what we'd be talking about. Every general conference. There's a reason, there's a reason. They don't want you to dive into these questions and they want to limit it to 4. Because if you start asking follow up questions, there's really only one way you can go. And I know why they don't want you to go down that road. Because they think that your eternal salvation is tied to that.

John Dehlin [02:38:41] So recently Elder Holland, and this is not new, but he gives the church news, shared a five minute video of Elder Holland doing a highly polished marketing video where he basically makes the analogy, stay in the boat. He basically says, who of us, if we're in a nice cruise liner when a big thunderstorm comes, would jump out of the cruise liner and face the storms? Not in a boat. You know, similarly, life is hard right now. Why would you ever leave the church when life is so hard? Stay in the boat, stay in the church. What would you say as a response to that?

Justin Sweeney [02:39:21] My life is great, so I actually am loving life, right? Loving life right now. Better than even before. But, but I think that's like a false dichotomy. The church is pretending they're the only lifeboat and that you can't be happy or you'll be destroyed or drowned or whatever if you leave the boat. I don't think those are the only two decisions that members of the church can actually make. And it's a fear tactic.

Justin Sweeney [02:39:51] It's why it took me so long to even look. Why look? Why do I need to look? I don't need to even question whether this is a boat or not or whether it's sinking. Like people on the Titanic probably said the same thing. Ah, it was just a little bump, but the boat was filling with water and gonna sink in a few hours. And you know, it's not. I don't want the church's boat to sink, but the idea that you cannot be happy or successful or raise good kids Outside the church is just wrong. And I have thousands of evidence. I mean, even at my kids own high school, like it does happen, right?

Justin Sweeney [02:40:28] It's not impossible. And I'm not having such a hard life. The challenges and trials I have in my life will come and go because in and out of the church, like every marriage, has problems. I'm definitely not one to pretend like once I leave the church, my life's going to be perfect and happy. Everybody has trials and problems and issues and that'll come whether you're in or out of the church.

Justin Sweeney [02:40:51] And again, I still go to church. I'm still trying to figure out what this all means because it is so new and raw. Do I believe all the truth claims of the church? No, I don't. So now we're trying to figure out what that means for us and our kids and how we navigate that as a family that still likes to believe in God and moral code and likes the sort of structure and community. But what do you do with the truth claims? That's a hard, hard thing.

John Dehlin [02:41:16] So the 1 and 2, the God and Jesus part, you're still relatively okay with?

Justin Sweeney [02:41:20] Sure, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:21] Okay. And even the church attendance, just not that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Book of Mormon is scripture.

Justin Sweeney [02:41:29] The Book of Mormon is definitely not a historical document. And I do not think Joseph Smith, per his own recollection of the first vision, did not happen the way he said it did. And so. And I do not believe that he restored God's one only true church on the face of the whole earth. I don't think that that's true because. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:53] Can the Book of Mormon be scripture even if it's not a historical document for you?

Justin Sweeney [02:41:58] I find value in it. There's lots of parts that I like. King Benjamin, one of my heroes. I love parts of the Book of Mormon. There can be value. There's some really bad stuff in it. There's some really racist stuff in it about dark skin and all that stuff, but there's some really good stuff in it too. But the problem is that Joseph didn't just say, hey, I revealed this new scripture. He said he always has to tie it to history and geography. And when you tie it to the Native Americans in upstate New York, then you've got problems. And if it's not what he said it was and he's the original prophet, then God clearly is not revealing his truth through him.

John Dehlin [02:42:44] There are a lot of Jews and Christians and probably Muslims that don't believe their scriptures are historical, but still find spiritual Value in them and in that sense, call them scripture. So you're okay doing that with the Book of Mormon?

Justin Sweeney [02:42:56] Yeah, that's where I think I am right now. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:59] Okay, what about the argument in the other direction, which is like, wait a minute. If Joseph Smith made this up, lied to people, lied about his first vision, lied about the Book of Mormon and the translation, lied to his wife about polygamy, plagiarized the temple ceremony, then he's a fraud, which means the Book of Mormon's a fraud, which means the church is a fraud, which means not only should you run away from it with your wife and kids, but tell everybody else they're in a fraud. Why not go that direction?

Justin Sweeney [02:43:35] Because it's traumatic. Again, this sucks.

John Dehlin [02:43:38] For who? For you or for other people? Or both?

Justin Sweeney [02:43:41] For both. Like, again, my goal is not to take anyone out of the church. I've seen. Yeah. People that have come on here and be like, yep, I just walked out and left. And I'm like, I don't know how you did that. And my job's not tied to it. Like, but we have a lot of family in it. But I. I find that hard to do just to pack up and just leave. I think that would just. I think for us, for my family, it would be traumatic to be like, all right, we're out, we're done.

John Dehlin [02:44:09] So, yeah, Margi and I stayed 13 years after we lost our faith, and we only left because they excommunicated me. Well, like, we.

Justin Sweeney [02:44:16] So I got 12. 12 more years left, I guess.

John Dehlin [02:44:20] Man, you're not even a full year, are you?

Justin Sweeney [02:44:22] No.

John Dehlin [02:44:22] No. Okay, so why aren't you terrified at either being excommunicated for coming on Mormon Stories podcast and speaking openly, or from being marginalized or mistreated by family, friends, and warden stake members for speaking openly on Mormon Stories podcast?

Justin Sweeney [02:44:53] I'm not afraid because, again, I'm not afraid of the truth. And I don't really care, I guess that might seem. But also, the people that know me and love me, they'll know me and love me no matter what my opinion is. And so the other people. I don't really care. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to come on, too, just so I can get the record straight. Like, I don't want to have 5 hour long conversations with every member I run into. If they want to know my story and my truth, here it is. And it's now recorded and documented. And I don't. I'm not worried about excommunication, not with not with someone I served with for five years. And again, what are they going to excommunicate me for? I've come on and literally recited things that are on the church's website.

John Dehlin [02:45:32] You think that's going to protect you? You don't think people have been excommunicated for just telling the truth?

Justin Sweeney [02:45:40] Okay, well, whatever. So if they wanted to do that to me, that's evidence that it's just not. That's one more piece of evidence that it's just not true. And I don't think that my eternal salvation is tied to the church

John Dehlin [02:45:56] because, I mean, in a way, you're saying two things that are kind of contradictory because you're on the one hand saying, I don't want to leave it. It'll be hard to leave it. What about friends and family and my kids and my wife and the community? So, like, I value staying in it. But then you're also saying, yeah, but if they don't like me coming on the podcast, they can excommunicate me and I'll be fine. But then that contradicts the first point, right?

Justin Sweeney [02:46:20] Yeah, but I want. I hope I can make that decision, I guess, is what I'm saying. Whether it's a month from now, a year from now, 12 years from now, whenever. I hope me and my family are allowed to make that decision rather than being forced.

John Dehlin [02:46:33] Yeah, but you feel like, I guess you probably feel security in the closeness of your relationship with your bishop and stake president, that you feel relatively safe.

Justin Sweeney [02:46:43] Yeah. Yeah. And I would hope. I would hope nobody that comes on this podcast is excommunicated. I know that's not true, but that seems silly.

John Dehlin [02:46:53] Only a few dozen have been excommunicated.

Justin Sweeney [02:46:58] Again, why? Again, for what? Anyway, for what reason? For speaking the truth. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:47:04] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:47:04] So. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:47:05] Yeah, If.

Justin Sweeney [02:47:06] If we have the truth, we shouldn't be afraid of it.

John Dehlin [02:47:10] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Justin Sweeney [02:47:12] And I know it's a contradictory position to hold. Like, I'm not saying it makes sense. It doesn't. But again, it's just. It's new and raw, and we're. We're still trying to sit with this and figure out what it all means, and we honestly don't have the answers yet. And that's okay.

John Dehlin [02:47:25] Yeah. Have you tried to apply any of this deconstruction to the Bible or Jesus? Not that you should. Not that anyone should. I'm curious if any of those dominoes have even been explored yet.

Justin Sweeney [02:47:38] No. Obviously. Yes, the thought has come. Well, if I do the same thing. Yeah. I've had Those thoughts. But, no, I have not done that yet.

John Dehlin [02:47:46] Yeah. Okay. Is it hard to go to church as a non believer?

Justin Sweeney [02:47:51] Yes, extremely. Way harder than I thought. Way harder than I thought.

John Dehlin [02:47:57] Why?

Justin Sweeney [02:48:00] I just ask myself why a lot. Like, just what? No. You know, you see little kids get up and say things, and you're just like, oh, you don't know. You don't. What you're saying is not true. And I know that sounds really like, I'm judging. I'm not judging everybody, but it's just hard. It's hard to. And stepping down from a position of leadership and getting released and having they publicly announce your release, and everyone's kind of like, well, that's weird, you know, and, yeah, it's. But I go because for now, it's where my kids want to go. They want to be there, and so we're going to support them, and I don't want them to go alone. And so that's what we're doing.

John Dehlin [02:48:39] Have you been able to find ward members or stake members or even leaders that you actually know, don't believe that are kind of hiding it?

Justin Sweeney [02:48:49] No. Oh, no, I have.

John Dehlin [02:48:51] You're about to.

Justin Sweeney [02:48:52] Oh, I know. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. So there is one person that I believe frequently watches or listens to your podcast, and that person does not hold a leadership position, but I'm 99% sure that that person will reach out to me. But I am sure I'll get texts or calls or whatever, and I'm happy to talk. But how sad is that that we have to, like, organize in this little, like, hidden community of random truth seekers? Like, that's so weird to me.

John Dehlin [02:49:24] But it'll be nice to have allies or, you know.

Justin Sweeney [02:49:27] Yeah, that's true. That's true. Because most. No one knows. Again, nobody knows that I'm going through this.

John Dehlin [02:49:34] They're about to. Yeah. So people sometimes are like. Like, my parents won't find out if I come on Mormon stories. Right.

Justin Sweeney [02:49:41] Yeah. Me and my wife have had this con. I'm like, my family's gonna know in a week or two. I expect texts in a week or two. Like, it's Mesa. There's too many people. Someone knows somebody who's gonna see this and send it to my mom, I. And my family and their. And my wife's family and whatever. It'd be a great time to have a discussion. Let's talk about this. You know, Like, I'm not afraid of the conversation.

John Dehlin [02:50:02] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:04] Some would say, well, then why not have it with your Family only or why. Yeah, why? Come on it. But for me, you're the only one that I know. It's hard to have that conversation. You feel like you'll be leading people out of the church, and so it's a way to protect them, honestly.

John Dehlin [02:50:20] Well, the truth is they don't want to have that conversation.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:23] I agree.

John Dehlin [02:50:23] Believing Mormons don't want to have this conversation.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:26] Correct. I agree with that.

John Dehlin [02:50:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:28] They'll just quickly dismiss it. Oh, it's okay. Polygamy is fine. Like, don't stop now. Stay in the boat.

John Dehlin [02:50:33] What source? Oh, Mormon stories. Oh, yeah. CES letter O. Well, that's what happened. Yeah. Yeah. And what's kept you from running to coffee, Happy Jesus, volleyball, church, and just going full. Just normal, traditional Christian.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:49] I don't know. Like, that could happen. It's on the table.

John Dehlin [02:50:52] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [02:50:53] Yeah, we have a lot of good. So my kids have followed my obsession with basketball, and there's a lot of good friends and buddies that go to that church. We know a lot of the people, some of the youth pastors that go there. Great people.

John Dehlin [02:51:05] What if your kids end up on Mormon missions or getting married in the temple and you can't even go to your own kids weddings because you raised them Mormon, but then you're not able to get your temple recommend because you don't believe anymore, so you're sitting outside the temple in your own children's Mormon temple weddings.

Justin Sweeney [02:51:24] Thankfully, the church allows them to get married civilly first now and not wait the year.

John Dehlin [02:51:27] If they choose that.

Justin Sweeney [02:51:28] If they choose that.

John Dehlin [02:51:29] Yeah. So, yeah, most Mormons don't. Don't choose that, by the way.

Justin Sweeney [02:51:32] Yeah, that's true. That is true. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm okay with it. I really might. So my. My grandma, my dad's mom is not a member, and she came to all my weddings with her. With her spouse.

John Dehlin [02:51:44] You're okay sitting outside the temple when your kids get married? I don't. I wonder if, you know, it's because.

Justin Sweeney [02:51:50] Because. Because what's going on is like.

John Dehlin [02:51:53] It's make believe.

Justin Sweeney [02:51:54] Yes. It's like, oh, I'm. When I go to Disneyland, I get motion sickness. So I don't go on the rides. I don't. I still go to Disneyland. I don't just not go. I'm still there, you know? So, like, okay, whatever. If that's what you. If they're making the decision, that's the thing. If they're making the decision, informed. As long as they know and as long as the spouse knows. My Dad's this crazy liberal, anti Mormon, non believer, whatever.

John Dehlin [02:52:18] Like you're not anti Mormon. Just.

Justin Sweeney [02:52:19] I am not anti Mormon. I'm not. Yeah, yeah. 100% not.

John Dehlin [02:52:23] I just want to make sure that's

Justin Sweeney [02:52:24] what someone might say.

John Dehlin [02:52:25] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:52:25] As long as everyone's making an informed decision, I have zero. I really don't have a problem with it.

John Dehlin [02:52:30] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:52:31] I will hope that they would do some sort of civil ceremony beforehand, but yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. And if they choose to serve missions again, I'm totally fine with that. If they make an informed decision about going to the temple and what a mission is going to be like and what they're going to be asked to teach and how that differs from what actually. The truth and how they're gonna deal with that for two years in Guatemala in the jungle, like. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:57] Where you could be killed. Where nine Mormon missionaries have been killed this year, you know. Do you wanna say where your wife is with the church or do you not wanna talk about that?

Justin Sweeney [02:53:07] I'll leave that to her. We're mostly on the same page, so

John Dehlin [02:53:09] she'll be coming on Mormon stories. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Justin Sweeney [02:53:14] I'll leave that. Maybe a follow up in a couple years or so. I don't know. It's her. Her story. Her story to tell.

John Dehlin [02:53:19] Yeah. All right. Well, this is so fresh. Like you can't even. There's this whole part of the interview of the template where it's like reconstruction. You haven't even got to the point where you can really do reconstruction because you haven't even really left. So I guess any advice to those staying in the church who don't believe. Oh, man, you haven't been doing it very long, by the way.

Justin Sweeney [02:53:43] I don't know how people do this without a spouse to hold their hand and try doing it.

John Dehlin [02:53:47] Thirteen years.

Justin Sweeney [02:53:48] I, I don't. I don't know what I would do without Marin. Like. Yeah. And I. And anyway, in some ways I wish he was here, but. Yeah, with five kids it gets. Gets tricky to come across the state. But anyway, yeah, I don't, I don't have any advice because I'm again, I'm brand new at this, but.

John Dehlin [02:54:05] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:54:06] Yeah.

Final Reflections and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [02:54:08] All right, well, any final words of wisdom or any final testimonies, secular or spiritual, that you want to share to end this interview? I think we're going to get under three hours, which is always a land speed record in Mormon stories. Land.

Justin Sweeney [02:54:22] Nice. No, nothing. Just that I. So to any faithful family and friends that are still listening. I still love you. This doesn't change anything. I know you think it might, but it doesn't. And I just want the church to be a better place. And I have a hard time because I grew up in the church and I dedicated so much time and money and effort to it. I just want it to be better. And I don't see any harm in getting the church to be at a better place with its truth and figure out how to deal with that and just become. If they need to become the happy Jesus church, that's great. That's what they should be and be better. But I thank you, John, for the opportunity. I really do appreciate it.

John Dehlin [02:55:10] My pleasure. And thank you, Justin Sweeney, for being able to tell us about your truth crisis. Maybe it's not even a truth crisis. Maybe it's like a truth discovery. Right.

Justin Sweeney [02:55:21] Awakening.

John Dehlin [02:55:22] Truth awakening. Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:55:24] It's a crisis only in through the paradigm of the church.

John Dehlin [02:55:27] Like, do you feel, let's end here. Do you feel happier and healthier to have discovered all this, or do you feel dark and sad and less hopeful about the future now?

Justin Sweeney [02:55:38] Oh, initially, it's dark. It's a dark place to be in because, again, I've used the word. It sucks. It does. It sucks. Now I am happier than I've ever been.

John Dehlin [02:55:49] How can that be when your whole worldview, religious, spiritual worldview, falls apart? Because.

Justin Sweeney [02:55:56] Because I'm living an authentic life with truth and I'm being who I am to myself. And I also get Sundays with my family. Like, that alone is awesome. It has been a paradigm shift. But I can truly say that I am happier with my family. And again, the church takes so much from you. When you can give that back to the people you love the most, it's actually wonderful. And I think the kids and family love it, too.

John Dehlin [02:56:32] So you're saving some time and maybe a little bit of money.

Justin Sweeney [02:56:38] Yep. Sadly, my business didn't crash down last year either from leaving the church and not paying tithing.

John Dehlin [02:56:44] Well, you didn't leave.

Justin Sweeney [02:56:46] Well, sorry. Mentally checked out. I don't know. But you know. Yeah, like, no.

John Dehlin [02:56:52] I know tons of people that got super rich after they left the church.

Justin Sweeney [02:56:55] That's not my. That's not my goal either.

John Dehlin [02:56:56] No, of course.

Justin Sweeney [02:56:57] But, yeah, again, jumping out of the boat. Well, I'm halfway out of the boat, I guess. I don't know what you want to say. And my life's okay, and I'm fine, and I'm gonna be fine, and hard things are gonna happen. And when they do happen, it's not because I don't believe in the church anymore. It's because hard things happen in life. My dad died. He believed in the church.

John Dehlin [02:57:16] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [02:57:17] It didn't. Like hard things happen to all of us.

John Dehlin [02:57:20] And good things.

Justin Sweeney [02:57:21] And good things.

John Dehlin [02:57:22] Yeah. All right, well, Justin Sweeney, thanks for coming on Mormon Stories.

Outro and Support for Mormon Stories

Justin Sweeney [02:57:26] Thank you so much. It was awesome.

John Dehlin [02:57:28] Yeah. Thank you. And while you're at it, just really quickly, please subscribe to this channel on YouTube if you're not already a subscriber. We also really appreciate if you'd subscribe on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, wherever you get your Mormon Stories content. We want to thank all of the donors that pay our bills to make Mormon Stories possible. Thank you for being a monthly donor. If you're not a monthly donor, we lose donors, at least 10 to 20 donors a month who cancel their recurring donations. If we don't replace those donations, then we have to start cutting back on what we offer. So we would like to invite you, if you value this content and want to see it continue, please go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button.

John Dehlin [02:58:18] Become a monthly Donor. We also really want to encourage any of you, especially those of you who are brand new to your faith crisis. We love to interview people who in this month or this quarter or this year are going through it. Because for the people going through it now, sometimes the people going through it now are the most useful to hear from. So we want. And if you've lost your faith 80 years ago, or if you've got a great, cool Mormon story to tell, even if you're still in the church, we want to hear from believers. We want to hear from faithful people. We want to hear from Republicans.

John Dehlin [02:58:53] We want to hear from conservatives. Like, we want to hear good stories, no matter who. There's a new form that you fill out. Go to MormonStories.org, click on the Apply link or button and you can apply to become interviewed on Mormon Stories. We would love to interview you. We're always reviewing new applications. We can't interview everyone who applies, but if you've got a great story to tell, please apply. And come on Mormon Stories podcast. I want to thank Brooklyn and Julia and Maven and Gerardo and Margi and Nemo and everyone in the Mormon Stories crew and our board of directors.

John Dehlin [02:59:33] Super grateful for everyone who makes this possible, but mostly the listeners and the donors. Listeners can also comment on these episodes and share them with other people. That's also a great way you can help the cause. So anyway, again Justin Sweeney, thanks so much for coming here all the way from California.

Justin Sweeney [02:59:54] You're so welcome.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] It'd be cool to do a different episode on immigration. Not to get political, not to tell anyone what they should believe or think politically. But I think doing an episode on immigration from sort of a Mormon lens with an immigration attorney, that could be really interesting. Would you be interested in maybe doing that?

Justin Sweeney [03:00:16] Sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:00:17] Okay. So we'll just plan that for a different episode, but I think I'd like to maybe do that, especially right now. Like Gerardo was telling me, like, they're setting up checkpoints in West Valley, Utah, in, like, different parts of Utah. Like, ICE officers are, like, literally asking. They're profiling people, looking for brown people, pulling them over, asking them for their documentation, and then throwing them in paddy wagons to fly them to freaking Panama or Guatemala, like, right now, in late January 2025.

Justin Sweeney [03:00:53] I talked to someone yesterday who had it happen. We had about.

John Dehlin [03:00:55] In California or Utah.

Justin Sweeney [03:00:56] California.

John Dehlin [03:00:57] Yeah.

Justin Sweeney [03:00:58] Another one of our clients in a small little farming community, they came to their school. They're waiting for their parents to come pick up their kids from school anyway.

John Dehlin [03:01:07] So the kids won't have parents because the parents get shipped off to. Yeah. So real politics aside. Politics aside, as a Mormon, we would love to have that episode where we just talk about. Tell us your experiences with immigrants, with immigration, what's messed up and how. What's your perspective on how we should think about all this?

Justin Sweeney [03:01:30] I would love to.

John Dehlin [03:01:31] And I didn't even know a political party you're a part of. Right. I don't even know.

Justin Sweeney [03:01:33] I would love to.

John Dehlin [03:01:34] I didn't ask who you voted for. Like, I have no idea.

Justin Sweeney [03:01:36] I would love to do that.

John Dehlin [03:01:37] Okay.

Justin Sweeney [03:01:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:38] So we'll come back in.

Justin Sweeney [03:01:39] Huge part of my life. We didn't really talk about it, but it's a huge part of who I am.

John Dehlin [03:01:43] Okay. All right. All right. Well, thanks again, Justice Sweeney. Thanks to all of you who have joined us today on Mormon Stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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