Introduction to Luna Lindsey Corbden and Her Work

Part 1 of 5 · Ep. 1443

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 6, 2021 and today I am super excited for an interview that I've wanted to do for quite some time. Today we are interviewing Luna Lindsay Korbden and we are going to be discussing in depth a really important book. This book was referred to me by numerous people, including Anthony Miller and my good friend Randy Bell. I think even Natasha Alfer mentioned it at one point or another. The book is called Recovering Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. And I think it's an important book for all sorts of reasons. Just to talk a little bit about Luna and then we're going to go into their book and to Luna's background story as well. This is going to be a multi part series on Mormon Stories podcast. And the people that have reached out to me about Luna have told me that they are an incredible writer, they edit a lot of books for other people, that this book is really important. But what's most interesting about this book in particular is that Luna has basically learned a bunch about social psychology and has applied the principles of social psychology as they relate to undue influence or coercion. You could even say mind control or the types of behaviors often employed by high demand religions or cults. Luna has applied these principles to high demand religions and the Mormon Church. And so that's what the book is about. This book explores 31 different techniques used by high demand religions and the Mormon Church to exert, let's just say, undue control or influence on its members. And so the reason why Luna has done this is because when you've been raised in a high demand religion, sometimes it becomes really hard to unpack everything you've learned and to tease out or separate what's dogma or doctrine or theology from basically who am I or who are you? That's a process that people need to go through. And if you're not thoughtful and careful about doing that, it can take a lot longer to unpack and process and kind of liberate yourself from ideologies or teachings that might be holding you back in your life. And Mormon Stories podcast wants to help people heal and grow from from their relationship with orthodox Mormonism. So this is gonna be an epic five part series. If any of you remember, several years ago, I did something similar to this with Dr. James Nagel. But this is kind of Luna's more updated and in depth approach. It's not just PowerPoint slides, it's literally an amazing book that is available on Amazon. Again, recovering agency Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control A little bit about Luna. Luna, who also Luna Corbden, who also writes as Luna Lindsay, was born into the LDS Church and left the faith in 2001 at age 26. They now live in Washington State and write about topics of interest to them, including psychology, mind control, culture, and autism. They also write science fiction and fantasy novels and write short stories of speculative fiction publications like the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Cross Genres and the Recognized Fascism Anthology. When they're not busy traveling to improbable worlds, they're thinking hard about this improbable world. And I'll add Luna, and I hope you're okay with me mentioning this, that Luna identifies as gender non binary. This is sort of something that many of us are just coming to understand in the past several years. My eldest child, who goes by Adrian now, also recently came out to Margi and I and our family as gender non binary. The way Adrian describes it, it is a. Let's just say a sub identity within the broader umbrella of. Of transgender identity. That's at least how Adrian describes it. My. My child Adrian goes by they them pronouns, not. Not he, him or she, her pronouns. And that's why, also Luna, that when we read your biography, we use they them pronouns. So I don't mean to be throwing too much at our audience, but I think representation is important and education is important, and that's why I want to take the time up front. And I hope I haven't stepped on any toes with that introduction. But Luna, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:52] Great, thanks. That means a lot to me. I do believe in representation, and that's one reason why I came out. So here I am.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] All right, well, I do want to give you a chance to tell listeners all about yourself. Anything you want to add to the introduction or correct, because sometimes I get muddled when I'm doing this on the fly.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:15] Sure. We do have a slide where I have bullet points if you want to bring that.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Yeah, okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:20] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] But nothing else for the most of it. Okay. Good, good, good. All right, so for our audio listeners, there are going to be visuals, really good visuals for this presentation. I'll do my best to make sure and describe all this in audio form so that our audio listeners can make the most of this presentation. But you can also open this presentation on YouTube and YouTube, by the way, if you. If you purchase, the premium account allows you to listen in the background even while the. While the iPhone or the Android is. Is locked. So People don't always realize that, that you can kind of watch, listen on YouTube and even have it locked at times and still be listening without actually viewing it. I just want to make sure people know about that. But without any further ado, Luna, let's go to this amazing presentation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:10] Awesome. Thanks a lot. Let's see if there's anything on the next slide that. All right, cover.

John Dehlin [00:06:15] Yeah, go ahead and just do your intro. Go and just do your intro and tell us about yourself.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:19] Sounds good. Well, like we've already said, I was born in the church. I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. I spent 26 years true believing, mostly active except for a couple years, but even then I was still mentally active. My career before becoming a writer was I spent 14 years in the computer industry in various IT roles, everything from support tier 1 through tier 3 support roles, sales engineer, systems engineer. And I left that field in 2018, 2010, 2011. Now I'm an author and I just write a little bit of everything. And I am both gender fluid, which is one of the non binary genders and bisexual we talked about. I go by they them pronouns. I am an abuse survivor and I am autistic and ptsd. So I'm also in the disabled category in a number of ways. I don't have a degree. I just want everyone to know that and not a related degree. Anyway, my degree is in computers. I'm a psychology nerd. So I just really love psychology and I like thinking about it and reading about it and studying about it, different areas of that, specifically trauma and manipulation and what we'll be talking about today. So those are some of the fields I'm most interested in. And I wrote a book about LDS control topic tactics, which is the topic of today. So.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] Yeah, excellent. Well, we're so glad to have you. Did. Do you. I'm just curious, did you ever end up watching. Did you ever see that James Nagle presentation I did several years ago?

Luna's Background, Autism, and Approach to Social Psychology

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:07:55] I did. I watched about half of it. So I don't. I have a hard time listening to podcasts because part of autism is my ADHD part. So I have. I can tend to get distracted by audio input. So I watched about as much of it as I could before my mind started to wander, which is just a defect of mine.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] No worries. Yeah, yeah. Or a feature maybe. That's a feature, not a bug.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:08:20] It is though. Yeah. There's a lot of advantages to it, so I can jump from one thing to another if I need to, even when I don't want to. When I want to as well.

John Dehlin [00:08:28] Okay. Well, I'm just really thrilled to hear your. Your approach to applying social psychology to Mormonism. So let's jump in.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:08:37] Great. Yeah. I don't know how much of my exit story you want to hear. It's not.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Yeah, yeah, no, let's start there. Let's start there. Let's start a little bit about your background.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:08:45] Yeah, it's. It's not terribly interesting because it gets into artificial intelligence and science fiction kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:08:50] No, let's do it. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:08:51] Okay. I'll try to give an abbreviated version. So in 2001, I was in some Internet chat rooms that were really nerdy, and they were talking about this thing called the technological singularity, which is the idea that human beings are going to invent something that is smarter than us. And when we do, because it's smarter than us, it will be able to invent and discover everything at a much more rapid pace. That's where the word singularity comes from, because it's a. Mathematically, you start getting this arc where we're progressing. All of a sudden, technologically, we're progressing an infinite amount or near infinite amount. So I was studying that, and every. Everybody was saying all doom and gloom. You know, this is. This is the story that Terminator follows and the Matrix, the idea that these robots we create will enslave us or destroy us. And I was thinking about it, and I was like, why. Why would that be a bad thing necessarily? Why would. Why would this. Why would we invent a monster? Why. Why wouldn't it potentially be a kind or good or benevolent being that we create? And so I started. I wrote an essay. And while I was writing this essay, I got really in depth in terms of what is creativity and what is intelligence? And what traits would this being have to have in order to be what it is? And through that process, I sort of realized how difficult it is to grok or understand in a deep way what. What something beyond us really is. That it would be like explaining to an ant what a nuclear reactor is and what it does. Like, that would be what this being would be to us, trying to explain what it's doing and why it's doing it. And through that process, I did conclude that this being would just as likely be a benevolent being as it would be evil. But I had this little niggling thought that was at the corner of my. My mind that I was. Hold on just a minute. You wait till I'm done with this essay. When I. When I finished the essay, and put it on the web. It's still on the web. I was a fledgling writer at the time, so it's probably not very good. But as I hit hit send on that, I suddenly realized that the being I had described was God. And it was such an incomprehensible being that I had concluded that this artificial intelligence would be that. It just hit me that no, no person claiming to speak for God could really speak for God. Again, not only would it be like trying to explain to an ant what a nuclear reactor is for, it would be like explaining to one ant what a nuclear reactor is for and then telling that ant to go tell all the other ants what the nuclear reactor is for. And, and what, why would a human think that that's a good idea? In other words, why would God think it's a good idea to tell one human to go tell the other human what it's all, what it's all about? And it just, my mind expanded on what a God would be to this huge thing that Mormonism and all other revealed patriarchal religions do is they put God in this little human shaped box. I couldn't anymore. I just, I couldn't with any revealed God. There are other versions of gods that are more interesting and less in a box, more expansive, but the patriarchal authoritarian gods didn't fit it for me. I spent about three months, that was in November of 2000. And were a lot of events leading up to that, by the way, a lot of destabilizing events. That was just sort of the crux of it all. My shelf broke basically. And yeah, finally in January was when I just sort of finally crossed the line and was like, okay, I'm not Mormon anymore. I was just, what if? What if? And that following year was really unstable for me. I questioned everything. If this much of my reality was not true. I was also going through political transition at the time, really becoming disillusioned with my conservative political background, transferring into libertarianism, which is at the time what I was moving towards. And so two of these most major realms of my world were just had the rug yanked out. And that made me question everything about reality. And so as I went on, I, that year was just really shaky and I had to question all my morals. I had to start from scratch. Well, is murder okay? Is robbing okay? And I came up with logical moral arguments for why the moral structure that I have now is what it is, which I do think murder is wrong and I think stealing is wrong. And I think honesty is still a good trait. And all of that, but I had to question all of it. And so leading up to the writing of this book, and I'll try to keep it short, a friend of mine was with someone in Seattle a few years later and this person, she was trying to sort of recruit me to her little family. And ironically it turned out she was also running a cult, A little family sized cult. But she said to me one day, in her attempts to convert me, she said to me, you know, you're ex Mormon, have you ever been deprogrammed? And I was like, come on, I don't need to be deprogrammed. I've figured it all out. I'm fine now. But it, it sat with me for a while. It was just like, this doesn't, this isn't, something's wrong here. There's things that I feel like I can't overcome, there's hang ups that I have that I don't understand the origin of. And so I was like, well, let's give this a try. So I bought a couple books and started reading and I just couldn't stop. I bought more books and I bought more books and these are books written by cult researchers. I also read memoirs of people who had been through cults, cult experiences. None of them had anything whatsoever to do with Mormonism. The word Mormon wasn't mentioned in a single one. These were all describing other cults, sometimes generically. They would research a lot of cults and say, here's what these all have in common. Some of them were specifically looking at individual cults in particular. And a number of them listed these different mind control techniques and these patterns of behavior that both leaders of cults and followers of cults would fall into. And it was really, you know, I marked them up, I underlined, I wrote in the margins. And it was really helpful for me to separate who I was from what had been done to me and to really learn and get to the root of who I really was. So they could make conscious decisions. That's the title of my book where that comes from, Recovering Agency. It was, it's about getting my free agency back. Because when we can't understand the decisions that we're making, we can't really make those decisions. So it's about understanding those decisions so that we can make it with awareness.

Defining Cults, Totalism, and the Language Problem

John Dehlin [00:15:21] And if it's okay, I mean, we're hitting right off, right off the bat maybe one of the most delicate and fraught topics for some. And that's how offensive and problematic and shocking and resonant it can be, depending on who you're talking to, to mention the word cult alongside the LDS Church or the Mormon Church and I'll just, just introduce that idea. You know, we've had Stephen Hasson on Mormon stories already. He has a book called Combating Cult Mind Control. And even the world's leading expert on cults recognizes that it's, it's pretty much always not useful to use the word cult when talking to an orthodox member of any high demand religion or cult because it creates the backfire effect. It's just Mormons consider it offensive. I, I've just recently I've been interacting with some formal, well known Mormon apologists. And just the fact that I had an episode, you know, where I talked to some ti, some Scientologists about Mormonism and, and mentioned the word cult was deeply offensive to them and enough to have them maybe, you know, reconsider the desire to even come on Mormon Stories podcast. And so it's, it's problematic. At the same time, I think it's undeniable that if you actually just go through the criteria of a high demand religion or cult, and I did this in Combating Cold Mind Control, I found that the Mormon Church strongly meets criteria or moderately meets criteria for something like 90, 95% of the criteria that Stephen Hassan lays out. So how do you balance this problem, Luna, of wanting to sort of like call a duck a duck, or at least wanting to talk about the literature and the understanding within the disciplines of social psychology and the problem of offending people, of turning people off, of creating the backfire effect? How do you think about all that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:17:27] It is a loaded term. And I agonized over the title of my book. I wanted to, you know, I've got multiple audiences and I tried to struggle with who I was trying to speak to. You know, if, if I was speaking to Mormons, true believing Mormons, orthodox Mormons, I'm not going to reach them anyway. And so I decided to target ex Mormons and Mormons who aren't happy with being Mormon. And, and at the time, by the way, the ex Mormon community and the fringe Mormon or progressive Mormon communities were sort of oil and water. They did not get along. We didn't get along with each other at all. And I always wondered about that. And I didn't like that situation, but I did. I agonized over that because I wanted people who are curious about mind control or Mormonism's cult status to be able to find my work. But I also didn't want that loaded term to create A reaction in some of the people I wanted to reach. I've gotten some feedback on my cover. If you go to the next slide and then the slide after that's also related to this topic. You know, this imagery of the temple just breaking open and all the light that's being caged inside the temple finally just breaking free. It's like the temple is a prison for all of that light that belongs to everyone. That's sort of the imagery I came up with. I have gotten feedback. Oh, I would give this to my relative or so and so if it weren't for the title or the COVID So to some extent I may have made the wrong decisions, but that's the decision I went went for. The next slide will talk about a little bit more of the different terms that I've found in the research that describe it more specifically that are harder to argue with. Of course, brainwashing is also a very loaded term. But coercive persuasion, thought reform, psychosocial manipulation, spiritual abuse, traumatic bonding, which is often seen in abuse survivor circles. But it's the same technique or the same dynamic. Behavioral change, technology compliance, gaining influence. And for cult there's dogma, ideological totalism, high demand group and long term influence situations. And all of those are really unwieldy. It's hard to put in a sentence. They're very self defining. It's hard to argue that Mormonism isn't a high demand group. I mean, even as a true believing Mormon, I think I would have probably agreed with that term. But they're harder to put in a sentence. So it is a double bind, which is a technique we'll talk about. And honestly, groups like this, like the Mormon Church want this to be complicated. They want it to be hard to communicate about these topics because if it's hard to communicate, then it's hard for believers to learn these things and leave to question their beliefs. And that is actually a whole topic. Loading the language. We won't get to that today, but that is what's going on here when these terms become really charged. So I use all the terms a lot depends on the situation. If I want to get people's attention. I use cult. But I realize that it's a sensational term when I want to be descriptive and academic about it. I use high demand group as my. Or a totalist. I don't think I put it on this list. Totalism is another really great word. And we'll talk about.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] No, it's there, it's there. Ideological totalism. Yeah. Under cult. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] Okay, great. All right, so next slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:52] So I just want people to know I didn't invent all of these ideas. I did organize them into a certain way and I did show how they mapped Mormonism. But these are some of the other prominent authorities in the field who are far more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am. These are people with degrees who have dedicated their lives to this topic. You've already mentioned Stephen Hassan, Robert J. Lifton, who was sort of one of the earliest researchers in this. He studied the Chinese concentration camps in North Korea and the brain. That was when it was called brainwashing that occurred in those. Leon Festinger, social psychologist, who studied things like cognitive dissonance. John Jalalich and Madeline Landu. Tobias wrote a couple of really good books, as did Margaret Thaler Singer. Michael Angoni currently runs the International Cultic Studies Association. I'm an advisory board member for that which sound more important than it is. I just give them advice every once in a while. But that is an organization where all of these academics meet at several conferences a year to discuss these things. And Robert Cialdini, who's another social psychologist who studies more less about specific groups and more about the broad, like how marketing works and how manipulation works for salespeople and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] It's a great book. I've read one of Robert's books. It's a classic. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:19] Yeah, it's pretty good.

John Dehlin [00:22:21] Yeah.

What Is Totalism and Why High-Demand Religion Attracts Members

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:21] Okay, next slide. So I like the word totalism. Oh, unless you had a question.

John Dehlin [00:22:26] No, no, no, let's do it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:28] I like the word totalism because it's really broad. It can apply to everything from an individual, like a domestic abuse situation and all the way up to governments. So governments can be totalitarianism or totalism. And in a totalistic situation, the ide first. There's nothing more important than the ideology, not even the individual. And it fills every part of your life. And the leaders or the group guide your decisions. And you know everything from what you eat to what you wear to who you marry or what genders you can marry, what jobs you can take, what jobs are off the table. And it doesn't just apply to religions. It's really important to know that anything, any system just about, can be made into a totalist situation. So that includes political groups, businesses, large group awareness training. That's what LGAT stands for. That's things like landmark. I was in one of those too, by the way. The Mormons had. We had a little one that was going around in the late 80s, early 90s. That was, I think it was called Quest Impact. And I actually went, went through the first one of those, so. And just about anything else, activism groups, like I mentioned, Family Systems, the, the, the lady I knew that ran that cult that my friend was in was just a household. There was five or six people living together and that was it. But she had doctrines and everything. You don't have to have doctrines though. It could be a system for running a business. It can be a system for self improvement or meditation. And these also use natural tendencies. There's nothing woo or mystical here. It feels very natural to be in these situations, partly because we have a lot of shortcuts, mental shortcuts that we like to take. And the totalistic system takes advantage of those, but they feel very normal to be in that. And this is a very successful strategy for an organization to propagate itself and to retain members. But it's very maladaptive for the individual, as many of us have experienced.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Yeah, but I like to, when I've held retreats and stuff, I talk a little bit about this. But the benefit, the benefits of a high demand religion are also the drawbacks. Because a religion like Mormonism, it tells you, it gives you an identity, it gives you morality, it gives you a framework for spirituality, it tells you where you came from, why you're here and where you're going. It gives you a patriarchal blessing that maps out your entire life for you. It educates your, indoctrinates you for, you know, three, three plus three to 10 to 20 hours a week. And it tells you where you're going. You know, like I said, when you die, it tells you who to marry, when to marry, how to marry, how many kids to have. There's something really freeing about all that in the sense that life can, you can get lost, it can be scary, it can be sad, and it can be confusing and you can really mess up and ruin your life and get to a really dark, scary place. And so a high demand religion just says, hey, you don't have to worry about any of that. Just join this. Here's what you believe, here's what you do, and you can have a happy, healthy life. And it can be so enticing for people that otherwise might feel afraid or lost in life. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:25:52] Absolutely. And it's a really good fit for a lot of people. And honestly, for people that come to me and say, hey, Mormonism is great, I love it, it's perfect for me, then I'm like, good, go live your life, Go be that's your choice to be Mormon, to be a true believing Mormon and to follow that. I have a chapter in my book I don't have slides for. It's about square pegs and a lot of people don't fit Mormonism. It's not, you know, when you, when you're given a choice and that's the choice you would have chosen otherwise, then it's, it's easy to say, well, I have a choice on choosing this, but when you're, when you don't fit that mold, then it's a whole other thing. So like, for me, I'm autistic, I'm queer, and I didn't know I was queer at the time, but I was. I'm also, you know, as having been raised as a woman and being in the church as a woman, I was, I went against all of those gender roles, even not dealing with trans issues. That was just, I wanted a career. I was technical. I was into math and science and I dreamed of being a physicist when I was in high school. And then I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to play piano and write, compose things. And that was kind of off the table too. It was like it. Because I was different for a number of reasons. It, it always just kind of felt wrong. It was like an itchy sweater and I just wanted to take it off. Even though I believed it. I think some people, it's not an itch, it's cashmere sweater. It feels really good on them. And, and so I think trying to take perspective from different people is, has been really helpful for me to empathize with people who are still in it, for whom it is comfortable and for them. I don't try to argue with them. I don't try to get them out.

John Dehlin [00:27:32] Yeah, yeah. And again, our point here is not to call names or to denigrate anyone. It's literally for people who have left Mormon orthodoxy and or are leaving the Mormon Church. It's just to help you make sense of who you are and to help you heal and grow and live the best life you can be. We mean no offense to orthodox Mormon believers or the church itself.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:55] Absolutely. And one more tag onto that is when I am writing about the Mormon Church, I am writing about the leaders, the doctrines and the policies. When I criticize the Mormon Church, I am criticizing them and I'm criticizing abusers, like rank and file abusers in the church as well. I'm not criticizing the average daily Mormon whose heart is in the right place, who is living their sincere beliefs and the Mormon church conflates those two things together. So it's hard to separate, you know, oh, you're talking about the church, not about me. That's kind of part of the control mechanisms we're talking about. It creates a defensiveness of like, oh, you're talking about me. You're offending me directly. And I'm really not. I love the Mormon people and I want to help those who want to be helped. Not I'm aiming, I'm speaking truth to power, not I'm not punching down.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] So absolutely. Okay, so, so now, now that we've sort of talked about totalism, I think our listeners can identify with the idea that Mormonism approaches, if not exemplifies a totalist framework. Right, Total ideology. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:04] There's a couple more points about totalism on the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:29:07] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:08] Totalism is ubiquitous but not universal. So that means that it's everywhere but it's not in everything. So we can. Look, I can come up with examples of businesses and political groups and multi level marketing and other sort of business ventures and just about everywhere. But that doesn't mean that every single group inherently is totalistic. And it's a spectrum. And so even within a single group, a person's experience of totalism might vary depending on all kinds of factors. How close they are to the inner circle, their gender, whether or not they're in a position of leadership or authority, their age. All kinds of different factors can change your experience even with a single group. And every group has their own perspective spectrum of where they fall on the totalistic scale. The best way to defend against totalism, if you're afraid of falling into another group, is learn about it. Gain awareness so that you notice those red flags when they come up. I want to read this quote by Robert Lifton, who he's. He's an old timey writer. He published his book in 1962 and there's really only one chapter that really focuses on this stuff. I think it's chapter 21 or 22 and. But he writes in this like it's kind of this old timey language with these long sentences, but he always packs so much in there. So I have a lot of quotes from him in this. Feeling himself unable to escape from forces more powerful than himself, he subordinates everything to adapting himself to them. He becomes sensitive to all kinds of cues, expert at anticipating environmental pressures, and skillful in writing them in just such a way that his psychological energies merge with the tide rather than turn painfully against himself. I like to think about that quote A lot. It's in my book if you want to meditate on that or you can. The chapter that it is in is available free on the Internet. So I think if you just search Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, you can actually read that chapter. So.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Got it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] Yeah, that's great. That's a great, great quote.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:17] Okay, so what is. I think our next topic is cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance: Origins, Mechanics, and Mormon Apologetics

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:23] Yeah. And a lot of people might have heard about this, depending on what circles you run in. But this is an idea that was developed by Leon festinger in the 50s. He did a number of experiments and those experiments have been repeated dozens of times and variations on them have been repeated dozens more. This is a very well established idea within the OR theory within the field of psychology. There's very little controversial about it, like Alice in Wonderland, who was afraid of believing six things before breakfast. Impossible things before breakfast. Cognitive dissonance is what keeps us sane. It keeps us from just believing every random thought that comes to us. But it also is the mechanism that malicious groups use to make us believe impossible things. So, next slide.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] Oh, so are you going to give us. Will you give us some examples of cognitive dissonance and probably.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:22] Let's see how long this goes on. Sure, I can give some examples. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:28] Let's lay out the framework just at a high level.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:30] Yeah. So, yeah, I've got more slides on this coming up.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:34] Okay, I do. I have more slides coming up. Okay, so the next slide is. Just gives a contrast of what those impossible things can entail. They can be harmless and mostly fun, or they can be all the way up to the brutal and harmful. Like the images show. I have a. The image show a bus with a bunch of hippies on it. It's a colorful bus. And the other one shows during the Inquisition, someone being run through with a sword. So it can be. It can. It can be innocent and fun and. But this can also be used to create a lot of mayhem for a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:33:06] I know we're going to be talking about this later, but let me just see if I can remember my Festinger. Basically. So tell me if I'm right about this. So it's ideal if a human's. What their thoughts and their beliefs align with their. With their behavior and with their understanding of the world. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:25] And feelings, so.

John Dehlin [00:33:27] And their feelings.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:28] Yeah. So the idea is we want to feel integrated, we want to feel sane, we want to feel. We don't want to feel like hypocrites. We Want to feel like we have integrity. And so it's the mechanism through which we keep all of that together. We. We feel like at least that all of the gears or the pieces within our mind are fit, are fitting together pretty well. So we'll get to that. We'll get to that soon and I'll explain, like all the mechanisms.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:51] Okay. Yeah. So Voltaire famously said, as it's often paraphrased, whoever can make you believe the impossible can make you do the unthinkable. And this is the full quote here, translated of course. It was originally in French. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow. And from this derives all those crimes of religion or totalism, which I added, which have overrun the world. And so that's kind of the. That's the stakes. That's the consequences of when we allow or fall into a pattern where someone else is pulling the levers and turning the knobs of our cognitive dissonance. So by understanding it ourselves, we can then take that back and own it for ourselves.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] I love it. I just finished reading Candide by Voltaire for a book club. It's such a great book and he really is an OG in understanding undue influence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:59] Yeah, yeah. I think I read Candide a long time ago. Yeah. So this slide is in the wrong place. So I'm gonna. The next slide, the cult exit recovery slide. I put it in the wrong. I don't want to do it. We'll talk about that after cognitive dissonance.

John Dehlin [00:35:13] I'll come back to it. Just tell me when to come back to it. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:35:15] All right. So as I mentioned, this was came up with by Festinger. And again, the idea is that we have to have internal consistency. It's a survival drive again, so we're not scattered all over the place. When our ancestors were trying to survive in the desert or the jungle, you know, there were certain beliefs that were. That saved their lives and certain beliefs that didn't. And that from an evolutionary standpoint, that's kind of where all this came from. Festinger said, a man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. And I'm sure many of us can relate to that, regardless of our current beliefs, we've always run into someone who we feel like that about. So. Next slide. Now we'll get into the mechanism. Mechanisms. This is the nerdy part. So a cognition is simply defined as any single unit of an idea, a feeling, an experience, a goal, a value, a commitment, a memory, a perception, something someone told us one time, behaviors, any single unit of a thing that we're trying to fit together with the other things. So I like to visualize them as gears in say, a machine, you know, where you got all the gears going together. And the idea is when. Next slide. When a new idea comes into us, a new fact or thought or behavior or example of something that we see, if it matches the current machine that we're running in our head, we feel good about it. And that's called consonants. We. It's. It's that preaching to the choir feeling, that ha. That rush of feeling that we get. It can be any emotion, by the way. These are all. It's a. It's a group of positive emotions, maybe euphoric, it can be joy, it can just feel rightness, righteousness and self righteousness included in that. And it gives us a reward. It's the carrot of it. It says, good job you for sticking to your guns. But dissonance is the opposite of that. So we get a new piece of information coming in. It says, whoa, hold up. That what you believe might be wrong. Then we feel, again, it's a group of emotions. It can be one of many different negative emotions. It can be confusion, anger, even on up to rage, where we are ready and willing to kill someone over their challenging of our beliefs. And there are many examples of that in the world today. Some examples of that. Let's see if that's. No, we're still on the slide.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] Yeah, so. So let me just see if I can. So like if you, if you were raised in a Mormon context and you believe that the Book of Mormon was written by Native Americans, you know, as a history, and then you learn about the findings out of Thomas Murphy or Simon Southerton that the DNA of the Native Americans actually goes back to Asia and does not go back to Israel as we once thought, that's a new piece of information. So you've got the existing schema of your worldview and your beliefs about the world. And let's just say. Actually, let me back up a bit. So you learn the schema about Native Americans in the Book of Mormon and then you're in seminary and you're watching a film strip called Something about the New World and how archaeologists were traveling through a Mesoamerican temple and they see a little pit that looks like a battle baptismal font. And the narrator in the film strip tells you that little pit was a baptismal font. And it shows that ancient Americans were doing baptism ordinances 4, 5, 600 years ago. Your brain's going to go, tell me if I'm right. That's going to be consonants. Your brain's going to go, ah, that feels good. It feels good to have someone who is portraying themselves as a scientist give me a new piece of information that fits with my worldview. Ah, that feels really good. And that's a reward to keep on believing that worldview about Native Americans in ancient America. But then let's just say you're. It's 20 years ago, and Thomas Murphy or Simon Southerton comes out with this DNA research that shows that Native Americans in fact come from Asia through the Bering Strait, not from boats, you know, via the Middle East. Then all of a sudden, you're going to feel yucky. That's going to feel dissonance. It's going to feel, you know, what Mormons would call the adversary or, you know, spirit of contention. You'll be confused, you'll feel uncomfortable, you'll feel a stupor of thought. Right. And then you'll say, well, I need to do something with that information because I don't like this feeling of cognitive dissonance. And that's what the dissonance means. It's two things that are kind of out of harmony with each other. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:40:16] Exactly. And, and it's not just that one belief about the Book of Mormon that's being threatened. It's your entire structure of beliefs. Everything religious for sure, but all your political beliefs get thrown in there and your beliefs about human nature and, and psychology and how that why we're here and what, what, what your purpose is in life and your identity, if it's all connected and threatening that one thing is like threatening your life.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] Yeah, because, because immediately if, if all of a sudden you're wondering if the Book of Mormon is true, because you, you find out new scientific evidence immediately, your brain goes, well, wait a minute. I'm in a marriage. If you're in a marriage, I'm in a marriage that was based on Mormonism. And if I start losing my faith in the church, my spouse may leave me and then I may lose my kids and, and my parents may disown me, and then I won't know who I am. And then I might lose my job and my whole world. I mean, literally, your brain, in just a matter of seconds, can go through that whole chain and it make. It can make you come back and say, ooh, that feels awful. Better find a way to deal with this with this piece of information that's causing me so much internal distress. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:29] Exactly. And that's a great segue into the next slide about the strategies that Festinger identified that we do use to deal with these things. Okay, so the first overarching one is we can alter one of the cognitions, either the new cognition, which is probably the most common when it comes to charged topics like politics and religion, and that is to just reject it. That's a lie. That isn't true. They're biased, they're motivated incorrectly, they're satanic. Or what happens much more rarely is we can modify our existing cognitions. So we could say, I was wrong, which is the polite, healthy, in my opinion, way to go about it, or you could even be sort of sour grapes about it, like, fine, whatever you say, I'm going to go along with it, but I'm going to sort of do so in a resistance sort of way. We can also add new cognitions to sort of. Again, I always picture this machine with all these gears and levers and stuff whirling around and. And I'm thinking of when I'm not an engineer. I don't know what I'm talking about. But you know, when, when you have two big wheels and they're not quite touching, you can add a little wheel in the middle and that makes them all work again. So we can add new cognitions. And that does include, remember, these aren't just thoughts or ideas or facts. These are also things like behavior and social feedback. So maybe we'll go on a mission to help us deal with our doubts about the DNA work that Murphy and Southernton came up with. Maybe we'll double down on going to church. Well, maybe we'll start praying and reading the scriptures more. Those all help us feel better about our dissonance and social feedback as well. If we have everyone around us is saying this is true, then it's easier to dismiss the thing that isn't fitting. And we can also change the importance of things so we can accept both the old cog and the new cog if we change how important they are. So one of the examples that I use for this, that isn't Mormon example, but let's say your favorite politician, you've. You've campaigned for him, you've gone, donated a lot of money for him, and it turns out he had an affair. Comes in the news, big headline across the thing. He had an affair. Well, you believe in marital fidelity. That's one of your core beliefs. So you can change your importance of those two conflicting beliefs. You can say, well, I didn't really like that politician anyway. Like, I'm still gonna vote for him, but maybe I'm gonna give him a little bit less money. Or you can alter the. Your perception of how important morale that moral is to you, that value. Oh, well, it's okay that he cheated on his wife because, you know, and

John Dehlin [00:44:07] then I, I didn't elect a pastor. I elected a politician.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:10] Right, exactly. This isn't about character, you know, but meanwhile, you will attack your enemies with the same, you know, it is about Char.

John Dehlin [00:44:18] Or you might say, well, I care so much about abortion and the Supreme Court that, well, I'm not going to let that affect. That's more important than anything else.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:28] Right, exactly. So those are the three overall strategies we can use to deal with cognitive dissonance. Next slide.

John Dehlin [00:44:36] Okay. And just to review just really quickly so we get a new cognition that's causing us dissonance. We can either reject. We can either reject the new cognition and say, well, the DNA stuff is dumb, or we can go, oh my gosh, maybe, maybe the. The Book of Mormon isn't what I thought. Right. We can, we can do our change behaviors like fast and pray and go to the temple more. Do whatever we can to try or pray. Pray for support to try and help us. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:45:14] Other forms of altering too, not just behavior. I added those as examples of things to not forget. But I don't want to de. Emphasize that it can include changing a belief. For instance, you could say, well, the Book of Mormon isn't. Wasn't meant to be literally true. It was meant to be figuratively true the way that the works of Shakespeare are. And, and that's also perfectly acceptable. And by the way, I really respect people who do that. I do think that as a work of literature, there are some good points in the Book of Mormon, some bad points too. And so, yeah, it's about Chang changing either the new or the old. Sorry. Adding a new cognition that sort of makes it all okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:50] And like going to fair Mormon or, you know, people, you know, some of the apologetic institutions, that can be an important way to reinterpret words or gain new information to help us deal or to dismiss the DNA stuff. It Seems like apologetics can be important way to, to manage that cognitive dissonance through new cognitions. Correct?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:46:14] Correct. Yeah. Or yeah, new ones.

John Dehlin [00:46:17] Yeah. And then of course, just like saying, well, historicity, the Book of Mormon isn't that important. It's really, you know, it's really about the core messages of Jesus. That's a way to lower the importance of, for example, Book of Mormon historicity that allows you to manage your cognitive dissonance but still retain the Book of Mormon and thus your membership in the church.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:46:38] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] Okay. I just wanted to drive that home. Thank you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:46:41] Yeah, no worries. So, and then, and this is how totalism gets in. And really that's what my work is about, is how totalism exploits cognitive dissonance, I believe. And this, this is actually sort of original research on my part. I didn't come across anyone else in the literature talking about this, but I personally can describe any of the thought reform techniques through a lens of cognitive dissonance. Here is how it turns dissonance into consonants or does something else to do with cognitive dissonance. And it can actually convert dissonance into consonants. And we'll come across a couple of examples. I'll probably repeat this in some later presentation. But one really big example is persecution left on its own with no added cognitions would be a dissonance causing effect. So those people over there, they're trying to kill me because of my beliefs. That would be like, okay, maybe I should not believe those things and maybe to save my life or so I can be more comfortable around other people. That would normally cause dissonance. But religions like Mormonism have turned persecution into such a consonance causing cognition that they see persecution often when there isn't any. They often feel persecuted, have a persecution complex, when really the only thing someone's ever done to them was called them a warmie or something like that. Right. Like ask them about their magic underwear and that's not really persecution. Or they might see criticism as persecution because they need the persecution to prove to them that, that their religion is true.

John Dehlin [00:48:16] Got it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:48:17] And we'll get more into that. I think I have a slide in some other presentation that actually talks about persecution, so.

John Dehlin [00:48:23] Okay, got it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:48:25] All right, next slide. I think we're still on cognitive dissonance. Yeah, I come from a computer background, so I like to think of it as an intrusion detection system or antivirus or a firewall. It's basically a pre installed system of self updating patches every time your computer runs Windows Update to protect you from the latest vulnerability. Cognitive dissonances like that, that's where we get our mental gymnastics from that us ex Mormons like to talk about so much. I also think of a Rube Goldberg machine, which is overly complex and ridiculous and does almost nothing for you and takes more to maintain than it's actually doing. I think of the scene in Honey I Shrunk the kids, you know, where they make breakfast with this really complicated egg rolls down and, I don't know, the woodpecker cracks it open and it falls and that pulls a string. That's where we get our mental gymnastics from is all the, all the cognitive dissonance remedy strategies that we create in our minds. Trying to hold on to something that reality isn't actually reflecting. If reality reflected it, we wouldn't need to go through such hoops to. In order to continue believing it.

John Dehlin [00:49:41] Yeah, that makes, that makes so much sense. Yeah, that's a great description. I. I just remember, I remember that point when I was studying Fawn Brody and just feeling bombarded with all the problems with the Church being true, given Joseph Smith's history and the treasure digging and the Book of Mormon and the Seer stones and the folk magic. And I remember thinking there's a thousand complicated questions and answers that need to be dealt with if the Church is true or there's one answer that resolves everything that's super simple and that's it. The Church isn't what it claims to be. That one answer, you know that. That one answer is so simple and yet it solved all of the problems. And that, that, that's what I think of when I think of a Rube Goldberg machine inside my brain. Mormon apologetics is like constructing this massive Rube Goldberg machine to try and make it all make sense when the scientific and naturalistic worldview just don't allow for what. What's being required of us Belief wise versus Occam's Razor.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:50:55] Right. That's the simple. You cut away all the overly complicated stuff. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:51:01] Yep. All right, next slide. Next slide.

John Dehlin [00:51:03] Yeah.

When Prophecy Fails, Confirmation Bias, and Influence Mechanics

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:51:04] So this is about a particular aspect of cognitive dissonance that Leon Festinger wrote about in When Prophecy Fails. This is a book that you can get again, it's kind of written in like 60s, 50s and 60s language, but it was really interesting. So what he did was he had a hypothesis in looking at the history of particularly prophetic groups that had predicted the end of the world, and then he noticed a pattern when the end of the world didn't come about. Anabaptist is a really great Example, I forget when they were early 1600s in, they were Dutch, I believe, and, and they, they preached the end of the world on a certain date. And the end of the world came and came and went and didn't end. And all of a sudden they started baptizing people, tons of people. Everybody in Holland or wherever it was, whatever city it was, wanted to be baptized all of a sudden. And. And they were going door to door and they were actually succeeding in converting people where it. Whereas. And you would think, why would that happen? Shouldn't they be like, well, the end of the world came and went and didn't. So he had an opportunity, so to infiltrate a group that was at the time prophesying the end of the world. And it was a UFO group. He uses pseudonyms throughout the book, but we have the history now of who he was talking about. I don't remember the details because I read the book more than the Wikipedia page. But. So before he infiltrated this group, he came up with some criteria about how. Basically the hypothesis is, if a group meets this criteria, then when their belief is disconfirmed in an undeniable way, that the group will double down on their beliefs and they will actually begin to proselytize more than they ever have before. So the criteria that he came up with were the cognitions must be deeply held, can't be frivolous. The believer has to make irreversible actions. So quitting a job, selling a house, telling off family members. They have to be specific beliefs that are detailed in such a way that they can be disproven or disconfirmed was the word that he used. And they have to be the irrefutable counter evidence has to occur. So the disconfirmation event is what he refers to it as. And then the believer has to have social ties to other believers. This can't just be one person, one crackpot. Forgive my word. I'm trying not to use ableist words, but, you know, if you can't just be the Unabomber sitting in Montana writing your manifestos, you got to have a group. And so he went to this group. Now, the group said that on December 21st or whatever the date was, 1954, that UFOs were going to come and create a flood and kill everyone. And this group was. Was going to be the only ones saved. The UFOs were going to take them up. Obviously. Completely ridiculous. It was a great example for him to pick because it wasn't Christian. It wasn't challenging any preconceived Most people don't believe in UFOs or particularly that UFOs are going to destroy the world. So he had his grad students. I just can't believe this. Like, I wish there was a documentary on it, like, of actually, like footage or something. They infiltrated the group. Before the date came, the group became increasingly insular. They stopped talking to the press. They tried to hide their activities. They didn't want anyone to know what they were up to. And the book documents, like, play by play, what they were talking about, at what time it goes through. You know, as the date came, the time came. They were like, oh, the leader of the group, I think the pseudonym they used for her was Miriam Kitcham or something like that. She did an automatic writing thing and she would, oh, the aliens have told me that they're postponing it. And then the time would come and go and, oh, the alien. So over a course of like two or three days, finally, you know, they went out to a field and they're ready for it to happen. This is the final time for sure, for real. And it doesn't happen now. You'd think this would be it, the jig would be up. Now, some people did leave the group. The ones that had invested less, the ones that were less close to the inner circle, they did leave the group. But the ones that were in the inner circle, they doubled down. All of a sudden they're picking up the phone and they're calling the media. Can we get an interview now? Now the media is not interested whatsoever. They didn't convert anybody after that. They weren't successful, but they tried. They sure tried. And so Festinger managed to back up his hypothesis with evidence. And so we ask ourselves, you know, how Joseph Smith had some failed prophecies, the Jehovah's Witnesses had failed prophecies. All of these sort of middle America, you know, middle and 19th century American groups had all of these very specific prophecies that didn't come true. How could those groups get as popular as they did? Well, that's the answer. I mean, it's actually how it works.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] Yeah. And if I'm thinking about Mormonism, whether it's, you know, Joseph Smith saying that, that Zion or the New Jerusalem will be built in, you know, Independence, Missouri, and that. And that fails. Or. Or that the end, you know, that the. That the coming of Jesus Christ is just around the corner. After all, we are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and yet we're a couple hundred years into the restoration And Jesus still hasn't come, or, or the. Even the teaching the polygamy is a requirement for exaltation. And then of course, they're rolling back polygamy. There are all sorts of instances in Mormonism where prophecies just flat out didn't come true. And every time you think the members would just cave and say, okay, this church isn't true, they're making it up as they go along. But as you said, if the cognitions are deeply held, which in Mormonism they are, if the believer has taken irreversible actions, like serving into your mission, like, like marrying in the temple, like making solemn covenants to give your entire life to the church and the beliefs, you know, did an angel appear? Did God appear to Joseph? I guess there's no way to disprove whether or not an angel or God or Jesus appeared to Joseph. So those things are disprovable. And of course, we have very, very significant social ties. Our parents, our siblings, our children, our ward networks, our friends. That's going to be a super powerful biting influence, such that when information comes to us, that's disconfirming the truthfulness of the church, we're going to have strong motivations to do what I've often called the backfire effect, which others call the backfire effect, like you said, which is to double down and even believe stronger in the things that don't tie with

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:30] reality, like the DNA evidence, which is pretty incontroversial, disconfirming, you know, information. It's very, very evidence, very accepted science. There's nothing questionable about it. And yeah, you see people double down.

John Dehlin [00:57:43] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:45] Okay, so briefly on this one, I go into this more in my book, but there are a couple of biases that have to do with this. And just quickly listing Cialdini's six influence mechanics. So confirmation bias is a lot like cognitive dissonance. It's. It's basically an instinctive, subconscious bias that we all have everyone to ignore things that don't fit our worldview and to accept things that do. And the bias, bias is our tendency to believe that I am not biased, I recognize that other people are biased, but I am not. And everyone has these to one degree or another. And Cialini's six influence, this is from his book called Influence. It has a subtitle, and I don't remember it right now, but reciprocation, that's the idea that we tend to want to give back to people who we perceive have given to us. And I said that very specifically. We Just have to perceive they've given something to us. They don't actually have to give us something. We could have a whole conversation about how the atonement is a thing that supposedly were given. But are we really commitment? Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] Yeah. In the book, if any of you ever wondered why, like at Olive Garden they give you a couple little mints with the bill with the check. And it's based on this type of research that if someone gives you something, then you feel beholden to them subconsciously. And they've done studies that if you give a little treat with the check, the people are going to pay more in their tips than if they didn't receive a small little gift. Now that's an example of an actual gift, but it's a small one. But that's why, you know, who are the airport people that hand out the flyers? The Hare Krishnas. The Hare Krishnas, right. They give you a flower or. Mormon missionaries give a book as a gift because psychologically that makes you more likely to then feel beholden to them to listen to a one hour presentation or to buy another book if you've been given one as a gift. And that's a. This is a great book. So I'm really glad you're bringing it up.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:59:59] Yeah, definitely. And then commitment and consistency we tend to. This is again part of cognitive dissonance. If we make a commitment, we tend to stick to it and we want to stay consistent in our behaviors and beliefs.

John Dehlin [01:00:11] And this is why, this is why missionaries are taught the commitment pattern. Missionaries are pressured to give investigators commitments to get baptized because once they've made a commitment, they're more likely to follow through. So commitments are super important in. And door to door salesmen use these types of techniques as well as a way to gain undue influence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:32] And a small commitment can lead to a big one too. And I actually have a. I don't think it's in today's presentation, but I. Public commitment is one of the mind control techniques. We'll do a whole couple of slides

John Dehlin [01:00:42] on like, like bearing, like an altar call in an evangelical church or bearing your testimony in the Mormon Church. If you can get youth or adults to publicly express their, their commitments, then they're going to be more bound or more likely to maintain their commitment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:01:03] Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Social proof is our tendency to think that other people know more than we do. Specifically if there's a whole bunch of people. And this one's really great shortcut because when you show up for a concert and you're not sure where the entrance is and you're in those giant parking lot and you see a whole bunch of people headed that way, Usually you're right to follow the crowd, but sometimes you're wrong. And in fact, social proof has been cited as probably the reason for the bystander effect. It's not that nobody cares that someone's being mugged and they're just bystanders who don't want to be involved. It's usually that they think someone else is in charge. They think someone else is taking care of it, and when they see no one else is taking action, then they don't take action themselves. And by the way, if you. If you need trouble, if you need help and you're in public that you know you're. You're having a heart attack or something, the best way to get help is to point to a specific person, doesn't matter who, and say, help me. Or call 91 1, give them an instruction, and all of a sudden everyone will swarm in and help you.

John Dehlin [01:02:02] Yeah. Or say, hey, you. Hey, you in the red shirt, or hey, you in the blue dress. Right. Even if you can add some sort of descriptive that identifies them, if you don't know their name, they're going to be way more likely to help you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:02:15] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] And is it social proof like Steve Young is a Mormon or the Osmonds are a Mormon. It's basically appeal to authority or appeal to popularity. Is that a form of social proof?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:02:26] It is, yeah. Like millions of people can be wrong. Yeah. So liking is another one. If we like people, we tend to believe them. We tend to go with what they say. Salespeople use that one a lot to get people. And Mormons are very likable, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:02:43] This is the Book of Mormon musicals. Got these cheery, happy, smiley Mormon missionaries that are clean cut with white shirts. All the Mormon ad campaigns. Oh, it's families. Isn't it about time? Like, liking and niceness is a strategy, and it's a really important strategy. If you make nice people good families, that becomes its own missionary tool.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:03:06] Yeah, definitely. We all tend to obey authority. Anarchists excluded, of course, but even anarchists, there's a subconscious tendency when we see someone who appears to be in and again appears as a chosen word. There appears to be in a position of authority. Cialdini's book talks a lot about experiments where all you need is a lab coat and a clipboard or what looks to be maybe a security or police officer's uniform, and you can get people to do anything you want. That's exactly. Just tell them what to do and you're wearing a uniform, they'll just go along with it. And then scarcity mentality. If we have a feeling that something is scarce, we'll have a tendency to want it all the more. And Cialdini actually uses a Mormon example in his book. In this one, he talked about the time he was invited. I think it was the Arizona temple. One of the Arizona temples was being dedicated before it was dedicated. There were tours and he saw some ads or friends of his were like, you need to go because you, you can't get inside after this. And he found himself going, yeah, yeah. And here he's a guy who researches the stuff. He knows it and he still says, yeah, I need to get in there before they close it off. And then he realized, wait, that's what's happening to me.

John Dehlin [01:04:14] And this is why all these websites, you know, say only 4 left or only 5 left purchase. Now this goes back to the Ron pull peel order now and you'll receive this other, other thing. But if you, you don't order now, you won't get the special, you won't get the sale. That's all totally contrived. Manufactured scarcity to then make you feel an extra sense of motivation to comply with, with what's being asked.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:04:44] But fewer chosen.

John Dehlin [01:04:46] Right? Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a good one. The path is narrow and few there. Be that find it. Right. Yeah, yeah. And frankly, the whole atonement theology, we'll get to this later, is a scarcity mentality. It's basically saying, oh no, you're in debt. You're in debt because of the mistakes you make. And if you don't have a savior to save you, then you're going to hell. That's creating an immediate deficit just by being born. And then it's. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:05:20] And reciprocity as well is coming into play there because of the gift.

John Dehlin [01:05:24] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:05:25] So I have to give everything that I have to make up for that.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Yeah. This is kind of mind blowing when people think about it, because honestly, I don't think we're saying that Mormon church leaders got together and studied the six principles of undue influence and then apply, you know, came up with the doctrine and the theology or that leaders now are even thinking in these terms. But these terms really do explain how Mormonism gets such a hold on its people.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:05:54] And again, natural mechanisms and, you know, kind of going a little bit in the weeds here. But when you study narcissistic behavior, narcissistic personality disorder, behavior patterns. I am an abuse survivor from a narcissist who, when you've lived through that, you. And you start to see other people and what they're saying about those patterns. You start to just like, whoa. And then like, I'm starting to see it in Mormonism. And all of these patterns that we're talking about are used by narcissists as well. And these go back to the dawn of time. These are just people that are. They're raised a certain way and probably a trauma response. We can theorize forever about that. Probably a trauma response. It's a way to control their world and decrease their anxiety. And it's just, this is what works. As children, they did certain things to get and they got what they wanted and they did other things and they didn't get what they wanted. And he learned what worked and that's what they went with. This is all very natural, behavioralistic kind of stuff. And I believe that Joseph Smith was a narcissist. He fits all the patterns. And most cult leaders are either psychopaths or narcissists, generally leaning towards the narcissist side. I think the difference, a lot of the difference has to do with how much adoration you need. I don't think a psychopath necessarily needs adoration, but a narcissist does. Again, I'm an armchair psychologist, by the way, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But I think that narcissists, they need adoration, and the ones that start cults, they need more adoration than a family can provide. And so they just start getting more and more and more followers. Again, completely natural.

John Dehlin [01:07:32] And what's difficult is I think we all enjoy positive feedback on one level or another. So it's very easy to diagnose. Anyone you don't like is being a narcissist. So it's probably a matter of degree, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:07:45] Yeah. It's not that they want it, it's that they absolutely need it. And their world is going to come crashing in if they don't. There's a very big difference between just kind of like liking it and enjoying attention. There's nothing wrong with enjoying attention.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] So super normal. Okay. Yeah. That book by Cialdini is life changing. So everybody needs to go read that book at some point.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:05] It's really good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] Yeah.

Overview of the Conversion Process and Mind Control Techniques

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:06] Next slide.

John Dehlin [01:08:07] Okay, so now we've got the. The Baskin Robbins, the 31 flavors of the 31 techniques of mind control. You call it the 31 flavors of coercion. I love this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:18] Yeah, thank you. It just happened to be 31 when I organized them all. Again, I think I'm the first researcher in this field to actually just put them all in one place. And the six we're going to cover today are in maroon or whatever that red color is. So we're going to cover sacred science, demand for purity doctrine over self, black and white thinking, blame reversal and guilt and shame. Not necessarily in those order. In that order.

John Dehlin [01:08:42] Okay, do you want to just tell us really quickly how you came up with these 31 flavors of coercion?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:47] Most of them were named in previous. By previous researchers. Lifton started sort of categorizing it. He had eight criteria of. Forget what he called them. Eight criteria of a thought reform or totalist system. And so he came up with several of them. And then other researchers added. Started adding to that. And then again, sort of piecemeal, like in one paper over here talks about one thing, and in one book over there, it talks about two or three of the other ones. And then some of them were patterns that were described but not named. For instance, blame reversal came up a lot. It was often called blame the victim or other. Just sort of the. I saw there was a dynamic there, and so I was like, well, it needs. It needs a name, and it needs to be a better name than blame the victim. So some of them, I did in fact, just name, but again, I didn't. I didn't actually invent any of these. So.

John Dehlin [01:09:38] And are they grouped or ordered in any meaningful way or are we just talking. Are they just kind of random as we talk about them, as we talk about them?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:09:46] I did put thought into ordering them in my book. And then I. I did sort of group them for this presentation in ways that sort of things that kind of fit together a little bit. They all fit together in some way. And there's some slides coming up that'll talk about sort of how they fit together. But the ones that are closest. So, for instance, demand for purity doctrine over self, blame reversal, guilt and shame, and also double bind, which is not in this cluster, are all very closely linked. Like they need each other in order for them to work.

John Dehlin [01:10:16] Okay. All right, so we're going to go through one through six, and then in. In presentations four through two through five, we'll cover the other 30. The other 25. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:30] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] Okay. All right, let's jump in.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:33] Okay. So this is sort of the overall. The bird's eye view of what a person. Again, this is assuming. This is assuming that the person wasn't born in the church. There are some shortcuts when someone was born into one of these groups. But if you're trying to get a new convert, this is what they have to go through, the overall process from beginning to end of being in the church. So the first thing you have to do, often called love bombing, is you have to provide them interest. And you do that usually via love or friendship, but also through ideals and values. We're going to change the world and we're going to change you. We're going to make you a better person, we're going to make you happy. So that's the sort of the hook. Then you have to destabilize them. So this is where cognitive dissonance come in. Play cognitive dissonance. They've already got their beliefs, their wall is up. And so to get them to change, you've got to tear that wall down. I think I spend some slides in another presentation sort of talking way more about destabilization. Then you have to establish trust. Okay, we're the ones that are going to put you back together. So you've fallen apart. We're not going to say we made you fall apart, but you've fallen apart. Or like missionaries, they look for those golden converts, the ones that have already had a disaster in their life. They're already have lost a loved one or something and they're already looking for answers. And so then you say we're the ones that you're going to trust, so trust us and we'll take care of you. Then you need to transmit the doctrines. And that's, that's how we're going to get all these mind control techniques into you, is through doctrines. And then part of that, and we're going to talk more about this today, we're going to install a pseudo personality, a personality that is partly you and partly the group. Then we're going to create dependents so that you can't go anywhere, you don't feel like you can go anywhere, you feel stuck. Then we're going to isolate you. We're going to put you what they call malie control. We're going to put you in a box so that you can't look to other places for answers. You can't receive disconfirming information from outside of your group. You don't know who Thomas Murphy is, for instance. Then we're going to instill emotions. And this is really like the instinctive, the gut reaction. You're not thinking about things anymore. We're going to instill fear, shame, euphoria, and some other emotions. And then we're going to create new logic that resolves dissonance in favor of the group. Then that will. All of this together will prevent you from leaving. And then we move on to proselytizing where you are supposed to tell everyone else this great message that you've heard.

John Dehlin [01:12:55] Okay, I love this. What are you calling this cycle? These steps?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:13:00] Bird's eye view of how all of it works together.

John Dehlin [01:13:04] This is like the steps for indoctrination, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:13:08] Yeah, this is. And all of the mind control techniques, those 31, are embedded in one or more of these things. So these are sort of like broader categories that sort of cast a net over how, how they all work together.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] Okay, so if I'm, if I'm going to just apply. I really like this. I think this is one of your most important slides, I'm going to guess, and I want to have a title so they can refer to it. So, you know, how did my. Let's just say my wife's parents, you know, they, they joined the church in the 70s. My, my wife's dad is a Yale, you know, MD, a Yale doctor. They, My, My mom's. My, My wife's mom was a nurse at the Mayo Clinic. They met, they were raising kids in the D.C. area and they didn't have a religious tradition at all. They became friends with some Mormons. Right. And so that's where it begins. They become friends with some Mormons and, and the Mormons, they, they seem happy, they seem friendly, they seem warm. It's like, whoa, these are really cool people. Then they, they get, they, they get introduced to this idea that families are only eternal if they're, you know, if they're sealed together in a Mormon temple. The Mormon, as you mentioned, the Washington, D.C. temple was being open soon, so there was an open house. And you can go through it and you can watch those movies. And all of a sudden this idea of, well, do you want to be together with your family forever? Do you want to see your kids again? Do you want to see your mom again after she's died? That can be a form of destabilization. It makes you feel, or have you committed sins that you haven't repented for? They're just some little movies or pamphlets that can be dropped to kind of destabilize you and make you think, or just how am I going to raise healthy, happy, normal children? They're just different little messages that a missionary or a Mormon friend can drop to all of a sudden make you think and start thinking about some of these more existential questions. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:16] It makes you think there's something wrong with you. And advertisers use that same thing too. There's something wrong with you.

John Dehlin [01:15:21] Deficient. There's some deficiency. Yeah, yeah. And so then they establish trust. The missionaries come, the friends come. It's like, hey, we're here for you. We're gonna help you. And so then they introduce you to the missionaries. You have the discussion, discussions where the doctrine is transmitted. You start learning the Mormon pseudo personality. Don't drink coffee, don't drink tea. Don't. Don't smoke. Don't drink alcohol. Cut your hair. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:47] Get the countenance of Christ.

John Dehlin [01:15:49] Countenance of Christ.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:49] Be smiley thing.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] Wear a white shirt, wear a dress, don't show your shoulders. You're starting to install the Mormon image, right? Then you create dependence. You need the church, you need them for the ordinances, you need the sacraments so that you can get forgiveness regularly for your sins. You know, and you need to start paying your tithing. And of course, if you don't pay your tithing, then all of a sudden you're not able to do some of the other more advanced rituals. You get isolated so that only your friends are Mormons. You really start becoming distant from family members or friends that, that aren't Mormon because they start thinking you've joined a cult, which makes you feel like, you know, they're offensive and you want to stay away from them. Plus you've got all these new friends. Plus you're all. Your old friends aren't living the lifestyle. They're drinking, they're smoking, they're watching things they shouldn't be watching. So you start isolating yourself, surrounding yourself with Mormons. Then you start getting subjected to the fear and the shame and the euphoria. General conference, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir talks about the atonement, pornography, oh my gosh, masturbation. How do I, you know, oh my gosh, my spouse may cheat on me. Am I going to be able to raise good kids? So all this emotion comes at you. You, general conference talks, etc. You learn all the new logic through Mormon apologetics, through indoctrination, so that you basically process everything through the filter of, Of. Of the Mormon worldview, which pushes away science, which pushes away evidence, progressivism, liberal politics, whatever. You have to push away so that you can reject any information or thoughts that don't jive with the worldview. And then they're all. Once you're in and your kids are in and your spouse is in and. And all your friends are in the circle and your identity's wrapped up in it, then it's much harder to leave and you become a missionary. And what's the best way to receive confirmation that your beliefs are right? It's to convert other people. And if you convert other people, that becomes, including your children, that becomes its own reinforcer for you. Do I kind of have that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:01] Yep, you explained it better than I could. In fact, the next slide, I do have some little examples of. Okay, more phrases.

John Dehlin [01:18:08] Yeah, I love it. Yeah, let's just dig in more.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:10] You covered actually a lot more than I do. I mean, it's just a slide. So love and service, it's how they get you in.

John Dehlin [01:18:16] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:17] Be contrite, be humble. Be as a little child is how they destabilize you. Again, exam. There's tons of examples for each of these. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] Be as a little child. That's so good. Right? Be humble.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:29] Children were unstable. Right. We're not learned yet.

John Dehlin [01:18:31] The learned are prideful. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:35] And then what's this? Establish trust. Open. Be open to the Spirit. We have the keys of the priesthood where the authorities.

John Dehlin [01:18:42] Here we talk to God. Right. We have a direct communication with God.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:48] And then indoctrination. New teaching, eternal truths, line upon line, precept on precept. And then installing the pseudo personality. You have a mighty change of heart. Perfecting the saints program. I don't know if they still have that. Again, I left 20 years ago. 20 years ago. I just let my anniversary, my 20th anniversary just come and go. But anyway, perfecting the saints was a program. At least it was around at the time.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] No, that's one of the three missions of the church now. There might be four, but it's certainly there. Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:19] And then creating defendants dependence. Rely on the Lord. Walk in faith. Lean not into thy own understandings.

John Dehlin [01:19:26] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:27] Isolating you seek after these things. Seek only after the uplifting things and praiseworthy things. And avoid the appearance of evil. For emotions there's the wages of sin. For fear, we reprove with sharpness. For shame and have the spirit. For euphoria. For the logic. There's all kinds of stuff that helps. Helps keep you in hold of the rod. Stay by the tree, stay in the boat. Pray fast and read the scriptures. Avoid apostasy. Avoid apostasy.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] For don't exit and apostates. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:58] Yes, definitely. Don't talk to anyone. And that's under Malou Control, which we'll have slides for in one of the next presentations. And then preach the gospel.

John Dehlin [01:20:09] Every member a missionary, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:11] Yep, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:20:13] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:13] Okay, next slide. We're not going to spend much time on this one. This is, this is in my book again, it's just another bird's eye view of how all these fit together. So each, each of those ones on the side there are the specific mind control technique and sort of what role they fill, what thing they do. So real briefly, because I don't want it. We could spend all day on this one. So if you want to resolve dissonance in favor of the group, you'll use thought terminating cliches, doctrine over self and so on. The carrot that gets people to come in and stay in would be euphoria, mystical manipulation, love bombing and elitism and so forth. So that's if people want to just plug in my book real quick. You want to get my book? I might have this on my website. I'm not sure. But you can study that more in depth if you so choose.

John Dehlin [01:21:00] Yeah. Excellent.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:21:02] On YouTube too. To stare at it longer.

John Dehlin [01:21:04] Yeah. And I'll just, I'll just show this book again. Recovering Agency by. By Luna. Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. There's also an audio version of the book, correct?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:21:16] There is, yeah. BJ Harrison was awesome. He. He's a great reader. I love the work that he did for that. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:24] All right. So that's, that's an important slide for you to dig into more things. But we won't dig into that now.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:21:31] Nope. So let's do some actual mind control techniques.

John Dehlin [01:21:35] So we're going to cover six now, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:21:37] Yep, sure. Okay. Sacred Science. This is one of them that was identified by Robert J. Lifton when he was studying prisoners of war coming back from Chinese mind control prison camps in North Korea in the 50s. And it basically, this is what puts the total in totalism. This is the overarching thing. It accomplishes actually a number of things. So we'll talk about that. It appeals to your ideals. It says, this is the system. This is the one. This is what's going to change the world. It merges the mystical with the rational. We'll talk about that in another slide. I think gives you the answer to everything. This is it. This is. Doesn't matter what problem you have in your life. It's everything unlike, say you go to a doctor and your arm hurts and he gives you pain medication and tells you to stretch. That's a very specific thing. He doesn't say he's going to change your life or find your spouse or make you happy or fix your trauma or any of that. It's just he's fixing the one thing, verse, sacred science is everything. It plays, pays lip service to reason, freedom, individualism, and all of the other mainstream values that we have, peace and hope. It has to address those, otherwise people wouldn't want to join. And like I said, it puts the total in totalism. Next slide.

John Dehlin [01:22:55] Yeah. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:57] For it to be sacred science, it has to be an infallible system. Number one, this is the only truth. This is the one, the straight and narrow way. It's the only thing. And it has to be universal. It has to apply to everybody. There might be a few exceptions to the universal clause. I think there are some. But many of these totalist groups is meant for everyone. We want to convert everyone. We want everyone in this. These rules that we're describing applies to everyone. It's not like a lot of other programs where it's like, well, this is for you. But if it's not for you, then that's okay. It's like, no, this is for you and definitely for you. Number two is its doctrines and leaders are indistinguishable. So the leader speaks for God or uniquely presents scientific laws if it's not a religious thing. So this is like, if I question the leader, I'm questioning God. If I go against the leader, I'm going against God. If I badmouth the group, I'm badmouthing God. Those two have to be connected. Again, if it's not a religious group, that might be a scientific law or a system. And the third thing is, because these are unquestionable things and it's one with God, then any expression of questions, doubts, criticisms are not allowed.

John Dehlin [01:24:08] Yeah, and this is just so. I mean, to me, this is the core. This is the root of what's problematic about the Mormon Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It claims to be God's one true church on the earth. Earth. They call it the fullness of the gospel. Right, the plan of salvation. It's universal, it's the path. And you get the sense that it is an infallible system. Even though they'll admit you're allowed to talk about flaws in the past, you're never allowed to talk about flaws in the present. The leaders can't be flawed now and the church can't be flawed now. But yeah, the doctrines and leaders are indistinguishable and the leader speaks for God. I think if I could make one thing illegal, it's that anyone could ever claim that they're speaking for God, because it all starts there. And that's how it starts. It's just too much power to give any one individual to allow them to claim that they have some direct divine access to God and they get to speak as God's mouthpiece. That's where all the problems start.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:25:17] And it doesn't make sense to me that God would even do that. The being so vast and amazing would think that he could communicate to one person and have that person communicate to other people when, when all of us know that anyone can lie. It just, it baffles me to this day.

John Dehlin [01:25:36] Yeah, yeah. And so if you're, if your church claims to have all the truth and to be the one true path, which ours does, if the leader claims to speak for God, which ours literally does, and then if expressions of questions or doubts or criticisms aren't allowed, look at all the excommunications, look at all the shaming, look at all the, the bishop's interviews and, and you know, it's just clear that Mormonism just 100% fits and employs sacred science as a means of, of coercion and control. That's just.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:26:06] It does. And I have some LDS quotes coming up too, if anyone.

John Dehlin [01:26:10] Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:26:11] This is Lifton again. I love how he says stuff. The assumption here is about sacred science. He's saying the assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather man's ideas can be God. Science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles. Its appeal lies in its seeming unification of the mystical and the logical modes of experience, which can create an extremely intense feeling of truth.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] Yeah. Have you heard that? Have you heard that saying, what is, what is being right feel like. It feels a lot like being wrong. In other words, when you, when you feel something is right, it feels the same way whether it actually is right or wrong. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:26:55] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:26:56] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:26:57] Yeah. So the next slide we actually get to. You know, if anyone's wondering if Mormonism fits any of these, there's a couple of quotes, of course. I memorized this one in seminary. I believe every knee shall bow and every tongue confess before him. Yea, even at the last day, when all men shall stand to be judged of him. And then shall they confess that he is God. And they shall quake and tremble and shrink beneath the glance of his all searching eye. And I just sort of tongue in cheek, I'VE got a picture of Sauron's eye there for people who are watching.

Sacred Science and Black-and-White Thinking in Mormonism

John Dehlin [01:27:27] I'm also thinking of Jesus saying, I am the way and the truth and the light. No man cometh unto the Father except by me.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:35] The intro to the Book of Mormon saying it's a perfect book, things like that.

John Dehlin [01:27:40] Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:41] So the next one has a D and C. What I, the Lord have spoken, I have spoken. Oh, this is the one I memorized in seminary. What I, the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and excuse not myself. And though the heavens and earth shall pass away, my word shall not pass away, but all shall be fulfilled, whether by my own voice or by the voice of my servants. It is the same.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] In other words, my servants speak for me. So whether it's your bishop or your stake president or the prophet, you may as well be talking to God, Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:28:10] Exactly. Yeah. You can't question them or you're questioning God.

John Dehlin [01:28:13] Right. Too much power. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:28:15] Thomas Monson recently, by the way, when I choose these quotes and my book is full of way more of them to show this, I kind of tried to pick from a broad range of times that someone alive today probably will have lived through, starting, well, me, stuff I've lived through, starting with the 70s. A lot of that was based on what was available on the church website. It went back 30 years. At the time I was researching the book, so I try to kind of show this is like a pattern. So this is from a 2013 conference talk from Thomas S. Monson. There is no need for you or me in this enlightened age when the fullness of the gospel has been restored, to sail uncharted seas or to travel unmarked roads in search of truth. A loving heavenly Father has plotted our course and provided an unfailing guide. Even obedience, a knowledge of truth and the answers to our greatest questions come to us as we are obedient to the commandments of the Lord.

John Dehlin [01:29:08] Yeah. It's basically saying, hey, we've got this. You don't need to worry. Just trust us, follow us, believe in us, and everything's going to be taken care of.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:29:17] Yep. And one more quote. This is going back to the 70s new era, this one. The logic baffles me, so I might script the words, but this is equating science with the mystical goes again. This is a new era. Quote. Faith, like science, is based on evidence. It is no more subjective and ignorant of evidence than secular knowledge is objective and unbiased about evidence instead of looking away from the facts of the real world. Faith is one way, among many others, of looking at the world. Thus faith need be no less intellectual and well founded than a scientist's belief about the temporal world. And provided the faithful person is pure in heart and is honest and unrationalizing about the evidence he receives. I was basically saying faith, evidence, it's all the same thing.

John Dehlin [01:30:04] I'll never forget I had a meeting once with Elder Holland who, who is basically saying, hey, you know, organic evolution and Charles Darwin can be easily reconciled with Mormon belief. You know, maybe evolution is just the way that God evolved mankind. But what that doesn't jive with is the timeline. Because if you look at the timeline of the Bible, in theory it puts us back about 6,000 years ago. But, but we know that evolution has been going on for billions of years, but there's this kind of hand wavy thing that, that religious people can do which is just to kind of state that that faith and science are, can be commingled and harmonized when in reality the evidence doesn't really, doesn't really confirm that. But if you say it enough, convincingly enough, people are just going to buy it and go, okay, I guess evolution can be God's way of evolving mankind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:31:03] I was actually really good at meshing science and technology and the scriptures when I was in there. And I'm actually still really good at it. Like, I feel like I'm better at apologists than to actually come up with this and like, but the thing is you can't take the Bible literally if you want to do this. So the literal Adam and Eve story, figuratively. Yeah, it could work. These are the first, you know, humans who achieved civilization level awareness, you could say, and that would fit the 6,000 year timeline. The garden is a metaphor for a state of innocence, of being an animal and speech, you know, Adam, Adam was the one who named all the animals, so he's the one who invented speech. And so it's a figurative story about the invention of language and thus falling from that state of innocence by, by learning morality, which is another thing that separates us from the apes, you know, so I'm good at explaining that stuff away. But you can't take the Bible actually literally. In order to do it, you gotta bend things and go with metaphors.

John Dehlin [01:32:02] Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, whether it's the Tower of Babel or the, the Global Flood or all the historical problems with the Bible and the Book of Mormon, it's just really hard to square either any of those books with, with the scientific and the historical record. It's not impossible, but when you, when you do that, it, it's, it's a, it's usually a matter of confirmation bias where you're ignoring the evidence that's disconfirming and you're grabbing onto the evidence that's confirming. But it's, but it's, it, it, it doesn't really square. It's a great example of how cognitive, you know, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are employed every day.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:46] Modifying the cognitions. Yeah. Together.

John Dehlin [01:32:49] Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Okay, so I think, I think the Mormon Church gets a plus on sacred science.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:56] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:32:57] All right, what's the second tool?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:00] So black and white thinking is a way that an organization can offer you a choice without offering you a choice. So I used this famous quote, I hear it all the time from George W. Bush. You're either with us or with the terrorists.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] A false choice, Basically.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:16] Yeah, it's a false choice. Every, every nuance is categorized into one or the other. There's no in between, good or bad, liberty or death. It's all got to go love or

John Dehlin [01:33:29] hate, God or Satan, God or Satan.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:31] Right. Heaven or hell. It's all got to go in one or the other. Now, we go along with this as human beings because it simplifies everything. It makes it easier for us. In fact, in my own decision process, I noticed that I. But this is my personal choice, not someone else dictating it to me. Like, if I'm looking for a new car or somewhere to live, I try to reduce down my number of choices by process of elimination as much as I can until I've got down to two or three choices, and then I can really compare them much more closely. So it is a shortcut, a mental shortcut. But an organization uses this maliciously. It's not self directed. You're not making those choices. The organization is making them for you. And so let's see, next slide. So it's kind of like this is a reference to an old game show called let's Make a Deal where you had to choose between three different doors and one door had a new car and the other two had goats. But let's say you choose door number A and the new car is, you know, a Ford or something. I don't know. Fords are probably good now, but it's a piece of crap car. You don't want it, but you kind of have to choose that because you don't want a goat. I mean, goats are hard to take care of. So maybe you don't want what's behind door Number one, but door number two and number three are worse. And so that's where we have again choosing between liberty or captivity. And the picture I show a medieval painting of people climbing a ladder to heaven and demons are trying to pull people off down to help.

John Dehlin [01:35:00] I'm, I'm, I'm, I apologize. I'm not understanding the goat and white thinking. I understand the game show concept of sometimes participants are asked to pick between three doors.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:12] But yeah, I think it was more of a joke in the, in my original presentation I actually had it like all written so I have my timing be all right and, but it's just a way to limit choices. Maybe what your real choice is, you want a new house. Like you don't want any of the things that's under sea, but you got to choose one of the one. And really it looks like it's three choices, but really it's two. I mean one has a treasure. In the picture it shows one has a treasure chest and the other two have goats. But it really is only two choices even though you think you have three.

John Dehlin [01:35:44] Right, right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:45] Yeah. So.

John Dehlin [01:35:46] So it's creating the illusion of, of kind of a binary choice that's forced, correct?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:52] Yeah. The illusion is that you have more choices, but really it's only two.

John Dehlin [01:35:55] Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:57] So the next very.

John Dehlin [01:35:58] They're very, they're prescribed, they're very, you know, it's very controlled choices to the benefit, to the benefit of the person telling you you only have two choices.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:36:09] Right, exactly. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:36:12] So this accomplishes a number of things for the totalist group. It contributes a feeling of being right. I'm one of the good guys. A self righteous sort of feeling and a feeling of safety along with that. It isolates you from people who think a little differently than you do because, well, they've chosen the wrong way. And it closes your mind to influence from outside information. So again, I already talked about this. But influence, all the nuances are relegated to good versus evil. You can't just look and say, well this has some trade offs, there's some benefits to it and some negatives. And. But if I choose the other way, there's different benefits and negatives. You're not really allowed to do that. It makes every decision or makes direction very simple. So the leader, all they have to do is say that's bad. And they don't have to produce any evidence. They don't have to say, well it's bad specifically because of this, this and this and show the evidence for that. They just have to say it's bad. Sort of like the quote from Bush that I had. You're either with us or the terrorists. He didn't have to say, okay, here's the reason why my policies are what are good, and here's what my critics are saying and address those things. He just had to say, you're a bad person. And then it also creates a habit of intellectual laziness where you don't really have to think about anything. I hope that word isn't too harsh. Again, I don't want to blame any person for taking these things on. I think that they were coerced onto us. But it does create a system where you're not really willing to think that that muscle, that muscle of, I'm going to really dwell on this, I'm going to research it a little bit, I'm going to consider all the angles. That muscle starts to relax and atrophy and you're not used to using it. So you do stop using it in a lot of ways and just, just listen and follow the direction of the person who's directing you.

John Dehlin [01:38:01] Yeah. When I'm thinking about this, I think of the Book of Mormon teaching about the great church of the Lamb of God or whatever, and then the great and abominable church. And this is what's in the Book of Mormon. This is how I was raised. It's either the Church of God or the Church of Satan. And of course it feels good to be one of the good guys. And if you just think about the type of language we're allowed to use within a Mormon context, you can't get out and bear your testimony and say things like, hey, I know the Book of Mormon has good things and it has bad things. I know the Mormon prophet, sometimes he gets it right and sometimes he gets it horribly wrong. You know, I know this church is good and bad. You know, try, just try and use that type of language regularly within a Mormon church context, and eventually you're going to get yourself isolated and marginalized in, let's just say, many or most situations. Because what is reassuring to the membership is this is the one true church with authority, that God's leading it. And as soon as it starts getting watered down, it starts losing what's compelling about it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:06] Right, right. And I've seen those. A couple of those testimony meetings where they shut someone's mic off. I can't remember the specific examples, and I don't spend a lot of time in the ex Mormon world anymore, but I have come across those words. I think one was someone was coming out like a teenager was coming out as being gay. And they cut her mic off, off in the middle of it.

John Dehlin [01:39:24] It's like, absolutely not an option. Yeah. And what you definitely can't do is get up and say, well, here's the things I like about the church, and here's the things I hate about the church. Or, here are the ways the prophet gets it right, but here's the way the prophet gets it wrong. You start talking about that, you're going to be eventually escorted off the premises if you do that long enough.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:42] And for anyone who hasn't experienced a group where you are allowed to say those things, there are groups out there where you are allowed to say, you know, hey, I really like this place, but there's a couple things that are wrong with it. Can we deal with that? All kinds of groups of all kinds of interest areas that do that. So it is possible.

John Dehlin [01:39:58] Yep, it is possible.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:00] Yeah. The next slide is we're going to get into some quotes here about what the church, just to prove it, to show the evidence that the church really does do this. Delbert L. Stapley, in the incident in 1975, said, There is no middle road. Our position must be one of strength in order to overcome the evil that Satan would have us do. Next slide. Wherefore. This is from Nephi. Second Nephi, wherefore men are free according to the flesh and call things, call things, give are given them. I think I mistyped that which are expedient unto man, and they are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the great mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death according to the captivity and power of the devil, for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. Next slide.

John Dehlin [01:40:45] Those are the basic choices.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:47] Those are.

John Dehlin [01:40:48] Yeah, okay, little punchline there. He chose poorly. It says.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:55] And another movie reference that came to mind while I was thinking about this morning is in An Interview with a Vampire, which is a great movie. It's rated R, though. And the vampire Lestat is. Has just drained Louis the human of all of his blood. And this is the point at which he's either going to die or become a vampire. And Lestat says to him, I'll give you the choice I never had. And that's the power of that moment. He doesn't have a choice. He's either going to die or he's going to become undead. And that's the only thing that he has. That's another example of that situation.

John Dehlin [01:41:32] I also love the south park clip where it Shows everybody in hell. And there's a guy with the clipboard and he's saying, welcome to hell, everybody. And then, and then the, and then somebody speaks up, hey, wait a minute, I'm in the wrong place. I, I did everything that I should have been doing. And the guy's like, well, which church? Which church were you? And he's like, oh, I was, I was a Methodist. He's like, sorry, you picked the wrong church, you know, and, and same with the Presbyterian and the Lutheran. And, and in that case, it was the Mormon Church. That was the right answer, but I think it was satire.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:03] I think, yes. And I've got a Mormon joke to do with that, but I don't want to take too long. Don't tell the Mormons. They think they're the only ones here. That's the punchline to that one, right?

John Dehlin [01:42:13] I've heard that before.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:15] So here's some antidotes to black and white thinking. First of all, the world is an infinite spectrum of rainbows and everything in between. It's not just even a range of grays, it's everything. And the LGBT reference here is not accidental. And think about things in terms of trade offs, things. Some things are, you know, everything comes with a price. Everything has what you're willing to take about it and what you. What you're willing to not take about it. And you try to mitigate those as you can. Every choice is like that. And just because something bad happens to you because you made a choice, that's just one of the trade offs, it's one of the risks that you took. It doesn't mean that Satan is out to get you or that God is punishing you. Each person has a right to their own experience, as everyone. Mormons who have great experiences in the temple have a right to that experience, but so do Mormons who had bad experiences in the temple. Everyone has a right, especially to their subjective experiences, what's meaningful and personal to them. I think that that's sacred, and I try to respect that as much as I can. As long as the person isn't using that to harm other people. That's when I get my wrinkles up. When people start getting hurt by their behavior or their words. Absolutely unnecessarily hurt. I would say sometimes you got to say things that are just, you know, going to hurt. That's. It's a nuance. There's, again, it's nuance. There's a lot of moral, you know, nuances there that you have to navigate. You just have to do your best. Capital truth versus small T truth. We have objective truths versus subjective truths. And we'll discuss that a little bit more in part three. It sort of really helps. You know, this, this iPhone is real. It's, you know, it's solid. It's a real object. We can all agree that it exists. That's an objective truth. A subjective truth is I don't really like milk chocolate. I love dark chocolate. I love it, I'll eat it all the time. And I like milk chocolate. And that's me, that's mine. Other people, my mom really loves milk chocolate and so I respect that. And when I buy her chocolates for Mother's Day or whatever, oh crap, that's coming up. I try to buy her milk chocolate because I know she won't eat the dark chocolate. So we can respect each other's subjective differences and we can make room, make space for that, for other people's truth and we don't have to invalidate. I don't have to feel bad that my mom likes milk chocolate. That's not a reflection on me at all. F. Scott Fitzgerald has a famous quote. The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to find function. That kind of addresses that. I can, I can, even with objective stuff, I can see your point. Like I may not still agree with it, but I can make space for that in my head.

John Dehlin [01:44:54] Yeah. And this is also so very Mormon. Mormonism really does encourage black and white thinking. And you know, as, as neo apologists like Taro Givens or Patrick Mason or others are now emerging, trying to move Mormonism into this middle ground of, of a multicolor spectrum. The problem is the value proposition. Because if the church is all true and if the prophets are literally speaking to God, well that's good to know and that's really valuable. If the prophets get it wrong as often as they get it right. If God's will is often tainted through that glass, we're seeing through darkly. And if half the time the revelation actually ends up being just social pressure, then the value proposition of Mormonism becomes a lot less compelling, I think. And, and that's kind of what we're dealing with. We have a really good comment from one of our listeners, Akeem. He writes, and I think you would agree with this. Akeem writes, same cult like tendencies in politics, especially in the two party system. And he lists Republicans and Democrats, which, which I agree with, I think Republicans and Democrats can be, can engage in black and white thinking, totalistic kind of ideologies that leave little room for nuance. And I, I'm gonna be the first to condemn. I just hate partisanship, personally. I hate dogmatic Republicans and dogmatic Democrats

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:25] and it benefits those in power. And that's where, you know, I, I don't wanna get too much in politics. I lean left.

John Dehlin [01:46:33] Yeah, I don't either.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:34] I lean left but I don't always agree with what my party, the party, I mean, you know, so yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:46:42] So yes, this applies to MLMs, multi level marketing organizations, family systems. It can apply to any real type of organization. Corporations and there have been smaller political

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:53] parties that were full blown, like what you would think of as, you know, Branch Davidians, like insular. A particular leader who has always been the leader, who is, is very abusive. I've read about a couple of those and yeah, that's also a thing. Activism groups, same thing, anything.

John Dehlin [01:47:12] I love it. Okay, so I think the Mormon church gets an A plus on black and white thinking. I do think that they're trying to change that, but I think what we find is that churches that go more towards a spectrum way of thinking end up becoming weaker and dying. And so the church is having to choose between staying strong and rigid and potentially breaking and becoming more flexible but dying slowly. It's a tough choice.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:47:43] I'd get re baptized if they take me as I am without trying to change who I am. But the thing is I wouldn't pay tithing. I might give them a donation every once in a while if I thought they were actually using it for building digging wells or feeding people. And I wouldn't go to church every week. I mean I've got the Unitarians, I could go to them and I, I don't, I've got the, the, it's the restore church where they call them now, Community of Christ I think. And I, I could go there and I, I don't want to get up on Sunday. So yeah, I would join and I would be a number in their ranks and I would talk about them but I wouldn't, I wouldn't be very active. So yeah, yeah, that's the problem.

Doctrine Over Self and the Culture of Perfectionism

John Dehlin [01:48:19] All right, A plus on black and white thinking. Third point is doctrine over self. Let's see if the church meets criteria.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:27] All right, so doctrine of over self is the idea that the doctrine has to be far more important than each individual. The group has to win over individual preferences and whims. And this leads everyone in the group to sort of congregate towards a specific Personality that's been established as the group as being the ideal personality. And that elevates doctrine over individual. This helps accomplish stifling of thoughts and feelings. Your own personal, inner. I still call it the still, small voice. I don't believe it's an external spirit, but your own subconscious, your own gut feeling, your yearnings, you have to stuff them down. If they don't comply with the church. And that's everything from doctrinal things like don't drink coffee, don't watch rated R movies, and sort of the big stuff on down to the stuff that they're not very specific on. But there are certain things that are frowned upon. You know, like when I was a teenager and was thinking about going into music, and some people around me were like, well, I don't know the music scene. There's a lot of sinners and wickedness in that field, so maybe you should kind of just stay away from that. It wasn't a commandment or anything, but. But it influenced me, and it did get me to sort of stuff down some of those talents. And also, there are certain ways that talents are to be expressed. You know, if you. If you want to play a hymn or play an uplifting piano piece at church, that's fine. But you want to get out of guitar and play rock music or even on the piano and play rock music, well, that's hold up, you know, hold up. Even in our creative endeavors, there's a very narrow definition of what's okay and what isn't. So we end up conforming ourselves and contorting ourselves into that narrow basket. And it also resolves all dissonance in

John Dehlin [01:50:10] favor of the group or tries to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:50:14] Yes. Attempts to. Not all of us past that church actually do this. Well, let's see, how does it do it? So, Mosiah, I think I also memorized this one in seminary. For the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and putteth off the natural man. And becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord. And becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him. Even as a child, death submit to his father. And I have a picture of sad little boy here, and it's coming. Coming out of a history of abuse. I look at that, and I just, like. I'm appalled by it now. This Domineering. Very. You know, the child must submit. There's no conversation there. There's no empathy. There's no connection or love or leading with. With love. It's about submission and it's about contorting our inner child, making. Contorting ourselves. You know, we're. You're an enemy. God hates you unless you come around. And then. Then you'll be all right.

John Dehlin [01:51:27] Yeah. Yeah. It's just this idea that if you don't do everything God says, you'll be in Satan's power and thrust to hell. What type of parent sets up a system like that? Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:51:37] Yeah, it's the older baby. Yeah. The older I get and the more I learn about abuse dynamics, it just. It starts to turn my stomach after a while that even 10 years ago, I've been out of the church 20 years. Even 10 years ago, I was still kind of like, yeah, that's just the thing. But now I'm just all like, whoa, Patriarchy and dominance and abuse dynamics and trauma bonding and all of that just. It starts to. Authoritarianism. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:03] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:52:04] So the next one is. This isn't a scripture or anything. This is a quote from a memoir that I found online by someone I'm probably going to mangle. Her name, Pam Kasmir. She wrote it called Losing My Mind. Bit by Bit. I don't know if this is still online. It was when I wrote the book. She tells her harrowing tale of her exit story, which ended her up in a suicide hospital. And she says, I lost my identity. I lost all sense of who I was as an individual with a right to sleep, pleasure, fun, joy. Being a Mormon dehumanized me. I was just a worker bee, like in that beehive thing they use as their symbol. Rather than rest, I plodded on, just be a good pioneer woman. I was obedient to every rule. There had been so little time over the years for myself, I had forgotten I was even there at all. It's a hair. It's making me want to cry just thinking about her story. Anyway, so that kind of shows what our experience is of it. And then a couple more quotes. Dallin h. Oaks from 2014 conference. Beware of the slick package and glitz of a good time. What the devil portrays as fun can be spiritually fatal. By the way, you'll notice the other mind control techniques coming in here. So it's. It's using black and white thinking to create doctrine over self. And then George Orwell, 1984, thought, crime does not entail death. Thought crime is death. Now the next slide before you go on. Trigger warning. Oh, he went on.

John Dehlin [01:53:31] Oh, sorry.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:32] It does contain images of death. And I present this to kind of show the cost of. You can go on now. Just. Oh, if you have small children or are sensitive to these kind of things, you might want to turn the video off for this part. So now you can go up. Just wanted to warn people. When you hear about cults committing horrible atrocities, it's doctrine over self that they're employing mass murder suicide. This is how they're literally able to get people to give up their lives for the organization. Yourself is worth so little that. This is a photo from Jonestown in 1978, where over 900 people were. I'm going to say massacred. People often call it mass suicide, but I firmly believe that these people were coerced and manipulated into doing this. Even though each one took the Kool Aid with the cyanide in it, it's actually flavor aid. They took it willingly. It wasn't really willingly. I've listened to. They're available online, the death tape, the death tapes, where they actually have the recording of Jim Jones talking to his followers and convincing them to do all of this. And you can listen to him. And what's really creepy about this is how much he sounds like a general authority. His voice is very calm. He's got an elderly. He almost even has the Mormon accent. He's very kind, gentle voice. But he's telling parents to force their children. Sorry. So that's. I didn't expect to get emotional about that because I've talked about this before. But we can move on from that. That's. The stakes of doctrine over self is, you know, it convinces people to commit atrocities against themselves or others, because the doctrine is that much important.

John Dehlin [01:55:18] Yeah, yeah. And it is emotional. And, Luna, I appreciate your vulnerability there. If it's okay, I'm just going to go back really quickly to this doctrine over self. I think one of the most compelling examples is the. The LGBT example. You know, when I was talking with Mike Rinder and Leah Remini about Scientology, there. There were several people that were offended that we would ever compare ourselves to Scientology, because after all, Scientologists put people in prison. Scientology, you know, there's. There's members of Scientology that are missing. They do physical beating. You know, they're. They. They're very litigious, and they'll, you know, hire someone to buy a house across the street and harass you. Like, yes, of course, Scientology can be much more brutal and overtly mean spirited and, and abusive than the Mormon Church. But, but there's a strategy to that, and I call it nice cult or a benign cult or a friendly cult. And there's a strategy, but that doesn't mean that these principles aren't in play and that they aren't even deadly or more deadly. So, no, we're not poisoning people and having them commit a mass suicide, for example. No, we're not physically killing people intentionally. But let's just take the LGBTQ identity. If you are taught that your core attractions, who you love, who you're attracted to in the case of sexual attraction, or if you're taught that your gender identity is wrong, that the gender that you were assigned at birth doesn't align with the gender that you feel inside, you're taught that that's sinful, that that's wrong, and that those attractions or that gender identity is, in effect, evil, and that the only way that it's going to be fixed is ultimately is in the next life. You have to literally die to have your gender corrected or your sexual attractions corrected. What we all know now that's led to, is within the Mormon Church, thousands and thousands and thousands of people who died by suicide in epidemic proportions over the past 30, 40 years within Mormonism, because these people were asked to suppress and deny their core feelings or their gender identity and subjugate it to the church's, you know, 19 Cold War era teachings and principles around sexuality and gender identity. And so, no, the church isn't administering the poison, but it's almost more insidious because they're administering the poison through thought control and without ever administering any physical poison, it's leading to a larger number of deaths or family dissolutions or, you know, divorces in the case of mixed orientation marriages that end in divorce. And that's just the LGBTQ example. If you're science minded and you feel like science should trump religion, but the religion has sold to you its absolutist view of truth and of a worldview that is incompatible with science, again, you have to choose between the church's doctrine, Joseph Fielding Smith doctrine, or science, or you risk getting kicked out of the church. Or if you're a woman and you want to work and you don't want to have kids, you're constantly bombarded with this message that the woman's place is in the, the home, that there's no greater thing than the woman nurturing the children as she stays home with the husband working. These are all ideologies that teach doctrine over Self that lead to anxiety, depression, divorce, family marginalization, and sometimes death by suicide and death. And in some cases, many, many, many more deaths and many, many, many more broken families than a smaller, more extreme religion like Scientology could ever manufacture. And so in some ways the niceness becomes in the end, more dangerous and more fatal. Do you think I'm overselling that, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:59:55] I don't. And I also think how many people died crossing the plains and once they got there, the theocracy that they were under with Brigham Young, where they literally feared for their lives and there. I'm not big on Mormon history, but I dabbled in it just slightly, you know, and I have read some of the accounts of mysterious deaths that were thought to have been blood atonement killings, people who tried to escape in their journals and were either brought back or killed. I think of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, you know, especially in the early church, there are actually direct comparisons between those events and modern culture.

John Dehlin [02:00:32] Absolutely. So as. As troubling as it may be for anyone, anyone who knows the excommunication of Natasha Alfred Parker or me or Jeremy Runnels or Kate Kelly or the September Six or Grant Palmer, you know, just the list goes on and on. If you disagree with the church's doctrine, you're fired, you're excommunicated, and no one can doubt that. So unfortunately, the Mormon Church gets an A plus in doctrine over self.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:59] Yep. Demand for purity. I think we're going to have a similar grade here. I think that in terms of the thought for form techniques that I've identified, this one is they get A plus with extra credit. Demand for purity isn't just, you know, it's healthy to have. Want to be a better person. Maybe join a program that will try to make you a better person in whatever area. You know, I have a therapist. That's okay. What this is, is a whole other level. This is a demand for flawless perfection. It's not a request, it's not a suggestion. It is a demand. You have to be striving for perfection, for demand for purity. Again, I didn't write these criteria. This is other researchers who came up with this while studying other groups, high demand groups, and the increasing list of demands. First of all, it seems to layer on top of each other and then it takes up a huge portion of your life. This isn't like if you joined a bicycling club or a gym and you have a personal trainer and they're there and you gotta keep going, you know, no pain, no gain, and they're Just and. But that's about getting buff or being a good cyclist or winning a competition that's only about that. It may affect, like your diet because it's to do with your body and your exercise program, but then the rest of your life is up to you. This is about taking over your whole entire life with these various demands that you have. This is important part. The demands have to seem achievable, but are actually impossible. And it creates in each person a system of perpetual inadequacy. You always feel like you're not enough. Next slide.

John Dehlin [02:02:36] Yeah. Yep. I'm sure this is resonating.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:02:39] Yeah. So it reminds me of Cinderella in that story where she was told she could go to the ball if she did this rather large list of things. She did the large list of things, and she still couldn't go to the ball. And the fact is that she was never supposed to go to the ball in the first place. It was never. The wicked stepmother and sisters never intended for Cinderella to go to the ball. And that is an abuse dynamic that shows up also in domestic. All of these things show up in domestic abuse, by the way, to one degree or another. It's very similar to that. So, next slide. Perpetual inadequacy. In fact, if. If it's demand for purity in the literature, if I had named it, I would have called it perpetual inadequacy, because I think that that's just as big a part of this dynamic as any other part of it. First of all, it appeals to your sense of ideals. It says, we're going to change the world. We're going to make you a better person. And it makes the group look good. We're going to help all these people. We're going to save everyone. And number two, it instills a sense of unquestioning obedience. So this leader has the all the answers. Sacred science. And I have to follow their program or else I won't accomplish the goals that I've set out to do, like get to the celestial kingdom. Number three is purity applies to thought, not just action. So it can literally stifle doubt. And Mormon Church does this a lot. You're not allowed to even think a bad thought. You're not allowed to doubt anything is even that will violate your purity. Number four keeps the individual too busy and exhausted to complain or notice flaws in the organization. So you're working so hard to do this list, which you never see all at the same time. You only see whatever the General Conference is talking about that particular week or the Sunday school class that particular week. And so you think, oh yeah, I can pray that I can do that. And then the next week it's genealogy. Oh, I can do that. But you can't. And so you're always feeling like you're a little bit behind and you're always working and striving and, and you get so exhausted that plus you're raising a family and you have a career and you're doing all these things. At the end of the day, you're just too tired to even think about any of it. Number five. It provides an explanation for any unfulfilled promises made by the group. So we'll probably get into this a little bit more later on. But the group says, hey, you'll be happy. This is wickedness. Never was happiness. This is a program for happiness. This is God's way, is the way. And when that promise isn't fulfilled, well, now they have an hour out. You must not have done it right.

John Dehlin [02:05:03] You weren't doing it right. You were doing it wrong.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:06] Exactly. Number six. Which leads into number six, which is. It sets the individual up for the traps of blame reversal and double bind, which are both other thought form techniques. We'll cover blame reversal today. And it places the member in endless mode. So there is always. You're always flawed. You'll never. They don't tell you. You're always. Well, they kind of. It depends on what week. There's a lot of double speak. It depends on which, which Sunday school class you're in that week. But you know, it's. You can achieve perfection. It's a commandment. God gave it to you. You may be, not be in this life, it may be in the next, but sometime you can. But then the actual feeling that you feel all the time is that you are actually flawed. And so you always have to keep coming back to the group for redemption.

John Dehlin [02:05:47] Yeah, some people get frustrated that I, that I asked so many of my guests about masturbation and pornography, but I don't. I do it for only one reason. And I've said before recently that shame and guilt, and usually sexual shame and guilt is sort of core, is a core ingredient in the Mormon formula for kind of the hamster wheel of worthiness. Because you need people thinking they need Jesus and the atonement and thus their bishop and the church so that they can be in good standing. And you have to pick a ubiquitous or universal transgression or sin that, that can, that can make sure that across the board members are feeling inadequate and unworthy. Well, what's more ubiquitous than masturbation, especially with men, but definitely with women as well. And so that's why you will not see the church remove porn and masturbation from its emphasis on the fornication or. Fornication or sexuality. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:49] Any type of, like, I'm petting polyamorous. So that's totally out. All of that is completely out. And you're absolutely right. It is about something that we all have that we don't. It's not like food. Like, you absolutely have to have food or you are very, evidently very quickly dead. Sex is something that we need. We definitely very much need it. But you can live without it. You can actually survive without sex. And so it gives them a way to. And it's not just, just it's.

John Dehlin [02:07:17] It's.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:07:18] It's not just our external behaviors that they're controlling. They're controlling your emotions and they're controlling your thoughts, and they get in there. And if they can do that, if they can control your thoughts and emotions about something that we all need, like, well, not all of us asexual people do exist, but that most of us need, then they can control your thoughts about anything and your emotions about anything. That's sort of the proof in the pudding that they really, really have you.

John Dehlin [02:07:42] Yeah. And so you can't swear, you can't have any type of sexual relations with anybody. You know, you can't drink beer, you can't do any drugs, you can't drink coffee or tea. All of these. You can't even have bad thoughts. Right, Right. And all of these sort of rules and guidelines not only propel this nice, squeaky clean Mormon identity image that's important to luring people to the faith. Faith, but it also makes all the members constantly feel inadequate so that they have to get the hamster wheel of paying and praying and obeying so that they can stay bound to the church, so that the church has power and influence over them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:08:24] That's right. And then the church becomes the only source of, you know, maybe fleeting joy sometimes, depending on who you are and whether it fits well or not, it becomes your. Your only source. So if you had a competing source of joy, you know, you smoke weed every once in a while or something like that, then. And then you're like, oh, this is fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. I don't need to go to church to get that little.

John Dehlin [02:08:45] So the church condemns anything that would compete with it in terms of euphoria, for example.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:08:50] Exactly. Exactly. So next slide.

John Dehlin [02:08:53] All right. Oh, My goodness, this slide's overwhelming. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:08:57] Have you ever seen a list of all the LDS commandments in one place before?

John Dehlin [02:09:01] So for those who are listening, this is probably 50, 60, 70 commandments, all in this huge PowerPoint slide in four columns. That's virtually unreadable, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:09:12] It is. You're not meant to read this. I do have a list in my book, and I also have one on my website. I did. I went out, I listed all the ones I could think of, and then I went on a forum. I think it was postmormon.org at the time. Rest in peace. I miss that website a lot. And it's a list of. I came up with everything I could possibly think of all in one place. You'll notice that the church has never released this in a pamphlet, in a scripture, in a conference talk, in a Sunday school class. I have never once seen a list of every single commandment. Now, when I join a program where I have a goal that I want to accomplish, I often get lists like, you need to do these things. Like, as a writer. Here's some things that. Here's some tips that you can do to become a better writer. And sometimes I get those in, like, a form, like. Like, here's. Here's some of the suggestions that you could do to be a bread. And it's got a list of things. Well, that's because if I want to accomplish or if I have a personal goal I want to accomplish, I'll start writing a list. I'll make. I need to do this first and this first and this first. That's the thing. You're never meant to complete the list. If they showed you all of those commandments in one place, you would be. You would freak out and you would run away, and you'd be like, I don't want anything to do with this. I can't do it. You have have to be under the illusion that it's possible to do otherwise. You can't feel inadequate. That's where the. The feeling of inadequacy comes from. And that's key to this particular technique.

John Dehlin [02:10:35] And a Mormon missionary is never going to show this list to investigators because it would scare them away. And that's why there's a problem of informed consent, because people aren't really thinking about, you know, the fact that this is this massive commitment. They're just. It's. It's sort of dribbled out rule by rule, without a real understanding of what the totalistic commitment actually ends up being.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:10:59] Exactly. So let's See, am I just blowing smoke, or does the church actually teach these things? Let's see.

John Dehlin [02:11:05] Okay. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:11:07] Doctrine and covenants 82. 3. Nevertheless, there are those among you who have sinned exceedingly. Yea, even all of you have sinned. But verily I say unto you, beware from henceforth and refrain from sin. Less sore judgments fall upon your heads. For of him unto whom much is given, much is required. And he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation. And to the side is a Mormon ad. It's from the 80s. I don't. Do they still have Mormon ads? I don't know. When I was a teenager, that was the thing. You get the new era. And everyone had a new Mormon ad in it. And so this one's got someone washing their hands. They're very, very grimy. And it says, strong soap at the top. And the caption reads, but it feels so good to be clean.

John Dehlin [02:11:47] Yeah, yeah. Not to mention, don't show your shoulders and dress modestly. And, you know, all.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:11:54] All those has to go down to the knees was how it was when I was in church. Yeah, you had to kneel. The state present, it made you kneel to see if your dress touched the. Which is so gross anyway.

John Dehlin [02:12:05] Purity culture. Purity, culture.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:07] Exactly. Exactly. Here's another one. Matthew 5. 48. Be therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven is Perfect. And Abraham, 3. 25. And we will prove them herewith to see if they will do all things whatsoever. The Lord their God, shall command them. And there's a cartoon that I included. I don't know who to credit this from. I just found it on Google. A guy is wearing a ring around his waist, and he has a pole that goes up, and there's a ring dangling from that, and he's trying to reach for it, and he can't, because whenever he jumps up, he. He goes up, too. And the other guy who's ordering him around says, keep going higher. Jump higher. You can do it. Grab the ring. And he can't. He can never grab the ring, so.

John Dehlin [02:12:53] Right, Very good.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:55] Next slide, we have the Miracle of Forgiveness, the problematic book of all time. Spencer W. Kimball says, every sin is against God, for it tends to frustrate the program and purpose of the Almighty. Likewise, every sin is committed against the sinner, for it limits his progress and curtails his development. In our journey toward eternal life, purity must be our constant aim. To walk and talk with God, to serve with God, to follow his example and become as God. We must attain perfection in his presence. There can be no guile, no wickedness, no transgression.

John Dehlin [02:13:30] Yeah, it's this infinite standard that is just completely unattainable by design. I mean it needs to be unattainable or you get off the hamster wheel, which, with the only exception to that is the, is the second, second anointing, which is problematic in and of itself because it's associated with money and family connections and elite power.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:13:49] And by then you're in so deep, I mean there's only been like one or two people that have defected and, and come to tell about it. By then you're in too deep to, to get out. And that's kind of part of a lot of, of these high demand groups. They sort of have these circles, you know, and when you're out on the edge, it's easier to leave and the closer in towards the middle you get, you know. So for me, when I left I was a single parent, so I didn't have family connections. My child was under the age of seven of eight. He had not been baptized. I had friends outside the church that I'd met in college and through the Internet. And so I had a place to go. I had a much better social network outside the church than I did because I never, I'm autistic. I didn't really ever kind of fit in. It was hard for me to make friends within the church, so it was easy for me to leave. I kind of was. Even though I was raised in the church was a little bit on the edges. But I really feel for people who are married and have six kids. Like I don't think I, if I found Mr. Right like I was desperately seeking in my 20s, I'm really grateful that I never did because if I would have, I very well could still be in the church or have. Have led a much more difficult life.

John Dehlin [02:15:03] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:15:06] Let's see.

John Dehlin [02:15:07] Last slide on demand for purity.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:15:10] Yeah. This is actually from a study that was done at UVU by Christine Dottie, PhD. She studied a thousand students and she found that there was a connection between depression, perfectionism. Now in her work, she blamed it on the culture. She did not draw those lines back to the leadership. But as we've seen, I fully think it was. I don't think this is just people thinking it up and saying, hey, let's all demand for purity just because it's fun. I think this really did come from the top down, all the way back to Joseph Smith and before him the previous Christian traditions that, that he was influenced by and the quote here is that the results suggest that there is a culture of perfectionism related to depression found at uvu. Aspects of perfectionism found included internally imposed standards, externally imposed standards, and a high need for organization and competency. In addition, a person's perception of their spirituality or religious beliefs and experiences also played a role. Again, she's. She's saying it's their perception of it, but I fully believe that it was. And her work is really good. I think she did a couple of studies that I cited, or UVU itself did. In my book, I have a whole part on mental health and what the research was available at the time. I think there's a lot more available now. I wrote the book in 2014, so what was available there? So that kind of shows that there is a cost to this. There was another study that they did that showed. Showed that women were more likely to be depressive and have mental health issues like suicidal thoughts or eating disorder type.

John Dehlin [02:16:52] Mormon. Mormon women, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:16:53] Yeah. Mormon women after, on Sundays, like the ER just accepts that they're going to be accepting a bunch of Mormon women on Sundays for mental health issues after church, coincidentally.

John Dehlin [02:17:04] Yeah. There's one point I wanted to make on a slide earlier. You've got kind of this demand for purity and for perfection. You've got this big list of commandments. What's worth mentioning there, And I don't know if it's on this slide, but I think the granddaddy of them all is the law of consecration. Right. It's the fact that when you enter the Mormon Temple, you covenant to give all of everything. Your time, your money, your resources. And if I remember right, when I went through the temple, it said, even your own lives, if necessary, to the building and the strengthening of the kingdom of God. And so the commitment is total. It's not just these commandments. You're committing to give everything, including your lives if necessary for the kingdom of God.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:17:54] Right, Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:57] Yep. So demand for purity, purity culture and basically total commitment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:18:04] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:18:05] All right, well, I think the church, I hate to say it, but I think that the Mormon Church gets an A for purity culture. So that's so far it's all A pluses. So let's see if maybe blame reversal, the church gets less stellar marks.

Blame Reversal, Shame, and Their Psychological Harms

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:18:23] All right, so this one and demand for purity are kind of holding hands. They kind of go together. So, and I kind of mentioned this a little bit. When, when the church makes lofty promises and they don't come true, it's got to blame someone. So the church makes Makes these big sacred science and mystical manipulation promises. This is sacred. This is special. You're blessed to be born in this time, and wickedness never was happiness. And you, we're gonna give you the wonderful life. Following the gospel is going to give you a wonderful life. And. But because those promises will fail inevitably, that will cause cognitive dissonance. And so they have to resolve that somehow. So they. What they do is they say, well, that's all your fault. It's all your fault that you didn't accomplish these goals. And it's all your fault that you're unhappy. And this is actually a really common abuse dynamic. There's a abbreviation, I never remember everything. It stands for Darvo, which stands for deny. Oh, I can remember it. Deny attack, reverse victim and offender. So what you're doing is you're blaming the victim for this abusive system that's been set up for them to fail in to begin with. It reinforces the illusion of choice. So you think you're choosing to follow this path, but really it's. You think you're choosing to aim yourself at these goals, but the goals aren't actually achievable. And that motivates you to work all the harder, which, you know, you're noses to the grindstone and you're not able to look up and look around you and go, wait a minute, maybe this is all bs. And that all leads into the double bind and shame, which we'll cover shame today and double bind another time.

John Dehlin [02:20:00] Yeah, a couple. I know we're gonna. There are a couple more quotes, but a couple examples that come to my mind here. You know, some of the most fiercely serving, obedient, hardworking missionaries are gay and lesbian Mormons that were promised, if you serve the most faithful mission that you can, Heavenly Father will take your same sex attraction from you. And they become, in so many instances, the AP's on the mission because they're working so hard. But of course, the more they try, the more they try, it never goes away. And just like Zion's Camp, if you guys remember Zion's Camp, where Joseph Smith predicted that they were going to march down to Missouri and beat the Missourians because the Missourians were being mean. And of course they went down there and the Missouri militias beat back us. Well, what did Joseph Smith do? He blamed the members of the militia and said, well, you guys weren't faithful enough. You always have to bring the blame back to the member because the system can't ever be wrong. It can't be that Joseph Smith made a False prophecy. It can't be that the church, church is just harming a bunch of people. And so the, the gay Mormon, the lesbian Mormon, the bisexual Mormon, the transgender Mormon, the Mormon, male or female, who can't stop masturbating, you're doing it wrong. You're not doing it enough. You're not righteous enough. Keep trying. And again, that makes for great, great members or great faithful missionaries until people just burn out and either implode, their mental health implodes, their anxiety, their depression, gets to that of the woman, the hamster wheel of female perfectionism. You got to be the best mom, you got to be the best wife you can. You got to be, you know, the, the leader of the home. And it's just a toxic recipe for self destruction, for over overuse of prescription medications, for addictions to opiates, you know, within Utah and, and of course depression and even death by suicide. And it's always the members fault. You're never doing enough. It's never the church's fault. For example, having a deadly LGBTQ policy, that can't be the church's fault. Blame it on the altitude, blame it on, you know, the members, blame it on society, blame it on video games, blame it on Hollywood and the toxic media. It can never be the church's fault.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:22:30] Yeah, and the one that came to mind there too, when you were talking about women is raise up your children the way that they should go and they shall never depart from it. Well, the implied thing there is that if your child does depart from it, then you screwed up as a parent, you didn't do it right. And that one's kind of heartbreaking, you know, seeing that dynamic within my own family. So yeah, it's always your fault.

John Dehlin [02:22:52] Yeah, yeah, that's so difficult. Okay, some quotes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:22:56] All right, so this is from General Conference Gordon B. Hinckley in 1984. A woman wrote to me a short while ago with a great sense of frustration. She indicated that she had been defeated or had failed in most of what she had tried to do. She then asked, what does God expect of me? That sort of reveals our instincts as Mormons to turn that blame inward, which I feel we've been groomed or conditioned to do. Delber L. Stapley in 1975. Ensign, I think this was also a conference talk said every dispensation of the gospel since the beginning of time has come to a close not because God has failed, but because man has failed God by the improper use of his free agency. And if you remember from Sacred Science, by God, he means the prophet, and by the prophet, he means God. Those are interchangeable terms. So it's not that the church and the prophet has failed, it's that you all have failed. It's all your fault that even the world is coming to an end.

John Dehlin [02:23:50] I just can't emphasize enough this idea of original sin, of sin. Just the idea of sin. It is. We view it as, you know, we're all conditioned to think, oh, well, sin, yeah, we make mistakes, so we sin. That's a great teaching because we all need to stop making mistakes and we need Jesus in the gospel and the atonement. So, yes, sin. What we don't understand is it's just that initial teaching of the idea of sin that, that hooks us all in. If it were, if life were just like, oh, no, there's learning. If we were all just taught as children. No, no, no, there's no such thing as sin. There's no even such a. You know, all it is is you learn. And when you learn better, you do better.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:34] Right.

John Dehlin [02:24:34] Well, that's, that's a very positive model that we could all get behind. And when a kid does something that hurts someone, you just say, hey, hey, what you did just hurt someone. Let me teach you why you shouldn't hurt somebody and how you can act differently and look, then you'll do better. That's a healthy, productive system. But that's not how religions operate. Religions need a deficit model and a sin model. And that's why even the teaching of sin or original sin, and even the teaching of the need for an atonement, we all have positive feelings about Jesus. But it's actually. The atonement is actually an insidious doctrine because it's all based on a deficit model of your brokenness and you needing someone to make you clean and to make you whole. And that's complicated because we always think positive things about the idea of sin or of Jesus, this. But these teachings can actually be very insidious.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:25:29] They can, yeah. And another thing too is like, there's a difference between a sin model and a values model. Like, having values is very self directed. You know, my value system is very much about don't hurt people. Like, that's the thing, there's nuances there as to what that means. And I think about that really hard. And I try to live, and I sometimes accidentally do it, and I try to live by a model of just, you know, as the Wiccan creed goes, and harm none, do as you will. And so I've built my model around that. These things, the church said they were bad, but they don't actually, you know, like hurt anybody, so. Or there might be, they might hurt a little bit. Like I'm drinking some coffee here, so there's some, maybe some health trade offs or some positives and some negatives there. My choice to drink coffee. And so I'm ta. I'm with free agency, with full awareness, at least to the point that modern science has at this point. I can go and research that choice that I'm making and make the closest thing and take on the risk that I'm willing to take on to get the benefits that I'm getting from each choice that I'm making. I would caution people, I mean, it's tricky business because someone might just decide, well, my value system is I can just take what I want when I want it and go out and hurt people whenever I want. And I don't agree with that. But I think that there are reasons that I can explain why you shouldn't act that way that are self interest based reasons. And I think that. But also like that's a very different thing from like you were saying, it's sin. It's, it's the inherent fall of man. It's, you know, good versus evil. And there's either good or there's evil and that's all there is to it. And if you're, if you're going with the evil path, you're a sinner and we're all sinners. And I mean that whole thing is just a whole different conversation than an evaluation of your value system. And then trying to live by those values as closely as you can, that's an accomplishable goal, by the way.

John Dehlin [02:27:14] Right. I love it. And that takes us to Brene Brown and the teachings about shame, which religions also rely upon.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:21] Yeah. And I didn't quote a whole lot of, I didn't quote any cult people in this. I think I do in my book, Cult Researchers, because I think we all know what shame is a little bit, but we kind of don't. So my chapter in my book is Guilty.

John Dehlin [02:27:32] Okay, wait, wait. Is this a new, is this a new concept?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:36] It's. I mean, it's guilt and shame. Right?

John Dehlin [02:27:37] Is this one of the 31? Is this one of the 31?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:40] Yeah, it is. It's one of the.

John Dehlin [02:27:41] Okay, okay, sorry. So let me just go back for just one second then finish off Blame resource. So blame reversal, where if, if there's ever a question, if you do what the church says and it doesn't work out. It's always, you're doing it wrong. Can we. Is there any of us who are doubting whether or not that's wedded to Mormonism? It is. It is. It's a plus.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:02] Yeah. I don't know that the church has ever, like, apologized for anything.

John Dehlin [02:28:07] They literally. They literally have said, we don't apologize.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:10] Yeah. Like admitted fault for anything. And isn't that what, by the way, speaking of sin and value systems, is that what we're supposed to do? We're supposed to, like, as part of the repentance process, we're supposed to notice that we've done something wrong and then we're supposed to make amends and we're supposed to go to the bishop and confess that. But the leaders never seem to be part of that process. And the higher up the chain you go, the less part of that process. Process you are. And the organization itself never has a moment where they live by their own doctrine, which is that they should apologize and make amends and repent for things. They never do it. That's because the church is infallible.

John Dehlin [02:28:42] Yeah. And in fact, they're explicitly on record as saying, we do not offer apologies. So, yeah. Yeah, that's a big alarm. Someday the church is going to have to fix that because. But as long as Down H. Oaks is still alive, they can't. They're stuck with it. So that's a big problem. Okay, so now we're to the last of the. Of the six points we're covering today, which is shame. Okay, now jump in. Let's jump in to shame. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:08] And in my book, I actually, the chapter is guilt and shame. Those are two related concepts, but they're very different. And today I'm focusing on shame because shame is pretty useless. We'll talk about that. Guilt actually has. It's a. It's a reasonable emotion. It's gotta use. That's where I've. I've violated my values and now I feel bad about a person that I've hurt. And that motivates me to have behavior different, to change my behavior and to make it right. So guilt is. Is definitely abused by the church. But really, shame is the one that, in my opinion, shame has very few functional uses other than to manipulate and hurt people. So. Brene Brown is a social psychologist and a researcher. I think I got her title right there. And she's done it.

John Dehlin [02:29:57] She's actually a social worker, not a social psychologist.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:02] And she. She's done a number of TED talks and written a number of books and at least at the time, had some great videos on her website as well. And she's researched shaming in a great deal. So a couple of the differences of shame is one is, she said says shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is I am bad. Guilt is I did something bad. You can't fix broken. If. If I'm a bad person deep down inside, like, that's my inherent nature, which is what the feeling of shame tells us. There's not. There's nothing I can do to change that. And I can try. I can feel like I can change it. I can try. But the next day I'm just going to feel like a bad and broken person again. So there's no restoration that can occur there. Whereas guilt is I did something bad, well, that's an action that's actionable. I can. I can change my behavior in the future. I can make amends. I can do restitution for that action. That is something that is external to me, and I can do something about it. She also said shame is easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that if other people know it or see it, that means I won't be worthy of connection? And that's the thing is shame is a social emotion. I can feel guilt about something and no one else. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Shame absolutely has everything to do with what other people think of me. So I can even feel shame about things that aren't. I don't even think are wrong. And I'm a person with social anxiety a lot of the time, by the way. So I definitely know what it's like to feel shame when I don't actually think I've done anything wrong. I don't, like, rationally, I didn't. I misspoke or whatever. Nobody's feelings got hurt. I just. Just felt like I felt bumbling and awkward, and I'm feeling ashamed. That has nothing to do with what I personally value. It has to do with what I think other people think about me. And that's very much the difference between shame and guilt.

John Dehlin [02:31:54] I love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:55] Yeah. Okay, next slide. Shame makes us feel alone. It makes us feel unacceptable and unlovable. And we tend to hide our true thoughts and feelings as an antidote for that. And we'll get into the next slide. We'll talk about how shame isn't actually a good, good mechanism for changing behavior. So in addiction circles, there's. There this dynamic is brought up sometimes in that you know, there's the cycle of you feel shame, so then you feel self loathing. And then you feel so awful. You feel so awful. So then in addiction circles, you turn to your addiction of choice. So you start drinking again. Well, and the drinking makes you have bad behavior, or maybe you just feel bad because you're drinking again. So you're like, oh, I'm a terrible person, I can't stop drinking. And the people around you are like, you're a terrible person, you can't stop drinking. And that leads to shame and that leads to self loathing. Shame isn't very much about changing a person's attitudes or behavior. You can kind of change people's behavior by shaming them into not doing that thing. But internally they're still often going to have the same attitude. So shame to me isn't usually a very useful function. It can lead to lashing out. It can lead to self soothing behaviors that are not healthy like addiction and self destructive behavior. And it's also very core in the feelings of depression and suicide. And it's a self perpetuating cycle. And it just, it keeps. When you get stuck in that feedback loop, you just keep going in it.

John Dehlin [02:33:26] Yeah, it's super damaging.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:33:28] Yeah. So totalist groups, actually they have a purpose for shame. Like personally, you don't, doesn't get much out of it. But a totalist group can use it to control people. It destabilizes the self and helps them promote the doctrine over the self. Because again, you feel like a bad person, you're broken, you're perpetually inadequate because you're not meeting the demands for purity. And so then the blame reversal comes in where you're shifting that blame not on the group that is doing the bad things to you, but on yourself for having not been a good enough person to have avoided the problem that is coming up. And it also directs negative attention away from the group and back to yourself.

John Dehlin [02:34:06] Yeah. And so, you know, one example of this is the constant harping about, for example, porn and masturbation or law of chastity or modesty. Then you couple that with the fact that almost everybody's going to fail in one or all of those areas in their normative adolescent upbringing or young adulthood. And then you combine with that the fact that you have to have these bishops interviews where you're deemed worthy. You have to have your temple recommend, you have to be given permission to pass the sacrament or bless the sacrament or go do your baptisms for the dead or get married in the temple or go On a mission. And these are all mechanisms built into the Mormon Church to enforce the purity on the members. And the shame culture is built in because what happens if you masturbate and try and go on a mission? Everyone finds out that your mission was delayed. Or what happens if you have premarital sex before you try and go to the temple wedding? Well, then your marriage is delayed or postponed. Or Even if you're 12 years old and you confess masturbation. Oh, you can't bless the sacraments to all your buddies in church. See that they're all blessing the sacrament or passing the sacrament, but you can't. Or if you're a young teenage girl, well, somebody touches you where they shouldn't have, you confess. Now all of a sudden, when the sacrament comes to you in church, you have to pass it on by to the next person. We have shame, public shame built into our doctrine, our theology, our practices, and our visible church ordinances that whether it's intentional or not, insidiously enforces the purity culture on the members through public shaming. You can't even go to BYU if you sin, you get kicked out of byu, sent home from your mission. Shame through, you know, enforcement of purity culture through shame is just everywhere within. Within Mormon culture.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:08] One of my biggest fears as a teenager was that I would be raped. And the biggest fear about that was the shame. Just the burning, intense. Even the thought that that could happen to me. Just. It wasn't the personal trauma that I would go through or the problems that it would cause me as a person. It was how that would reflect on me in the eyes of other people. You know, I'd have to talk to the bishop, probably. And I couldn't even think about what I would have to do, what that chain of events would be, because it was just such an overwhelming experience of shame.

John Dehlin [02:36:38] So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love this next slide that shame is torture. Explain. Explain that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:45] So this is a study that was done that is particularly about social rejection. But I think that's pretty much the same thing as shame. They did a study with an FMRI where they put people in the machine and they, they had people go through pain. They probably used ice water. I don't remember. It's been a while since I read the study. But that's what they usually use in these. Went to simulate pain and they, they scanned the brain and they found these certain spots in the brain where pain was being experienced. And then they had different, the same people on a different day, I think it was come in and they, they asked them to remember a time when they had been rejected, broken up with, I think was. Was part of it. And they found the exact same parts of the brain were lighting up as with pain. And so when. When a group puts us through these shameful experiences, makes us. Us feel ashamed of normal human life functions that we do, they are literally causing us torture in the sense that we're. We're experiencing it the same way we would experience pain.

John Dehlin [02:37:48] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:37:52] And this is from Kristen Weir from the Pain of Social Rejection, which is. Was in the APA monitor on psychology in April 2012. Humans have a fundamental need to belong. Just as we have a need for food and water, we also have needs for positive and lasting relationships. And that's just how core it is. I mean, you can look and say, well, the church never beats anyone. They never punch anybody. They never even really say, like, call you names or whatever, other than sinner, you know, but that's okay. And, but what we don't realize, we don't starve us. They don't. Other than Fast Sunday. I mean, I'm finding exceptions, by the way, to all of these. But, you know, for the most part, they did treat people well. And so we tend to want to excuse it. But what we're ignoring here is just how fundamental our need is to accept it by other people. It's. It's just rooted deeply. And there's a condition called failure to thrive, where infants will. If they, they're not getting care and touch and they can have all the food they want, but in the same. In monkeys. They did research in the 70s and 60s with monkeys, all the food and water and every physical need met. But if they didn't have love from a warm, physical mother type being, they. They shriveled up and died. They just didn't care and they died off. So this is really serious. This is not some. We can't just dismiss this with a, with a flip of the wrist. This is. Is really serious stuff.

John Dehlin [02:39:20] Yeah, and this was really brought home to me in my recent conversation with Leah Remini and Mike Rinder. We were talking, you know, ex Scientologists, we were talking about comparing Mormonism to Scientology or, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. And you know, again, I, I was kind of doing an analysis and I said, okay, so we don't do hard shunning where it's like, you know, we'll never talk to you again if you leave the church. You know, kind of like with Scientology, where someone's labeled a suppressive person and you can never talk to them again. I said all that we do is. You may be cut out of the text chains that a family has, you may not be invited to certain family events, and most importantly, you'll eternally be viewed as a disappointment by your parents to the point where you could cure cancer and you would always be viewed as a perpetual disappointment by. By your family members. And Leah just made this point. But, John, that's. That's horrible. And, and all of a sudden I just realized, you know, that that really is true because we don't do the hard shunning like Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses. Then all of a sudden, what we do in comparison, we don't even register it as being comparable to torture. But if you are not invited to family things, if you are cut out of the family text chain, or if just simply you're viewed by everyone around you as a complete disappointment and as a failure, or by your own spouse as a constant continual disappointment, or you lose all your friends and the ward members and the social connections that you used to have, that really is tantamount to torture. And we as Mormons are conditioned to think, oh, well, the moral Mormon, we don't shun. We don't shun in the Mormon Church, but the truth is we do. And it is torture and it is diabolical. And if you don't register it as horrible, as abusive, as horrendous, you sort of give everyone a pass for what really is torturous and, and inhumane behavior.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:41:31] Yeah. And it's tempting to minimize it. And that's a thing that, you know, abuse survivors from all types of programs of abuse, whether it's spiritual abuse or domestic abuse is. There is a sort of oppression Olympics, you know, like. And we do it to our. I do it to myself, you know, well, my abuser didn't, you know, do this or didn't do that. So it's not. I'm not. My pain isn't as valid as someone else. And it's the same with these group dynamics, you know. Well, my church, you know, wasn't as bad as Scientology or Branch Davidians or Heaven's Gate or whatever. We didn't, you know, do any of that stuff. But it's still like, your pain is still valid. You're still. The bad things still happen to you. Even if it's lesser of a bad thing than happened to someone else. Your pain still happened to you and still hurts. And you still need comfort and you still need validation for that you still need other people to recognize that that hurt. And that's reasonable to feel hurt by those things, because in all honesty, they were intended to hurt you. If you didn't comply with the rigid demand for purity that the church laid out, then the church feels that you deserve to be heard. And it's all throughout their scriptures. God's saying it all the time. You deserve to be. Literally, God shuns people from the celestial kingdom. And it baffles my mind that I ever thought this was okay, But God is like, well, you didn't leave a perfect life in that life where you were behind the veil and you couldn't see anything anyway. But you. You still didn't live a perfect life. So I don't want you to live with me anymore. How. How is that love? Like, there were very few things that my son could do where I would say, yeah, you're banished from my life and I'm never going to talk to you. God shuns. That's literally how the whole program works. Like, even if you're celestial, even if you're terrestrial or telestral material, which we're told are pretty good people, they're just not perfect, but they're pretty good people. That's grounds for God to shun you for all eternity, forever and ever. To me, that just. It baffles my mind. Like, it's one thing to set boundaries and say person. Okay, if you're going to be hurtful to me, if you're going to be abusive and. And do bad behaviors in my presence, that is directly affecting me or the people I love, that's one thing to say. Okay, I'm going to need to put some distance between me and you until you figure that out. But that's not what God's doing. He's saying. Nope. Forever and ever and ever.

John Dehlin [02:43:49] Yeah. Yeah. And that. You know, that. That is abusive, and that's. That's a problem.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:43:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:00] Okay. So you have a summary slide on shame.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:44:02] I do. Yeah. So I think hate the sin, love the sinner seems okay on the surface. But you still. You're still a sinner. I mean, you're still shaming the person for what you're calling a sin. And as you mentioned, LGBT issues, a lot of times those sins are things that are just inherent to who you are. Those not even about your behavior. They're just things that you just are that way, and there's nothing you can do about it or. And you wouldn't want to do anything about it even if. If there were because you're not hurting anybody with that. Unconditional love, by the way, got sort of muddied. It was a loaded term within the Mormon Church. Got all kinds of ideas about what that was. But really, unconditional love is acceptance for who you are, not in spite of who you are. The people that I love unconditionally, there are people I love conditionally. And that's. That's. I think that's fine as long as I'm upfront about it and I'm aware of it and stuff like that. But the people I love unconditionally, like, I just like them for who they are. Like, they're not. Maybe their interests aren't exactly in line with mine, and maybe we don't always have things to talk about or some of their behaviors are annoying or whatever like that. But, like, I'm not seeking to change who they are fundamentally. I'm not. Again, if there's harmful behaviors, I might just draw some boundaries, like, please don't do that around me. But. But. But I'm still, like, loving, like, who they are as a person. So, like, when it comes to LGBT people, like, it's not hate the sin and love the sinner, it's you love the person that you. They're a human being. They're not just some sinner. They're a human being. And when you add demand for purity with blame reversal, that's when you get shame. I put up some words here. These are sort of words that have shame baked in with them that Mormons use a lot. And the implied opposite of that, again, black and white thinking there, you only are one or the other. So you can be worthy or unworthy. And what does that actually mean? Like, you're worth something or you're not worth something. That's the root of that word. You either be sacred or carnal. Again, no. Either blessed or you're not blessed. Like, there's no in between. You can be pure or unclean, or you can be perfect or be selfish. And we have a lot of those dichotomies within Mormonism of. Of, again, ways you can be. Not behaviors, but things to be ashamed about. Like, I am selfish, I am unclean, I am carnal, I am unworthy. And it's hard to change, like, who you actually are.

John Dehlin [02:46:22] Yeah, I love it. This is such a powerful slide. I have a comment from Akim. Again. He writes, I guess subtle, soft shunning can sometimes even be more emotional damaging than hard shunning because you're still part of the conversation. And are constantly reminded of your deficits. And I'll just add, Hakeem, that you're also still in contact with your abusers. If soft shunning, where you're viewed as, you know, let's just say you're married to a spouse who's a believer who thinks you are a constant disappointment because you are no longer, quote, a righteous priesthood holder, or you're constantly going to the family dinner every Sunday where your entire believing family kind of looks down on you, talks about you behind your back. You're constantly being exposed to what really is abuse because it's abusive to be viewed as a disappointment, to be viewed as a failure to be viewed as lesser than that is abusive. And so sometimes a hard shun, at least, is humane in the fact that you're cut off and you're not. You have to deal with the loss of that person, but at least you're not continually bombarded with reminders of your inadequacy and that you're a constant disappointment. If you're soft shunned and you're still in contact with your abusers, it's more chronic, it's not as severe, but maybe it's more damaging in the end. I think you really could argue that. And I just love this idea, Luna. And for me, I think I haven't fully processed my own Mormon, my own Mormonism, my own Mormon conditioning. And I just think it's, it's so powerful, I haven't really thought of it before, that the entire concept of heaven is, is rooted in shunning, that the whole multi levels that we as Mormons always sold as a virtue. It's like, oh, we don't have hell. We don't have an outer darkness. We just have a stratified celestial system that we're shunning and marginalization and ostracization and inferiority is structurally baked into the process where you either get to live exalted with Heavenly Father for eternity, or you're eternally shunned and stuck into an inferior caste where you don't get to be God and get all the benefits and the exaltation that is really insidious. It's basically shunning base heaven, a caste system in heaven, and how horrific is that? But somehow it's all been sold to us as, as kind and gracious and loving. Maybe that's true compared to sort of the hell and the heaven. But how is it, how is it not abusive?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:09] Right? And that's. And again, the older I get and the more experience I'VE had with interpersonal abuse. And the more I study and recover from my own traumas, just the more like horrific it gets. Just the more like, the less like I can accept the authoritarianism that is baked in. I mean we're either all equal or we're not. And Mormonism has nothing to do with equality. There's. We're not created equal within Mormonism. It's, it's strata, it's hierarchy. It's, you know.

John Dehlin [02:49:38] Yeah, well, unfortunately, I think the Mormon Church gets an A plus and shame. Now we're not the only churches that shame. Obviously Jews are famous for guilt and shame or Orthodox Jews as I've, as I've understood it. Catholics are well known for their guilt and shame. And of course Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses and others and even, you know, orthodox Muslims, they're all going to have their purity culture and they're all going to have their guilt and shame. But Mormonism, we, we thrive. We're built on shame culture. And so I think the church gets an A plus for shame. Unfortunately. Yeah, Carl says an A plus plus plus plus plus plus plus plus. So that's what Carl says. Okay, so Luna, today has been just amazing. We've done six of the 31 sort of techniques used to have undue influence over the membership. You do have a book which is a really good further reading reading list. List. Why don't you just read those out really quick because these are some really good books for further reading that are worth mentioning.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:50:49] Number one on the list is my book Recovering Agency, Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. Luna. Lindsay Corbin. The next one is Captive Hearts. Captive Minds. I really love this book. It was very empathetic by Madeline Tobias and John. I don't know if I'm saying right, Chandra Lalitsch.

John Dehlin [02:51:06] Lalitsch. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:51:07] Yeah. And there's a new version of that that I have not read, but I think it's just an updated version of Captive Hearts, Captive Minds called Take Back youk Life. What I like about theirs is they also include domestic abuse dynamics, which in my opinion are pretty much the same thing. Recovery from Cults, which is edited by Michael Langone. That is a collection of papers and essays that are readable by the average layperson and I really love. Some of them are about experiences that people have had and exit stories from other groups. Some of them are more clinical leaning or research based. I really got a lot out of that book. The Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton.

John Dehlin [02:51:51] Again, classic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:51:53] Yeah. I've really only have to admit I've really only actually fully read that one chapter. I think it's chapter 22, but I do own a copy and I flip through it again. It's older language, so harder to get through, but very poetic when you can sort of breach the density of the text and Releasing the Bonds by Stephen Hasson. So these are some of the top books that I liked the best. I liked a lot of books, but had to limit it down. And then the next slide isn't really meant for.

John Dehlin [02:52:22] Oh, really, really, really quick. If it's okay, I'm just gonna mention there is also by Stephen Hasson, Combating Cult Mind Control, which is a classic. I highly recommend that. And there's another one called Freedom of Mind. Helping Loved Ones Leave, Controlling people, cults and Beliefs. So this one is about understanding how cults work. It's got the bite model in it. Behavior, information, thoughts. Basically, as I, as I understand it, Hassan felt like Lifton was just, just too technical, too scientific, too hard to read. And so he basically acknowledges Lifton, but builds on lifting and condenses it into a more readable format. And then this is about helping loved ones see that they might be experiencing undue influence. That's freedom of mind. And I'm going to add to this recovering agency. You've already mentioned it. You want to understand Mormonism within the frame of these intellectual greats, you gotta get recovering agency. And so I'm just gonna ask all my listeners right now, please go buy this book right now. Go to Amazon. Buy this book. Support Luna Lindsey Corbden. They deserve your support. This is the best way. Do it for yourself if you want to deprogram. If you find yourself stuck in the. The discourse of Mormonism, stuck being able to move on, stuck being unable to heal, stuck in unhealthy patterns, it might mean you haven't done the work to really understand the hold that this conditioning that the Mormon conditioning has on you. And that doesn't mean you have to leave the church. There are plenty of listeners that love the church, that want to stay in it. This has nothing to do with whether you steal, stay or leave the church. You know, retain your membership, even attend. This is about freeing your mind, freeing your mind from the conditioning that you were raised with and whether or not you leave the church or reside from the church. That's a totally different question than whether you free your mind from the unhealthy conditioning. Is that fair to say, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:38] I think that's fair to say, yeah, absolutely. And you can fully stay in the church and read the book. I mean, it'll generate a lot of doubts for sure, and you'll have to deal with that. But I mean, the purpose. I mean, if the church wanted to use my book as a guide for how to be less abusive, I would totally.

John Dehlin [02:54:55] We'd all be thrilled. We'd all be thrilled.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally will. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you for the shout out. That's awesome.

John Dehlin [02:55:02] Everyone, go buy this book. And if you do, it will reward our thinkers and our writers for their amazing contributions. And then you can buy it for loved ones. Buy it for friends and family. We need to support our thinkers and our writers and our artists. And Luna has done an amazing job here. If you can't tell just by today how much thought they have put into their work, you will when you read this book. So please buy this book right now. Go on Amazon. I get no personal monetary kickback from this recommendation. Go buy this book right now to thank Luna for their work, but also to help you, unconditioned reprogram recondition your mind from the unhealthy programming. And there's an audio version as well, so Ivana writes. Is there an audio version? Yes, there is an audio version. How do they get it? Luna, how do they get the audio version?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:04] It's on Audible or I think Amazon and Audible are the same thing now. So I think you can get them through this same channel.

John Dehlin [02:56:12] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:13] And there's also ebook, so physical print and ebook as well.

John Dehlin [02:56:17] And then of course, you've got a big old slide with like dozens and dozens of references.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:22] That's just my references. So if you want to hit pause and screenshot that. And it's really tiny, but that's. And my book, of course, I have a thousand. More than a thousand footnotes in my book. So if you want any of these references or sources, I wanted to make sure. I've actually been hoping someone will try to pick apart my work. I've been looking for criticism, like a. I mean, I get the kind of criticism of, you just hate the church and Satan has. Hold your part. Like, no, I want, like. I would love, by the way, put out this challenge out there. I would love for someone who is pro Mormon, who thinks the church is a great thing and not abusive. I would love them to try to pick apart my book because I've been waiting for that. I've been waiting for someone to take me down and criticize it with, like, a thoughtful criticism. And no one's done it. I've had some people say they would. No one did it, so that's one of the reasons why I cited it so heavily. I wanted my arguments to be impeccable. I'm sure I made mistakes though. And so just putting that out there.

John Dehlin [02:57:22] Yeah. Yeah. So believers or defenders of the faith, if you want to take take shots at this presentation, go to the comments@mormonstories.org, comment on this blog post. Feel free to make comments in our YouTube when this is released on YouTube or here on Facebook. You can email us if people want to get a hold of you. Luna, how do people get a hold of you?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:57:45] I'm most active on Twitter, so I'm at Corbden on Twitter C O R B D E N if you follow me. Expect a lot of politics. My politics will become very clear to you when you do. I do a lot of retweeting, but I also all of my other interests I end up I was just talking about a video game the other day and I'm also a part time little bedroom dj, what they call a bedroom DJ on Twitch. So you'll get all kinds of random stuff on there. And my email address is Luna L U N A at Corbden C O R b d e n.com that's B as in boy, D as in David. In that order. Those are the two best ways to reach out. I also have sort of a Facebook presence, but I'm never really on there. You can just search my name on there. Where else am I? Those are the best ways.

John Dehlin [02:58:34] Huge shout out to Sid Olson. Sid writes. Looking forward to reading Luna's book. Thanks John and Luna. Excellent podcast and Ivana writes bought the audio version by Amazon. So thank you Ivana for purchasing and I hope that all of our listeners purchased this amazing book. Not just copies for themselves but for their friends as well. Okay, so Luna, what do our listeners have in store? Because this is just part one. So let's give people an overview of what's to come.

Closing Part One and Resources for Further Reading

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:59:01] Just part one. Let me glance at my other ones. I think the next one will be covering love bombing, destabilization, deception, belief follows behavior, public commitment, creating dependency, and emotion over intellectual. And then the rest of the 31 will be breaking down.

John Dehlin [02:59:17] And then so basically from now this is part one and for the remaining four episodes we'll be covering around five or six of the 31 issues per episode. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:59:30] Yeah, I think the next one is where I crammed seven because there was an odd number. So Two, four, six. So there's seven in the next one and then the rest should all have six.

John Dehlin [02:59:39] Yeah. And I promise you guys, this is, this will help you process your Mormonism and it will help you heal and grow. And someday I think we need to have retreats or workshops where we can bring people in, identify these principles, have them do assignments in session, and help them process and talk about and share and exchange the ways that all these principles apply to them. Because I think, think this can be its own mental health intervention, I believe, to help someone reprogram.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:00:17] Yeah, I'm willing to do that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:00:18] Yeah, let's, let's talk about that. Couple more comments. Shannon Funk writes, you're helping me see how much I gaslit myself in the church and invalidated my own feelings and how damaging it was. Yes, Shannon, that is one of the benefits to Luna's work. And of course, the amazing Jonathan Streeter writes, luna is fantastic. I learned so much doing commentary with Luna in the Undue Influence in General Conference series. So glad to see a focus on Luna's work here. And I want to give a shout out. Jonathan Streeter has one of the best and most important YouTube channels called Thoughts on Things and Stuff or Totus. And yes, he is another person along with Randy Bell and, and Anthony Miller and Natasha Helfer who all brought to me your work as super highly recommended. So, Streeter, we love you. Keep up the great work. And do you want to talk really quickly about what you did with Jonathan Streeter on Thoughts and things and stuff?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:18] Sure, yeah. We've done a handful of these and we'll probably do more in the future. Basically what we do is we together, we watch a general conference talk and we pause like literally every five seconds sometimes and talk about what they just said and how manipulative that is. We talk about the different mind control techniques that are being used in that talk. So.

John Dehlin [03:01:37] All right. Thoughts on Things and stuff. Thanks, Jonathan. We love you. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in, Jonathan. And of course, Camille also writes, I bought it on Audible, so we got you at least two purchases today. I think we're going to get you tens of thousands of purchases before this is all over.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:54] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:01:55] That's my goal.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:56] And I wanted to say to Shannon real quick, quick too. She said, I gaslit myself and I want to make it really clear the church gaslit you and maybe you repeated those patterns or came up with some creative new ways to repeat those patterns to yourself, but that's what they wanted you to do. I want to be sure. That we get out of this blame the victim and blame reversal stuff as much as we can. That's part of deconditioning, is it's not your fault. You didn't gaslight yourself. They wanted to gaslight you and they gaslit you.

John Dehlin [03:02:29] Yeah. So when. When Mormons refer to being self gaslit, you're saying that's a. That's a product of blame reversal.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:02:37] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:02:38] Yeah. You can't gaslight yourself. You can just be under the influence of undue influence by someone who's gaslighting you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:02:46] Correct. And again, you might get creative. Like maybe there's a cognitive dissonance that, that they haven't answered for you and ahead of time. And so you might be creative in inventing your own new form of gaslighting, but again, they're motivating you to do that. They're the ones that are putting you in an impossible position where you are being forced to gaslight yourself. I don't even want to say it, but they're the ones doing it.

John Dehlin [03:03:11] Well, Luna, just to conclude, I just want to say we have so many great thinkers in the space of progressive and post Mormonism.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:03:20] Them.

John Dehlin [03:03:21] D. Michael Quinn passed away recently. You know, we. Yeah, he. He passed away just, just last week or the week before. So condolences to him and his family. But, you know, we've talked about Fawn Brody and Juanita Brooks. We've talked about Leonard Arrington. We've. We've talked about Simon Southerton and Richard Bushman and, And of course, we have today, Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real and Natasha Helen Helfer. So, you know, Lindsay Hansen Park. So many amazing thinkers and thought leaders, and I just want to add you to that list. I've discovered you recently and you deserve to be up there. And this book really is groundbreaking, and so I just want to thank you so much for your contributions. You really do deserve to be. You are a thought leader. And I really hope that this podcast helps give you the place you deserve within our people. So thank you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:04:14] Thank you so much, John. I'm. I'm. I have trouble self promoting and I'm bad at it and I hate doing it, and so I really appreciate. I'm the type of person that sits around and waits to be acknowledged and it never happens. So I really. I just. I almost want to cry. Thank you so much for that. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:04:32] Well, that stops today, Luna. That stops today.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:04:35] Thanks a lot.

John Dehlin [03:04:36] All right, so we'll, we'll, we'll plan when our next. We'll be doing Four more of these, so we'll plan when the next one is. Is that all right, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:04:44] Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited. Looking forward to it. Thanks a lot.

John Dehlin [03:04:46] Okay, thanks, Luna. Yep, thanks. Thanks so much. And thanks all our listeners for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. Thank you again to Randy Bell for really urging me to interview Luna. Thanks to Streeter, thanks to Natasha, thanks to Anthony Miller and all the others that recommended it. Thanks to all our listeners and our donors who support us. We could not do Mormon Stories Podcast or keep the Open Stories foundation alive without the donors. And so I just want to thank everyone who contributes. I also want to say that less than one out of a thousand of our donors actually donates of our listeners or viewers actually donates. And because of COVID because of financial constraints, we are losing donors every day. We are constantly losing donors. And if our listeners feel moved upon, when you guys sign up to become monthly donors, that is what keeps us in business. So if you value this programming, if you want to see it continue, if you like Mormon Stories Podcast and don't want to see it go away, please become a monthly donor to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. You can go to MormonStories.org on your mobile device or on a webpage. There's a donate button at the top. You click on it, you type in. You can either check a box or type in how much you want to donate monthly. You become a monthly donor and it's all tax deductible in the United States. We're transparent in our finances. All the money goes towards supporting the cause of the Open Stories foundation of a Mormon Stories and we'll keep providing this content and creating new content for as long as as we can. We also do our best to support communities of support so that people aren't alone. The Thrive Initiative is indirectly supported through Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. There's so much good that we want to do and will do coming out of COVID So please become a monthly donor and we'll do many more good things. Thanks again for the support. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with your feedback. Comment. You can share all of our podcasts on social media, on TikTok, on, on, on Facebook, on Twitter. That's one thing you can do to promote us in addition to or or in replace of donating financially. If you can't and just spreading the word, you can also give it a positive review on, on Facebook, on our Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page, or on the Apple podcasting app and wherever else you can give us a positive review. We're always getting haters giving us negative reviews who don't even listen to or watch our stuff. Your positive reviews can counterbalance that. So please, give us a positive review review if you can. Thanks again, everybody. Stay tuned and we'll see you guys all again very soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

Part Two: Love Bombing and Emotional Dependency

Part 2 of 5 · Ep. 1444

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's May 14, 2021 and today we are following up with part two in a very important five part series with a newly. Not newly discovered, but kind of a newly met for the first time and discovered in terms of their brilliance. Luna, Lindsay Corbden. The book that we are reviewing in a five part series is this phenomenal book, Recovering Agenc Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control, available on Amazon and elsewhere. We spent three hours with Luna earlier this week. Luna, I forgot to ask you about your second COVID vaccine, so I'll ask you about that in just a second. But what Luna has done is something really important. Luna has spent a lot of time immersing themselves in the social psychology literature to understand how high demand organizations will wield or elicit undue influence on their followers. And Luna has pulled together what Luna calls the 31 flavors of undue influence, or at least that's what I'm calling them. And it is just so powerful. We covered about six of those in part one and in each of those, these five parts, we're going to be covering five or six of these elements that Luna has uncovered. And I ended my last episode by saying we know about Grant Palmer, we know about Michael Quinn, we know about Joanna Brooks and Fawn Brody and RFM and Bill Real and Lindsay Anza park. And there's so many people that have been very influential on us in the Mormon mind space. And I think Luna, without attempting to love bomb, which we'll describe later or flatter Luna, I think the work that Luna has done here belongs in that realm of importance. So without any further ado, we have. Lindsay, we're so happy to have you back on Mormon Stories podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:02] Hi, thanks a lot. Happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] Okay. How was your second COVID vaccine?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:06] That was rough. Day two of that, I just kind of felt like I wasn't. It wasn't quite like I had the flu, but it almost was no specific, like a little slightly fevery, a little achy and just like no energy. But it passed on the, on the third day and, and here I am. It's out now. My arm's still a little bit bruised, but.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] Oh yeah, I'm glad you made it through and I'm glad you got vaccinated.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:29] Yeah. And I'm free now, so I'm planning on getting a haircut next week. My parents are vaccinated. They were the biggest worry for a while because they're definitely in the risk group and I think my son probably is. I think we're all in the risk group for immuno type things. So it's, it's, I'm happy to finally feel like free from that, safe from it. So I love it.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Well, glad. Well, thanks for joining us again, listeners. We're going to do around 2 and a half ish hours, maybe 2 hours and 45 minutes today as we cover these next topics. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna review what we covered in part one because I saw that baked into your slides. There's gonna be a slide about what we covered last time, just as a brief review and then what we're gonna be covering this time. So without any further ado, Lindsay Luna, sorry. Let's dive into this really important book. I wanna ask all my listeners, please stop. Go to Amazon, buy this book Recovering agency. You will want this as a resource. Just the bibliography alone is so powerful and important. But Luna, let's talk about part two of your five part discussion. Where do we go from here?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:03:42] All right, do we want to do a real quick intro? We did a full intro last time, but just for people who didn't catch the first one. So I was born in the church. There is a slide for this if people are more visual. And by the way, we are going to try to describe a lot of these slides for people who are just listening or with visual impairments. So I was born in the church. I lived for 26 years before I left the church, before I got into this, if you can call it a career. I worked for 14 years in the computer industry. I am a writer. I am currently working for a living as a freelance ghostwriter and I also write fiction and I've written this book, blog posts, various technical writing. I am in the LGBTQIA group. I'm specifically gender fluid and go by they them pronouns and I'm bisexual. I am an abuse survivor and I am autistic and I have PTSD and I'm disabled. I'm a psych nerd, but I don't have a related degree. So just putting that little pin in that. So no one has approved of me and said, you know, you have done the work here, go have a degree. I'm just really into this stuff and because of that I wrote a book about LDS control tactics.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] I love it. Well, we're so glad to have you back and you are so strong and effective and the fact that you like all of us, but probably in very important Unique ways you've exhibited so much resilience with all of the things life has thrown at you is really inspiring to me.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:29] Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. So the next slide, the COVID of my book. There, there is a name change. You might notice that the copy you were holding up, John, has Luna Lindsay. Luna Lindsay Corbden. Unfortunately, when you're coded as female, you take on the name of your person. And I don't really associate my name with him anymore because he wasn't a good person. And so that, that explains why I used to go by Luna Lindsay and now I'm Luna Corbden or Luna Lindsay Corbin. I keep the name in there. Just. Well, don't lose track.

John Dehlin [00:06:02] For continuity. For continuity.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:03] Try not to confuse too many people.

John Dehlin [00:06:06] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:08] Okay. Support this book. Okay. Yeah. And this is the slide that tells, I guess it's blue for what we covered last time and then red for what we're covering this time. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:18] That is correct. So real briefly, last time we covered, you asked me if there was an order to these, and there kind of sort of is. So last time we covered the topics that I thought were like the most essential core to being to the control mechanisms, some of the most harmful ones, although they're all somewhat harmful. And so we covered sacred science, demand for purity doctrine over self, black and white thinking, blame reversal and guilt and shame. And this week we're going to cover. These are the ones that sort of pull you in. And so that starts with love bombing, destabilization, deception, belief follows behavior, public commitment, creating dependency, and emotion over intellect.

John Dehlin [00:07:05] Yeah. And I actually, this time in advance did a bit of an inventory and I'm trying to give a grade to the Mormon Church for each of these techniques. And so far, unfortunately, it's got an A plus in all the ones we've covered so far, and it's not looking super good for the church today.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:07:26] And that's one thing I would like to point out is all of these techniques, I didn't originate any of them. These were discovered by other researchers who've been working in the field since the 50s and 60s when they began the fields, when Korean prisoners of war were coming back from Korea, US prisoners of war, and they studied the brainwashing techniques used by the Chinese military against them and sort of looked at which prison camps worked, which ones didn't, which prisoners were just faking their belief and which ones took a while to wean themselves off of those beliefs and which techniques worked and which ones didn't. And surprisingly, torture and Browbeating people into saying something under duress didn't really work to change the individual. But when they did little steps, we're going to reference a couple of those later on in today's talk, they found that that actually convinced people and changed people. And then in the 60s, the new religious movement started up. A lot of Transcendental meditation and People's Temple, which was the Jonestown. All of these little, you know, some of them were harmless, some of them were less harm. Less harm, sorry, more harmful and less harmful. And they found that, you know, parents were losing their children. They would just, literally, their children would just be off the, off the map. They would go to college and then they would join some group and then they would just be gone to some compound somewhere. And so they started studying, studying those. And that's what we have today.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And if I can just give one quick, it's sort of a disclaimer, but it's also trying to be super fair. We mentioned last time that these are techniques that are not just used by high demand religions. They're not just used by the Mormon Church and they're not just used by high demand religions. They're used by the military, they're used by corporations, they're used by therapy groups, they're used by unhealthy family systems, you know, corporations. There are just so many ways that these techniques should be applied. I actually want, if I ever help with an organization again, I want to use these techniques, these flavors, as you call them, as checks against any organization I'm ever involved with to make sure anything that I ever do strives really hard. But the point is, it's not just Mormonism and it's even not just religion. We need to be on guard in every aspect of our lives. Pyramid schemes, you know, network marketing, everywhere politics, politics, right. Liberal progressive, liberal politics and conservative politics. It's. It can be everywhere government.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:10:14] That is absolutely true. And there's another important distinction to make too, is many of these techniques, if not potentially all of them, most of them can be used in ethical ways. And we're going to talk about some of the ethics today. A couple of these control techniques have some nuanced ethics in them and are used ethically in certain ways. And so that's another thing to keep in mind is just because you see someone, for instance, being loving, that's where I talk about love bombing next, they might be being very friendly to you and loving and they bring you cookies. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying to hook you into a controlling group. It's the system of all the things put together and used in unethical.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] That's a great point. That's a great point.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:10:59] Yeah. So. And hopefully by the time you're done viewing these slides and. And. Or reading the book and other materials that other authors have written, you will sort of create. You'll get an instinct that can help you bolster yourself against falling for any of these. That said, with a little caveat, you know, sometimes I get asked, you know, luna, how do you know you're not brainwashed? Right. And my answer is, I don't. In fact, when I was writing Recovering Agency, I had this little niggling thing in the back of my mind is I kept seeing these patterns of behavior in my abuser who I was living with at the time. So I literally was in a controlling situation while I was writing Recovering Agency. Unfortunately, I couldn't really escape it at that point. And so knowing about it or being slightly aware of it in the back of my mind wasn't really helpful. So that's a whole other story. But, yeah, part of this, part of being on guard against this is always questioning, always being aware. Never be in an organization that's too sacred to question, never follow anyone. Even in a relationship where there are topics that are just completely off. Not maybe because, you know, they're. They're upfront about it and say, look, that's a triggering topic. I really, you know, it hurts me to talk about it. We need to talk about it very carefully, or we can talk about that later. But I'm talking about someone where there are topics that are completely off limits all the time, and you just. And you haven't talked about it ahead of time. You just know by their reaction that you're afraid to bring that up. That's like a red flag that. That there might be something going on. So always be ready to question and doubt any situation that you're in. That's kind of the only way to. To deflect that.

John Dehlin [00:12:49] Yeah. And just. Just for those who missed part one, go back and watch part one. But I'll just sort of say as a summary, any system that holds itself out as the one true system, or having the totality of truth, which is sacred science, or that demands purity of its membership, that has its focus on perfectionism and purity and cleanliness, that's demand for purity, that doesn't care about the individual at all and is willing to steamroll individuals for the benefit of the system. That's doctrine over self, that engages in black and white thinking, pure good, pure evil, pure truth and pure falseness that won't engage in not just gray, but also multicolored shades of perspectives. That's black and white thinking blame reversal, where if anything goes right, the organization gets all the credit. If anything goes wrong, it's the individuals that are to blame. That's blame reversal. And then guilt and shame is just where, where you are bad, you are stained and broken. Using shame to control and humiliate people so that they are left in submission, so that they want to follow. That's what we covered last time. It's absolutely crucial to, to listen to part one, but that's my quick summary. And now let's jump to part two.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:14:12] All right, before we jump into the actual next technique, which is love bombing, there were a couple of things that I thought of after our last session that I wanted to just to on. First of all, I want to let everyone know that being manipulated is not a moral fault. It's the manipulator's fault. The manipulator is the one who makes the choice. It may be subconscious, it may not, but they, they are the ones acting to go out and find you for many of us as a baby, which is completely not our fault, and program you with these ideas that that changes your behavior, that controls your behavior. But once we learn and discover this, we can take responsibility to free ourselves and I also added to free others. So for many of us, for many of you, this may be a phase where you're going to be highly self focused. And that's fine. It's totally fine to be self focused. I mean, you were raised in a group that was completely about how you needed to sacrifice yourself for the group. So you do need a period where you are going to take care of yourself. You do self care, you're going to think about what happened to you. It's a time where pointing the blame outward is appropriate, particularly if you're pointing that blame at the powers that be. Completely appropriate to do that. So. So that's good for now. And I want to stick a pin in that though, because eventually you'll be healed and you'll be better. I mean, I don't think you'll ever be completely healed. I'm not completely healed. But you'll be more grounded and stable in yourself and more knowledgeable about who you are. And that's the time start thinking about others. There was a conversation I had with a Jewish person on Twitter this week about the sort of post religious self help movement and how there's never really any unpacking of things like white supremacy and the way that we treated marginalized people when we were in that group and how those of us who are in this field ought to kind of point that direction. So that's what I'm doing, I'm pointing that direction is once you feel more grounded and stable and have done the work on yourself, it's time to think about other people and how your actions within the group might have impacted them. Now is not the time though, because if you're still dealing with guilt and shame, you don't need more of that, you need to free yourself from that. And then you can start being it from a responsible point of view and a well grounded point of view where you are capable of acting. Then start thinking about the people you may have hurt and how you can help them now.

John Dehlin [00:16:42] It's kind of like on the airplanes, you put the mask on yourself before you put the mask on somebody else.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:47] Exactly. But let's not forget to put the mask on.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Right, Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:51] Yeah. And then the last list of point being manipulated is not a sign of low intelligence. In fact, the studies that have been done in that regard have shown that people with higher IQs are more likely to be recruited into a group like this and to remain in the group. Partly because we're more creative when we're more intelligent. In terms of how, how do I make this, these cognitive dissonance parts that aren't fitting together, how do I make those fit together? We're more creative at creating those. Mental gymnastics. It's not a sign of mental illness, although a group such as this can cause mental illness. But it doesn't mean that you are mentally ill because you decided to convert. It doesn't mean you lack an education. Very educated people can be recruited into cults or high demand groups. It's not a sign of spiritual weakness. In fact, these groups tend to prey on people who are morally upright, empathetic, kind. And because we're the type of people who are going to give over and dedicate our entire lives to helping others and then they just put themselves in the place of the other. Or you're help, you're not helping others, you're really helping the church, but you feel like you're helping others. And in the same line, it's not a sign of moral inferiority. So just putting that out there, I don't, I don't want to make people feel worse than they have to already feel because of all of this.

John Dehlin [00:18:21] No, in some sense It's. Yeah, it's. Absolutely. I. You remind me of what I read in the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, that a high intelligence just makes you, like you said, more skilled at employing, you know, kind of moral reasoning or the confirmation bias where you can justify things. And so, yeah, no one should feel bad and really just we're evolving as a society, so let's just keep evolving, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:18:51] Just keep evolving. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:53] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:54] Beautiful. Love bombing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:56] Okay, so this is number seven, is that right? Of the 31, is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:59] That is correct. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:19:01] That we're covering today.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:19:02] And not necessarily in order. In the book, I have them in a different order. I've presented them in different orders. So love bombing is sort of the hook that gets you into such a group. Now, a lot of us were born into the church, and as infants, we are 100% susceptible to love bombing. But even as adults, we are as well. Love bombing is what attracts new members to the. To the organization, and it appeals to your ideals and values. Says, we are going to change the world. We're going to make casseroles for our neighbors. We're going to make the world a peaceful place. We're going to bring Zion. That in other groups that could be other ways that the group is going to change the world because they're in all these groups, they're claiming to have the perfect system, and thus the perfect system will change the world. It establishes trust so that you will believe that the person who is indoctrinating you has all the truth. It creates positive mental associations with the group. So you might think, those Mormons sure are nice. They wear nice clothes, they say nice things. They never swear, they're never angry. They've got a smile on their face all the time. Other groups have their own positive associations that they try to project out into the world. Again, not. Not all of these techniques apply evenly to every single group. So some groups may not be as proselytizing active. You may not be have a good pr. Good as a PR firm behind them to promote those ideas. So it depends on the group how positive. There are some groups that you can just tell they're a cult just by looking at them, and you wonder why anyone would ever join them. But groups are really good at making themselves look like really good people. And the people are good in most cases, but the group itself is not. They also. But that's the thing, though, is it's a false love. It's not genuine. It might be genuine for specific individuals who are meeting with other Specific individuals. But we'll get into sort of why that breaks down even for people with the best of intentions. And that love, though, ends up being conditional unconformity. So if you join the church and you're new in the church and you, you can't quite quit smoking, you can't really, you leave your girlfriend or your boyfriend, but you can't really leave them for long and you're back sleeping with them again or whatever, and then that's where the judgment comes out and the love gets withdrawn and you feel it and then you're encouraged by that emotion to get back into good standing. I'm going to break down some of the words here because I think the words that are used within Mormonism are very telling. Disfellowship is literally a feeling of isolation. You're, you're being removed from your fellows. And excommunication is literally a failure to be heard. There's no two way communication going on. It is just dictation.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] Yeah. And we're going to talk about this in just a second. But I like to just bring it, I like to bring in, just as I'm trying to make sense of everything you're saying, bring in my Mormon experiences. We'll talk about it later. But what immediately comes to mind is, is so many converts to Mormonism talk about how they met people in the ward. Everybody loved them, made them feel super special. The missionaries were so nice. It was like, oh, wow. I not only have these, these elders or these sisters that are like now my besties, now all these members are wrapping me in love with blankets and invitations. And these investigators feel like, like they're just loved by, you know, coming home to this family that's always been waiting for them, to this warm heart, that of, of freshly cooked bread and home cooked casseroles and, and then they get baptized. And within, let's just say weeks to months, it's like, where did everybody go?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:57] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Missionaries are transferred. The, the ward is, has moved on. And it's not saying that people weren't sincere in all that, but there is this sort of like man, Mormons love, I don't want to say fresh meat, but they love the convert, they love the investigator. But the investigators often feel, as I understand it for many, they feel initially loved and then all of a sudden, where did it all go? Is that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:23:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:25] A classic example?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:23:26] Exactly. Because it takes a lot of effort to do all of that. Not only that, but the church puts a lot of other demands on you, which we discussed in demand for Purity. And so you've got all these other things that you have to do and then you've got other converts. You know, you're supposed to save one soul and how great your joy will be with one. Well, imagine if it even more. And so you're encouraged to go out and make new friends and convert them as well. Yeah. So it's an endless cycle. And it's interesting. If you go to the next slide, we're going to briefly talk about how this pattern is also discussed in survivors of malignant narcissists or narcissistic survivors. And I am one of those. And so I can, I can testify, if you will, to that dynamic. When I got with my, with the church, I wasn't a convert, so I was just born into it and I just, it was just normally being a little kid. But, but I did get this guy, he came, he sweeped me off my feet. Wouldn't take no for an answer. But it was always the good stuff that he wouldn't take no for an answer for. It was, wasn't got kind of got to the bad stuff yet and wined and dined and expensive restaurants and dancing and gifts and great words of appreciation and affection and, and you know, it was very easy to move in with him quickly and then really move in with him quickly. Like I'm gonna rent my house out to someone else. And then, you know, next thing I know I've lost the house and seven years go by and I've lost almost everything. And that's what hurts the most, is when that love is withdrawn. It's because it is so overwhelmingly, amazingly, too good to be true. It's not just like falling in love, it's like falling in love times one. It's like the Disney imagination of falling in love. It's beyond anything. And so when, when you do something that then contradicts that person or the church and you've behaved the way they don't want you to, rather than being mature and discussing it and having a two way bilateral conversation about it, he withdraws the love. But he doesn't say why or he says why, but it's not the real reason. And so it creates that addictive, it's trauma. Bonding is what it is. You, you are now bonded to person. You're expecting them to behave the way they promised that they would always behave. They're telling you up front, this is just the way I am. But they're not really that way. And they, they have exhausted their resources. They have gone over and above and it's not sustainable. But they don't tell you up front it's not sustainable and it's only temporary. And so you're left feeling like what did I do? And then you're trying to keep up, oh, I've got to behave better. I've got to do exactly what he wants to do if I want to get that back. And so it does become a sort of addictive cycle. The next slide, I don't think I talk about addiction on the next slide. It's the slide after. But this we can go on, on this slide. We also tend to base our trust on who we're going to believe based on likability. So if they're charming and charismatic, charismatic, we're going to tend to think, well they must be right. That's just a wiring deep within our brain that isn't based on rationality. They don't have to produce any proof or evidence for anything. They are just charismatic. And so we trust them. And when they give us things, whether it's a casserole or someone sweeping us off our feet, we feel that reciprocation that we talked about last time and that inspires loyalty in us. I'm going to be with this person forever or this organization forever. I'm going to give everything back that they, that I feel like they've given to me.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] Me.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:11] Our need for love is fundamental and universal. There might be a couple of suggestions, exceptions out there, but for the most part everybody has a deep seated need to be liked and loved. And it's almost as fundamental to our survival as eating and breathing. This can include everything, including flattery, gifts, attention, touching, compliments, invites, listening and sharing. Listening can be a really big one sometimes. All we want to do is be listened to and the love bomber is on their best behavior. You're not seeing their dark side. They're not showing you the dark side. Again, we're talking about church members. You may not have a dark side, but the organization's dark side is sort of ends up flowing through you because you're following all of their dictates or trying to and you just can't keep up with it. And so you do end up neglecting the new conversation. And it one important thing is it externalizes our self esteem so you become dependent upon the group to feel like a good person, to feel valuable. And so we'll talk about dependency coming up. But that's one of the things that it creates a kind of emotional dependency. And of course children are 100% susceptible to these. The. The picture is Windsaw is a Mormon ad from the 80s. Everybody's dressed in their 80s clothes. This is a blast right to my past. And it says, windsaw. The is stranger has a scripture reference down there. And there's a girl standing off alone. And the other girls are kind of standing together, and one's thinking about maybe talking to the. To the girl that's alone.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] Yeah. We all want to be loved. We all want to be adored. We all want to be pampered. And if somebody treats us that way, the oxytocin, all the good chemicals go into our brain. Our IQ probably drops by 10 to 20 points, and we're susceptible to all sorts of undue influence because the mirage makes us feel so dang good. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:23] Exactly. Yeah. It's a very heady experience.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] Yeah, we all have experienced it, probably most of us.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:30] Yeah, Absolutely. Even just falling in love in a healthy relationship can kind of show you what it feels like, so.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:38] So what happens is we get hooked on that love, and in order to get more of that, we're supposed to conform. And what happens is the group is using some different words, and they're maybe behaving a little different. They dress a little different. They green jello or something. Funeral potatoes. There's a little behaviors. Most of them are fairly benign, but some of them may not be. And so what happens? So you don't necessarily have to have a commandment that says thou shalt, but we start to mimic the behavior that we see. So there's a concept in neurology called mirror neurons. And this is where when we see someone else behaving in a certain way, perhaps they're using it in monkeys there. They might be using a tool. They've done a lot of these studies on monkeys. So the monkey might be using a tool, and another monkey has never used the tool before, but they're watching the monkey using the tool, and they can do brain scans and see that the monkey who is watching the activity will have neurons firing in patterns in the brain, brain cells firing in the same pattern as the monkey who is actually using the tool. And so we're basically mirroring that behavior within our minds. We're imagining what it must be like to do that thing, and that creates the same patterns in our brain. And so we see other people behaving these certain ways, and that leads us to. We add that to our desire to be liked. And what happens is we start mimicking that behavior so we'll fit in well. Cognitive dissonance. Did we Talk about. Are we going to talk about it this week?

John Dehlin [00:31:05] We did a little bit. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:07] We'll talk about this more later. This will lead in to belief follows behavior in a bit, but when we are behaving in a way that we don't understand why we're doing it, then cognitive dissonance kicks in and says, why are you behaving that way? And the easiest way out often is to be. Well, because I believe the same things they do. I don't even need a reason of why I believe the things that they do. I just. I just. I just must believe that because that's why I'm doing these things. I fit in. Therefore I am the same as these people.

John Dehlin [00:31:35] That's belief follows behavior.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:37] Yep, exactly. Yeah. And so it becomes addicting. I put it in quotes because some people disagree with throwing that word around when it's not an actual chemical dependency. But it does sort of become a natural chemical dependency where we become willing to do increasingly extreme behaviors to maintain that feeling of love.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] Yeah, I'm thinking of Patty Hearst in the sim whatever liberation movement of the 70s. This daughter of William Rand Randolph Hearst, super wealthy, educated. All of a sudden she's in. She be. She gets kidnapped into this group, and then all of a sudden she's in love with everybody and becomes an accomplice because this stuff's super powerful. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:19] Right. Yeah. And they call that Stockholm syndrome or trauma bonding is the. The more modern version of that word.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] Yeah, but it can. We can win you over. You can, like Elizabeth Smart, you can start out as a complete victim. But. But if. If they treat you the right way, you can become an accomplice, even if

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:36] they treat you the wrong way. And I don't think I really necessarily covered that concept in any of these slides, but that is true. Even if they treat you the wrong way. Or it's probably cognitive distance again, it's a survival or coping technique that thousands of years of trauma has instilled in us. Probably even going back to the animal kingdom, where you admit that you're stuck, stuck, there's no way you're going to escape. And some subconscious part of your brain goes, well, may as well make something out of this. May as well. And. And so you will. Well, this person who has kidnapped me and is treating me very poorly, well, at least they're feeding me. At least they're keeping me safe. Like, even if they're not feeding you regularly, you become so grateful for what they are giving you that. That all just transfers. I think psychological transferences is a term related with therapy. So we just sort of become one with that person. It's pretty tragic. So.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:32] Next slide. This is a quote by Michael Langone from Recovery from Cults, which is. He's the editor of that. It's a collection of essays and papers which I highly recommend. He says the apparently loving unanimity of the group masks and in some cases bolsters strict rules against private as well as public dissent. Questions are deflected. Critical comments are met with smiling pleas of no negativity.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] Sweet. Keep sweet.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:00] Exactly. And we see that. Yeah, we see that pattern in a lot of groups. Just, you gotta stay nice. You gotta keep that smile on your face. Always be looking, appearing to be happy, whether you are or not. That's part of. Part of how we became love bombers.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:19] The next slide. So ask yourself, well, does Mormonism benefit from this particular psychological dynamic? This is from a Priesthood Manual in 2000. And the story. I'm going to read the quote. But the story starts out as, there's a couple and the wife is LDS and the husband is a non member. And the church is trying to figure out how to get Jack to become a member. So they plan a barbecue. And the quote goes, Jack, initially reluctant to come, was surprised and delighted with the easy, natural friendliness of the group. By evening's end, he enthusiastically supported the idea of a second party, a picnic in two weeks. No one said anything about going to church. But Alan Westover, who had discussed Jack's house painting project at the party, showed up on Saturday with his own ladder and came back evenings after work. Two other men also helped several times. Times. Later that month when the Elders Quorum had a project, Jack was anxious to help them. There's that reciprocal reciprocity coming in. As the summer progressed, Jack spent more and more time with church members. There were chats about fishing rods and politics and raising children. To his wife's great joy, Jack told her one evening that he was ready to take the next step of being taught by the missionaries and joining the church. So mission accomplished.

John Dehlin [00:35:37] Yeah, and it's so complicating because, you know, you. You do want an organization, a culture that encourages service and kindness and acts of charity. Like, who doesn't want that? And so isn't it just so complicated that. And. And I'd say many of the Mormons that engage in those acts of service are doing it with sincere hearts of wanting to help people. So it's just weird how. How acts can be good and even people committing the acts can be well intentioned, but all of it is working within a system of undue influence or coercion.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:36:16] It's not the charity that's the problem. It's not the service, it's not the volunteer work that's the problem. And we're going to talk about deception today. I think deception is the key ethical difference there. And there are some other ethical differences too that we'll talk about. So the thing about love bombing and just what we were just talking about, members feel sincere, but due to church pressures, they don't have time to follow up on the friendships that end in conversion and that don't result in conversion. And I can think of a few examples from my own life where I did neglect relationships after I started out. This seems like a nice friend, but I could probably convert them. And then when I didn't, I just had other things to do. I was too busy. So this is an area where you can let go of guilt. Certainly healthy to take a moral inventory and to think about maybe what you've done. But don't spend too much time on it. Don't beat yourself up about it. Don't use it as a tool to reduce your energies or hurt yourself or cause yourself new trauma. The church pressured you to act this way. And this weapon was also used in against you. You were also manipulated via love bombing. There's a quote from Marion Stricker. She wrote a really good book online called the Pattern of Double Bind and Mormonism. I think you can also buy a paper copy of it. I hope it's still online. And she says whether one is born into Mormonism or not, everyone's need is for genuine human social relationships, personal, sympathetic, caring relationships to be understood, to love and be loved.

John Dehlin [00:37:52] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:37:53] So that's the last slide on this, this topic.

John Dehlin [00:37:56] So if you've engaged in, in love bombing, if you've been a missionary, if you've brought people into Mormonism, whatever it is, don't beat yourself up. Like Maya Angelou likes to say, or liked to say, when you know better, you do better. Let's not spend any time beating ourselves up. Instead of having a, a sin mob model and a guilt and a shame and a deficit model and a purity model, which means a filth model. Let's have a learning model where we just learn and then we do better.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:26] Yeah. Become a better person. And you're not never going to be perfect, but you can, you can over. You can be a little better every day.

John Dehlin [00:38:33] Yeah. Love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Okay, so we, we've, that's Love bombing. We're on to number two for today, which is destabilization.

Destabilization, Deception, and the Ethics of Influence

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:42] A destabilization. This is, this is as old as the hills. All of these are. It's basically when we talked about cognitive dissonance last time. You've got, you've got these strong drivers within you to believe who believe what you've already believed and to be who you've already been. So if a new group wants to get in, get indoctrinate you get in there, they've got to somehow tear down your defenses against new identity. So destabilization is used in advertising as well. We're going to use, we're going to look at an advertising example in the next slide. Very well known marketing technique. Your old self has to be destabilized to overcome the dissonance that you would otherwise feel to the new ideas. It also suppresses the self. So we're going to see some things in common on this one with doctrine over self, although it's not entirely the same thing. So I did choose in my work to separate them because this has some different points with it. When the, when the group destabilizes you and causes you to start questioning things and feel a little off, they promise you relief. We are the ones that are going to fix you. And then you feel that relief and you're going to go with that emotional flow where it takes you, it establishes trust and influence so that you once again have a reason to listen to the leader, to absorb the indoctrination that they're sending over to you. And it helps you rebuild your identity into someone new. We talked about that under doctrine over Self. Those pseudo personality that creates, that you create, that's part you and part group or part group ideal, it regresses adults to childlike a states. So children are already destabilized. Children already don't have a firm identity. They're still figuring that out depending on what age and what stage of development they're in. And so with children it's really easy that this step is already done. But if you're an adult, what it does is it regresses you. Or some techniques can regress you to a childlike state where you remember what you were like as a child and are more susceptible to listening to the doctrine that the group has to get you. And of course Golden Investigator is often already destabilized. They've lost a loved one. That, that is often a target within the with for missionaries, you've lost a child or you, you've lost your job You've gone, you're going to school for the first time, going off to college. These are all. You've moved to a new town. These are all things that make us a little wobbly inside, make us question, make us look for some answers. And destabilization's already taken place and the group can come in and take advantage of that.

John Dehlin [00:41:28] To me, what immediately comes to mind is kind of the military and boot camp and how they want to break you down before they can build you back up again. That kind of idea. And I think about Christ's admonition to be like a little child. You know, I love the idea of an awakening or a rebirth, kind of the second half of life that Richard Rohr talks about. About. But that can be misused to say, be submissive and innocent so that we can have undue influence over you. So it's tricky because these concepts can be useful or harmful depending on. It's like any tool, like a hammer. Hammer can build a house or it can be used to destroy you. And that's why tools need to be handled with care.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:42:14] Yes. And we will look at the ethics of, of this two slides from. Now, I do have a slide that addresses that. So let's look at an advertising example. So this, this freeze, change and refreeze model was originally thought up by Edgar H. Shine in the book Coercive Persuasion, which was written in the 60s and 70s. And I actually read that book after I wrote Recovering Agency and found a whole bunch of new quotes and insights into all of this. But I was aware of, of the unfreeze, change and refreeze process because that's talked about in the literature quite a bit. So the idea is that unfreezing throws you off balance. So the message is you are flawed. An example from a series of commercials that we're all pretty familiar with. Are you spending too much on car insurance? So am I. I thought I was fine, but maybe I am spending too much on car insurance. So the next step is to change. And basically the cause of your dissonance, your feeling dissonance. Like, I'm not paying too much for car insurance. That feeling is redirected to you. You're the one that's paying too much for car insurance. That's not our fault, that's your fault. And now you feel like you're responsible. I'm the one that has to do the changing. And so the organization or the advertiser says, we can help. They're offering you a solution. Sticky Lizard will save you time and money, 15 minutes or less. And so then comes the refreeze phase. This is where the group promises to fix you. So all you have to do is follow the doctrines. Doesn't that feel better? And you feel like this sense of relief. And they can do this in a, in a 15 second commercial when they say call now, they give you an action, they give you an out. You just have to pick up the phone and call and we'll solve all of your car insurance problems. So yeah, it's used on us every day. You'll start to notice it in commercials. Now when a group does it though, you know, there's again, ethics. It might be one. I mean, it is sort of marginally ethical when an advertiser creates a problem and then offers to solve it within a 15 second span. That's like on gray ethics, because maybe they actually are going to solve an actual problem that you may have and you just didn't realize it. But when it comes to a high demand group, the ethics, they're asking for your life, they're asking for all of your time, all of your money, all of your resources, your loyalty and obedience, your children, your family, they're asking for everything. And so the ethics gets real bad here when it comes to a group. So.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] Yeah, and they're offering the sacred science of a total solution that can't be questioned. And that's, you know, that's when, when things really become sketchy.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:45:01] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] And harmful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:45:02] Yeah, exactly. So speaking of ethics, wait. Oh, the ethics is the next slide. No, we're good. I just keep promising things that I can't fulfill. What do you mean?

John Dehlin [00:45:13] Wait, what do you mean?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:45:14] What happened? I said, I said it would be in two slides and it's actually three. So we're good. We're fine. We're fine. So the, the, the basically what they looked at in the, in the communist brainwashing, when they were looking at the prisoners of war returning, they also looked at people who had, who were Chinese who were sent to education camps in China. And they looked at the difference between the way that the communists were educating people in China and in the prison, in the war prisons versus the way American cults were doing in the 60s. There were some slight differences there. And they found that one of these two patterns works better than the other in terms of, of creating lasting change in people. So in the communist re. Education, it focused on the peripheral self, the external self, your public appearance. So it was things like your social status, your positions and roles, your political opinions, your performance and your conformity to the social standards in modern American religions. Religious cults in particular was what they were looking at. And even political cults and other things like that. They focused on the internal self, on your central core being on who you are as a person, which focused on family, relationships, your values, your aspirations, sex and emotions, trauma, religious and your religious convictions. And they found that focusing on the central self, which is what we. We do here with our high demand groups in our free country, is that that actually works better for creating lasting change in people. I feel like I had one more thing I wanted to add on that, that is an interesting topic, is we have freedom, relative freedom. We do have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And that has sort of changed the nature of this millennial, millennia's old control pattern that we've had. This isn't new. This isn't. The only thing that's new is that if an organization comes in and kidnaps you and steals you away and puts you in a prison and then forces you to work for them and believe their religion, then the FBI is going to come in and arrest them. We actually saw that with the Branch Davidians. They weren't even physically forcing anyone. But we still had a huge debacle, which both sides were completely. It was awful. Branch Davidians and Waco. So. But in the past, I mean, we had Europe being dominated, say, by the Catholic Church, and they could just kidnap you and torture you if you're heretical. So the difference is now they have to use lures to pull you in voluntarily and then trap you and keep you there. Because unless you're locked up on a compound, which does happen, there are people who are eventually kidnapped and locked up on various compounds, and the government doesn't come in and save them. But to get you into that compound, they've got to appeal to your values. And so that's part of why appealing to the central self convinces you more. And they did find that torture just. It doesn't really convince you. You will comply. You will do what you were told to do. But deep down inside, you still feel, like, resentful and like, I'm not part of this. I'm not. I'm just doing this because I have to. So, yeah, you want to.

John Dehlin [00:48:31] You want to win over their soul, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:48:34] Exactly, exactly. You're winning over their free will.

John Dehlin [00:48:36] Yeah, their free will will. And that's got to be given voluntarily.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:48:40] Exactly. Yeah. So now we'll get into the ethics finally to. To one of the ethics slides. So destabilization is not always Unethical. This is central to how therapy works. For instance, the therapist, you know, gets you in and you may not trust the therapist and you might be on guard and, and you're supposed to share these deep traumas, but you don't really want to. And so that process, process of winning your trust and opening you up and questioning your life and your values and all of that is used in therapy. So what's the difference? It's also used by educators who are trying to teach you something new. Military training, which we've already talked about. Self help groups. Actually there are bad self help groups that are unethical, but there are many good self help groups that are very ethical and that you accomplish the goal that you set out to do when you go there and you're free to leave when you're done. Done. Addiction recovery is another great example of how this is used ethically. And all of us have undergone the same destabilization process when we went through our faith crisis and left the church. So let's look at how the ethics compares. In an unethical group, deception is core to this. Whereas an ethical group it's mostly honest. In an unethical group it's coercive and manipulative. Whereas an ethical group it's, it is you inform consent, you are consenting. You understand all of the ins and outs of what's going to happen to you. When you go to a therapist, you're paying the therapist, you know, $150 an hour to, to do exactly this. You set your goals out front. My goal is to overcome trauma or overcome bad habits. And you go into the therapist and the therapist agrees with you. And the therapist has the same goal that you do everything things up front. The amount of money you're going to pay them is up front. How long you're going to be in therapy is upfront and may vary over time. If you decide to leave the therapist, you're allowed to. It's by the way, a bad therapy and unethical therapy practice. If you say I think I'm done with therapy and they spend anything more than a, well, I'm sorry to see you go and hear if you need me again. If they try to do any manipulation to try to keep you there, guilt, you tell you you're not done yet. Any of that stuff, that's an unethical therapist. And there are unethical therapists out there. An unethical group is, or process is other guided. It is guided by the person who's in charge of the group or the manipulator or the con artist. Whereas in an ethical situation it is self guided. I want this. And the other person's like, okay, well maybe I want something different. So let's negotiate. But you're still, your needs are still being considered. In an unethical group, it's all about the manipulators goals. And in an ethical group it's your own goals. In an unethical group, it's unilateral, it's top down, it's one way. And in an ethical group, it's multilateral. So everyone involved in the ethical group has a say and has some share in what's happening. And an unethical group is inflexible and an ethical group is flexible and able to bend with the needs of the moment.

John Dehlin [00:51:48] Those are a great set of guidelines.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:51:49] I love it. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so does. We'll see. There's more. We did talk about pseudo personalities a bit under doctrine over self. It creates a new pseudo personality by telling you that you aren't good enough. And if you conform to the group, you might be good enough. And what happens is you internalize the group identity. So we quoted this scripture last time as well. That was the second half of the scripture. We were focusing on that time. This time we're going to focus on the first half. Mosiah 3. 19. For the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth and submit to his Father. Yeah, so you're an enemy. You're, you're hopeless, you're helpless. There's nothing that can be done but God via this church can make you okay. Just, okay though. Just, just a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:52:59] Yeah, but continually dependent. Which we'll also talk about later.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:53:02] Exactly. Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's, that's the way it works. And, and, and again, it's weird because you read a scripture like that and I remember having tender feelings about scriptures like this. But, but the really, the reality is it's, it's religion that, that tells you at your core, and this is unfortunately atonement theology, you're broken your core, you're inadequate, you're a sinner and, and who you are at your core is, is a problem. And now you need Christmas Christ, which really means the church and your bishop and the leadership structure and the corporation to make you whole. Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:53:45] Right. It's never just Christ on your own terms. If, if the Spirit tells you that your relationship with Jesus ought to be something different than what the church has told you, then you'll come into conflict with the church and you won't be around for very long, especially if you talk about it. They're going to kick you right out. So.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Absolutely. And it's never really about doing the introspection. It's never on the top table. Introspection of what makes me tick. What do I really want? Am I a male? Am I a female? Who am I attracted to? What am I attracted to? What makes me tick? What career do I really want? Do I want kids? Like none of that's on the table. It's just like, get on the train. Here's, here's your assigned roles. Get on the train.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:54:32] And fits all theology.

John Dehlin [00:54:35] Personal introspection is just not even part of the plan.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:54:38] Yeah, totally. Out. So does the church encourage these? Well, we have a couple quotes here. This is from Neal A. Maxwell from a conference in 1990. He says selfishness is often expressed in stubbornness of mind. Having a hard. A mind hardened in pride often afflicts the brightest who could also be the best, but implied you're not the best unless one thing the brightest often lack. Meekness. Instead of having a willing mind which seeks to emulate the mind of Christ, a mind hardened in pride is impervious to counsel and often seeks ascendancy. Jesus, who was and is more intelligent than they all, is also meek than they all. Interestingly, I've been thinking about the word meek lately and I looked it up in the dictionary. We'll talk about loaded language in a different on a different day. But the, the group high demand groups do sort of change the meaning of words or at least sort of create their own words or their own definitions of words. And meek, I always thought sort of meant submissive, but it actually just means gentle. Those are two different concepts completely. And yeah. So I recommend, highly recommend a lot of these churchy words. Go look them up in a dictionary and think about what they mean. Think about not just a dictionary, but also look at them in other contexts and how other people use it them. Because words have a lot of different meanings and a lot of different nuances and it expands our ability to think when we can think Differently about all the words.

John Dehlin [00:56:06] Sometimes we, we ruin words.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:56:10] Yes, and on purpose again, for a topic for another time. So he continues. In this talk, Neal A. Maxwell. One of the last subtle strongholds of selfishness is the natural feeling that we own ourselves. Those who have chosen to come into Christ soon realize that they do not own themselves themselves. Instead, they belong to him. Clinging to the old self is not a mark of independence, but of indulgence. Indeed, the gospel brings glorious illumination as our pos as to our possibilities scales fall from our eyes with the shedding of selfishness. Then we see our luminous and true identity.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] So this is, I'm sorry, this is just so. Because I loved Neal A. Maxwell. He's one of my favorite apostles. I'm old enough to remember, remember when he was in his glory days of, of using literal literary eloquence and fancy words and alliteration in general conference. And every time he got up for a talk, it was just this powerful, eloquent, well written, well spoken, well delivered thing. And so it's really, it's, it's kind of, I don't want to say triggering, but it brings back a lot of strong emotions because here he is basically, basically saying, give yourself to Christ. You don't even own yourself. Christ owns you. And if you give yourself to Christ, and there's a sweetness on the surface to that, because you think of Christ, you think of someone who's loving and kind and serves you and will give everything for you. But when the Mormon Church says Christ, what they mean is the organization, your bishop, the leadership structure, the general authorities, the commandments, the rules. And it really is this corporation that is Christ's surrogate on the earth. And so something that has the wrappings of sweetness has this, this, this corporate machinery in the background that is really what you're tying yourself to. And I don't mean to be so harsh and stern about it, but that's

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:13] how I have that reaction too. It's visceral. I don't think it's inappropriate to use the word trigger here. And as an abuse survivor with ptsd, it is not inappropriate to use the word trigger in these concepts. In fact, we probably should have put a trigger warning on this whole thing. Thinking about this stuff and talking about this stuff is going to bring up reactions because you're looking at it in a new way that you never have before and realizing that you were hurt in ways that you haven't realized before. And so, yeah, you, it's, it's a visceral reaction and it may be bringing up trauma, and it may be pushing those buttons. And so you sure it may not be bringing on a panic attack? Although that could happen. It's still, I think trigger is still appropriate for that.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] Yeah. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:59] Neil.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:59:01] Yep. So that leads us into deception. Do we have anything else we want to say on destabilization?

John Dehlin [00:59:06] No, that's, that's such an important term. It's basically, you know, being born again, but, but hijacking you into living someone else's life, you're basically giving. You know, this is just, this idea of informed consent was, was one of the things that jumped out at me most. Because really, what is life? Life is the time you have. It's your money, it's your time, it's your identity. And you should know exactly what you're giving your life to. To. And whatever you. If you give your life to something that isn't you, it better dang well be what it claims. But should any, should any organization be asking for your life, for your identity, or should that be yours? And, and so it's just such a, this, this idea of destabilization without informed consent, giving your life over to an organization that at the end of the day is going to choose the organization over an individual every single time. An example of this was just recently with Fiona Givens. Like, you know, I've been hard on apologists because what they do is they carry water for the church. And they're good people, they're smart people. But we know at the end of the day when it's the individual versus the church, the individual will be crushed every single time. And we have one of Mormonism's most beloved apologies. Fiona Givens, working in the Maxwell Institute with her husband, Terrell, giving their whole identity, their time, their energy, their effort to the church. She starts talking about her own views on Mother in Heaven. And before long, she's ground and removed from the Maxwell Institute and silenced and told she's not able to go on her retreats anymore. Time and time again, you think that your love. You think that you've been love bombed. You think that this organization is going to care for you like gentle, loving parents. But if you cross them, you will be removed and ground into irrelevance and forgotten. And I hate to speak of it in such stark terms, but that's what happens when you give your identity over to an organization.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:01:26] And what more stark terms than Neal A. Maxwell is the subtle stronghold of selfishness is the natural feeling that we own ourselves. I mean, he says it right There he's saying you don't own yourself. I mean, that's. He says it more starkly than either you or I could. You know, those who have chosen to come into Christ soon realize that they do not own themselves. But, but you do. You do own yourself. You to make your. If you had free agency, which you do, you get to own yourself. You get to make your choices. You get to fight back against people who are trying to tell you that you can't make your own choices and trying to force you into not making your own choices. You get to do that. So, absolutely, I give you permission.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Right. So on to deception, which. Well, I'm just going to say Mormonism gets an A plus in destabilization. Not that they're the worst organization out there. I'm sure there are others that, that are much more abusive, that are, that are much more stark. But, but Mormonism absolutely does try and take away your identity and rebuild you. So love bombing and deception so far really are A pluses. Love bombing and destabilization. Let's see how Mormonism does with deception.

Deception, Sacred Science, and Belief Following Behavior

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:02:42] All right, so deception. So this kind of is the ethics talk. Deception is the biggest thing that separates a cult from an ethical group. An ethical group can do a lot of these techniques, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them and still pass because they're. If they're upfront and telling you the truth, then you are able to consent in an informed way. I think the military is a great example of that. I don't necessarily agree with the military's techniques, and I don't necessarily agree. I do agree we need a military, but I don't necessarily agree with. I don't like it. I don't like that we need a military. And so, but, but in order to create people who can, can pull a trigger without even wincing, that is a necessary thing to have a military. They have to break people down and build them back up. And some may argue there are some levels of deception within the military, but it is more ethical in the sense that when you go down to the recruitment office, you pretty much know you're going to go to a boot camp and it's going to be hell, and you're going to get yelled at by a sergeant who's going to call you a lot of names and they're going to break you down and they're going to build you back up into someone who can pull a trigger without further lynching. And you know that, and you know you're going to get paid for a certain amount of time that you're going to be an out after the time that you committed to serve and maybe and they're going to be some options for you to move on and become career military. All of that is upfront, again with some nuances. I've heard some stories about where they kind of been that a little bit from, from time to time for people. But overall the military is far more upfront about what you're going to go through and what's going to happen to you that than these high demand groups that we're talking about.

John Dehlin [01:04:15] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:04:17] If the group made all these promises and they actually came true and they were working on your behalf, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. If there really was an eternal life and if you prayed, every time you prayed you got an answer and every time you followed the commandments, you had the Holy Spirit and every single promise that the church made actually consistently came true, then so be it. They're telling the truth and that's just the way it is and go for it. But the group has to self aggrandize and the leaders are actually serving themselves. Every member is upon to be drained dry. They are just using the members to get money, to get power, to get fame, to promote themselves and get more members. You're just an object. You've been objectified by the group, particularly by the leaders. And of course the only way that you would ever agree to a situation where you would be upon to be drained dry is if they lie to you about it. So yeah, that's the big separation between a cult and an ethical organization that's doing some kind of change on you like an education system or something. I love that. So what happens is the leaders make promises that they can't get keep and that causes some negative effects on people which people might want to complain about. So then they instill techniques to hide those negative effects. They hide the fact that their promises are broken. Then they might, that might attract predators because now predators know they can do whatever they want to in that system without getting caught. And so you end up with unethical and criminal behaviors going on within the organization, either by the leaders or by members that are that are being covered, covered up. And so they hide all those unethical and harmful behaviors. They hide the abuses that occur and then they hide challenging doctrines that come up the meat that you're supposed to have milk before. So if you're not ready for that doctrine and you learn about it and then they try to hide that. So you won't, you won't. I just lost all my words. You won't, you won't be challenged by them and leave the church. And those challenging doctrines are actually about creating tighter control. And so they don't want people to catch on to that before it's, before they're ready for it. They hide negative history and testimonies and bad word of mouth. Other groups do this too. Other high demand groups do all of these things. They obfuscate their control methods so they don't just say, well, we're doing this destabilization so we can get at you and control you. They make other people promises. We're doing this to make you a better person or to bring you into Christ. Maxwell used the word luminous for trying to make your, your life full of light. And it, and it makes the followers feel like they have choices when they don't necessarily have choices. Informed consent is a really important. You cannot make a choice, a true choice, if you don't know what choice you're making. If you don't know that you're, you're choosing something that's going to make you unhappy. If you knew that you wouldn't choose it. If you knew you didn't have a choice, you probably wouldn't choose to even go there.

John Dehlin [01:07:29] Yeah, and this is so hard because it is a high standard of ethics to expect an organization from the outset to be fully honest. And so if I'm looking at these, if I'm looking at like, what would the most honest Mormon missionaries be? Right? They would show up at your door and they would, sure, they'd give you their beliefs and they would give you the plan of salvation and they would tell you all the reasons why there are positive things about being Mormon. But they would also say, okay, you know that priesthood blessings that we talk about, the priesthood power. Well, a lot of times those blessings really don't heal. And you know, and you know about, we talk about the ward and all this love bombing you're getting. Well, sometimes the wars forget about you and they hurt you and there's backbiting and people are mean and sometimes that lovely bishop, well, sometimes bishops are abusive and they even abuse people sometimes. And you know, there's no complaint hotline.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:30] When they do, there's no one you can call to, to fix that problem. Here's the list of commandments that you're going to have to keep that has dozens and dozens of commandments on it. I'll show you all up front. You have to commit to these. Otherwise none of it'll work. None of it'll work unless you follow every single one of these professionals.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] And by the way, if you're a person of color, you may want to know that back before 78, we, you know, and of course, we don't do that. And, and if you happen to be gay or transgender or whatever, like, here's what is in store for you. And. And. Okay, now let's really get into what Joseph Smith actually did and who he married and. And how he died. Like, all of that and the temple ceremony. What's really going to happen when you go to the temple? Like, you know, all the different ways. They just. There's no informed consent. The church kind of hides under milk before meat.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:09:26] And all that means is that you're. You're not going to handle it until you get all these mind control things installed on you. The meat is okay now. You're in, you're dependent, you're hooked. There's no going anywhere now for you. You're stuck. Duck. Now you get to have the really challenging stuff because your cognitive dissonance is definitely going to resolve in favor of the church when you're. When you're in too deep.

John Dehlin [01:09:48] Yeah. It's like the. It's like the. The. The. The car dealership. If the longer they can keep you there, the long. The more likely it is that you're going to buy a car. The sunk cost fallacy. Right. It.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:02] Right.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] They're able to realize the more they get you in. And we're going to talk about public testimonies in this episode. Actually, the more they can get you committed to it, the less likely it is you're going to be able to pull those hooks out, basically.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:15] Right?

John Dehlin [01:10:16] Yeah. But they do it like you just. The point you made is brilliant. You. No one would ever sign up for any of this without deception. They have got to hide as much as possible from you of the dark stuff, of the bad stuff, of the high commitments, or no one in their right mind would have ever joined.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:34] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:10:35] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:35] Yeah. So we do have a slide. Oh, back one more.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] Oh, sorry. The.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:10:40] Just. Yeah. There's a picture of dirt. A bowl of dirt. So here's a little bit more about uninformed consent. Is. It's a can of a can with a soup label, but there's dirt inside. Members are not. We just talked about this. Members are not told up front how much will be required. The commandments aren't listed in all one place. Children cannot consent to an eternal commitment. I want to make this really clear. A child cannot sign a contract until they're 18. A child can't get a credit card, they can't vote, they can't consent to sex, they can't consent to get married. There are a lot of adult things that children cannot consent to. But for some reason the church thinks it's okay to get children to commit eternally forever and ever and ever and ever at the age of eight. But they're old enough at that point to do that. And that's, that's not okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:11:29] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:11:30] So. And then finally there's no safe op out, safe opt out. In Mormonism, there is no way to say, hey, I'm done with this without some really harsh consequences. You might lose your family, you might lose your social support. You're going to lose your eternal blessings. You're going to, you're going to burn in, burn in the celestial kingdom forever. There's some double speak there I always get, I always like. But you're going to burn in warm and hell forever. And there's just no way to walk away from it. In an ethical group there is always an out. There's always a, there's an end. If it's a contract that you signed for an employee employment thing, there is an end date. Most jobs you can quit at will. In most states you might even, even Comcast. You sign up for a year, get your cell phone or your cable network or whatever like that. Even in that the most hated corporation in America and the most, you know, you get your new iPhone and you're going to veri or whoever it is, I want to whatever cell phone company you and you get stuck in a two year contract. Even then there is an out. You might have to pay $500 to compensate for the fact that you now have an iPhone for free. But you still have a. There's an exit strategy. There is a way out for you. There is no way out for Mormonism. No legitimate way out. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:49] And someone will say, well, you can always leave, you can always resign. Right, but, but I think the point is a high demand religion or a cult is defined by how it treats you when you leave. And there's no gracious or dignified or honorable way to leave Mormonism. You are cut off, you are viewed as an apostate, you are viewed as weak, you are viewed as fallen. So yes, you can leave, yes, you can resign, but not with your dignity.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:13:18] Emotionally safe, it's often not physically safe. Safe if you're dependent on the church, which we'll talk about In a minute. And, and there's no, you know, I mean, we get frustrated with trying to find how to cancel a subscription on a lot of these company websites. But eventually, somewhere in the fine print, somewhere down the phone menu, there is a way to cancel your subscription. I challenge you to find the cancel my subscription button on the church website. The I want to resign from the church. Now, where's the form? There is no form. You got to go to third parties to learn the legal way to get out of the church with the least legal consequences. And by the way, that was a right that was won. So I think it was in the 80s, up until the 80s, you actually could not leave the church without being excommunicated. They could kick you out, but you couldn't go to the church and say, I resigned. And there was, it was a different church. There was a Supreme Court precedence. It was a different church, I think it was in Arizona, some other religion, and, and the person tried to quit their church and they couldn't quit their church. And so they sued and went all the way to the Supreme Court and they won us the right to leave the church. But if you were trying to leave the church in the 70s, good luck, you can't. So, yeah, you gotta go out and sin and then they gotta kick you out. That's. That was the way out then. So does the church practice deception? Well, this is a very famous, at least among ex Mormons, quote by Boyd K. Packard. Not a very famous quote amongst true believing Mormons. So it's one of the things that they're covering up. This was a talk given to. Given at Brigham Young University in 1981. He said teaching some things that are true prematurely or at the wrong time can invite sorrow and heartbreak instead of the joy intended to accompany learning the Scriptures teach emphatically that we must give milk before me. The Lord made it very clear that some things are to be taught selectively and some things are to be given only to those who are worthy. It matters very much not what we are told, but what we are told. But when we are told it, be careful that you build faith rather than destroy it. I think he gave that to CES members. So seminary teachers, BYU teachers, institute teachers, so Boyd K. Patrick.

John Dehlin [01:15:30] And there's also that famous quote, not all things that are true are useful. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:35] I think I have that quote in my book as well. So that's them just straight up admitting that they, that they do use deception. You're not going to find them admitting that very often. That's Why I had to go all the way back to 1981 to find that, because that is part of the deception. If they came out and said, oh, by the way, we're dishonest about a bunch of stuff, you might want to look into that, check some third party reviews before you join us, then they wouldn't be deceptive. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] And just for those who are joining Mormonstra stories, kind of newer to Mormon stories, I just want to say we've done some real important coverage over the past year or two of how much the Church has known and for how long it's known it and whether it's the Book of Abraham. You know, the problems with the translation of the Book of Abraham was on a cover of the New York Times in 1912. The church has known about the problems of the Book of Abraham for well over a hundred years. Years. Whether it's the BH Roberts scandals of the nineteen teens and twenties where BH Roberts basically came to understand the Book of Mormon to not be a historical document. All the anachronisms, the view of the Hebrews stuff. There was a meeting in 1922 with Shannon Caldwell Montez. She's the scholar that helped remind us about the great Mormon meetings where all the first presidency, quorum of the 12, all the general authorities sat in a room room for three or four days in Salt Lake City and were debriefed about all the ways the Book of Mormon was not a historical document. Whether it's Fawn Brody and excommunicating her for no man Knows My History, a book that came out in 1945 which told a truthful history of Joseph Smith, whether it's the Leonard Arrington years of church history from 72 to 82, where the church historians started uncovering the factual history again and talking about about it. And all the brethren, including packers, shut it down. Because we can't have, you know, anything discussed that could cause members to question. And of course, the excommunication of the September Six and me and Bill Real and Sam Young and like. There is zero question that the Church has well over a decade, a century of systematically hiding the truth about its history, knowingly hiding the truth about its history and punishing anyone who talks about

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:17:56] it all the way back to Joseph Smith. I mean, William Law is publishing an expose on polygamy and one issue, next thing you know, a mob is burning down ordered by the mayor, which is a theocracy. You're having a literal United States mayor suppressing freedom of speech. That I mean, he wasn't just some person like a church leader. He was actually like in a government position when he did that. That. So, yeah, it goes all the way back.

John Dehlin [01:18:25] And the church has hid Joseph Smith's treasure digging with the peep stone and his folk magic. His polygamy was unbeknownst to the members forever. Like the. The connections to the temple ceremony and the Masonic Lodge, like, just take your pick. It. It has been 200 years of knowing intentional deception. Now, that doesn't mean that the brethren aren't smart enough to employ the tools of confirmation bias to actually believe it all. I'm not necessarily in that camp that thinks they're all knowing frauds, but they are knowing deceivers. And there's this concept of lying for the Lord, which you can see also in past Mormon stories episodes we've covered that where because of teachings in the Bible, because of Joseph Smith's teachings, it is an intentional technique and an intentional code of morality or ethics that you can knowingly and intentionally deceive as a leader in the Mormon Church if you're doing it to preserve precious testimonies which infantilizes the members that they're so innocent and feeble and their testimonies are so fragile that we have to protect them by knowingly deceiving them and lying to them them. That's the history of mormonism for over 200 years. Am I overstating it? Luna, Am I overstating it?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:52] You're not overstating it. And you know, far you're able just to rattle all that stuff off much better than I am. And the thing is, is if you know, in the world of free thinking and critical thinking, the concept is, if your idea it can hold up to scrutiny, then it's a good idea. And if it can't hold up to scrutiny, then it's a bad idea. And that's what the principle in play here. Here. The, the Mormon idea there is flawed and it cannot stand up to scrutiny. And so they have to hide those flaws as their only strategy for the whole thing to not just completely fall apart.

John Dehlin [01:20:24] Yeah. So Mormonism gets an A in deception. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me happy to give that grade, but it is a master of deception.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:36] I want the Mormon Church to be healthy and, and to be upfront about all this. They lose a lot of members and a lot of tithes. But in terms of the human cost, I would take that trade as who I am. Save all those people from all that spiritual abuse and trauma.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] Yeah. And again, I'll just say this really quickly, a lot of people say, well, John, you're trying to destroy the church, or, John, you hate the church. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's really as simple as is this. When people are giving their life, their identity, their time, their money, 10% of their income, their children, when they're giving all of that to an organization, that's a lot to give to an organization. People deserve to know what they're giving their lives, their time, their money, and their children to. And so people deserve informed consent. So I don't want to take everyone out of the church. I don't want to destroy the church. I want everyone who has ever been, who is now or who will ever be a member of this church to simply know everything about what they're joining before they make those commitments so they can make an informed, intelligent decision. And then from there, if they still want to be a part of it, they have my full support as autonomous humans with free will. They have my blessing, but only if and only then. And I won't and I won't rest until everybody can engage Mormonism with informed consent.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:10] Yes, exactly. I'm with you there.

John Dehlin [01:22:13] All right, so deception we've done. Now it's belief follows behavior.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:19] All right, so we talked about why we might do things we don't understand under love bombing, but when we do a thing that we don't understand, cognitive dissonance is. Is like subconsciously going, what. What are you acting weird for? It makes us automatically believe the offered explanations. The church says, you're doing it because the church is true and because Jesus loves you and because the Book of Mormon is true and because the church was restored by Joseph Smith the prophet. And that's your explanation. So your brain goes, why am I doing doing this? Because it's true. The picture, by the way, is a picture of Joseph Smith with some hipster glasses on, and it says, mormons calling each other bro before it was cool.

John Dehlin [01:23:01] What is it? What do you mean by that? Why'd you pick that meme?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:23:03] Oh, because it's funny. It's a joke. I have a few jokes in here because we brother and sister. And it's a hipster joke and a Mormon joke anyway. So all of these processes are subconscious, usually. And in order for this belief follows behavior mechanism to work, the behavior has to feel voluntary. If you feel like you're doing something because someone is forcing you to, then your cognitive dissonance will resolve to, I'm doing this because I'm being forced to. So if we show up at. At the Mormon dance or whatever. We've invited by a friend and we're standing around and everybody's got that accent and they're talking about the Book of Mormon and about volleyball on Saturdays and. And I don't. I've been out of the church so long, I don't remember how Mormons behave. But they're doing the little things and they have their little stuff sayings that they say and you start to just kind of. They're calling each other brother and sister. I think that might be why I have that slide there, actually. Thank you for asking me these questions, John. You're keeping me, keeping me smart. I guess so. So we're calling each other brother and sister and you join the church and you're like, I'm calling every brother and sister. I don't really understand why they say it's because maybe we were brothers and sister in the pre existence. I don't really know if I accept that. But you're doing it now. And so. So you start feeling like maybe because it's true. These aren't commanded. No. No prophet I don't think has ever said, thou shalt call each other brother and sister. Thou shalt have funeral potatoes or any of the other. Wear a dress. Sometimes that's commanded. But usually we. We see that other people are wearing nice. Their Sunday best, and so we put on our Sunday best so that we don't feel like we stand out, so we don't have that shame which we talked about as well. So the more unusual the behavior, the more likely it is to resolve to belief. So we might ask ourselves, why don't Mormons become even more mainstream than they are? Why don't we wear. Why don't they allow women to wear slacks to church and men to wear whatever sweatshirt or whatever that they want to feel most comfortable in? Well, part of that is that because it's a little bit unusual. That makes us. If you wore a sweatshirt to church, you wouldn't be like, why am I wearing a sweatshirt to church? It must be because the church is true. But if you're wearing, you're not used to wearing and it's kind of uncomfortable and it's, you know, then you might be like, okay, it must be because the church is true. But there's a balance there. Because if the behavior is too weird, like there's a movie, dude, where's my car? Where the cult in that movie, they wear bubble wrap all the time. And I'm sure that there are definitely some cults that do things that are too weird. But if it's too weird, then they're not going to get as many recruits because you're going to. So has to be just weird enough, you know, preferably something that makes you kind of look nicer, stand out a little bit better, look upper class. So that's, that's one part of the Mormons dress code. And the odd behavior, though, if it's just slightly odd, does reinforce isolation, which is Maloo control, which we'll talk about later, is if you're just slightly odd enough, it'd be like people outside the church might be like, yeah, those are those Mormons. I don't know, they're kind of weird. And when you do talk to them, the conversation might be a little awkward because they're from different subcultures. And that actually helps reinforce the feeling that you're different from other people and that you're not the same, that you're a peculiar people. And we'll also talk about us versus them, which. Which is in another presentation. And so.

John Dehlin [01:26:29] Yeah, no, no, no, finish the slide and then I was just gonna jump in.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:26:32] Yeah. Last point is that all of these little signs, you know, do you smell like cigarettes, cigarette smoke, are you drinking a Pepsi? All of these subtle little signs play into demand for purity. Gives us a way that we can quickly judge their outward signs. They're not internal signs like, are you honest? The church could spend a lot more time talking about honesty, which I feel is very good value. It's my most important value. They could, they could spend more time on helping people become more charitable. But, but they spend more time on the little things like sexual purity and caffeine, word of wisdom kind of of stuff because they're outward, because we can see it's hard to tell if someone's being dishonest unless they're just outright lying about something. That's obvious. But drinking a Pepsi, you can see that and you can judge it. It makes you feel like a better person. I don't drink Pepsi, but they, they're a bad person. So I'm better than them. And it helps that feeling like I'm, I'm right, I'm righteous.

John Dehlin [01:27:26] And you get this, you get this sort of culture where people have got the perfect hair and the perfect, perfect clothes and maybe they're a sexual abuser behind the scenes. Like it's this weird dissonance where you got the public face and then the private behavior, but as long as you create the appearance of, of fitting the mold and living the lifestyle, everyone's good, and then you just don't talk about the problems. And that's the way the system kind of can roll forward and self propell based on appearances. Yeah, I'm going to take this just slightly in a, I, I, I, I'm very confident you're going to feel like this harmonizes with what you're going to say, but it's a slightly different look or lens on this idea of belief follows behavior. I do think you're gonna, you're gonna address this in a second, but I was just thinking about the fact this is just a little bit personal. You talked about honesty being your, your most important value. I, I had that growing up as well. I think my parents will say they cannot remember a time where I ever lied to them ever. Like through, through college. And, and part of that was because I saw in my family life what happens when you're dishonest. And I saw people's lives blow up when they were living secrets that were harmful. So honesty was always like number one for me. And so I was always taught in seminary. Oh well, you know the church is true and you can know it for yourself. And if you pray, you'll get the answer. So I read the Book of Mormon and I pray and I read it and pray, read the whole thing, live the standards, you know, and I pray and I, I'm not going to just like lie. I'm like, I want that answer and I pray and I didn't get the answer. But what we all know happens in Mormonism is this teaching of you gain a testimony how? By bearing it. Right, right. And we're going to talk about testimonies later in this very segment. But it's also this idea of live it, plant the seed and live it and then the fruits will come forward and then you'll know it's true. That's kind of the Alma 32 plant the seed kind of thing. And all I'm going to say there is for me the best metaphor of what you're talking about is one of the biggest strokes of genius on the part of the Mormon Church, which is having a missionary program, because how many I've done 1500 hours of people's stories within Mormonism. It's almost a cliche. You get to 19, you're not totally sure if the church is true, but you've been living it all these years. Then you go on a mission and you get to this point where you have to start telling other, you have to, you clean up your hair, you Wear the white suit, you wear the ties. Or if you're a woman, if you present as a woman, you wear the dress, you look all Mormony, and you start bearing your testimony, living it in a mo. And I think some would say the most Coley thing about Mormonism is the mission experience where you're cut out, literally cut off from your family, living at 24 by 7. And you bear your testimony even when you don't have it. And I remember that first moment where I had to go teach a lesson, listen to my first investigator. In my mind, I'm thinking, do I really know this is true? And I'm like, I don't. I never got that answer. But then I make this decision. I'll just bear my testimony. It'll be an act of faith, and maybe I'll come to know it by burying it. And that's what we're literally taught. A testimony is obtained by bearing it. And that for me, the missionary program is a metaphor. And that belief following behavior, I just can't think of a better metaphor than the Mormon mission. Now, I don't know that that's exactly where you were going, but please tell me, Luna, that this aligns with kind of the direction and the theme.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:31:26] It does. It does. And we'll get more into specifically about testimonies under public commitment, which is a type of belief follows behavior. But for now, belief follows behavior is like a broader umbrella, so that includes any kind of behavior. And admission is an excellent example. That's a huge step. You're giving up your schooling and maybe a relationship, and you're paying to go paying for it. You're paying to volunteer to be a salesperson for sometimes. And I study this stuff sometimes. I don't even understand how they get it to work, but they do.

John Dehlin [01:32:02] Isn't that brilliant? You pay to be their salesperson.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:06] Yeah, it's ridiculous. But. But by doing that, a lot of people get a testimony. And this is the mechanism through which that happens. Why did I give up two years of my life? Why did I go to all this trouble? Why am I paying all this money? Must be because it's true. And you're sub. Again, it's subconscious. You don't sit down with a journal and a piece of paper and just pros and cons. It's not like that. It's not conscious. It's not informed consent. It is subconscious. It's a reaction and doesn't always work. Doesn't work for everyone. Didn't really work for me. I mean, I didn't go on a mission, but I did all the other steps, and I never really had a testimony. I had some spiritual experiences, but it was still hard for me to say, I know this church is true when. When I didn't even. But I did it anyway because the pressures. I mean, I was three, and they stuck a microphone in my face, and I was supposed to say the things. So.

John Dehlin [01:33:01] Yeah. Okay, so next slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:05] So this can be. The different behaviors. Can be. Here's a list of. Some of those can be clothing and hairstyles, which we've discussed. Your diet, which is the word of wisdom in the Mormon. In case of Mormonism. And also just particular dishes that are. That Mormon culture is used to having. It can be rituals, either large ones or small ones. Like, could be praying every morning on up to the sacrament or the temple ceremony.

John Dehlin [01:33:33] Hymns, music, church attendance. Temple attendance. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:38] Yep, Yep. And music is the next one. Singing songs and. Or chanting in some groups. Personal expression, writing, art, public speaking, games and shared activities. Manners of speaking. So the particular ways of using words are vernacular. Definitely that. Yep. And volunteer work. And interestingly, with volunteer work, the more menial it is, the better. If you're feeling like you're gaining a skill while you're doing the work, then you aren't gonna. It's not gonna work as well. And you see this in Scientology a lot, where they put. They put their best accountant or lawyer to work as punishment. Cleaning toilets. And by the way, pounding rocks.

John Dehlin [01:34:18] Pounding rocks. Digging ditches that you fill in, you know?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:23] Yeah. And you think to yourself, why am I doing this? Now, I do want to add. I don't want to denigrate what they call unskilled labor because it is skilled. Of course, clean toilets is valuable. It's a great service. So. But it's not about what the actual objective of the task is. It's about what we feel it is. So we feel like this is unskilled labor. We feel like it's menial. We feel like we're above this and we're doing it anyway. And so that we feel. And that judgment. Judgment of other types of work also helps us. Helps the church create that feeling in us of hierarchy. So we feel like we're higher on a rung than someone who cleans toilets. And I do want to put a shout out there to everyone who cleans toiletries is skilled work, and it is valuable. I personally don't feel like it's lesser work, but people who do, when they're doing it, it. They're in service to a Group like this, they're going to feel like, why am I doing this? Maybe because it's true.

John Dehlin [01:35:21] And mostly if the work, if the meaning, if the. If the work is assigned as a way to subjugate, humiliate and control the individual who's doing the work. And honestly, I think missions are. Can be that this tracting, this brainless, mindless knocking on doors, getting rejected day after day after day, you would think that would make you hate the organization giving you the work and the assignment, but what it does is it makes you more loyal. It's like, man, I gave two years of my life, and those are the best two years of my life. Paying to get door slammed in my face day after day after day. Because there's some bonding that happens when you've served something and even paid to serve something. And given such a sacrifice, you would think it would be the opposite. But psychologically, you become bonded to something that you serve so committedly for so long.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:36:16] Exactly. That's exactly the dynamic that happens there.

John Dehlin [01:36:19] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:36:20] So on the next slide, we'll kind of talk about how this worked in the prisoners of war in Korea in the 50s. And here's a quote from. There's a picture here of American prisoners of war captured by Korean forces that are awaiting liberation in 1950. 1950, black and white photo. And so this quote is by Robert Cialdini from Influence, his book Influence. It said, the Chinese set about arranging the prison camp experience so that their captives would consistently act in desired ways. Before long, the Chinese knew these actions would begin to take their toll, causing the prisoners to change their views of themselves, to align with what they had done. Writing was one sort of commitment, committing action that the Chinese urged incessantly upon the camp captives. It was never enough for the prisoners to listen quietly or even agree verbally with the Chinese line. They were always pushed to write it down as well. And in my reading about this situation, what they would do is they would offer a small incentive. And the smaller the incentive, the better this technique works. And again, it has to feel free. It has to feel like you're choosing it. That's why you offer the incentive. You don't say, you better write this essay on the benefits of communism or we're going to put you in the hot box. Again, that doesn't work because you're going to think, well, I'm going to write it, but I'm not going to believe it. What they do is they'd offer you some tiny little creature comfort. They'd offer you a toothbrush if you write an essay, a one page essay on the benefits of communism, we're going to give you a toothbrush. And it worked way better. The prisoners of war, they came back who had been through that sort of program were more likely to stick to their beliefs that communism was the way to go than those who had been forced or had been offered larger incentives, like we're going to give you a couple of days of freedom or whatever the larger incentive might have been. And this interestingly parallels the work that Leon Festinger was doing simultaneously here in the United States in his cognitive dissonance research. I didn't really talk about the experiments, but one of the earliest experiments for cognitive dissonance is that they would have students come in and be told that they were doing this great scientific research and then sit them down in front of a board full of pegs and tell them to rotate each peg in order, a half turn over and over and over again for the next half hour. And the student would think that that was the experiment, but that wasn't really the experiment. The experiment was when the student left the room, they were told that, oh no, there's an emergency, one of our next staffer has called in sick. So we need you if we're going to pay you a little bit of money, if you can tell them, the next person who's going to do the experiment what it's all about. But you need to sell it. You need to tell them it's an awesome experiment and it's going to benefit science greatly. And so the turning of the pegs was designed to be mindless and boring and seem like it was completely useless for science. So you go out and you tell the person, hey, so they had a control group who wasn't paid anything and they had a group that was paid a dollar, this is in 50s money. And they had a group, group that was paid $20 in 50s money, which is, I think about $100 today. And so the group that wasn't paid so, and then after they did that sold, sold about how fun this experiment was. A week later they had what seemed like a different group of people, like the university ethics committee or whatever ethics committee would call them in and say, okay, well how would that experiment go? Do you think it was fun? Do you think it was useful for science? And then they gauge their responses to see whether the person changed their beliefs about. So the control group, they went in and did the survey and they, they were like, no, it was a useless experiment. It was super boring. I don't even know what this is supposed to prove. And the group that was paid $20 also wrote, this was a stupid experiment I hated. It was so boring. It was menial. I just. It was. I couldn't stand it. But the group that was paid a$, the lesser amount actually said they changed their beliefs. They said it was a fun experiment. I had a really good time. And what they. What they found out was that, that when you're not paid enough to feel like you're doing it for the money, you'll change your beliefs as a reason for why you did the thing. And that's what they found out simultaneously over in Korea, that the Chinese were doing these simple, similar experiments unethically on prisoners of war by trading toothbrushes for essays about how great communism was. And the same exact effect occurred.

John Dehlin [01:40:53] And the other thing that jumped out to me is there's this weird situation in Mormonism where you're taught from a baby, serve a mission, serve a mission. So at least for me as a Mormon boy, and now I think it's boys and girls now that girls are encouraged as much as boys to serve missions. Because the church was losing all its missionaries and the number of missionaries was plummeting. They had to double the missionary force by letting. Encouraging all women to serve. But anyway, the point is, from a boy, it's like, serve a mission server mission. I hope they call me on a mission mission stories. Mission, mission, mission, mission. Your whole life is to serve a mission. And then you get to like 18 or 17 or 18, and they'll. They'll sort of like, back off and they're just kind of wait. And everybody else is going. All your friends are going. You're seeing, you know, the sacrament talks and the home, you know, the farewells and, and people are coming home. And so they create this perception that, oh, well, you get to make the choice.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:51] Right?

John Dehlin [01:41:51] And so it's like, why did I

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:53] choose to go on a mission?

John Dehlin [01:41:55] Do I want to serve a mission? I get to make the choice. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:58] Right.

John Dehlin [01:41:59] But really, you've got 19 years of conditioning and pressure and expectations. And of course, if you don't, you won't find a girl. A girl won't want to marry you. Your parents will be disappointed, all your leaders. This is what they've been raising you for forever. But there's just this moment where they back off and let you have the perception or the feeling that you made a choice. But did you really make a choice to serve a mission? I mean, really. But you feel like you Absolutely feel like, no, I made that. I made that decision on my own.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:33] But did you have to feel like it or it won't work?

John Dehlin [01:42:35] Did you really? Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:36] If you feel like you didn't choose it, then the whole thing doesn't work. It stops working. So yeah, yeah, yeah, so does. The question is, can we find some quotes of the leaders acknowledging that this exists? We have Richard g. Scott from April 2002 conference. You will receive from the Holy Ghost a confirming witness of things you accept on faith by willingly doing them. Neil L. Neil l. Anderson in 2012 said, how do you remain steadfast and immovable during a trial of faith? You immerse yourself in the very things that helped build your core faith. You exercise faith in Christ, you pray, you ponder the scriptures, you repent, you keep the commandments and you serve others. And then from the Family Home Evening resource book in 1997, no person knows the principle of tithing until he pays tithing. I have a Mormon ad here from, probably from the 80s. Again, it's got a CTR ring and the caption reads, choosing the right is the only true happiness. Only way to true happiness.

John Dehlin [01:43:40] Yeah. Yep. A testimony to tithing comes in. Paying your tithing, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:43:45] Yep. And that's the last slide on belief follows behavior.

John Dehlin [01:43:48] Okay, so that's belief follows behavior. And I do think, I do think there's another A plus there. I'm not trying to pummel the Mormon Church. I have so many mixed feelings and lots of love and frustration. But, but the church is just. They're excelling at these points, Luna. So definitely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:44:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:08] Okay. Public commitment is the next one. What is that?

Public Commitment, Covenants, and Creating Dependency

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:44:11] Public commitment is a very specific type of belief follows behavior. It is the act of making a commitment in front of other people. Robert Cialdini from Influence said, public commitments tend to be lasting commitment commitments. And by the way, this is used ethically in self help groups and therapy. When we stand up and say, for instance in an AA meeting that you're an alcoholic and you sort of barrier AA equivalent of a testimony and talk about that. And to your sponsor you talk about. And people have talked about AA maybe being a cult. I think it really super depends on like what region you're in, what your local leaders are like in aa. But it has helped a lot of people overcome addiction and do self improvement. When you want to get buff, you might commit. I'm going to work out one time a week or whatever, four times a week or whatever. And you tell that to your friends. It is, it can be a Positive change agent. But the fact of the matter is this is how we operate. When we add cognitive dissonance to the concept of integrity, we have words becoming belief, because nobody wants to become a hypocrite. Even small agreements can leverage a huge change. There's situations, I think Cialdini talked about this in his book Info Influence, where signing a petition can make you feel dedicated to that cause. Like all you did was sign a thing. But you can suddenly become dedicated to the organization that's promoting that cause. And you might send them money, then next time they ask for money. But it's very important still. The commitment cannot feel coerced. So just like with belief follows behavior.

John Dehlin [01:45:44] Yep. I'm ready to talk, but I'm going to let you go. A couple more slides before I jump in.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:48] We have a quote from Margaret Singer, who was one of the early researchers of these of brainwashing techniques coming out of Korea. And she said, in cults in our midst, as social psychology experiments and observations have found for decades, once a person makes an open commitment before others to an idea, his or her subsequent behavior generally supports and reinforces the stated commitment. That is, if you say in front of others that you are making a commitment to be pure, then you will feel pressured to follow what others define as the path of purity. I want to emphasize that what others define as the path of purity, you will, then you will think that you came upon the belief and behaviors yourself. So that is, it's so subconscious that it makes you think that you're being self directed when really it's other people defining that morality for you.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] Yep. And we're all thinking about the fast and testimony meeting now.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:41] Yep. So next slide.

John Dehlin [01:46:43] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:43] Mormonism do this testimony and covet covenants.

John Dehlin [01:46:46] Yeah. Oh yeah, Covenants too. Absolutely. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:50] All the way from baptism up to all the way to the second anointing, but all the ones in between temple, marriage and so forth.

John Dehlin [01:46:57] Yeah, and we're, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about this, but I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna like say, and we're gonna talk about coercion. You know, we're taught from a very young age that a testimony is, is gained by it by bearing it. But it's so brilliant of the church to have this baked into the monthly, not just the monthly church experience because of course there's the fast and testimony meeting once a month where members just get up and bear their testimony. And then in your family home evenings, you're taught as a kid to prepare to bear testimony there to your family. And then you graduate to bearing your testimony in front of the group. And it's so brilliant. And I don't think it's conscious. I don't think they're consciously trying to manipulate and coerce people. But the way the system is saying set up, you are groomed to become a missionary for the church by learning to bear your testimony. And you do it in primary before you do it in sacrament meeting, and you do it at youth conferences and youth conferences, girls camp, they all have testimony meetings where they're constantly trying to get you to make that public commitment. And then of course, the mission is like the supreme culmination. But you're right, it's more than that. It's the temple ceremony where you're covenant in front of your parents, your siblings, your children, whatever, you're raising your arm to the square. Law of consecration, law of sacrifice. All the different covenants you make in the temple, you're making with your arm to the square. And of course, now the church has got this term covenant breaker, where they're basically saying, are you on the covenant path? Which means are you keeping all the promises that you've made all throughout your life life, or are you not on the covenant path? Which means you're a covenant breaker. And this is all this massive structure of undue influence where you were groomed to make these public commitments, which means your brain was wired to be committed to the organization. And then how much force and power does that have to make you terrified to ever break away from it once you've made decades of public commitments, thousands of hours of public commitments.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:49:13] And what's the point of sacrament? Of sacrament meaning what's the whole point of sacrament meaning to renew your covenants. So every single Sunday, the most important meeting of church, and they'll come to your house during COVID times and administer the sacrament to you is to re up those commitments. And so you're, you're saying the prayer along with them in your mind, you're singing the him that's reminding you of what that covenant is. And so it's. Yeah, it's there. So, yeah, that's all I've got to say.

John Dehlin [01:49:41] Yeah, so so many. Yeah. And again, I didn't even think about the sacrament, but it's just constant public commitment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:49:48] And they tell you that your commitment is to God, but in a number of these particular rituals, that your commitment is to the church, not to God. And so that's sacred science coming in again, where the organization puts itself in place of God or some imperfect system that they're interchangeable. Is it God, Is it a church?

John Dehlin [01:50:08] So it's, yeah, it's, it's not God. It's. It's the corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ Saints. Alex Beckstead. We're getting great comments, but I'm just, I've got to highlight this one. Alex writes, the opt out moments in the temple are worth noting here. You know, don't want to agree to this. Just stand up and face the judgment of all these people. I, I'll just, I'm going to one up. Alex, how about opting out of a baby's blessing? Well, you can't because you're a baby. Well, how about opting out of, of getting baptized? Really? In the history of mormonism, how many 8 year olds have felt like they really had the freedom to say, nah, mom and dad, not me, when you're

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:50:48] eight to an eternal commitment and no one does.

John Dehlin [01:50:50] Right. And then, and then, you know, at the temple, that's the worst of all. Yeah, they give you, you like, they don't tell you what you're going to be committing to before you go to the temple. So there's that secrecy element. But then once you're there, you're going to be promising to literally give your very lives to the church. You're tithing your money, your whole lives to the church. And yes, they say you can leave, but before you sign up to all this stuff, you can leave of your own free will and choice, which creates these illusion of consent because you don't even know what you're consenting to. But are you going, how many people are going to opt out at that moment, right before you're about to do the endowment ceremony? Grandparents, parents, siblings, everyone's around you, your loved ones, how many of you are going to like opt out and leave the temple? And so they even create the perception, the self perception of consent by making you feel like you consented to something that you didn't even know what you were consenting to with the massive peer pressure surrounding you. It's not intentionally insidious, but it is psychological. It is, it is massively psychologically insidious that, that system.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:52:09] Absolutely, yeah. So does, does the church teach this? Well, let's do the church teach public commitment? Let's find out. Sheldon F. Ch from General Conference in 1997 said, we make covenants at the waters of baptism. We renew those covenants each week as we worthily partake of the sacrament. We take upon ourselves the name of Christ. We promise to always remember him and keep his commandments in return. He promises us that his Spirit will always be with us. We make covenants as we enter the temple and we in return we receive the promised blessing of eternal life if we keep those sacred covenants. Covenants with God are not to be taken lightning lightly. What's interesting about this is the two things that we get back. One of them is that will keep the commandments and in exchange where God will help you keep the commandments. And the other thing we get is conveniently invisible and beyond the afterlife, which none of us can peer into. Some people feel like they may have. And I don't. I don't want to disparage any of those personal feelings, but there are conflicts in those reports of people who have seen into the afternoon afterlife. There are direct contradictions in those reports. So we cannot know for sure what will come in the afterlife. So conveniently they're saying we're going to promise you this amazing. Absolutely beyond your wildest dreams. But there's no way to prove whether or not it's actually true. So we don't. We're committing and getting absolutely nothing tangible for it.

John Dehlin [01:53:36] Right? Yeah. Just the perception.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:40] But I want you all to know that you were under duress as we've been discussing. These are pressures that you that are hard to avoid, that are. That have a huge cost to avoiding them. It was not. You were not informed. It was all done deceptively. You were. It was done under the threat of lost blessings and eternal punishment. And again, you're not committing to God but to the church itself. And like I said before, the deal isn't even all that great. Keep the commit. Keep the commandments and God will help you. Keep the commandments. Commandments. All the rewards are intangible. And I want you to know that you're not obligated to follow through on any commitment that you've made under deception or coercion. That's your out. You can. You can rest easy and resolve it in yourself. If you made these commitments under deception, you are not still beholden to them. When you discover. And that's how contract law works in the United States. It's how moral ethics in my opinion works. Work. You don't have to follow through on something that you didn't. They weren't informed and consent to.

John Dehlin [01:54:39] Yeah. What do you get? You get to be a lifelong devoted servant to building the interests of the church. That's what you get. What do you give? You give everything you give your life, your identity, your time, your commitment, your money. It's, it's a mind blowing commitment you make, make for.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:03] There's no upside for you. There's no upside for you, except maybe a mansion in heaven.

John Dehlin [01:55:07] But again, the after, it's always, it's always in the life. Yeah, it's always in the life you don't know you're going to have. You don't know if you get that afterlife. Nobody really knows what heaven's like. No one knows what the rewards are. And by the way, even Mormon theology makes it so everybody can get it at the end of the day. But still, what you do know you have is this life. The money in your pocket pocket, your children, your reputation, how you want to spend your life. And that all goes to the corporation. And you think you're giving it to Jesus and to the Lord, but the money goes not into Jesus's pocket, it goes into the corporation's bank account and then they use it to buy malls and real estate properties and investments and

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:54] scholarship worth and counting.

John Dehlin [01:55:58] $130 billion just in investments. This church, the Mormon Church, will be a trillion dollar church within the next 20 to 30 years. Now it doesn't even need your tithing like that's just 7% interest. Money doubles every seven years with 7% interest. It's going to be a trillion dollar church within the next 20 to 30 years. And that's.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:56:20] They could be helping so many people too. I don't know. Only costs $15,000 to build a well in Africa. I did the math on Twitter back a couple years ago when one of these news stories broke and I forget, it was something like 16,000 wells or something they could build with even just part of that money. And so they could solve world hunger with that money right now and they choose not to. And to me, that's despicable.

John Dehlin [01:56:45] Yeah. And there's a really, there's a really vulnerable and I think poignant comment shared by one of our listeners. Liz writes, my son kept this is about the idea of consent and duress. An honest and vulnerable parent basically acknowledges my son kept saying he didn't want to be baptized, but because I felt the pressure to do what was right, I persuaded him to do it. Liz now says, worst moment ever. Again, I'm an echo Luna. What you've already said, Maya Angelou, when you know better, you do better. Let's not spend any time beating ourselves up for how we behaved under undue influence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:57:26] Right?

John Dehlin [01:57:27] We're all victims here. Let's now Just figure out how we can do and be better going forward. And that's, that's all we can do. And that's a lot. You deserve, you deserve a. It's a crowning life achievement to break free from an organization that has entrapped you with undue influence. So if all you've done is liberated yourself so that the. So that the, the undue influence stops with you for your generation and for generations after you, I think that's a massive, monumental achievement.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:57:58] I don't know if you agree. Yeah. Break the cycle.

John Dehlin [01:58:01] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So more on public commitment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:58:07] Yeah. So there's a. I showed a picture of the testimony glove, which was a thing again after I left, but I heard people talking about it in 2008 from the friend. And the idea of a testimony glove is that you have the five rote things that you say and you teach your children to say the five rote things. So testimonies are often given under pressure. And again, children cannot consent. I don't know the earliest age that children are taught to get up in sacrament meeting and give testimony. But I was three when I gave my first testimony. And in fact, when I was, I think seven or eight, I think it was just before I got baptized. The 3rd Ward Phantom gave me a book on testimony. It was a gift giver, a secret gift giver in our ward. And one day I got this book on testimonies. I still have it because I had given a testimony that was apparently impressive or something at the age of seven. Testimonies are often not honest. The policy of bear it till you believe it. It makes. Makes you dishonest when you're telling that testimony. And again, that dissonance that the dishonesty causes people who are, who want to be honest is part of what makes you feel the testimony eventually.

John Dehlin [01:59:17] No, you're literally told what to say. You literally repeat back exactly what you're told to say.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:59:23] The testimony glove, it's got, you know, a picture of Joseph Smith in the first vision. So I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and restored the gospel. It's got Jesus. I know Jesus is. Jesus was our savior. And I know there's Joseph Smith again. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's got Thomas Monson, who was at the time. I know Thomas Monson was a prophet. I know that I have a testimony. The temple. I know the temple is true, is a true doctrine. And we're supposed to say those over and over and over. And it's kind of those five points. There might Be I might be at the test the Book of Mormon. You might have a testimony the Book of Mormon as the word of God. But it's kind of of those basket of 10 different truths that we are supposed to pull from and say we're also supposed to be 100% positive in our testimonies. I've never heard anyone get up and give a testimony. I don't know. The church is all right, I give it two stars. No, it's a lot of work but you know, I have some friends.

John Dehlin [02:00:16] Church really hurt me in these ways.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:19] Yeah. And imagine, imagine if there was a restaurant on Yelp or Amazon. There's a book on Amazon and you go to rate it one star because you hated it. And it won't let you click one star star. It won't let you click two stars. It'll let you click five stars though. And so all of a sudden it has a five star review. Are you going to trust the five star review for that book or for that restaurant?

John Dehlin [02:00:38] Well, you could only pick the pre written text that it allows you to publish in the review. It's like, oh, you want to give us a review? Only the 5 star button works. And you can only copy and paste in the text that they wrote for you to say.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:52] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:00:53] Yeah, exactly.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:54] And testimonies are stated as certitude. We were taught, I was taught as a child to say I know the church is true, not I think the church is true or I believe the church is true or I kind of like the church. I know the church is true the same way that I know that this pencil is real.

John Dehlin [02:01:11] And that's back to the sacred science. You know what? No, no implies evidence and facts. And that's all, all, that's all smoke and mirrors. That's sacred science, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:01:23] Yes, exactly. And no criticism allowed to. And they're often rote so there's no room for self expression in there. There are. I have definitely heard people bear testimonies where they have a specific thing. Maybe they were sick or had a problem in their life and they might talk about that, but it's back again. It's always how the church helped them. And they are often rote for those who don't want to go free form minute they have a template that they can, that they can use.

John Dehlin [02:01:52] Yeah, yeah. And then Liz writes and if anybody says anything negative, the bishop will ask you to sit down, pass you a note, do damage control. We all saw that instance where the, the young girl got up and said she was, you know, same Sex attracted or a lesbian. And she, the mic was shut off and she was sat down. You know, that's, that's what happens with. He'd go off script.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:02:15] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:02:16] Yeah. Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:02:18] So does the church actually teach this? Well, M. Russell Ballard in 2004 said what we've heard in many different talks, simply stated testimony, real testimony. Born in the spirit and confirmed by the Holy Ghost changes lives. It changes how you think, what you do, it changes what you say. It affects every priority you set and every choice you make.

John Dehlin [02:02:40] Yeah, it's total. Yep, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:02:46] My computer is beeping. I'm sorry, someone's messaging me. I'm going to ignore them. If it was my son, I would tell him to quiet up. But it's not someone else. So let's see. Do we do public commitment in the missionary field? And this is from Preach my gospel in 2004. I'm sure it's in the latest edition, but that's the addition that I had. Missionaries pressure investigators to commit to read and pray to know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Note that it's not to read and pray if like maybe the word the Book of Mormon might be true or might not be true. It is to know if the Book of Mormon is the word of God. They are to pray to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. They are not to pray. Is he a con man? Is he a prophet? Is he just like a well meaning dude who doesn't actually speak for God? They're not. None of those are options here. They're asked. They're asked to attend church that Sunday. They're asked to set a time for the next visit and they're asked to follow a commandment of the missionary's choice. The missionary gets to pick, you know, hey, you need to quit smoking or whatever the commandment is. You need to stop drinking coffee often again, those outward presenting commandments, not, I want you to be more honest this week. I'm not sure if they ever say that or I need you to. To love your neighbor a little bit more. It's always like the outcome word principles that they're asked to commit to and

John Dehlin [02:04:09] it can't be probably stated enough. They don't say read, no man knows my history so that you understand the life of Joseph Smith before you bear pray to know if he was truly a prophet. They only tell you the whitewashed version about Joseph Smith. They don't tell you the problems with the Book of Mormon, how racist it is, how unscientific it is. You're praying about sort of like whitewashed unidimensional issues wherein you're completely uninformed until after the hooks are in.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:04:43] Right? Yeah, exactly. So that's the last slide on public commitment. Any last.

John Dehlin [02:04:49] Yeah, that's. I mean that is a. That is an A plus. I don't mean to be unfair to the church, but it's another A plus. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:04:56] And again, there are ethical ways that this be could work. Sticking that for your own. If it's self directed for your own goals and your own benefit, then public commitment can be a really good tool to create new habits.

John Dehlin [02:05:08] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:09] Okay. Well, let's. Let's hope. Let's hope for something better with creating dependency.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:14] All right. Well, the church can't have you just up and leaving, so they need you to be dependent. So in high demand groups, they want to prevent your ability to leave and even prevent thoughts of leaving that can be real or imagined, real or imagined dependency. Whether. Whether it is actually real or not doesn't matter. If you believe that it is a real dependency, then it is the same as being real. This can be physical, emotional and. Or spiritual dependency. And any one of those would work. But all three is even better for the, for the group. And it's established often by social pressure rather than command commandment. And it leads to double binds and decision making. Double binds is one we're going to get to in another talk. But it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. There is no right choice that benefits you. The only choice is going to be win, win for the group and lose, lose for you and for me.

John Dehlin [02:06:10] This is just. You cannot be happy without the church. You cannot be healthy without the Church. You not can't. You can't. You won't be faithful to your spouse without the church. You can't raise good kids with the Church. You won't make it in the afterlife.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:25] You won't be moral or have any values.

John Dehlin [02:06:28] You can't be moral. You can't be ethical. It's the great plan of happiness which implies if you don't follow the plan, you're not happy. Right. It's the great plan of salvation, which means if you don't follow it, you will be damned, not saved. It is a dependent model from. From top to bottom.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:48] Absolutely. So here's a quote from one of the. One of the books I read. And these are two cult researchers, Madeline Lando Tobias and Janiel Lalich. I looked up how to say her name, although that may not be how she pronounces it, but that's the popular way. Janja Walovich. And they said, and I love this book, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds. There's a new edition so you can get that book out of print. The new edition, which I have not read, is called Take back your, your Life. And it goes. The superiority of the church, of the group is established through the combination of peer pressure and constant reminders of the new members weakness and vulnerabilities. The new member begins to rely on the beliefs of the group or the leader for his or her future well being. Which, which addresses what you just said, John, about needing the church for happiness.

John Dehlin [02:07:33] Yep. And I'm just gonna, just really quickly in the spirit of just being willing to take criticisms, Dan Hardy writes, John, quote, I don't mean to be unfair to the Church, unquote, smiley face, smiley face, smiley face. Okay, Dan, I'm not sure if you're just joking with me or if you're actually a member of the Church who's a believer, who feels like I'm being unfair to the church while I'm saying I don't want to be unfair to the church. And I'm just going to invite. Dan, I'm okay with criticism. I'm okay with you challenging me. Dan, if you feel like the church does not meet criteria for the items that Luna has presented to us so far, if you don't feel like the church engages in creating a feeling of dependency, of encouraging public commitment, of belief follows behavior, of destabilizing people's identity, of love bombing, if you really want to have the position that, that the church does not meet criteria for these items, I want to have that discussion with you. I will bring you on Mormon stories, I will treat you with respect. But, but if you're mocking me, I want to have that conversation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:08:47] And I've been looking for, for criticism of my book too. So. Yeah, please take my book apart.

John Dehlin [02:08:53] Yeah, please, Dan, please show us how we're not being fair to the Church. Okay. Yeah. You may disagree with us on the Church's motives or whether people are harmed or hurt. Those are all fair questions. But whether or not the Church engages in these behaviors, I really want to hear that argument. Okay, Luna, back to you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:09:14] All right. Yeah. And like I said, I'm up for that too. And I would love a critical takedown of my book too. I've been hoping for like an intellectual, intelligent, fact based critical takedown. I've certainly gotten a lot of, you know, you're led by Satan or you're hurt and Hateful or all that kind of stuff. Like an actual someone who reads it and critiques the points I actually make. So yeah, so the church I mentioned can create, or a high demand group can create dependency in three different ways. Spiritual dependency. So the eternal, this is how the church can, can meet that eternal destiny is dependent upon the church. All meaning is found within the church. All your values and sense of purpose. It externalizes your free will. So you're giving your ability to make changes choices up to the church. And so the church is basically telling you this is right and this is wrong and if you do this, you're good and if you do this you're bad. And also the forever family would count as a spiritual dependency because if you don't follow the church's commandments, then you don't get to be with your family forever. You lose out on that. The psychological and emotional sphere includes social support, your family and immediate, in both immediate and extended family, whether or not you'll still have access to them or can relate to them as closely as you did before. It is your familiarity with like whether or not you're familiar with the church and its policies and you're comfortable with the culture. You're under threat of losing that sense of familiarity. If you leave the church or pushed out of the church and your identity is also wrapped up in the church and you're dependent upon the church to preserve your identity as it stands.

John Dehlin [02:10:55] Yeah, and I'll just highlight one of those items, like we all thought growing up Mormon, that the eternal family idea was the most beautiful of all ideas. It's like this is the one great gift that Mormonism gives the world is the eternal family. But what, what you have to realize now thinking about it is it's manufactured scarcity. It's this idea, why is it the default that a loving heavenly Father lets everyone be with their family in the afterlife? That should be the default and that should be just the love of God and the charity and the kindness and the ethics of God. But instead, what is perceived as this gracious, beautiful teaching of eternal families is really what it ends up doing, is this powerful bonding to force you to obey and pray and conform and pressure everybody around you. You out of being terrified that you won't end up with your spouse or your children or your grandchildren in the afterlife. And it becomes the tyranny of the eternal family, not the beauty and the freedom of the eternal family. And it is one of the most powerful ways the church creates dependency. Because who doesn't want to be with their spouse and kids for eternity. Right, right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:16] And some people are traumatized by their spiritual spouse or their, their parents or their other family. And in that case, that creates a different trauma dynamic because now you're gonna feel like you're gonna be forced with a, an abusive person, but you're not having what abuse is explained to you. You're not having someone say that's wrong. You're just told to honor your father or mother no matter what. And so that creates a whole other dynamic for people who are in abusive situations. Like I'm going to be stuck being, feeling this way for the, for the rest of eternity. So it's, it's a double edged sword as well.

John Dehlin [02:12:50] Yeah, it's so often these beautiful things become really pernicious, unfortunately when you really think about it. And Luna, I just have to take. We're on the topic of family. I have to share this, this shout out to you. Brenda Flesher writes, I am married to Luna's brother. While I was still believing, Luna never criticized or challenged my faith. I wish I had read their book when it came out. For those who weren't with us last time. Luna uses they them pronouns as a gender non binary identifying person. So, so Brenda writes, I wish I had read their book when it came out. They, meaning Luna, are so intelligent and well researched and really believes in actual agency. Love you, Brenda.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:13:34] Thank you, Brenda.

John Dehlin [02:13:35] That is beautiful. And Luna, I think that's well deserved. So I had to share it. Okay, so back to, to creating dependency.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:13:42] Yeah. So physical dependency. When we think of a high demand group or a cult that has created physical dependency, we might think of like a cult compound like the FLDS or Heaven's Gate who had their own property and people were segregated onto the property. Or the Sea Org within Scientology where people are sent as, as teenagers and have to live there. And the doors are locked and there's cameras and people everywhere to keep you from running away. But you might think, well, the church doesn't really have all of that, but they does actually have it in a few ways. So first of all, your safety and material blessings are contingent upon the church. I grew up with stories about how temple garments save people from harm.

John Dehlin [02:14:23] Tithing is fire insurance.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:14:25] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:14:26] Tithing literally keeps you from being burned. Yeah, right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:14:30] Yeah, Fire. Yeah, we talked about that in seminary. The fire exterior insurance joke. And then financially, when you really break down, when you think of a white Mormon male with a career in the church that's sort of that independent. We're taught to be independent in the Church self reliant. Most of us think of that person and that person is not financially dependent upon the church unless he is working for the church in CES or for BYU or one of the other church office buildings, something like that. Also, most women in the church don't have careers and so are financially dependent upon good standing with their husband. Husband and huge. Exactly. Anyone living in the Mormon corridor, which I don't know if they still call it the morridor in some circles, but that's what we did. So if you're working in Utah or in Boise, Idaho, you have a really high chance of having a Mormon boss. If you're running a business in those communities, your clients approval may depend upon your standing within the church. And of course minor children are completely physically dependent upon, upon maintaining good standing with their parents. And so with. When you add up all of these things together, more than half of the LDS members are physically dependent upon being in good standing with the church.

John Dehlin [02:15:46] So powerful. That's powerful. Yeah. One of, one of our really faithful listeners and followers, Jenny, she writes, I was utterly dependent because of the Mormon Church. I was a stay at home mom, she got a tumor, became disabled. Her husband was cheating on her with prostitutes and abusing and torturing her, but she couldn't leave because of total dependence. And then she writes, I became homeless when I left him. When half of your population, the women and I guess the children, 2/3 of your population or more for decades and decades are 1000% dependent on the church through the patriarchy, through the husband. Husband. How much freedom do they really have to. To make other options. Right, to make other choices.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:16:33] Yeah. I mean very little. Yeah. And, and I feel for you, Jenny. And yeah, I've, I've like I said, been with an abuser as well and was financially dependent on him and it's very, very tough to leave that. I was couch surfing for a while and, and had to, I, I used my retirement, My retirement is gone. I lived on my retirement. So that's. Yeah. Anyway.

John Dehlin [02:16:55] Yeah. And there's also the psychological bonding of prosperity gospel. Oh. If you, if you serve Jesus and the Lord in the church and if you're faithful, they'll pour out blessings. And that sounds beautiful. And oftentimes Mormons are prosperous, but that's just because they do smart things and lots of non Mormons do smart things. But in Mormonism you think that your prosperity comes from the church. And what that often does is it makes people afraid to leave it because they're like oh my gosh, I'VE had good things happen to me so far. If I leave it will. Will my business dry up? You know, will the Lord stop blessing me? Will I be cursed? And then there's the real idea that your business is somehow tied to your relationships in the church. And so if you're a dentist or a doctor or a lawyer or a psychologist and Mormons are your class science, there really is a financial dependence on remaining in good standing with the church sometimes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:17:54] Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. So we also have, under this topic, in terms of emotional dependence, the concept of regressing, which reverts an adult into a childlike state. So when we were children, we had brains. We had the same brain that we have now. And all of these neurons were firing. Brain cells were firing and creating technology templates, which is how we're called synaptic pathways, which is how our brain works. All of our memories and behaviors and ideas and all that thing are stored as synaptic pathways. So all the synaptic pathways that we had as children, we still have exactly as children. They're dormant. Sometimes we're reminded of things by various triggers, like childhood songs or feelings that we have or just memories that come up and that can actually. Actually, if that's. If that button is pushed enough can put us into a regressive childlike state again and remind us which. Which brings us back to destabilization. It's a one way of destabilizing people, and that can make the adult feel emotionally attached and physically dependent because that's how we were as children. So I have. I think this slide's showing up funny on your side. I don't know why it did that, but I think it's because I used an emoticon or something like that, an emoji. But I have the lyrics to I am a Child of God up here because that does remind us of our dependence. And the second verse of that song, like, anytime I hear this song, I'm like, right back to childhood. And the second verse of that song speaks directly to this. I am a child of God, and so my needs are great. Help me to understand his words before it grows too late. And that's a very ominous. You know, we think of this song as like a heartfelt, you know, children's song. But there's a really an ominous threat built into that particular lyric. And we have.

John Dehlin [02:19:41] It's that scarcity. It's that perceived scarcity.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:19:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:44] And now before the offer expires.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:19:47] Right. And to me, that has, like, a dark cloud on the Horizon like, you know, like a horror. I watch horror movies so you know it'll be too late. And, and the way out of that is to understand God's word. And so we lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way. We end up asking for guidance from those who are in authority over us.

John Dehlin [02:20:07] And it's not Jesus, it's. It's the leader, the prophets and apostles leading the church today. And, and don't pay attention to what they said in the past because we may have changed that. It's like what are they saying today? And, and they're leading the corporation of the president of the church.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:20:22] Right, exactly. Yeah. So the next slide, we have a scripture verse. I think we mentioned this earlier. And verily I say unto you, this is Matthew 18:30, but by the way, and verily I say unto you, except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

John Dehlin [02:20:41] Yep. Be like a child. Which means submissive and obedient and ignorant and dependent. Yeah, dependent, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:20:51] So we talked a bit about reciprocation in our last talk. We'll hit on that again. Reciprocation is a feeling that we have when we're given a gift. Gift that we feel like we have to give something back. Usually we feel like we want to give more back. And so what we've been given in the church is Jesus Christ's sacrifice is the atonement, the dying on the cross, the resurrection. And he sacrificed his whole entire life for us. And so what we're going to feel dedicated to give more back. And in Gospel Principles 2001 it says how Jesus lives, loves us to suffer such spiritual and physical agony for our sake. How great the love of Heavenly Father that he would send his only begotten Son to suffer and die for the rest of his children. They definitely push that button. I think in my book I quoted a couple of hymns, that sacrament hymns, and there were far more that I couldn't quote because of copyright issues. Lyrics have funny copyrights. Like if you say even one line of a lyric and it's copyrighted, they can sue your paper pants off. So I avoided, I had to use only public domain hymns. But you go through and read those hymns and they're incredibly guilt provoking and hit that button of reciprocity which does create in us a feeling of eternal dependency. Not just, oh, I'm going to give back just a little bit and then I'll be done, I'll be off the hook, but eternal dependency.

John Dehlin [02:22:13] Yeah. Again, something beautiful becoming pernicious. This idea of Jesus the way we were to tied hot. You know, Jesus died for you. Like oh, what an amazing thing, right? What a. This is one of the most sacred things we all felt as Mormons. The truth is if it's not true, if it was just made up, then we're given this story of something that literally never happened. There's no cosmic math where Jesus died so that we could all go to heaven. If that's all made up, then we were told this story where we're supposed to feel super guilty and indebted for something that actually never happened. And then what we have to do to make that right is to give the rest of our lives to the corporation. That's a, that's a mind blowing inequity of what is given versus what is, what is taken and what is received. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:23:13] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:23:14] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:23:17] So the thing about.

John Dehlin [02:23:18] Let me just share one comment from a listener. There's so many comments coming in. Krista writes, I too was codependent on my abusive spouse and on the church. He got to do whatever he wanted. Leaders protected him. I stayed home with five kids trying to be the perfect mom, Mormon mom. I lost myself. So much trauma to heal from. This is painful and I'm really sorry for that, Krista. But she also writes, this is very valuable, validating. Thank you. I think that's what your book does, Luna, is that it's. This is hard stuff to like slaying the sacred cows. Why are we doing it? Is it to like hate on the church and take everyone away from it and destroy the church? It's not. It's to help people who have been under the power of the undue influence to rewire their brain to liberate them from the undue influence and to free the them up to. To create a new world for themselves not rooted in John de Lynn's theology or a new guru. Trust yourself, rebuild yourself, become who you want, know yourself and then become who you want to be. That's what you're doing, Luna, with this amazing book.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:30] Absolutely. And validation is super important. It's a, it's part of the therapeutic process. Why we go in and talk to therapists and tell them all our problems so they can tell us, hey, that that wasn' happen to you, that wasn't your fault when it, when it wasn't your fault. And also because we've been conditioned. And honestly I really wish there was a path like this for general ptsd, for abuse, ptsd. Because I think that the Trauma industry addresses the trauma, the brain wiring and the emotional chemistry and stuff that happens in our minds, but they don't really address deconditioning. The things that we learned from our abusers about ourselves and about the world world that makes us be like that. But fortunately in the cult exit world, that work has been done and I was able to build upon the work of others. And those other researchers who have nothing to do with Mormonism whatsoever said that if you went through a high demand group or a cult experience like Scientology, like your Branch Davidians, the way out of that is to understand what happened to you, to unpack those doctrines so that you can separate who you truly are from the person that the group was trying to make you be. So that's what I'm here for. Like John, like you said, John, I don't want any followers. I don't have a prescriptive spiritual path for anyone. I'll be up front. I do want you to buy my book because that's kind of how I'm making my living right now. I'm a freelance writer and I also sell books. And it's.

John Dehlin [02:25:55] But once you're done, if you buy the book, because Facebook will help you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:25:59] 25 bucks and then you're done, right? I don't have like a whole bunch of programs and if I did that, they would be very focused on getting you over it. And it's up to you to decide when you're ready to move on. I don't want you to be beholden to me forever. I don't want you to obey me. I don't have any commandments for you. I do want you to be an upright and moral person in general, but I'm not going to tell you how to do that. And I'm not. I'm not going to promise you ultimate happiness if you follow my plan. I don't want you to be clinging to Luna for the rest of your life. I want you to. To be able, happy.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] Are you wanting 10%? Do you want 10%?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:26:33] No, I want 25 bucks. That's all I want right now. Or if you want to borrow it from someone, I'm happy for you to borrow it. And I've got free blog posts on my website that I'm not even going to charge you for. I do a lot of unpaid work in this field. If. If I wanted to make money, I could make more working at McDonald's for 750 an hour.

John Dehlin [02:26:53] The book is Recovery Agency by Luna Lindsey, Lindsay Corbden. And thank you

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:04] I just wanted to be up front. I just wanted to be upfront, that that's what I want out of people. I. I don't want your whole life. I just. I want you to heal and grow, and I want to be compensated for my labor. And that's it.

John Dehlin [02:27:15] Yeah. So, okay, let's. Let's round out creating dependency.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:20] All right? So under creating dependency, the promised outcomes are contingent upon good behavior. So it's not just where you're going to be dependent on us. We'll take care of you. Nothing to worry about. It's. You got to keep performing in order to stay, stay in the loop. And you become dependent upon the church, even for decisions. Small decisions, big decisions, all the decisions. I know I was all hung up on, you know, am I. Where am I going to find Mr. Right? Am I going to get married? Where should I move? Where should I live? What kind of job should I have? Should I pursue my career? Is this just a temporary thing like all of these list decisions? And I had a feeling that, like if. If I even woke up on the wrong side of the bed and left the house at the wrong time, that I might avoid an accident or change my life in a positive way. If I just did everything just perfectly and I had to be in tune with the spirit in order to do that. It was very dependent upon the church in almost every waking moment of my life. I'm sure some people can relate to that. We're conditioned to scrutinize every tiny decision. And I brought run across conference talks that talk about the eternal consequences of even the smallest decisions. And in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a therapy that is highly effective for treating anxiety and depression, that is known as catastrophic thinking. So the idea behind cognitive behavioral thinking of therapy is that we have feelings, behaviors, and thoughts, and they all link together in a triangle. And of those three, if we want to change our behavior or change our thinking, thinking the easiest. Sorry, the easy. Or our emotions, the easiest thing to change is our thinking. So the idea there is. If we're. We're depressed all the time, that might be because we have certain patterns in our thinking that are erroneous, they're lies, they aren't true, and they're ramping up our emotions way too high. So catastrophic thinking is one of those thinking patterns. And it's the idea that even a tiny choice can cascade into to this. It hasn't happened yet, but we. We think, oh, I'm going to be late for work. I'm going to be five minutes late for work. Oh, and then on the way to work, we're thinking, I'm going to lose my job, and then if I lose my job, I'm going to lose my house, and then I'm going to be homeless and then I'm going to get hooked on drugs and then I'm going to die. And that's what you're thinking. You're just building up into this huge panic. And cognitive behavior therapy teaches you to do the opposite of that. Okay, calm down. You're five minutes late for work. There might be an immediate consequence to that, but there's no point in extrapolating that out. Well, the church teaches us the opposite. The church, like I said, there are talks where they talk about every tiny choice leading to not just lifetime consequences of maybe being homeless or something, but of eternal consequences of being spiritually homeless when God kicks us out of his house forever.

John Dehlin [02:30:10] Not just you, but for generations and eternities and all. All the posterity from time to time.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:17] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So in the antidote to this, and I wish I'd provided more antidote slides to all of these, my book does go into antidote slides.

John Dehlin [02:30:26] That's book two. That's the sequel. That's the sequel.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:29] That's the sequel. So just remember, all choices have a mix of realistic consequences. There are trade offs, both good and bad. Everything we do has good outcomes and bad outcomes in a mixture. And rarely does a single choice bring a large number negative outcome. So you should trust yourself. I have as evidence for my claims that the church ramps up the catastrophic thinking. I have another Mormon ad from the 80s and it's a guy, he's standing between on a giant chess set between the black and white. We talked about black and white thinking before and the caption said, life is no game. Every choice has consequences, so choose wisely. And that, I'm going to add, my commentary is wrong and controlled, controlling.

John Dehlin [02:31:12] And it says, make your move.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:14] Your move.

John Dehlin [02:31:16] Make your move.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:17] That's right. What do you think the grade is on that, John?

John Dehlin [02:31:21] Okay, well, you know, so, you know, trying to be fair. If we compare to like, you know, Warren Jeffs or the FLDS Church, if we compare to Scientology where they literally imprison you, you. You know, there are cults that are way more severe in terms of creating dependency. I mean, I'm about to interview the Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't even encourage their members to get educations because, you know, and so, so these people are just even more dependent. So I do think that if. And that to be honest, that's true for. For all of these. These things, all of these principles you lay out. You're going to be able to find cults or high demand religions that are worse in any of these dimensions. But absolutely, the church's theology and doctrine and its practices are rife with creating not as much physical dependency, but they absolutely get an A plus for psychological and emotional dependency.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:32:31] Definitely. And like you said, there are definitely worse groups out there. Not going to argue with that. But it's not oppression Olympics. It's not like, well, you're oppressed less than me, therefore you are not oppressed. This is not black and white thinking. This is a spectrum. Just because you can say, well, you're not quite as oppressed as that other person doesn't mean you're not oppressed.

John Dehlin [02:32:51] So, yeah, and again, I'm just going to say that the church being less severe, the Mormon Church being less severe allows it to be bigger and more influential. It allows us to have senators. It allows it to have members of the House of Representatives with Scientology doesn't have. As far as I know, it allows it to have a presidential candidate for a major party. It allows it to have major circuit court justices, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, $130 billion. There's just change to invest because it's less severe. And that allows it to be 16 million or 5 million versus a couple hundred thousand or a couple million. And that means more LGBT suicides, more broken families, more divorces, more wrecked lives. And so in some sense, being less severe is more. Leads to more harm. And that's why we can't let the Mormon Church off the hook, you know, even though good can come from it, you know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:33:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:57] Okay. We're on to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:33:59] From all these groups, by the way, and that's something I haven't pointed out just real briefly is any kind of situation that you're in, even being with my abuser, I got good things out of it. So it's not black and white. Nothing's 100% good or 100% bad. There's. There's good and bad, and recognizing both of those is kind of part of healing.

John Dehlin [02:34:20] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:34:21] Yep. All right, Emotional.

Emotion Over Intellect and Manipulating Spiritual Feelings

John Dehlin [02:34:23] So we're on to the last one, which is emotional over intellect. I already know what grade the Church is getting on this one, and we. We have about 10 minutes, so we got to cover this one in about 10 minutes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:34:35] Okay, we'll hurry. So, first of all, emotions.

John Dehlin [02:34:37] Well, let's be clear. I'm the one slowing you down. Okay. I'm just gonna to own that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:34:42] Okay. All right. Emotions are incredibly easy to manipulate. And I know this very well as a fiction writer. Again, all of these things are, can have ethical uses. So part of my job as a fiction writer is to manipulate people's emotions. They're consenting to have their emotions manipulated. They're saying, I'm reading a story now, I would like to be taken on a journey. And if I'm doing my job right, I will do that. But the point is, is it's really easy. Easy to manipulate emotions through a lot of things. Through words, through art, and also through telling stories. There's nothing wrong with emotions. We often in our society tend to focus on rationality is the most important thing. But it, but the way to do it healthily is to balance emotions with our intellect together. Emotions, I think, ought to be classified as one of the five sense senses. I think it's ought to be a primary sense sense. It doesn't necessarily reflect the, the valid truthfulness of literal reality. But emotions do give us feedback about our reaction to reality that can be very important and useful. Self awareness of those emotions is a healthy skill that can help us function better in life and be more happy, reach our goals. However, because it is so easy to deceive with emotion as over reason, we have to be careful of it. And that's where the church of your abuses it. So if I hold up this pencil and say, this is a pencil and it's black and it's been sharpened a few times, it's a little bit short, but it is kind of sharp at this point. Like you can see that. And if you were in the room with me, you could hold it and you could measure it and you could tell that it's a pencil. Unfortunately, with emotion, you don't need that evidence. There's no evidence required. You just need to say a few beautiful words in the right order and you can make someone cry or you can make someone happy, you filled with joy. It's pretty easy to do. And what that does is it suppresses our ability to think critically when we are in that state.

John Dehlin [02:36:39] Okay. Yes, emotions are powerful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:43] Yeah. The little cartoon is a brain that says, wait, hang on, let's think about this. And the heart says, shut up, let's do this. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:36:52] Absolutely, absolutely. All right, let's keep going. Emotion over intellect.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:56] All right. It suppresses critical thinking. We mentioned that. It encourages exclusive reliance on emotion for decision making and amplifies the influence of manipulators. It reinforces our trust in those manipulators and allows for easy reframing. Reframing is one of the topics that we will get to. It's where something has one angle to it and we introduce a new angle. This change sort of how it looks. We will definitely talk about that more another time. And we can use feelings to generate miracles or fulfill prophecies. So we will also talk about mystical manipulation, which is that idea of miracle fulfillment. It's a lot easier to generate a feeling in someone that you then say is a miracle as opposed to actually like curing an amputated limb. And it answers doubts with more emotion. So a doubt is a kind of emotion and we can answer that with new emotions that override it, the doubt. And also, if you control someone's sexuality, you have control over their emotions.

John Dehlin [02:37:56] Absolutely, absolutely. And all high demand religions try to control sexuality in some way or another.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:05] Exactly. So the emotional control elephant in the room is the Holy Ghost. I have a picture. I can't believe I found this photo. It was so amazing. Of an elephant in a sheet with a hole poked out for its eyes and its nose, its trunk. So the Holy Ghost is really how the church leverages emotion. The Holy Ghost is an emotion or a set of emotions. My book, I really get into this. To how the Holy Ghost is used to replace the concept of love. There's actually a quote about a child who's. Who is feeling love for a new newborn brother. And the grandma says that that's the Holy Spirit. It's. It's love. And you're repurposing that emotion for the church, for the sake of the church.

John Dehlin [02:38:50] I'm just gonna have to say how brilliant it is that you used an elephant there. I don't know if you're familiar. I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Jonathan Haidt and a little bit.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:59] I haven't read him yet. I've been meaning to.

John Dehlin [02:39:01] Okay, so he has a book called. It's called the Jonathan Heights. What is the book?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:39:12] There's two of them. There's the happiness one, and there's one about religion.

John Dehlin [02:39:16] Yeah, I quote this all the time. The Righteous Mind. And in the Righteous Mind, he actually compares the brain to a rider on an elephant. And he says the rider is like your moral reasoning. It's your prefrontal cortex. The elephant is your emotional brain. It's your immigration amygdala. And he says when. When both are startled, who wins? It's always going to be the elephant who wins every single time. Basically saying that the that the emotions are going to win out over the intellect every time. He goes on to say that we think we arrive at our decisions or our conclusions logically. But what neurological studies show is that oftentimes the emotional part of the brain is triggered before the, the reason part of the brain is triggered, which shows that we, we get the emotional reaction first. Then we use the reasoning part of the brain to simply cherry pick the evidence or the logic that then makes us feel more comfortable with the decision that we arrived at emotionally. And it's just beautiful that you're using the elephant elephant to talk about the Holy Ghost, which represents emotion and that fits in with the science from the righteous mind around the writer and the elephant. And how emotion is going to trump logic almost every time unless you're really, really careful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:40:47] I need to get around to reading those for sure.

John Dehlin [02:40:50] Yeah, it just adds depth to it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:40:53] So, you know, we've heard by the power of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible. And the Holy Spirit whispers with a still, small voice. But all things are possible with the Holy Ghost because it's invisible and limited only by your imagination or by the imagination of the person trying to manipulate you. So it is conveniently suitable for all situations. One day the Holy Ghost might tell you to do X and the next day do Y. And it's all to serve the needs of the manipulator, not to serve your own needs.

John Dehlin [02:41:24] Yeah. And even the language that's used is. And by the truth of the Holy Ghost, you shall know the truth of all things. The truth of all things. Wow. That's pretty powerful. Like scientists are still trying to find out really basic things about atoms, about germ theory, about the human brain. Oh, but with feelings you can know the truth of everything.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:41:48] Right.

John Dehlin [02:41:49] And that's where the Mormon Church was so skilled. Demeaning science, demeaning the scientific method, demeaning intellectuals, demeaning, you know, Darwinism and age of the earth and geology, none of that matters. All of that can be trumped. All evidence can be trumped by feeling. It is a crucial move for high demand religions. And Mormonism, the cultural Mormonism is just reinforced with steel beams of emotion over intellect.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:42:27] Yeah. And if you really could know the truth of all things, why didn't Nephi, you know, build satellites? I mean, he could know the truth of all things. So he could just build all kinds of technology. He could have invented the Internet and he apparently didn't. So does the Church teach this? Well, Boyd k. Packer in 1984 said revelation comes as Words we feel more hear. Nephi told his wayward brothers who were visited by an angel, ye were past feeling that ye could not feel his words. The flow of revelation depends upon your faith. You exercise faith by causing or by making your mind to accept or believe as truth that which you cannot by reason alone approve for certainty. As you test gospel principles by believing without knowing, the Spirit will begin to teach you. Gradually, your faith will be replaced by knowledge.

John Dehlin [02:43:18] Yeah. So again, it sounds so beautiful, but it is so manipulative and wrong. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:43:26] Here's doctrine and covenants 9, 8 through 9. But behold, I say unto you that you must study it out in your mind. Then you must ask me if it may be right. And if it is right, it will cause that your bosom shall burn within you. Therefore you shall feel exactly. You shall feel that is right. But if it not be right, you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stone stupor of thought. We were suppressing the intellect. Again, that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong. And I added an asterisk that says may contain traces of cognitive dissonance. And I have another asterisk that says significant quantities. So we talked about cognitive dissonance, and I think stupor of thought is a really good way to describe one of the feelings that cognitive dissonance can cause is like a sense of confusion as those two ideas clash in your mind.

John Dehlin [02:44:11] You know, I'm going to just. I'm going to call an audible and I'm going to just read one more scripture. I know I told you that we need to hurry. If you read Moroni 10 three, you know, three through five or whatever, that's the scripture that we're taught in seminary to memorize because it's Moroni's promise and basically says, I would exhort you that when you read these things that you. You would remember how merciful God is. That's all that guilt and the shame. Jesus has died for you. God's been merciful with you. So like the Moroni 10, 3 is like putting you in that submissive state of the childlike, vulnerable, weak, fragile, human, emotional right. In an emotional state, making you feel sad. It's saying, ponder it in your hearts. It's not saying ponder it in your mind, it's saying, ponder it in your hearts. Right? Which means, go to the feeling place for this to know truth. Go to the feeling place. And then it says in verse 4, Moroni 10:4. And when you shall receive these things, I would exhort you that you would ask God the eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true, and if shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, with faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth unto you. You by the power of the Holy Ghost, not by evidence, not by facts, but. But by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is feelings which are very easy to stimulate. Yeah. And by the way, because of the. What was the one where if it doesn't work, you're doing it wrong? What is that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:45:51] Blame reversal.

John Dehlin [02:45:53] Through blame reversal, anytime you do. Moroni 10, 3, 5. And it doesn't work. Well, you didn't have enough faith, you didn't write wrong, you didn't have a sincere heart, you didn't have real intent. Right. You didn't have enough faith. So it's back on you, back on you, back on you. And then the mother load comes in. Moroni 10, 5. And by the power of the Holy Ghost, ye may know what. You may know what. Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:46:20] All things. The truth of all things. Truth of all things.

John Dehlin [02:46:25] Of all things. Right. It's just so freaking loaded. It's unbelievable. Okay, sorry, that was my audible. Let's get back to your quotes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:46:32] All right, so here's second Nephi 9, 28, 29. Oh, the cunning plan of the evil one. Oh, the vainness and frailties and foolishness of men. When they are learned, they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsels of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves wherefore their wisdom is foolishness, and it profited them not, and they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God. And of course God doesn't come down and tell us this with words. He uses scriptures, authoritarian people who spoke in the past. And he also uses feelings, the Holy Ghost. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:10] And how, like I sometimes I just wonder how did Joseph Smith like it was so brilliant for him to bake into the Book of Mormon this anti intellectual sort of stance with Kori horror, with neither whore, with this, with this scripture about the learned thinking that they're wise. The foolishness of men like you have to give him credit. That was brilliant to bake into the book, this anti intellectualism as an antidote or as a defense to intellect that would, that would, you know, assault the church and say, wait, what about evidence? What about science? What about reason? It's already been baked into, in the members have already been inoculated. Those smart people, those scientists. Well, they're, they, they don't you know, they don't have the power of God. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:47:59] Yeah. Well, this might have been a dig too. Like, I'm not a huge Mormon history buff, but at this point, hadn't he been challenged by intellectuals at that point on the history? I mean, it's Second Nephi, so he's kind of a ways into working it to writing it. I don't know if he'd lost the first. First book of the, you know, First Nephi yet at that point or not, but. But he'd been challenged by people. So he. I think he was ready with his defenses based on his contemporaneous activities.

John Dehlin [02:48:28] Yeah, yeah. He had done enough treasure digging to. To realize he.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:48:32] People were challenging him on a rational basis. And it was, you know, the mid 19th century, and that rationality was kind of getting its foothold at that point in America. So.

John Dehlin [02:48:41] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:48:44] Glenn L. Pace in 1989 said, Elder Foss describes this type of intellectual as a person who continues to ch after a bus even after he has caught it. We invite everyone to get on the bus before it's out of sight. And you are left forever trying to figure out the infinite with a finite mind. And I added, but what if it's the wrong bus? Or what if the engine catches fire?

John Dehlin [02:49:06] Yeah, and there's the whole stay in the boat thing, really. Do you want to stay in the boat if it's sinking? Like, you know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:12] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:49:12] Kind of mentality.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:14] So here's the antidote to this one. First of all, you own your feelings. They're your feelings, so you get to be responsible for them. But you also get the benefits of those feelings. Feelings are neither morally good nor bad. They can. They're neither good nor bad in general. They are either pleasant or uncomfortable. Feelings can't be morally evil. Only actions have morals. So you can feel angry, and that is okay to feel angry. It is just a feeling. It is a sense. The same as when you look out with your eyes and you see colors. There's nothing morally wrong with colors. There's nothing morally wrong with your feelings. Your actions impelled by those feelings, though, if you. If you don't keep those in check, if you haul off and punch someone when you're angry, that can be morally good or bad. And again, nuance and context all matters. In that feelings give us valuable information about our reactions and inspire us to act. So we're taking in all this information. Our feelings are processing it and producing for us our reactions. To us, that is all really valuable information. It may be factually wrong if we're afraid of something that is not actually dangerous to us, but knowing that we feel that it's dangerous is informative and useful information, and that also inspires us to act. So when we're afraid, our heart rate goes up and we're better at running and fighting. When we're angry again, our heart rate goes up. Our physiology actually changes with each of our emotions. That can inspire us to act in ways that might be beneficial to both us and others. So our anger, again, I'm picking on anger because it's considered kind of a bad emotion that can inspire us maybe not to haul off and hit someone, but maybe we go out and write an article that speaks truth to power, or we stand up for our beliefs, or it gives us energy to go out and do something to try to end the wrong thing that's happening. A weird awareness, not control, is how we can live and flow with emotion. So we were taught in Mormonism to control our emotions, stamp it down, bridle our passions, and really that causes our emotions to build and build and build and build, and then they come out in some way that we don't have control over. So what we can start with is meditation, types of meditation, where we become aware of our breath and our body and where we're feeling those emotions in our body. And that can, can help us recognize what we're feeling and what action is inspiring us to do. And then we can flow with the emotion. Maybe it wants us to punch someone and we shouldn't punch someone, but we can say, okay, I acknowledge that you exist, feeling of anger. And I acknowledge that you're trying to tell me something important about the world. So I'm going to listen to that and I'm going to act in a way that is, that is mutually beneficial for all of the self. And we can also learn how to trust our feelings.

John Dehlin [02:51:58] Yeah. And I just want to say, part of what's so tricky is not only does the Mormon church. And this is back to the bite model. We've talked a lot about behavior today. Emotion is really important. We've talked about information. This is Stephen Hasson's bite model. We've talked about behavior and how belief follows behavior. We've talked about information, how the church hides information from its members intentionally so that they can control their thoughts that they, they have. And emotion is such a critical part of the bite model. And what you have to realize is high demand religions, people who are exerting undue influence, they're going to get you to feel the emotion Fear or joy. And then they're going to always tell you what it means. So one of the critical parts of that is the interpretation of the emotion. You say totally correctly that your emotions are yours. I want to also say that your interpretation of your emotions should be yours and you should not let somebody else tell you, ever. Not a, not a crystal, you know, not a Reiki person, not a new age person, not me, not Luna, not even a religious person, not a therapist, not a licensed therapist, not a coach. Nobody gets to tell you what your feelings mean. And if somebody is trying to tell you you that, that's your first sign that somebody's trying to manipulate and control you. Never let somebody tell you what your feelings mean. That should be on you. I'm sorry, I just had to say that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:53:33] Sure. No, it's an excellent point. Perfect. Fits perfectly in here. So again, this is Tobias and Lalitsch from Captive Hearts, Captive Minds. After leaving such a group, you need to recognize that having human thoughts and feelings is okay. Instead of continually confessing or suppressing things, feelings, you discover how to evaluate them and choose the ones you want to act upon. For some former cult members, rediscovering the world of feelings is a big portion of the healing process. If this is not addressed, they may lead a narrow, unsatisfying experience.

John Dehlin [02:54:04] Yeah, so what's that basically doing?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:08] It's, it's sort of backing up what I just said about learning to flow with your emotions, learning to know what you feel, learning to feel confident in interpreting your emotions. And if we don't address that, we're missing out on the healing.

John Dehlin [02:54:22] Absolutely. So I think you're bringing us home now.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:26] Yeah, I'm going to rush through these ones. This is actually a really big topic. We're going to see if I can do it really fast. The researchers have discovered two different types of feelings, types of thinking. And we tend to react differently based on these types of thinking. We tend to assess things differently. So the first one is confirmatory thinking. And this is where we already have a belief and we are seeking evidence to confirm that belief. And the second one is exploratory thinking, which is we have a question that we want to have answered, but it's an open ended question. We might have some ideas about it, but we then seek out the evidence and learn what the evidence tells us about that. So confirmatory thinking is more emotional. That is what is known as hot cognitions in some of the studies. In that we know the answer before we have the evidence. We confirm what we already Know it is more easy to manipulate people when they are in that state. It is a closed system. You will not change your mind when you are in confirmatory thinking, no matter what the evidence shows. And it embraces confirmation bias rather than trying to avoid it under exploratory thinking that is more rational. It is called cold cognitive. In some of the studies, it decides the answers based only on the evidence, discovers new things. It is restricted only to what reality shows. It is open and can change based on the evidence and tries fervently to avoid bias. The next two slides actually show a flowchart that we can. We won't have time to explore them, but we can.

John Dehlin [02:55:57] Maybe we can start with that next time. I just. I want to come back to the slide because this is so important. Just ask yourself if you're in a Mormon context, if you're in anything that you're suspecting is a high demand organization exerting undue control. Are you. Do you know the. Do you know the right answer before you even start asking the question? Are you trying to just confirm what other people have told you? Is it mo. Is it based on emotion or is it based on evidence? Is it evidence based or emotion based? Is there manipulation going on? Is it a closed system? You know, this is just. This is just Critical Thinking 101. And it's. It's truly one of the life skills that we're lacking in society for political stuff, for religious stuff, for relationships, for everything. And I mean, maybe we can start back up with this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:54] That sounds good. Yeah. Because the flip parts are kind of cool. I compare Mormonism with more of a scientific approach.

John Dehlin [02:56:59] Yeah. I don't mind if you want to move these slides to the beginning of our next presentation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:57:03] Okay, yeah, I'll do that.

John Dehlin [02:57:05] All right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:57:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:57:07] The only reason I'm rushing is because I'm doing another interview right now. Back to back. The book is Recovering Agency. Luna Lindsey Corbden, Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. Please go buy it now. Several people just bought the audible version. There is an audible version of this. Please buy the print version as well to support Lindsay. But do it mostly to help unpack and heal and grow from having been subjected to a high demand religion. This is just part two of a five part series we're doing. We have now covered 12. Is that right, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:57:43] I believe so, yeah. I think we did 7, 13, 12

John Dehlin [02:57:47] or 13 of the 31. So we've got a long way to go. But this is all super important stuff for life skills, for unpacking. For rebuilding, healing and growth. So, Luna, Lindsey Corbin, thank you for joining us. Thanks to all our listeners who have been joining us in the comments. Thanks to everyone who supports Mormon stories. And Luna, let's have you right back and let's keep going. Okay, awesome.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:58:10] Thanks so much, John.

John Dehlin [02:58:12] It's been great. You're brilliant as always. And we'll see you again soon. Luna, Luna and all listeners and viewers, we'll see you guys all again. Just right on the flip side, come back for part three of our of our talk with Luna. Take care, everybody. Thanks again, Luna.

Part Three: Recap and Confirmatory vs. Exploratory Thinking

Part 3 of 5 · Ep. 1445

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 18, 2021, and today I am just thrilled to enter into part three of what I think and what I think several of my listeners have indicated is an epic, groundbreaking Mormon Stories podcast series. Today we are covering part three of my interview with Luna Lindsay Korbden or Luna Corbden. And we diving deep into the concepts in Luna's book Recovering Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. At least that's the version that I have. Luna has updated this version. It is available on Amazon and wherever you get cool books. But just to quickly summarize, what Luna has done with so much brilliance and insight and wisdom is comb through the social science literature to understand the tools and the techniques of high demand organizations or authorities or religions. It's much bigger than religions. It's political parties, conservative and liberal. It's businesses, its corporations, its government, its family systems, its personal relationships, wherever there are people or groups wielding undue influence or authority. These techniques and tactics have been studied by many others. But what Luna has done so brilliantly is distill these techniques into 31 flavors of, I'll say coercion or undue influence. Luna, you'll have to remind me what there are 31 flavors of, but 31 tools or techniques that are employed by organizations that wield undue influence and then systematically applied it to Mormonism. But you could just as much apply it to the Democrat party or the Republican party or corporations or governments or abusive partners. You could apply it to anyone. And it's just been groundbreaking so far. We're covering about six topics per episode because we're on part three. That means we've covered 12 or 13 topics so far. This is part three of at least a five part series. We plan on showing these back to back over a five day period. We're going to call it Luna Week on Mormon Stories Podcast. But it has been such a valuable and insightful experience for me and hey, I've been around the block a bit and I've, you know, I went to a pretty good school as they say, and I've read a few books and for me this has been groundbreaking and, and so without any further ado, Luna Corbden, welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:38] Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on again, John.

John Dehlin [00:02:40] Okay, so we are going to dive back in and like we're doing each time, I think we kind of try and start with a bit of an overview. And so Luna, where do you Want to take us with your overview?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:54] I like to do a quick introduction for people who haven't seen parts one and two. Just let people know my qualifications or lack thereof. So the next slide has the bullet points on that. I was born in the church. I lived in the church for 26 years. True believing the whole time. Not always completely active, but pretty, pretty active and definitely believing. I worked for 14 years in the computer industry in various roles, everything from support to systems engineer and sales engineer and everything in between. I write. I'm a. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, and I'm currently making my living by freelance writing and freelance editing. I'm lgbt, specifically gender fluid, non binary, falls under the transgender umbrella, and I'm bisexual and I use they them pronouns. I am an abuse survivor with PTSD and disabilities, and I am autistic. I'm a psychology nerd. But just a caveat, I don't have a related degree. So this is all just my own work in reading, devouring the literature and then regurgitating that from my own, based on my own experiences and my knowledge of LDS doctrines. And based on all of that, I wrote a book about LDS control tactics, which you've already mentioned.

John Dehlin [00:04:15] All right. And this is it, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:18] That's the book. Yeah. And you said I have a new edition. It's not really a new edition. I just changed my name on the COVID I do have, like a list.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] Well, that's really important, it turns out.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:27] Yeah, I do have a list of things I would change. Not too many things, but there's a few updates I would do, including the Stanford prison experiment, which I talk about in my book, which has since been a bit controversial, been debunked a little bit. Turns out Philip Zimbardo, who ran that experiment, faked a few of the things and coached some of the subjects and stuff like that. So I would remove that or add a lot of caveats is the biggest thing I would probably change about it. But I still stand by just about everything else.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] Do you cover the Stanley Milgram obedience to authority experiments in the book?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:58] I do.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] Isn't that a classic?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:00] That is a classic. And that's one of those that just. And as far as I know, that one has stood the test, the test of time. They can't repeat it because of ethics issues. But in terms of. There hasn't been any dirt found on Milgram and his techniques.

John Dehlin [00:05:13] That was goodness. Or my testimony in social psychology would be challenged.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:22] All right, so let's. Let's do a quick. I mean, Listeners really go back and watch 1 and 2 before 3. But the truth is these don't necessarily have to be watched in order. Is that right, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:33] That is correct. I mean, there's a few foundational pieces of groundwork that we laid in the first two, but for the most part, you can jump in at any point. I put these techniques in a certain order in my book. I've put them in a different order in the presentation. I mean, some of them are kind of grouped together, some of them build upon the other ones, but they all interact in a complex system and they all depend on the others in order to really work. Work in the mind. So these, these are the ones that we're covering this week?

John Dehlin [00:06:06] Yeah, yeah. So what, so what have we covered? Read the ones we've covered so far and then talk about.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:11] Sure. The ones in light blue on the slides are the ones we've covered already. So those include love bombing, destabilization, deception, sacred science, demand for purity, doctrine over self, belief follows behavior, public commitment creating dependency, black and white thinking, emotion over intellect, blame reversal, and guilt and shame.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] Yeah, And I've been giving each one kind of a grade. A means that the Mormon Church kind of excels at the tool or the technique. What's the church's report card so far? Of the 12 or 13 we've done so far?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:48] I think you've given an A to all of them, except some of them that you gave an A to.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] I mean, it just depends on what you're comparing it to. But it's a spectrum.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:07:01] High demand groups, or as we talk about them as cults, a lot of times are a spectrum. There are the harshest, worst ones that end in the deaths of either the believers or people that the believers are targeting. And we have all, you know, it's a grade. So we have all the way towards what I call a knitting circle, which is what I consider the most ethical, least controlling form of group, which is you show up at knitting circle, you knit, you go home, and that's the end of knitting circle till the following week and everything in between. And so if I were to give Mormonism a score based on the cults that I've read about the worst being a 10, say People's Temple, where, where there was a mass murder, suicide, or Aum Shinriko, where they gassed a Japanese subway, that that would be a 10. I would. But modern day Mormonism falls at a 6, depending of course on your level of involvement in the church. So if you served a mission, that's going to go up higher than a six to maybe a seven or an eight. If, if you're higher up in the church, it's going to be higher. If you're an abusive, in an abusive family, and we'll talk about that a little bit later than that, then the level of oppression that, that, that the group has on you is going to go higher than a six. Also, historically, I would say that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's church were closer to that spectrum.

John Dehlin [00:08:24] Yeah. And I really like where we've talked about the oppression Olympics, which, you know, to an LGBT Mormon youth who, who or to. To a tormented straight Mormon teen that's being tormented with sexual shame or guilt or whatever it is, and all the other, well, you know, all the other sort of oppressed or marginalized or damaged minorities. It doesn't matter whether Scientology imprison or Jim Jones takes people off to drink Kool Aid on Guyana. Like wanting to die is wanting to die. And it doesn't help that LGBTQ Mormon youth that there's some organization that's worse.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:09:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] And I don't mean to laugh. I'm just saying, like, we have to lose. And this is what Leah Remini and I just want to refer people to the Leah Remini interview that I did on going on Unfair Game podcast to hear a Scientologist react to some of the techniques of Mormonism just woke me up to the fact that pain and suffering is pain and suffering and we don't really benefit by lowering someone's pain, lowering the significance of someone's pain and suffering because some other random non related organization has it worse across some dimensions. Is that fair to say?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:09:49] That is fair to say. And your pain is your pain and it's your pain. And part of healing is to stop minimizing your pain, which is the technique that abusers have taught us to do, which is to say, well, I can get through it, so it must not be that bad. Or I felt worse than this before. It's like feeling bad is feeling bad. And having bad psychological impact onto your psyche is still going to impact you negatively. And you have to sort of own that and face it and admit it and put it in its proper context before you can really heal from it.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] I love it. Okay, so there were a couple really important slides that we did not get to cover and I didn't want to rush them. So let's take all the time we need to wrap up part two.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:10:36] Great. This is the end of the emotion over intellect discussion that we were having. And we Were comparing confirmatory thinking versus exploratory thinking. And these are two. This is a field that has been studied. There are a number of studies to do with these two mental states that we can be in when we're considering making a decision or considering a truth question. So confirmatory thinking knows that the answer before the evidence has come in. It knows. It confirms what is already known. It is known as a hot cognition in some of these studies. And which is to imply that it's an emotional state of mind. While you're in that state, you're a lot more easy to manipulate because the manipulator merely has to conjure up certain emotions to get you to sway one way or the other. It's a closed and unchanging mental state and it embraces confirmation bias, which is the bias we have where we tend to adapt or take in information that confirms our existing beliefs as opposed to and then rejecting all of the information that comes in that contradicts our beliefs.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] Yeah, and I don't, you know, cog cognitive dissonance gets a lot of attention and play as it should. But this concept of motivational reasoning isn't in my view, discussed enough. And so listeners and viewers really pay attention to motivation motivated reasoning because it's so important. It ties back to the elephant that we talked about last week to Jonathan Haidt, that we're emotional thinkers more than we are rational thinkers. And it's healthy to be able to identify motivated reasoning in ourselves and in others because it's just so useless to try and reason with someone who has arrived at their conclusions emotionally. That's something I will say. You can't reason someone out of a position with. With logic to. To a position they arrived at through emotion. Is that, is that fair to say?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:41] That is that is generally fair to say. And this is the mechanism through. Through which it occurs. You can actually put someone into an exploratory thinking state of mind. It's not like there's two types of people. There's confirmatory people and exploratory people. It's no that these are us have moments when we're in exploratory hot cognition state or confirm. Sorry, the other way around. Exploratory cold cognition state or confirmatory hot cognition.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] So hot cognition is motivated reasoning. Is that what you're saying?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:11] All of these are motivated reasoning. So that is the question is, is your motivation to confirm your existing beliefs or to explore what the truth may actually.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] Okay. And is it fair to say we'll go to exploratory thinking in a second. But what I want to have you talk about is street epistemology, which some of our listeners will not have heard of. I wonder if street epistemology becomes a way to help give people a shot at moving from confirmatory thinking to exploratory thinking. But I won't steal your thunder. Let's talk about exploratory thinking, and then you can answer that question.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:44] And I've heard of straight epistemology before, but I don't quite remember what it is.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] I'll talk about it in a second.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:50] All right, sounds good. So exploratory thinking is. And they can put people in these states at the beginning of an experiment based on the instructions that they give the person and the types of questions that they ask them. So in an exploratory. In an exploratory state of mind, we decide the answer based only on the evidence. So we're looking at the evidence before we make a conclusion. We can discover new things while in that state. It is rational or cold cognition. It's restricted to merely to what reality shows, not to the limits of your imagination or your feelings or anything like that. It's open and you can change your. Your conclusion based on new evidence that comes in and makes every attempt to avoid bias.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] Yeah, it's a kind of a conscious attempt. I like to. One of the most pivotal moments in my view to a faith journey, to an awakening I'll call it, is when somebody for the first time was willing to consider the possibility that the church wasn't what they thought it was. And kind of going back to this idea of street epistemology, it's literally not trying. It's basically my. The way I would explain street epistemology is it's kind of using Socratic method to just ask lots of questions and to ask people why, you know, oh, you arrived at these conclusions. Why? What are the reasons? How did you arrive at that? What, what, what evidence did you have to arrive at that? What other possibilities do you think might be true? It's basically asking lots of questions to help people start looking at their conclusions with a different set of eyes, to allow them to start kind of loosening them up, so to speak. And, and one of the ways that people often do that is by. Is by asking people if the church wasn't what it claimed to be, would you want to know? And there's a lot of people that would just literally say, no, I don't want to know. And if that's true, you know, they want to stay in high cognition, that's what they want to do. And if they're like, well, no, of course if the church weren't true, I would want to know. Well, what that shows is a willingness to evaluate or even just consider other questions. Does that make sense?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:15] It does make sense. And in fact, lately I've been experimenting with using questions which, which I've been calling the Socratic method to. In debates to. To really allow the other person to think through their position a little more deeply on their own. And that does put people into an exploratory frame of mind and allows them to. To use their own connections. I'm not subjecting them to my connections, the connections that made sense to me, that brought me to that position. I am showing them their own, their own beliefs from their own, their own mind. And I'm not good at asking questions. It's something that. That has been a problem for me in the past. I am on the autism spectrum. So they've got these little social things that, you know, and childhood bullying and things like that, and being misunderstood has kind of led me to make assumptions about the world. And one of my assumptions is that asking questions is really scary. And lately I've been trying to overcome that. And when I talk to people online or my family, I have been asking more questions. And it's a much better experience for me and for them because it's less contentious and I get to know who they are a little bit better. And I've also had more. Better results in terms of persuasion. And that's one of the things that is my special interest I'm really interested in is persuasion. How does it work? And this book is written based on the darker side of that. How does it work when people are willing to break ethics and be malicious about it? I'm not willing to do that. So I've always been sort of subtly experimenting on how to ethically persuade people. And this one asking questions does seem to help put people. Another thing that puts people into confirm exploratory thinking is to compliment them on their intelligence. And there are studies that show that if you start out a persuasion, if you say, hey, you seem like a really smart person, so let me try this one out on you. That they'll be much more open to what you have to say.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] Yeah. And if, you know, I just want to be really clear about something. One of the things I like about street epistemology is not that it allows you to manipulate and impose your worldview on others, because I actually do think that's Unethical. I don't. I never in my life have had the goal of taking someone out of their belief position or their allegiance to a religious tradition, including Mormonism, because I don't think I'm smart enough to know whether they're going to be better off leaving their belief system and or the organization that they belong to. I always go back to my training in psychology. When I had a client who self harmed, I thought my goal was to take away their self harm. I thought that was my goal. And it turned out my trainers taught me that sometimes people self harm as a substitute to attempting death by suicide. And when I realized that, then I realized, whoa, I need to, to just let people have whatever their journey is and not assume I know what's best for them. So for me, asking questions is never a manipulative, coercive sort of ploy. It's more to, to get to the heart of is there a way to find out whether they want to know, whether they want to learn more, whether they want to be given a different set of informations or question their own own conclusions? And if they really do and if they feel like they might really stand to benefit from additional information and or a reconsidering of a perspective, then then that's up to them. But I just want to make sure everyone who would want that would have the chance. But if they don't, I want to say bless you at wherever you are in your life and enjoy that and find healing and growth wherever you are.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:29] Letting it come to be more about sharing than about dictating any, any particular belief system.

John Dehlin [00:20:35] Yeah. And respecting people, respecting people's self determination.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:20:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, so that's a great slide. Thank you for sharing. Motivated.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:49] We have a couple of flow charts actually that'll help sort of walk us through how the church uses this versus how the secular or scientific method approach these questions. So I don't know if everyone can see this very well. And you can take a screenshot of these. I also have a copy of these images both in my book and maybe on my website. And I forgot, you know, I keep referencing my website and I end up not telling anybody where my website is. So it's@recoveringagency.com and I've got a number of blog posts on there and a lot of other information. So back to. I don't remember if I put the flowcharts on the website, but they might be up there. So this is how the Mormon Church teaches us to gain knowledge. So we start out on the upper or on the upper left hand side, we start out learning the gospel or a principle of the gospel, like tithing or the Book of Mormon. So we're supposed to ponder whether or not the Lord's word is true. And we then ask God with a sincere heart, real intent and faith in Christ if it is true. So we go to the first question. Did you receive an answer from the Spirit? If the answer is no, you're supposed to stop, you have done something wrong, and start over with more faith, sincerity, intent, and less sin, doubt and selfishness. So we're going to go back through the flowchart again and we're going to go back. Did you receive an answer for the Spirit from the Spirit? We're going to say, yes, I received an answer from the Spirit. Did the answer confirm that the gospel principle is true or did it say that the gospel principle is false? If it says it's false, then nope, stop. The answer was not of God Again. And you're supposed to start over again with more faith, sincerity, and less sin and death out. So we go through the chart again and we go down and we go, yes, I did receive an answer from the Spirit, and yes, the gospel principle is true, and congratulations, you now have a testimony. And you're supposed to abide by this belief forever and ever and ever. So that's how the Mormon Church teaches us to discover truth. But there is a different way.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] And if I could just sort of highlight what I'm noticing about this, it's kind of this closed, and I think you're going to talk about this later. It's kind of this closed loop where the only correct answer, ultimately it's sort of the creating the perception of you being an individual agent unto yourself, exploring and determining truth. But the whole thing is framed and contextualized in a way to where there's only a prescribed set of correct answers that happen to benefit the system that is exhibiting undue influence. And so, yeah, explore. Yeah, pray, yeah, ponder. But it just so happens that you literally can never arrive at a set of facts or knowledge that contradicts the institution without getting punishment or being told that you're wrong. And so there's this closed loop of, oh, you didn't get the right answer, it must be you. And we have, that's a concept called what? Because we talked about that earlier.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:23:55] Blame reversal.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] Blame reversal, where it's always the, it's always the member's fault if you don't get the right answer. And then the church always, or the institution Always gets the credit if you get the right answer. But it's this closed loop of keep trying until you get the right answer. And then eventually when you, quote, get the right answer, then you move on to the knowledge that the institution needed or wanted you to have. Is that a fair restatement?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:24:21] It's a fair way to state it. And I saw on Twitter recently someone else stated it. They weren't talking about this. It was something else. But I was like, how to remember that is they said, flip a coin. Heads I win, tails we flip again.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's, that's super. That's super succinct. Yep. Okay, so that's, that's one way of gaining knowledge, but it's clearly a way that benefits the institution that's weighted to optimize the benefit of the institution over the benefit of the individual. Is that fair to say?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:24:55] That is fair to say.

John Dehlin [00:24:56] So an example of where this could go wrong is your lgbt, you're transgender, or you're gay or lesbian, as an example, or a feminist, or you're a person of color and you keep praying about like, well, maybe God curses people with dark skin, or maybe God doesn't want women to be in positions of power, influence, or maybe God doesn't, maybe God doesn't want me to ever have a career or pursue a degree, even though that's what my heart is telling me. Or maybe being, maybe God will take away my same sex attraction if I pray enough and fast enough. And you keep trying, and you keep trying and you don't ever get the quote right answer. And when that happens, you're told, just keep trying, you're doing it wrong, Keep trying. And instead of finding the truth that's going to be optimized towards your individual well being, which may be, I need to transition to a gender that feels more aligned with who I am inside so that I want to keep living on this earth. As an example. Instead of doing that, you're stuck in this closed loop system that is probably optimized for, again, for tithing and obedience and growth of the institution, but maybe not for the individual.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:10] That is correct.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] Yeah. Okay, next slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:13] So the next one is this is a different way of thinking. So a lot of times I hear that, you know, outside the church, people are just as brainwashed as in the church. And so this is my evidence to show that there, there is actually a different thinking process behind secular or scientific approach to the world. So this is, there's an asterisk on there gaining Knowledge, the secular way may be considered sinful. So just a war out there. So what we do is we start with observing the world and we collect data about the world and from there we draw a conclusion. Or maybe someone else has drawn a conclusion and we consider the conclusion that they have drawn. Then we collect more data and we get to our first question. Does the explanation fit all the evidence? If the answer is no, then stop because the explanation is unlikely to be true. Now, you'll notice there's a lot of softer words in this unlikely to be true. There's still a chance that the explanation which doesn't fit the evidence might still be true somehow. Maybe you just haven't explained it properly. So we're going to say, nope, that's probably not true. So we're going to start over and go back to the beginning. There is no shame in being wrong. You've eliminated an unlikely explanation and are now closer to the truth. So we start over again. Observe the world, collect data, draw a new explanation, or take someone else's explanation, collect more data. We go down and does the explanation fit all the evidence? If the answer is yes, we move to the next question. Is it the simplest of all explanations, which is Occam's Razor? The key point of Occam's Razor is it isn't just the simplest explanation. It is the simplest explanation that fits all of the evidence. If the answer is no, that it is not, there is a simpler explanation that fits all of the evidence out there, then we stop, the explanation is less likely to be true, and we start over again. There's no shame in being wrong. Observe the world, devise an explanation, collect more data. We ask the questions again. Does the new explanation fit all the evidence? If the answer is yes, we say, is it the simplest of all explanations? Yes. Now we come to the next one. Is it falsifiable? Now, falsifiability is a question, is a definition that's a little hard for me to explain. So I'm going to try. Falsifiability means that if the assertion is incorrect, there is a circumstance under which you could show it to be incorrect. So I like to use the idea of gravity. So if the theory of gravity is incorrect, then you could drop. I have a pencil here, you could take a pencil and you could drop it and you could say, if the theory of gravity is false, then when I drop the pencil 100 times, then some percentage of times I drop the pencil, it will not actually false. So we can, we can say that that is Falsifiable. The theory of gravity has not been shown to be incorrect thus far. There's some caveats to that, but for the most part, we can build rocket ships and design them and trust, trust, trust enough and reliably enough to actually launch them and know that they're going to work every single time. So that tells us so the qu. Is the question falsifiable? The question of does God exist? Is not falsifiable because, yes, we can prove God exists if God comes down and stands in front of us and starts talking to us. But if God never does that, there's no situation where we can say, we have just disproven God. So when we say the question is not falsifiable, then we, if we say, no, it's not falsifiable, then stop. And we have, maybe that is true, maybe your explanation is true. But since there's no way to show if it's false, then it's probably not a good explanation. And we go to the part of the flowchart that says, that's okay, some things are unknowable. But claiming that you know is a lie. So we can say there, you know, there's an example. Russell's teapot. Bernard Russell said that he postulated that there is a teapot in orbit around Venus. That is a non falsifiable question because the goalposts can always move. So if you build a powerful satellite and you look at Venus and you watch its orbit for a year, you say, nope, there's no teapot going around. I can't see it. Well, then Bertrand can say, well, it's a really tiny teapot. And so you send a probe and you, and you look and you still don't find the teapot. And Bertrand can say, well, it's invisible teapot. The goalposts are always moving because it's not a falsifiable question with specific definitions and limits around it. Then the last thing on the flowchart, we go back around and we observe the world, we collect evidence, we find an explanation. Does the explanation fit the evidence? Yes, it does. Is it the simplest explanation? Yes, it is. Is it falsifiable? Yes, it is. Then congratulations, this explanation is, is likely to be true, but it might not. So still keep looking. That is the secular way. That is how science is performed. Very different from the spiritual version that we just looked at.

John Dehlin [00:31:09] Yeah. Yep, that's a brilliant slide. Everyone should go copy that and put it up on their wall. I do think of that. Just a succinct way to talk about it is the scientific method. It's, it's, it's a great way to understand, to do the best you can, to understand as well as you can the world that is around you. But it's not perfect and it's not, you know, it's a method for discerning the best truth we can discern. It's not its own religion, it's not its own set of dogma. So many people are like, well, science sometimes gets it wrong. And so, ha ha, it's the same as religion.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:52] No, you're not a bug. Yes, science gets it wrong and its ability to eventually admit that it's wrong. Sometimes it can take, you know, a few decades for heart, for hard, entrenched ideas, but it can admit that it's wrong. Whereas religion has to abide by its tenets forever and ever and ever. And if it's wrong, it's harmful to that organization and that system. It threatens to collapse the whole flowchart. And so they are, they have to continue to assert, no, it's true, it's true, it's true.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] And the only other, you know, one thing that came to my mind as you were talking about this is just this realization I had. And this is not me trying to tell other people they should arrive at the same conclusion. But for me, I, in my faith crisis when I was a seminary teacher, I'm trying to understand polygamy, and I'm trying to understand the Book of Abraham, and I'm trying to understand Book of Mormon anachronism, and I'm trying to understand the racism and the sexism and the homophobia. And I'm like bending and contorting myself into a pretzel to try and make all of these problems make sense and to jive with prophetic authority and with prophetic inspiration and this being the one and only true church on the earth. And I was literally contorting myself into knots. Maybe not literally, but figure literally figuratively contorting myself into knots. And then I realized there was one answer that answered all of the questions that, that, that made it all make sense, and that was that it wasn't what I thought it was. But I had to get to that moment. I remember it distinctly in my mind where I said, wait a minute, is it possible that the church wasn't what it claimed to be? Because if that were possible, then all of a sudden everything else makes sense. And once I was willing to allow myself to ask that question, then, then that's when the walls, the Dam broke, so to speak.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:53] Yeah. And on this chart, that was where you devised an explanation and collected more data and then went through the flowchart, and that's. And you ended up with. That is the most likely answer to be true.

John Dehlin [00:34:05] Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. Thank you, Luna. Okay, so let's move into.

Milieu Control: Isolation and Information Management

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:34:11] So now we're going to the flavor, the first flavor of today, milieu control. Is that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:17] That is correct.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:34:19] Milieu is a fancy French word which for this situation means your social setting, your environment, the people who surround you. What Milou control does is controls a group member's environment and access to information. So the most stern way to do this is to wall everyone off. In a compound, there's a buddy system. You've always got to be with someone who can watch and watch you and report back. That is what we think of when, you know, when we're thinking of the movie that we saw once about a cult or the science, one of the Scientology movies about how they physically cordon off certain people within their group flds, things like that. So you might say, well, Mormons don't really do that. So Mormons don't have maloo control. Well, it turns out that you can produce the same level of isolation using fetters of belief by saying things like, you're not allowed to watch or consume this type of media. You're not allowed to talk to certain types of people. And that effectively creates the same barrier to disconfirming information that you might run into.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] Yeah, absolutely. I like to think of this as. There's this concept in social psychology called learned helplessness. And it's this idea that if you keep a dog in an area and you shock that dog long enough, even if you take away the barriers, the dog will often still stay in the barrier. And you don't need all those physical barriers to control someone. If you can get enough psychological barriers in there, there, then you can have control. And parents and siblings and friends and social environment can be that social barrier that keeps people locked into a system.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:36:18] It can if the people who surround you are always reinforcing particular beliefs, especially with random enforcement or negative enforcement. A little slap on the hand, a little disapproving glance, a little, you know, did you see what they did? Any of those sort of subtle social pressures which we talked about under social control can reinforce that learned helplessness. And thank you for giving the proper explanation of learned helplessness. I keep running into the use of that as sort of victim mentality. That person is learned helpless, has learned helplessness because they've been helped too much and they never learned to be strong on their own. It's like, no, no, no, no. That's the opposite of what learned helplessness means. I've seen it in education circles especially, and it breaks my heart to know that children are being treated a certain way based on the theory that if they're helped too much, they'll get learned helplessness. And it's like, no, if they're not helped enough, then they learn that they can't do it, and then they end up with learned helplessness. And they feel their whole entire life that they can't do things with help or without.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] Yeah, okay, well, that's so milieu control. I think milieu control is possibly the most powerful binding force on Mormons today. And that's just, you know, all these things are powerful. Everyone. I'm like, okay, we've got the good ones now the, the next ones have to be weak sauce. Everyone's super strong. I was telling you that beforehand. But, but, but if there's one thing keeping people in Mormonism, I think if you had to reduce it to one thing, I think it's milieu control. That's just my opinion. Sure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:37:53] It's. It's hard to pick.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:37:56] So. So Malou, control accomplishes a number of things. It suppresses contradictory information, suppresses doubts and questions and criticisms, builds dependency on the organization. Because as we talked about under the social topic, if all of your friends are in the belief system, then the idea of leaving means that you have to leave behind your community. So it's one way of creating emotional dependency on the group. It limits your outside relationships, it limits what choices you have, but it maintains the illusion of choice. So, yeah, you can have any friends you want, you can associate, you can read anything you want, you can look at any movie that you want, but really there are restrictions on those, and it's just an illusion of choice. It prevents open complaining and expression of doubt, which I guess it's similar than suppressing. So one way is internally suppressing your doubts and questions, and the other way is preventing people from standing up with a microphone and testimony and making those complaints. Complaints. It controls the environment. It reinforces a need for group approval. So you're always seeking that, those approving glances instead of the disapproving glances, and the group then becomes the sole source of good feelings.

John Dehlin [00:39:09] If I had to kind of extract for me the most powerful modern examples of milieu control, it's the fact that in, you know, in spite of the fact that let's just say Kate Kelly was excommunicated in 2010 and it was like a global news event or like I was excommunicated in 2015 and the new York Times tweets it and you know, CES letter has like penetrated so many different areas and the podcast Mormon podcasting world is huge and ex Mormon Reddit's huge. Not that any of us are like inherently important, but the fact that you can find that the majority, the vast overwhelming majority of Mormons in the States, United United States active believing Mormons, let's just say 90, 95% have still never heard of any of these things, let alone Fawn Brody's book that was published in 1945. The fact that the bubble is so impenetrable that most of this Mormon Internet stuff to this day, most orthodox believing Mormons remain oblivious to any of of it speaks to how powerful just these suggestions of don't read, you know, follow the brethren, don't rely on external sources, only look at review, you know, approved correlated materials, you know, contentions of the devil. Oh, I have got a bad feeling about this. Like all of those. Oh mom and dad would be disappointed. Oh I don't want to lose my job like all of these binding forces make. So in 2021, 95% of Orthodox believing Mormons have never heard of any of this stuff. And we're getting people coming out in 2021 going CES letter. What's that? Mormon stories. I've never heard of it. And it's not again to inflate any of our individual self important. It's just the bubble is so strong,

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:09] you know, and that's what makes the Internet such a threat. So when I came up in the church at as a kid in the 70s, 80s and 90s, as a 20 something in the 90s, there was no way to get this information. I heard about anti Mormon books and movies and I was told to stay away from them. I was told by my dad who had seen the God Makers that which was a big 80s thing which I think the God Makers is absolutely silly and not the best example of anti Mormon work. But he said that brought in more converts than it then it chased people out of the church and that only evil people had written these things and you should stay away from them because they're all a bunch of lies. The problem with that is I would have had to have gone to a library or asked someone for a copy or the title of one of these books and had to have gone out to find it the, the beauty of the Internet and why so many people are leaving the church now is that it can pierce the milieu at least a little bit. Even with just having. Even outside of the question of whether the church is true or not, there are a lot of other philosophies and ideas that Mormons are exposed to via the Internet. Like social justice campaigns where we're seeing live videos of the abuses and oppressions that are going on. And even within that a Mormons political beliefs might be cracked a little bit by seeing these different or they might read accounts from their non Mormon friends of spiritual experiences they've had that might be a little bit different than those of Mormons who don't even have to be exposed to specifically anti Mormon material to have your blue milieu shattered a little bit. And so the church has a real problem on its hands which it keeps kind of sort of trying to address. But I think it really in order to reinforce the milieu in the Internet age, they would have to say no Internet ever forever. They're right now they're kind of doing baby steps into that. And I don't think it's going to be enough.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] No. And, and people can always. You know, the thing that's so insidious about the Internet is you can listen to a podcast in secret on your drive while you're mowing the lawn and nobody has to know. You can be on your little cell phone in your bed at night where no one can see what you're looking at. And you know, that's really different than like a physical book that's going to be laying around. It's much, much. It's much easier to hide your interaction with this device than it is to hide a physical book or like a face to face get together. Yeah, the Internet changes everything.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:47] Yeah, it does.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you got some examples. The great Robert Lifton.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:55] Yes. Robert Lifton is one of the earliest cult researchers and he said in his book Thought Reform and the psychology of total is milieu control is the most basic feature of the thought reform environment. The psychological current upon which all else depends the control of human communication. Through this milieu control, the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual's communication with the outside, all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences and expresses, but also in its penetration of his inner life over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. And that's really where, where the Milou becomes thought control. It is self thought policing. We become police, policers of Our own thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] Yeah, it's beautiful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:45] Okay, so we have Margaret Thaler Singer, also one of the early researchers in cults in our midst, said this is total control of communication in the group. In many groups, there is a no gossip or no nattering rule that keeps people from expressing their doubts or misgivings about what is going on. This rule is usually rationalized by saying that gossip will tear apart the fabric of the group or destroy unity, when in reality, the rule is a mechanism to keep members from communicating anything other than positive endorsements. Maloo. Control also often involves discouraging members from contacting relatives or friends outside the group and from reading anything not approved by the organization. They are sometimes told not to believe anything they see or hear reported by the media. So that's a big red flag, by the way, if someone is in general saying the media is wrong, the media is always wrong. The media is always biased. That is some of that black and white thinking. That's a bit of a red flag. I personally believe the media is sometimes biased. It is sometimes wrong. It is sometimes makes mistakes. It sometimes has its own interests that it's pursuing. But we can use our rationality to discern what those things are and that overall, the media is pretty reliable. So that's just an example that Margaret Thaler Singer gives us there.

John Dehlin [00:46:07] And what's so confusing about this point is that if you ask the average believing Mormon, are you able to have friends that aren't Mormon? They'd go, oh, of course. Mormons can have whatever friends they want. And are you. Does the church control what you think and what you read? Well, they're gonna say, no, of course, I could read whatever I want. And in some degree, that's true, because in theory, physically speaking, you know, you can buy any book you want and read it, and you can't have any friend you want. But there. It's these psychological controls that are just. It's just conditioned behavior over time, often through emotion, that would just make it so you'd never, ever hear about no Man Knows My History by Fawnbridge Brody. And you'd never read it. Or if you stumbled on CES letter, this. This conditioning around the spirit and having a dark feeling. You would start, you would go, what is CS letter? Let me look at it. You'd get two paragraphs in and go, oh, I'm getting a bad feeling about this. That's. That's the Holy Ghost telling me that this is a bad thing. And you might put it down and even never think it again. Or remember that you even had ever looked at it. It's subtle, but it's just so powerful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:47:29] Absolutely. And we'll get into some of the specific ways that Mormonism does this. The next slide.

John Dehlin [00:47:35] Actually, wait really quick, Luna. I want to not be a closed system ourselves. And so we're getting a little bit of pushback from a faithful listener. And so I want to be an open system and allow for or potentially a disagreeing thought. So here's what Dan writes. Dan Hardy writes, Kate Kelly was a global news event question mark. And by the way, Dan, I will say yes, just go look at the uk. Just type in any whatever the predominant UK newspapers are and type in Kate Kelly. If you go back in history, her stuff was absolutely covered, delivered in international news organizations, as was mine. But I'll just keep going. I mean, I think that's an objective fact. But, but anyway, without wanting to belabor that point, Dan goes on to write, you'll say no one knows about Kate, but then you'll say she had an impact on Mormon change. Which is it? Okay, Dan, I'll, I'll. Do you want to answer, Luna, or do you want me to?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:48:40] I mean, it's not black and white. Why? It's nuanced. There's some people fall in this category, some people fall in that category. I was an ex Mormon when that story hit and so I definitely saw it hit the main media. As an ex Mormon, I am in a specific bubble. I'm not always in it. I'm not, I don't sit on Reddit every day, but I do am on Twitter and follow a few ex Mormons. And so I do see various pieces of news coming in that are related specifically to Mormonism because I'm interested in keeping tabs on that. So I'm going to see more about Mormonism than your average true believing Mormon and your average mainstream, never Mormon, don't know any Mormons kind of person because I'm interested in it. And so that is a nuance and that is where I fall in that nuance. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] No, no, no, go ahead.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:49:29] There are Mormons who are progressive Mormons who like me, are keeping tabs on Mormonism in the news and want to know the negative and the positive. And so they definitely have heard of Kate Kelly because she is a somewhat famous figure in those circles. Circles. And so but if you're, if you are a couched hardcore true believing Mormon who has all of their friends as Mormon, they, they've never left that bubble. They probably have never heard of Kate Kelly, and therefore her. Her story cannot impact their beliefs negatively.

John Dehlin [00:50:03] Yeah. And I'll just add, you know, Dan, that it. Multiple things can be true. It could be true that Kate's news story was a global news event as defined by. By international news organizations covering, and we'll just say ordained women. It's not even about Kate Kelly per se. It's about the ordained women movement. It can be true that Ordained Women was a nationally covered, internationally covered story. True. That many progressive Mormons heard about it. That can be true. And that it had some influence in leading to positive changes. True. And it can be also true that the vast majority of heads down, orthodox believing Mormons never heard about any of this. That can also be true. And one big contributor to that would be not only the way orthodox Mormons have been conditioned to tune out any disconfirming or troubling information, but also the demands on time, which is an actual. Well, one of the 31 flavors that we're about to talk about later. Is that all true, Lindsay?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:51:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Yeah. So he goes on to write, mormons can be in a bubble, but ex mos are in their own bubble. Okay, now we're in a bubble, which we are. We are probably in a bubble. I'm even gonna say, yes, Dan, we're all in bubbles. So note taken, Dan. Ex Mormons under bubble too. He would say, ex Mormons think everyone cares about what they say. Or what. What? Or that because Kate said something that her words now should matter to faithful members. It's not necessarily that members aren't aware of Kate or you or Bill Real. It's that they think you're wrong, there is an option, and then his words are cut out. So, yes, that's true. What would you say to his final thoughts there, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:52:01] Try to think of the word words, the world in nuance, if you choose to. It's. Multiple things can be true at the same time, especially if you're talking about a diverse population of people. So that's what I got to say to that.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] Yeah. And I would agree that there's a subset of orthodox believing Mormons that hear about ordained women and say, well, that's bad stuff. I don't want to go there. But I would also say the overwhelming majority of orthodox believing Mormons in the United States have never heard of John Dehlin or Bill Real or Kate Kelly. I think that's objectively true, and I think that's why the church continually sends out market research to ask people these very questions. But they do it Secretly and because they don't publish the results. I guess we're all, all somewhat speculating, but. But I think I'm right. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:53:00] And it's the perfect description of what Malou control is in a group that doesn't isolate us on a compound. So if you live in Provo, you are going to be in a deeper milieu than you are if you live where I grew up in Eastern Washington. So Eastern Washington demographically is about 10% Mormon. So it's common to run into other LDS people in this area. Most people in this area know someone who is mor. But most of us who were Mormon also knew a lot of people who were not Mormon. So when I went to college I had friends who were outside of the church and therefore my, the crack in my milieu had widened a little bit. I did have exposure to other spiritual beliefs and the negative things that a few people had to say about Mormonism, I had exposure to that. And then when I left the church, I did have more ex Mormon or non Mormon friends who had never been Mormon. And so I had somewhere to go. I had had a social circle to go to. But if you're, and if you're in Salt Lake City, it might be a little bit like that too in the sense that Salt Lake City is where all of the people from the rest of Utah flee to when they are no longer keen on the straight and narrow orthodox true believing Mormon experience. But if you were in say Provo, where people are coming from all over the country to be there specifically so they can be Mormon and you've got a lot of people who work for the church living there then or somewhere like St. George, somewhere a little more rural, then you're going to be in a much tighter malieu where that information is controlled a lot more. That is a perfect example of a milieu that Dan brought up.

John Dehlin [00:54:35] Yeah. And Dan, my data. And Dan, you may have your own data, maybe. Dan, you are constantly surveying orthodox believing Mormons to find out whether they've heard of John Dehlin or Bill Real or Lindsay Hanson park or Sunstone or whatever. My data point is I'm constantly having people come to me who are in faith crisis in 2021 and without fail they're all telling me I'd never heard of you. I'd never heard of Mormon stories. I'd never heard of CES letter until X happened. So that's my data point. Maybe. Maybe I'm using motivated reasoning and confirmation bias to draw my conclusions. That's absolutely possible. So Dan none of us really will know until we see the data, the church's data. But Cynthia, is someone speaking up that would confirm the position? That is my impression. Cynthia says, I was not in the Utah Mormon bubble, so I was very unaware of Kate Kelly, Mormon stories, Bill Reel, et cetera. Why was I unaware? Because I followed the church's strictures on staying away from all non church sources and I didn't Google. And so who knows? Maybe you're right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:55:48] There's also the front that as Mormons, we had to put up to that everything's fine, everything's happy. The church always works out for me. I left in 2000, and when I left, I was shocked at all of the people that crawled out of the woodwork who suddenly saw me as a person that they could trust with their dark secrets. I had family members, I had people that I had known in the church who suddenly were telling me about the secret life that they were living or doubts that they had had or the abuses that they had experienced in the past. I was not, I couldn't access any of those stories as a true believing Mormon. But after I left, now I could go to ex Mormon forums and I could see that all of these stories that had happened to regular, normal rank and file Mormons that have terrible things that had happened to them or ways that they were secretly living in sin, and you're not privy to that when you're hardcore in the middle of it. True believing Mormon, because nobody trusts you to, to you about that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:56:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:58] All right. This is so good, so valuable. And I just want to say, Dan, I. Yeah, I'm being a little bit salty with you, Dan, but Dan, I want to give you credit for listening to Mormon stories and as probably a minority, I, I know we have a lot of believers. Heck, I'm having CES people and bishops reach out to me weekly now. Some of them believing, some of them not. But I know I have a large believing audience. But Dan, you know, you can probably feel like you're in the minority. And so, Dan, I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for speaking up and I want to thank you for even disagreeing with me because it's just freaking lip service if Luna and I are just in this closed system of self confirming motivated reasoning. Right. And so Dan, you're helping keep us on and to follow. What's the slide? Gaining knowledge the secular way versus the motivated reasoning way. Is that right, Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:56] That's right. Yeah. I invite constructive critique all the time. If all you're doing is hating with nothing to add, name calling, then I'm going to judge you for that. But constructive critique, intellectual critique is. I'm always up for that.

John Dehlin [00:58:10] Yeah, yeah. And the only thing I'll say is, Dan, if you want to disagree with me, that members aren't discouraged from reading. Well, from having friends that don't believe the church is true, from having friends that actively disagree with the church's teachings. And if you want to say that members aren't discouraged from reading anything that contradicts what the brethren say or teach, I'm going to just say that that hasn't been my experience. Okay, what's the next slide?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:45] Examples. Let's look at how the church actually employs Maloo control.

John Dehlin [00:58:48] Beautiful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:49] The first one is just a straight up scripture. Moroni 7:17. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil and believe not in Christ, and deny him and serve not God, then you may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil. For in after this matter doth the devil work. For he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one. Neither do his angels, neither do they who subject themselves unto him. So this lets you know that if anything leads you away from Christ, or at least the way the church defines Christ standing in proxy for him, then you know that it is definitely totally satanic, no matter what it is every single time. So that is an example of the Maloo control being reinforced. And the devil's a scary guy, so there's a little bit of emotional control there as well as scriptures like this may prompt you to feel fear in the future when you encounter materials that go against the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] Yeah, that whole good and evil angel, devil, you know, when it's paired teaching, when it's paired with negative emotion, I think it's one of the most effective from the church's standpoint and damaging points of view. Because as a mental health professional, and I do get to speak as a mental health professional because I've done the training and the work, Negative emotions are extremely important. Fear is important. Anger is important because they help teach us and they help move us to action. And when we're always taught that negative emotion is bad, run away from negative emotion, we limit our own potential and our own growth. And when you pair any negative emotion ocean with Satan, then you're literally limiting the healing and the growth and the potential of the people involved in the activity. And that's thought stopping. Right? That's, that's bite. Model Stephen Hassan level thought control. And we'll, we'll cover. We'll cover that more in just a few minutes, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:51] Yep, yep, sure.

John Dehlin [01:00:53] Yeah, yeah. Okay, so other examples of milieu control.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:58] Yeah, so here's just a list. And this goes across two slides. So the church tells us that it has all the truth. There's no need to look elsewhere. In its double speaky way, it does say, well, other people have the truth, but they don't have the whole truth. And so we end up thinking to ourselves, I'm not going to waste my time reading about Daoism or Buddhism or anything else, because Mormonism has it all. Having explored some of those realms, I can say though that, that Buddhism has a lot more to say on the topic of compassion than Mormonism does. Taoism has a lot more to say on a lot of topics, including the sort of, you can't know, the bitter without the sweet type of ideas. And so those are actually worth exploring. The church has a correlation committee which makes sure that every arm of the church is teaching exactly the same thing, sometimes even the same Sunday, making sure that that message gets reinforced across all the different meetings that you go to. The restriction against R rated movies. Now, we were conditioned to think that it was all about sex and violence and that the only reason that you would ever want to watch an R rated movie is so that you can be titillated by the enticings of Satan. And when I started watching rated R movies slightly before I left the church, I discovered a whole new world of ways to explore the human condition that went beyond the titillating. So what you get in a PG and a G rated movie is children's content. And so you're always kept in a childlike state if that is the only media that you're allowed to consume when you watch R rated movies. The creators of those movies are sometimes just trying to titillate and sell more movie tickets by showing a little tna, but sometimes it is because they want to show an authentic piece of art that reflects their view of the human condition and reflects the way that actual people live in this world. And so a really great example, just before I left the church, I think it was, I saw a movie about a woman from Mexico who was coerced into the drug trade to become a mule. That really opened my eyes to a lot of how the world works. Another really good example was much later was Slumdog Millionaire. It had to be rated R to show that the harsh conditions that people are living in in the slums of India, but also to deal with very adult topics like why Someone would get into sex work as one of the girls who is impoverished finds that that is her best option in order to continue to survive. And it really shows us a close personal look at people from other parts of the world who are having real life experiences. LGBT issues are hidden when you aren't allowed to watch. You don't get to watch someone's narrative of how they are dealing with the way that they're being treated. And so it's easy for you to say why? Gay people are fine, everything's fine. They're treated totally fine. No one ever hurts them or tries to murder them or anything. You cannot have the contradiction of that belief unless you are able to watch movies that can deal with adult topics.

John Dehlin [01:04:05] Yeah, we're kind of infantilized, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:04:07] Yes. Yeah. Only Disney movies are allowed. Where everything ends up happily ever after in the end, every single time. And that shapes our idea of how the world works. We then come to a just world view of the world where we believe that everything always works out fine in the end. Watch a few R rated movies, you find out that there's a lot of unhappy endings as well.

John Dehlin [01:04:27] Yeah. And just this idea of black and white thinking that the world is black and white Disney movies. There's black hats and white hats. There's good guys and bad guys and this idea of a villain that has altruistic motives or a bad, bad, a good guy that actually is corrupt in some ways. You know, we just. If your media is G rated, you know, you're, you're not going to ever be conditioned to look at the world in a nuanced way.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:04:57] You get the cartoon cutout villain, the, you know, we know he's evil because he cackles a lot and he has glowing red eyes. And it's like real world villains are charming and interesting and you know, you can't tell that they're conniving because they're showing a different. And R rated movies will kind of show you, is more likely to show you that view of a villain. So we're also taught to seek only friends with good standards. So while we're supposed to where we're told we're allowed to have non Mormon friends, the actuality is they all have to have our share, our same standards. We're supposed to avoid negativity and gossip and rumors and backbiting and murmuring. All anti Mormon material, of course, is straw man. Now straw man is a type of fallacy where we create a straw man, a version of our opponent's argument that is easy to knock down, but that isn't the real version of the opponent's argument. So we're told anti Mormon material is produced by people who are misled by Satan and who are angry for no reason and just want to sin and all of that kind of. Of stuff. But that, that isn't our real reasons for producing this stuff. They slander everyone who is not of God. So if it's not of God, then it is of Satan with that black and white us versus them thinking there have been recent crackdowns against the Internet. I'm not super up on all of it, but I've. I've seen it come through that they've had weekends where you're supposed to go without the Internet challenges that they have talking against certain types of places that you could go on the Internet. And when you go on a mission, you are in a complete milieu control information blackout. Not even the news, not even regular television shows. It is 100%. You know, I don't even think you're allowed to read like, Deseret published stuff like faith promoting Deseret stuff. It's all got to be actually the scriptures or actually LDS produced MIT materials.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] Yeah, Yep. So true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:06:57] So there's a few more ways that the church does this. And I might not have even on the next slide, I might not have even caught all of them. So you're all free to think of your own examples if you'd like.

John Dehlin [01:07:09] Yeah, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna invite our listeners to just really look at this slide because these are really, really powerful ways that people that the bubble, the Mormon bubble of ignorance gets reinforced. I can't emphasize enough the importance of this slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:07:32] Yeah, okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:33] Yeah, let's keep going.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:07:34] There's a few more. So having constant church meetings, we'll get into time control next. But having constant being constantly busy keeps you in a malieu. The ministering program, which is home visiting and home teaching, has people checking in on you. They might not be watching your every move like in some of the more extreme demand groups, but they are checking in on you. And they might notice if, you know, you might have a cigarette stubbed out there on the porch or something, they might wonder. And that kind of keeps you on your toes, making sure that, you know, every. Everything's kosher in your house. The singles and youth programs really lock down on the youth who are in a destabilized phase of their life. They are finding their identity. They are trying to figure out who they are. They're in a Perfectly natural and healthy. The sort of rebellious phase in life where they are testing authority, trying to see how far they can go and who they really are and experimenting with different identities. And so that's why the church really has a lot of has all of the youth tied up in doing service and going to weekly meetings and seminary and institute programs. And all of those is on purpose to keep people from leaving during a time when people are likely to leave missions, of course, and byu. If you go to a church school and LDS family services, which is if you go to the bishop and you say, I'm having some problems with my marriage or my emotional problems with my life, they will send you to LDS approved therapy services which may not allow you to talk about certain topics. Or if you do talk about certain topics, as you mentioned, John, the ethical therapy practice will say, you know, will help you figure out who you are and what you want and help you lead the life that you want to live. Regardless of what you think that is. Obviously if you think you're going to hurt someone, they're going to stop you there. But everything or yourself or yourself. And even then, I mean, I've had difficult difficulties with self harm and suicidal thoughts. And even then like a good therapist will approach it and meet you where you are rather than shaming you and saying, no, you're not allowed to think that way. They are like, okay, well tell me more about that, what works, what doesn't work, that kind of thing. And then finally the last Milou drum roll for the next slide. Do to do the family Malou. So Madeline Tobias and Janja Lalich in their wonderful book Captive Hearts, Captive Minds said if the group isn't already living communally, the cult leader creates an environment that extends to members of home members, homes and families. So what happens is the family becomes an extension of the church where you do have a buddy system, where there is always somebody who is close to you, who can keep an eye on you and make sure that you're toeing the line. Families are forever. We've talked about this, but only if it's conditionally forever. Families do keep an eye on each other. Family members are dependent upon one another quite literally, both emotionally and physically. Family can continue the indoctrination and we see that with family home evening. And you said that now there's family Sunday school at home. And we have a real problem then when the healthiness level of your family, whether or not there's abuse within your family, that can intensify the spiritual control that you're receiving from the church and the spiritual, they can use spiritual justification for abuse. So those most toxic Old Testament scriptures spare the rod kind of gets pulled out and used to excuse all forms of abuses, which it makes logical sense. If there is an authoritarian God who will punish you for eternity and separate you from your family for eternity, then the rationale of the abuser goes that if that, that what is a little strap here and there, what is it? What is a bit of a rod now and then compared to all of eternity and the atonements that you might experience there. So the next slide kind of shows a chart of how this can work. And so the, as an extension of the church, the way our families treated us then becomes an extension of the level of toxicity that we got from the church. So we had just a regular family. Maybe it's a bit progressive. They're going to interpret the scriptures and the sayings of the prophets in the most liberal and progressive way, in the most soft way, in the most loving way. They're going to be more likely to quote the kindest words of Jesus over the harshest Old Testament words. If you have an unfamiliar healthy family, maybe there's some codependency and some toxic ways of dealing with each other, but it's not like abuse. Abuse is just kind of, kind of meh, kind of icky, then that's kind of going to be your, your experience of the church. But if you're in an abusive family, then that, that level of toxicity and harm caused by the church, that level of totalism is going to just shoot right through the roof. I mean you're going to be, you may as well be a full on Branch Davidian or Heaven's Gate person at that point in terms, and we see this in terms of the suicides and self harm that does come out of a lot of those families or just living a life, an unsatisfied, unfulfilling life forever because you've got these toxic patterns that you're repeating that you've learned from your family that was justified using church doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:12:57] And part of what's so complicated about this is, you know, people, people, you know, I'm just so conscious of the fact that on the one hand it's just a fact and even Stephen Hatt would agree that using the word cult is not helpful when talking to religious people. And so even more so exploring a book about the 31 techniques and tools used by cults and then talking about it in a Mormon context, all of that screams like not helpful in the context of like how to talk to believing Mormons. I'm just so aware of that. And as we're looking at this slide, it just reinforces that because. Because now we're talking about family, which is one of the most sacred things to Mormons. And we're basically saying that family can be the ultimate enforcement mechanism of milieu control. I know that that's just like making everybody who's a believer think that we hate Mormons and we hate the church and we are taking the most sacred thing and making it pernicious. And that's really not what we're saying. And this slide is so important because what it is really saying is that not every, there's not a monolithic Mormon experience. And if you are raised with a progressive, liberal, open minded Mormon family, you can be taught that masturbation's okay. You can be taught that LGBT people are good people. You can be taught that gender identity isn't binary. You know, there are all sorts of, you could be taught a compassionate, loving view of God, that women are equal and that women should work outside the home. But you know, that can be true. And if you grow up in some of the less healthy family systems, it can be literally deadly. And we're not claiming that everyone is going to have the deadly, awful, terrible, abusive experience, but it's also true that that does exist and that it can be deadly for the people that just hit the unfortunate side of the Mormon lottery and they grow up in those more abusive totalistic systems. And that's part of what makes this system so nuanced and complex. Is that right, Louis?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:14] That is correct, yeah. And so part of healing from that process is unpacking how your family system interplayed with the Mormon doctrines, cultures and policies. That's going to be a big part of it. And if you had a traumatic upbring in terms of your family system, I probably should have caveated this whole series of talks with this is if you're having mental health issues, you need to seek a therapist, you need to seek a professional. Mental health, you can do a lot of this work on your own. And ultimately all mental health work is your own. But seeking the guidance of a professional who can navigate you around those trauma points and those trigger points safely because you know when you get triggered and are in a panic attack, that can send you back, back to all sorts of unhealthy patterns of thinking that can include self harm or even harming others. And so having the guidance of a professional, if you feel that you need it, Is. And can find that there. There are. Is sometimes hard to find those resources. But if you can, I recommend doing that if you feel. Feel so prompted.

John Dehlin [01:16:22] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so you've got a couple more quotes and then I want to get a couple people. People's comments in. So you've got.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:16:31] Yeah, so these are. This is Gordon B. Hinckley from the Family Proclamation, which, as a queer person. Let's just do a little shudder there for a minute. Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their spiritual needs, to teach them to observe the commandments of God. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, will be held accountable before God for their discharge of these obligations. So what we learned from Mormonism is if you raise up a child the way that he shall go, then he shall never depart from it, which implies that if he does depart from it, that you have done something wrong. Again, that blame reversal. And so Gordon B. Hinckley is just sort of reminding us there that, that as Mormon parents, we have an obligation to. To raise up our children righteously. So no question there in terms of. Does the Mormon Church use families to enforce them? Lou, I don't think in my mind Messiah.

John Dehlin [01:17:23] 4.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:17:24] I wrote that wrong. 414 through 15. You will not suffer your children that they will go hungry or naked. Neither will you suffer that they transgress the laws of God. You will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness. And that does something even more insidious as it equates material needs with spiritual needs. And I've seen this before in conference talks and so forth as well, where they reference some tragedy and the children that were harmed in the tragedy or starvation of your children. And then they say, ah, but now that we've got you feeling sad for little children, we're going to remind you that their spiritual needs also need to be met. And you better meet their spiritual needs with the same level that you're meeting their. Their physical needs.

John Dehlin [01:18:07] Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And if people. I. Well, let's read the final slide and then I'll. I'll make a quick comment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:16] This is Robert D. Hills from the Presidents of the Church Teachers Manual. Mother and Father Coyote. Send those little coyote pups out to play and frolic. And the little lambs who are secure in the fold look over there and say, boy, doesn't that look like a lot of fun? And they leave to go play with the coyote pups. Then the adult coyotes come down and kill them. There's a lot of fear Instituted there. If we allow our children to mix with those, those naughty never Mormons, then they might die. They might get eaten.

John Dehlin [01:18:48] Yeah, yeah. And this is so, this is so charged and for, for the skeptics, I don't know. We lost Dan. I haven't seen Dan was a Dan comment in a while. But, but if you have any question that, that the family is one of the primary instruments of milieu control, just talk to anyone who is trying to come out as gay or lesbian or bisexual, anyone who is, who's lost the faith and is looking to leave the church. There is a terror that mom and dad will reject me. There is a terror that a spouse will leave you, you. There is a terror even if it's not full on rejection or abandonment. There is a terror that mom or dad will be disappointed in me or that to my spouse I will be a disappointment or for a child, you know, to be terrified about those sorts of things. And my view is in a, in a Christian or in a ethical worldview, a spouse or a child should literally never fear that their parent or their spouse is going to reject them because of some religious dogma or if even stopping short of full on rejection, there should never be a dogma where a child or a partner should feel like they are going to be an eternal disappointment to their parent or partner or to their child frankly, if they fail to continue believing in a certain religious dogma. Okay, yes, if you're going to be a mass murderer, yes, you can expect to be a disappointment to your partner or your parent or your child. If you're going to, you know, engage in genocide, then yes, it's reasonable to expect, expect that you'll be a lifetime disappointment to your parent or your child or your spouse. But if you just simply like, oh well, this church isn't working out for me so well, this belief system that doesn't have evidence isn't feeling like the right lifestyle choice for me. Somebody that's sort of just, just as an adult saying, yeah, this set of dogma or this set of beliefs or this particular life path just isn't feeling right to me. No one should ever have fears that dogma will be chosen over family. Family should always trump dogma in my view, in my worldview. And that's not the case. The case, the reality that I face every day is terrible terror that, that, that a, or that a questioning or doubting Mormon lives in terror that they will be, if not, if not a lifetime disappointment to their believing family member, but potentially outright lifetime rejection. And we we just need to look at the Family Acceptance Project by Caitlin Ryan at San Francisco State University, which shows that a highly rejected LGBTQ youth is three times more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, three times more likely to engage in risky drug use, and up to nine times, six to nine times more likely to engage in suicidal behaviors if they're highly rejected by their close family. This is a very serious thing. And it's a reality. Reality.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:51] It is. Yeah. Couldn't have said it better.

John Dehlin [01:22:54] Yeah. So really quickly, I want to get in some. Just a couple comments because there's so many good comments coming in. And I'll start with. I'll start with a comment by. Let's see. There's so many we're missing. But Marissa. Marissa is talking about milieu control. And she writes, I was discouraged to read the CES letter in my online institute class, literally as recently as two months ago. Well, that didn't go over well. Here I am. I found Mormon stories shortly after that. Started doing our own research. And my family is forever thankful we asked the question, what if it's not true? True. We are the kind of people who would want to know now. We do. 99% of our research was prayer, reflection, and heavily reading the Book of Mormon because we were sincere in heart and desperate to prove our doubts were wrong. Our forever unbreakable testimony crumbled into days. That is a beautiful comment by Marissa. And it's not like we're saying that is the right conclusion. I think the only thing we're really saying is milieu control is real. And what Marissa is admitting is she was discouraged to read the CES letter as recently as two months ago. And I just want to quote J. Rubin Clark at the beginning of the CES letter. There's that amazing quote by. I believe it's J. Rubin Clark, which says, if we have the truth, there is nothing to fear. Fear. If we have not the truth, we should fear. And that's a general authority who said that. And that should be the way Mormons approach truth. If Mormon stories or CES letter are false, then Mormonism should be fine if orthodox believing Mormons check them out and that should be. But this idea of, ooh, John De Lynn is evil and ooh, Jeremy Runnels is an apostate and ooh, Fawn Brody was a lesbian. So you can't look at those sources of information because the adversary will get you. I just. That is belieu control. That is fear. And I think that is a real dynamic. The other quote I wanted to Share was from the amazing great Jonathan Streeter. His quote gets cut off here, but I'll read the full quote. Jonathan writes, religions aren't the only folks who do this. The secular form of milieu control has taken the form of de platforming and canceling. The assertion is that certain ideas cause harm simply by being allowed to be spoken or broadcast. And so you can protect vulnerable people from that harm by silencing or censoring opinions or voices that don't follow a certain orthodoxy. It's done by labeling those people as hateful and then justifying the silencing of hate because no one likes hate. No need to listen to the voices and see for yourself. It is actually hateful. It's akin to silencing critics of the church because they may harm the testimony of vulnerable members because that stuff is evil and no one likes evil. No need to listen to see if it is actual evil. And I'm going to say that's a sensitive topic that I actually have respect to Jonathan Streeter for addressing. Because the left can do this just like the right, and politics can do this just as much as religion can. And even if I personally have some sympathies or even proclivities towards progressive politics, I can also see that sometimes progressive politics can go way too far in silencing and de platforming people, people and cutting off the fair review of evidence and of data and of information and of discourse. And I can understand why some people are traumatized and some people have triggers and why we need to deal sensitively with marginalized and, you know, abused, historically abused populations. It's a landmine we're walking in. But I'm grateful for people, people like Jonathan Streeter can remind us that all of us, politically, religiously, governmentally, in all the realms, we have to always be on guard to not become an echo chamber. Now, Lindsay, do you want to correct me or Jonathan? Luna, what did I say?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:43] Lindsay?

John Dehlin [01:27:43] Luna. Sorry. Thank you. Luna, do you want to correct. I do.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:48] Well, I have a lot to say on that too. Try to keep it short. I am in the social justice warrior culture. I've never thought of that as an insult, but they try to use it as an insult. And so I am a part of what you could say, a part of being pro cancel culture. However, sometimes it does go too far. I have seen it where in my opinion, I was like, that went too far and you shouldn't have done that. And there can be a tendency in the activism circles I run into from time to time for this Purity mentality, this demand for purity. You have to say the right words in the right order, because elsewise, and not taking into account where people might be in their learning about these things, not taking into account. You know, I feel like I've been part of those discussions since about. I've been on Twitter a long time, so I'd say 2009, 2010, I started sort of hanging out with these sort of people. And so I was part of. Of the rationale for why we, as a collective, sort of came up with a lot of those decisions. But not everyone is in on that, and sometimes they do take that too far. And so, yes, I am always on. On the lookout in my own subcultures for these patterns, and I am disapproving often on my platform, on Twitter, when I do think that these are taken too far. There are counterarguments to what Jonathan said in terms of. Of some of the people that were cancelled that supposedly are canceled, are not actually canceled. They continue writing op EDS in the New York Times. I was canceled. Oh, no, I don't have a voice anymore. Well, clearly you do have a voice. You're in the New York Times. And some of the things that people say aren't just thoughts. They are things that continue to actually literally oppress people of color or other marginalized people in our society. And the question is not do we cancel someone? The question we're facing as a society is which person do we cancel? In the past, the default has been to cancel the marginalized person without any discussion, without any fanfare. We just by default, don't listen to the marginalized person. And so that's part of the shift that we're seeing. But there are lots of nuances, as Jonathan pointed out there. And sometimes I have seen people that I thought were perfectly fine who did get dogpiled on.

John Dehlin [01:30:09] Alex writes, sometimes cancel culture is consequence or accountability culture.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:30:14] That's a really good way to put it.

John Dehlin [01:30:15] And, you know, I'll just summarize it this way, because I know these are difficult conversations. I know as soon as things get political, they become fraught. I'll just say it this way. I know that ex Mormons can fall privy to probably every single one of, well, I mean, yeah, probably in many instances, or at least some instances, ex Mormons can be as guilty as any of these 31 flags flavors of undue influence, as can religious people. I will say that there should not be a person on the planet that doesn't stay vigilant to make sure that in whatever occupational Corporate, social, familial, religious or political role that they're engaged in, in that they, that they make sure to stay vigilant, that they're not falling privy to the same sorts of tools and techniques that they ran from. Is that fair to say?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:31:19] Be on the lookout for those red flags. Be willing to stand up in your own communities when they feel that they're getting a little too insular. Be willing to think for yourself. I don't always speak up when I have these opinions. Sometimes I, you know, I just think to what I think to myself and don't feel like any harm is being done by what's being done. And so I just keep it to myself. But, but at least, at the very least, be willing to think for yourself. Because any, literally any political spectrum, any, anything business. We've talked about this before, can, can turn into, even if it started with the best intentions, can, can be co opted by, or just through natural human tendency, turn into something that is more toxic. So I try to stay on top of it in my communities and, and we all share. That's part of self actualization.

John Dehlin [01:32:08] I love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:09] Yeah.

Time Control and Mystical Manipulation

John Dehlin [01:32:10] Okay, so now we're on to time control, which is a biggie.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:14] Yeah. So time control is another form of blue control. If you're too busy to think straight, then you can't think critical thoughts about the group that you're in. It limits your energy for thinking critically. It isolates the member from outsiders and outsider information. It immerses the member fully within the group because you're always working on group projects or the, the various dictates that the group has given to you or the leaders of the group has given to you. It creates dependency because that's where your occupation always is, is within the group. And exhaustion actually can lead to altered mental states or you become more susceptible to persuasion. When you're tired, we will talk in another presentation about altered mental states and how they interplay with all of this. It leaves little time for self care. So you can't really just take care of yourself. Fill your own cup so you have more to fill other people's cups. And it creates a cognitive dissonance funnel that always resolves to the group. Why am I working so hard? Again, that belief follows behavior. I must be working so hard because the doctrines are true. There's a little caption on the side, a little Mormon ad going nowhere and it's got a guy on a giant hamster wheel and the caption says, are the things that keep you busy taking you where you want to go. And of course, course where the Mormon Church is implying that you ought to go is the celestial kingdom by working hard for the church.

John Dehlin [01:33:39] Yes. And I've got some things I want to jump in and say, but I'm going to let you do a couple more slides because you have some good examples here. So.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:33:46] All right. So Stephen Hassan, in releasing the Bonds, said cults often impose an oppressive time schedule on their members lives in order to control behavior. When members are not engaged in cult rituals and indoctrination activities, they are typically assigned to specific goals that restrict their free time and behavior. Anything to keep them busy. In a destructive cult, there is always work to be done. And Michael Lingoni in Recovery from Colts said in order to advance at a satisfactory pace, members must spend long hours involved in various tasks or practices the leadership deems necessary. In short, members spend more and more time with and under the direction of the group. So I don't know if that sounds familiar to anyone. It sure does to me.

John Dehlin [01:34:32] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:33] There's a few more quotes from cult researchers here. John Goldhammer in Under the Influence said, lack of sufficient rest and sensory overload contribute to the inability of the individual to have time to think about the validity of information being received. This kind of repeating what I've already said, but I just, I sometimes put in here these quotes to just show that I'm not making this up. I do have a lot of references in my book to show that I'm not making this up up. Someone else said it about other groups. And Margaret Thaler Singer in Cults in Our Midst said, you plod and plod and plod along. You were incredibly confused but don't know any way of dealing with your confusion. And finally put your shoulder to the wheel. Push along. Is something I heard somewhere.

John Dehlin [01:35:18] Absolutely. And then some scriptures. You got some scriptures.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:21] We'll see. Does the church really demand all these things on your time? Well, it's find out. So DNC 5826 says, for behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things, for he that is compelled in all things the same is a slothful and not a wise servant, wherefore he receiveth no reward. So even when the church isn't telling you what to do with every minute of your day, we are told that we're still supposed to be thinking of things to do on behalf of the of the gospel or God or the church throughout our day. And if we don't, we're going to be in trouble for. For not Thinking about it and doing it on our own. DNC 12313 we should part of the scripture, not the whole one. We should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness. Waste and wear out our lives. DNC8824 again edited for brevity. Cease to be idle, cease to sleep longer than is needful.

John Dehlin [01:36:14] And there's just the, the beehive, right? The busy bee. Be like what's the symbol of Utah? It's the deseret, it's the beehive, it's the busy bee. There's a queen bee, which you could say ironically is the patriarchy. And then there's all the worker bees. And all they do is exist to support the hive. And it's not to say that again that the church is evil. There's a lot of good that comes from that level of order and productivity. But there is this just constant tension where the individual can be sacrificed for the good of the hive. And if you care, Jesus tried to turn that on its head and say, no, the 1 matters. Leave the 99 and go after the 1. So if you're going to claim to be a Christian organization, if you're going to claim to follow Jesus, then you've got to care about the 1 and not privilege the welfare of the 99 over the 1. Which means the hive mentality needs to be problematic and fraught for you. Which means you need to care about the individual and how much you know, they're getting chewed up and spit out, so to speak.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:37:22] Right. And what's the good of serving the group if the group doesn't serve the group? If the group doesn't serve the people of the group. And I always say that the point of religion is to serve the members of the religion, not for the members of religion to serve the religion. The religion already has power. So if the religion isn't helping out each and every one of its members, members, then what's the point?

John Dehlin [01:37:44] Yeah, yeah. The church was made for humans, not humans for the church.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:37:50] Right?

John Dehlin [01:37:52] Yes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:37:54] So when I first started writing this, things are a little different in the church. There was still a three hour block. So I've, I think I've modified this to match the present church. How many hours do we spend? And I did go out on some forums at the time time to sort of help brainstorm and think of all the different ways we spent time. And in my book, I think I actually add up all the hours. I think I came up to a minimum of 20 hours a week that the average active Mormon spends at church. I don't remember if that's the exact number, but something, it's a lot. It's a part time job. So Mormons spend two hours a week at Sunday church meetings plus an hour of Sunday church homeschool or whatever, I don't know what they call it. An average of eight hours a week for college callings, two hours a week for additional meetings like if you're a mutual or relief society, priesthood meetings, two hours Monday for family home evening, one hour a day for scripture reading and prayer. That does not include, and this is fine print on the slide because there's a lot of stuff, you know, girls camp and state conference and scouting and dance festivals and war gatherings and seminary and talent shows and high demand callings if you're a bishop or a quorum president, supporting your spouse's calling, missions member, missionary work, temple attendance, genealogy and family history, cleaning the meeting house service, gardening, food storage, journaling, studying church publications, magnifying your talents and having a large family. So that's just some of what we did as Mormons in terms of time control.

John Dehlin [01:39:24] It's exhausting just to read it, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:28] And the thing that I was going to just mention earlier is there's just this common question and it's like how can intelligent people stay in the church? How can intelligent people believe the church? And then there's always this question of like do the brethren really believe? Do the quorum of the twelve and the first presidency or is it just a big fraud? Or do they really believe? And you know, the thing that I can say is time control is a really important part of that puzzle because if you, if you literally are, are kept so busy between your responsibilities as you know, a parent and in your professional opportunities or responsibilities and then you add on there any self care plus church responsibilities. Do you have even time to read the New York Times? Do you have time to watch R rated movies or to to have friendships outside of your Mormon circles? Do you have time to read books that might have you look at other worldviews and then is it possible if you're so busy serving the church along with your career and parenting and spousal responsibilities, Is it possible to go 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years, never even stopping to help to ask some of those fundamental questions? The answer is absolutely, Absolutely that's true. Absolutely that's possible. And it's, and it's in fact the reality. So can you get to age 80 having never seen the CES letter or read Fawn Brody, or even stopped to ask yourself if maybe your worldview isn't. Isn't lining up with reality. I think. I think the proof is the pudding.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:19] And then we felt guilty for every time we did read a novel that showed another worldview. I mean, my downtime. I played video games when I was Mormon. I read books for fun, and I felt a lot of guilt doing those things. And then that gets me. I'm not looking at what. How maybe the church could be flawed or maybe that. How the church is asking too much of me. I am looking back at myself and feeling bad about my actions. Actions. And that's sort of another reinforcing emotional form of Malou control.

John Dehlin [01:41:52] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] And I think the most important comment made so far today, Carol, reminds us and Trek. Don't forget Trek, Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:04] See, and they had sort of like versions of that when I was still in. So when I was a teenager, I went on a. It was like a Saturday, and we walked across the desert for a couple of hours, and then we had refreshments. Yeah, I think that that's. Trek has become something bigger now than it was in the 80s.

John Dehlin [01:42:22] Well, thank you, Carol, for reminding. We can never forget Trek. Yes, we must never forget Trek. Okay, thank you, Carol. All right, so that was a faster one, but not an unimportant one.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:34] No.

John Dehlin [01:42:36] Let's go on to mystical manipulation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:41] Yes. So this is one of the first eight techniques that Robert J. Lifton came up with. So it's kind of core to what makes a high demand group high demand. It's sort of think of it as a way of manipulating miracles or reinterpreting what happens in your life as a miracle. And this creates a higher purpose which allows the ends to justify the means and reinforces the legitimacy of authority via God or higher deals. So it's connected to sacred science. And it. It creates basically a higher purpose. Purpose that is proven through various miracles or mystical events or emotional conclusions that we can come to. And that that higher purpose is expected to supersede all other goals. It grants mystical power to the leaders and the members. So, for instance, the Transcendental Meditationists, at least in the 60s, some of the accounts I read there, they were promised that if they meditated enough and followed the program enough and followed all the rules strictly, that they could learn to let levitate. It creates an aura of control that seems to defy physical restrictions. So if God is watching everything you do all the time and writing down your sins in the great Book of life that you'll be judged on. At the end, you. You feel like someone is watching you. And that's called, that specific thing is called spiritual surveillance, which is part of mystical manipulation. I think Mormonism definitely does a little bit that. And it builds trust in the group. When you're, when you're having things pointed to and saying that's a miracle, then you're going to be like, well, there must be something behind this. And it subordinates the self to the group through that ends justify the means sort of vibe. The next slide might make this connect a little bit better.

John Dehlin [01:44:29] And I would just say that's kind of the magic worldview. Right. It's. It's basically superstition. It's.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:44:34] It's.

John Dehlin [01:44:35] What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:44:36] We will get to magical worldview. Yeah, I have, I have the definition here. So, so the, the logic behind mystical manipulation is forces exist that are more powerful than the self. Therefore the self must adapt at all costs. So it plays into that doctrine over self idea. So what happens is miracles are either orchestrated in some groups, they actually do use a few sort of illusionist magic tricks to kind of orchestrate, or they use cold reading techniques or coincidences or normal activities of life are reframed to be miraculous via confirmation bias, where we are looking only for the things that match our preconceived worldview and are rejecting things that don't. This provides intangible rewards and punishments that cost nothing to the leadership. So leaders can say something vague like, if you follow the program, good things will happen to you, and you're living your life and a good thing happens to you. And you're like, look at that. I followed the program and good things happen to me. And that doesn't. That is a, that is a benefit to the group that gets you to believe deeper. That costs absolutely nothing to them. They don't even have to do a PR campaign to do that. They just have to get up on the pulpit and say a few words in a talk. And who can question a higher purpose? So if there is a higher purpose that is being backed up by these supposed miracles, then we're never going to criticize or question those things. Stephen Hassan said in. Or Hassan said in Releasing the Bonds. Mystical manipulation is the contrived engineering of experiences to stage seemingly spontaneous and supernatural events. Everyone manipulates everyone else for the higher purpose.

John Dehlin [01:46:14] Yeah, and we're gonna, we're gonna illustrate these in a second, but just so that I can have, have people thinking about examples as we talk about it. This to Me, this is like, like priesthood, blessings that heal. This is temple garments that have protective powers. This is angels watching over you. This is prosperity. Dr. Paying tithing is going to give you special blessings. Any of that kind of magic worldview stuff, Right, Exactly.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:46] The spirit whispered to me at the right time and I visited the right person. Person, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:51] Now the Holy Ghost is a protection.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:46:54] Exactly. Now I want to add my own opinion here in that I don't think that belief in, in supernatural or coincidence is always a bad thing. It's only a bad thing again when it reinforces the totalistic system. So, you know, I'm, I'm a mostly secular, scientific person, but I have some, some silly little beliefs that I like to dabble with. I'm of a little superstitions that I like to play with. I believe in synchronicity, which is a Carl Jung idea about gathering meaning from coincidences. And that can be sort of somewhat intentional. And so this isn't always bad to have magical thinking. It's only, in my opinion, impactful and harmful when we follow it towards an exclusionary and totalistic system.

John Dehlin [01:47:43] Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:47:46] So Robert J. Lifton in the next slide. He's the guy that invented this one or observed it. He says he becomes sensitive to. He's talking about the psychology of the pawn. And in this, the pawn becomes sensitive to all kinds of cues, expert at anticipating environmental pressures and skillful in writing them in such a way that his psychological energies merge with the tide rather than turn painfully against himself. This requires that he participate actively in the manipulation of others as well as in the endless round of betrayals and self betrayals which are required. So we become active participants in this mystical manipulation. We are, we are proactively seeking out this evidence that, that this, these supernatural events are real. And so we're always on the lookout for those coincidences that are meaningful. And we're putting the group's meaning into those, those coincidences. And then through that, through our influence over others that we meet in the group, we are likewise perpetuating that manipulation into other people as we tell those stories of things that happened to us or point to them and say, look, did you see that thing that just happened to you? What does it mean? And then I have the answer for what. I'm not going to let you decide what it means on your own. I am going to dictate to you the answer. And we all became participants in that.

John Dehlin [01:49:02] So powerful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:49:04] So this is a thing that happened to a man named Steve Sanchez who wrote a memoir called Spiritual perversion. About his experiences with a Christian plus New Age group in San Francisco. A kind of a mixture. And the leader of his group was called Reverend Reverend Will. And he says, as I sat close to Reverend Will, I kept having the image in my mind of hitting him or even stabbing him. This was very disturbed by the way he got those feelings after a great deal of abuse. So he's, he is now sort of reacting to that abuse. He continues, this is very disturbing. And it made me uneasy because I was afraid he could tell what I was thinking. It was, it was almost like I couldn't control it. He asked me how I was doing. I felt obliged to be honest. So I said, I keep having these weird thoughts of hitting your parents body. I know. He acknowledged, I can feel all the entities in your space that hate me for telling the truth. Those are the entities that can't have this teaching. And so what Reverend Will does here is a bit of a cold reading. So cold reading is often done in. When you go to a medium or these, these people on TV who claim they can speak for the dead. And they are, they're looking at your body language and your facial expressions and they, they're, they're playing out little teaser trailers. They're being vague. They're feeling around with their words and they're observing your reaction as they're feeling around. And when they hit a certain button, they know they've got it. They know by the look in your eyes that. So they'll say like I'm, I'm seeing someone. And their name starts with an M. And then if you aren't reacting right away, they'll continue, is it Mary or Michael? And then they see your eyes. Why Mike? His Mike. And he's speaking from. Is he your bro? Your father? And they're basically reading your reactions and it seems like they're reading your mind or talking to a spirit that isn't really there, but really they are, they are. They're just, they're making it up as they go along and playing off of your reactions. And so that's a bit of what Reverend Will has done here in this. And it's a very effective technique and it can be used by abusers and one on one manipulators, artists, not just for entertainment purposes as a medium might do, but for greater and greater, to ask you for things and to steal things from you. So.

John Dehlin [01:51:20] And what's really powerful, it's one thing when a conscious fraud is intentionally trying to deceive and manipulate people, but a system that's really effective. Can get the perpetrator. We'll, we'll use that term. Can get the perpetrator to actually believe and think that they do have the special power. And an example that came into my mind as we were talking about this was a patriarch, a stake patriarch. Because what. What's their job? Their job is to predict the future to the person that they're giving a blessing to. And so they're literally putting their hands on their head, claiming and believing that they're channeling God's divine will for this person. And so it's not so much trying to do a cold reading, but it's basically claiming the power to predict the future. When, of course, it's basically saying, Whoa, 99% of the time you're going to get married in the temple, you're going to have kids, you're going to. You never get this. You're going to marry outside the church and your kids are going to all reject the church and you're going to leave Mormonism and go back to become a Muslim. You know, you never get that reading right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:52:33] And, yeah, big and, and the reason. But there's always an out. So the patriarchal has these little. If you follow the commandments, you will have these blessings. And so if your patriarch. Or it can happen in the next life. See, that's where the manipulation comes in on the mystical. The answer can never be, no, that was false. No, that was a false prophet that. He told me the wrong thing. No, it's. Well, I didn't serve a mission in this life, so I must be going to serve a mission when I'm older or when I'm. When I'm dead. In the, in the next life.

John Dehlin [01:53:02] Yeah. And the slide. And the slides are going to get to that. Yeah, I'm jumping ahead a little bit.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:05] That's fine. I think talking about it, when it feels organic is totally.

John Dehlin [01:53:10] For me, it helps the listeners have something in their mind to apply the concepts to. In my mind. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:18] So let's see what Bruce R. McConkey had to say about this in the new era in 1970, 78. Unless we enjoy the same gifts and work the same miracles that mark the lives of those who have gone before, we are not the Lord's people. Anytime any of us exercise the same faith that moved the ancients in their pursuit of righteousness, we will enjoy the same gifts and blessings that attended the ministries. You'll notice there. There. There's a couple things going on here. Number one, he's got the out so we can, we can sin as a, as a people and totally blow. We won't get any miracles if we're all sinning. If only we had faith like a mustard seed, we could, we could do it. And it's also establishing the fact that the miracles will prove the gospel. He's saying that, that in the Bible and the Book of Mormon there are all these amazing incontrovertible signs that God, I mean if the sun goes dark and there's no scientific explanation or someone is, is blind and they're healed from that, that those are, those are scientifically testable in today's world, but weren't back then. And so he's, he's basically saying that if we are the Lord's church, then we're going to have miracles unless people are sinning too much and then, then we've got it out.

John Dehlin [01:54:28] Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:54:29] So, so mystical manipulation is kind of, as you said, the same thing as magical thinking. Wikipedia defines magical thinking as the identification of causal relationships between actions and events where scientific consensus says there is none. So let's take a look at some more things. Quoting from Preach my gospel in 2004. This is the missionary magazine. Samuel, as you testify of a commandment, talk about the blessings you have received from living the commandment promise those whom you teach that they can enjoy similar blessings. So this is how the church co opted us into spreading mystical manipulation. Think of an example for your own life. Again, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias really come into play here. We aren't going to notice the times when we prayed and didn't get an answer, or we prayed and the answer was wrong, or the times our patriarchal blessing was wrong. But we are going to notice that one time when everything lines up, when we pay our tithing and we get the unexpected check in the mail, we're going to notice that every time. And so that's what this missionary manual is asking us to go back and remember that and then tell that to an investigator of the church. And then Bruce R. McConkey again, same new Era article. Perhaps the perfect pattern in presenting faith promoting stories is to teach what is found in the script scriptures and then put a seal of living reality on it by telling a similar and equivalent thing that has happened in our dispensation and to our people and most ideally to us as individuals.

John Dehlin [01:55:59] Yeah, yeah, those are. We're gonna talk about Bruce, our McConkey.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:56:04] Yeah, we're going to talk about trans inducement in another, another presentation on another day. And it sounds woo and Mystical, but trans inducement is actually really straightforward. We go into altered states of race, reality all the time. And, and that is one way that these miracles can sort of be orchestrated is through feelings and emotions that we get during that phase in potential hallucinations or ways that we're interpreting the reality that we're receiving. And I do think that, that spiritual experiences are a human trait. We are all prone to have them. I have had many spiritual experiences. A couple of them pointed to the truthfulness of the church. A lot of them of them pointed to the not truthfulness of the church. And I think that it's important to own our spiritual experiences for ourselves and to interpret what they mean for ourselves. And it becomes problematic when someone outside of us is telling us how to determine those. How to interpret those experiences.

John Dehlin [01:57:06] Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. It's just too much power. I remember I have a family member whose son died unexpectedly. And at the funeral, at the wake, someone walks up to him and says, you know, your son visited me in a dream last night, and he told me to tell you that, you know, that he. That he loves you and that he's doing fine. And on the one hand, I, you know, I was super touched. I was super moved. I. I could tell that meant a lot to my family member. So I'm not trying to, to like, dis on that or, or say it's illegitimate or, or judge it. But I also believe that it is excessive power for anyone to claim they have exclusive or unique access to the divine on the behalf of somebody else. Because as soon as you, whether it's claiming to be a prophet, claiming to talk to God, me telling you that God told me what you should be doing, it's basically exerting too much power. And no human should be given that much power.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:58:15] Absolutely. And another example that I thought of is when I was college age, all the stories I heard from all of the other women that were saying, you know, I married my guy when he came to me after three weeks of dating and said, I had a dream and you're the one. And some of those ended up being abusive relationships that ended in divorce, at least the ones where I remained in contact with the person. And, and yeah, that is so insidious. I had a dream and you're my soulmate, that is so manipulative and beyond. And it usually, again, the times that I have where I knew the person afterwards ended in abuse. Those are abusers that tend, that tend to really lay that on thick.

John Dehlin [01:58:57] Yeah. Yep, yep. So watch for Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:59:02] So the thing about mystical manipulation is it can set us up for self fulfilling prophecy prophecies, particularly when it comes to the outcomes of obedience and sin. And it's really easy to manufacture an emotional prediction. So we've, we talked about it under emotional control, emotion over intellect. Where, where anyone who's a storyteller is at least trying to learn how to manipulate emotions in a consensual way. Like I want to, you know, I want to lead you on an adventure in my story where you're feeling the same thing as my main character. But that just shows how easy it is to lear those skills. And confirmation bias where you mentioned causes to ignore non compliant experiences. So an example from outside of the church of a self fulfilling prophecy. And the thing is is that our subjective spiritual and subconscious symbolisms and emotions are all very individual, but they're pliable. They are, they're, they're under the power of suggestion. So when we dream at night, I don't know how many times you've had a dream where you dream about something that someone said to you that day. Only this time it's all different in a different context because that is our mind as we dream, our subconscious mind processing and working through these strange things that we've come across in our daily life. And so that's an example of how susceptible we are to the power of suggestion when it comes to things like dreams and, and subconscious imagery and things like that. One example that I read about was someone in someone's cult. They were told that if they're, if their group were true with the group's doctrines were true, that they would have a vision of an orange fog. And sure enough, the person had a dream with orange fog in it. The most arbitrary thing, that's why I love this example is because, you know, it's so weird and arbitrary. I've never dreamed of orange fog, but the group was able to induce a dream of orange fog in this person because they had come to exist, expect it because their group leader had told them to.

John Dehlin [02:01:08] Yeah. And that, that reminds me of how many have envisioned Joseph Smith's wit. You know, three and eight witness accounts may have happened if, if you prime your witnesses, and I'm saying that in quotes, that an angel is going to come to them and deliver, you know, a vision and you tell them what the vision is going to be. And you encourage this idea of second sight, which is that to see it in a vision is equivalent to seeing it in reality. Then with the right conditions, whether it's fasting or some type of substance use or breathing or whatever it is, deprivation. And we're going to talk about this later. You can generate the exact vision or experience that you want to generate, even if it's unintentional, right? It can be. Yeah. It can be something that's a sincere act. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:02:03] And like I said, I've had some incredibly profound spiritual experiences and I'm not going to go into them here, but they were influenced by the things that were going around me at the time. And I can recognize that. And still it doesn't take away from the sacredness of those experiences to know that the most likely explanation is that my neurons are firing in a certain way and. And under extreme stress or in. Under certain states of. States of mind, that my subconscious is going to offer me up symbolism in ways that I can almost perceive or that hit me in a severe, strongly emotional way. It doesn't to me, take away from the miraculousness of the amazingness of the human mind that we're so capable of having these extra layers of thought on top of just raw reality. Again gives us meaning where there is none. And to me, that's absolutely amazing. Where I wrangle again is when someone outside starts to dictate what my spiritual path should be based on those experiences.

John Dehlin [02:03:09] Yeah, it's just too much power. It's too much power to give somebody.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:03:13] Yeah. So let's take a look at some of the loops of logic, which in my opinion is a form of mystical manipulation, where the answer always has to come around to being that the church is true. So in there's two of them. This one is a table, and it's. And it's got the you are column. And a life is. And a causes, and therefore the church is. So let's say you are righteous and life is going very well for you. The cause of that, the church says, is you're being blessed by God, therefore the church is true. Let's find out if you're sinning and life is going great. So you're sinning, you're going along, and everything's coming together for you. The cause is temptations, and the church is still true. You are righteous and you're going along and life is just terrible. Nothing's coming together for you. Then the cause is you're being tested and it is a growing experience, therefore the church is still true. And let's say you're sinning and life is terrible, then the cause of that is that you are being punished or that you lack blessings. And therefore, again, the church is True. This is not a falsifiable question. There is no circumstance in this logic chart under which the Church can be false.

John Dehlin [02:04:25] Yeah, and this is again, this brings to mind priesthood blessings where if you're healed while the priesthood power works, and if you're not healed, then you just, you know, then you, then you just didn't have enough faith, or the person administering the blessing didn't have enough faith, or it's the Lord's. It's in the Lord's due time. And now we're even seeing a version of that that I mentioned to you before the show, which is having the faith not to be healed, which is kind of something new that's been introduced. It's just, you know, the church always wins, and if anybody loses, it's the participant. And patriarchal blessings are another example. The law of tithing. You know, there's just so many of these magical kind of worldview claims of power and authority that, that always have, have, have a closed loop where the Church has to always win. It can't just be that Heavenly Father forgot, or Heavenly Father isn't all powerful, or the Church made false promises, or the brethren overreached. There's always a good closed soup explanation that, the closed loop explanation that always leads to the Church being powerful and true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:46] And the next slide is just another one of those. If you receive an answer, if you pray and receive an answer that yes, the Church is true, then the cause is God answers prayers, therefore the Church is true. If you don't get an answer, then you're being tested, or you need more patience, or your faith is weak and therefore the Church is true. True. And if you get an answer that the church is not true, then Satan is deceiving you and the Church is still true.

John Dehlin [02:06:11] Yeah. Yep. Okay, so if that's not. If that's not the healthiest approach, then. Then what is, Luna? If mystical manipulation isn't the secret sauce, what is?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:25] Well, we can be grounded in reality. So I like to think of the world in truth, in terms of objective truth versus subjective truth. So objective truth is a certain kind of truth. It can be sensed by everyone. Do I still have this pencil? If I hold up the pencil, you can see it. If I.

John Dehlin [02:06:42] Wait, let me. Are you holding up a pencil?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:44] I'm holding up a pencil. But you can imagine me holding a pencil. You don't have to. Yeah. So you can see the pencil. You know, we can all. We can hear it fall on the table. I don't know if you can hear that. I can Describe it. It's permanent and fixed and we can all have the same experience. If you were in the room, I could pass it around and we could all touch it and experience the pencil the same way. And so based on that, we should learn to, if we go back to the slide, learn as much as we can about the world and maintain a skeptical outlook, but with kindness. Because there is a form of skepticism that can be kind of vicious and self righteous on its own. So have a skeptical outlook, always be asking questions. And especially as it pertains to objective reality, subjective truth is a little bit different. And I think that spirituality is definitely a subjective truth. Even though certain religions claim that they are speaking about objective reality, I think that really what they're talking about is a world of subjective reality. So an example of subjective reality is. I really love dark chocolate. I love it so much. I'm not so fond of milk chocolate though. Like maybe if it's got caramel in it, I'll like it. But milk chocolates kind of, Kind of. It's too sweet and not chocolatey enough. But that's just me. It's. It is true. It's absolutely true. But you don't know if I'm lying. There's no way for me to prove I like chocolate. Even if I ate a whole bunch of chocolate, I could just be forcing it down to fake that I like dark chocolate. Think about spiritual analogies. As you're thinking, as you're thinking about this. My mom really loves milk chocolate and I accept that as her truth. And when I'm buying her chocolate, I make sure to get her milk chocolate because I respect her and respect her path. Her like of milk chocolate has nothing to do with my like of dark chocolate. And it doesn't scare me that she likes milk chocolate. It doesn't threaten my belief in dark chocolate. And so it's okay to believe subjective things for yourself. It's not okay to force your subjective beliefs on other people or try to influence them into. To force them or coerce them or threaten them into believing in your subject objective truths. I can't make someone else like dark chocolate if they don't like dark chocolate. I could encourage them to try. Have you even tried it? That would probably be okay. But beyond that, I need to respect their boundaries and accept that they like what they like. The phrase I like ice cream only means that you like ice, that whoever's saying that likes ice cream. It doesn't mean everybody likes ice cream. And spirituality is no different. So for me, I do While I am an atheist, I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I do have, have spiritual beliefs about the unseen world that I sort of tentatively hold. Someone could probably prove me out of them, but they're beneficial to me and I like them. They make me feel good and so I believe them. But I'm not going to think that those beliefs are good for everyone. And so I think that everyone has their own spiritual path that they need to follow, their own spiritual language that they speak. And as long as you're not making objective claims that are universal and meant to apply to everyone, I think that people, pretty much anything should go in your spiritual language.

John Dehlin [02:10:00] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:10:02] We can respect each other and get along when we take that attitude.

John Dehlin [02:10:06] And what's hard is in a totalistic worldview with sacred science, the believers aren't primed to accept kind of a relativistic worldview where there can be lots of paths up Mount Fuji. And that's where totalism and sacred science and this type of grounded in reality, but also a subjective, a respect for subjective experiences. They're just not always super compatible.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:10:35] Right. Because they do make it feel threatening. The totalistic system and the leaders make it feel like in a personal front to say I prefer a polytheistic or a pantheistic world view that makes me feel better about the universe and helps me feel more compassionate towards my fellow man. That is a threat to the very identity of someone who is couched deeply in a totalistic system. And that's, that's by design. By design. I don't think they sat there and calculated out and, but, but they, but it worked for them when they did it and so they kept doing it.

John Dehlin [02:11:11] Yeah. And it's not just a preference. It's a full on frontal assault on all that you hold dear. Really quickly, I'll share one comment from a listener again. This is Marissa. She writes my patriarchal blessing said my children's health was dependent upon my obedience to the word of wisdom. This was so awful. When I became a mom, I was truly terrified if I messed up, my kids, if I messed up, my kids would fall sick because of me. I wonder how many people out there were given blessings that said loved ones out outcomes were dependent upon their obedience. Another thank you for Marissa for sharing that. That is too much pressure to put on anyone. I remember a Mormon Stories podcast interview where missionaries were told that if they were wicked, it would keep someone else from being able to listen to the missionary discussions and convert to the church. So it puts other people's eternal salvation on the backs of the mission missionaries being perfect. And so when the missionary, let's just say, masturbated once every six months, he felt like he was damning people to hell. And it made him want to literally self harm his own genitalia. I'll just say. Because he couldn't stop. And yet he felt like his. His personal actions were damning the souls of other individuals. Rules. It's just this superstitious worldview for. For particularly scrupulous people with. With high. Who are highly conscientious can. Can wreak havoc.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:48] It's. It's preying on your values. And I just want Marissa to know that that was spiritual abuse. It was spiritually abusive for the. For the patriarch to do that.

John Dehlin [02:12:58] Full stop. Full stop. All right, Totalist reframing is next.

Reframing, Loaded Language, and Thought-Terminating Clichés

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:13:03] Reframing. So a lot of people who are artists might recognize that if you put a different colored frame around a picture, you can actually change what the picture looks like. So if it's a landscape and you put a green frame on it, that's going to pull out the leaves and the grass. And if you put a blue frame around it, it's going to emphasize the sky. Some colors may cause contrast and cause smaller items in the painting to sort of jump out and stand out a little bit. Bit better. And so that is the idea behind the word reframing. Totalist reframing. And I intentionally put the word totalist in front of. There is a particular kind of reframing. And this is when a totalist infuses events and concepts with their own meaning in order to manipulate. And it narrows rather than expands insight and choices. So reframing can be used as a way to think about the world in a new and different way. Academics use it a lot. They're like, you think, you know this thing. We're going to explore it and we're going to come out with a different conclusion and we're going to look at it a different way. So there's nothing wrong with looking at things from all different ways. The difference here is that they're causing you to look at things in a way that always circles back around to the truthfulness of the doctrine and the authority of those who are leading it. The context of emotions and events are controlled through totalist reframing. It explains cognitions in a new light to help change the meaning. So we talked about cognitive dissonance, how you have all these cognitions in your head and you're trying to keep them all fitting together. Together. And maybe a new One comes in and it doesn't fit that system. Well, totalist reframing can explain that new piece of information coming in so that it will go ahead and fit into the system. It dismisses or alters disconfirming information. It can twist logic and reality to fit the expectations of the group. It can suppress or change emotions. And so it can reframe. Let's say you're feeling angry at something that bishop did. Then you can reframe the source of the emotion. Well, it wasn't something that the bishop did, it was something that you did. Or it can reframe the target of an emotion. So if you're angry at one person, it can turn you around so that you're angry at yourself, you're angry at something the bishop did. Now you're angry at, say, yourself or someone else. So can. Can change the target of an emotion, and it is a type of deception when it is used in a total ext.

John Dehlin [02:15:28] Way. Okay, so I'm dying to. I think I know where we're going here, but let's hear some examples.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:15:38] All right, so in a talk entitled A Talk Given by Tom Perry in General Conference in 2002, the title of the talk was Obedience to Law is Liberty. And that reminds me of George Orwell in 1984, where the party said, war is peace, freedom is slavery, slavery, ignorance is strength. And so those are reframing each of those conflicts, each of those contact concepts. War isn't peace, war is war. Freedom isn't slavery. It's the opposite. And ignorance is not strength. Those aren't even the same type of thing. Ignorance is about your knowledge, and strength is about how powerful you are. So that is an example that Orwell insightfully gave us of how reframing can occur. And Tom Perry echoed that in Open Obedience to law is liberty.

John Dehlin [02:16:28] Yeah. So let's see some more examples.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:16:31] All right. In totalist reframing, everything must be imbued with meaning that promotes the legitimacy of the group. And all signs must be forced to point to, yes, the church is true. So I have a couple of quotes on this slide from the friend in December 2011. Everything that is good in the world is part of the gospel of Jesus is Christ. And in his memoir, Suddenly Strangers, Chris Morin, who is an ex Mormon, said Mormons were at the center of the universe, the focus of both good and evil forces. And then this brilliant quote from one of my favorite shows, BoJack Horseman. It's on Netflix. I love the show to pieces. One of the quotes is when you're wearing rose colored glasses, red flags just look like flags.

John Dehlin [02:17:15] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:17:17] So how does the church do totalist reframing? There's a lot of different ways. We'll cover just a couple of them. The feeling that we. This is emotional reframing. The feeling that we describe as the Spirit. There's a warmth in your bosom and it makes you feel peaceful and comfortable and safe. That feeling is love. It's. I mean, love can feel like a lot of things. That's a particular type of feeling of love. Love. And the church is just co opting that feeling and saying that that is actually the Holy Spirit. There's a story from family home evening resource book that parents are supposed to teach their children. And this little girl Lindsay is, has a new baby brother. And the grandmother says, would you like to hold your new brother? Grandmother asked Lindsay as she placed the baby on her lap. Lindsay, you know this baby boy was with Heavenly Father just a few short days ago. Heavenly Father sent him to our family to love. Go guide and train. You must always be kind and good to him. So the grandma is conjuring. Plus the presence of the brother is conjuring these feelings of love. As Lindsay held her new brother and looked at him, she had a good warm feeling inside. She knew Heavenly Father had sent her little brother to their family. And so that feeling is reframed and then used as proof that everything that grandmother just said was true, when in fact she is just feeling love. Typical, typical feelings for a child to feel while holding their new brother.

John Dehlin [02:18:48] Yeah. The reframing of the spirit is such an important part of how Mormonism works. Any, any positive emotion is basically means the Mormon Church is true. It doesn't just mean that you feel love or you feel joy or when you serve someone, a good thing happens or people love each other, families are good, good or, you know, it's, it's good to not hurt people and it's good to be kind instead of them just being universal feelings that everybody has. And that just mean you're a human being having positive emotion. It's all got to be recontextualized as the Mormon Church is true and the Book of Mormon's true and follow the prophet and we're the one true church. And that's, that is emotional reframing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:19:32] That's kind of totalistic theft. It's stealing your ownership of your emotions and your ability to interpret what they mean and giving that as proxy to the church to do that for you.

John Dehlin [02:19:44] Yeah, yeah, Yep, Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:19:48] All right, so Stephen Hassan says, in a cult, happiness is often redefined as sacrifice or suffering. Let's see if the Church uses that kind of reframing. I have three hymns up here. Let us all press on. In the work of the Lord that when life is or we may gain a rain reward in the fight for right Let us wield a sword, the mighty sword of truth. Fear not though the enemy deride courage for the Lord is on our side. We will heed not what the wicked may say, but the Lord alone we will obey. So that is turning strife and conflict into confirmation that the Church is true. We also have come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy when your way though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day. With, of course, the pioneer imagery that came along with that, that song. The worst possible discomfort of trudging through the snow. I've lost loved ones. It's cold, you're hungry, you've been walking for months. And we're supposed to be happy about that. With joy, wind your way. This is all good stuff, supposedly. And then finally, more holiness. Give me more strivings within, More patience in suffering, More sorrow for sin, more faith in myself. Savior, more sense of his care, More joy in his service, more purpose in prayer. Again, those contradictory ideas of patience and suffering, sorrow and sin, that sort of reframe those emotions and concepts for the benefit of the Church.

John Dehlin [02:21:18] This is emotion. I don't want to say triggering, but it's emotionally activating for me because those are some of my favorite hymns.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:21:27] Yeah,

John Dehlin [02:21:29] I loved singing those hymns. I would even say I miss singing those hymns, but it's so true. Like, one of the most brilliant strokes Joseph Smith ever did was to frame in the Book of Mormon adversity and opposition as a proof that the Church is true and as a fulfillment of prophecy. And so, again, that's such a brilliant refrain that anytime somebody opposes us, it's just confirmation. It can't be that the Church bungled its experiences in Missouri or that Joseph Smith became a monarchical dictator in Nauvoo, violating constitutional principles. It's all that the adversary is working to oppose the work of the Lord. And it can't be that Brigham Young made irresponsible decisions about the pioneering efforts that led to people dying in the handcarts because they left too early or too late in the migration west that led to people dying in a bad winter. It can't be irresponsible leadership. It's that adversity proves that the Church is true. And that God loves us and he loves us by blessing us with adversity. It's such a totalistic and harmful and tragic reframing. I mean, there's a benefit to it in that everything bad that happens is always going to be spun with a positive light. And in some sense that keeps everybody feeling optimistic, that everything has purpose and everything has meaning. And a loving heavenly father is always in control, but it allows neglectful or damaging leadership decisions to always be reframed as positive and to never have any accountability for the way that leaders harm people. That's kind of, I think, part of the risk.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:23:30] Right, right, right. And that's, you know, abusers use minimization, which is kind of what that is. If you can't acknowledge optimism is one thing, but if you can't acknowledge, hey, this thing hurt, and I'm going to need to heal from that and we're going to need to rectify the situation that caused the hurt so that it won't happen again so that I can re establish trust with you. If that's not what's going on and you're stuffing those feelings down in order to just put on a happy face regardless of anything that happens to you, that is minimization. And it can also be a form of gaslighting. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about gaslighting coming up. Actually, this is from a missionary memoir by Jack B. Worthy. I'm sure that's a pseudonym. In a book he called the Mormon Cult. He says that some of the fabric at both the foot and head of the mattress had rotted away, exposing the foam inside. Where the foam was exposed, it had oxidized and crumbled into crusty brown powder. The sight of that pleased me immensely. It gave me a deep sense of satisfaction to know that I would be sacrificing the luxuries I had enjoyed from the day I was born. My service to the Lord would thus be more difficult and therefore more meaningful. Such open, armed acceptance of sacrifice makes excellent fodder for faith promoting mission stories. And so the church gets us to do this to ourselves, to always see suffering and the things that ought to be causing us. Cognitive dissonance to ought to be saying, maybe there's a problem here. It actually converts that around to be cognitive consonants where we feel like, oh, this is proof that the fact that I would put myself through this is proof that the truth church is true.

John Dehlin [02:25:05] Absolutely, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:25:07] Now, Viktor Frankl in the next slide. He has a. He has something to say about this sort of thinking. Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who wrote Man's Search for Meaning. I think he was also a field of psychology or social work, one of those two, and he went on to become a great thinker in that field. He says, let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. If anyone ought to know, ought to be him. If suffering were avoidable, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological, or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic. So he puts it under no uncertain terms how we ought to view suffering, especially unnecessary. I mean, it's one thing to find meaning in suffering that is unavoidable, that we can't change or do, but to find suffering in that which we can avoid is toxic.

John Dehlin [02:26:02] Yeah. And that's so powerful. And I think Buddhism, even secular Buddhism, does such a great job of distinguishing between pain and suffering. Pain is something that is inevitable in life. Yes, we're all going to experience pain at one point or another, whether that's death or taxes or war to some extent. Illness and sickness and natural disasters. Yes, there's going to be to be pain in this life. And you, it's, it's healthy to come to accept that what is unacceptable and violent is when a totalistic system is literally inflicting pain and suffering by choice on its membership and lulling them into this kind of passivity of accepting that. So again, I hate to always be beating the this drum, but LGBT suffering is 100% unnecessary in 2021. And so to just say, yeah, there's going to be, yeah, death by suicide happens, and the Lord is mysterious and who knows how this is all going to play for the good. And someday in the afterlife, you'll be able to find love and companionship. But right now we just have to trust in the Lord and it's a trial of your faith. It's the cross you have to bear. No, that's unacceptable. Pain and suffering.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:35] Yeah. And human beings become acceptable losses, you know, casualties. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so, yeah, it'll work out for the good of most people. But the marginalized who fall, do we not care about them? And that's the message that it sends to marginalized people.

John Dehlin [02:27:53] Yeah. Yep. In 2021, we can't tolerate that anymore.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:58] Yeah. So Elder Stephen E. Snow in the New Era in 2013 said the overwhelming evidence of church history is positive and faith promoting. If you choose to spend much of your time studying only controversial chapters of our history, you'll see a few threads, but you'll miss the whole quilt. And you'll need to understand the whole picture of how history in this context, it is absolutely inspiring. And so he is using Malou control as he reframes the controversial histories about the church and says that those are all faith promoting in general.

John Dehlin [02:28:35] Absolutely. Stephen Snow.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:39] Epic reframing and reframing can become gaslighting when you are denying someone reality. Gaslighting and I am a gaslighting victim. That was one of the ways that my abuser abused me. And it literally broke me and broke my mind.

John Dehlin [02:28:56] Okay, wait. Just. Just really quickly. So where is this is epic reframing?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:00] It's the same.

John Dehlin [02:29:01] That's. That's still. Okay. Yeah, keep going. Sorry, sorry.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:03] Twist to the. To the. To the subject so they mix it up.

John Dehlin [02:29:07] No, that's good. That's good. Okay. Epic reframing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:09] Yeah. So. So gaslighting, if no one's aware of it, is, is. It's not just a lie, because a lie is just a lie, but it is a system of lies that gets a person to, over time, deny their own reality. It can be their emotional reality. It can be their. The physical reality of the objective things that are around them. And it in. The goal of abusers in a one on one situation is so that the abuser can supplant their victim's emotions and worldview with their own and also to punish them and drive them crazy. Crazy. So if the abuser is always the cool and collected and rational one, and you're the one screaming and crying and acting outrageous, well, maybe you're doing it because of the abuse that's happening. And, but the. But the abuser gets to sort of remain the cool, calm, rational one by pushing your buttons, making you react, and then denying that you had a good reason to react that way. It's a program and system of that. So that's what I mean by gaslighting. And. And this is a quote by Brigham Young. It is most astonishing to every principle of intelligence that any man or woman will close their eyes upon eternal things after they have been made acquainted with them, and let the things of the world, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, entangle their minds and draw them one hair's breadth from the principles of life. So you don't have a good reason for leaving the church after you have been familiar with the church. The reason gaslighting is that you have been drawn by the lusts of the flesh and you're just out to Sin. And so that is an example of the kind of gaslighting. Again, it's not just one lie. One time. We were under a program in the church of constantly having our doubts and opinions reframed in the church's context, which cancels out our own feelings and our own reasons for things and replaces it with the church. And that's. That's what I mean by gaslighting in this situation.

John Dehlin [02:31:02] And so. And so, just to drive that home, that quote about Briggs Young is just connect the dots. It's gaslighting because on the one hand, he's saying what. And on the other hand, he's living

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:14] what he's had 55 wives.

John Dehlin [02:31:17] And he's saying what he's talking about.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:19] He's talking about, you're doing this because of the lust of your eyes. And he probably was projecting a little bit there, which is a whole other psychological concept where people who are trying to hide something, they will accuse other people, People of doing that thing that they themselves are doing. So, yeah, probably projecting.

John Dehlin [02:31:37] And again, we use that gaslighting term more and more. We're defining gaslighting. Say it one more time, if you don't mind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:44] Yeah. And I'll just get to where the term comes from. It might kind of help you a little bit better. It's from a play and then subsequently a movie wherein a man, abusive man, has a new wife and she has a fortune that she has inherited. And he is trying to drive her crazy so that he can get her committed to a mental institution so that he can have her wealth and not have to worry about her anymore. And so he does this. This is set in. In Victorian times or Edwardian, when we still had gas lighting. And so he would go. And he would mess with the gas pipes so that the lights would flicker and dim, and then she would go, did you just see that? The lights just diminished. And he would be like, I didn't see anything. Is there something wrong with your eyes? Is there something wrong with your mind? Another thing he would do is he would hide her jewelry. He would take her favorite necklace and he would hide it somewhere, and she'd be like, where's my necklace? And she'd look. She'd turn the house upside down looking for her necklace, and he'd be like, I haven't seen your necklace. Did you even have the necklace in the first place? And then later, he would sneak it back into her jewelry box, and there it's been the whole time. And it is a system of lies, a program of lies. That supplants a person's sort of feeling that they can recognize reality to sort of make them slowly feel like they're crazy to doubt their own feelings and their own thoughts.

John Dehlin [02:33:02] Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, it's a. It's a really important concept. Is that its own, one of the 31 flavors, gaslighting or not?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:33:10] It's not. And when I wrote the book, gaslighting was kind of a new. It wasn't a new concept, but it was kind of starting to enter the culture as a. A concept. So I was kind of aware of it. I was with my abuser at the time who was putting me through a program of gaslighting, and I hadn't quite recognized that yet. So I was in the place of feeling crazy and like I was doubting. So I don't think I talk about it. I might mention it in my book. I might define it briefly, but I don't. I didn't give it like its whole. Its own chapter.

John Dehlin [02:33:41] Okay, Makes sense. We have a. We have a quick. We have a quick question from Stephanie about the book. Are these slides and bullet points from her book or work? Is it possible to get a copy of these or can I purchase her book?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:33:58] Yeah, you can purchase the book, which we. Yeah, you can do that. I can also. I'm happy to send you the slides if you email me at Luna L U N A at Corbden C-O-R-B-E-N.com I'll be happy to send you the.

John Dehlin [02:34:15] The PowerPoint and we can share also links to the slides in the show notes when this episode goes live. But everyone go buy this book, support our authors, support our writers. And your life will be enhanced by having a physical, electronic, audio or paper copy of this book. Your life will be enhanced by really internalizing these principles. It's helpful to help you deprogram whether or not you stay in or out of the church. It helps you rewire your brain to take back your agency, which is going to be beneficial to you regardless of your status with the church or with any other religious tradition. So please buy this book and support Luna. Thank you and great question, Stephanie. Okay, now we're on to loading the language.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:35:04] Yes. So loading the language is more specific to. It is a type of reframing, but it's very specific to words and. And language. And so we can think of words and language as sort of a plug that goes into a whole circuit of emotions and concepts and memories and metaphors and ideas within our head. I think of it as like a handle on a suitcase. So the suitcase has the. What's really in our head, all the. All the synaptic pathways that have burned into our mind, all these connections between everything. And the suitcase is the thoughts and the concepts that we mean by them. And the handle is the word. The handle is the word that we use to reference that body of ideas or those objects. And so, like, if I hold up a pencil, I'm not actually holding it up this time. If I hold up a pencil, I can point to and say, it's a pencil and I've got a handle in my head that connects to the concept of what a pencil is and all the memories that I have about pencils. And you've got your own, but you've got your own suitcase. And it just so happens that a pencil is a very simple concept. And so when I say pencil, you're probably. You've got your own idea what a pencil is. You're probably picturing a different color pencil, but it's still, in essence, a pencil. What's complicated, though, is that some words mean slightly different things to different people. We have different life experiences and different associations with that ideas and different nuances for that. And so if we want to liberate our minds, we can play with word meanings. We can look up where the word came from and how it's changed over time, and we can see how other people are using the word. And we can try using the word in different ways and nuancing what that word means. We can come up with neologisms, which are new words that can help us. Like computer is a neologism. There wasn't a thing that could calculate before, and now there is a thing that can calculate. So we make up a whole new word for that and call it a computer. And so that is sort of what language is in general. In a totalist group, what they do is load the language, which is to reframe the meanings of a word word, so that to it that is different than that which larger society accepts. And the purpose of doing that is to shut down critical thinking. So on my slide, I have two little pictures. One is of these curved arrows that are all going out in different directions. And the other are the same curved arrows, but they're pointed inward and they're all pointing towards the gospel. That's the function that loaded language does.

John Dehlin [02:37:32] I love it, and already some ideas are jumping out in my head, but I'm going to wait till the next slide to talk about it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:37:39] All right, sounds good. We're going to reference that talk again by Tom Perry. The title of the talk is Obedience to Law is Liberty. Those words are not the same. Those are opposites. They are antonyms. Obedience is not the same as liberty. Very different ideas. But he is conflating that he is creating a new concept, which is that if you obey laws, you will be more free. And one could have a philosophical discussion about that. And if it were an open philosophical discussion where multiple points of view and criticisms of that idea are allowed to come in, that would be a really, really interesting discussion that I would love to be a part of. But that's not what's happening. He's standing at the pulpit and he's dictating that new meaning of that word that everyone is supposed to accept without question. So what loading the language does is it creates new words or changes the meaning of existing words. It allows for doublethink, which we're seeing in this Obedience to the Law of Liberty quote. So you can have two contradictory thoughts at the same time, and yet they somehow seem to fit together in your mind. It literally. I put that in quotes because it's kind of funny. It's a pun. Causes a stupor of thought. When you try. When you're not consciously aware of the word meanings and you're trying to think of them together and they're not fitting the way the church wants you to do, you can get confused. It suppresses and reframes emotions. It enables the manipulation of thoughts via. Via words. It bolsters your group identification. So if you're using these different words or the same words with different meanings with other people in the same way, you're going to feel connected to them and like you belong to that group. And it helps you be in the world because you're speaking the language of the world, but not of it, because you're not speaking the exact same language of the world.

John Dehlin [02:39:27] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there are going to be. Oh, well, let's go one more slide. Let's go one more slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:39:35] Sure. Yeah, next one. So other control techniques are accomplished via loaded words. So we've talked about a number of different techniques and there's some more we're going to talk about. And loading the language can help create those. Those undue influence techniques. So for instance, it can reframe potentially distasteful doctrines as positive. It can be emotionally charged labels to make a thing 100% good or 100% bad. So that would be black and white thinking and us versus them thinking. It creates new pathways of thought to circumvent criticism, doubt, and awareness of options. So that reinforces sacred science and thought terminating claims cliches. It can prevent meaningful communication between insiders and outsiders. So that is a form of malou control that loaded language can cause. And doublespeak can mask double binds. We haven't talked about double binds yet, but a quick summary of it is it's a situation where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. And many of these other control techniques can also be conveyed through loaded the language.

John Dehlin [02:40:44] Yeah, and this is such a. This is such an important and a powerful one. A couple things that come to mind, you know, hate the sinner, love the sin. Right. Like, you know that that's fine if we're talking about again, somebody who's murdering someone or whatever, but then when we're talking about like who someone chooses to love and partner with, that's a biological sort of almost mandate from the way that their brains were formed and imprinted then saying, love the sinner, but hate the sin. You can't really tease those two apart. But language makes you think that you can. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:41:27] Right. Just labeling the fact of being gay or acting on being gay is as a sin is itself a great example of loading the language.

John Dehlin [02:41:36] How so?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:41:38] I mean, it's. If you say it's a choice or a preference or just the way you are, those have a positive frame or a neutral frame. But when you say it's a sin, you immediately have moved the whole conversation to whether or not it's a sin, whether or not it is. I don't have a dictionary in front of me, but we could look up. I encourage looking things up in the dictionary of what does the word sin mean? But it's considered like an inherently a violation. Violation of God's express commandments. That has a very negative connotation. And so now all of a sudden the person who is gay is having to defend themselves against the fact that they. Or that you're claiming that they are violating God's will, that they are transgressing against God's commandments. And that's a whole other conversation than, oh, you fell in love with someone who, who has the same gender of you. How nice. Um, let's, you know, are you gonna marry? Like that's a conversation you'd have with a straight child or person in your family where they meet someone, they fall in love and they're. You might have a different conversation about that than if they're gay.

John Dehlin [02:42:42] Yeah, yeah. And you know, you There, there are these platitudes like, oh, heavenly Father loves everyone and everyone's a child of God, and the church loves LGBT people. We've got a website that even says it, you know, know, but you're still

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:42:56] calling it a sin. That's it.

John Dehlin [02:42:58] And there's no plan of salvation for these people. They can't love who they want to love in this life. And, and they're viewed as fundamentally bad and broken. And then they, then they try and, okay, well, we can't have that. So we'll say that, okay, it's only a sin to act on your same sex attraction, but it's not a sin to have same sex attraction. That's just yet another attempt to reform, frame and load the language. Isn't that right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:43:26] It is also thought terminating cliche, which I think we're getting to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:33] But then another, another really classic example is, is just this whole apologetic debate around, you know, we're all taught that Joseph Smith translates the Book of Mormon, right? You know, and we all know what the word translate means. Or, or Joseph Smith translated the Egyptian poet papyrus into the Book of Abraham. But then all of a sudden, a real Egyptologist actually translates the papyrus and demonstrates that Joseph Smith did no such thing. Or we look at the Book of Mormon and there's anachronisms and horses and steel and all sorts of things that should not be in pre Columbian America. Oh, well, what is a horse? Maybe a horse is a t taper and you know, what is translation anyway? Maybe instead of Joseph Smith translating in the literal sense, well, then we have the Terell Givens and other sort of example of, oh, what's it called, where the catalyst theory, which is that maybe Joseph Smith didn't technically translate, translate the papyru or even the Book of Mormon, but instead the mere existence of the artifacts inspired him to channel the scripture as revelation, not as translation. And this is something Spencer Fluman and Richard Bushman and Terrell Givens and all the others are now literally engaging in redefining words so that instead of having to just, just sort of deal with the obvious, which was Joseph Smith was not translating. We were all taught something that was wrong. The Brethren got it wrong. We were deceived, either intentionally or unintentionally. No, we can't ever have any of that. And so we just got to redefine what all these words mean so that we can continue holding fast to the iron rod.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:45:33] And I say Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. He didn't translate it. He Wrote it in know and, and I'm a writer so I know it's not that hard to write a book like the Book of Mormon. You still have to do it and it can be difficult, but it's not impossible. It's not some kind of. And that a 14 year old wrote it. I mean Aragon was written by a 15 year old and became a New York Times bestseller which is a book about a dragon. And so a teenager can write a work of fantasy. It's not beyond the realm of understanding. And if you really want to reframe that, I'll reframe it. He wrote the Book of Mormon. So that shows like the ways that that can be looked at in different ways. And they're not interested in looking at it in the different ways and multiple different ways. They are interested in looking at the one way which is the Joseph Smith translated the book Mormon. And if you got a problem with that, well, we'll come up with some other weasel words to kind of pack around it to help you stay in

John Dehlin [02:46:29] and to talk about low. You know, the book of the lore and the majesty around the miraculousness of the Book of Mormon makes it so sacred that nobody feels like they can touch it. And it's not that the book is inherently profound. Like just ask Mark Twain. Like it's, you know, anybody who does a cold reading without all the milieu control, controlled, charged emotional baggage or layering that we were all subjected to from childbirth without all that milieu milieu informed, loaded emotion. You read the Book of Mormon and it's like this is kind of poorly written New Testament Bible fan fiction. That's chloroformin print with 20,000 and it came to passes. And a lot of plagiarists plagiarized Isaiah, a lot of Joseph Smith's biography written in with then you know, a couple interesting or creative or emotional, you know, riffs. But to say it's the most brilliant book ever written and the keystone of our religion and the most perfect book ever written or whatever the loaded language is we use. And you know, it just, it just, it just. We're. We're hopeless.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:47:59] Yeah. And I mean just a plug for people of color, particularly indigenous people. They rewrite of their history. It is cultural appropriation at its worst. And not only just rewriting it just for the. For fun. It is rewriting it to justify the stealing of their land and to, to basically claim that their ancestors were Christians. Christians specifically worshiping a white God that's, that's all its own can of worms. And. But that, again, is like reframing. If they reframed all that, we can look at it different ways. There's a lot of different ways we can look at it.

John Dehlin [02:48:35] Yeah, but the. But the loading of the language makes it hard. Loading a language. Totalistic sort of rhetoric, milieu control locks people in to not being primed to be able to look at things a different way.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:48:52] Right. Because if language is like a suitcase where the concepts are held onto by a little handle, it's hard for us as human beings to think about things without that handle to hold on to. Or if we have a different one handle that's connected to a different suitcase than what everyone else is, that gives us fewer choices in terms of what we can think about. In fact, the next slide goes right into that. So In George Orwell's 1984 the Party, Big Brother created a new language called Newspeak. And the point of Newspeak was to eliminate every word from the language that wasn't necessary for production and life. So they eliminated all the nuance from the language that was possible to eliminate. And one of the characters in the book says, don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of. Of thought? In the end, we shall make thought crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. That kind of gives you some of the power that changing or eliminating words from our vocabulary can really have over us.

John Dehlin [02:49:55] So powerful. Such a great book, too.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:58] Yeah. Robert J. Lifton on this topic said, for an individual person, the effect of the language is. Sorry, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word, constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived. And since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. As in other aspects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of insight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness. This uneasiness may result in a retreat to a rigid orthodoxy in which an individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demonstrate his conformity.

John Dehlin [02:50:41] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:50:42] He packs so much. Robert Lifton packs so much into his quotes, you just sit and, like, ponder all the layers of stuff that he's trying to communicate there.

John Dehlin [02:50:52] Yeah. Such a pioneer.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:50:54] Yeah. So my next slide, I'm going to quote Orson Scott Carr. This is actually a really funny book that he wrote. I think it came out in the 70s. I think it's out of print now, but you can find it if you. If you look hard enough for the book's called Saint Speak, the Mormon Dictionary. And. And in a humorous way, he ends up sort of uncovering a lot of the loaded language within. Within Mormonism, not with the intent of unpacking that, but with the intent of just having a good laugh. So I recommend it. It's pretty funny. It's a little dated, but it's pretty good. So he said under the word prayer speak that he added. He defines prayer speak as a highly elevated language used in Mormon prayers. It consists of a limited repertoire of incantory phrases, a mystical vocabulary of long or archaic words that are rarely understood by anyone, and a grammar built upon the misuses of the second person singular pronoun. Especially daring speakers will venture to use the really potent wast, wouldest, shalt, hath, hast, and art, to name a few. These words all derive from the English language, but they have lost all meaning. Rather, they are used to impart an aura of spirituality and exaltation to the prayer. And when used, someone fluent in prayer speak can make a perfectly common public prayer into an ecstatic musical experience.

John Dehlin [02:52:14] This is back when Orson Scott Card was edgy and progressive.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:52:18] That's right. So that's an example of Mormon loaded language is the these and vowels that, that we use we used quite a bit from time to time. And that reinforces that quote from Lifton where he said that the individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder to demonstrate his conformity. That's what's going on in our prayer. Speak our King James English.

John Dehlin [02:52:42] Yeah. Yes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:52:45] So let's look at a few more examples from Mormon Mormonism. So Mormonism preaches that authoritarianism is evil. That's the whole point behind the Satan story in the. The war in heaven. But God's commandments give us freedom. They're not authoritarian. It's. It's some kind of freedom. Truth is whatever the scriptures and the prophets say it is. So they get to define truth and we don't get to define that for ourselves.

John Dehlin [02:53:07] Yeah. How do you know if a prophet's speaking, you know, speaking the truth? His mouth is moving. And does it matter if he's contradicting patterns past prophets? Now just focus on what the current prophets say.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:53:20] Exactly. And there's that double think that enters into it via loading the language. True spirituality can only be found within Mormonism. Everything else is counterfeit. So two more words that they load. Morality means refraining from unauthorized sexual activity. See also modesty. Now, when we look at what morality really means, a set of morals is a Set of a lot of different guidelines that we can live with by chief among my own personal ones are things like honesty and compassion. The church doesn't focus on those particular morals, it focuses on sexual activity. The same thing with modesty. I thought growing up in Mormonism that modesty had to do with how you dressed. That is one thing that the word modesty used to mean. It also meant doing things in moderation. That's where the whole thing of dressing came from is you're dressing in moderation. You're doing dressing in a sort of milk toast, commonplace way that isn't testing the boundaries or pushing any kind of extremes. It's also modest to be humble. It's modest when drinking alcohol to refrain from going to excesses. But you can still drink alcohol in that system. And so they've completely co opted these words to refer to sexual purity. And one of the reasons for that is because that if you can control sex, you can control emotions. And also because those are often outward visible behavior that everyone can judge and feel better than other people about.

John Dehlin [02:54:51] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:53] The righteous are approved of by God. Everyone else is unclean and unworthy. If you don't believe, you're hard hearted. So that implies there's something wrong with your feelings. Commandments are often softened as invitations. So if you listen to conference talks, they'll often invite you. But they really, it's a commandment. Like if you, if you look at the nitty gritty, you're like, actually I'm supposed to do that. That or else I won't get into the celestial kingdom and people will judge me. They don't say thus we shall command thee. They say we invite you to explore the prince, you know, to practice this principle. And it hides the harsh consequences that, that are behind that. Just a few examples. There's a ton.

John Dehlin [02:55:36] Absolutely. You know, you choose to go on a mission, except for the fact that if you don't, you, you can't find someone to miss marry you and everybody's disappointed and you're, you know, you're a disappointment and a failure for everybody. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:55:52] Idea of choice. Yeah, that's loading the word choice. Yeah, yeah. So we have a couple, couple quotes here from the Church Gospel Principles 1985. In marriage, neither the man nor the woman is more important than the other. They are equal partners, although the man is the head of the the house. There's a lot going on there, a lot of contradiction. And they get to have their cake of having a modern idea of gender equality and they get to eat it too. In other words, they still get to have their patriarchy where the man runs everything and calls all the shots.

John Dehlin [02:56:26] Yeah. Presiding in a system of equal.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:31] The court of love is very. Is the disciplinary arm of the church. I don't know if they still call it that, but they called it that when I was in. And that equates directly to nineteen, 1984's Ministry of Love. The Ministry of Love in. In nineteen, eighty four was the Re Education center, where they would torture you until you came around to the thinking of the party.

John Dehlin [02:56:51] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:52] And Theodore M. Burton, in Conference in 1985, said, I realize there is a tendency to equate the word discipline with the word punish, but there is a difference between these words. In English, at least, the word discipline has the same roots as the word discipline. A disciple is a student to be taught. In dealing with transgressors. We must remember that they are desperately. That they desperately need to be taught. When you look up the word dictionary discipline in the dictionary, it says control that is gained by requiring that rules or orders be obeyed and punishing bad behavior. So Mr. Elder Burton there is trying to reframe discipline as this soft, gentle thing. But readers will not be mistaken in thinking that it is about punishment because that is how the word is used in the English language.

John Dehlin [02:57:41] Yeah. Yeah. We're so good at this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:57:44] Yeah. It calls to mind from the movie Labyrinth, where Jareth, the Goblin King, is trying to seduce Sarah, the innocent teenage girl who's trying to save her baby brother. And Jareth says, I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you you want. Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave. The watcher of that movie is under no mistake that he does not intend to be her slave whatsoever. And yet that is what he's telling her and reframing those words.

John Dehlin [02:58:18] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I can tell you're geeking out on this one because you've got so many slides. You love this topic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:58:27] I love this.

John Dehlin [02:58:29] You must be a writer or something. You must care about words a little bit.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:58:32] I love words. I love them so much, and I love to play with words. So the remedy for this is we can unload our language. So first of all, acknowledge that these words can be triggering. You did use the word trigger earlier, and I think it's appropriate in this situation. A lot of these can push our buttons, partly because of the gaslighting behind them, saying that discipline isn't about punishment, when, like, that's literally what the word means. That, that there's, there's good reason to be triggered by a lot of these Mormoning words. So number one, be gentle with yourself on these things and, and others. If you're working with other ex Mormons as well, spend a little time with the dictionary and with Google. So I still do this. I've been out of the church for 20 years and especially when I'm thinking about religious concepts, I find myself typing in define and then the word. And that's, that's all you have to do in Google. Type that in and it'll pop up. A dictionary, multiple dictionary definitions right at the top. And I spend a little time exploring. You know, I might just read the one I think it usually offers Oxford. I might just read the one and go, hmm, that's interesting. And think about it. Or I might click the expand button and go look at Merriam Webster and all the other dictionaries and look at every single one of the definitions under there and just really think about what the word means. And you can go beyond the dictionary as well. And if you really want to know, read, read what other people have to say about that word. Follow your sense of curiosity. It's easy for me because I love words. Ask yourself about the meaning of the word, like what is its opposite mean? What are the roots of the word? I really Recommend this website, etymonline.com it's e t y m online.com that's short for etymology, which is the study of word origins. And I love thinking about where the word came from and what it meant to our ancestors and how the word evolved as culture evolved. And I love thinking about that. And it's expansive. We're not redefining the word to put us on a narrow path towards a specific definition of the word. What we're doing when we do this is we're thinking about all the different ways that the word can be used. And that's expansive and leads us outward to new ideas. You can also ask never Mormon friends or discuss with other ex Mormons. And outside the dictionary you can ask yourself how other groups use the word. And you can come up with new definitions on your own if you would like, because creative it can. This can be a fun process and silly as well. Silly, by the way, comes from the Celtic word seelie, which was there were good fairies and bad fairies, and the seelie were the good fairies. So that was the quickest way to define that. So just an example of the fun you can have defining words.

John Dehlin [03:01:09] I bet you're good at Scrabble Luna kind of.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:12] I'm not great at spelling, so that.

John Dehlin [03:01:16] Yeah, all right, well that's, that's loading the language. I think we do get an A plus on that one. I haven't been rating all these today, but I do think we get an A plus on that one.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:27] All right, and this is the last one. This is thought terminating cliches. This is when we string a bunch of loaded words together and create a short, quick little bumper sticker phrase that is intended to be the end of the debate or the discussion. So loaded Lang. When, when we add loaded language, language plus sacred science, which is the idea that the group has all of the truth and that it's universal for everyone, we add that to totalist reframing, we get a thought terminating cliche within a thought terminating cliche. Every answer there are easy answers that are meant to circumvent critical thought and it can transform thoughts into emotions. Some cliches can trigger trance like states. For instance, instance Mormonism tells us to sing a prayer, say sing a hymn or say a prayer when we're having doubtful or bad thoughts. And that can itself be a thought terminating cliche. That triggers, that puts us into a state where we're not thinking very critically and we're just susceptible to whatever comes in. There's a quote at the bottom, another one by Robert J. Lifton. The language of the totalist environment is characterized by thought terminating cliche. The most far reaching and complex human problems are, are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive sounding phrases easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. Yeah, so I have a parable on the next slide. And the parable is that you are reading an advertisement about a hiking adventure. Maybe it's the Australian Outback or the Swiss Out Alps or the Washington Olympic Peninsula. And you get to go on this great exploration and they're gonna, they're gonna set you out on your own. And you can choose any direction that you want to go. There's a network of trails and they give you a map and you pay for your plane ticket and you fly all the way across the world and you show up and you're all excited to get to choose your own adventure on this wonderful trek. And so you get, you start walking along, you got this map, there's forks and everything going all different directions. You're really excited to see all these different places. At the first fork, the sign pointing to the left says trail closed for maintenance. Okay, it's reasonable. You go to the next fork. And the sign pointing to the left says, closed avalanche risk. All right. They're trying to keep me safe. Good for them. The next fork, the left sign says Danger Bears. Again, trying to keep me safe. Awesome. I will go to the right again. The next fork, the left sign says do not enter. Okay. And then the next left sign says, look out snakes. Okay. And then the next left sign says employees only. And then finally, the last left says temporarily off limits. And you have spent your entire trip going which direction? The right. You have had to choose the right the entire way. And they promised you the freedom of whatever you wanted to do. But when you got there, each sign at each fork was pointing you away from the direction that you wanted to go. And those are like thought terminates cliches.

John Dehlin [03:04:28] Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And Stephen Hassan calls this thought Thought Stopping. And I'm sure he's not the only one. But it's, you know, the bite model again, if you just really want to think of a simple acronym, Behavior, Information, Thought, and emotion. Thoughts are what. What can take us out of a totalistic context or worldview. And information is the food for thoughts. So if you can control the information that people receive, often through fear, and if you can stop the thinking, then you can keep people in kind of the learned. The state of learned helplessness.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:05:12] Right, yes. And if this particular. If part three today had any particular theme, most of these were about thoughts. They were primarily about how to change thinking.

John Dehlin [03:05:23] Yeah, absolutely. So you got to keep them keep their thoughts controlled. And thought control is. Some people really hate that term because it sounds like brainwashing. It sounds like water torture or whatever. But there are ways to do thought control, even if you're not intentionally trying to control thoughts.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:05:44] Right. And it's more effective if the person thinks that they have a choice. As we've discussed in previous. Previous ones, they found, for instance, in prisoner of war camps, that torture is not a very effective way to change someone's thinking long term. Getting them to think that they are choosing things, however, is the way to do that.

John Dehlin [03:06:02] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:06:07] Some secular examples of thought terminating cliches, ones that you might have run into in the wild, out in the. In the world. So some things just can't be explained. They're only doing it for the money. That woman just wants attention. Science doesn't know everything. How can anyone know for sure? You're too politically correct. You're just being selfish. Don't worry so much. Nobody's perfect. Do it because they said so. Property is theft, taxes are theft. Just Trust me. Now, it's important to note that these phrases aren't always automatically wrong. Just because they are listed here as a thought terminating cliche doesn't immediately negate their validity or truth. They become the thought terminating cliches when that becomes the end of the discussion. So if you use taxes or theft or property as theft as a initial start, to discuss, to lay out your argument, to take criticism and defend your points and stuff like that, that is not a thought terminating cliche. But when it's on a bumper sticker or on a protest sign and you're not allowed to talk about it beyond that, then and that's when it's a thought terminating cliche or potentially one.

John Dehlin [03:07:16] Got it. Those are great.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:07:18] Yeah. Next slide. I have a picture of a comic I found online that is a little platypus and the platypus is saying everything happens for a reason. And the caption is that he's a duck billed platypus platitude. So Stephen Hassan says meditation or prayer used in an automatic way can shut off critical thinking. So that can itself be a thought terminating cliche. And elsewhere where he talks about his experience with the Moonies where he says, I was told thought stopping would help me grow spiritually and allow me to remain centered and focused on God. I didn't know it was a mind control technique. I had been indoctrinated to believe that thinking negative thoughts would allow evil spirits to invade me frequently. In many Bible based cults, devil or Satan is used is the source of the man members doubts. Reciting scriptures, speaking in tongues and humming can be used to stop critical thinking. Again, he's not talking about Mormonism here. I'm not even sure he was aware of Mormonism when he wrote Beyond Just seeing what everybody sees when he wrote this book Releasing the Bonds. But to me that really spoke to my experience with thought stopping in the church.

John Dehlin [03:08:36] Yeah. And for those who don't know, I did. I've done two interviews now with Stephen Hassan and both are really, really interesting and important and his books are fantastic as well. So shout out to Stephen Hassan for his great work.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:08:48] Definitely.

John Dehlin [03:08:49] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:08:50] The next slide. I have a few Mormon thought.

John Dehlin [03:08:54] This is one of those slides you need to screenshot and save because there's just like a thousand words on it. But in total it's a really powerful message.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:09:04] Yeah. And just calling out some random ones. Be of good cheer. Do not cast your pearls before swine. It's secret, not sacred. Milk before meat. All will be revealed in due time. Be not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Even the very elect will be deceived again. These are really quick little things, you know, get the behind me, Satan. That we, we think right away as a. Something's coming in, a new thought and we feel uncomfortable, we feel dissonance, and we immediately find off with. You know, the reason you're telling me this is because you want money or wickedness. Never was happiness. That's a temptation and I'm not going to go there because I don't want to be unhappy. So you can pretty much just randomly pull one of these off as an answer to any sort of doubts that might be coming up for you.

John Dehlin [03:09:52] Yeah, yeah. So many, so many good ones. Check them out. These are all really, really powerful and interesting. Interesting.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:10:00] Yeah. And I got this list from my book too. So if, if you go to my book, you can get, you can get the full list and not inclusive. I'm sure you'll think of your own. I think there, there's been quite a few new phrases that Mormonism has adopted since I left. I think I hear people say tender mercies now and that, that wasn't a thing we said back then. So. So there are new ones as well.

John Dehlin [03:10:21] For me, one of the most powerful, powerful thought terminating cliches is, is they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. It's basically a way to say if anybody has a criticism of the church, shut it down by just characterizing them as pathetic, broken, offended, angry, bitter. They're just bitter. That's another one.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:10:46] Right.

John Dehlin [03:10:46] There are all sorts of ways that the church has these thought stopping, pithy cliche cliches to demonize and dehuman earnest critics. Another one is they never believed all along. So recently I started a TikTok channel and I just. Somebody asked me in the TikTok, how'd you lose your faith? And I talked about how I was a seminary teacher and I started studying church history and once I learned all the problems, I lost my faith. One of the immediate comments was, was I, I think, John, you never believed to begin with. What do you say to that? It's just, it's just a way to dismiss somebody.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:25] It stops you.

John Dehlin [03:11:26] Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:27] And that's the goal. It's hard to argue with that.

John Dehlin [03:11:29] That's the goal. You never believe to begin with. How do I prove that I did once really believe? No, trust me, I really did believe. Like those are just words, you know what I mean?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:38] Yeah. And that's the subjective truth and that's what we talked about earlier of respecting other people's subjective truths, but not projecting your objective truth or your subjective truth as an objective truth onto other people. And that's what they're doing.

John Dehlin [03:11:51] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:53] So here's another one thought terminating cliche can also be conveyed through stories and concepts, through parables. So the idea, there's not like a catchy phrase for it, but the ideal, you lose the spirit if you think even one bad thought. The idea that the devil tells half truths, so you shouldn't even consider new ideas because there might be something you think is true in that, and it'll bring along all the false things that are coming along with that as well. Well, different parables like the prodigal son, the ten Virgins, Wheat and chaff, the seeds and soil are generally. And we can have different interpretations of those parables, but the church interprets them in. In the most controlling way possible. I think that battle metaphors definitely fall in this. We're in a righteous battle and there's enemies out there. That reinforces us versus them thinking, which we'll talk about another time. And I hate that story about the camel. Do you know the one I'm about talking. Talking about where there's a nomad.

John Dehlin [03:12:48] Yes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:12:50] He's walking through the dunes and a sandstorm comes up and he pitches the tent and the. The camel's out in the wind and the storm, and camel's like, oh, the sand's getting in my nose. Can I just stick in the nose? And nomad like, sure thing. And. And then the camel's like, oh, what about my eyes? And so. Oh, sure, you can bring in your eyes. And the next thing you know, the whole camel's in the tent. I hate that story on so many levels.

John Dehlin [03:13:10] Why do you hate. Why do you hate it?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:13:12] First of all, the poor camel. I mean, come on. It is absolutely reasonable to allow the camel's head in the tent and it skips over the whole middle and hand waves it. And we're just supposed to assume that somehow the camel convinces the nomad to fit the whole camel in there and it skips that part. Like, what did the camel possibly say? I mean, camels are built to live in the desert. They have all kinds of. They have a tough hide. So I don't know what the camel said to convince the nomad to go the rest of the way. It's a slippery slope argument, which is a fallacy. Just because you let the camel's head in doesn't mean you're gonna let the whole camel in it doesn't teach compassion. We're just supposed to be mean to this camel. I guess the camel's Sol, he's got to live. You know, there's so many. And there's potential issues with misrepresenting the Bedouins who would be the nomad in the situation and what their culture might, might have been like. So I don't like the story and it's a thought terminating cliche. It, it is to get you to say, I am not even going to entertain that idea because I heard the story about a camel and I don't want the whole camel in my tent.

John Dehlin [03:14:23] Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Okay. All right, we're, we're, we're coming to the end here.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:14:32] Yep. So this is from conference. Rulon G. Craven said, when, when evil thoughts arise, stop, think, control your mind. Visualize a large exit sign in your mind's eye. Immediately change your thoughts, get off that avenue of thinking. So he, he is literally telling you to control your thoughts and telling you what to think. Therefore, he is the one controlling your mind. And then from the biography of Camilla Kimball, it said, talks about her. Camilla had a philosophy of religious, about religious problems. She said that when things troubled her, she put them on a shelf. Later, when she looked at them again, some were answered, some seemed no longer important and some needed to go back on the shelf for another time. So put it on the shelf is a. And of course us ex Mormons say that my shelf broke. That's where that's from.

John Dehlin [03:15:24] Yeah. And I just love that point you just made that it's not, you know, this, this thought terminating cleavage cliche. It's, it's, you know, when they're telling you to stop a thought, that the adversary's trying to control you, that you're in danger. It's, it's not that they're trying to keep you from being controlled. It's that they want to do the controlling. And I'm not even saying that it's conscious, but, but absolutely they want to have, have total control or influence on you. There's only one right answer, there's only one authority. And, and when they frame it as we want your freedom, you know, we want you to be liberated. We, we don't want you to be under the control of X. I just think that's such a brilliant point that, that the, it's, they just want, they just want to be the ones that

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:16:24] have the control, projection and deflection. And we see those patterns in narcissistic abuse patterns and in toxic power systems where they accuse people of doing what either the victim or someone else of doing what they are actually doing. And it's a form of misdirection.

John Dehlin [03:16:44] Yeah. Yeah. And it's super effective, unfortunately.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:16:47] Yep. So as an antidote, let's think about thought liberating cliches. So here's a few that I've come across in my. My life. Short little quips that tend to lead towards greater thinking or expansive thought or discussion. So. Question authority. Seen that on bumper stickers before. Question everything. Question everything is actually one of the little things that ended up on my shelf as a Gen Xer. Growing up through the 90s, everything was about deconstructionism and take. Tearing things down and figuring out how things work and questioning authority and questioning everything. So that one's kind of decent. Dear to my heart. Moderation in all things and it harm none. Do what you will. That, that one is a quote of. That's called the Wiccan Reed, which is in Wiccan and pagan circles. That what our ancient European ancestors probably would have worshiped. But that's a modern. A modern version of that. Basically, if. If it doesn't harm anyone, you can do whatever you want, but always be thinking about what. How what you're doing may or may not harm yourself. For others, the truth will set you free. Loaded language there. Whatever truth means. So we can. If we are expansive in our thinking, we can think about what truth means and what it means to be set. Set free. Your best is good enough. I really like that one. As a perfectionist or an ex perfectionist. And I could be wrong.

John Dehlin [03:18:13] Yeah. And I just want to add. How about something like. Like you are your ultimate authority or claim your authority or never surrender your authority or the kingdom of God is within meaning you. Right. Never, never outsource your authority. You know, how else can we say that? The Great Journey. And I think even Jesus would support this idea. Idea. The Great Journey is to go within and to ultimately figure out what's best and right for you. And we've got this idea of selflessness being defined as getting rid of self. But that's such a convenient teaching for a totalistic authoritarian regime. Yes, they want you to lose your yourself, but they want the system to be the one that takes over control. And the truth is when you can find yourself and become self driven and self empowered, you have so much more to give other people versus allowing some totalitarian system to simply siphon and deplete your best resources. Resources.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:19:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:38] So it's it's if, if you don't

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:19:41] have a self, then you have no self to give and you can't give

John Dehlin [03:19:45] what you don't have.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:19:46] Awareness is big too. Self awareness and awareness of the world around you is an expansive thought. I don't know if there's a cliche that goes with that, but the idea that the more about our world that we can become aware of and the more about ourselves we can become aware of and, and we don't get there through judgment. And when we're judging everything, if we're judging our feelings when they come up, then our feelings are going to be like, okay, well I'm going to go back and hide then. And I'm still here, but I'm going to hide. We can't be aware and know what we really want, what our issues are, what's draining our energy. And when it's a group that's outside of us that's doing that to us, they're effectively stealing our resources for themselves. They're finding good hearted people who have good morals, who want to help, who are empathic and want and feel other people's pain and want to help relieve other people's pain. They, instead of allowing us to go find the people that we feel called upon to help by being aware of our inner world, they suppress all of that stuff and they're stealing our resources for them. When they are already the, literally the, the richest religion in America and one of the richest organizations in America and they've got in the world, they have millions of followers who dote on their every word, who follow every little commandment down to the letter. And all of those resources of all of those good people are going to that most powerful organization instead of going to the little guy. The least of these, which is the phrase that Jesus is used is if you have done it and to the least of these, you've done it unto me, not if you've done it to this super powerful corporate organization. It's no, the little guy, the guy that the rest of society has pushed to the margins, that's the guy that we're supposed to go take care of.

John Dehlin [03:21:42] Yeah. And how, you know, how many, how many hundreds of billions of dollars does an organization need in reserve before they can stop requiring the widow's might of the African peasant? You know, like that $130 billion that the church hid from its members until a whistleblower, you know, leaked that it existed. That's not, you know, the net worth of the church, which with all its assets, assets that's just the surplus that it's gathered on top of its core assets and value that it's like, oh, we've got all this money, let's put some in cash and some in bonds and some in stock and some in real estate. And it's, it's doubling every seven years at 7% interest or whatever it is. So such that the Mormon Church will literally be a trillion dollar entity within the next 20 to 30 years and yet they're still demanding the 10% and then not using it for charitable purposes, but literally just sitting on it and reinvesting it. Because why Jesus needs a trillion dollars so that he can affect the millennium when it never comes. Like what do you need? How many hundreds of billions do you need before you don't need any more? Now that just the interest on the 120 or 130 billion funds the annual operational budget for the church, such that tithing is literally no longer needed to fund the operations of the church. Like when does it end?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:23:31] Yeah. And they're redirecting those resources from all of those good believing Mormons away from, from solving homelessness or feeding the sick

John Dehlin [03:23:41] or immunization or water or poverty.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:23:48] Yeah. And all of those efforts could be going to those people. And it's not the churches. That's why I use the word steal. I may be loading the language here or whatever, reframing it. And again, I'm reframing it for us to have a different way of looking at it. And you can come up with your own words if you want. I'm not keeping you from doing that. And that's what I'm saying. They are stealing, stealing those resources from good hearted people who want to help. And if they knew what their money was going towards, they would redirect those resources to people who actually need it.

John Dehlin [03:24:20] Yeah, yeah. And maybe they'll get shamed enough in the public sphere to start finding a way to spend that money on altruistic purposes. But up until now they've just been hoarding. They're like literally doing what gave Jesus condemned in the New Testament, which is bearing your talent and hoarding your resources instead of serving and blessing the poor and the needy and the sick and the afflicted. I mean, how many vaccines could the church have purchased and distributed to save the millions of literally millions of lives that have ended prematurely over Covid or AIDS or vaccinations or hunger, education, literacy, racism. Pick your problem. You know, what could, what could 150 billion do to help solve the problem? Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:15] It could go a long, long way.

John Dehlin [03:25:17] Yeah, it could go a long, long way. All right, well, we're done. So now we have just your further reading list, Luna. So.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:26] All right, so there's my Recovering Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control, that's available on ebook, print and audible. So we had BJ Harrison did a good job of narrating the book for audio listeners. I think that's the preferred format for podcast listeners. And then I really liked Captive Hearts, Captive Minds by Madeline Tobias and Janja Lalich. There's a new version of that out called Take Back youk Life, which I haven't read, but I'm sure it's just as good. Recovery from From Cults, which was edited by Michael Lingoni and has a number of essays and papers written that are accessible by the layperson. Just a wide variety of different experiences and approaches to the topic from that Robert J. Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. I think it's really only chapter I can't remember 21 or 22 which covers these eight criteria or techniques of thought reference reform. That's really good. Again, beautiful language, kind of old timey and stilted, but I really like thinking and pondering about the things he has written. And Releasing the Bonds by Stephen Hasson yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:26:35] All of those. And I'm just going to say, if you have enjoyed this episode, if you value Luna's work, if you want to see amazing work like this, continue, continue. Go buy this book in audio form or in digital readable form or in print form. Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control and it will help you not just in your religious and spiritual life, it will help you in your personal relationships, your job, your corporate life, government, your politics. It'll help you in every, I think every aspect of your life. It'll just help you be a better human. So please support right now, go purchase this book and support Luna. And if that's not enough, you've got this outrageously long reading list of of additional references that doesn't even fit on the slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:27:37] It doesn't even fit. It spills out. And my book has the full I have over a thousand footnotes with all the different references, some of them pointing to LDS references, some of them pointing to specific page numbers of the various bits of literature and stuff that I wrote. So if you want a full breakdown, if you want to spend several years reading about this stuff like I have, you can definitely find that in my

John Dehlin [03:28:00] bibliography in the book and shout out to Jeff. Jeff Scott, Dennis Denzik, who reminds me, the rule of 72, divide interest rate into 72. And you know how long it takes to double your money. 7% return is about 10 years. So I was off by three years. 7. 7% return, which is what the church has averaged over the past.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:28:28] But they're prophetic, Right. So they'll invest it better than everyone else.

John Dehlin [03:28:31] That's true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:28:32] They'll get like an even bigger return. Right. If they really are prophets.

John Dehlin [03:28:37] Yeah. Well, they certainly are good at procuring prophets. We can say that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:28:40] Right.

John Dehlin [03:28:42] And I'm sure when they sing we thank thee, oh God, for a prophet, there's a double meaning there. And as. As. And as L. Ron Hubbard so sagaciously reminded us, if you want to get rich, start a business. If you want to get really rich, start a religion. Truer words were never spoken. Right. Luna Corbden.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:04] He was truthful about something. Yes.

John Dehlin [03:29:08] All right, so this is only part three. We did three and a half hours today. We've still got two more episodes to go. This is like a marathon. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:20] Let us all press on.

John Dehlin [03:29:21] Yeah. Because we've still got, I don't know, 12 to 13 more principles to. To go.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:27] And I'm waiting for the weak sauce, but the weak sauce has not appeared yet. Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:32] Maybe I saved the weakest ones to last. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:29:35] I don't.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:35] I don't remember. We'll have to find out.

John Dehlin [03:29:37] All right. All right, Luna, thank you so much for your time today. And we'll schedule our our next one soon. And listeners, this all will be appearing on YouTube in a five day epic week of Luna on Mormon stories. YouTube coming in the week weeks ahead. So stay tuned.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:54] Sounds good. Thanks a lot.

John Dehlin [03:29:55] Thanks, Lyna. So great to have you. Stay tuned. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:59] All right, thank you.

John Dehlin [03:30:00] And listeners, thanks for joining us. If you value this, also, please consider donating to Mormon Stories podcast. Go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button at the top of the page. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We are always losing donors because of COVID because people just lose interest or move on because of enemies that are constantly attacking us and trying to destroy us. And so if you can become a monthly donor, we're financially transparent, 100%. We're tax deductible in the US and 100% of your donations go towards supporting the mission of the organization. So please become a monthly donor. Please share this work. Please tell your friends, please give us positive reviews on all the social media. Please retweet us or reshare us. Please spread the word and please giving us your support and we'll keep doing this great work for as long as there's support. Thanks so much to everyone who donates now and we've got so much great content ahead. So please stay tuned. We love you guys. And yes, Daniel, we will be sharing the email. Go to mormonstoriesmail.com and I'll make sure you get in touch with with Luna. I think the the website is Recovering agency. So if you go to recovering agency. Let's see recovering agency.com you will find the email to Luna. There's a web form there but but just go on the web form there or email me at mormonstories.org mormonstories@gmail com and I'll make sure and get your emails to Luna. Thanks everybody. Take care. See you guys soon. We'll see you all guys again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody. Love each other and please recover your agency.

Part Four: Social Pressure and Pluralistic Ignorance

Part 4 of 5 · Ep. 1446

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 26, 2021 and we are so excited to have a continuation of what I think is not only a fascinating but also I think a really important series here on Mormon Stories Podcast. We have been covering a really, really important book. It's called Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden. Linda Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. We're answering the sensitive and important question of either is the Mormon Church a cult and or does the Mormon Church have cult like beliefs or practices or tendencies? And if so, what are they? And if so, how can the Mormon Church learn to do and be better? Of course, no church or organization likes to be called a cult and no cult member thinks they're in a cult or likes to be told they're in a cult. And so this is very sensitive but the purpose is positive and constructive in that we just want the Mormon Church to harm as few people as possible. We want everyone who's ever been Mormon or will ever be Mormon to be as healthy as possible. And then everyone who has decided to change their relationship with the church and or leave it. We want them to be able to unpack and deconstruct and heal and grow. So it's all positive, all constructive. And honestly, if the Mormon Church is true and not a cult, it has nothing to fear. And if it's not true or if it is a cult, it should be harmed. So it's all positive. And what's equally positive is we have back with us in the studio Luna Lindsay Corbden, who is the author of this book and who has been carrying this in the series. This is part four of a five part, at least a five part series, if not more. Luna Corbden, welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:01:51] Thanks a lot. Glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] It's so great to have you. I've been loving this and a lot of our listeners have no idea. We've been doing this because we've been live streaming just to Facebook because we have to release things sequentially on YouTube and so I've been saving this all up and we're going to have kind of a Luna Corbden week on Mormon Stories podcast where over five days we release all five of these episodes on YouTube and that's going to be fun. Anyway, welcome back, Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:19] Thanks a lot.

John Dehlin [00:02:20] Yeah, it's been great to have you. Okay. And I also want to welcome our listeners who are joining us on Facebook Live and eventually on on YouTube as well, we welcome any questions or feedback. Please share this with as many people as possible while it's live streaming because we love to have as many viewers as possible and that helps, helps us with sustainability. It helps share the healing and growth. So please share. All right, Lindsay, so we always begin kind of with an introduction. Anything you want to. Should we just jump to the slides or is there anything you want to say before we jump to the slides?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:59] Yeah, we can jump. There's an intro slide that kind of helps me remember who I am.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] Okay. Who are you? Luna Corbden.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:03:05] All right. Well, I was born in the church and was a member of the church for 26 years before I left in 2001. I worked for 14 years in the computer industry in various roles, everything from a technician support, all on up to sales engineer and systems engineer. I am presently a writer. I write nonfiction and fiction, including speculative fiction, science fiction, short stories, and things like that. And I'm a freelance editor and ghostwriter. And I'm lgbt. So specifically on that I am gender fluid, which is a non binary gender. And I'm bisexual and I go by they them pronouns. I'm an abuse survivor and I currently have ptsd and I'm autistic. I'm a psychology nerd. But I do like to tell people that I don't have a degree, a related degree in the field I just breed a lot of. And I'm interested in thinking about various topics, specifically culture and religion and manipulation and trauma and autism are kind of my. My focuses in that world. And I wrote a book about LDS control tactics based on the research that I'd done by other researchers who were looking specifically at cult manipulation tactics.

John Dehlin [00:04:22] And I'm just going to ask all my listeners right now, please go buy this book right now. Go to Amazon or wherever this book is sold, recover agency. It'll either say Luna Lindsay or Luna Lindsay Corbden. Please go purchase it. And you can buy it in audio form, you can buy it in digital form, you can buy it in paper form. But not only will this support a very important book and support Lindsay Luna for writing it, but also it will help you in your life. And if nothing else, it will help you unpack. Unpack your experiences. And I'll just. I'll just say as a disclaimer, not only are we not, you know, hating on the Mormon church or targeting them, but these principles don't just apply to Mormonism, they apply to every religion. And they don't just apply to religions, they apply to unhealthy corporations, companies, businesses, multilevel marketing schemes that are unhealthy, Military government, unhealthy family systems, unhealthy relationships. The list is endless of how these principles should be applied. And so please don't think of this book as only being helpful for if you were Mormon or a member of some high demand religion.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:05:38] Exactly. I've gotten feedback from people who never were LDs who read it, but had similar experiences either from their own church or other societal systems that they were involved in that had similar unhealthy patterns. I also want to point people to my website because I have a lot of free resources up there as well. It's recovering agency.com and so if there there I've got blog posts up there and essays and things like that that can links to some videos that I've done that can help give you this information. Like if you can't afford the book. Also if you can't afford the book, reach out to me and I might be able to hook you up with something as I want, I want this to be out there and I want people to grow from it and learn from it more than more than I want the money, to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] So I love it. I love it. All right, thank you. Thank you, Luna, for joining us. Thanks for doing this series. And this slide's great because it shows us not only what we've covered, but what we're going to cover today. And it also shows us what we're going to be covering in our final fifth and final episode.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:40] Yeah, we're halfway there. Living on a prayer.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] Oh, living on a prayer. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:48] So we've, we've already covered. I'll read them really fast. All the ones in light blue. So we've already covered love bombing, destabilization, deception, sacred science, mystical manipulation, milieu control, demand for purity, doctrine of herself, loading the language, totalist, reframing, thought terminating cliches, belief follows behavior, public commitment, creating dependency, black and white thinking, emotion over intellect, time control, blame reversal and guilt and shame. And today we will be covering dispensing of existence, social pressure, elitism, us versus them, thinking, the double bind and confession.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] And just to help our listeners or viewers who are joining us for the first time, kind of get some context. Luna developed or identified 31 techniques or teachings or approaches or tools used by abusive or high demand or unhealthy organizations. You could say colts if you wanted to, and 31 of them. Luna refers to them as kind of the 31 flavors of coercion or undue Influence or mind control. There are lots of different ways to look at this. We've covered about 18 or 19 of them so far. We're going to be covering six of them today and we've got a few more to cover in our last episode. So this is again a five part series and today we're on part four.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:08:11] Yep. And just for credibility sake, I didn't invent any of these or discovered them. Some of them didn't have names when I came across them in the literature. But I have seen all of these described by other writers. Almost all of them never Mormon, never dealt with Mormonism. These are people going back to the 50s who originally started in studying prisoners of war returning from communist re education camps or prisoners of war camps, going through all of the new religious movements in the 60s. That's kind of where this field started. And most of these already were named and spelled out, but they weren't collected into one place. And some of them weren't necessarily named, but the dynamic was described. And so a couple of them, I gave a name, but I'm still sourcing materials. And then one of them, the Double Bind, was actually best described by an ex Mormon author, Marion Stricker. And so we'll be talking about that one today. So that is kind of the only one where my main source is Mormon related. But most of these are. Are they had nothing to do with Mormon Mormonism when they were describing these topics.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] Right? Yeah. A couple. Just quick comments from our listeners. Tara writes, I'm so thrilled about this series. I found Luna's book incredibly insightful and validating. So valuable for your listeners. Mars. Marcelo writes, the book is awesome. Hey, Marcelo. And then of course BJ writes, Luna's book really helped me to deprogram when I left. It really helped to know what the church did to me. And thank you all of our listeners and viewers.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:09:46] By the way, is the narrator on the audiobook. Oh, that's great. Great job.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] Thanks, bj. Shout out to BJ and Marcelo and Tara. All right, let's dive in, Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:09:55] All right, let's go.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] What's our first one for today?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:09:58] We're going to start with Social Pressure. We already talked about a couple of these mechanisms under Love Bombing.

John Dehlin [00:10:03] Love Bombing and Milieu Control. I'm guessing that's.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:10:06] Yep. We talked about it a little bit in Blue Control as this is focused. Love Bombing was focused on how social pressure is used to bring people into the church. And this part is focused on how social pressure is used to keep people in the church and Keep people obeying while they're in the church. And so it accomplishes a number of things. It influences people via culture rather than dictated down from on high, which offers a number of benefits for a totalitarian or totalistic leader. Because then they can say, well, I never said that, but really the pressure is still there to do create a subtle yet powerful reward and punishment system. So, you know, if you were to flog people openly, then it would be pretty obvious that there's something wrong and you might get law enforcement breathing down your neck. But if you can get people to pressure each other in social ways and threaten ostracization or give, you know, disapproving looks and things like that, that can hurt just as bad. It can hit us just as hard, but it's less obvious. It reinforces most of the other control techniques. Those are all conveyed and doubled down on via social pressure. It reinforces our dependency on such a group. It reinforces the doctrines that the group is hoping to teach us. So it's not just, it's not just some person on a pulpit telling us these things, but this, our society all around us is also telling us these things. So it's harder to point to it and say, oh, that isn't true. When everyone thinks it's true. It prompts the mimicking of behavior. And as we discussed in belief follows behavior. When you behave a certain way and you don't understand why, you often resolve that to, okay, it must be because I believe everything, everything that that is goes is behind my behavior. And it pressures you to filter your own personal self expression.

John Dehlin [00:11:56] Yeah, I, I feel like this is one of the most powerful of all the tools that that is.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:01] It's hard to find a powerful one. Right? Really, really powerful.

John Dehlin [00:12:05] This one is super powerful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:07] Yeah. So. And my. It's pollen season, so I'm sorry, but my nose is running.

John Dehlin [00:12:13] No worries at all.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:14] I try to be perfect because I was raised to be a perfectionist.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] No, as you're doing that, it's okay, I'll just fill in and just say that I, I believe that. I believe that religious conversion is primarily an emotional and social conversion, not an, not an intellectual one. And maintenance of religious participation is, in my view, primarily social. And then the biggest obstacles or difficulties in leaving a religion are social, in my opinion.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:47] Yeah, I can agree with that. Yeah. And being on the autism spectrum, I've had to sort of my relationship to social stuff has been quite a bit different than a typical neurotypical person. And so for a lot of the social stuff, the levers didn't work as well on me. And, you know, I didn't make friends either easily within the church. And it was a real struggle. And so a lot of the social pressures, I mean, they just, they didn't work as well on me or like even, even as a teenager when it was the other way around, when all of the, all of my peers were like sneaking around, getting around all the rules and stuff, I was the judgmental one. You know, I've always been kind of like different from everyone else, even, even when I was the one doing the judging. So it's kind of funny just letting people know it's this stuff. The social side of things doesn't necessarily come instinctively to me, but on the upside of that, it means I'm thinking about it all the time, I'm analyzing and I'm able to sort of step outside what other people are doing just as a knee jerk reaction and observe it as an observer, as an analytical observer. So that's kind of my point of view and where I'm coming from.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Okay, so we talked about a slide here with a bunch of fish. I thought the sheep or the lamb metaphor would work as well.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:59] That's right. Well, these are, I find these pictures on Google and I just, I have to use them. So this is a little goldfish and then there's a blue goldfish swimming the other way. And like the crackers, the goldfish. So we talked a little bit about social proof under love bombing. And I think mood control. And that is the tendency that we all have to think that whatever, whatever everyone else is doing is right. And usually that's true. So the example I like to use is when you show up at a concert and the parking lot is jam packed and you don't know which direction the entrance is, and you look around and there's a group of people and they're headed that way and you follow them. Like most of the time smart to follow what other people are doing because most of the time other people are actually more correct. When you don't know, when you already know and you're going with the crowd against what you know, then that's a different situation. But when you don't know, we tend to look to the crowd. But the danger of that is when the crowd is wrong, you end up with what's called pluralistic ignorance. And that's where you have maybe you have 10 people in a group and one person thinks that's wrong and the person sitting next to them thinks that's wrong. And the person sitting next to them thinks that's wrong. And all 10 people are thinking that it's wrong, but no one wants to say it because they think that the other nine all think that. That it's right. So that's called pluralistic ignorance. And when I. When I left the church and started meeting other ex Mormons, now we're free to talk about the stuff we never could talk about. I suddenly discovered a lot of people saying, yeah, I was sitting there in church thinking, that's wrong. And the other person was like, I was too. All of a sudden, we all come out of the woodwork. We were there all along. But willing to point it out while we were in the situation.

John Dehlin [00:15:42] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's the idea of. Of people. The herd mentality. Right. Of. Of you're following the herd and then sometimes the herd goes off the cliff and you just. You risk following everybody off the cliff, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:15:55] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:56] You have to guard against that. It's group think.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:15:59] Group think. Yeah. That is true.

John Dehlin [00:16:02] I love the ASH conformity experiment. You know, as someone, you know, who's trained in psychology, this is like one of the top five coolest social science experiments of all time. So tell us what it is.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:14] And it managed to be ethical. So many of the most famous experiments from that time period were completely unethical and, like, appalling in terms of what they did to people, but this one was actually ethical. So what they did. Ash conformity experiment. So Solomon Asch is the scientist who did this study, and he brought in, filled a room with eight people, and only one of those eight people was the actual scientific subject. And the other seven were accomplices. They were actors who were in on the experiment. But the subject thought that they were all in on the experiment, that they were. Sorry, that they were all subjects of the experiment.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Also called confederates, Right. Is that another word for it?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:52] Confederates? Yep, yep. And so they. He. Then they put up a chart, and the chart has three lines, A, B and C, and they're all different lengths. And then it has another line off to the side that is X. And X is supposed to be the same length of one of the other three lines. And then they go around the room and they ask everybody, how do you. Which one do you think X is the same length of. They go around the room. Now they do a couple of times where everybody's right, everybody says X is the same length as B in the example in the slide. And so the subject starts to think, okay, everybody's probably right. Here. But then they go around and everybody says A. Well, if you look at the slide, if you can see the slide, A is quite a bit longer than X. So they go around. Number one says it's A. Number two says it's A. They get around to the actual subject, who's the last one in line. And three out of four times the person is going to go with the crowd and say the wrong length. My cat is coming in.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Oh, don't worry about it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:17:51] Sorry. And so they go around the room, and three out of four times, three out of four times the person will comply with what they think the crowd is going with as opposed to sticking up for themselves.

John Dehlin [00:18:01] Now, just to. Just to restate so that everyone understands, because some people aren't going to be able to see this visually. So the group, aside from the one person being studied, the group is told beforehand to give the wrong answer, to say that two lines that actually aren't the same height are to see what happens to the subject if a bunch of people before them give the wrong answer. Will they give what is obviously the right answer, or will they cave to social pressure that's been expressed before and give the answer that the group is giving? That's the test, right? Exactly. You're saying three out of four times the subject will go with the group and knowingly give the wrong answer in response to peer pressure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:51] Exactly. In fact, they end up sort of feeling like it is the right answer. They feel like something's wrong with them

John Dehlin [00:18:57] and wrong or, you know. Yeah, it must be missing something.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:19:03] Exactly. Exactly. And I can relate to that feeling, like when everybody else is saying something and I'm not, I'm kind of like. But I began being on the autism spectrum. I've always been the most likely one to be like, you know what? That's wrong. I'm going with what I think. So what's funny is that they did all kinds of variations on this experiment to sort of suss out what certain common factors were. And one of the twists that Salman Asch did was they had one other person among the eight give the right answer. And they found that when even just one other person gives the right answer, gives the right answer over all the wrong ones, then the subject is actually far more likely to go to go along with the right answer, because now there's at least one other person that's supporting them. But if that person leaves the room before it comes around to them, then they go back to giving the wrong answer, which is.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] Which is why. Which is what's Behind Mormon Stories podcast, letting people tell their stories so that others know they're not alone. And this is why people coming out, not everyone is safe enough to come out. No one. Not everyone's in a privileged position to be able to come out as having lost their faith or as transgender or as gay or lesbian or as a feminist or whatever. You know, the going against the grain thing might be. But when. When one person does speak up and speak out, it makes it easier for other people to be able to do that as well. It's an act of courage. Speaking up is an act of courage,

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:20:34] and it explains why the church fights so hard for Maloo control, which is one of the techniques we talked about before. They fight so hard to make sure that everyone at church who's getting up there with the microphone at testimony meeting, and talking to each other in the hallways, they want to make sure that it is 100% unanimous story that everyone is telling. Because if even one person comes out and says something different, then that breaks the pluralistic ignorance illusion that is set up, and more and more people will be like, yeah, you know, I think you might be right about that.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] Yeah. Yeah. And I should also mention. Do you ever talk about the Obedience to Authority experiment in your book or in this?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:21:13] I do in the book. I don't get to it in the presentation. It's sort of. The presentation is focused on the 31 techniques. My book has an opening section that talks a little bit more about the more general human tendencies. And because the presentations go on so long as it is, I kind of had to pick and choose. So I don't talk about the authority experiments. But, yeah, Milgram is. Is pretty big on that list.

John Dehlin [00:21:35] Yeah, I was just going to say, listeners, one other huge study that everyone should know about is the Stanley Milgram Obedience to Authority Experiment, where you find. Basically, I'll summarize that if someone's. If somebody's wielding authority over you and kind of pressuring you in a position of authority, two out of three times, you're likely to do kind of potentially really awful things.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:21:56] Right. That's one of the ones that was unethical because it actually traumatized people to have to experience that experiment. So that's a little teaser trailer, if you want to know. Go to Wikipedia about Milgram's experiment or my book discusses it as well.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] I love it. All right, so the Asch Conformity Experiment is a classic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:16] Sure is.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] And so what is it? What. So you have some examples now?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:22] Yeah, well, first of all, I have Some of the literature just to show that I'm not making this stuff up. And so I have a couple of points conveyed by this literature. One of them is that very complex messages can be conveyed without words, Especially in a high pressure situation where you're, you know, waiting every second looking to make sure you're doing the right thing, which is kind of what is created in some of these totalistic groups. And so John D. Goldhammer, in his book under the Influence, says the raised eyebrows, a certain expression, are all we need to immediately know. We have deviated from the collective norm. Any feelings or thoughts that are not in alignment with our social group are censored and repressed. Like a child who becomes acutely aware of a parent's disapproving glance, we are taught to repress unacceptable behavior, ideas and language.

John Dehlin [00:23:12] So just like a huge percentage of communication isn't verbal, it's body language. A huge percentage of social pressure does not need to be verbal, explicit pressure. It can be eyebrows. It can be heads nodding in a. For affirmation or in disagreement. It could be scowls, distancing. There are all sorts of different tones

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:23:35] of voice, the way people treat you. Yeah. And you pick up. We're wired as social animals to pick up on the slightest little hint of what the people around us want and need. And that's a survival tactic that our species has been very successful for our species, incredibly successful. But it can be misused by abusive people who want to get what they want. Exploit people for what they want.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] Yeah. Love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:24:02] Okay, so this is by. This quote is by Margaret Thaler Singer from Cults in Our Midst. She's one of the earliest cult researchers studying those prisoners of war coming out of Korea. Communist prisoner, they called it brainwashing. I try to avoid the word now because it's fallen out of favor. But anyway, so she says, approval comes from having your behaviors and thought patterns conform to the models put forth by the group. Your relationship with peers is threatened whenever you fail to learn or display new behaviors over time. An easy solution to the insecurity generated by the difficulties of learning in the new system is to inhibit any display of doubt. And even if you don't understand the content, to merely acquiesce, affirm, and act as if you do understand and accept the new philosophy or content. So that's what happens when we're put under social pressure and we don't fully understand what's going on. We just immediately we act like we do. And of course, when we studied belief follows behavior, we learned that when you act like you do, you end up believing like you do.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] Absolutely. And I think you have some examples of this later.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:25:08] Uh huh. Yeah. So next one. This is a quote by Robert Cialdini from his book Influence Science and Practice. And the point he's making here is that social pressure allows leadership to delegate manipulation. So he's talking about Jim Jones. Jim Jones who ran the People's Temple, which is where the 900 and some odd people were massacred or killed themselves under his direction. Jim Jones real genius as a leader was his realization of the limitations of individual leadership. No leader can hope to persuade regularly and single handedly all the members of the group. A forceful leader can reasonably expect, however, to persuade some sizable proportion of group members, then the raw information that a substantial number of group members has been convinced of can by itself convince the rest.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] Yeah, it's much more effective if you want to have high control over your organization, to have people under you enforcing the rules versus you having to enforce the rules yourself.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] And you can be the good guy. You can stay, stay pure if you, if mistakes. This is kind of, this is why the Mormon Church is really insistent that bishops and stake presidents, you know, excommunicate people, not the church leaders. It's plausible deniability. It saves them time. It lets other people do the dirty work if mistakes happen again. Oh, it's the local mistake. There's no legal liability. Less legal liability up top. There are all sorts of reasons why you want to push down responsibility to your membership.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:41] Yeah, that is.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] But it's also more effective. It's more effective.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:43] It's, it is because you trust the people. I think I make that point in a little bit that you, you trust the people around you. These are your family members, your friends, they're local people, they understand local issues. And so you're going to trust them more than you will trust some, some old guy in Salt Lake City.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:26:59] Yeah, it's another reason. So, so. Well, that's the next slide. Actually. We tend to trust our friends and family more than higher up leaders. And boy Kay packers shows us this. He says, I have certain, I have that certain witness. It came to me in my youth, during those early periods of doubt. I leaned on the testimony of a seminary teacher, although I did not know. Somehow I knew that he knew.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Of course the implication is believe Boyd K. Packer, believe your seminary teacher, believe your bishop, believe your young women's leader, believe the apostles, believe people, General conference. And then if you start saying something enough and doing something enough and We've covered this in previous episodes. You'll start believing it yourself.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:45] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:47] You got it.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:49] So what happens is, and we talked about this before, cognitive dissonance, which is that uncomfortable feeling we get when we encounter information that goes against our pre existing beliefs. Cognitive dissonance says, I don't believe this. It also says, but I want to belong. And those two feelings are clashing in your mind. And so what's the easiest resolution to that? If I do what I what they do and believe what they believe, then I will resolve the I don't believe part and feel comfortable.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] Yeah. And I would just say, Luna, I'm guessing you would agree with this that for millennia, I think this behavior adapted, evolved in us for survival's sake. There's a saying, a lone monkey is a dead monkey. In other words, we needed historically our social groups to survive. And I still think we are social creatures primarily. Maybe not everyone to the same level, but I think basically speaking, we survive and thrive in groups. Like someone once said, it can take a village to raise a kid. And so it's probably on some level adaptive to follow the crowd, but there are risks to it. And then the other, only other thing I'll say is that in 2021, what's a privilege or a benefit is we're able to form new groups like never before, such that if the, if the mainstream religious group or social group ends up rejecting us or we choose to leave it, it's a privilege in the modern age to be able to say, okay, I can't be a member of the X group anymore, but I can be a member of Y group, or I can form group Z of people who I fit with better. And that's why we're talking about this is because it's a privilege. In some ways, a faith transition is a privilege.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:29:36] Absolutely. And we, we all. If social media has been amazing, I've grown up with it. I had my first computer when I was 9, earlier than most of my peers, and was on the Internet when I was 16. Well, that the BBS's, which were like the Internet, and then I was on the Internet right away in 1995, as soon as it was commercially available. And so like, I've watched the change of society and our ability to socialize across regional lines. I mean, the fact that the listeners here are from all over the world, we wouldn't have been able to do this 20 or 40 years ago at all. And so it's a tremendous privilege. And the thing is, is evolution doesn't care about your feelings. Things. Evolution isn't there to. To make the perfect species. Evolution, that would imply some kind of intelligence. The point of evolution is survival, survive and propagate. That is it. And so these techniques have been in use for. For thousands and thousands of years. They have helped our species survive, but it hasn't necessarily been that great for a lot of people in those societies. The people on the lower end, the people who didn't have power, they. They were the ones being suppressed and rejected and beliefs squashed out. And we have the most amazing. Like, even before the Internet, just the fact that we had books and we could spread our ideas and read the ideas of different people itself is a development. And all of these mind control techniques we're talking about have actually developed in the last. A lot of them have developed the way they are in particular in the last 200 years or so, because the ideas of freedom of speech and freedom of press and all of that are, depending on which culture you're talking about, somewhat new. And so the fact is that manipulative and controlling people didn't just go out with their weapons and round up a bunch of people and force them to convert like in the past. They've had to use more sneaky methods. And that made social pressure a much more important tool for them as opposed to just, you know, using their. Using physical coercion to get people to do what they want it.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] I love it. Okay, so social pressure can make us override our own concerns and questions and doubts and skepticism to belong.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:31:53] Yes, it can. So on the next slide, we have a quote by Singer and Offshay. This is Margaret Thor Singer and I think Richard Offshay. And they are talking about communist peer influence on Chinese students. And they found out that it was more effective than the prisoners of war who had been tortured and brainwashed. So we're talking about Chinese students. It says in these programs, it appears that aversion, arousal, which is guilt and anxiety, coupled with peer rejection, became the driving force through which the target was coerced. Social and psychological punishment by peers became the workhorse of the system. For many individuals, this process induced psychological breakdown. And so that leads us to. We were talking last time about destabilization. And so when you have all of these people pressuring you all around you and other pressures that they were using at the time, you. You can actually just break down, and then they have the opportunity to build you back up in their image.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] I love it. Yeah. Yep. This has been studied well.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:32:57] Yes. So in the next.

John Dehlin [00:33:00] Just more Effective than torture and brainwashing is. It's saying a lot.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:08] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because when you're the cognitive dissonance, when you're being forced, like, physically to do something under duress, your cognitive dissonance is going to align with, okay, I'm doing this because I have to, or I'll die or my family will die or I'll be in pain. And so you can then lie without it changing your beliefs because you have a good reason. You feel like you have a good reason for lying. When it's social pressure, you can't see that. You don't know where that feeling is coming from. And that's when you're more likely to go with a group because there's nothing to resolve. There's no easy answer.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:43] Quick comment from a listener. Neil writes, oh, man, my head aches from how much I relate to this stuff. Glad you're joining us, Neil. Glad it's resonating.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:52] Yeah, I hope it's helpful.

John Dehlin [00:33:54] Yeah. So let's go to some brain scans.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:57] All right. We've already talked about these brain scans, so I made the slide real small because I already mentioned it. But just to point out, social pressure creates a milieu where everyone agrees or seems to agree with each other. The false unanimity immerses the member in consonants, so they have this comfortable feeling that they can go to whenever they want to, and their only other choice is social rejection. Feels like pain. And we did discuss that. This. The slide shows brain scans of brain. The top row are brains that were under physical pain, and the bottom are brains that are under rejection, which I think they asked the person to recall a time they were broken up with or rejected. And they point to the same areas of the brain. So we feel. We feel social rejection as we. The same way we feel pain. And so we're going to try to avoid it the same way we'll avoid pain. And that saying, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me is complete crap. It's complete crap. Words can hurt you so. So bad. They can hurt. They can drive a person to feel like they don't want to live on the earth anymore. And I can speak from experience from that. Words can make that happen. Whereas sticks and stones, you know, that'll heal. Heal a lot faster than psychological damage.

John Dehlin [00:35:11] Yeah. And I've already mentioned this as well. But the. But the. The study out of San Francisco State University, the family acceptance. Caitlin Ryan teased out what. What factors contribute to LGBT suicides, deaths by suicides. And it's family rejection. When a, when a youth is, is highly rejected by their family member, they're, you know, three times more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, three times more likely to engage in risky drug behavior, and eight times more likely to attempt death by suicide. And it's family rejection that is, is what causes it. And that, that's not an LGBTQ thing. That's just a life thing, everybody.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:35:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] You reject your kids, they're going to be more likely to die early. Just plain and simple. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:35:57] Yep. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] Yep. All right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:36:01] On the next slide. Yeah. Well, you let in great to that because I want to point out that there are people who fit into Mormonism pretty well. Like, those are the life choices they would probably already be making. They want a suburban family, they want medium income, they want to live a very strict puritan kind of life. They don't have a lot of. They like little cute little piano music and they like the kind of church meetings that, the socialization that they get. They like wearing suits or dresses. And those people are going to fit within Mormonism really, really well. And they're going to be very, very comfortable. Then there's the square pegs. And I think I was definitely one of those. I have a list of people who might count as a square peg. People for whom the church doesn't fit, fit very well, that might be non white or ethnically diverse, people from other countries, lgbtqia, introverts or people with social anxiety. Anyone who's gender non conforming. And I not just including trans people in that. I'm including like CIS women who are strong and want a career, or CIS men who are nurturing and love children and like to raise children. Includes autistic and neurodiverse people. Non conforming artists. So artists who want to do wild and outlandish and challenge. Socially challenging and very emotionally powerful pieces rather than the gentle landscapes and biblical scenery that we're used to from Mormonism. Free spirits, intellectuals, progressives, single parents. I was one of those. So it's really hard to fit in the church if you're a single parent. And fans of blue jello just have my little. And I have a quote from Kent Ponder, who wrote on there's an Internet essay called Mormon. It might be a paper. I don't know the difference between a paper and an essay sometimes, but it's called Mormon Women Prozac and therapy from 2003. I think it's still online. And he says if a church's belief shoes are all narrow, even though they may vary in length, which women will think this works. Those with narrow feet, of course, they will benefit. Those with wide feet will be in pain and wondering why. When bishoprics and therapists have strong religious conviction that narrow shoe, that narrow shoes are God's only true shoes, they offer corn and bunion pads to pained women with wide feet.

John Dehlin [00:38:19] Powerful. For our listeners who don't know the. Don't get the reference, we have a lot of non Mormon listeners. Jello has historically been a Mormon cultural staple, and green Jello for some reason has been adopted within Utah historically as being the preferred flavor of Jell. Okay, so that's the joke of the blue Jello. And I'm just going to add, just really quickly, that what's ironic about this list is that this list talks about all the people on the margins, right? And ironically, Jesus, the founder of Christianity, you know, that was a very important thing to Jesus. You know, leave the 99 to go after and save the 1 sort of message that the 1 matters and that the group's interest should not railroad or harm the individual of the, you know, the needs or the desires of the individual. That was core to Jesus message. But ironically, any religion, not just Mormonism, but any Christian religion and any, any non Christian religion, once it becomes a corporation, a structure, an organization, it almost immediately becomes more concerned, as it probably should, with its own survival, with its own needs, with its own interests. And almost without fail, organizations end up stepping on and squelching the needs of the individuals. And I'm only bringing that up because it's particularly ironic or tragic within a Christian paradigm because that just without exception, violates one of the core tenets of, of Christianity or of Christ, who is the founder of the religion. So when the Mormon church is just like, oh, I guess there's going to be LGBTQ deaths and suicides, or I guess we'll lose intellectuals or feminists from the church because they're the great enemies of the church. Or, oh, we don't really care about, you know, neurodiverse or artists or free spirits, because they can't, oh, they're wearing tattoos or they've got multiple ear piercings or they're not dressing in white shirts. You know, anytime there's conformity and groupthink and preference of the group over individual. Which is one of your 31 points, right? Isn't it? Organization over individual or what is it?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:40:35] Doctrine over self?

John Dehlin [00:40:36] Doctrine over self. Yeah. Yeah. It's just. It's always ironic and tragic within a Christian paradigm.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:40:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:44] And.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:40:44] And Jesus said If you have done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me. And if you want a list of the least of these in Mormon society, I just put one up there. So.

John Dehlin [00:40:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're harming, you're. If you're harming these people and you're a Christian, then you're harming Jesus and God.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] There's no other way to look at it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:04] That's what he said.

John Dehlin [00:41:05] Yeah, that's a great slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:07] Okay, so here's a few quotes from the Mormon context from the Strength of Youth pamphlet in 2011. It said, what is the definition of a friend? Friends are people who make it easier to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm a little appalled at that quote because that's not what true friendship is. There are whole books and poems and stuff written about what true friendship is. But true friendship is not the person who's going to keep you always, always putting an organization over yourself.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] Yeah, it's also really limiting. A friend is someone that always agrees with me on everything. And it's not even agrees with me, agrees with a third party organization that is pretending to have your best interests at heart. But in reality the corporation has its own best interests at heart. So this is a very self serving quote for the organization to say, only surround yourself with people who support the organization. And that's also, you know, that's in many of the 31 flavors or techniques that you've highlighted.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:42:09] It is. And this is from a study done by Dr. Christine J. Dottie from UVU. And there's a paper called Cultural Considerations for Social Work with Mormon women diagnosed with depression. And this is a case study, a person named Tracy. And Tracy says, I feel like everything is judgmental. I have never seen people judge so harshly on clothing, hair, the things others are doing that that's what Utah is. I don't get it. What's wrong with me? What am I doing so wrong? For some reason people just judge me really harshly. I don't know why. I have just come to the conclusion that it's Utah and I hate it here. And you notice that Tracy. I think, I think Tracy's a woman. I think she, she's saying what's wrong with me? And that's what happens in these situations. We see everybody else doing the same thing and then they're looking at his side eye and we're like, what? What did I do? And we think, and again, as an autistic person, that's probably going to come out a lot Today we talk about social stuff. A person. I have empathy, I have compassion for people. I want to please people and. But I don't always take in all of the information and sort it out correctly in my mind. So since I was a child, I just know that people randomly don't like me. I say stuff sometimes that people don't get or something. And so I go through life feeling misunderstood. And until I got my autism diagnosis, I thought there was something like wrong wrong with me, that I didn't understand why people were treating me the way they were. I didn't stop to think, well, first of all, maybe I'm just a little different. Maybe it's not wrong, I'm just different. And maybe they're wrong for not taking the time to understand me better and what I actually meant by things. And that's taken a lot of work and that will take a lot of work for people because it is our instinctive response to turn that inward when really sometimes we ought to be turning it outward.

John Dehlin [00:44:01] Absolutely, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:03] And then from memoir from an ex Mormon, Brad L. Called Suddenly Strangers. Brad L. Morin says, while greatly concerned about the infectious influence of others lifestyles upon our children, we frequently seemed oblivious to the highly contagious nature of our own intolerance.

John Dehlin [00:44:21] Yeah, we can definitely be super intolerant.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:25] So what's the remedy?

John Dehlin [00:44:28] Yeah, I love it that you've got remedies in here.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:30] I wish I had more. I realized I only did it on like a few of them, so we'll

John Dehlin [00:44:34] take them where we can get them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:44:35] All right, so the remedy for this one is first of all become self aware. As self aware as you can. I recommend that. Anyway, it's a wonderful life skill. It's impossible to ever fully complete. And there are philosophers that talk about that. They're really interesting to think about. But learn as much about yourself and learn how to listen to your inner self as you can. I have a couple of questions on the list that might help with that. What do you love most about yourself? What would you change about yourself not from outside pressure, but from your own heart? And what are your values? And I have a couple of resources up there for exploring your values. We're used to from Mormonism, having our values dictated to us and this idea that there is one set of values that everyone must follow. And while I agree that we should have all have the value not to hurt each other, I think that there's a lot of variance in terms of what the other values that we have are. A value is the thing that you. That is important enough to you that you actually act on it. A value isn't something that you say, oh, I'm really into honesty, and then you go and turn around and lie a lot. I mean, sometimes you can break your values every once in a while, but if you're making the habit of breaking your value, it's not really a value. And so explore that space. Explore what you really spend your time on, what you really enjoy, what sparks joy in yourself. A couple of resources. There's a couple of cards, decks of cards, and there's a link in the slides if you want to take a screenshot or come back to it. That's a list of value cards. And the idea is you print them out and cut them up into pieces, and then you can grab them based on what you feel. So I feel I really like spontaneity and creativity and friendship. And you can lay those out. And here's the ones I don't feel like can kind of help you get an idea of who you are. And there's another one. My therapist use this deck with me. They're called the Mixed Emotions Oracle cards by Petra Martin and Chris Wiltsa. And those have art. It's the same idea. It's emotions or emotions are often values. So most of them can be exchanged for values. And they. But they have art on them, so there's a motion with them. My therapist had me just go through the deck and just on a spur of a moment, put the ones that I resonated with in a pile. And then we spread the pile out and I could get like a really good. And I had some surprises about things that I valued based on how I felt about them and the way I spent my time. So that's a good start to just learn who you are. And then you can take social feedback and you have something to compare it with. And make conscious decisions about the choices that you make in life.

John Dehlin [00:47:07] Also.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:47:08] Yeah, I recommend you gain confidence. You have a right to your own thoughts, preferences, and values. And learn how to set boundaries that is way outside the scope of this presentation, Even just the definition of what a boundary is. But there's all kinds of stuff written about it, and therapists are usually well versed on what a boundary is. It's important to set internal boundaries, which are the rules that you have for yourself and your own behavior. I will not, you know, do this or I will not do that. And then there's external boundaries, which is how you allow others to treat you. And this isn't Like I want you to buy me dinner every week. That's not a boundary, that's a preference and a request. A boundary is like don't yell in my presence. Presence, please don't yell in my presence or I will have to not hang out with you anymore. It's things that people do to you and it's drawing a line and saying, don't do that to me. Other than that, lots of other resources out there on how to set boundaries, but I highly recommend exploring that.

John Dehlin [00:48:08] I also just want to say that ironically, this is highly consistent with not just Mormonism, but with, with so many of the other predominant faith traditions. You know, whether it's, you know, ancient Greek saying, know thyself or even Jesus saying the kingdom of God is within you. That's the whole point of these spiritual practices is self awareness, self knowledge. And ironically, as soon as an organization or a church or a corporation gets built up, all of a sudden their main focus is to not have you self develop, but instead to figure out what the doctrine, the teachings, the practices as the preferences, the behaviors that benefit the organization and you're, you're constantly trying to deny and ignore and suppress your own self understanding and your own self interests. And which is abuse.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:49:00] It's abuse in this day and age. That's straight up abuse.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah. And that's why ironically, this is highly, highly compatible with Christianity in its pure sense. Yeah. All right, so that's, that's number one for today, that is social pressure on to number two, which is elitism. And I'll just have to say, obviously I've been given a grade on most of these. Mormonism is highly social and Mormonism gets an A plus on the use of social pressures to educate and to keep its members bound. And if you don't believe me, just try and speak up in a testimony meeting. Say something unapproved. Teach a lesson that's unapproved. Start a podcast that's unapproved. Start a YouTube channel or a TikTok channel that's unapproved. Do anything publicly that's unapproved. Or just try and leave the church and see what happens with your parents, with your siblings, with your, you know, social groups. We're just punished socially in every possible way. Yeah, on average there's going to be exceptions, but on average, pretty much, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:50:20] Because I already had non member friends and not a whole lot of friends in the church, so it was easy for me to walk away. But yeah, and I didn't live in Utah, so. So that's the only Reason I was an exception. And even then I've gotten. I've gotten tons of negative social feedback. Feedback. So, yeah, for doing so.

Elitism, Us-Versus-Them Thinking, and Persecution Complex

John Dehlin [00:50:35] All right, so elitism is the next tool or flavor or technique.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:50:41] It sure is. So a lot of these techniques cause a lot of negative emotions. Shame and guilt and doctrine over self. Kind of like after love bombing. Why would you stay in a group that's treating you like this? That's kind of what the whole theme of this whole group of presentations is, is why would you stay in? And so one of the carrots that they offer you, one of the good little upsides that they give you is elitism, which says that the group and its members are the very best. And it acknowledges, sure, everybody's equal, but we're the really best. We're actually the best. And I just mentioned that. So it. Elitism boosts you up after tearing you down. I think the military uses this as well, but it's contingent upon group approval. So you get this sense of euphoria and pride, like, I'm special, I'm a peculiar person, and I'm a member of God's chosen people. But only as long as you continue to toe the line. And everyone sees you toeing the line and approves of you. It builds a strong group cohesion. So everyone. It reinforces that social pressure. And it also reinforces us versus them, which is we're going to be talking about. I think it's the next one. It makes members feel like they're valued, but only through the group. And it supplants the self image with the group image. We've talked about how the group creates a pseudo personality, which is part you, part the group. And that's. Elitism is kind of part of the incentive to get you to replace your personality with the group's personality.

John Dehlin [00:52:12] And we'll talk about some of these. But what comes up for me immediately in a Mormon context, there's just the teaching of the chosen people. So just the fact some people. People don't think about this. But I've talked to Jews who even believe that this idea that the Jews were God's chosen people, that. That's fundamentally racist. But this idea of the pure blood of Israel, the talk of blood and inheritance and the chosen, that's us versus them. So it's baked into the Old Testament, which then carries through to the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, all throughout

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:52:49] the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:52:49] Mormon, what's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:52:50] It's all throughout the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] And then the Book of Mormon is all about the 12 tribes and the grafting and the olive branches and the

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:52:56] pure blood versus the Lamanites. And this time the Lamanites are the good guys now the Nephites. Oh no. How could the Nephites possibly fall into sin?

John Dehlin [00:53:05] Yeah, and there's Gentiles and the chosen. And then the Gentiles are going to help resuscitate the fallen Pure blood. It's just a total mess, but it's all us versus them. And you can't have religion without it. And we're just talking about 1% of it. And then, you know, modern day examples. I'm just thinking of patriarchal blessings. They make you feel special just being a member. This idea of Saturday's warrior, the chosen generation. Just the fact. Oh, what, What Mormon youth group wasn't told that they were part of the chosen generation, save for the last days to help usher in the millennium. And, and by the way, every teenage generation has been told that since the beginning of Mormonism. And it's all, it's all about this us, them, elitist kind of mindset and mentality.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:53:52] Yep, you got it. Yeah, covering the whole thing right there. Get through it fast then. Elitism is an extension of sacred science and sacred. Part of sacred science is saying that this is the one true system, this is the true, this is the truth. And so if the group is special, then so are the members. A couple of quotes from the cult literature, cult research literature. Yanya Lalich and Michael ligoni in Cults 101, a checklist of characteristics. You can find this online. One of the bullet points there is the group is elitist, claiming special exalted status for itself, its leadership and its leaders and members. I love they use the word exalted. There again, I don't think either of these two had really ever considered Mormonism before writing that famous checklist. And yet there's that word exalted. John D. Goldhammer in under the Influence said the individual members of a group so completely identify with a collective mission that they too experience tremendous ego inflation themselves through their association with the group as anointed persons, uniquely gifted and appointed as emissaries of a world saving cause, which of course all others must be converted to.

John Dehlin [00:55:03] Yeah, and I'm just thinking, just, just. I've already said about patriarchal blessing. There's the declaration of lineage. Why did, why did, why was that tradition even included? It's basically to say you are of. Even if you're adopted into to. You're adopted into a chosen lineage. It's all about privilege, elitism, us versus them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:55:24] Feeling better than everybody else.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:55:28] John D. Goldhammer also said a disruptive. A disruptive. Sorry. A destructive group directly erodes the individual self esteem and sense of worth, while at the same time paradoxically maintaining the illusion of elitism and superiority. Persons trapped in this dynamic derive their self worth and sense of identity from a group and their position within the group. So that that carrot and stick feeling that I'm worthless, I am worth everything back and forth is actually part of the design. And as an abuse survivor, I can say that that definitely happened to me as well. Within a personal relationship where one minute I'm at top of the world and next minute I'm Persona non grata and I don't even know what I did, but I sure as heck I'm scrambling to figure out what I did so I can get back to that, that exalted status because it feels so good to be in that experience. Exalted status.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] Yeah. This goes really hand in hand with the previous technique. And if you don't believe us, just think about if you're an investigator into the church or if you're a youth who's on track, how amazing you feel, how much social reinforcement is telling you you're awesome, telling you you're amazing, telling you you're chosen and a gift and a child of God. And just try diverging from the past path and you'll see how, how superficial. All that love bombing, and I'm using that term very loosely here, but, but just see how superficial that community, that love, that praise is. Because as soon as you're saying, well, this is what works for me, even if it diverges from the group, you're shamed, you're cut off, you're kicked out, you're excommunicated. And that just shows you that it's really not about you. When you're praised individually within Mormonism, it's because you're emulated. What the group wants you to be and do right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:18] Not for being yourself, not for your own creative, you know. Yeah, it's because you, because you're conforming. And I freely wanted to use Saturday's warriors lyrics in my book, but I never, I couldn't. I had to. Because they're copyrighted and copy lyrics and copyright, there's no fair use at all. You're not allowed to fair use with lyrics. But you know, who are these children coming down with glory trailing from their feet as they go? And that always just got me. I mean, I was a kid in the 80s. So that, that, that came out on.

John Dehlin [00:57:46] These are the true. The warriors, save for Saturday, together, last day of the world. These are they on Saturday, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:55] Yep, yep.

John Dehlin [00:57:56] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:57:57] So that. That was like the most. And I still. It gets me. I cry every time I watch that movie, even though I know it's full of crap.

John Dehlin [00:58:04] These are the strong, the warriors rising in their might. You know, who is it? It's the elite. Right, Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:10] Exactly. And, oh, there's so many hints. Same thing. So. And I think we get into. Maybe we don't in us versus them as well. So. So this is Janya Lallich from A Recovery from Cults. And she says she was in a. If I'm getting the right person. Right. She was in a political cult, the Democratic Workers Union or something like that in the 70s or 80s. And she said at the same time I was being treated with a lot of favor. The words of praise overshadowed my inner doubts and fears. And then later in her story, she says study group members had the sen. That they were being observed, watched, participation was encouraged, praised. All of this added to a growing sense of being special, of being part of an elite, of being chosen. And the thing is, is that's called spiritual surveillance. The. The feeling that she's reflecting there, the feeling that. That you are being watched. And I, to this day, I don't think every Mormon necessarily comes away with Mormonism, from Mormonism, with a feeling of being watched. But to this day, and it's not always. It's not necessarily a creepy feeling, sometimes it leads into the elitism. But there is this feeling, because I was told as a kid all the time that God is watching me. And God is recording down. The angels, are recording down my every action in the book of life. And to this day, that feeling of that I am being watched by someone is always there.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:59:32] And elitism is how they get that. Because you do you kind of feel special if you're not doing anything wrong. The idea someone's. Yeah, someone's watching me. That can kind of feel. Kind of feel. Make you feel special. Special.

John Dehlin [00:59:44] Yeah. And by the way, dress code is a really important part of this elitism. You start feeling like, well, short hair on men is better. Long hair on women is better. White shirt on men is better. Not showing your shoulders for women is better. And that's true about all the behavioral things, the cultural markers. Not drinking alcohol makes you better. Better. Not doing drugs makes you better. Not having premarital sex, not. Not partnering with a partner and moving in and living With a boyfriend or girlfriend or a partner with. Before marriage. All these things, all these behavioral unique identifying markers in a high demand organization reinforce this sense of elitism.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:34] Yeah, that's a great observation. It does. And that then becomes an incentive for doing those conforming behaviors.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:42] So within the church, how many conference talks start with flattery? I tend to notice that they. Most of them tend to. And depending on the group that they're talking to, they're going to flatter the specific demographic that they're speaking to. So the women or the men or the youth or whatever. And the thing is, so we're getting into not just like how Mormons feel elite compared to outsiders, but also how we're made to feel elite compared to other people within our group. Praise costs nothing and it garners trust. When someone flatters you, you kind of. There's a natural tendency to want to trust them because we want more of that. And yeah, like I said, men, women, and youth singled out separately for praise. So each person is put on a pedestal. And I wrote an essay for a feminist blog a few years back about how women are put on pedestals in these cultures because they can't see the chain around their feet. They're being praised all the time and told that they're free and told that they're appreciated and loved. Meanwhile, they don't actually have as much power as the men in the organization. And I think, just speaking more widely, every sub demographic within Mormonism is separately praised so that each one cannot see the chain around their feet. Supremacist thinking of one type leads to supremacist thinking in other types. So. So if we're the chosen of God, well, then maybe white people are the chosen of God, and if we're the chosen priesthood leaders, and maybe we're chosen because there's, you know, we don't think it consciously, but that's clearly because men are superior over women. And they, they literally are in that situation. They are being put in a position of active power over women. And so the scriptures make it clear what happens to groups of people who displease God, and it often has to do with skin color. So these, these sort of elitist, hierarchical thinking leads to elitist hierarchical thinking in other ways that comes out in ways that aren't particularly religious. So the Mormon Church isn't getting up there, aside from the racist, problematic things that they do say and that are in their scriptures. They're not actually standing up there saying the white race is the chosen race and we need to Protect our heritage and our culture, and we're going to do so at the expense of everyone else. They don't actually say that, but those are the conclusions that a lot of members are led to, especially when. And the whole Book of Mormon is based around people getting cursed for the curse based on the color of their skin or cursed to have darker skin based on their righteousness. Yeah. Danger.

John Dehlin [01:03:08] Yeah. And I, you know, this is this slide in particular, I almost gasped when I saw this image of a woman up on a pedestal with a ball and chain connected to her ankle. Any. You know, you could almost predict it anytime time. A patriarchy is complimenting someone very profusely. What they're really doing is sort of like lifting them up superficially so that they can continue to maintain unhealthy, unbalanced power over them. So whether it's the youth or women or minorities, you can just tell a patriarchy, because of the extra showering praise, is meant to sit. We know we have so much power and influence over you, and it's pretty obvious. And so we're gonna say, man, the men just wouldn't, you know, behind every good man is an even greater woman, you know, or this church would fall apart without the women or the youth are the most important thing. It's really just a masquerade for the patriarchy to stay in control. I think it is.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:04:16] And ultimately, you know, I mean, we throw around the word power a lot, ultimately. What does power mean? It. The ability to make decisions. And empowerment is the ability to make decisions for yourself. And power, raw power, is the ability to make decisions for other people. And ultimately, that's what it comes down to in the church. Men get to make decisions for everyone else, like adult men get to make decisions for everyone else. And therefore, no matter what you say about everyone else, particularly adult white men, no matter what you say about everyone else, they still have the power to make decisions for everyone else. Everyone else. That's what it comes down to.

John Dehlin [01:04:52] Absolutely. All right, so we do have some examples. These are great examples.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:05:00] Yeah, have some examples. So for women, David O. McKay in this is from the teachings of presidents of the church, he. He said about women, the noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professionals. She who can paint a masterpiece or can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind, deserves the highest honor that man can give and the choicest blessings of God. So I think I left something out there, but Basically they're saying, you know, you can accomplish everything you want, but we're going to pat you on the head because you're being a mother instead of all that stuff. And personally I think that those are all kind of equal. I think that raising children is certainly an honorable thing if that's what you choose and that's what, what sparks joy for you and that is what leads to your self actualization. For a lot of people that, that's true. A lot of men that's true of as well. And likewise for worldly accomplishments also. Kudos to you. Kudos to anyone who follows their heart and expands their talents that they have, regardless of what they do.

John Dehlin [01:06:03] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:06:04] So to the men. William R. Bradford in General Conference in 1979, said, My dear brethren, this is a thrilling action. At no time has there been a gathering such as this of the elect sons of God. Were it not for the power of the spirit, I could not bear up the weight of this moment.

John Dehlin [01:06:20] It's basically saying, we're all so amazing men, aren't we all so amazing I can barely keep it together. We're so amazing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:06:27] We have the best mutual appreciation society. And then to the Youth, 1974. And I picked some old quotes to show that this is nothing new. They've been doing, saying the same thing this whole time. So 1974, as we look into their happy, clean and appealing countenances and felt their enlightened presence. They radiated great moral strength and beauty. They reflected an inner light. These youth and young adults are part of an almost world, an almost worldwide new aristocracy as the elect of God who know that the source of all light is divine. And I thought that that talk was interesting. I forget the name of the talk, but it's something like, like toward a new aristocracy or something like that. It's basically advocating for monarchy in modern times, religious monarchy, but it's still monarchy nonetheless. There's no, there's no even pretense to a democratic or egalitarian society here.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] Yeah. And it's, it's tough because I mean I. I have children and I have a spouse and I want to pay them compliments. I want to tell them I think they're amazing. When I see really cool things, I want, want to say, wow, I'm so impressed. So I guess, I guess what, what do we, what do we make of that are.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:07:40] Well, again, all of these things are fine on their own and they're fine if they lead people to personal fulfillment and everyone's respecting their own boundaries and empowering Themselves and others. Like, I want other people to have their own choices. I don't want, if I ever get power, I don't want to use it. And I do have a little bit of power. I don't want to use it to dictate what I want for everyone else. What I want for everyone else is for them to dictate their own path. And so we can, we can lift people up. We can praise people for their accomplishments or their inner strength or whatever we want. But what are we doing that for? Are we doing that so they feel better about themselves so they can make their own choices, or are we doing that so we can exploit it them? That's really what it comes down to.

John Dehlin [01:08:26] Yeah. Just make sure you're not part of a, of a unhealthy structure or system where those compliments are being used to coerce or manipulate or wield undue influence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:36] Right. Are you using it to mask the fact that you are exploiting them or are you using it to. To give them their own power?

John Dehlin [01:08:43] Yeah, I love that. Thank you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:08:47] So the thing about elitism is that, that certain individuals are deemed more elite. You can't have everybody be equally elite. It automatically leads towards people starting to compare each other to each other. The church is dependent upon a strict hierarchy with many at the top, many at the bottom, and very few at the top. That it just has to work that way. There are positions of status within the church. So even without the demographics, this is just callings. So you have auxiliary presidents, relief society president, quorum, elders quorum president, bishopric, stake presidency. And then you start moving up the chain and now you have general authorities and the Q15. And it has to work that way. Egalitarian values aren't compatible with Mormonism. Mormonism would fall apart if everyone in the church had equal or similar, close to equal power. If we had the ability to bypass our bishop when we have a problem with the bishop and go up the chain and say, hey, this bishop's a problem, like he's a sexual abuser or he's ecclesiastical abuser, a spiritual abuser, and he's hurting people. There's no egalitarian mechanism there and that serves the Church's purpose. The church is more of a feudal monarchy than it is a democracy. But they have to pay lip service to society's values because otherwise people would go implement. Most people value equality or they think they value equality when they dig. Again, values are what you act on. And so. But at the very least, we all think we value equality, whether we act on it or not, but the church has to pretend they value equality, but really, they're instilling all of these top. Everyone has to be top tier, but not everyone can be top tier. Everyone wants to be top tier and they're promised to be top tier. But do the math.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] And it reminds me of the Animal Farm quote. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Others, you know, you know, they're also. I can see other risks to this. Well, first of all, Mormonism, anyone who's objective, even the most orthodox Mormons I know will admit that sort of general authority worship is a real problem. Even the church now is having a backtrack on that, because with the Internet, it's just so easy to show, you know, evil, awful, hateful, bigoted statements made by previous channel authorities or statements that are contradictory between previous general authorities and current general authorities. And then there's just all the. When a general authority makes a mistake, the ripple effect is massive. And so for so, so many reasons, there are all the gaffes that are being made these days by Elder Bednar saying that, you know, there are no gay people in the Mormon Church and just all the different gaffes and problems that, you know, number one elite and his wife in the church, we stand up. You know, Elder Bednar gets messed up when the members of the church don't stand up. When an apostle enters the room, you go to general conference and everybody is drooling and fawning over the general authorities and they even need and want that you stand up and you sing we thank thee, O God, for a prophet, or Hail to the Prophet, the hymn about Joseph Smith, you know, and we praise our prophets and leaders. And it's become a real problem in the church. But it's obvious. But there are some, many problems with that, including the fact that if you believe all Mormons are awesome. Well, what about those that are sexual abusers? You're maybe not on guard. If you believe all Mormon bishops are inspired and have the gift of discernment. What about those that are abusive or neglectful? You know, you do business dealings with Mormons because they're most honest. What about the Mormons that cheat you and rip you off? Like, there's so many reasons why elitism is harmful, harmful to the membership and to the group, and yet it continues.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:12:44] I worked for a company in Seattle that got bought by a Salt Lake City company that was run by clearly Mormons. And yeah, the worst company I have ever worked for and absolutely dishonest and fired everyone for no reason. And it was just. Yeah, but we did, we trusted. As a Mormon. I wasn't Mormon at the time in this particular instance, but as a Mormon, I did work for Mormons and I trusted them. And, and yeah, it comes, it just comes with it like it's a system that is so interlocked and everything is connected to everything else. And it, it does suppress critical thinking. It suppresses the ability to say, you know, that's mostly great, but here's the little problems that I have with it. And so then those little problems can grow and become bigger and bigger and bigger because there's no transparency on them. There's no. It reminds me of the scripture that says every sin will be shouted from the rooftops. And I think of social media when I see that, and I think of how, how social media is exposing. Not necessarily, you know, the little guy for being gay. Oh no. But, but the, the big powerful people for their corruption and, and the bad things that they're doing.

John Dehlin [01:13:53] So absolutely. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:13:56] One more slide on this topic.

John Dehlin [01:13:59] Next slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:14:00] Just to drive home the point that specialness in this such a system is conditioned upon, on perfect compliance, William R. Bradford from conference in 2005 said, your status as the governing ones has been and remains conditional upon compliance with the terms set forth by the Father and his Son Jesus Christ in our personal premortal life. Nothing about this is casual. It is serious business. It is so serious that God's affairs on earth and the salvation of all mankind rests upon it. And I have the, the mid-2000s Internet meme that the cat serious business. And basically what it does is the need for perfect compliance gives them excuse to give everyone their promise of why not everyone gets their promise. Celestial cookie. So, you know, we're going to promise salvation, we're going to promise all these great rewards, even happiness on earth and prosperity on earth. And not everybody is getting that. And so we're going to condition and you know, it is so serious that God's affairs on earth and salvation of all mankind rest upon you, you special person right there. You gotta act absolutely perfectly or else the whole thing crumbles and it'll be your fault.

John Dehlin [01:15:08] And for me, one of the most dramatic examples of this are the missionaries that I've interviewed on Mormon stories that were told that if you masturbate as a missionary, you won't have the spirit, so you won't be able to convert and thus so many people won't get eternal salvation and will be effectively damned to Mormon hell for, for your wickedness. Of not being able to masturbate, which led at least one missionary to want to cut off his own genitals because he felt like he, his wickedness was, was keeping people out of heaven and keeping people from being saved. It's that, that elitism, that amplified language can really wreak havoc on, on participants mental health.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:54] It's a double edged sword. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] All right, so that's elitism. So we're, we're two down. That's good. We're making good progress.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:16:06] What do you think the grade is on Mormonism?

John Dehlin [01:16:09] Oh, I mean we are the, I mean Mormonism is dripping with elitism, pure blood, patriarchal blessings, chosen people, gentile and chosen Saturday's warrior. It's just all there. A plus, unfortunately.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:16:26] All right, yeah. So that leads us right into us versus them thinking. So when you have elitism and black and white thinking and they get together and they have a baby, then that is us versus them thinking. So basically us versus them thinking is black and white thinking that is applied to people which makes it, you know, if we're talking intellectually about black, black and white thinking, okay, that's some abstract intellectual thing. But this is about people and that totally changes, in my opinion, the morality of what they're doing. So what they do in any, in any totalist group is they create an enemy or multiple enemies. Generally speaking, it is the people inside the group are the good guys and everybody else are the bad guys. But that is a flexible idea because sometimes you need people outside the group to be your allies. And so, so there's some doublespeak there and can kind of go back and forth depending on the needs of the moment. That allows the church to deflect blame, enforce elitism, enforce isolation, which is malou control that we talked about, polarize people's thinking, halt careful consideration of outside ideas, increase trust for insiders, which you talked about people wanting to use Mormon businesses because they trust them while lowering trust in outsiders. There's a, there's a cost to that and it establishes a persecution complex which we'll talk about fairly extensively.

John Dehlin [01:17:49] Yeah. And also it can be used as a, as a proof that the church or the organization is true. Because so geniusly as Joseph Smith baked into the Book of Mormon and to the Doctrine and Covenants that, that God's elite, God's chosen, will be persecuted. Then when the persecution happens, happens. Oh well, it's just a fulfillment of prophecy. It really was a genius tenant to bake into the foundation of an organization because if you do awesome things, you're praised as an organization. And if there's any adversity, well, look at that. Satan comes to get us. And you know, Satan always persecutes the righteous. And this is a fulfillment of prophecy. It really is a win win for the organization. And I just have to, to say for me, and we'll talk about this, the biggest evidence of this in Mormonism was that you grow up with all the adversity. You're like, why did the Mormons go from New York to Kirtland to Missouri to Nauvoo to Salt Lake? And why was Joseph Smith getting tarred and feathered? And why was Joseph Smith being persecuted and thrown in jail? Well, it certainly could have been because Joseph was doing illegal things. It certainly could have been because he was violating the US Constitution in the freedom of speech. It couldn't be because he was propositioning and sleeping with other men's wives. And it couldn't be because the church was super annoying to the people of Missouri or Illinois or that they were threatening people's safety or disrupting the social and the political status of the people around them. It must have been that Satan was persecuting them. And it was just such a, such a stark thing in my mind to realize that all the persecution was of Joseph Smith and all the persecution of the early saints, if you read the history, was because of bad behavior. But as a Mormon, you can't ever believe that Mormons or Joseph Smith had bad behavior. And so it's all gotta just flow to the bottom line of the church is true. And so we're gonna get persecuted and thus whitewashed. Mormon history.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:52] Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk a bit more about persecution coming up. I think the main thing there is that persecution can lead to cognitive dissonance the same. It's a form of social proof. It is a form of everyone saying, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. And so the church has to have something that says that turns that you're wrong into you're actually right. And it's kind of, it is kind of brilliant. And that's why I do talk so much about cognitive dissonance, because I think all of these techniques can be explained in terms of how they are managing cognitive dissonance and consonants in favor of the group. And that's one, one such one so important. So we have a couple quotes here from cult researchers Michael Lingone, who is, I think he's still president of the International Cultic Studies association in recovery from cults which he edited. He said people outside the group are viewed as spiritually, psychologically, politically or socially inferior or as impediments to the members development. Again, he's not talking about Mormonism here, so if you see any comparisons, that is a natural conclusion to come to. He wasn't picking on, he wasn't persecuting Mormonism in particular at all. Margaret Thaler Singer from Cults in Our Midst said members internalize the group's value system and its sense of moral pretentiousness, intellectual superiority and condescension toward the outside world. In the cult, members get points for showing moral disdain for non members and for members who faltered or left group.

John Dehlin [01:21:21] And I'm reminded here of just every Mormon fast and testimony meeting I've ever attended where it's like, I just don't know how people outside the church can raise healthy kids. Or I met someone whose loved one died and I felt so sad for them that they didn't have the gospel, because if only they had the gospel then they would have blah, blah, blah. And even when it's not explicit, there's this condescending like, too bad for all the other people in the world that don't have the amazing things that we have, which actually ends up being counterproductive for the church because, you know, as Mark Twain once said, travel is fatal to prejudice. You know, once you start going out in the world and seeing amazing Sikhs, amazing Muslims, amazing Jews, amazing Christians, amazing, you know, atheists and agnostics, you're just like, wait a minute, I thought we had, wait, I thought we had a monopoly on goodness and truth. And it turns out, why am I meeting all these people that are actually more Christian than me? Why do I know an atheist at work that's more kind than me? And it actually becomes a common crack in people's testimony once they actually get exposure to the real world.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:33] It does. And social media has been big on that. And in fact, the next slide I'm gonna talk about dehumanization, which is how all of this comes together. And I'll add some stuff to this slide based on what you just said. So first of all, we tend to have naturally have impact empathy for other beings that particularly beings that we relate to in some way. So usually other human beings, but some people expand that out to all creatures and it's a survival mechanism for us because, you know, our ancient ancestors who were apes were facing the world and there were all kinds of different survival mechanisms they could take on. They could be the strongest or the fastest the biggest fangs or the most fur or the, you know, the most camouflage, those are all strategies that other species have used to survive. But the human species, the strategy was to empathize with people that you thought were in your tribe, within your close knit group, within your family group and your larger, larger family group outside of that, your clan, and empathize with them and just do or die for them. And the individual losing their life in that situation, the individual that goes out and fights the tiger and loses, but saves the rest of the team that kept that trait continuing on. That's how evolutionary evolution works. So the one person who sacrificed their lives to save the group, their genetic material being close knit to that group, was also in the group. And so the rest of the group went on and survived. So we're naturally wired to empathize with other beings. But groups that want power or leaders who want power have to circumvent that. And you see this all throughout society and it's called othering or dehumanizing. Humanizing. If you can make someone or a group of people seem like they are not human, objectification is another word. If you can objectify them and make them seem like they're not human, then that cuts off, it short circuits the empathy paths that we have for people. It just stops. And so they create an us versus them. And we can, we see it along race lines, immigrants, if we can call them animals, criminals, beasts, diseased. We want to just get away from that. It makes us like as a survival technique, want to get away from that person or to hurt them, to end them so that they're no longer a threat to us. And so manipulators at all levels of society have gotten us all to fight amongst each other. Because you're not human. And you're not human. No, you're not human. And we go back and forth to get us to hurt each other. Now you mentioned that when you, Mark Twain said the thing about travel, we have social media today which is like the ability to travel. And it's amazing because we, while while manipulators are using that to divide people. A lot of us like to connect to other people online and we meet other people and we learn about their lives and we can feel towards them. So there was a study, I don't cite it here because I wasn't planning on talking about it might make us go a little longer. They did a study with narratives. So they found that people who are othered that we, we don't know them very well. And manipulators have gotten us to dislike them or hate them. So people, often people from other cultures, they found that when you read a fictional narrative with a person from that background as the main character, that you empathize with them after reading the narrative. The same way that you would empathize with them is if you were from their group. So in this can, even with a broken foot, you know, like I've never broken my foot, so I don't know what I have to do when, when I imagine when I see someone who's broken their foot and I want to up end empathize with them, I have to use a different part of my brain. I have to use cognitive empathy. So I have to imagine, I have to think about times I broke my finger. It must be kind of like that, only worse. But I'm not like actually feeling it. But you have affective empathy for things that you've actually been through. Well, they found that when you read a narrative about a person who'd been through that, that you had affect, you actually gained affective empathy where you no longer had to imagine it. It was now as if you had experienced the thing yourself. And so this is why, why representation in media is so important of having people on the screen who look different from us, because then we get that wiring to be able to empathize with them in their lives. Even if it's fiction. Whether it's fiction or not, it just has to be a narrative.

John Dehlin [01:26:51] Yeah, yeah. And, and for me this is why it's so important that the, the churches use terms like apostate or infidel. It's, it's why. Sinner. What's that? Sinner.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:05] Wicked.

John Dehlin [01:27:05] Wicked. It's also why the church disfellowships and excommunicates people. Because it's crucial to, to have a label. It's why they have member and non member. Right. It's, it's a really essential way to basically say to put someone in a bucket. You basically create this category or bucket that you can put people in. You can associate all sorts of negative labels with it. Weak, feeble, wanted to sin, never had a testimony to begin with. You know, sin, bad, dirty. What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:41] Misled by Satan.

John Dehlin [01:27:42] Misled by Satan. You, you know, John de Lynn, whatever it is, you can associate all these negative labels or terms with a bucket. And then immediately when they, you know, they go from being elite, beautiful, chosen. I'm so excited to be with you that I can't even contain myself. Oh, you stopped believing, you child of God. Let me throw you in this bucket. Otherize you. You're no longer an individual. You're a nameless, faceless part of this group that we've already pre demonized. And now you don't exist anymore. And one of the biggest testimonies of this is just try losing your faith. You could have been bishop or stake president in a ward for forever. You could have served all these people, helped raise their kids, shared the best and the worst of their lives with them. Try leaving the church and staying in your ward. All of a sudden, crickets. Nobody talks to you again. All those friendships dry up for the most part, and you realize it was all just very superficial. And that's because they've moved you from an individual who reinforced the collective needs of the organization into a category of the other, where they have to just, you know, pretend you don't exist anymore. And the last thing they want to do is ask you, oh, my gosh, why did you lose your faith? What happened? I trust you. I love you. I care about you. Let me learn all that I can about what's going on and how can I serve you? Because you're still a child of God and I still want to be there for you. And now my Christian impulse is to go after the One and to care and serve you and need you. That's not what happens. Instead, you're just bucketized. Othered. You're forgotten and you're marginalized.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:29:22] And that's because it would allow for empathy. Because then you would hear that narrative that the studies show will give you empathy for someone who has gone through something that you haven't. You will then have empathy for the person who left the church. And then with that empathy, you'll be able to listen to them and hear them and care for them, and you just might be persuaded yourself out of the church. Church.

John Dehlin [01:29:41] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:29:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:43] Really quickly, Neil. Neil writes, it's really hard not to feel angry through this. And Neil, anger is actually healthy emotions. So don't. Don't resist the anger. Process it. Lean into the anger. Write, write about it. Talk about it. Get a therapist, get a coach, get a friend. Process the anger and learn from, from, from what the anger is teaching you. And then channel it in healthy ways such that you never get fooled again, you never get abused again. And you can use whatever you've learned from this to pay it forward and help other people or to improve your life. There's a great episode on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast@mormonfaithcrisis.com about grieving and the importance of grief in a faith crisis and what we can learn from our emotions. I strongly recommend listeners check out that episode.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:30:40] Yeah, and we were taught in Mormonism that anger is bad. And I think sometimes when we act on anger, it can be bad. If we're acting impulsively, we can hurt people unnecessarily with anger. But emotions, we talked about this in a previous part. Emotions themselves are not moral. There's no moral, good or bad about an emotion. Emotion can be uncomfortable and it can be driving you to do something that you might regret late later. But when you have self. Self awareness and you're not just suppressing that feeling, when you can allow yourself to let that, it's uncomfortable. But there's meditation techniques where you, you let that feeling course through you and you sit with it and you blank out your mind and you just let whatever's going to come up, just let it. Don't punch anybody, don't hurt anybody, don't kick the cat or anything, but just like sit with it and breathe and let yourself feel it and observe where it's going through your body. And then observe. Observe what ideas might be coming up of what you might be able to do about that feeling that is healthy and constructive.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] Yeah, that's a way healthier approach. All right,

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:31:48] so we have a quote from Philip Zimbardo and Susan Anderson. I have a hard time including Zimbardo in anything anymore because he got caught out faking parts of the Stanford prison experiment. But I don't want. It's a good quote. And I don't want Susan and Anderson to suffer for Philip Zimbardo's misdiscretions or whatever.

John Dehlin [01:32:07] So privy to purity culture. Right, right. Do some good things and still do some other bad things and still have done good things.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:14] Right, exactly, exactly. So that's, that's how I resolve it. So he says, while we. They dichotomies cut us off from others and suggest we think of them in terms of dehumanizing labels such as animals, sinners, queers, rednecks, women's libbers, the teeming masses and so forth.

John Dehlin [01:32:30] Apostates. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:32] Yep, exactly. Nothing is so simple as the labels good and evil suggest. They foster utter vulnerability to whatever system is the good one naturally, the one that wants our support. So, yeah, and I try to avoid those labels. You know, if the label is accurate and descriptive, then I'll use the label, you know, and if. I'll use the label. But if the label is purely a slur and has no, you know, it is just there to make the person look bad. It's not descriptive of that. If it's descriptive and it makes them look bad, like racist because like the thing that they're doing is actually racist, then that's like a different thing. But when we thoughtlessly throw around. And I love that he uses a mix of ones, you know, he uses rednecks in there. Like, I generally avoid the term redneck. It's not constructive, it's not helpful to anyone. So

John Dehlin [01:33:24] yeah, and we're going to talk about this probably a little bit later too. If you think about, you know, totalitarian or fascist organizations, they always need an enemy. Because. Because having an enemy gives you something to fight against and be strong against. So for Hitler it was the Jews and for the Mormons it's apostates or non members, like there's. Or the LGBT people or whatever it is. You always have to have a enemy because that gives an organization something to fight against, something to strive for. It's a very powerful reinforcing mechanism in an organization. Unfortunately.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:04] It is.

John Dehlin [01:34:05] Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:06] So the next slide we have a quote from Stephen Hasson from releasing the Bonds about how us versus them can create phobias about leaving the organization. And so it says from the point of view of a mind control cult, there is never a legitimate reason to. To leave. The only people who leave are weak, selfish, or cannot control their need for sex, drugs or other addictive substances. In the mindset of the group, people who leave are incapable of sacrificing or transcending spiritually. Does that sound familiar?

John Dehlin [01:34:35] Yeah. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:38] I was terrified that if I made the wrong decisions, that I was. When I was considering divorcing my husband, I was 19 years old and I was considering divorcing. He was. He was a convert. I converted him and we got married outside the temple. And then I was pregnant and I had a baby and. And then he turned out to be an abusive asshole. Not the same abusive the other day. Not as much abusive as my other one. And I was like, man, but if I divorce him, then I'm probably going to leave the church and then I'm probably going to shack up with some guy and become promiscuous and just go, go around and like. And then I'm going to get hooked on drugs and then I'm going to be in an alley somewhere with a heroin needle sticking out of my mind. That's the cascading thing. And that's where Us vs Them played its role in there is because I had this picture painted of the wicked world out there. And there's no other reason for them to make any choice in their lives other than that they're following Satan and trying to do evil. And that's where I went was that that's what's going to happen to me. I ended up divorcing him. And some of those things came true, but not necessarily in that context. And I certainly never ended up in an alley with a heroin needle sticking out of my. Out of my arm, because that's just not how the world usually works.

John Dehlin [01:35:57] And I'm always reminded of the quote that I first heard from Thomas McConkey. Occult is any organization that won't let you leave with your dignity and intact. And you know, it's an unhealthy organization. If they're like, you can't go, horrible things will happen. Versus a healthy organization would say, hey, I'm glad we were able to help you for a while. Oh, you're taking off to go learn something else. Godspeed, good luck, and we'll, you know, if we can help you in any way, let us know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:36:24] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So this is a quote from Steve Sanchez, who wrote a memoir about his time in a combination New Age Christian cult called the slf. I think it stands for Spiritual Light foundation in California. And he said, Reverend Will painted all those who had left SLF as having fallen into chromatic ruin. Karmic mirin. When we heard this, part of us was vengefully delight delighted that we were doing so much better than those who had left. And the other part of us was full of dread and determined to never set. Never suffer such an unthinkable fate. So that sounds familiar to me too. I related to his memoir quite a bit and some quotes from the church itself to see if the church really promotes this or if this is just some little cultural thing that the members have imagined up all on their own. James J. Hamila from conference in 2008, in a conference talk entitled Winning the War Against Evil, he says, we are entering the final stages of a great war. This war commenced from before the foundations of the world and has been pursued with awful consequence throughout the world's history. I speak of the war between the followers of Christ and all those who deny him as their God. So that seems pretty incontrovertible that the church is stirring this stuff up. This is one example of many. And then Delbert L. Stapley from the incident in 1975, so they've been doing this for a while, said all good Things come from God. All evil comes from Satan. And yeah, you know, when I, when I went looking for these quotes when I was writing my book and so I read the stuff from the literature, the cult research literature, and then I was like, well, I know Mormonism does this stuff. So I'm going to go onto the website lds.org and I'm going to search these conference talks. I had to throw a dart and I would get the examples that I needed. Like, I'm not a good dart player either. It just, I was the first result, the second result, the fifth, the tenth result. They were all absolute perfect, perfect quotes to display to demonstrate these techniques.

John Dehlin [01:38:27] So, yeah, and I also just want to say we should all be hesitant whenever war rhetoric is being used in any circumstance. I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth, and there's this idea that whatever you fight, you strengthen. And if you just want to look at it, the war on drugs, how successful has it been? Have we stamped out marijuana and cocaine and meth and heroin, or is it, you know, or did we only just increase and and strengthen methods of producing illegal drugs? The war on crime. Have we eradicated crime from our society? Or are our prisons more. Do we have more prisons and are they more populated than ever? But just in and of itself, war is evil. War is literally, I think, the worst thing on the planet. I can't think of anything worse than war. Men, women, children, tortured, killed, mass amounts of people, poisoned and killed, dismembered, disfigured. Why would we ever want to invoke war metaphors ever? And here we have Jesus, the Prince of Peace, being used as like the chief warrior. And the Book of Mormon is just rife with war metaphors and war examples. And I just think we all need to be really, really have second thoughts or have suspicious dispositions when war rhetoric is being used.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:57] Definitely. And I have a whole, I think about half of the US versus Them chapter. I think it's the us versus Them chapter in my book is actually citing all the war references and talking about war references and I mean, just the hymns alone. And I did find a number of hymns that were out of copyright, so I was able to quote them. Yeah, we are all enlisted till the conflict is over.

John Dehlin [01:40:18] We are all enlisted till the conflict is. Or soldiers in the army. There's a bright ground in store, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:25] Yeah. And what do soldiers do? They follow orders without flinching. That's what they do. And that's what we're supposed to be as Good Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:40:32] Yeah. And then that's all wrapped in the us versus them kind of rhetoric.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:36] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:40:37] It comes hand in hand. Right. With us versus them rhetoric.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:40] Yeah. And we're, but we're fighting other human beings who have a right to be who they are. I mean, I believe in fighting actual evil. I believe in fighting those who want to take power to make decisions on behalf of other people. You know, I believe in fighting people who oppress and hurt and cause harm and all of that. I believe in fighting them. But that's different than just us in our group versus absolutely everybody else. Everyone else is evil. Without even listening to them or hearing them out or seeing what they're all about, you just, you just hate them automatically. That's, that's what this is about. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:20] So, yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:41:23] Yeah. So. So one thing is the greatest threat to a totalist group is its former members. Because former members were trusted at one point. They have insider knowledge. They speak the language, they know the doctrines inside. Now they know when the group is contradicting their doctrines through their actions. And so they can, they are the best ones to put point to the problems within the group. Now a healthy group would take that advice and take that input and they would work on those problems and try to solve them. But we're not talking about healthy groups here. We're talking about totalist groups. And so these people who are former members would, who would otherwise be trusted because of their connections and their expertise. The way you trust a Ford owner who, if you want, if you're looking to buy a car and you want to know how good a Ford was, you might go talk to someone who owns a Ford and talk to them about their experience with car. A car. Well, they want to stop that. They want to put a stop to any of that. So. And also it creates the question, if the group is so great, why would anyone leave? It contradicts the social proof of the group. And so that any totalist group has to make former members the worst enemy of them all.

John Dehlin [01:42:31] Yeah. And if you, and, and I, I, I actually did a tick tock about this because somebody's like, well, don't listen to John Dehlin on TikTok because he's a, a bitter, angry ex Mormon. And I'm like, I, you know, I just have to say that I think ex members of a religion are on average way better sources to consult than members of a high demand religion. And, and if, you know, go to, if you're Mormon, which would you rather trust about? Scientology? A scientologist or an ex Scientologist? If, if you're a Mormon, who would you rather trust about Jehovah's Witnesses? A current Jehovah's Witness or an ex Jehovah's Witness? As Witness, obviously. But if you just go to like consumer ideas, if somebody's trying to sell you their used car, would you trust them more or would you trust, let's just say, you know, the mechanics who have worked on that car who don't have a vested interest in selling you the car. You know, objective third parties, people who are willing to be critical and positive and who don't have a, a vested self interest in your conclusion are almost always, you know, how about, how about the, the producer of a product, would you rather trust their reviews on Amazon or a thousand people that have actually used the product and are giving you their realistic experience with the product? It's always going to be that. And I think this is obvious to everyone except people who aren't open minded, really.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:43:59] Right. Unless you have something to hide and then the manipulator is incentivized to, to muddy the waters and get you to only listen to them.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] Yeah. Yep. So stay away. Stay away from former members. And that's why again, the church excommunicates apostates, labels them, it's as a way to tag them as dangerous, tag them as unsafe so that members won't ever listen to them or they won't have any influence on them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:44:29] Yeah. And this next slide talks about that. And it's in the word excommunication. Don't listen, stop communicating. And Mormonism isn't the only high demand group that uses the terms disfellowshipping, excommunication and similar type language. And the point of that is to other the person. I was trying to remember if I see if I could read the little. Because there's a picture of all of them birds. Yeah. And they're picking on all the weird looking birds. Are picking on another weird looking bird. And it's says othering noun.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] The perception or representation of a person or group of people as fundamentally alien from another frequently more powerful group.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:14] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:45:16] Yeah. And othering through dis. Dis. Disfellowshipment or excommunication is important. And this can be political. This doesn't have to be religious. We do this politically. If someone doesn't agree with us politically, politically, sometimes we disfellowship or excommunicate them. Corporations can do this. These are all things that unhealthy organizations can do.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:35] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:45:36] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:36] And so now we get to persecution, which we were talking about at the beginning. So we, as we discussed, persecution can be a source of cognitive dissonance via social proof. And criticism is worse because there's all these people who have experience with the organization or our objective third parties who don't have a stake in the game and they're saying we're wrong, wrong and they're being civil about it. That's going to be a threat to our beliefs. So what happens is the totalist organization reforms these into a consonance causing cognition so they can turn it around. They are against us because we're right. If they weren't against us, then maybe we'd be wrong, but they're against us and so we're right. And if someone, if no one, is against us. So let's say the Joseph Smith times are over and Mormons are living in relatives peace with relative lack of persecution, and no one is against us. So then we have to imagine that everyone's against us even when they aren't. And that's where you get a persecution complex, the idea of being persecuted when you're not actually being persecuted. In the next slide I have definitions of some of these terms. So the Oxford Dictionary defines a persecution complex as an irrational and obsessive feeling or fear that one is the object of collective hostility or ill treatment on the part of others. But it defines persecution itself as hostility and ill treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs. And it defines criticism as the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes. And in Mormonism or any other high demand group, all of these concepts get conflated together and it's to stop critical thinking. It's so that you cannot tell the difference between a well reasoned, compassionately delivered expression of criticism versus hostility and ill treatment, especially because of religious beliefs. If you can't separate those things in your mind, then you won't be able to listen to rational critical thought.

John Dehlin [01:47:45] And it's really unfortunate for an organization because if an organization is open to criticism, to thoughtful criticism, it can impress, improve. And if, you know, if a church or organizations open a science, for example, they can learn, oh my gosh, we had it wrong about same sex attraction or LGBT people. We had it wrong about race, we had it wrong about women or whatever it is, you can learn and improve and hurt less people. But if you're defensive, if you've got to carry this mantle of being perfect and persecuted all the time, and that any criticism means that you're under attack and being assigned assaulted. You can't engage in the self correction that would improve your organization and or improve the health and the well being of many of the marginalized within your

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:30] reorganization and it transforms into abuse at that point. That's when it becomes abuse. So Steve, Steve Sanchez from the memoir Spiritual Perversion said to all of us SLF members being persecuted by the outside galvanized the feelings of being elite and righteous in all our endeavors. Again, SLF is or was a high demand group in California called the Spiritual Light foundation, kind of a combination Christian New Age group. So if he said that, maybe it can apply to us. So does the Church have a persecution complex?

John Dehlin [01:49:03] The Mormon Church, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:49:04] The Mormon Church, yes. The Church with a capital C. So Russell M. Nelson posted to Facebook In 2019, the church, when restored in its fullness, will prepare the world for the coming of the Lord. But as members we will be persecuted for our beliefs. We must fortify ourselves against the attacks of the adversary. And Stephen E. Snow in the New Era in 2013 said, the church has always been a minority and it seems like we've always had a target on our back. We will always face adversity and we might as well get used to that in the next slide. I have my answer to that now.

John Dehlin [01:49:40] I don't like minimizing oh really?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:49:43] Yes, it's the meme. It's the oh really meme. And I don't like minimizing anybody's pain. And so it's a difficult subject for me to talk about because there are experiences that all Mormons have had where people slightly looked down on us. They, they, we were, we were a little bit marginalized and a little bit on the fringes. But as I'll get into, if we're going to judge the truthfulness of an organization based on the level of persecution, they're rece. Mormon. Mormons in modern day have it pretty easy. So we'll get to that. But next I want to see like an example of kind of how, how Mormons are seen by the world. So this is from the Mormon Moment article, the famous NewsWeek article in 2011. And they said the result is an organization that resembles a sanctified multinational corporation, the General Electric of American religion with global ambitions and an estimated net worth of $30 billion.

John Dehlin [01:50:43] It's a little more hundreds of billions. It is now hundreds of billions.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:50:48] At least 130 that we know of.

John Dehlin [01:50:50] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's certainly 200 billion because that's just the investment arm. So it's 130 plus the core assets of the church. It's got to be 200 billion or more. Anyway, so.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:51:03] Yeah, so. And the article continues, the church runs and finances one of the largest private universities in the country, Brigham Young University. More than many other faiths, the Mormon Church prepares intelligently with the broader culture and with the wider world. And the next slide, I have some actual persecution. Again, I feel weird saying that because I don't want to do Oppression Olympics, but I do want to put into perspective what actual persecution is like in the modern times. So if persecution made a religion, religion true, then the Branch Davidians have more access to God in 1993 than Mormons did. And black trans lesbians are God's favorite prophets. So I have a picture of the fire burning at the Branch Davidian compound where a whole bunch of people died. Died. I'm still not sure if they know exactly who exactly started the fire, but we know that if the feds had not been there, barren down and making all sorts of incompetent decisions, that that fire would have never happened. It was just a mess. I don't take sides in that one, but it was a mess. And surely they are definitely far more persecuted in the modern times than Mormons are. And then other picture is from a vigil for a black trans man, Tony McDade, murdered in Tennessee on May 2027, 2020. One of the many black trans people whose lives have been stolen every year. So I just want to point out that, yeah, there's persecution involves people actually being murdered for who they are and called names on a regular basis and rejected from their families and kicked and fired from jobs and kicked out of their apartments. And that is what LGBT people go through. That is what. What a lot of people of color go through. That is what a lot of immigrants go through. I mean, we're talking about not even letting immigrants in our country. We're rounding them up and putting them in the cages. And Mormons want to cry. I feel. I feel so conflicted about this because they don't want. But, yeah, Mormons want to cry. Oh, no. We're so persecuted in 2020. And I'm sorry, but getting asked about your magic underwear isn't. And I think there are definitely some Mormons who fall into categories where they do do face, like, stronger persecution. They may face job discrimination or other things. So there are definitely Mormons who are exceptions to this. But for the most part, Mormonism is generally seen as a relatively good thing in our world. And Mormons have a lot of power. They tend to get jobs. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:29] I mean, I, I think you, you know, you can use the, the, the ultimate litmus test in the United States of your social status is, you know, do you have US Senators or presidential candidates and, or major, you know, major candidates for president that represent your group. And so, for example, you know, Protestant white men, probably not marginalized groups in the United States, even Catholic white men, once John F. Kennedy and Joseph Biden have been elected, Catholic white men have already arrived. Women, not so much. Gay and lesbian trans people, not so much. And again, to take the position that Mormons are persecuted as a foundation, we've got US Senators, we've got tons of members of the House of Representatives. And then recently he didn't win, but Mitt Romney was chosen as the primary candidate for president United States. Once you reach just now a person of color, you know, Barack Obama finally gets elected as president. But then if you count up all the presidents historically, just one, one person of color, you know, that's, that's the real sign. Mormons have so much power. And then I just also want to highlight the fact that nowadays, whenever the Mormon Church cries persecution, it's usually because they want to continue discriminating against a minority group like women, like trans people, like gay and lesbian people. And they, so they'll say, oh, you know, don't tell us, don't tell us. At byu, we have to allow gay and lesbian students to be students and to live fulfilling, healthy, meaningful lifestyles. And then they hide behind the shroud or the shield of discrimination. Oh, you're trying to violate our religious rights. You're trying to violate our freedom of religion and religious beliefs by forcing us to treat LGBTQ people humanely or women humanely or people of color humanely. And it's a really unfortunate tactic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:31] Yeah, there's also a lot of Fortune 500 executive representation. Mormons are in a lot of those as well, which is also very powerful positions.

John Dehlin [01:55:40] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:41] White Mormon men particularly. So Mormonism isn't the only high demand group to play the persecution card. It. During the, the Jim Jones Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978, he used actually the persecution card to convince those 900 people to drink the cyanide laced Kool Aid flavor aid and their children, he said. And I've listened to these tapes and their harrowing. You can find them online, he said. In those moments before the massacre, he said, don't be afraid to die. You'll see they'll torture some of our children here they'll torture our people people. They'll torture our seniors. We cannot have this. And that's from FBI tape number Q042 and it's available for listening@archive.org a massive trigger warning on that. And he, he has this general authority kind of voice that he speaks with, kind of a little bit of a drawl and he's got an elderly kind sounding voice and he delivers this message with that voice.

John Dehlin [01:56:42] Yeah. And I, I also just think the stakes are really high because when you combine a millennialistic organization that believes the end of times are near, believes that Jesus is going to come anytime, and then you add this us them persecution complex, you get what happened in the FLDS compounds, you get what happened with the Branch Davidians, you get what happened in Guyana and Jonestown. And honestly, Mormonism could have just as easily burnt up and imploded and exploded with Joseph Smith's behavior in its final know years. And if Joseph hadn't been killed and if Brigham Young hadn't have taken over and moved everybody far, far away, you could have had a mass, a war and or mass deaths and even look at Chad Dabel and Lori Vallow and a lot of these Mormon preppers. It is super dangerous to have the spiritualistic kind of, you know, worldview combined with an end of times theology combined with us them thinking it's just a matchbox for carnage.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:57:48] Yeah. And this is how they convince terrorists to fly planes into buildings and to blow themselves up. These are the exact same techniques that are used. Doctrine over self, which promotes the purposes of the group over your own individual safety. And they're very, very powerful mechanisms that can get people to do that.

John Dehlin [01:58:07] Yeah. Whole teaching of infidels. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:58:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:11] All right, so to conclude with us, them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:58:14] Yeah. So let's just keep in mind that we don't suddenly become evil or justified just because of the groups we join. We're all the same. And we can increase our ability to empathize and treat our fellow travelers with charity and kindness when we remember that. So that's my goal, is to pursue learning, empathy for other people and, and base my decisions on rationality and people's actual proven behavior rather than just what group they're in.

John Dehlin [01:58:42] Yeah. And I think humility is just a really important virtue. And I hope as progressive and post Mormons, we can have humility. We're not better than anyone because we're ex Mormons or progressive Mormons or liberal Mormons or post Mormons. Believers aren't all dumb, they're not all stupid. They're not all inferior, weak, they're brilliant and they're good. And there's good things about being in the church. There's good things about leaving the church. We're not better than anybody and we have to continually guard against these things because lest we as progressive or post Mormons become the monster we were running from.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:59:19] Exactly. And there'll be a time when you're first leaving the church when you're still reacting off those same levers that have been installed in you. You might be acting the opposite way way, you might be just completely rejecting it and going complete. But you're still, that's still a reaction to the lever. You're still under their control when you're doing that. And so you will often fall into those same patterns of thought. And that's normal. It's to be expected. You are who you are and you are acting like you're acting in the world. And so just go, go easy on yourself, you know, and learn this stuff. And there's so many resources available to help you learn how to become a better person and how to have be more of a free thinker and self actualize and help yourself and the people that are closest to you.

John Dehlin [02:00:09] Yeah. We have a great comment from a listener. Claudia writes, I listened to Luna's book. I would now like to buy a hard copy because so much of it is in lists and lists don't always translate well orally. And that's true. And then Claudia writes, as the reader read quotes from general authorities, I found my anxiety rising and realized that just hearing that information was triggering the desired response. This is a brilliant work of synthesis. And that's right, Claudia, please go buy this book in any or all of its forms. Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden. Thank you Claudia for that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:49] I'm glad that's helpful, Claudia. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:51] All right, so we're on to the next point. Oh, by the way, us, them, what grade does the Mormon Church get? This isn't me being super biased, trying to, trying to paint the church in negative ways. I really am trying to look objectively here, but how can anybody claim that the Mormon Church doesn't get an A plus in us them mentality. We, we, we win the, you know, along with many other high demand religions. Religions, you know, we stand toe to toe with them in terms of us them. We just do.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:01:23] Yeah. Yeah.

Dispensing of Existence, Double Binds, and Scarcity of Salvation

John Dehlin [02:01:25] All right, so the next one is dispensing of existence. What is that, Luna Lindsey Corby.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:01:32] That is a really complicated way to say death threat. That is that is the science, scientists that came before me, not me, came up with that term. And it can be an eternal death threat. In, in religious groups it tends to be an eternal death threat. You will die if you don't do. I say. Now death can be literal, which it sometimes is, or it can be figurative, which our brains will register similarly as it does to a physical death. Death of self is basically our brain can't distinguish between physical death and the death of the self or the identity. And so we fear them both equally. So it can include spiritual death or infinite punishment. It can include loss of identity or the self. It can include loss of purpose or core moral center or loss of community. And it serves to induce phobias, which is another technique, another mind control technique. It can suppress doubts and the self and it can instill demand for purity as it threatens a dire consequence for failure to match up with the expectations of the group.

John Dehlin [02:02:40] And obviously for me the first thing that comes to mind is the, is the Christian teaching of hell that if you don't do what Jesus says or do what the church says, you're going to burn in hell forever. Of course, Mormonism has its own version of that which is the multiple levels of heaven. I'm sure you're going to talk about all this in a second. And then there's just this idea of spiritually sick or spiritually dead. Oh, your countenance is darkened. It's just all this fear based language and of course the, the doctrine of eternal families which Mormonism tries to sell as oh, how beautiful, you get to be with your family forever. But what that does is it creates the scarcity such that you've got this constant fear that you, you won't be with your spouse or your children or your loved ones in the hereafter. It's all different versions of this idea of dispensing of existence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:03:31] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:03:31] Outer darkness, you know, even outer darkness.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:03:34] Yep. And what is outer darkness? But you're, you're existing and nothing is happening forever and ever and ever. Never, Never. That's different than the atheist idea of you just go to sleep and never wake up. There's, there's no awareness there to experience anything that's different than being aware and awake through nothing.

John Dehlin [02:03:53] Eternal torment, eternal punishment.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:03:56] Yes. And what kind of a God does that anyway? Anyway, that's a whole other. So here's some quotes from the literature. Stephen Hassan from releasing the bonds said dispensing of existence is the belief that people in the group have the right to exist and all ex members and critics or dissidents do not. And Robert J. Lifton from Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism said the totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized and those who possess no such right. One underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory. The conviction that there is just one path to true existence, existence just one valid mode of being and that all others are perforce invalid and false. So it's really about who has the right to exist. And the organization is saying we're the ones that get to decide it or dictate who is going to exist and who isn't.

John Dehlin [02:04:51] And it's just so obvious that this exists not just in Mormonism, but in Christianity brought more broadly and probably other faith traditions. Actually, actually not as much in other faith traditions. But how many people don't leave the church because it's like well what happens when I die? I want to be with my loved ones in the hereafter. I don't want to go to hell. I don't, you know, and that fear is a very important, powerful binding force to people's continued observance of a faith tradition.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:17] Yeah. And other, I mean again this can other religions that are not Christian based without the patriarchal authoritarian sort of chain have found ways within their own cultural, you know, theology to have their own version of dispensing of existence. And again for totalist groups that's what they can do so they can come up. Buddhism from my study of it kind of resists this just because of the core theologies of the main core of Buddhism. However, there are Buddhist high demand groups who have found a way, way to, to create a form of dispensing of existence even within the Buddha. The more free, in my opinion, more free flowing and self actualization type of beliefs of Buddhism that can still be turned around. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:03] And Islam definitely has you know, a torture punishment in the afterlife.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:06:09] Right. And it's a patriarchal authoritarian. There are some groups of Islam that aren't but, but the ones we generally think of, of are patriarchal orthodox orthodox. So dispensing of existence. So the due to the nature of the cult pseudo personality which we've talked about again where they have, they promote the doctrine over the self and use social pressure and other cues to encourage us to sort of create a Persona that is different than we would if we were following our hearts. So that is what I mean by cult pseudo Persona personality. Because that pseudo personality is so based on, on good favor within the group. If you leave the group that is A death of your identity, your identity is going to die. When we left Mormonism, a vast portion of our identity had to die. We had to go through that, that, that, that experience. So. And then once you're shunned from a totalist group, some will wonder if life is even worth continuing. And that is a really rickety time when you're going through a faithful experience crisis where, where that yourself is threatened and your connection to physical life, your psychological connection to that starts to get really wobbly and it's a kind of a dangerous time.

John Dehlin [02:07:26] Absolutely. Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:07:30] So let's look at some.

John Dehlin [02:07:31] This is a really cool list of kind of concepts that a church teaches you to, to instill fear. This is a great list for those who.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:07:41] So it's a chart and I have two columns. The first column is with the church I am. And the second column is without the church I am. So with the church I am good and worthy, spiritual and righteous, honest and upright, kind and generous, a follower of God, destined for eternal life. And I have a feeling of peace. Without the church I am unworthy, wicked and evil, a sinner and lost, a liar and a backfire biter, angry and hateful, a follower of the most evil being ever, Satan, destined for separation from God, even outer darkness. And it creates a panic.

John Dehlin [02:08:20] Yeah, so it's just this, just this. It's, it's kind of, it's kind of binary thinking. You know, nobody's any of these things. Nobody's purely good or purely, purely bad. Purely worthy, purely not. It's this idea of instead of just like learning, it's kind of this growth, growth mentality of like, hey, I'm learning every day. You're either righteous or a sinner, you're either honest person or a liar. There's no middle ground, you know, it's just creating these binaries where you either have to feel like you're totally in or you're totally out. And totally in is the best ever. And totally out is the most evil, wicked ever.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:09:05] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:09:05] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:09:06] Yeah. So it's, it's threatening that, that your core ideals and your sense of identity and your sense of purpose and those things that make you you. And the death of that personality is, is similar to feeling like you're actually dying.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] Yep, absolutely. And it's just, you know, it's reinforced with this idea that, oh, you've let left the church, there's darkness in your countenance, you've lost your light. It's all, that's all part of this reinforcing mechanism that's Sort of the social

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:09:34] proof side of it. Yeah. So we have a quote in the next slide by Janja Lalitsch from Recovery from Cults. Again, she was in a political cult. She says, once in this world, as awful as it was, being thrown to the outside became an unthinkable alternative. It meant failure to meet the technical test. Even worse, it meant failing the working class, betraying the ideals that first attracted us to the party's pitch. It also meant acknowledging that we had bought into a horrible lie and in so doing had hurt our comrades as they had hurt us once caught in such a trap. Decent human beings, which we were, don't easily say, sorry, friends, I'm getting out of here. Rather, they look for ways to rationalize their subservience and exploitation.

John Dehlin [02:10:20] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:10:23] And this is from again, the memoir by Stephen Sanchez. He's quoting Reverend Will, who ran his high demand group, slf. Reverend Will says, I guarantee you this, if you people leave, you will do just like them. First you'll stop reading, then you'll stop running your energy, then you'll stop grounding. With each step, your information is lost, it's erased. You gradually go back to sleep, and I'm taking. Telling you, you are a hundred times worse off than if you had never started this. When you go to sleep, it's spiritual death. It's exactly like a heroin addict who cuts his wrist because he can't get another fix. When you give in to the spirit of the world, you feel euphoria. It's got you. The dark angels come and take you up, take you down, just like those shadows took the evil guides down in the movie Ghost. So I saw some familiar words in there. He's using some. Some loaded language from his particular group. We can see that there. And we can also see that he's words that Mormonism uses, particularly spiritual Death jumped out at me and talking about addictions and how if you leave, you'll. You'll fall into addiction and also demons. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:30] What I'm reminded of is the Mormon Temple ceremony when Satan goes on his little monologue in the movie and says, if you do not live up to every commandment, every covenant made in the Lord's house, this day you will be in my power. You know that whole monologue, fear, be very, very afraid.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:11:48] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have a chart in the next one. So if you're listening to this, you might want to take a screenshot or I do have a copy of this chart in my book. So this is again about how we can create an illusion of choice. Sorry, there's a. My window's open. You can create an illusion of choice where people think they're getting a choice, but really they don't actually have a lot of options. So in the pre existence our choices were we could follow all of God's rules on the threat of being cast out of heaven, or we could follow unrighteous dominion where we would follow all of Satan's rules. Or else with an implied or else I don't know what Satan's threatening to do to us if we don't follow his rules. I'm not. They don't really specify that. So on earth we have, we have two choices presented to us by the church and we have a third choice that the church has hides from us. So our choices the church presents are we can follow the choice of agency where we follow all of God's rules on the threat of spiritual death. Great choice. Or we have a worse choice, which is we can be evil. We can be tempted by Satan into not following God's rules, at which time God will cast you out. What we're not told is that true freedom is found in your own authenticity.

John Dehlin [02:13:05] Yeah. And what we're also not told is what every other non and this is where there's a difference between high demand religions and other mainstream non culture, non high demand religions. There is this option of like, hey, be a buffet cafeteria participant, believe the things you want to believe, don't believe the things you don't want to believe, obey the things you want to believe, or just choose not even obey. Choose to follow or practice the things that work for you, don't choose the things you don't attend when you you want, don't attend when you don't want, pay whatever you want, don't pay whatever you don't want and just, you know, have the religion fit what works for you in your life versus fitting your life to the specifications of the religion. High demand religions don't do that. You're either all in or you're all out. You're either a card carrying temple recommend holding devout orthodox true blue Mormon or you're a problem.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:14:00] Mm. And it does kind of come down to the choice of your existence versus the organization's existence. If they let us, you know, speak freely like I in a Sunday school meeting, I would love to just say, you know what if the Book of Mormon is just a work of fiction like Shakespeare, it doesn't mean that there's no truth to be found within the works of Shakespeare because There is a. There are plenty of great, brilliant insights into the human condition. And there's a few moments like that in the Book of Mormon. Let's talk about that. That if I was allowed to say that now the church's existence is threatened because then other people can say their wild ideas about the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the words of the prophets, and now we're all talking about different ideas and we're exploring different ideas. And now the pressure, the cultural pressures to conform at all costs gets to lift up. And now people are saying, well, maybe I don't want to pay my tithing. Maybe I only want to pay on my. My net instead of my gross. Or, you know, and now the church doesn't have bazillions of dollars coming in. And now the church starts to worry we're going to lose members over this. So it kind of comes down to a choice between, you know, does the church want to keep existing or do you want to keep existing? And maybe they. And I don't necessarily think that dichotomy is literally true, but I think that the leaders of an organization and someone like Joseph Smith who started this thing probably felt like it was a choice between the existence of the church or the existence of the individuals.

John Dehlin [02:15:21] Yeah. And also leaders don't want you thinking that sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes they actually really get it wrong. And so you should use your own choice to decide if you should follow or believe what a leader says or not. And ironically, just to mention Joseph Smith, a lot of Mormon theology grows out of Joseph's brother Alvin dying and Joseph Smith's concern about his own parents because he had a mixed faith. Family. Family who goes to heaven, who doesn't. Some were Presbyterians or Methodists, others weren't. Some are universalists. And so there's an early Universalist Unitarian impulse within Mormonism. But then is the theology around multiple levels of heaven and all these sacred secret rites, ordinances that have to be done in a Mormon context with Mormon authority, Mormon priority priesthood. It starts out very open and universalistic and Unitarian, and then it starts clamping down again using the priesthood authority and exclusive truth claims. And exclusive ordinances, which is unfortunate.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:16:31] Yeah. And literal death threats. I mean, the history of the church is full of people like Brigham Young, the blood Atonement and Danites running around. And. Yeah, there they were. Was. There were actually people. The Mormon. The Mountain Meadows. Mountain. Yeah, there. People actually did die for their choices within or adjacent to Mormonism during that time.

John Dehlin [02:16:52] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:16:53] And people still do. I Mean, you brought up the point about LGBTQIA suicides, and that's. And other people who. Who don't fit into the church very well are at higher risk of suicide, so.

John Dehlin [02:17:05] Absolutely true. Okay, well, let's see.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:17:10] Does the church teach this? Well, let's see. Second Nephi 2. 27 says, Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh, and all things are given them which are expedient unto man, and they are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the great mediator of all men. That sounds pretty good. Or what's my second choice? I'm so excited. Or to choose captivity and death according to the captivity and power of the devil, for he seeketh that all men might be miserable, like unto himself. So that's it. You're free. I have it in quotes. To choose, and I have that one.

John Dehlin [02:17:44] Yeah. Not. Not much of a choice. And again, you make the point. It's a false choice. It's extreme. It's either free liberty eternal with God happy, or death devil miserable. And those are your only two choices. And we can't even see other possibilities. And that's right in the Book of Mormon. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:18:06] Right there.

John Dehlin [02:18:07] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:18:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:18:09] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:18:10] Messiah, Also in the Book of Mormon, he had to say, but this much I can tell you that if you do not wash your. Watch yourselves, and your thoughts and your words and your deeds, and I put in parentheses, if you don't mind, control yourself, because that's what he's describing, and observe the commandments of God and continue in the faith that ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, you must perish. And now, O man, remember. And perish not. I have a picture. It reminded me of Beavis and Butthead where Beavis pulls his shirt up over his head and says, are you threatening me? It's just because it does. It feels like a threat. It's like, do it, do. Follow everything that we say as proxies, standing in a spokesman of God. Or. Or else you will perish Death.

John Dehlin [02:18:55] Yeah, yeah, it's right there. People just can't argue that this is. Is part and parcel of religion. They create this scarcity. They create this fear of death, spiritual or physical, and. And. Or of not being with your families or of not being with Heavenly Father. And then they present themselves as the solution. And those are all arbitrary. By the way. Who says there's even a thing of spirit, spiritual death? Who says there's an afterlife? Who says there's multiple levels of heaven? Who says that God is going to keep you from him or her or they, if God even exists. Other Christian churches, you're just with your family. That's it. So who says there are all these deaths or limits or punishments or hells or judgments? It's the religion saying it. Oh, and by the way, how do you avoid all the death and the separation, Separation that, that the religion is telling you you're going to experience by doing everything the religion says.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:19:53] And you'll notice they get to have their cake and eat it too. There's a, there's some double speak here. So yes, the church says that you have the celestial kingdom and then the terrestrial and telestial kingdom, and any one of those is better than life here. And so you're, you're set, you're good to go. And yet that's like one or two scriptures plus some stuff some prophets say every once while in a, in a while. A majority of the scriptures that talk about the afterlife are like Messiah right here, remember? And now. Oh man, remember? And perish not. And they talk about hell and they talk about the fires and they talk about torture and they talk about endless torment. Scripture after scripture keeps driving home these, these ideas of eternal death over and over and over. But then when you say, oh, I'm scared of the Mormon after afterlife, it's scary. They're trying to scare me. They can say, no, we've got the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms. They're just as good as the celestial

John Dehlin [02:20:47] would kill themselves to be a part of them. They're,

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:20:51] you know, they get to have their double speak there. They get to instill the fear of death that we, that we had as Mormons at the same time as they get to have their soft little afterlife, they get both.

John Dehlin [02:21:05] Yeah. Yep, yeah. And this notion of sad heaven, which is a real thing, is something is hurting the church in 2021 because there are all sorts of other voices out there saying heaven doesn't need to be sad. Heaven can be a happy, great place. And so, and so there are a lot of people just saying all this stress and pressure of living the Mormon way is making me miserable and I'm not. And my kids are falling away. No matter how hard I work to and tried, my kids are still choosing to leave the church. My spouse has now left the church and the church is realizing that this totalistic sad heaven theology is backfiring as more and more people become aware of the problems. Choose to leave the church or they come out as gay or lesbian or trans or a feminist or they want to work or whatever it is. And Mormonism is having to backtrack and say, no, no, no, heaven's about love and happiness and don't judge. But now it's contradicting past prophets, the scriptures themselves, and it's become a real mess for the Mormon Church to try and manage all this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:22:09] Yeah, I hope they figure it out in a way that is beneficial to human beings that are part of it and that are adjacent to it.

John Dehlin [02:22:17] That's what this, that's what this whole series is about, is helping people unpack and deprogram and live healthy lives and maybe giving the church some tips to harm less people. I love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:22:30] All right, so this is Gordon B. Hinckley. He's quoting something he once heard that was then quoted. But there's a lot of this in the church, people quoting and there's like three layers deep of quotes. But anyway, so. So this was recently quoted by Marilyn and Meryl Bateman in, at a BYU devotional in 2003. So this isn't buried doctrine that no one talks about anymore. It's. It's still brought up. And Gordon B. Hinckley said, I know what my mother. Sorry, he's quoting someone who's at Vietnam. He says, I know what my mother expects. I know what she's saying in her prayers. She'd rather have me come home dead than unclean. And so that my conclusion to that is the consequences, the spiritual consequences of screwing up within the LDS Church are so harsh that death is preferable. So they can say all they want about the telestial and terrestrial kingdoms being pretty all right. And yet you have people who would rather come home in a body bag from Vietnam or from their mission than come home unclean.

John Dehlin [02:23:29] And by the way, this is not just like a cherry picking of the worst possible quotes. My mission president shared this quote with all of us on our. On during our mission experience when one elder, you know, when some elders were sent home for doing bad things. And I've had many people on Mormon stories that were shared, those quotes were shared with them. Parents have shared those quotes with their kids saying, we'd rather you come home dead than unclean. This is not exaggeration. This is still part of Mormon culture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:03] And then a quote from camp Pam Kasmir in her Internet memoir, Losing My Mind, bit by bit, I thought that if I kept working hard, I'd earn God's peace. I was so focused on having eternal perspective that I lost perspective, perspective. The perspective that this life is worth living. I was living just to get. Just to die soon and get admitted to the celestial kingdom where all those hardy, enduring souls got to go. And I can relate to that feeling. Like, as a kid, I was like, yeah, if. If the celestial kingdom is so great that you just. You die to get there, then yeah, I want. And I remember at 6 years old, just like wanting to die, you know, I wasn't going to kill myself or anything. Like, I wasn't depressed particularly. Even, like, I mean, I kind of probably was. I was bullied in school a little bit. But, like, it was all about the promise of the celestial kingdom and how hard this life has to be. You have to endure it and you have to get through and you have to be tempted and tested all the time. And it was just such a huge burden that Mormonism put on me. And even as a six year old, I just wanted to get it over with, like, kill me now, God. I prayed to God that he would kill me now. So. And then Pam had a much harder life. Her story is pretty harrowing, and that's how she felt as well.

John Dehlin [02:25:21] Yeah. And this is why so many again, just as. As one group, LGBT, you know, Q Mormons, they're told, there's no theology for you in this life. There's no plan for you. You can't find love, you can't get married.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:25:37] You.

John Dehlin [02:25:37] You can't, you know, you know, live a healthy, fulfilling, meaningful life with someone you love and meaningfully participate in the church, which is the whole reason for your existence. And the only way you're going to be fixed or cured is in the afterlife. And so sometimes people, and that's not just true for LGBTQ people, it's also, you know, Mormon youth who can't stop masturbating or who have premarital sexual, or who, for whatever reason, can't live the gospel. Far too many Mormons conclude, you know, this life is. Has not been fulfilling. I can't do it in this life. I may as well just hit the reset button, propel myself into the next life where maybe the healing is going to come, or maybe I'll be able to find love then, or maybe have Heavenly Father will fix me then. And they actually terminate their lives with the hope that there will be a next life. And people these days, we don't really know if there's going to be a next life. So if this is the only life you have, what an incredible tragedy to have terminated it under a false scarcity, a false hope, a false promise that may or may not come true in the next life.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:26:56] Yeah. And that's Pam's story. She's leading up there to the conclusion of her story where she. She did attempt suicide. And. And she was a Mormon housewife. She didn't even have the LGBT pressures. That was just the pressure on her to be a perfect super mom within the Mormon context, so.

John Dehlin [02:27:16] Absolutely. And. And we have Mormon stories, interviewees all the time that have just buckled under perfectionism.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:23] It's toxic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:23] It's harsh. It's harsh for. For everyone. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:27] Okay, so we have now completed dispensing of existence, and I think this is the plan of salvation. The plan of salvation has scarcity built right into it. Everything from death, physical death, spiritual death, Mormon version of hell, which is outer darkness, the three degrees of glory, which creates, in effect, certain types of death by being cut off from God, cut off from your family, cut off from your spouse, cut off from your children, potentially cast into outer darkness, to just the metaphorical spiritual death, dark and loathsome. The light's gone out of your eyes. You're going to be sad and sick and miserable if you leave the church. Spiritual death. Unfortunately, Mormon theology and Mormon discord gets an A plus, I'm sad to say.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:15] Which leaves us with the last one for today. I. No, no, no, there's two more.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:21] Two more.

John Dehlin [02:28:21] Yeah, two more. Okay, so the penultimate one for today is Double Bind, which is a really good one. Let's talk about Double Bind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:28] All right, let's see if I can do this one. This one kind of baffles me, and I think if I was a narcissist, a malignant narcissist or something, it would. But I always have to, like, concentrate really hard to explain this. Hopefully I can. The easiest way to explain it is damned you if you do, damned if you don't. I have a Far side cartoon here with the devil and he's poking the guy, and there's one door says, damned if you do, and the other door says, damned if you don't. And devil's saying, come on. It's either one or the other. So it's a double bind is a compromising situation where either choice will bring unwanted results. And so it creates logical, emotional, and behavioral traps that we can get stuck in. And it's a lose, lose situation for the victim and always turns out to be a win, win situation for the manipulator. It deflects blame and attention away from the manipulator for the failed promises that they have and the abuses that they're committing and it often leads to self betrayal. That's usually the easiest way out of a double bind is to betray yourself and go against your own. What your own heart is telling you or what you know to be true or what you would prefer to do with your life. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:30] And I think having some examples is going to really drive this home. So let's, let's keep going.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:34] Examples should, should help. So I want to talk a little bit about the dynamic of how the double bind works with. I think these four mind control techniques support each other. So. So you have a cycle between demand for purity which, which sets up unrealistic expectations.

John Dehlin [02:29:51] So if you don't have bad thoughts, don't, don't sin, don't masturbate, don't do anything compliant. Porn. Sexual purity.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:00] Don't even have the thought. Don't dress in a way that's going to create the thought. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:05] Exactly. So that creates unrealistic expectations because you're expecting some kind of reward for that. But usually those promises aren't fulfilled. And not everybody who obeys the commandments is happy all the time. And so blame reversal comes in to put the failures on you. Also.

John Dehlin [02:30:20] No one can. No one can live up to all those things.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:30:25] So you're going to slip up on something and so it's automatically your fault. So blame reversal kicks in and that generates guilt and shame and so you've got all this guilt and then it flips around to the double bind which forces you to. To when you have that choice you're feeling, I feel like guilt. What is my way out? The double bind comes in and forces you to where your only out is to obey more.

John Dehlin [02:30:48] Right. And so. And so if you can't. If you can't stop masturbating, if you can't stop looking at porn, if you can't live the law of chastity, if you can't dress my modestly, if you mess up with your boyfriend or your girlfriend. And we just have to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:03] Your genealogy perfectly all. Ever find every name of everyone who's ever. That is an endless task right there. A Sisyphean task that can never. Because the records don't even exist for once you get to a certain point. And yet you can always fall short of doing your genealogy. Always. Just that one.

John Dehlin [02:31:20] Yep. And that big. That wonderful big old list that you have, that slide of like, you know, the 500 things they don't tell you when you join the church. Of all the things you'll have to do. It just makes it so you're always on this hamster wheel of unworthiness and shame because you can't live up to it. What's the answer? Obey more, follow more, believe more, pay more. And it all accrues to the church's benefit, of course.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:45] And to the detriment. To the detriment of your own mental health and well being.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:31:50] Exactly. And your family and the people around you. So I have a metaphor to try to get this one over. We will have some actual examples within the church, but here's metaphor. So you get a flyer and it talks about a happy hyperspace light years delivery service that promises co op vacations. They're so wonderful that nobody even comes home from them. So there aren't even any testimonials because no one's ever come back. That's how amazing the trip is. So you sign up, you hand over all your, all your wealth to get on a spaceship. You're in the spaceship, you're in this rocket and you're flying through, through space. And you're expecting to punch into hyperspace drive any minute. So you can go fast enough to travel the vast distances of space, but you're still traveling at sublight speeds and you're not getting any faster. There's a help button on the dash and you push it and the little computer screen pops up and says, mechanical difficulties, please stand by. And then it prints out and this old printer. Out comes all of these complicated instructions and there are contradictions in the instructions. It says to cut the red wire. And then the next part says, never, ever, ever cut the red wire and you should cut the blue wire. And so you're not sure and you've got, you're tangled in wires and you've got your wire clippers and you just like I think it says to cut the blue wire. So you cut the blue wire and immediately a technician comes on. Why did you cut the blue wire? You have just broken your, your ship. How could you possibly break your ship? And you've been traveling for a week at sublight speeds. You are out of fuel and it's your fault. And so you're like, well, now what do we do? And the technicians presses a button and a panel opens up in the wall of the ship and there are pedals. And the technician says, well, now because you've broken the ship, you got to pedal the rest of the way. And you better pedal hard because you've got a long way to go. And so you start pedaling hard and you're pedaling hard and the pedals are cheap and they break. And then now the technician is yelling at you because you pedal too hard. That is like an example in the story that I tell in my book goes into, has more little nuances and stuff about your adventure on the spaceship. But it's kind of an example of what, what we do when we're in Mormonism, when we're truck, when we try too hard, we've tried too hard and now we're depressed and broken and that's our fault. And we, if we don't try hard enough, then that. Our fault. And if we, you know, preach the gospel too hard, then we, we turn a bunch of people off from the church, then that's our fault and we don't preach the gospel and we're insincere to our friends. We've got more examples coming up. But now we're insincere to our friends because we've been preaching the gospel to them and now that we don't want them to be our friends anymore. All of these little double binds where neither choice gets us, where what we want or what we have promised.

John Dehlin [02:34:34] And what's really hard about this is the teachings of Jesus are viewed so sacredly and is so core and to Mormonism, and the atonement is viewed as the most special and beautiful and sacred part of all Mormonism. And unfortunately for Mormonism, this hamster wheel of unworthiness and guilt and shame has been interwoven into the Mormon version of Christology and atonement theology. So that you're always hustling for your worth and for forgiveness, and you're always hustling for repentance. And is it God that you directly repent to, or Jesus that you directly repent to? No. You always need the bishop or the Mormon Church as the intermediary between you and God, and it becomes very, very toxic.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:35:26] Yeah, we'll actually talk about that in the cult of confession. Yeah. So there's some examples of some double binds within Mormonism. Another way to describe a double bind is the answer is yes. Yes, but. And then the but always means no. And so I free to leave Mormonism? Yes, of course you are. But can I choose for myself? Yes, but will the gospel make me happy? Yes, but is the church good for families? Yes, but will God answer my prayers? Yes, but will I be blessed in this life? Yes, but. And do other faiths have the truth? Yes, but we can list all kinds of things. There's always a catch. There's always a double speak. There's Always a way that it can. The. The church can get the benefit of the answer being either yes or the answer being yes. But. But the answer is never no. They're not going to say no. You're not free to leave. You're stuck here forever. And they're not going to admit that if you leave, you're going to maybe lose your family, you're going to lose your sense of identity, you're going to lose your community, you might lose your job. They don't talk about any of that.

John Dehlin [02:36:26] If the patriarchal blessing comes true, well, then the church is inspired. If it doesn't, then you weren't living worthy. If the priesthood blessing works, then wow. Isn't God's priesthood power miraculous? If it doesn't work, well, either the blessing giver or the blessing receiver weren't worthy enough. So church always wins somehow.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:45] Yes. And we got some quotes from some of the researchers describing this dynamic, although they didn't use this name. I got this name from Marion Stricker, who is an ex Mormon. But Tobias and La Lich in Captive Hearts and Captive Minds said when this type of manipulation is used, cult members spend most of their time feeling as though they are walking on eggs. Knowing that they must act. Yet to act may bring rebuke, punishment, or worse. And then somewhere else in the book, they said it therefore becomes easier to rationalize the leader's behavior as necessary for the general or individual good. The alternative of the devotee would be to face the sudden and overwhelming awareness of being victimized, deceived and used. Such a realization would wound the person's deepest sense of self. So as a means of self protection, the person denies the abuse. When and if the devotee becomes aware of the exploitation, it feels as though a tremendous evil has been done. A spiritual rape. So that's kind of the situation that double binds put us in. Again, these, these work in domestic abuse as well. And so I had those situations with my abuser where I was supposed to do this, but I knew from his reactions that if I did that, then this would happen, happen. So I had to choose between two bad outcomes. Neither one, neither one was good. And I did end up sacrificing a lot of myself because that was the easiest way to go. Just sacrifice my own needs. Don't bring anything up. Don't, don't stir the pot.

John Dehlin [02:38:12] And.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:13] And it did feel like I was walking on eggshells.

John Dehlin [02:38:16] I'm so sorry.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:17] Thank you. I'm hoping to help others with that knowledge. So that's why I'm so open about it. Yeah, I've seen it in the literature called the loyalty betrayal funnel. And so Michael D. Langone in Recovery from Cults said if members remain loyal to their own perceptions about self in the world, they betray the group on which they have become inordinately dependent. If they remain loyal to the group, they betray their own perception of what is real, good and true. Dissent thus places members in a funnel from which there is no escape and which inevitably leads to being betrayal, either of themselves or of the group.

John Dehlin [02:38:57] Absolutely. Yep. Sounds familiar.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:39:02] Yeah, we have some examples from scriptures. So there's a little cartoon of a guy and he's looking at two checkbox and the empty checkbox says tick box to accept terms and conditions. And the other box is checked and it says untick box to not confirm unticking of previous box. And so we have some big ifs within the church. We've got a couple of scripture quotes. DNC8210 I the Lord and bound when you do what I say, but when you do not what I say, you have no promise. That's a really big if right there. Given the demand for purity and the list of commandments that we will never be able to complete. And then. Moroni 10:4. Yeah, exactly. Moroni 10:4. If you shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in God, Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost and the implied, you know, if, if not, then if you don't have enough faith, then you won't get the answer and then it's

John Dehlin [02:39:59] all on you again and who's to say what, what's sincere and what is real and what is faith and, and ultimately, unless you agree, you know you got the right answer. If your answer agrees with what the Church, the answer the Church wanted you to receive. If you receive any other answer or you don't get your answer, you, you are clearly doing it wrong.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:40:22] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:40:24] Yeah, keep doing it, Keep doing it until you get the right answer right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:40:29] And it converts every situation to the benefit of the Church and the detriment of you. Unless you're, you know, you're already going to do that and then it's not to your detriment and then it's not a double bind. And so there are exceptions for individual individuals for whom specific commandments or parts of the Church. You know, if you, if you pray and you read the Book of Mormon and you get the answer right away that the church is true, then good job you avoided the double bind. Because you weren't in conflict with what the church needed you to do. Yeah, absolutely. We have another quote from First Corinthians which summed up, says if we fail to receive the promised blessings, it is our failing in the scripture reads the God. God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will with the temptation, also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. And what if that isn't true? And what if we can be tempted more than we can bear? What if there is no escape? How does that make us feel when we're told we won't be tempted above what we're able and then we are tempted above what we were able or we're going through such pain and torment that we keep. You can't. And the fact that suicide exists is, I think, proof against this scripture. Suicide happens when it hurts so bad that you cannot bear it anymore and your only escape is death. And I have a picture of an escape room and a caption. I wrote a caption like an escape room where all the puzzles have no solutions.

John Dehlin [02:41:54] Yeah, yeah. And it's dark and it's, it's. That's. That's a really heinous kind of quote. And I'm really glad, glad you you emphasized it because clearly life gives people all sorts of, you know, people have mental breaks, people end up in behavioral health units, people attempt suicide or they successfully complete suicide and they have mental breakdowns and, and it hap. Guess what? Psychologists and psychiatrists in Utah are. Are six months out, they're so busy. And the unis are full of people who have to commit themselves to an institution before they die prematurely. And people are super depressed and self medicating in all sorts of horrible ways. Just death by suicide is an extreme. How about all the people that simply can't endure without self medicating through food or through distractions or through drugs or out alcohol or unhealthy forms of sex or coping. There are all sorts of ways that people are not able to endure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:43:01] Right, Exactly. So here's a few more specific examples from the church on the next slide. If you have friends outside the church who are pressured to try to convert them, if you cannot convert them and remain friends, then they may set a bad example for you or distract from your church duties if you stop spending time with them. Your friendship was instant, sincere. So there's no way to win from that by having friends outside the church if you can't convert them. Sure. If you convert them, then everything lines up and you win. You get to still be friends with them, but you won't have time to be friends with them if they don't convert. And then that, that, then that's a betrayal of yourself because then you may feel like your friendship was like you were faking the friendship. If you go, don't go on a mission, you will let God down, you will be shamed by your family and you will let souls suffer in the belief. If you do go, you go against your own goals in schooling, career and relationship. If you're trans or gay, you can deny yourself healthy, fulfilling relationships or self expression while still being more or less accepted by your family, friends in the church. Or you can be yourself and be utterly rejected. If you don't have a testimony, you have to bear it anyway and you feel like a liar. So those are a couple of the situations that a lot of people are put into by the church that I consider to be double binds.

John Dehlin [02:44:18] Yeah, there's so many. Okay, so we, fortunately we, we have one of our, one of our believing listeners who has joined us and we're always super glad when our believing listeners join us and we have a question from him. So it's a question from Dan. I'm going to put the question up on the screen and I'm going to read it and then Luna, I'm going to have you respond and then I'll maybe respond to. Thanks for reaching out, Dan. We're glad you're joining us. We don't want groupthink here. We want critiques, we want questions, we want criticisms, we want debate because we have to live the principles that we say we believe in. So Dan's question, I'm confused for the question am I free to leave? You are saying that the church says yes, but the church doesn't tell you tell, tell you that you can lose your family or that you could lose X, Y or Z. But I've seen other podcasts where John tells viewers that the church tells its members that if they leave they will lose their family, etc as a scare tactic. Again, I'm confused. The church tells us that we will lose everything if we leave. Question mark. That's option one. Or the church doesn't tell us that we will lose anything when we leave. Question mark. Getting two different messages here from you guys depending on the podcast. Now Luna, I guess you're not, it's not your job to answer for what Dan thinks I've said in other podcasts, but I do want to give you the first chance of responding.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:45:53] Well, it's kind of the nature of the double bind, right? The church can say loving and kind and everyone's has freedom and free agency is a core to our, to our gospel. They can say that and then they can say quote, Ms. Messiah again. And now, O man, remember and perish not. If you do not observe the commandments of God and continue in the faith of what you have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even into the end of your lives, you must perish. So the church can say that. They can threaten you with death on the one hand, if you don't do what they say God says. Or they can tell you on another day that you have free agency and you can leave the church, you can stay in the church whatever want you want. But neither of those two statements erases the actual consequences of leaving the church, which we all knew when we were in the Church. We knew that we risked disapproval from our family. Maybe our family wouldn't shun us outright, but we knew that they weren't going to like it very much. We're going to get that social pressure. We knew. We were told that we would fall into a life of sin. We were told that we would fall into Satan's power. We were told all of that. And that's the core of double speak is the Church can pull out a quote that supports anything in any topic of the day, in the moment, any point that they want to make in the moment, they can pull out a quote and do it. And so when we're addressing all of that, all of that contradictory double think, we have to address it and we have to address each one. We have to point to it and say there's that one and there's that one. It's not us that's doing the contradiction, it's the Church that's doing it. And that's kind of the basic element of what a double bind actually is, is it's all to the benefit of the church and all a lose lose situation for those who don't follow the church's commandments 100%.

John Dehlin [02:47:39] Yeah. And that was a beautiful response. And I'll just say, Dan, yes, you're confused and I'm confused. And my answer would be yes, it's doublespeak. The, the Mormon church theology wants to have it always. Heavenly Father loves you, you and he's your loving Father that wants the best for you. And if you don't do everything he says, you're going to be cast out to outer darkness or not be able to live with him someday. It's both. Jesus is loving and kind and sweet and peaceful and patient and he's overturning the tables and he's going to come back in the second coming and like burn and torture everyone in the, you know, in, in the second coming, you know, if you go read Revelation theology, he's going to burn everyone who doesn't do and say what they're supposed to do. You know, the atonement. Jesus loves you and you, you know, we will be patient with you. And everyone can, you know, make their free, free agency and do what they say. And if you don't do everything the Church says, you're going to be punished and kicked out and ostracized and marginalized. Marginalized. And you're dirty and you're like a chewed piece of gum and you're like a licked cupcake. And the atonement makes you clean. And bishops are going to be able to ask you about your sins for years and years and years afterwards if you get caught in that shame parade. And they can ask you again and again and again to repent for things you've already repented for. Like that's part of it, Dan, is that the church wants to be able to use any tool, and it is, anytime, whichever way it wants to keep you bound to it. And so there's going to be a good cop, bad cop dynamic of love and kindness and acceptance and universality and fear and shame and guilt and punishment. It's all there to be used however the Church wants to, to keep as many people committed to it as possible.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:38] Yep. Hopefully that answers your question, Dan. I hope I understood your question well enough and was able to, able to answer.

John Dehlin [02:49:47] Dan, we're so glad you're here. Please give us your best critiques. We want you to critique us and not just Dan, other listeners as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:49:59] All right, More on the double bind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:50:01] Yeah, so here's another double bind. The Spirit will help you choose the right, but you can only have the Spirit if you prove you are worthy by choosing the right. So you're kind of stuck in that. So I don't know how that is supposed to work. Like if you commit one sin once, is that you're done with the Spirit and the Spirit will never help you choose the right again. I'm not really sure when you think about it, kind of when I think about it kind of starts to fall apart. Baptism is a two way covenant. But if you think about the sacrament prayer, we keep the commandments and God's promises will have the Spirit to help us keep the commandments. That that's what that's all we get. That and some invisible stuff in the afterlife that we don't know. There's no way to prove whether or not we're actually going to get when get that. And it turns all choices into being about the church or God or the church standing in for God at all times. And we actually, in the end get nothing from the deal.

John Dehlin [02:50:52] This is such a brilliant point you're raising, Luna, because if we had the Spirit to begin with, why did we ever say or do anything bad? If the spirit really means something, if having the Spirit really affects your thoughts and behavior, then you would never do anything bad. But then also if we do something bad, don't we need the Spirit more? Why isn't the Spirit helping us when we need it most? If we've had a bad thought, made a bad decision, why isn't that when a loving Heavenly Father would say, oh my gosh, my child, you've sinned, you've made a mistake. I'm not going to withdraw the spirit so that just to add add severity and pain, rub salt in your wound. I'm going to give you the spirit that's going to help you heal and correct and do better. What does it even mean, this Spirit? At the end of the day, if you really think about it, the church's teachings about the Holy Ghost are at best confusing and at worst they're inhumane and evil, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:51:58] I think so, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:59] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:52:00] Yeah. And the more I learn, the more perspective I get on that and just the more obvious it becomes to me, I guess so. I have a quote from Martha Beck's memoir, Leaving the Saints. She's. She left Mormonism. Really good memoir. I enjoyed it. So she says, utterly confused is exactly how I felt most of the time I was Mormon. Before you accept any religious claim, you must scrutinize it to see if you really believe in true. However, if it's an official church doctrine and you feel it isn't true, this is the work of a sloppy soul or worse, the devil. On the other hand, if you accept the advice of a church leader, which then turns out to be wrong, it's your own fault for not discerning that in this particular case, the leader was mistaken. So we're supposed to obey and unquestioningly whether or not it's a good commandment or a bad commandment. Commandment. But then if it turns out it was a bad commandment, and that comes to the Public awareness of the church. Well then you should have had a spirit and should have just known that it was a bad commandment. And so it's still your fault because you were obedient to a bad commandment. And, and then where's your faith get you? So having unquestioning, unwavering faith of a mustard seed that can move a mountain and you have that, and sometimes even that becomes a double bind situation where you're getting trouble for falling following too much.

John Dehlin [02:53:17] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:53:18] And I have other examples of where following too much can have gotten people in trouble in my book as well.

John Dehlin [02:53:25] And then, and Julie makes a slight little joke. She says, and don't forget that the all powerful spirit or Holy Ghost goes to bed at 11pm so when we need it most, in those dark hours of the evening or morning, the Holy Ghost somehow loses all his power.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:53:40] The spirit must be aging because he went to bed at midnight. When I was a kid.

John Dehlin [02:53:44] That's like grandparents, you know. All right, more on the double bind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:53:51] Yeah. So the double bind and blame reversal together both re traumatize and re victimize in cases of abuse and itself is a form of abuse. So I have a quote again from Marian Stricker. She again, she wrote this pattern of the double bind in Mormonism. The bound is left with the implicit demand to intuit the intelligent higher mind of the binder as to when she should obey rules and when she should already know when rules are not necessary. When she follows the rules, she is guilty. When she doesn't follow the rules, she is also guilty. She walks on eggshells looking for a sign that would indicate in advance the binder's elusive whim. And when she wrote this book, she wasn't just writing about the church. She had also left an abusive marriage. And so when she talks about the binder, she's talking both about church leadership and about her ex husband and the patterns that she saw within his behavior. And as an abuse survivor of a malignant narcissist who did a lot of mental abuse, I can also testify, if you will, to that dynamic existing in abusive relationships.

John Dehlin [02:54:51] Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think that rounds out the discussion of double bind. And unfortunately I have to give the Mormon church an A again on the double bind because I think you've laid the case out just very, very clearly. All right, we have a comment from Gerardo, my dear friend Gerardo. He writes, it sounds to me like what Bednar did a couple conferences ago with food storage. Food storage had not been mentioned in general conference or over a Conference. But then Bednar during COVID goes on General Conference and says it's the members fault for not being prepared.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:55:31] Yeah it's always your fault. It's always blamer versus Universal and the double bind.

John Dehlin [02:55:37] Thanks Gerardo for for the comment. All right, this brings us to our last of the of the 31 flavors or the Tools for Undue Influence. Cult of Confession yes, and I think we already know. I think we already know the answer on this one.

Cult of Confession and Its Psychological Consequences

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:55:56] The Church actually isn't as bad on this one as a lot of other Scientology.

John Dehlin [02:56:00] Not as bad as Scientology.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:01] Not nearly. Scientology gets like a extra gold star.

John Dehlin [02:56:05] Extra gold star.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:56:06] Yeah. Now the reason I have Cult of in parentheses is because that's the original name that this one had given by Robert Lifton, who was probably the first or one of the first researchers into how mind control works. And so when he named this one he called it the Cult of Confession. And in my book I think I just call it Confession. So after all these demands and double binds and all this stuff going on, you got all this guilt and shame, you've got this weight on your shoulders and you got to unburden it to someone. And it's awfully convenient that the only one that the Church offers you as a way to unburden yourself is the Church itself. It destabilizes, reinforces guilt and shame and doctrine over self. And the overall message is submit. It is an act of submission. When you go to someone who is in a position of authority, authority under a commandment that you are supposed to do this, and you are revealing your soul to them, whether or not you personally trust them or not, that is an ultimate act of submission to them. All personal problems are routed through the Church. So not just sins, but situations that can be embarrassing to the Church, like sexual abuse or familial abuse, all has to go through the Church to be dealt with the way that they want to do deal with it. And the remedy for emotions or consequences is always has to be LDS approved. So if you think you might want to get a therapist who is following the current APA guidelines for a healthy and ethical therapeutic experience, you're not going to be told to just go to any secular therapist of your choosing that you find on the Internet through Yelp reviews or throughout the through friends, you're going to be told to go to the Church LDS services, which contradicts the APA Guide for Ethical and Healthy Therapeutic Practices that's presently out there. And Tasha Hilfer has talked quite a bit about that particular problem and so even if you're just having marital problems or struggling with some spiritual issues or emotional or trauma, past trauma, you're still going to go to an LDS appreciate therapist who may or may not be following the recommended guidelines that science has offered us as the least, as the, as the best way to deal with trauma, to not re victimize or not continue to hurt the person. And so and cult of confession makes you dependent upon the group in order to be considered a good person. If you have sinned in order to become clean again, you have to go through the Church's outlined process of repentance which involves talking about, talking to the bishop or the stake president. And they don't let you have any other path to absolution. There's no other options with that. It is literally a prescribed pathway to repentance that the Church offers you.

John Dehlin [02:58:53] Yeah. And you're going to talk about this more in just a second. But there's so many things that confession does. It puts you in a downpowered position of weakness. It elevates your leader as not only being a of part above you but but in Mormonism it places the leaders between you and God. So there is no direct worship of God and direct relationship with Jesus. It's the church that you have the relationship with. And of course the church is going to tell you, you know what, what's the way that you're going to get better? Well pray, pray, read your scriptures, fast, pay, pay a generous fast offerings pay, pay a generous tithing, you know, serve in your calling, do everything we tell you, be obedient. And that's just wrong for so many reasons. It's self serving for the church. And you know what's worse is that advice isn't necessarily going to help you if you're depressed or if you have obsessive compulsive disorder or an eating disorder or unhealthy coping. The bishops aren't trained to help with mental health stuff. And it's worse because the church either demonizes his historically the mental health profession. Bruce R. McConkie did it. Most church leaders have done it or they redirect people to unethical mental health practitioners who again are going to say the solution to your depression is more righteousness. The solution to being gay is to go to North Star or Evergreen or do reparative or conversion therapy. They're going to recommend unethical or non evidence based solutions to the problem and it's going to just harm you more or put you under subjective service to the church and prolong your health and well being. It's unethical on basically every level. Which then makes total sense why the church excommunicates Natasha Alfer Parker and frankly me, I was telling LGBT people they needed to be come out as lgbt, live their full authentic life, get same sex married if they were want to, and that's going to lead to the most health. I was doing that as a psychology PhD and they excommunicated me for giving that recommendation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:01:02] And I always think of the stories that I've read online over and over and in a couple of memoirs that I've read about the child who is sexually abused by a family member or someone in the ward. This happens over and over and over. It's like such a stereotypical story. And then they go into the church, they go to the bishop like they're supposed to, and they're seeking help and they're, they're seeking comfort and help from. They've been victimized. And then the bishop does some form of victim blaming from the very mild on up to the full on. You were completely culpable and it must have been something you did somewhere in that range of blaming the victim for their sexual abuse, which any therapist therapist is going to know, any ethical therapist on the planet is going to know, is going to re traumatize you and is going to make your PTSD a lot worse. And then the bishop time and time again doesn't call the authorities. Sometimes they do, but usually they don't. They might call the church and of course the church is just going to pull in their lawyer arm so they can get a settlement. And this happens time and time again. I saw a tweet the other day that pointed out that settlements for sexual abuses, this wasn't about Mormonism. This was our society. Society's tendency to just settle out of sexual abuse complaints is, is just a form of sex trafficking. It's just a person getting caught and so they pay their way out of it. How is that different from them just paying a lot of money to have sex with someone against their will? Like that is what, that is what those settlements sort of end up being. And then the person gets a gag order and then they can't talk about it and if they want to get their settlement and then that's that. And the church's way of handling that is, tends to be re traumatizing and re victiming. Victimizing, which are concepts that anyone. I'm not, I don't even have a degree in psychology. I just read a lot of books. And I know that you never blame someone, even if they had some small part. That is not the time to talk about that, not the time to point that out or anything. Because if you don't do at that precious time when they're still raw, which can still be years later, you're going to hurt the crap out of them. You're just going to drive home that they deserved what happened to them and that it's all their fault. And that meanwhile the perpetrator is completely out of the story. He's the guy that did it, and yet he isn't part of any of this. He's not getting punished. He's not getting. He might get a slap on the wrist, he might get called in and talk to, but they're going to believe every word that he says because they do. They do time and time and again. I'm really passionate about this topic. Can you tell? This is the thing that still gets me mad. Like I have worked out so much of my anger about the church, but this is the button and you can push it. And I will get mad and mad and mad and mad about this because the church is excusing and covering up and enabling abusers throughout the church. And I hate it. I can't stand it. This is the worst part of it.

John Dehlin [03:03:53] And we've got some pushback from our favorite believer. Dan Hart LDS Social services is simply a free service for those who want to take advantage of the service. Members are not told to avoid professional therapists.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:04:08] Depends on your bishop.

John Dehlin [03:04:10] What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:04:11] It depends on your bishop. Some bishops will say go find a therapist. And other bishops will point you to LDS services and say you have to get one of them.

John Dehlin [03:04:18] And Dan Hardy, what you are not being either not being honest about intentionally or what you're just unaware of is the decades and decades and decades, decades of Bruce Armor Conkey Mormon doctrine Mormon church leaders discouraging seeing psychologists and psychiatrists denouncing the the professions of psychology or psychiatry, of, of privileging counseling with the bishop over mental health professionals, of not training their bishops to be mental health counselors. So we're talking about all the gay people, people that went to bishops to try and un gay themselves. All the depressed people that went to who had like clinical bipolar depression where the bishop is saying repent or read the scriptures where he should be saying go find a therapist. But there has been a lot of denouncing. And then when mental health professionals are encouraged, there is absolutely a funnel where members are funneled by to church approved mental health professionals that are going to give you the church approved guidelines which are often contradictory to the best science and the best mental health professional guidelines. The classic example of that Dan Hardy, is when Natasha Alfred Parker was teaching that masturbation is healthy and normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Then Mormon church leaders started discouraging members in the Kansas City area from going to Natasha to going to mental health professionals that are church approved, that are going to say that masturbation is an addiction, that masturbation is like a drug addiction and that you need to go to a 12 step program, addiction recovery program to treat your masturbation as an addiction which no competent mental health professional is going to ever do. And, and so they're, they're funneling people to addiction recovery programs instead of to licensed competent sex therapists or mental health therapists. Not to mention you know, again the LGBT stuff Gerardo sharing with us while my husband was going, Gerardo's gay. So it's talking about his, his gay male husband while my husband's going to byu, Idaho. He needed a therapist really bad after panicking attacks while going through a faith crisis. His mom told him if he wanted to use the family's insurance he had to go through LDS Family Services. Also when, when the bishop frees up fast offering money to be used for mental health professionals, they can only be mental health professionals not of the choosing of the, of the member, but they have to be funneled through bishop approved LDS Family Services is I just want to say Dan Hardy, you are not giving an honest account of what happens within the church in the mental health world.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:07:13] I think he's being honest. I think that's just his experience.

John Dehlin [03:07:16] Yeah, it's his experience.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:07:18] I think that that's valid because again the church has these ways where it depends on, it's what they call clergy roulette. Like what's, what's your bishop's particular individual attitude towards modern mental health services? And I, and what is your family's relationship to that? So I grew up, my mom was interested in psychology as a kid. There were self help books laying or secular help self help books laying around the house. My sister was really interested in psychology and so she was learning all this stuff and, and talking about it all the time and like therapy was approved. I, that wasn't something that was stigmatized or anything in my particular family growing up. And so you know, there I was a 19 year old new divorced single parent and I went to therapy but I picked, I still picked a Mormon therapist. He wasn't through LDS Family Services. But that's, I picked that because that's who I had been taught to trust. But then I couldn't afford it and I went to Codependents Anonymous, which was a 12 step group for various types of relationship and personal self help kind of healthiness issues. And I learned so much stuff in Coda. If I had not gone to Coda, I probably never would have left the church because it taught things like it doesn't matter what, who your higher power is. It just matters that it could be the universe, it could be just fate or some kind of like secular idea of higher power. And that's okay. What I learned was that the point wasn't that you worship God the Father Yahweh. The point is that you have someone that you can lean into, a spiritual being that you can sort of lean into. And that is the point. And I learned a lot of that. I learned a lot of other people's faith experiences from other religions and they happen to be similar to Mormonism. So that kind of lowered the importance. But so see, it is a threat to Mormons mind bubble when people do learn these secular ideas and Mormonism knows that the leaders do. And so having mixed advice to people at least they're going to throw some of those seeds out and it's going to hit fertile ground and enough people are going to avoid secular, modern, modern therapeutic things that it's going to help the church in general. But you, but there are examples where, like me, where we were totally cool with therapy. It just depends.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] Absolutely. And, and if you, and, and you know, you know, Gerardo shares some of the guidance in, in the Church Handbook of Instructions. So for example example homosexual behavior and same gender attraction. And again same gender attraction would, that term would never be used in the, in the competent mental health, you know, profession. It's being gay, it's being lesbian, it's being bisexual. It's not same gender attraction. That in and of itself is a non evidence based, offensive, unuseful term in, in the mental health world. But anyway, it says in addition to the inspired help of church leaders, and by the way, they're not competent mental health professionals, especially around LGBTQ issues. It says members may need professional counseling. Okay, so they do say counseling. Let's see what type of counseling. In the United States and Canada, Stake presidents and bishops may contact LDS Family Services to identify resources to provide such counseling in harmony with gospel principles. Which means those therapists view same sex attraction, as they call it, as sin, as bad as being against the Church principles, which means that it's something they need to either become celibate about around or enter into a mixed orientation marriage. Both of those choices being literally damaging to your mental health and well being. But that's what a church approved therapist is going to recommend. You're never going to find a church approved therapist that's going to say, oh, go find your partner, partner, fall in love with them if they're of the same gender and go live it. Go get same sex married and live a happy healthy life. If a bishop finds out that that's what a therapist, LDS Family Services therapist is recommending, number one, they're going to complain LDS Family Services. And number two, they're going to stop recommending that person. And that's just the way that it works, you know. And there are other examples as well. Carol writes, I have a 17 year old pregnant activity woman. I went to a therapy group, an individual, twice a week and I'm just starting to unpack the trauma of this therapy. It was just a place to shame you into placing your child for adoption. It was abusive on so many levels. I was indoctrinated as a pregnant teen for eight months, twice a week and it was very unethical. Carol, I'm so sorry this happened to you. Gerardo, please give our love to Zach for what happened to him. And yes, for so long the Mormon Church wanted to offer adoption services so that these affluent, well connected, wealthy, you know, married couples that couldn't have kids could get kids through the church, which would make them super grateful to the church so they would pressure these teenage girls to give up their children for adoption so that these other wealthy, affluent children, church members, could have and raise kids in a home that would make sure that these kids would become active, faithful, tithe paying Mormons. It was an awful racket that I'm grateful to see that the Church has sort of divested itself of for legal and liability reasons. And there were some positive things that happened too. But all I'm saying is, Dan, yes, you've had your experiences, but the Church has been a disaster when it comes to mental health professional professionals. And if you don't believe me, ask the hundreds and hundreds of licensed mental health professionals that signed the letter supporting Natasha Helfer, condemning the way that the Church has, has handled Natasha Helfer and the mental health profession. And then I'll just say one last thing. We all know about the 1-800- hotline that was given to bishops for victims of sexual abuse. And we all know that that hotline did not go go to licensed, competent, independent mental health professionals. It literally went to Curtin McConkey, where the advice wasn't given on how to protect and heal the victims. It was literally advice to help the bishops avoid any liability on behalf of the church, which included recommending to the bishops that they tell their parishioners not to go to law enforcement or authorities to report the abuse. And of course, Mormon bishops in Utah are not mandatory, mandatory abuse reporters. And so, so much abuse just goes unreported. It's a nightmare. And Luna, obviously I share your passion on this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:14:05] Yeah. And I just want to be clear that a health. Because there are unhealthy, unethical therapists even outside Mormonism, that the, the way that you judge that or discern that is that an ethical therapist is going to help you. You discover what you want and you need. And so if you're gay and you're Mormon and you have your belief and you're getting a lot out of Mormonism, but you also want to have a filling relationship, they're not going to just tell you, leave the church and go get married. Like, if they do that, they're not being an ethical therapist. They're not following their training. And ethical therapists will help you explore that space. And through that exploration, you will have freedom to consider all of your options, including staying in the church and remaining celibate, including entering a mixed orientation marriage, including leaving the church entirely and going off and getting married and settling down. Like, they're gonna, they're gonna help you listen to your own inner voice on whatever the subject is, that is what an ethical therapist does. If a therapist is trying to make you stay in the church, that is unethical. If a therapist is trying to get you to leave the church. Church, that is unethical. But if through the process of therapy, you discover that you want to stay in the church or that you want to leave the church, that is ethical therapy. Oh, I can't hear you. I can't hear you, John.

John Dehlin [03:15:25] Amen. Absolutely. All right, well, we can talk about this. This deserves its own podcast series. But. But let's continue with confession and why it's unhealthy.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:15:36] All right, so I want to point out that confession itself is not unhealthy. Unhealthy. What is unhealthy? When it is. When it's a forced confession or one that you are highly pressured into doing to a person who you haven't chosen. So that is an unhealthy confession. And also when you getting Confessing, confessing and counseling with an untrained lay person who is in authority over you, that can be psychologically dangerous. Now if you're confessing to a friend, someone that you have chosen to trust because you feel good about that and you want to unburden yourself, it doesn't matter in that situation nearly as much that they're just a layperson who doesn't have counseling training because it's self directed, it's from you, and most importantly, you're of equal power or relatively equal power. They're not in a position of authority over there over you, where for instance, they can point and say you're in spiritual danger if you choose this or if you don't choose that. So the problem is when they are a lay person and they are in authority over you, that creates a really bad mix for where some psychological damage can be done in. In the cult of confession, regardless of the organization, the sins aren't actually forgiven and forgotten. And when we read ex Mormon accounts, we can find a lot of people who found out that they confessed their sin and found out later that the church or the bishop or whoever it was had not actually forgiven and forgotten their sins. I have my own story where I'd done some really super tame sexual stuff. Like not even foreplay, just like super tame. But I felt I needed to confess it, so I went to the bishop and I confessed it and I got voluntarily disfellowshipped and did my little thing where I abstained from the sacrament and couldn't pray and stuff like that for a couple months and then free and clear. So then I go in to get a temple recommend and I'm talking to the counselor, state counselor, and he's like, have you had any sexual sins? And I'm a super. I have a hard time. Like I'm really like freaking transparent. And so I'm like, yeah, but you know, I repented of them, right? So I'm thinking I'm free and clear. He wanted to know every freaking detail. And I swear to God, he was getting off on it. Like he wanted to know how it felt and exactly what I did and exactly what he did and exactly everything. He wanted to know every little nuance. And I got super creep vibes from this guy that he was like. And I'm like, didn't I? Wasn't I forgiven? Why am I having to reiterate this stuff? And the fact of the matter is I think that guy was just a creep and he just wanted to get off vicariously through me. And that is an example of how the confession can be abused by someone who is in a position of authority that you don't have a choice over. I didn't get to choose which state counselor I was meeting with. So that's like an example of. And I've heard worse stories. My story is very tame in comparison to some of the stories where they pull up past stuff and use it against you. In bishopric or state presidency. In more severe cults that are not Mormonism, that are worse than Mormonism, confessions are often public and made in front of the entire congregation, or they're recorded and later used against people. So Scientology is a really great example. You have hours and hours and hours and hours, and they pressure you and they. It's like an interrogation, and they recording all of it. And they have. Now they have dirt against you that they can use against you. In most cases, I don't think the church goes quite that far, although in excommunications, where it's over political dissent or, you know, ideological dissent, then they. They often, I think, do pull up past material. Those are other people's stories to tell, and they have told them. And the thing about confession is it works as both a deterrent and a punishment. So within this context, it is about control. It is not about unburdening yourself or being able to breathe easier or getting validation. You know, if you're talk. Talking to a friend and you're telling him something bad that you did, part of that is getting that validation of that sense of I am still a good person, and helping to sort out the morality of it and helping to sort out how you can make amends for it and how you can avoid doing that in the future. That's what a healthy confession looks like. And in Mormonism, it isn't. Isn't always that healthy.

John Dehlin [03:19:45] Yeah. And one example of where this really gets ugly is in all the constant consequences that come from confession. So it can be just. Just the bishop's disapproval to being told you can't take the sacrament, which means that all your friends and your family and everyone around you sees that you're not taking the sacrament so that you know you're perceived as a sinner. It's. It's not being able to bless or pass the sacrament if you're a young boy. It's being kept out of baptisms for the dead and the. The temple, or being kept out of being able to go to the temple because you're unclean. It's being able to. Kept being kept from attending the weddings of, of family members, it's being kept out of byu. Not being allowed to go to byu, not being able to go on a mission, getting sent home early from your mission.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:20:36] They tell the top leaders too, in the church, right? Don't they tell like the Relief Society president and everybody? Like, call on them. Don't. Don't call on them to pray because they'll have to say no. And then if the person calls on you and they didn't happen to get the word down the line and they call on you to pray, then you're gonna sit there and go, I can't, I can't. I don't know, because I can't. You know, like, it's shameful. You're stuck in a shameful situation there.

John Dehlin [03:21:00] Yeah, there's just, there's just, you know, again, getting sent home from a mission, how humiliating. Being denied the ability to go to, you know, to get married in the temple or to have your, your temple wedding date postponed where everybody. Oh, well, look, I thought it was August 4th. Oh, now it's. Now it's December. Well, the couple must have done something wrong because now they're changing their wedding date. There are just so many ways. And then, let's not, let's not forget, you go to byu, one of the BYU schools, you confess to your bishop, you can literally get suspended and, or kicked out of your university. Experience. Experience just for being honest with your ecclesiastical leader because of the honor code rules and the honor code violations and that sort of thing. And that can add one to two years on to your education as you have to transfer to a different school sometimes mid semester, sometimes lose out on credits that didn't get transferred. There are just so many ways that this confession practice within Mormonism becomes abusive and to the detriment of the member.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:22:04] Yep, definitely.

John Dehlin [03:22:07] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:22:07] So we have some quotes, just so you know. I'm not making it up. We have John D. Goldhammer from under the Influence, who says confession in a destructive group, Maloo implies forgiveness, which means the core authority in an organization becomes the judge and jury over one's existence. This existential control gives groups limitless power and control over individuals who surrender the themselves. So it ties into dispensation of existence a little bit. If you're afraid that your eternal salvation is contingent upon this whole confession process, that's a lot of authority. That is a super loaded amount of power that that person has over you.

John Dehlin [03:22:48] Mormon bishops are literally called judges in Israel, right? That's literally part of their job description.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:22:54] Yep. And John Goldhammer wasn't Mormon, like he had nothing to do with Mormonism. So. And then Marian Stricker, she did, she was an ex Mormon. She says the binder causes the bound to be evil, punishes the bound for being evil, then steps in to become the comforter who forgives upon the bounds confession of guilt. After all, if the bound had been completely obedient, punishment would not have been necessary. Therefore, the bound, quote unquote, asked for it.

John Dehlin [03:23:24] Just way too much power to put yourself between somebody and their God. Just way too much power.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:23:28] Yeah, definitely. Tobias and Lalitsch in Captive Hearts, Captive Minds said an active surrender of total exposure. The individual is now owned by the group. The person no longer has a sense of balance between worth and humility. And there's a loss of boundaries between what is secret, known only to the inner self, and what is known to the group. And Margaret Thaler singer from Cults in our Midst said, purge and merge. The information gained about you can be used against you to make you feel more guilty, powerless, fearful, and ultimately in need of the cult and the leader's goodness.

John Dehlin [03:24:03] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:24:08] So in, in Mormonism, we were always confessing in our hearts to God who was always watching us. We had no right to privacy. The angels were writing our names down, down in books that were going to be shouted from the rooftops at the end times and the judgment bar, all would be made known and every little jot and tittle would be made known and we would be just buried in shame. And that removed our sense of personal space and boundaries in general, which is really helpful for abusers of all types. So not just the leadership of the church, but any given abuser who is in the congregation or in your family, they have a ready and grade groomed victim just waiting to be abused and taken advantage of. And all they have to do is do it. And they know that the whole system and support of the church is going to support them over the victim. Especially if the victim is female or a child or LGBT or not seen or poor or of color or not seen as just like that. That bishop, that white male bishop up there on the pulpit, Robert J. Lifting, said, each person becomes caught up in a continuous conflict over which secrets to preserve and which to surrender over ways to reveal lesser secrets in order to protect more important ones. His own boundaries between the secret and the known, between the public and the private, becomes blurred. So that's the result of it. We, it is a way of grooming us to lose ourselves and lose our sense of self and our strength. Our empowerment, our ability to make decisions for our ourselves. And it grooms us to be willing to hand that over to anyone who asks.

John Dehlin [03:25:42] Not to mention what we've highlighted many, many times in Mormon stories, which is the lesson to lie because of all the shame and the risk involved in a combination of this confession culture with this punitive purity culture. You know, so many Mormon youth and young adults just learned to lie because they don't want to be embarrassed. They don't want the punishment. So what a messed up thing it is when your religion is literally grooming you to become deceptive and to have this duplicitous double life where you, you project health and healing. But then you've got the secret self that you're ashamed about and, and you're hiding it from everybody. It sets people up for awful marriages and awful messages. Mental health in adulthood, sometimes it's that double bind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:26:32] It's that you can be yourself and be ashamed and hide it all the time, or you can conform to the group and lie and not be inauthentic and get approval and get a pat on the head for doing all of that. It's a double bind. And either way, either way you're not being authentic and you're stuck.

John Dehlin [03:26:51] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:26:54] So it. Confession works as both a deterrent and a punishment. So in the new era in 1989, someone wrote in. I went through a period when I had been involved in some bad things that I knew required a confession to the bishop. I was very fearful of going through with what I was, what, what I knew was right instead of just confessing. I quit going to church because I didn't feel comfortable there. I quit praying because I felt unworthy. I got involved in other more serious activities which would also require a confession. And I can relate to that feeling of being so ashamed. Ashamed and worried that I wasn't confessed over, over my thoughts. Like I wasn't even doing anything. I was just having thoughts and I was so ashamed. I didn't want to go the bishop. And then I felt like a liar and I felt like I was God knew. God knew that I wasn't doing it right. And there was that thing of like, well, if I ever acted on any sin where I crossed a line, then I would just. Then it would be so overwhelming that I just may as well go out and do every sin like I've already. You know, you're either in Satan's grasp or you're not. And if I'm in Satan's grasp, I may as well have a Lot of fun doing let loose. Right, Exactly. And I've seen that dynamic in writings of ex Mormons over and over. And that's, that's again, a double bind that you get stuck in and it kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Then the church can point to you and you know, in your heart like, oh, no, the church was right. I really did fall in the grasp of Satan because look, I did this one little thing and next thing you know, in an alley with a heroin needle sticking out of my arm. Right. So. And then Jack be worthy from his memoir, the Mormon Cult. It's a missionary memoir. Ex Mormon. I have never had my peers sit in moral judgment of me before that day or since. And it felt strange. He had committed a sin on his mission and everybody got in on it. And so he's sitting in judgment and he says only an indoctrinated prisoner would willingly allow such a thing. Now, I was admitting to my sins to fellow missionaries, not as friends and confidence, but as his judges.

John Dehlin [03:28:52] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:28:55] One more quote from Stephen Hassan. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:58] Oh, we love Stephen Hasson on Mormon stories.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:00] Yep. Last quote. He says the destruction of personal boundaries and the expectation that every thought, feeling or action, past or present, that does not conform to the group's rules, be shared or confessed. This information is not forgotten or forgiven, but rather used to control.

John Dehlin [03:29:17] Yeah. And it's really heinous and, and honestly, a shout out to Sam Young and his Protect LDS Children movement. Because what Sam tried to do with the support of Natasha and me and others was just to say this whole worthiness interview concept is bankrupt. It's, it's defective. And I would even go a little bit further. I think this, this atonement theology of you're fallen, you're, you're dark, the natural man is an enemy to God. And so you need Jesus and you need the church and you need bishops to become clean. It's a hamster wheel of unworthiness that leads to poor mental health and really negative consequences and really bad marriages. It's meant to help people be on the straight and narrow and make good choices. But we need a better way to motivate positive behavior. And I'm going to say it's not through guilt and shame and confession and, and this kind of worthiness. Instead, what about a, a learning theology where it's just like, hey, when you're born, you don't know everything and then as you get older, you start to learn stuff and you're going to try out, you know, trial and error and you're going to make some mistakes and you're going to make some good choices and you'll. The good choices you'll learn from, the bad choices you'll learn from. And each day you try and do better and then eventually and you incorporate science and evidence and your own internal desires and knowledge of what your values are and what's right for you. And, and as you synthesize science and social science and the wisdom of your, of your social circles and most importantly your own self knowledge, you'll just learn to make better and better decisions. How healthier and preferable would that be to this Fear based shift, shame based, hell based, intimidation based, you know, confession grooming based, deficit based theology that is getting us nowhere good.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:31:16] Yeah. With a demand for purity where watching a rate our movie is considered a huge sin. Like expanding your mind and learning more about the world and following a narrative of someone who's had a different background than you so that you can then empathize with other people who have that background. Background that is big sin. Like no. And, and that's the other problem of it too is what they are defining as wrong behavior is really, really misguided and for their, for the church's benefit, not for our benefit. Me watching rated R movies has been a eye opener and it's been edifying for me. And it's, it's me. I think it's made me a better person. And, and so choosing sins that are actual, you know, things that harm other people, that's where I'm going to draw the line. And there's some nuance there. What is and how do we know what's harmful? And is there some nuance? But there's most of it is pretty clear. If you kill someone, you're harming them. If you punch them in the face, you're harming them. And maybe it could be in self defense. So that's one of the nuances. But generally speaking you can use that as a guide. And to me that ought to be the only things that we're considering sins and then have a process of learning from it. And so you learn how to not harm yourself and others. That's my guide.

John Dehlin [03:32:34] Yeah. And I'm just not even crazy about the concept of sin. Yes, I believe that the behavior harm there can be harmful behavior harmful to yourself, harmful to other people. But why, why chart? Why load the language? Why charge it up with sin and hell and judgment and condemnation and purity and filthiness? Why not just say hey, when you know better, you do better. That's what my answer is. Angela said, when you know better, you do better. Why can't it just be that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:02] Yeah, exactly. And I was using sin as a standing word. I don't use it generally either. But if you had a religion and needed to call it sin, those are the things that I would put in that bucket.

John Dehlin [03:33:11] Absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:13] Well, I think we made it to the end of today's presentation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:17] We did it.

John Dehlin [03:33:18] We did it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:20] By the way, I mean in terms of a grade on the church for. For confession. Look, we're. We're not as bad as scientists, Scientology, but our entire church is built around worthiness, interviews and in temple recommend worthiness. And that's all a confession culture. So we get an A. Maybe Scientologists get the A plus, but we still get the A, unfortunately. And I mean the A in a bad way.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:47] How could anyone argue with that, really?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:49] Some. Yeah, I can't. This is just some recommended reading. I have a longer list of recommended reading in my book. These are some great books by authors. My book, Recovering Agency, Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control, which gets specific about Mormonism. And I've distilled a lot of stuff I collected from a lot of other books into this one so that you don't have to read this shelf behind me, by the way, the top shelf, are all books, mostly. I've read most of those and they're all to do with cults and Mormonism and stuff like that. So plug in my book book there. And I have resources on my website too, for free recovering agency.com blog posts and essays and stuff like that. And then Captive Hearts, Captive Minds. I really love that book. There's a new edition of it called Take Back My Life, which has been updated by Madeline Tobias and Janiel. Really love that one because it's kind of. It gives like a personal touch and a more of an emotional, empathetic kind of angle. And it also talks to abuse survivors and Recovery from Colts is a collection of essays and papers by different clinicians in the field, edited by Michael Lingone. They also, by the way, ICSA has a new book and it's like that thick and it's more academic and I forget what it's called. It's on one of my shelves around here, so those resources are really good. Thought Reform and the Psychology of totalism, particularly chapter 21 or 22. You think I would have looked that up by now. And that chapter is actually available free online. You can go check out. Check it out. That defines the first eight mind control techniques and was written in the 60s and releasing the Bonds by Stephen Hassan.

John Dehlin [03:35:27] I love it. And then there's a big old another reading list of other biography and it

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:35:33] goes like off the screen.

John Dehlin [03:35:34] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:35:35] The back of my book has the full bibliography and I have footnotes throughout with all of my sources cited.

John Dehlin [03:35:41] So everyone within the sound of my voice who are watching now, please buy Luna Lindsay Corbden's book Recovering Agency. You can get it on Amazon. It's, there's a print version, there's a digital version, there's an audio version. Buy it in all the ways that you can. Not just to support Luna, but also to help yourself unpack and deprogram from the harmful things you learned in, in all the unhealthy organizations or family structures that you are involved with and to help you know, it's, that's not a foregone conclusion that you leave a high demand religion or become unorthodox in a high demand religion and then you're going to have a happy, healthy life and never fall prey again to undue influence. This applies to politics, government, education. This applies to podcasters, this applies, this applies to schools. This applies to what else? Other religious traditions, family systems, abusive relationships. This book will help you in all the areas of your life, not just, you know, leaving a high demand religion or a cult. So please buy it now. Please support Luna and yeah, and Luna, thanks for another wonderful Part four. We've just got one more to go. Are you excited? Exhausted yet?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:37:06] One left? Not yet. We've been taking nice breaks about a week in between each one. That's, that's good, good.

John Dehlin [03:37:12] Rest and then we'll do that part 5 which will cover the final, let's just say 6ish of, of the principles and then we'll release them all. We'll have Luna Lindsay Corbden week on Mormon Stories where we do five episodes over five days and we'll answer the question, is the Mormon Church a cult and or does the Mormon Church engage in cult like activity, activities and in a more healthy, constructive sort of way? Say, how can we help the Mormon Church be less cult like or be less harmful to its members and how can we help? Most importantly, how can we help members of the Mormon Church or ex members of the Mormon Church find healing and growth and unpack all the unhealthy programming or habits or lessons that they learned? I'm going to share a quick comment from Carrie Ann Sherette Gardner. So good. Thank you, John and Luna. I just bought your book, Luna. Luna And I can't wait to read it. Thank you, Carrie Ann. And Neil writes I'm buying it now. Thank you, Neil, for buying the book and thanks to everyone who joined us today and to all the comments and questions. It always makes these episodes more interesting. So thank you and thanks to everyone for please getting the word out and sharing this with everyone that they can.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:38:23] Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on again, John, we'll talk to you about next week or so.

John Dehlin [03:38:26] All right, Luna, we'll see you soon.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:38:28] All right, see you. Bye.

John Dehlin [03:38:29] And listeners, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. We really appreciate it and we want to thank all our donors that make Mormon Stories podcast possible. We couldn't do it without your donations, without your support. Unfortunately, we're losing donors and donations every month because people fall on financial hard times or they lose interest or they choose to redirect their funds elsewhere. There are lots of reasons why people have to cancel. Sometimes they just get healthy and move on and that's all good. So we just want you to know we're losing support all the time. We've got so many expenses that we have and we, we need your financial support. Unfortunately, less than one out of a thousand of our listeners or viewers contribute to the podcast. And so we need your help. So if you value this programming, if you want to see it continue, we need you to please become a monthly, monthly donor. Go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford, you will help keep this programming alive. You can pay forward the benefit that you've derived from this program. You can pay it forward to other people in the future, even if you've lost interest. And we're financially transparent, we release our financials every year publicly. We have the best accountant in Utah for nonprofits. We have a solid board to oversee our financial finances. We have a top notch staff. And every dollar you, you pay to the Open Storage foundation will go towards the mission of supporting people in faith, transition building, community building, resources and tools of support. And again, it's all tax deductible in the US So you can deduct it from your taxes. Please support us. Thank you for your support. You can like us, you can recommend us, you can follow us, become a subscriber on YouTube or a follower on YouTube or on Facebook, share it on all the social medias, spread the word, give us positive reviews wherever you can. All of that stuff helps. Thanks for your support. Thanks to Gerardo thanks to Brooklyn. Thanks to Kara for all the behind the scenes support in the Open Stories Foundation. Thanks to our board, Clint and Carrie, and thanks to all of you, our supporters and listeners and our donors. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com for any feedback or suggestions. Comment on our blog@mormonstories.org if you need a community of support, go to Facebook, type in Mormon Stories Podcast Community. You can join the Facebook community there and get support or in lots of other ways as well. Love you guys. See you soon on Mormon Stories Podcast today. Take care and we'll see you soon for part five of this episode with Luna Lindsay Corbden and for other episodes on Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care everybody.

Part Five: Indirect Directives and Doublespeak

Part 5 of 5 · Ep. 1447

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is June 9, 2021 and today I am super excited to bring to you part five in our five part series on this amazing book that I am holding in front of you and showing you those who are watching on Facebook and on YouTube. The book is called Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden, Lifting the Veil on Mormon Mind Control. It is a really important book that covers 31 identified tools or techniques used by high demand religions and or cults to exert undue influence or unhealthy control on its members. And we have already done four episodes, each of them being around three hours plus or minus 15 minutes. And we've covered around 24ish, 25 to be exact, different tools and techniques. And today we're rounding out with the final six topics that we're going to be covering so that you as a progressive questioning and or post Mormon cannot be fooled again. So that you can learn how to avoid anyone who's trying to exert undue influence on you. Whether it's a business, government, school, self improvement program, podcaster partner, family system. It's not just religions that use these techniques, it's lots of different types of organizations. And joining us today, the author of this wonderful book is Luna Lindsay Corbden joining us back for part five. Welcome Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:01:39] Hi. Thanks. Good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:41] So good to have you. Are you, are you ready for your final lap around the track?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:01:45] I am. Let's do this.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] All right, well, thanks so much for joining us and thanks so much for writing this amazing book.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:01:53] Yeah, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:54] All right, so as always we have a set of slides or visuals. Of course those of you who are joining us just in audio will hopefully be able to derive a lot of value from this episode. But if you're able to subscribe to YouTube Premium or join us through YouTube or through Facebook, we've got these amazing slides that, that provide some visual aid to the concepts that that Luna is teaching us today. So let's just jump in Luna and why don't you go ahead and start with a little bit of your background for those who are joining us for the first time.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:02:26] Sure. I was born in the church. I spent 26 years as a true believing Mormon. My job before doing what I do now is I worked 14 years in the computer industry and I am now a writer. I write nonfiction and fiction and I'm a freelance editor and a ghost. I'm lgbt. Specifically I am non binary gender Fluid and bisexual. My pronouns are they, them. I am an abuse survivor and disabled with ptsd. And I am also autistic. I'm a psychology nerd. But just a caveat, I don't have a related psychology degree. I just have read a lot and I'm interested in topics particularly trauma, manipulation, group manipulation, autism, things like that. And I wrote a book about LDS control tactics, which you've already shown off there. It's called Recovering Agency, Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] All right, and I just want to encourage all of our listeners to please stop right now and purchase this book in print form, in audiobook format, in digital format. It's available in all those different ways because it will enhance your life and it will support Luna's important work. And we have one listener who writes, Michael writes. Luna's book is amazing. The information in every one of these interviews with her is captivating. So thank you, Michael. Luna, were you going to say something?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:03:54] Yeah, I was just going to say that it's heavily researched. So I really. The only thing I'm adding is synthesis, deconstruction and synthesis. So I took the literature that other cult researchers had written about other cults, other high demand groups, and I took their information and applied it to Mormonism. So most of what I have to say isn't really new. I'm just drawing lines between different other people's research and other people's thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] I love it. Okay, well, let's dive in. This is the book we've shown you all, and we have covered 25 of the 31 flavors of coercion. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:38] Yeah, we're almost there. We're almost done. So do you want me to list the ones we've covered?

John Dehlin [00:04:44] Sure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:04:44] All right, let's do it. All right, so we got love bombing, destabilization, deception, sacred science, mystical manipulation, Maloo, Control, demand for purity, dispensing of existence, doctrine over self loading, the language, totalist reframing, thought terminating cliches, social pressure, belief follows behavior, public commitment, creating dependency, black and white thinking, elitism, us versus them thinking, emotion over intellect, time control, double bind, blame reversal, guilt and shame and confession. And that's what we've covered up for now. And these are things that a high demand group uses, mechanisms or tools that leverage the human tendencies that we all have. Cognitive dissonance and consonants, confirmation bias or various. The science of belief. They basically use these different techniques instinctively many of the times to sort of entrap us into a specific belief system and keep us from getting out of it. Then Today we'll be covering indirect directives, identification and example induced phobias, trans induction and dissociative states, euphoria induction and proselytizing.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] And it probably goes without saying that to. To learn about the other 25 techniques, go to parts one through four in this series, because this is part five.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:10] Exactly. And all these techniques work together. So any single one of these isn't going to change anyone's mind or entrap anyone or ensnare anyone. I mean, with some exceptions, depending on, like, dispensing of existence is basically a death threat. So I guess you could get someone to do something, but you can't get someone into a belief system believing that they've willingly chosen it and yet be trapped without using a majority of the. They all work together hand in hand.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] Absolutely. One more comment from a listener. Just an endorsement of the book. Nicole writes one of the best books on Mormonism. I read this book three times. It helped me so much so we would not be spending 30 plus hours on Mormon Stories podcast unless this book was really important.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:06:55] So thanks, Nicole.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Yeah. All right, so indirect directives.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:07:02] Yep, that's the first one we're gonna get to. So indirect directives is basically a way of getting someone to do what you want them to do without directly commanding them in so many words. And we'll get into how that works. There's an image that I have. I've got a few optical illusions in this. In this particular. In the slides for this particular topic. And so the one I have up there, it looks like at first glance, a sphere with spikes sticking out of it. But when you look really closely, there's actually no circle drawn. And it is the illusion of the various cone shapes and triangles that give us the illusion that there is a sphere there. And that's kind of an optical way to explain how an indirect directive works. Is a way of sort of giving someone the ingredients that they need to put together a certain conclusion or to follow a certain command without so much as saying it. And so that can be through unspoken implications, direct instruction, indirect instruction, and cultural forces. Which has a lot of advantages to a manipulator. One of those, probably the biggest one, is it creates plausible deniability. So if someone comes to a conclusion that benefits, or does an action that benefits the manipulator, but then the manipulator didn't actually expressly say it. They can say, well, I didn't say that. And that's one of the biggest advantages of it. It has a strong interplay with Identification and example, which is another control technique that we'll be talking about next. It directs negative or critical thought away from leadership. And as we've seen many of these control techniques, that's their purpose, is to get you to not look at the cause of the thing, like you told me to do this, but to look at the person who made an incorrect conclusion. And it's a part of deception. It can hide harsher doctrines and actions from the public and the outer circles of the group to make it difficult for. For anyone to believe that the group is doing harmful things. And it feeds on and feeds the double bind. So we talked about the double bind last time, which is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. So I have a story from history in the next slide that kind of shows how this works. And we see this used in, like, mob movies, crime movies. You kind of see this kind of dynamic a lot. So this is the story, how it went. Thomas Becket was a clergy person for the Church in England in the 1100s. And King Henry II, Thomas Becket was vying for more power for the Church in King Henry's kingdom. And King Henry II didn't really like that so much. So he famously said, and this is a paraphrase, this is not actually what he said. We'll get to what he said in a minute. He said, will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? And of course, King Henry's knights went out and murdered Thomas Becket. I'm not going to take sides in the story. I think everybody was wrong. Everyone was just scrambling for power. But when they tried to pin this crime on King Henry ii, he was able to deny ordering the execution because he technically hadn't. What he actually said in the next slide is even more vague than what is attributed to him. The vague thing that he actually said, they think he said, what miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a lowborn cleric? So basically all he said is, who is this guy that he can challenge my authority? And that was the slim, the narrow saying that the knights picked up on him and took that as an order to kill Thomas Becket. And I have a meme here that's a nice everything you have. It'd be shame if something happened to it with the creeper from Minecraft, who, if anyone's played Minecraft, he sneaks up behind you and then explodes and blows everything up. So there's a meme and we see this in crime movies, you know, where. Where the. The Mafia boss says, you know, oh, sure, it'd be nice if something happened to him, you know, or which. It would be a shame if something happened to your shop. And that's the idea behind indirective. Indirect directives.

John Dehlin [00:11:13] Yeah, I think I get that.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:11:15] Yeah. We have a couple of quotes on the next slide. And another optical illusion. George Orwell said, nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them. That was in 1984, describing the party that was in total control of the people. Martha, back from her more ex Mormon memoir, Leaving the Saints, said, throughout my childhood, though, through continuous indirect communication, I learned that a good Mormon girl doesn't ever travel in the dimension of direct communication. And the picture that I have is an artistic example of how to create implied lines in a drawing. So the first drawing is a drawing of an apple, and the outline is very clear around it. And the second one is a similar sketch of an apple, but there's no outline. And there's actually one point if you look very closely in the picture, where the shiny part of the apple is the same color as the background and there's no dividing line. So if we took that literally, we would see sort of an apple with like a chunk taken out of it. But our mind comes in and fills in the line that isn't drawn.

John Dehlin [00:12:19] Interesting.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:23] And so we. We kind of do that with religious instruction or influence.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:12:27] Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's sort of like if you walked into a kitchen and you saw a pot and you saw a pile of carrots and a pile of chopped beef and some garlic and some zucchini. You might think of what you would make with that in a gallon of water. You might think, well, I'm going to make stew. The recipe is implied by the ingredients. It's a euphemistic means of ordering an action or making a threat without just coming out and saying it's. It uses connotation, inference, and is implicit rather than denotation, direct and being explicit. And so, for example, if we're going to use spiritual ingredients, the ingredients that Mormonism gives us, I've got many examples. One of them is wickedness. Never was, was happiness. So if I'm not happy, that implies I must have done something wrong. That's an example of one of the conclusions that we're supposed to draw. The church might not come out and just say that because it might make them look bad, although they do say the equivalent of that sometimes. But then they can blame it on you when you decide that you're depressed because it's your fault.

John Dehlin [00:13:35] This is what I'm working to think of some ways that it applies in my experience to Mormonism. But let's do a couple more slides and then I'll bring in some thoughts I have.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:13:45] Yeah, sounds good. And I think most of my examples, this one I have a lot of slides on because I think it's such a powerful concept. So there are examples eventually. So for example, in bullying, people can say really mean things or pass aggressive behavior. People can say really mean things and then dodge accountability. Like they can say you should have taken it in the spirit it was given. Or they might say can't you take a joke? And that's sort of one of the ways that they can dodge saying a mean thing and then backtracking from it by sort of, sort of gaslighting you to make you think that they actually meant something else when really that's just cover for their behavior. And the church does that. But in a more complicated way, the follower is expected to show loyalty by picking up on the hint. Like that is the expect expectation and not so will result in disfavor or punishment. I've quoted this a number of times and I'll quote it again because it's really good. This is Lifton defining Robert Lifton defining the psychology of the pawn. He becomes sensitive to all kinds of cues, expert at anticipating environmental pressures and skillful in writing them in such a way that his psychological energies merge with the tide rather than turn painfully against himself. And so for example, non forming members get shunned out of concern and boundaries are violated in the name of love.

John Dehlin [00:15:04] Yeah, okay, so you have to be able to pick this up and you probably get promoted or advanced if you're able to pick up these indirect cues

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:15:11] exactly at the right time in the right. Because if you do it at the wrong time in the wrong way, then you could actually be punished for taking it wrong. But yeah, if you're following that program really, really well and you're, you're heightened to the cues and you're, and you're performing well, then yeah, you will, we will be promoted. I'm sure King Henry II knights were at least given pat on the back in secret for that. So that is kind of how, how it goes. So indirective directives make people think that they thought of an act themselves and in a way they kind of are. It inspires people to commit acts that would otherwise go against their values because they're having a cognitive dissonance moment inside. And they're so eager to please that authority, that person authority, that they sort of forget about their other values. And then the leader can blame the follower for misunderstanding what they meant. So here's a quote from Margaret Thale, singer from Cults in Our Midst. And she says the leader often said, oh, she's talking about someone else's experience within. Within a group. The leader often said during lectures that people who don't obey must be punished. Shortly after such a lecture, one woman began to shake and slap another woman who wasn't working hard enough. Later she said, it was his words and how much I wanted him to like me. I saw myself doing as he would. He didn't have to be there. He didn't have to tell me who or when or where. I just wanted to do what he wanted. I realized I was flailing at her. It was as if he and I were one at the moment. I have another optical illusion in which there are no triangles. If you want to look at that slide. And there are no triangles, but there appear to be two triangles based on the shapes around them.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] Right. Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:55] I do have a concrete example from Mormon history.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] And yeah, this is a good one.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:16:59] Yeah. So the scripture is DNC5826. For, behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things. For he that is compelled in all things the same as a slothful and not a wise servant, wherefore he receiveth no reward. I had to memorize that in seminary. So it is a prominent scripture within LDS theology. And the question with the Mountain Meadows Massacre comes, comes down, did Brigham Young order that hit? And the answer is, it actually doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Brigham Young said the words kill those travelers who are coming through Utah because the elements were all there for the. For the Mormon settlers to pick up on the hints that all the context that was around them and they murdered those travelers, and that was. That was what benefited the church at the time. And it really doesn't matter if Brigham Young actually said those words because the ingredients were there and the people picked up on them.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] Yeah, it's kind of like if you've got this millennialist doctrine, end of time, if you teach, you know, that your people are superior to other people. If you teach a persecution mentality that everyone's out to get us because we're faithful and righteous and we can do no wrong. And then you have the doctrine of blood atonement where, you know, people who do really bad things need to have their bloodshed. If you whip up enough fear and concern and paranoia, then people are going to respond to that without explicit directive.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:18:33] Yeah. And there were rumors that the murderers of Parley P. Pratt were in. In the, in the caravan. There were a lot of things going on there that people were just really eager to please Brigham Young and do. Do what he wanted or what they thought he wanted. And it did benefit the church for. For that to happen, at least until, you know, it came to light 100, 200 years later.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] So we're getting a couple examples from our listeners. Scott Duke says Porter Rockwell trying to assassinate Governor, Governor Boggs to fulfill a revelation. And then Glenn's asking a question. Benefited the church at the time. How? So he's basically. Glenn's questioning you. Luna, how did the Mountain Mills massacre benefit the church at the time? I don't think it needs to benefit the church. I think there just needs to be a perception on the part of the killers that they are doing something that will benefit the church. And in their minds, they were probably just fearful that if. Well, there was a revenge kind of. Oh, we forgot. The temple ceremony itself had some blood oaths. But also I remember some sort of language in the early temple ceremonies about avenging, you know, the persecutors of the church. Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:19:56] Yeah. It benefited in a few ways. And I'm not a huge Mormon history buff, so other people probably be more qualified to answer this. But first of all, it proved their absolute loyalty to the church and their absolute will to obey. If you're going to murder 100 and some odd men, women and children in cold blood, absolute cold blood, with no ability for them to fight back, what else won't you do? I mean, you're gonna do absolutely anything else. And at that point, a person who had done that is gonna justify anything else that Brigham Young asked them to do. They got a bunch of free Mormon converts out of that. All the children under the age of eight were spared and were adopted into the homes of their murderers. Those are kind of probably the biggest ones. I'm sure it vitalized the faith. Faith of the members who lived in that community, even those who weren't directly involved. It justified their faith. Those are some of the sort of. They're not very direct. And then they get all their stuff. I mean, I don't think that part's talked about. Again, I'm not a historian, but that wagon train probably had cattle, horses.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:21:07] Food supplies. But they probably had the starting farm supplies for where they were settling. Again, not a history Buff. But I'd imagine they had a lot of really valuable things that they directly financially benefited from that at least.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] Yeah, you don't need them to actually have benefited. You just, you just need them to have believed they were going to benefit.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:21:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:31] I was just thinking, in addition, you had that scripture that you quoted, DNC58, that it not being meat that God should command in all things. There's another talk that Boyd K. Packer gave at one point called the Unwritten Order of Things where he, where I think he quotes this scripture and he talks about all the ways that we should behave without being commanded to behave that way. There's actually an explicit general conference talk that illustrates this, this point for our listeners. If anyone wants to go look that up, I think they'd find a lot of examples there. Kind of like don't drink caffeine, you know, that, that sort of wear the white shirt. And then some of these things become explicit but enforced by the membership, which I think you're going to get to in just a second.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:22:20] Yeah, I think it will. Yeah. So I have a quote in the next slide that's an example from another high demand group. And this is from. I've been using this guy's memoir as an example and a lot of these over this whole five part presentation. And so this is a new age Christian cult in San Francisco called slf. And Steve Sanchez wrote about his leader, Reverend Will, who's to. Reverend Will is speaking in this quote. Katie's a perfect subject. She wants to please me so bad. I can't, can't get her off me like a booger. All you have to do with her is put a tape in her head and she will act it out for you perfectly whether she is in or out of a trance. Actually a waking suggestion is the strongest kind. I've been doing that with all you people for years. And so that's a person, a manipulator, who is telling us exactly what's going through his mind. Now I don't, I can't speculate if the leaders of the church are this calculating, if they're this aware of what they're doing. But we do know, at least some of these cult leaders are aware of what they're doing and they know exactly how this all works. Other people do it instinctively. Right. So on the next slide we. You might have noticed if you're ex Mormon and think about this stuff a lot, that the official works of the church are full of contradictions. And you would think that this would hurt the church. But actually it's a benefit to the church that way. They can say, we don't teach that or we do teach this, depending on the needs of the moment. They can always pull up a supporting quote, even if other quotes lead the members to a different conclusion. So maybe a member is being abusive to a family member that they think is being sinful, and they're using the scriptures to justify that, that, that it's better than eternal torment. And, you know, you're supposed to obey, obey, obey, and they're using that to hurt their children or something like that. They can come to that conclusion. But meanwhile, the church can point to lots of scriptures that say, no. It says love one another. It says unrighteous dominion is bad. We teach, we teach that abuse is bad. Here's a, Here's a talk from last conference where they spent, you know, less than a minute talking about how abuse is bad so they can pull that quote out. Meanwhile, the still using that to control each other. And I have a picture of Hinckley, Gordon B. Hinckley with his Larry King interview. And around that same time, there was a Time article, it's. I think it's still pretty famous, in which he said about the Eternal Progression Doctrine. He said, I don't think we teach that. And those, those are around the same time. So I always think of his Larry King interview and he's got this smug, smug look on his face. Place in the, in the Larry King interview. And that's an example. We don't teach that. Oh, you're, you're. I think you're muted.

John Dehlin [00:25:09] I was trying to remember if there was another one of your 31 points that covers this idea of doublespeak. Right, where you're remind us what double speak is.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:25:20] Double speak. I didn't separate it out as an individual one, but it shows up in all of these. But doublespeak is a term. You know, I always attribute it to George Orwell, but I'm just realizing he came up with newspeak, and I don't, I'm not sure if he came up with doublespeak, but it's a way of saying you say one thing and then you say it's opposite, but you say them at different times and in different contexts. So that if you put them next to each other, you can clearly see that they're contradictions. But since they're discussed separately, you don't get to see that they're contradictions. So that's pretty much what doublespeak is.

John Dehlin [00:25:52] Okay.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:25:53] Talking out Both sides of your mouth is another.

John Dehlin [00:25:57] Because one of the most most famous parts about that Gordon B. Hinckley story was after this interview with Mike Wallace. I, I don't know who it was, the time interview or whatever. There was a stink in the church about, wow, do we no longer believe that men can become gods? And then Gordon B. Hinckley goes to General Conference and tells the membership, you know, oh, there's been some talk about whether or not we understand and still believe in the doctrine. And he makes some sort of cute comment where he says, you know, don't be worried, we understand the doctrine quite well. And then the whole membership breaks out in laughter. And it was sort of, as I remember it, kind of this eerie way to sort of acknowledge that we speak one way to the press and then. But we all know we have our sacred, and we'll use the term sacred beliefs that we just don't, you know, we don't cast our pearls before swine. But in reality there's like you said, a little bit of smug deception that seems to be going on there.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:27:03] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's kind of this and other of the mind control techniques all kind of fed into that happening. So I have another example in the next slide, and this is a quote from Brad Morin, who has a memoir with his brother Suddenly Strangers about leaving Mormonism. He said, I grew up Mormon with strong sentiments against the civil movement. I felt certain my feelings reflected all the teachings of the church leaders, although I could not recall any specific sermons to that effect. I've often wondered in later years about my spiritual conviction against this movement. And personally I did too. I think I'm probably about the same age as Brad. So I was a child in the 70s, 80s and I remember just people just talking about. I don't remember any specific quote in conference saying, but I remember thinking that Martin Luther King Jr. Was a communist and he was in on some great conspiracy to take over America. I mean this is. I wasn't even alive when he was assassinated and yet these ideas were still being propagated throughout the church. But we're hard pressed to find. I think there might be. I think when I was researching this many years ago, I found like one scant quote from Ezra Taft Benson that was vague and, but they, that's, that's what we spreads through rumors and it spreads through putting together all the pieces of the puzzle to come to a certain conclusion. It works with the political beliefs of most members of the church as well as the religious beliefs. And they all Work together and people tend to come up with the same conclusions separately.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] Yeah. So the fact that like 75% of Mormons in the US are Republican, you're not going to find some mandate somewhere that says to be a Mormon is to be Republican. And of course there are going to be enough Democrats for the church to be able to engage in plausible deniability and say, no, we've got members on both sides. But somehow, especially in Utah, but often elsewhere, a good Mormon gets the message along the way that Republican party politics is kind of the one true way to look at the church. And oftentimes more liberal or progressive politically, members feel marginalized. One example from my lived Mormon experience was what happened on my mission where missionaries were baptizing children that probably had no business being baptized. A single mom seeking out the poorest. You would never sort of see in the missionary manual per se directives that said go to the poorest people because you're going to get the most baptisms or go to the immigrants or find the single moms or baptized the kids. But you just hear it over and over again in these missions where, where that's what the missionaries end up doing. And, and in my, in my mission's case, it became really abusive. But you could never probably find my mission of president saying, Baptize 40 people a month and, and have soccer, have soccer parties where you then take them all back to the church and baptize them. But it's just, but then those, the zone leaders that engage in that kind of behavior get promoted to assistance to the president. And that really sends clear messages to the missionaries on what types of behaviors lead to leadership callings. And that's kind of how it ends up shaking out. So again, it's an example of nothing written down. Of course, the church could fix this if it, if it wanted to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:30:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] But. But it doesn't, you know, and so

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:30:40] the behavior grows and, and this technique is, is just merged with the identification and example technique that we're going to be talking about. And what you just pointed there to where you look and you see who's getting promoted. You see who's getting the kudos and the cookies and stuff like that. And you say, I want to be like them. And that's where the identification and example comes in. Yeah, yeah. So you notice, you might have noticed in conference talk and people who are emulating conference talks on the local level that members are rarely commanded. You know, you don't see the prophet saying thou shalt in Old Testament terms, but you do Hear a lot of members being invited, implored, counseled, advised, directed and guided and so forth. I have a bullet point. What words can you think of? Because I have not done actually an extensive study to go through and figure out what the words are and how many times they've used them. But these are the ones that come to mind. And I have a quote from, from Elder Boyd K. Packard which kind of demonstrates that this may not be a mistake, that they use these soft words and that the words don't mean invited and guided. They mean a commandment. And members know that they mean a commandment. So this quote is from Packer's talk to the All Church coordinating council in 1993. He says, I was asked to write an article for the improvement era. It was returned with the request that I change some words. I balked it bit. I remember Brother Lee's council. I had to submit. Now I'm glad, very glad that if someone digs it out, I was invited to change it. So Elder Lee, Brother Lee invited him to change the words of his talk and yet Packer translated that to he had to submit. That's those are his words. He submitted to Brother Lee based on an invitation.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] I thought of a couple more examples from my Mormon experience that I thought might be relevant. So one is you probably don't get Mormon direction from leadership saying only have Mormon friends, right? But the teachings about alcohol and modesty and dress and morality and the spirit of the gift of the Holy Ghost versus just the light of Christ, it just tends to lead to Mormons only really hanging out with and associating with other orthodox believing Mormons. And it may be parents that enforce that on their kids. But you probably won't find a lot of church curriculum that says only hang out with Mormons, right? But it just ends up like the

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:33:18] strength for strength of you says and has said for many decades. You know, hang out with people with high standards or your standards or similar standards to you or they, they, they refer to the standards. Well, most of the world, which we're taught is wicked, drinks occasionally, you know, uses drugs, occasionally does sexual things, occasionally, you know, I mean that's kind of the world the way the world is. And so if you, they watch rated R movies, they drink Pepsi and so if you are following the high standards thing, you're not going to find a whole lot of non members who, who don't follow those standards. And so you're still stuck having members for friends. If you're following the fourth ranks of four, strength of youth Pamphlet.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Yeah. Another example that came to my mind is mixed faith marriages. You know, you're not going to ever see the church tell somebody if your spouse no longer believes, leave them. And in fact, when I talked to Elder Apostle, Mormon Apostle Elder Holland about this, you know, his comment was, we don't tell people who they should and shouldn't divorce. You know, we don't get into that sort of thing. But something has led believing spouses to feel like, you know, losing one's faith is worthy of divorce because we've seen that time and time again. So again, the church would probably never want to be caught recommending that. But somehow that is what logically occurs to believing Mormons whose spouses of the church, by the way, I forgot to mention back with associating only with Mormons, one of the benefits the church has of its members only associating with other members is that limits their exposure to other good people who aren't Mormon, and it limits the information that they receive about the church having problems or, you know, science being real or evidence really mattering. And so if you can get people to limit their associations, which includes a non believing spouse, you really do have a more significant control over the information the members receive and the thoughts that they're able to have. And that's of course, of course all contributes to this idea of the Mormon bubble where you can have Mormons living in 2021 who've never heard of the CES letter, Fawn Brody, Kate Kelly, Ordained Women, Mormon Stories podcast, you know, all the different ways that you could learn about Mormonism. You've got people in the Internet going strong in mobile devices, in everyone's hand. You can still have this dynamic where in 2021 someone's never heard of any of this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:35:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:58] And they, and they're educated graduate degrees living along the Wasatch front.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:36:03] Yeah. And that's, that's Lou control. That's the technique called Malou control. Yeah, yeah. And of course you wouldn't, like you

John Dehlin [00:36:09] said, these things kind of work together, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:36:10] Yeah. And mix the mixed face faith marriage thing, I mean, they, again, they can dodge that. They don't say that. But they do. You can't get into the celestial kingdom without your partner, without your spouse. I mean, that is absolutely. In the scriptures it is quoted. It's not, you know, neglected down there hidden somewhere. It is very frequently quoted. You can't get in the celestial kingdom if your spouse isn't coming with you. So of course you would divorce. I mean, that's the only conclusion is that you would divorce your spouse or else cross your fingers and hope it works out, hope he comes around or she comes around. So, yeah, that's again, that's a great example of how they can say it and not say it at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] And then the only other one that comes to mind, it's a little bit like Mountain Meadows, but it's kind of different for some reason with disciplinary councils, especially with high profile instances of apostates. The church has always wanted to insist that it's not commanding the excommunications from the top down. I guess it's this concept of teach them correct principles, let them govern themselves. But the church never wants its fingerprints on high profile excommunications. It always wants to be able to sort of point to the bishop or the stake president as the one that made the decision. But in my case, literally, Elder Ballard and L. Whitney Clayton, if that's his name, came to, held a stake leadership thing named, named, you know, the types of apostates that are causing trouble on the Internet. I think they even named me and ordained women. We were on a bubble chart that got shown in these training meetings. And then they go, but they don't actually say take, you know, take John out. They just sort of like say, here are the types of things that, that might qualify for apostasy. Here are even some other more prominent apostates. And then they leave and they allow the leaders to connect the dots and to sort of make the. Thomas. Was it Thomas?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:14] Thomas Beckett. Yeah. Won't someone review this? Troublesome podcaster, right? Yeah, there's a troublesome podcaster.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] Podcasters are causing a lot of trouble these days if there happens to be one in your stake, you know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:28] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:38:29] I don't know if these are examples, but they're ones that come to my mind.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:32] Yeah, they're, they're good examples. Examples.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:38:35] Okay, more example. Let's see. Yeah, I have more examples on the next slide. So in Mormonism, more is always better. That's the attitude I had as a Mormon. If there's a commandment about something, well, I don't want to be a slothful and unwise servant. So I'm going to double down on all the commandments. That was kind of my attitude towards it. And, and, and I saw other people doing that. So. So one logical conclusion is pay more tithing. There's the law of consecration. Everything that is yours is God's or the Church's. Work harder. Go the extra mile. Magnify your calling. Pray More Read more scriptures and what I think is a recipe for domestic abuse is DNC 121 34. Reproving betimes with sharpness when moved upon by the Holy Ghost, then showing forth afterwards an increase of love towards him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy and thou. That's often used by abusers. I have to cough just a second.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] No worries.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:39:39] Anyway, it's yeah, terrible timing too because I'm talking about abuse. You know, the rationale ingredients that often parents put together in this situation with scriptures like this, and there's some from the Old Testament as well, spare the rod, spoil the child, etc. Is that if your eternal suffering is going to be great, if you don't follow, you know, hold to the rod, then a little abuse now a little beating or bad mouthing or like belittling or, or name calling or whatever your abusive technique is, a little bit of that now is, is a loving act within that context. And so scriptures like this and others are the ingredients that many abusers within the church put together and then use that as an excuse to abuse their children or their spouse, people in their family.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Yeah, yeah, that's powerful. I, I, there are a couple other ones that I don't know if, if they would quite qualify, but I just wanted to run them by you. Sometimes what we see in Mormonism today is this culture, these cultural practices that were taught to our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents that have been written out of, of the, the general Thor. You know, general authorities no longer say certain types of things, they're no longer in the handbook of instructions, but they're still lived in, in the everyday practices of the members and particularly amongst the leadership. So one example would be. So it's basically old quotes of general authorities that are no longer embraced but are still part of, of the cultural, are still cultural artifacts that influence us. So one example is this famous quote, I would rather have my child come home in a pine box than unworthy from their mission. Now the leaders would be able to say we don't teach that, but it still gets passed on because of our parents and our grandparents taught us that. Does that make sense?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:41:39] It does. And they get the benefit for having that be out in the wild in the culture. And culture is definitely in fact the next slide I kind of talk about. This culture is definitely a part of how indirect directives get spread. So maybe only, you know, a handful of members come up with the conclusion from the ingredients that they're offered. But the rest are still susceptible to those conclusions because they're spread culturally.

John Dehlin [00:42:05] Yeah. And we'll jump to the next slide. But the other example I thought of is I. I'm pretty sure if you go through the entire handbook of instructions now, the word masterpiece bait won't appear anywhere in there. So then you have to ask, well, then why is this, like the number one issue on the minds of bishops? Well, there's either private training we're not privy to, or they're simply just carrying forward the perceptions and the teachings of their. Of their predecessors, so.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:42:32] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:34] And that, I think that takes us to this slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:42:36] Oh, and actually, this is starting a new topic, so do we have anything else to say? Okay, this is about identification and example, which is very similar. Anything else to say on indirect directives?

John Dehlin [00:42:49] No, just. I mean it. I think I would love. Here's what I'd love to do. I want to invite listeners, you know, viewers who watch this on YouTube, listeners that are listening to this. I would love you guys to come up to the post for this episode and share any examples the listeners have of indirect directives, because I. I am. I'm going to guess that it's going to take some work for people to identify these because they're so subtle sometimes. And. And by definition, they're indirect. But my guess is they're everywhere and they're more powerful than we even can imagine. But. But because they're subtle and indirect, we probably have to start paying attention to notice them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:37] You can't just Google this one, right?

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:39] So, yeah, you got to think about it.

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Yeah. But it. But I think it's everywhere. And I've just come up with six just, you know, in preparation in the past 30 minutes. So, yeah, I think there's probably a lot. So we do this for sure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:53] Yeah. Yeah. All right.

John Dehlin [00:43:55] Yeah. All right. So the next one.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:43:59] Yeah. So influence doesn't just have to be, as we explored, verbal. It doesn't have to be wrote like this is, you know, thou shalt not kill or whatever. They can be given through examples and identification. So on the slide, it's do as I do, not as I say. And I have a little meme with Yoda. As I say, do as I do, do not. So this one is in a triangle with social pressure and indirective, indirect directives. So the one we just talked about, plus one we talked about previously, it just, like indirect directives, it creates plausible deniabilities. They can. We don't actually say that it creates the culture and is created by the culture. So the culture is in kind of a circular. You know, it really bothers me when the church says, oh, that's just the culture causing that, because it's a cop out. The church has, the church has full control of its members for the most part as a body. And if they got up on the pulpit and said, look, you guys need to cut this out and describe what the thing is and point to it and do that once every two or three years, they could spend five minutes on it. They could get all of these cultural behaviors to just go away. But these cultural behaviors benefit them. And so they don't want to do that even though it's harming people, whatever that behavior might be. We talked about perfectionism, for instance, in the demand for purity. Slide in the first part. And perfectionism is an example of a conclusion that you probably would come up with, given how much the church harps on being perfect and trying to become perfect and following all the commandments. And so if you end up with a perfectionism problem that's leading you to depression and anxiety on a regular basis and maybe self harming behaviors and other bad behaviors, you might be willing to just blame that on the culture. And I have seen that being blamed on the culture. But really the church is creating that culture. I'm just gonna say it right there and put a pin on that because that's, that is what they're doing. Of course, when you were following the example of others, that can lead to belief follows behavior. So we're, we're following someone else's example and we're not really sure why we're behaving the way that they are. And so our brains resolve that too. I'm behaving this way because I believe in the doctrines that support establishes phobias. And we will be talking about phobia inducement later on. Today it plays in hand with mystical manipulation, which is sort of the orchestration of or of miracles or the spotting of miracles through confirmation bias. So for instance, she sinned, therefore something bad happened, that is goes hand in hand with identification and example, where often examples are held up to say, you know, she sinned and then something bad happened. Therefore when we say that wickedness never was happiness, that's true. It's also used to punish, ostracize and exclude people because they see, they look around and they see how other people are being treated. They may see that someone's being excluded and so they, they stop doing that behavior because they see the example of what happens to people who do that, and also there is a pressure on Mormons to be an example, which probably doesn't need much proof, although I do think I have a quote in here to sort of show that. But, yeah, being an example was definitely taught all of us, which then becomes part of demand for purity. So you have to be pure. You have to be completely pure, and you have to show everyone that you're being completely pure so that they'll follow your example.

John Dehlin [00:47:29] I love it. Yeah. And the next slide really helps drive it home, I think.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:47:33] Yeah. And so this sort of influence is done both through direct examples and stories that may or may not be true. So we have stories of ex Mormons that are always tragedies in general conference. We never hear a story of an ex Mormon who left the church and went and had a good, comfortable, happy life. There are always terrible things happen to them until they wipe up. Stories of the faithful are always inspiring. So this person did the right thing at the right time and good things happen to them. We never hear they did a good thing at the right time and then they were punished for it and there was nothing good came of it. We never hear that story. Even though examples of both of these things exist, we never hear those stories. And you'll notice that all the stories that general authorities tell about themselves are always. That always make them look good. Even that when they're saying, look at the. Look at how flawed I am, they tell a cute little story that just makes them more likable. They broke a window when they were little and. And had to tell a lie, or then they were honest about it later. Cute little things. You know, I remember one general authority was bad at singing, you know, and. And everybody laughs at that. And it makes them cute and likable. It's all. But they never tell about, you know, I did sexual sins or I got drunk one time. Like, they never. They never tell stories of how they're flawed in serious ways. I. I lied in a conference talk. I. They never. I excused a sexual abuser. I like. They never say things that they've probably done that were far worse. It's always cutesy stuff. And as a writer, out of a

John Dehlin [00:49:03] bunch of money from a pyramid scheme, you know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:49:06] Exactly. Yeah. They never do any serious stuff. And as a writer, I know that if you want to make a character likable, you give them a couple of cute little flaws. Like, that's just. It's just the trick that writers know that we do to make a character likable. And general authorities are doing that with themselves. Themselves. And also through this process, members learn to compare each other to each other. That person's sinning, and so I'm better than they are. Oh, that person seems to have a perfect life, so I'm worse than they are. It gets us in the habit of comparing ourselves to others, which isn't psychologically healthy to do in most cases. And this same dynamic happens a lot in domestic abuse. So as an abuse survivor, I have examples from my own life. Has nothing to do with Mormonism. Neither of us were Mormon at the time, but where we were in an open relationship. And so he was dating other people, and so he would be like, you know, so. And so I was dating the other day and she said such and such. And can you believe that? That's. I don't think I'm going to date her anymore. And then I got the message, don't say things like that. Don't talk like that. And I knew right away, like, what was expected of me. So it's used for. At all levels of abusive from. From the individual up to organizations.

John Dehlin [00:50:16] Yeah, yeah. What comes to mind is just this association with people who leave the church, that the light goes out of their eyes and they're darker and they've lost the spirit. Or just these testimony meetings where people say, isn't it just sad when you think about the people who aren't members of the church and they don't have a view of the afterlife that's reassuring, or they don't have the benefit of the spirit? It does reinforce kind of a superiority complex. And it kind of curses and conditions people to demonize and. Or look down on and. Or devalue people who either don't join the church or who leave the church and are.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:50:58] And after having left the church, I mean, I've been out 20 years and I still feel the burden of when things go wrong in my life or things go bad. I know that Mormons are judging me and saying, you know, yeah, look at. That's what happens to Luna because she left the church. And they. See, I don't know how to get my pronouns right all the time either, because I'm sure they're saying she, by the way, because they're not going to respect my gender anyway. And so, yeah, they left the church. And so look at that, you know, And I have had a rough life the last few years, and I've had great times in my life since I left the church, too. Just like anybody. I want to let all of you know, just like any of us Our lives are ups and their downs and their successes and their failures. And unlike what the church taught us, that has nothing to do with how, how much you're following God's plan or how much you're obeying some old men down in Salt Lake City. Like it has nothing to do with any of those things. Yes, there are consequences for choices that we make. And I chose, you know, I chose a bad person to get with and I was abused. And that has caused a lot of problems in my life that I'm still having to deal with. That, that, that was a specific choice, though, that I had awareness of or didn't have awareness of and have learned better since. But that wasn't like a prophet telling me, don't get with that specific person or the Spirit wasn't there to tell me one way or another and wouldn't have been if I'd been in the church. Because I can think of a lot of faithful, true believing Mormons who get with abusers and had a lot worse road toe to road to hoe than I did. So I just want to let everybody know out there that, like, this is crap and it's in your head. It's in my head at least, and it gets to me all the time. And I just have to remind myself that it's, it's not fair. It's not fair to us, it's not fair to Mormons, it's not fair to anybody to, to nitpick at people's lives and how they're resulting based on whether or not they still have faith in the church now.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] And this is a really powerful binding force that keeps people from leaving the church because, because there's this fear. You know, we've already been, you know, fear has been instilled within us. You can't be moral without the church. You can't. You, why would you not cheat on your spouse without the church? And of course, you can't raise healthy, good children outside of the church. And then of course, you know, I hear all the time, children and grandchildren of apostles that develop drug addictions or die by suicide or are, are gay. Not that those are bad things, but just like things that from the orthodox Mormon standpoint are bad. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:53:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] And you, you would never have an apostle get up in general conference and say, yeah, I guess I was too strict on my kids or my, my son sure blew it with my grandkids. And now they've, you know, they're depressed and you know, have, have symptoms of bipolar. Mormons will only talk positively like you say about their own decisions, their own kids, their own grandkids, you'll only hear the positive stories. And then of course, if somebody leaves the church and then one bad thing happens. The believing members are conditioned to say, look, it's a cautionary tale. You leave the church, look what happens. Your kid starts smoking or they got pregnant out of wedlock or whatever, they got tattoos or they started drinking coffee. And it becomes this psychological thing whereby never talking about the bad of believers and then through confirmation bias, only pointing out and noticing what would be perceived as negative by people who leave. It leaves people who are on the fence, on the margins about leaving, terrified that if they leave they'll lose their job, they'll lose their income, their kids will become sex workers and drug dealers. And it's a real, real powerful binding force on the, on the membership. And it reminds me of this photo that it's a meme, maybe you've incorporated this in your slides where it shows someone hanging onto a rock for dear life as if they're gonna fall and die. And then you zoom out and there's only like a foot between their feet and another ledge below them. But they don't know that at the time. Time. And so you think you're going to fall to your death and really what you do is you fall to stable, solid ground. And I've known so many people whose marriages improved, they improved as parents, their job, their income doubled. You know, so many instances of very, very positive. They'd lost a ton of weight. How many ex Mormons left the church and then lost a ton of weight because they weren't self medicating away their feelings. Feelings. I'm not trying to say leaving the church is a panacea by any stretch. There, there are, you know, Buddha. The principle of Buddhism is life has suffering and you're not going to avoid suffering. So you'll always find the cautionary tale if you're looking for it. But on the other hand, this conditioning is real. But what I'm here to say is there are just so many people who leave Mormon orthodoxy and, or the church and everything improves. But you just, you'll never hear that in a Mormon context. All you hear is the negative.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:56:20] Exactly. Yeah. And that's. And any harms that, you know, a lot of us suffer PTSD after we leave the church and so that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, that mystical manipulation in that we are dealing with spiritual abuse that the church put on us and we're finally able to like get some perspective on that. And relax and let down our guard a little bit. And then that's when all the symptoms of the trauma come up and then they point to and say, ah, look, see you're, you're miserable. And we may self medicate with that if we don't have guidance or help for that, for those issues. We may become an alcoholic or something like that or make a lot of mistakes because we're fresh out of the church and we don't know how to deal well with adult topics like sex and alcohol and drugs and other things. And so we may, we may go overboard in those ways. And that, that's just sort of self fulfilling on that. So in reality where we all have our lives to live and there are ups and downs and it's, it's hard to point to and say, well that's because you didn't have the spirit. If we compare all the, if we compare it fairly with all the examples of all the kinds of people, we can't make that the conclusion that the church makes.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] And just we've talked about this before. But just a final reminder that one of the most severe things a human can experience is parental and, or familial rejection. And that can be them kicking you out of their lives, but it can also be them constantly and continually and eternally viewing you as a disappointment. Either one of those things can be very psychologically damaging for the recipient of that treatment to the point where it could drive them to levels of anxiety or depression or fear or even, you know, unhealthy substance use or unhealthy coping behaviors. Because that's, that's what family rejection does. And we just have to realize that, that like you said, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when one of the most severe actions, one of the most damaging actions is committed against you by familial rejection or social rejection. You know, like Carolyn Pearson said, you throw people in the gutter, they're going to get dirty.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:36] Yeah, exactly. And it's not fair to blame them then for that. And that's blame reversal.

John Dehlin [00:58:41] Yeah, that's right. Very good, very good.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:58:42] Yeah. So on the next slide we have a quote from Stephen Hassan and he's going to reference some of his time with the Moonies. But he says most of the techniques members learn are not taught directly or consciously, but rather through the process of behavioral modeling. They learn by watching older members listening to the leader and modeling themselves after their behavior. Eventually they unconsciously pick up some of the leaders behaviors, including speech patterns and gesticulations. And then elsewhere in the book, he says, four years after I got out of the Moonies, I started learning more about hypnosis. And I realized I had been trained to use hypnotic processes even without knowing what hypnosis was. So that shows you how powerful we can learn through identification and example. We can even learn how to use manipulative techniques on other people.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [00:59:33] And so malignant narcissists use this instinctively. I already mentioned my example from my abuser. And the thought that you have when you're faced with one of these examples is you. You identify with the person being used in the example and you think, if it can happen to that person, it can happen to me. And that's reasonable. We're animals, we're survivals survivors. We get out there and we do what it takes to live, and we're social animals. And so we learn from other people. That's one of our great survival skills as human beings. And so another quote from Steve Sanchez from his memoir Spiritual Perversion, talking about the SLF cult in California, he's talking about one of the other members. He says, Renee seemed to be getting weirder. She became more and more distant, sad, and shut down. I didn't know what was going on, but we all perceived her as unworthy, a renegade and a betrayer of Reverend Will. In the teaching, he said, she wants to take me down because misery loves company. She doesn't realize I have a mission I can't jeopardize. The entities are taking over in her head. She can't handle the truth. We all believe this story and now looked at Rene as a nutcase, a slime ball whose soul had been consumed by the world. Now keep in mind slime. When we look at the next quote, just hold that in mind now. And Renee is the slime ball. Remember that. And then next slide.

John Dehlin [01:00:57] Yes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:00:59] A few pages later, he's. He ends up. Steve ends up on Reverend Will's bad side. And so Steve says, I was so caught up in the teaching, it never occurred to me to question Reverend Will. I felt like slime and that there was something inherently wrong with me and that I had to try harder. So he, he grabbed hold of that word that was associated with Renee that Reverend Will called Renee and he brough it into his own mind and then applied it to himself.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] Yeah, it makes total sense.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:01:26] Yeah. Next slide. So this is from Suddenly Strangers Again. Two brothers wrote a memoir about leaving Mormonism. He says, as for Mormons who suffered a divorce in this family oriented church, I judged them as falling short, although I considered My judgment to be measured and merciful. My inclination was to belie that. As my wife Connie had been taught in a religion class. Class, failure in marriage is almost total failure. I did not acknowledge the arrogance of the judgment I passed on to others. Indeed, for the most part, they were subconscious thoughts. And so it does get us to compare each other to each other and look down on those, and it gives us a little burst, a little boost to help with all the negative emotional things that are going on because of the group.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Yeah, there's that. That famous quote, no, success can compensate for failure in the home. Right. That can leave you feeling like a fist. Failure.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:02:17] Yeah. And judging others as well.

John Dehlin [01:02:20] Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:02:21] So does the church teach us to be examples or to look to examples? Well, let's see. Thomas Monson in April 2008, in a talk entitled Examples of righteousness, said, always remember that people. And I have some emphasis added. Always remember that people are looking for you to. For leadership. And you are influencing the lives of individuals either for good or for bad, which influence will be felt for generations to come. No pressure, he says. At state conference, I observed a young boy sitting with his family in the front row. As the meeting progressed, I began to notice if I crossed one leg over the other, the young boy would do the same. If I reversed the motions and crossed over the other leg, he would follow suit. I put my hands on my lap and he would do the same. I decided to put him to the test. I looked squarely at him, certain I had his attention, and then wiggled my ears. He made a vain attempt to do the same, but I had had him. He just couldn't quite get his ears to wiggle. And so they are very aware of the power of identification and example within the church.

John Dehlin [01:03:26] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:03:28] My patriarchal blessing on the next slide says, you are an example unto those in whom you associate with and in those in whom you come in contact with. Be not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but speak out and uphold and sustain those in authority over you and appreciate the blessings of being a member of the church. And in a 2002 Aaronic Priesthood lesson manual, it says, tell of someone you know whose life has been affected by abuse of dangerous substances without giving names. Emphasize that the Lord has given us the word of wisdom to help take care of our bodies and avoid the sorrow that comes with substance abuse. So, yeah, examples are definitely encouraged to be given throughout the church.

John Dehlin [01:04:04] And I'm not sure did did one of the previous items, one of the previous 25 that we've covered Talk about kind of the church's use of celebrity as. As a way to market the church. Because if I'm thinking about how so many people converted to mormonism in the 60s and the 70s, you know, the Osmonds had this phenomenal effect on conversion to Mormonism because their big smiles, happy, positive, talented, clean living, big families, wealth, success. Yeah, like what? And we all know about, you know, Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Leah Remini and the ways that Scientology has used celebrities as a way to market. Market the church. And, and of course, we all. We all know how the church is led in its marketing efforts with the family. And in fact, there are a lot of great Mormon families now, or at least a lot of families that look fantastic. And then you also learn about the dark side behind a lot of these smiley, happy, positive Mormon families that many times there is abuse. There is verbal abuse or control or anxiety disorders or depression. But you'll never know any of that because from the Osmonds on down, as long as culturally we're discouraged from talking about the hard things, and as long as is we're focusing on the public image of dressed up, nice, clean cut, happy families, you're creating this image for identification purposes, whereas the reality may not and often doesn't live up to the perception. But that's where marketing and PR can be so effective. Am I wrong?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:05:53] I think so. I think I don't really address celebrities too much. The Mormon Church specifically doesn't, I think, rely on celebrities as much as at least in this day and age. And the Osmonds were slightly before my time. I was born in 74, so they were kind of still sort of around at that point, but not like big. So I can't really. I didn't really observe that time. So I think that the church focuses more on their PR arm, on ads and films and things like that, and also on their missionary program. And as we've talked, I think the church does really, really well at getting into government and getting into business, big business, more than Scientology does. And Scientology's real good thing is, is getting into Hollywood and in a day, getting in there. So, yeah, I think it just kind of is different strengths and weaknesses. I don't think the church relies too much on celebrities in this day and age. And some of their celebrities may even be a little bit problematic. Like, I'm thinking of Brandon Flowers from the Killers, who isn't exactly like a straight and narrow Mormon. Mormon. I really love his music because he's not exactly a straight Narrow Mormon. I can relate to a lot of his songs. So there's, I can't really think of any like prominent where the church says, look at them, they're Mormon who has definitely like a pure thing like the Osmonds had going on.

John Dehlin [01:07:16] So I mean, I'm thinking of like Steve Young, The San Francisco 49ers quarterback for me is an example of a, a really well known and prominent Mormon. Stephen R. Covey, maybe serve that role for a time. And if you think of the I'm a Mormon campaign, the church did indeed do an I'm a Mormon video with Brandon Flowers. And at that point he helped serve their image of, their evolving image of saying, hey, you don't have to be totally boring and square. You can be a rock star and a faithful Mormon. Now whatever Brandon Florida hours private behaviors actually are, is, you know, is a different thing. And that's private and, and we're not standing in judgment of that. But no, I, I do think over the years Dale Murphy was a, was a famous baseball player for the Atlanta Braves. Like I do think over the years Sean Bradley was a famous basketball player. I think when they've been able to. Olympians, like the church is always really keen to advertise which Olympians are serving in the Olympics or are in the Olympics or, or even the BYU football team as a, as a shining example of a, of a intercollegiate football team. Danny A. You know, as a, as a basketball player, athletes, actors. But, but it is problematic because a lot of these people end up leaving and I'm guessing that the church is learning that it's a double edged sword to invest in celebrities because those celebrities might someday become Leo Reminis and then that becomes a huge embarrassment for the church. So it's probably smart in 2021 for the church to ramp down its emphasis on celebrities because a lot of them are leaving.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:09:03] Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:09:05] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:09:07] So the role models that we are presented with in the church are not realistic. And I have a picture of Barbie to sort of be a metaphor for that because Barbie is not a realistic beauty standard. I think if you were to have a human being with her proportion portions that she wouldn't be able to walk. I think some, some people have explored that quite a bit. So those examples that were held up do not represent your ideal self, but the ideal of the Mormon pseudo personality. So you are a unique individual with your own likes and preferences and interests and talents and that the ideal perfect you is not the same as the ideal perfect general authority. Those are two different, completely different things. And we shouldn't aspire to be someone that we're not. We shouldn't aspire to fit ourselves into a mold that we don't fit in. I mean, we can, but it's not the path to being a happy person, to be well adjusted. And as I mentioned, leaders only are showing us their best sides. So we don't see the real struggles that they've gone through, the real flaws that they have, the real bad things that they've done. We're only seeing the best of them. So how can we live up, up to what we can't see inside? You know, we can't live up to a fake outer Persona. Mention of theory of mind. Theory of mind is, is kind of controversial in autism circles. I think it's a better principle to apply just in general. And it's. It's the idea of how, how we think about other people and what is going on in other people's minds. What, what is their reasoning when they are approaching an issue. And we tend to, all people tend to project our own theory of mind onto other people. We tend to think that other using similar reasoning processes to us. And so because of that, like, I know about myself, like, way more than I know about anybody else. I know the things I don't like about myself. I know all the problems that I have and the struggles that I have and the times I feel bad, I don't get to know that about someone else. They are going to show a front, whatever that is, and I don't get to know. And so I'm going to see my flaws as being way bigger than what someone else's flaws are. Even if they're telling me what their flaws are, I'm still going to outsize my own flaws to myself. So it's a good thing to keep in mind. And that's the last slide, actually, on, on this one. I think these are. These are kind of the remedies to this things to keep in mind, to kind of adjust your perspective to something that's hopefully more healthy.

John Dehlin [01:11:39] We did have one comment from a listener, Tamara, reminding us that the church has used Gladys Knight as a way to communicate to the world that there are people of God color. I think Thorough Bailey, the former jazz standout power forward kind of guy, is another example of not to beat that point. But I just wanted to follow up with a few examples that have been used over the years.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:12:01] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:04] All right. So that's influence through identification and example. And, you know, that clearly is A powerful tool used by the church. So I think the church checks that box. Let's go ahead and go to the next one. Which is induced phobias or fears, Right?

Induced Phobias and Fear-Based Conditioning

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:12:23] Yeah. So these induced phobias are fears that are instilled in us by the high demand group that are created by things like dispensing of existence, which is the technique that instills a death threat or the equivalent of a death threat in you. By our dependency that we gain upon the group, by the social pressure of those around around us, by the mystical manipulation or contrivance of miracles that the church does or connection connecting coincidences that aren't necessarily connected and demand for purity, which is the purity culture. You have to be perfect and so forth. So all many of these other techniques we've been discussing all serve to create fears in you. These fears can create double binds where you're afraid of doing one thing and you're also afraid of doing the opposite. And there's no right and answer. And it strongly suppresses negative thoughts, open and private criticism, doubt and the possibility of leaving. So that's the purpose that induced inducing phobia serves.

John Dehlin [01:13:19] Okay, so creating lots of fears.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:13:22] Yeah. So the definition of a phobia is an irrational, extreme and persistent fear of something that doesn't exist is unlikely to occur or is unlikely to cause harm. Harm. And the thing about fear and phobias is their thought stopping on a physiological level. Like your brain chemistry kicks in and when fear is triggered, your, most of your brain processes are rerouted to the amygdala and which is your lizard brain is in short way to put it. And you, your heart rate goes up and your body is preparing itself with stress hormones and it's preparing itself to either flow, fight, flight, freeze or appease. You're going to fight the thing, you're going to run, you're going to hide and freeze or you're going to try. As social animals we have an option to try to talk ourselves out of it. And it just triggers that our rational senses are lowered quite a bit. Those because that part of the brain is not as being specialized at that moment. Another part of your brain is phobia in this case can be anything from just a mild anxiety, a mild fear on up to a full blown panic attack. And it puts us on an anxious cycle called the hamster wheel where we're constantly worried if I do this and that this will happen, then if I do that, then that'll happen. And that is a state that keeps us from being able to Think critically about the organization, especially if we've been taught to be afraid of thinking critically about the organization.

John Dehlin [01:14:51] I have one example that just kind of comes up personally for me, there's a patriarchal blessing. There's a line in my patriarchal blessing that basically said if you obey the word of wisdom, you'll. You'll have strength and, you know, vitality and you'll live long and all that kind of stuff. And I think I really internalize that. And so to this day, I haven't tried alcohol or any, you know, psilocybin or marijuana or any of that type of stuff. Whereas a lot of my friends have and have developed what they would probably say is a healthy relationship with. With, you know, even. Even kind of responsible alcohol use or whatever. Whatever. And, you know, I've got 15 different reasons why I haven't tried that stuff. And I don't think anybody should feel like they have to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:15:36] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:15:38] And if I'm being honest, I do think in my mind I've made that opposite association that, that kind of like Samson, you know, if you cut Samson's hair, he loses his strength. I think I probably do somewhere have the psychological association where if I do break the word of wisdom in any. And I still drink coffee, so even in my own world and tea, I've. I've kind of made a differentiation there. But for me, I think I've got it in my brain that if I try some of those more recreational drugs or even, even alcohol, that something bad might happen to me. And it's. It's superstitious. But I think that's the implication of associating health and strength and positivity with not using certain substances. You. You automatically, in your mind, the inverse is also, also there, which is bad things will happen to you if you do, you know, do certain things also. You don't wear your garments, you'll cheat on your spouse, or some type of physical harm will come to you. You know, these are all. If you leave the church, you know, you'll get divorced or you won't be moral or you won't be able to raise your kids. There's so many examples of fear.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:16:48] There are controls and it's wired. It becomes baked into you. So my, my example. And I was scared to try substances for the first, but I'm. That path has been well trod since then. But for a long time, I was afraid of the dark after I left the church. I was afraid of evil spirits. I was still afraid of evil spirits for years after I left the church. And I finally did some. I sort of used some paganism and did some psycho. I think paganism is mostly psychological, but that's great. I think that's fine. And so I used some psychological tricks by designing a spell that would sort of get rid of the evil. Evil spirits for good. And I still rely on that. I still invoke that every once in a while. Just. And that. That worked for me to get rid of my fear of the dark and fear of evil spirits. Now I watch horror movies and stuff and have a great time. And that's another. I guess we're getting into remedies at this point. But, you know, I used to be terrified to watch horror movies because I was afraid that being afraid would bring evil spirits. So why would you make yourself afraid on purpose? Because definitely that's going to bring the evil spirits, which was. Speaking of hamster wheels like that. Just get me in there. Oh, I'm scared. Oh, no. That means there's evil spirits. Oh, no, that means I'm more scared. It was awful. It was terrible. And so I finally started watching horror movies as a way to put the fear in the box. It's in that box. My iPad or the TV or whatever. And I can turn it off at any time. I can reassure myself that that's fake blood and that's fake spirits and that's all special effects. And it allowed me to sort of externalize those fear fears and put them into something that I had control over, which now it's hard for me to get scared during a horror movie. That's just because I see how cheesy most of the effects are and so forth. So.

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Yeah, and sometimes exposure is what you need. You just need to live without garments for a while to stop living in fear about not wearing your garments.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:18:44] Yeah, exactly. But reason doesn't always do it. Rationality doesn't always do it. And that's the thing is, is you've got to do it when you're ready, you know, unless. Unless it's something you absolutely have to overcome your fear for stuff like drinking alcohol. I mean, it's not hurting you to not drink alcohol. And so when you feel ready, you may or may not do it. And that's. That's what matters. So.

John Dehlin [01:19:04] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:19:07] So in the next slide, we have a quote from Stephen Hassan from Releasing the Bonds and in the Extreme, he says this panic response causes a number of physiological symptoms, including a racing heart, a shortness of. Of breath, dry mouth, cold, clammy hands, and sometimes nausea. The most Common coping mechanism for a phobic individual is avoidance of the provoking stimulus, which in the Mormon context is going to be avoiding thinking about that thing. Phobias destabilize and undermine a person's view of reality, emotional and intellectual control, self confidence and judgment. So this is some pretty heavy stuff, but it does get you to stop thinking about whatever it is you're not supposed to, to think about.

John Dehlin [01:19:48] There's a. There's an interesting comment from. Well, I was thinking about fear of the water. When you're on a mission, you read that, that verse in the Doctrine and Covenants that Satan has control of the waters. And then you combine that with kind of mission lore and you have all sorts of fear about swimming and what the water can do. Tamara writes, when I left, my never Mormon cousin told me she had always been concerned about how obsessed I was with Satan. I was surprised. And then I started paying attention. Satan is the Mormon boogeyman. And I remember that. I remember being made. Made to be fearful of Ouija boards, which are just silly board games.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:26] Right.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] And of the influence of. Of satanic spirits. You know, to the point where as a teenager I was truly afraid of like sometimes going to cemeteries at night because. Because maybe evil spirits would be there there. Right. And maybe they could influence you. Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:44] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:20:44] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:20:47] We have another quote by Stephen Hassan. This was in Combating Cult Mind Control, but I got it from it being quoted in Captive Hearts, Captive Minds. He says, today's cults know how to effectively implant negative, vivid negative images deep within the members subconscious minds, making it impossible for the member to even conceive of ever being happy and successful outside of the group. Members are programmed, either overtly or subtly, to believe that if they ever leave, they will die of some horrible disease, be hit by a car, be killed in a plane crash, or perhaps even cause the death of loved ones. I don't know if any of that sounds familiar, but I think it does to me.

John Dehlin [01:21:26] Yeah. All right, so Chad's challenging. Challenging us a bit. Chad writes, if Satan controls the water, why do baptisms involve complete submersion? It's a good question, Chad.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:21:37] Yeah. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:21:39] Again, you want to keep members fearful or guessing. And so it actually seems very consistent for me to on the one hand, be made to be very afraid of the water and to have water be a part of the ordinances because it just, it kind of keeps you psychologically on your toes. Like don't get too comfortable with anything because Satan can have influence and anywhere, Right.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:02] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:03] And any confusion that that causes, it only benefits the church. Right. So.

John Dehlin [01:22:09] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:22:09] Yeah. So we have some more quotes from the cult literature. Tobias and LA and Captive Heart, Captive Minds said in some groups, members are told that they will be possessed by the devil, die, become psychotic if they leave the group. Since some cult members believe their leader has supernatural powers, they take such predictions seriously, obviously. And that I'm just going to add a footnote there, that that is sacred science and mystical manipulation together. In other groups, members are told that the outside world is cruel, unbearable and unsympathetic and they will never survive out there. And from the Cults 101 Checklist of Cults cult characteristics, it says the most loyal members feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to. To be.

John Dehlin [01:22:55] Yeah. And this really is real. You grow up thinking the world is evil and dark and sad and it's about to end and everybody out there is, is bad if they're not members. And that, that really does affect your worldview and how you interact, how you view the world and how you interact with the world. And I think it can become dangerous if you think about Chad Daybell and Lori Valo, if you think the world is awful all the time instead of like Steven Pinker stuff which basically says on every meaningful measure, health care, you know, access to education, the plight of women or LGBT people. Like pick your metric. War, disease, famine. The world's getting better on all these fronts. But, but it doesn't benefit sometimes the, the high demand religion to have the members thinking that way because you want fear to be there so that you don't feel safe. Safe. And so you feel like you need the church and its teachings and to follow its commandments and to pay the money to be safe. So it just seems like it's, it. It's so common in these high demand religions to just stoke this fear of the outside, fear of foreigners, fear of anyone outside the. The church and its leadership.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:24:07] Yeah. To reinforce that malu control so they won't look for answers. And anywhere else. Yeah. And one more quote from Stephen Hassan from Releasing the Bonds. Phobia indoctrination is the single most powerful technique used by cults to make members dependent and obedient. I have encountered innumerable individuals who had long ago stopped believing in the leader and the doctrine of the group, but were unable to walk away. They were psychologically frozen with indoctrinated fears which often functioned unconsciously. And I've, I've seen in the forums like the Reddits and other forums that came before, before Reddit, you know, people who were living incognito as Mormons who had completely lost faith. Many of them were staying in for social reasons, some were staying in for fear and other reasons. It took me about three or four months after my epiphany, which I think I talked about my exit story in part one. It took me several months to actually like act on it, to actually say, okay, I'm not actually a believing member because I was afraid. I was afraid that it might still be true. And if it was still true, I was afraid of vague things. And that's part of the thing about fear is it's kind of vague. It's hard to pinpoint what are you. And that's actually like a good healthy coping technique when you are feeling fear is to say, okay, what am I actually afraid of? And list it out and think about it and then think about how likely is that to happen and so forth. But at the time I didn't have those skills and I was sort of vaguely. I was afraid I'd miss out on the celestial kingdom, kingdom and I was afraid that God would disapprove of me. And it, it took actually like at least a half a year to a year after, after my epiphany before I sort of settled down, I was like, okay, there's, there's actually nothing to be afraid of except evil spirits. That one took longer. So yeah, so what happens is the fears kind of become their own thing that is independent of the doctrine. It separates inside your mind and in your body. The fear fears are just become like your biochemical wiring at that point and it becomes instinctual and bypasses conscious thought. That, that is why it's helpful sometimes to sit and actually think about specifically what you're actually afraid of is it helps reconnect the mind and the body's reaction. It can coexist with other feelings and beliefs, even opposite feelings of beliefs. So you can believe the heavenly Father loves you and also fear that he's going to punish you eternally for making small mistakes. Those are trust. Two opposite beliefs that shouldn't fit together and yet they do within this context. And it's like a knee jerk response when you're driving. So someone pulls in front of you and you swerve out of the way and you didn't even think about it. That's how these fears work. They're, they're very biological and it gives us an inability to rely on our own instincts. It sort of replaces our own personal instincts with the group's instincts. Stephen Hassan said cult leaders implanted the fear that I couldn't trust my own thinking capacities due to unseen negative spiritual forces. Satan, that were supposedly affecting my mind and spirit. So that can override what you're. What you're actually would have thought on your own without those influences.

John Dehlin [01:27:16] Yeah, yeah. And with that quote at the bottom from Stephen Hatter, lesson, there is this idea where you want to make members again, feel afraid and like they're not safe and secure in the world. And invoking this sense of demonic influences or bad consequences can. Or invisible forces, spirits trying to tempt you, a Satan figure trying to drag you away. It's just all a way to honestly, to make you feel less safe in the world. Less powerful in the world.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:27:53] Yeah. Less powerful. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. So then someone else can be powerful over you.

John Dehlin [01:27:58] Yeah, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:28:00] So in a way, this weaponizes triggers. So some of these fears might actually come from trauma. And some of these doctrines that are being taught can induce trauma in us. And so we end up with triggers. And again, that's a wiring thing. And there's a great book written on this called the Body Keeps the Score by a guy named. Forgot his first name, Van der Kolk. And. And it goes into the brain chemistry of what happens with trauma and triggers and trauma and just how much the amygdala comes into play. And he talks about the hippocampus and the hypothalamus, and I can't. I'm not a neurologist, so sometimes I can't keep all that straight. So I'm not going to try to repeat what I think it said. But, yeah, basically when you're triggered, when you're in a trauma trigger, the. Your old memories come flooding back, your fears come flooding back. The anxiety comes flooding, flooding back. And that amygdala is in full force and your upper rational centers are not operating at their full potential. Margaret Thaler Singer in Colts in Our Midst said reflective, critical, evaluative thought, especially that critical of the cult, becomes adverse and avoided. The member will appear as you or I do and will function well in ordinary tasks. But the cult leader, the cult lectures and procedures tend to gradually induce members to experience anxiety whenever they critically evaluate the cult. Soon they are conditioned to avoid critical thinking, especially about the cult, because doing so becomes associated with pangs of anxiety and guilt.

John Dehlin [01:29:29] Right. And the next good.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:29:32] Yeah, the next slide. Stephen Sanchez. Steve Sanchez, again from Spiritual Perversion, says, as I Walked out the door. I was suddenly seized with intense fear. My heart pounded fiercely and my body was shaking. The trees, street and walkway around me started swimming. I felt like I was walking in slow motion with a camera on me, and I was about to cross an invisible line into hell. I felt that Reverend Will and Maggie could psychically see what I was doing and that the heavens were recording the moment that I passed the line of no return. And I can really relate to that feeling and his. The words that he's using to describe it. Right there.

John Dehlin [01:30:05] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:30:09] So Stephen Hassan talks about the ways that these phobias are induced in us. And so the first one is direct suggestion. So with the mantle of authority, leadership can make clear statements about what happens to those who fail to obey. So they can just outright say, here's the consequences for failure. They can do it through indirect suggestion, as we've talked about. They can imply horrible consequences and the followers are allowed to fill in the gap with their imaginations. As I mentioned, I'm a fiction writer and I do write horror and I also watch a lot of horror movies. And horror writers know that sometimes, a lot of times you can make someone more afraid by what you don't describe than you can by what you do describe. Sometimes what happens off camera in a horror movie can be more scary than what we actually see, because then it's up to our imaginations. And sometimes when they show us what the monster looks like or what the monster does to people, then it's kind of like, yeah, that looks like fake blood. And, and I'm not buying that the monster would look like that. Like, it just sort of takes away away some of that fear. So actually, indirect suggestion can be more powerful because it's our worst fears that we're going to conjure up, not something that someone else has imagined for us. It can also be done through stories and testimonials like the, like the example we were talking about examples before. Examples portray what happens to bad people. Gossip, rumor, and urban legends effectively spread these phobias. They can use the media, so they can use news stories. They can reframe them in a total assessment context. So natural disasters and wars are reframed as consequences of sin or impending apocalypse. The group produces its own apocalyptic media. And I can remember as a child, a young child, my parents had the missionaries over and they were watching some kind of thing about the end of the world. And they, they did they use news footage of earthquakes and hurricanes. And I remember being like, terrified of that for a long time. As a kid. So Mormonism does seem to use that. And they could also leverage existing fears. So a convert's previous weaknesses may be used against them, either implied or stated. They can say, for instance, if you leave, you'll become an addict again or an alcoholic.

John Dehlin [01:32:17] Yeah, Yep. And of course, we, you know, we all know about the history in the Mormon church of sort of LGBT people being blamed for the signs of the times, the end of the earth, the earthquakes and the natural disasters. I think to this day I still get reports of people being taught in seminary. If there's an earthquake or some natural disaster that somehow the liberalness or, or the pervasiveness, even, Even in this recent talk that was given again about LGBT people, was it by Cook recently?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:32:56] Not sure.

John Dehlin [01:32:57] No, it was Tad Callister. It was a talk that was actually given just this past week. Week. It's like a guardrail at the top or an ambulance at the bottom. And he literally says it. And the implication is, if we as church leaders don't have rules at the top of the cliff, then you're going to have a lot of dead people that you'll need ambulances for at the bottom. And he literally lists, you know, abortion and then kind of same sex marriage and other types of teachings as social movements that will lead to, in his own words, explosions in our society. And so he's associating literally disasters and death and calamities with something that some would perceive as innocuous and as healthy as two people committing to each other for life, to love each other and to support each other. Each other. And what an awful way to stoke fear, especially on, you know, Pride week or during Pride Month.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:07] And, and even he even used the term a glitter explosion, which I was just dumbfounded by the, the insensity of using a term like that. Yeah, a fear inducing yet yet symbolic term like a glitter explosion to, to, to, to talk about same sex marriage on, on Pride Month and in Pride Week. It just. Yeah, we're still doing this today. And it's. And it's just super sad.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:34:36] And the thing about it is that a good rule that will protect us from dangers will make sense to a majority of people. You can say we have a speed limit because when cars go too fast and they hit each other, people die. And, and you can lose control of your car more easily. There's reason, reasons for why we have speed limits that can be explained. And in a democratic system like we have, people can listen to those reasonings and vote for that rule to be in place. Whereas the rules that the church puts in place, many of them, not all of them, but many of them, have no rational basis because God said so. That's it, that's the end of the rule. And yeah, they can come up with all kinds of reasons, but a lot of those reasons are fictive. So for instance, gay marriage is why we have, you know, that's the rule. Do not get gay marriage married. And the result of that is God is going to have all these disasters and earthquakes on earth because that's what a good person does. I mean, to me, that's what an abuser does. So they hurt people when they don't do everything they say.

John Dehlin [01:35:37] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:35:41] And I think actually I might talk about disasters in the next slide. This is a quote by Russell M. Nelson at conference in April 20, 2005. He's talking about someone who was not a member. I think he says his priorities were set upon the things of the world. His ladder of success had been leaning against the wrong wall. I think of him when I read this scripture. Behold, your days of probation are past. You have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is too late. He goes on, because of frequent and frightening calamities in the world, some people doubt the existence of God. But in fact he is trying to act. Help us. He revealed these words. How often have I called upon you by the mouth of my servants, and by the ministering of angels, and by my own voice, and by the voice of thunderings and tempests, earthquakes, great hailstorms, famines, pestilences of every kind, and would have saved you with an everlasting salvation, but ye would not. And then he offers the conditional relief if we are well prepared. Death brings no terror. From an eternal perspective, death is premature only for those who are not prepared to make need God. And again with that. What kind of God, benevolent God, is going to warn you by sending down hills like earthquakes that kill people? So the example I thought of is like, let's say I think that you should insure your house against fires. And you're not doing, you're not listening. We're friends or whatever. And I'm like, you should insure your house. And you, you like, ah, it's too expensive. I don't want to. And like, no, look, I had a fire, fire in my house like a few years back and it was devastating and I was really glad I had insurance. So you should insure your. No, I don't feel like it. What kind of friend would I be if I Then went into your house in the middle of the night, threw gasoline all over everything and lit it while you were asleep in your bed and said, ah, you see, you should have got fire insurance. And I'm doing this out of love. I'm doing this because I'm trying to show you that you need fire insurance. That is messed up. And that's the situation that Russell M. Nelson is attributing to God in this passage.

John Dehlin [01:37:42] And I never. Yeah, that's true. And I never really thought about the fact that millennialism is, you know, and this is just Christianity. If you look at the Book of Revelations, I mean it starts with the book of Moses, not the book of Moses, but it starts with like the movie, the Ten Commandments movie and how the pharaoh had all the, the famines and the locusts and the fire and the starvation. And it starts in the Bible, you know, in the Old Testament. It goes into the New Testament with this teachings about a second coming and a judgment and gog for Magog and you know, just the second coming of Christ and the death and destruction that will follow. Which is always ironic because Jesus is also supposed to be the prince of peace. So of course we've got the dualism of Jesus as kind, loving, holding a lamb, lamb loving the children, and then Jesus with the red robe and a sword, raining death and destruction on the inhabitants of the earth. It's both Jesuses. So that hateful apologists can quote, mean, you know, genocidal Jesus and then passive neo apologetic apologists can quote loving, kind, humble Jesus. You can have both. But, but I just, I never really stopped to think about how just the teachings of Jesus and the second coming, along with the destruction just causes Christians to, you know, live in fear, to always want to be on the good side of God so that they don't end up on the bad side with the torture and the famine and the decapitations and the destruction, etc. And of course it always devalues the taking care of the, the earth. It devalues taking care of society because hey, you know, Jesus is coming soon anyway, so why bother? So there are all sorts of problems with the teaching that I never really spent too much time thinking was super destructive. But, but a teaching about a millennium really kind of can be.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:46] Yeah, eschatology, Christian eschatology really bothers me. It just like you said, it's got, it's fraught with all sorts of problems and the fear inducement is just, just one of those.

John Dehlin [01:39:55] That's a fancy word for end of Times theology, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:39:58] Yeah, exactly. Eschatology.

John Dehlin [01:40:00] That's good. Yep.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:40:02] So here's one of the phobias, one of the ways they induce phobias. There are many, many, many. We're only touching on a few examples here, but in the LDS Temple vow says, we desire to impress upon your minds the sacred character of the first token of the Aaronic priesthood. They are most sacred and are guarded by solemn covenants and obligations made in the presence of presence of God, angels and these witnesses to hold them sacred. And under no condition, even at the peril of your life, will you ever indulge them. And before 1990, before it was changed to soften it to that, it said, rather than do so, I would suffer. The right hand, palm down, is now placed near the throat so that the thumb is under the left ear. My life. The thumb is drawn under the jawbone across the throat to the right ear to be taken, taken. The hand is now dropped to the side. So you would actually pantomime your death in the pre1990 temple ceremony, splitting your throat.

John Dehlin [01:40:54] And I, and I went through this, I, I'm old enough to have gone through this version of the temple ceremony. And you really did live with kind of this association where, man, if I don't, and it's not just if I divulge the signs and tokens, which is kind of the explicit promise that you make, you also make all these other promises to pay tithing, to live the law of consecration, to give everything you have to the church. And even if the throat slitting or the self disemboweling isn't necessarily associated with all those covenants, your brain still kind of makes that association anyway. Not to mention the fear of Satan in the temple ceremony saying if these members do not live up to every covenant they make in the temple to today, they will be in my power, you know. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, if I don't live a hyper religious life, I'm going to be subject to Satan and his minions controlling me. And that fear really has had an impact. And that's why it was there. That's why those things were in the temple ceremony. To instill fear in the hearts of members, to control them. To control them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:03] Yeah, yeah, it works.

John Dehlin [01:42:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:42:07] The antidote, how can we help with induced phobias on the next slide? Remember that never mows, never Mormons. They live normal, happy lives doing all these things that Mormons are taught not to do. You'll still Be a good person. And there is no punitive, obsessive, codependent, jealous God watching your over move. Those are people that created that God. I'm not going to opine whether a God exists or some gods exist, exist, but it's clear that this particular God was created by people who were themselves obsessive, codependent and jealous and controlling. They created a God in their image that they could then use to convey these ideas to people that they personally wanted to control. So if you try to keep that in mind, that can help. You can't always talk yourself out of a phobia, but these things will definitely help. Remember that the phobia is a separate thing from yourself. It's not even your feeling, it was forced on you by a coercive organization. So if you try to sort of separate yourself from your fear, it can definitely still affect you. And if it's all through you, but just remember that it isn't you. And you have a lot more parts of yourself as well that you can promote and encourage and help and pursue. And Tobias and Lalitsch in Captive Hearts, Captive Minds said, do some reality checking. If the cult is responsible for the bad things that have happened to you since leaving, then who is responsible for the good, good things? So reality checks are a good way. You know, if, if the phobia is bad enough. There are a lot of therapeutic methods these days that can help help get rid of phobias. Like I said, I did my own psychological trick by. I created a little pagan spell and imagined a bubble of light around me and my house and imagined it forcing out and keeping out like a shield. And I renew that. I put energy into that whenever I feel like afraid of evil spirits or anything coming into my house. Little tricks like that can just sort of. That's you taking control. They use tricks to get the phobia into you. And you can use the tricks, whatever works to, to get the. To separate yourself from the phobia.

John Dehlin [01:44:19] I also recommend the book the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan to pretty much, I think that's one of the most top three to top five most important books anyone can ever read. Leaving a high demand reader religion because it just demystifies kind of the supernatural mystical worldview which I think just helps you live with your feet firmly planted on the ground in the 21st century to just understand how people are manipulated and then to understand how science works. And I think there's just a real value in learning to value physics and science, science and just how the natural world works and then how charlatans work to fool and deceive you so that you can just avoid getting fooled again either by another person or psychologically by the conditioning that we've all been subjected to.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:14] Yeah, there's a lot of comfort to be found in like the reality of the world. The, the rule, it runs by rules. And there's, it's solid and there's a lot of comfort to be found there.

John Dehlin [01:45:23] Yeah, I think so.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:45:27] So let's see. Oh, there's more help for induced phobias. Thought we were done. Okay, so Stephen Hassan from Releasing the Bonds said that you can understand the difference between a phobia and a fear of something actually dangerous. So just understanding that those are different things can, can sort of help you slowly reason your way out of it. You can understand how the phobia was induced for the purpose of compliance, which is part of what this present presentation is helping you do. And what my book also goes through of just look, this was used against you. Even just that knowledge can help quite a bit. And then reason through the phobia. Ask yourself questions, is this realistic? What's the likelihood of this happening? Are there things I can do if it does happen? Do I have tools at my disposal? Can I prepare myself? Things like that you can research and you can look for real examples of people who act without the feared consequence occurring. You can look at people who've never been Mormon, or you can look at people, other people who have left the church and look at their varied experiences, very varied experiences, and see that there's really no causation of leaving the church and then mystical bad things happen to you. There's some real things that we can draw connections to, like you might lose your friends and family, you might lose your job or your social network. Those are real things to be afraid of. But when we look and see that there are some things that aren't real, that we, we that aren't, there's no purpose in being afraid of. We can notice that everyone who leaves the church has different experiences and those things.

John Dehlin [01:46:54] Yeah, and just like Mark Twain said, travel is, is fatal to prejudice, or at least it can be. You know, meeting people of other races or ethnicities or cultural backgrounds can help cure you of, of racism and bigotry. Meeting people who aren't subjected to the conditioning and the fear based conditioning of a particular religious tradition and seeing that they can be happy, healthy, good parents, financially prosperous, if that's their goal or value. Just living healthy, happy lives can help disabuse you of your fear based conditioning. So get out more. Make friends who aren't Mormon, who have never been Mormon, who live in lots of different ways. And that can help you see that you don't have to fear all the things you've been taught to fear.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:47:41] Exactly. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:47:44] All right, so that's phobias. I do think Mormonism gets an A on phobias. I think we've got fears everywhere, you know, all throughout our theology, from Satan to Satan's minions to temple covenants to death oaths which are still there's remnants of to our eschatology, as you say, to associating from freaking premarital sex with murder. Like all these different things really do keep us bound in fear. So Mormonism's got a lot to do to. To ramp down the fear. So I'm giving Mormonism an A on fear.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:24] All right.

John Dehlin [01:48:26] Do you disagree with me on that one?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:28] No.

John Dehlin [01:48:28] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:29] Oh, you're talking to.

John Dehlin [01:48:31] No, that's you. No, I. I'm talking to you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:33] All right. Yeah, no, I, I fully agree. Agree. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:37] Did I say Luna?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:39] I think so. Yeah. You looked off camera and so I

John Dehlin [01:48:41] thought I was looking at our next slide.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:44] Here's our next slide. Why would I disagree with that? I'm the one that just said it.

John Dehlin [01:48:48] This is your stuff. Okay. We're on the trans induction and dissociative states.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:48:54] Yes. All right, so I'm going to demystify this because there's not a whole lot of woo about it. Okay. This is really straight forward. Altered states are not what you think they are normal aspects of everyday life. We flip back and forth through multiple altered states throughout our day. I don't even think they've been named and classified. I've done some mild looking to find if someone has named and classified all the alter states. I don't think that that's work has even been done. There are just so many of them and they are natural. So here's some examples of some altered states that we through sleep. Totally different mindset when you're asleep. Boredom. Focus states like if you're learning or working or creating something. Those are actually all different types of focus states. Singing or reciting rote material operates different parts of the brain. Watching, chanting. Yep, yeah, yep. Similar part. Watching a movie or reading a book creates a suspension of disbelief. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. That shuts down parts your of brain road hypnosis and spacing out. So when you're driving and you're not really paying attention, your body is taken over and it's automatically driving for you, and so your mind can wander. That's a different state. Trauma, dissociation are many kinds of trauma dissociation. Those are also altered states. And because they feel so natural, they go undetected. So an organization can, I'm putting air quotes, hypnotize you, which is a very broad and vague term, but they can put you in any of these states and you won't even notice. You're just bored. And, and, but you're still a more receptive state when you're bored. And we'll, we'll talk about some of these more state states in the, in the following slides. Next slide. So one way to think about it is when you're in an altered state, your brain is focusing on something specific to specialize in a certain task. So it's not sending resources to the parts of your brain that aren't being used. You know, there's that myth that says you only use 10% of your brain, and that's actually not true. What is true is that at any given moment, moment, you only use 10% of your brain because your, your, your brain is drawing all of those resources to focus on that particular area. But all of your brain eventually gets used at some point or another, while It's a different 10% when you're doing something else. And so during that specialization state, some of your brain functions are high, are raised so that you can focus on the task at hand and other brain functions are lowered. So for instance, when we enjoy a story, we're switching off our reality functions and we put on our disbelief suspenders and a fiction writer. That is one of my goals is to get you immersed in the story, to get you to stop thinking about the technicalities of, well, this wouldn't happen. And that wouldn't happen when you're watching a movie or reading a book and you're in your start getting nitpicky and critical. They have not done their job in college creating a suspension of disbelief in you, that altered state of mind. So what happens when we are in that mode is we become one with the characters and we're totally immersed in the world, the rules of the world, we start to believe them. So we believe that Harry Potter can do magic by saying incantations and waving a magic wand. And we believe there are rules to that magic. And we know that those rules can't be violated by the story. And if they do, we get annoyed by it. That's all. This altered state is that put that stories can put us into. And it's the. It's a pretty similar state to the one we're in when we're dreaming or in a dream we're not nitpicking over. Well, I wouldn't be flying. What's this like? Because those parts of our brain that are. That are critical thinking are not functioning when we dream, same as when we're immersed in a really good story. We also have altered states when we're focused on learning. So first of all, we have to trust the teacher. If we're going to learn anything, we have to trust that the book we're reading or the person who's not teaching us knows what they're talking about. And that is a type of altered state is our. Is. Is we're setting aside our criticality of them and just trusting them. And we also.

Altered States of Consciousness Used for Indoctrination

John Dehlin [01:52:56] A mindset of believability versus skepticism. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:00] Exactly. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:53:01] Total mindset.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:53:02] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's. It is literally just that simple. Like, who do you trust? And you're going to learn from them? And that's. That's it. And also when we're focused on learning, we tend to tune out distractions. Unless we have ADHD and then something. Sometimes we can't, or sometimes with ADHD, we hyper focus on the thing and we really are tuning out all distractions, including whether we're going to be on time for an appointment or whatever. Like that's a. That's just something that, that we do. Everybody does. When we learn to one degree or another. When we're bored, our mind relaxes and our attention becomes unfocused. Again, our critical thinking is not in place. We're. We're not interested in the material. And so it's not like, again, like, like subliminal messages. It's just that we're just not paying attention. And so what people say can tend to kind of go into our brain and it stays there, but we're not necessarily filtering it. We're not interested in the material enough. When we sing or cite something by rote, our mind becomes focused on going into our memory banks and pulling forth that thing that we're trying to remember that we're reciting or that we're seeing singing. And our minds are in a state of flow when we're singing. And so those are all different, like examples. There are many other altered states, but those are ones that can pertain potentially to undue influence. So the next slide, I have a quote from Jerry, Ann Galante from Recovery from Cults and she says our society does not recognize the full range of altered states of consciousness available to human. Human beings. If people could get past the idea that a person must feel stoned or at least high to be in an altered state of consciousness, they would accept the reality of brainwashing far more easily.

John Dehlin [01:54:44] We're being some euphoric state, Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:54:47] You can be in a euphoric state,

John Dehlin [01:54:48] and we will that there are many more examples that are more base and common. I think that's what you're saying in these slides. You don't have to be in this Kirtland, Ohio rapture of a moment to be under the influence of trans induction and dissociative states. That's all I'm saying.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:05] Exactly. You could literally be just bored. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:09] So board in a temple ceremony, for example. Bored in Sunday school. Board. And there you go.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:55:14] Yeah, yeah. Or trusting the leader and interested in learning more. And then you're suspending your critical thinking skills and you're just accepting everything they say and you're intently trying to learn it. That's another common thing. So, next, next slide. Some natural states, as we've discussed, are of use to a totalistic system. So being relaxed and trusting and open to influence a state of being influenced through story and emotional. So being caught up in an emotion is kind of an altered state as well. And euphoric states, which we will talk about then become proof. So that becomes a mystical manipulation thing. Again, Mystical manipulation is looking for supernatural proof for. For the truth of the doctrine. Just like. I have to cough again.

John Dehlin [01:56:05] Bless you. Bless you, Luna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:56:09] That was muted, right?

John Dehlin [01:56:10] Yeah, that was muted. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:56:11] Oh, I think. I don't know if it's pollen season again or something. But anyway, so these various states suppress critical think thinking and that helps create openness to indirect directives, for instance, where we're looking for those little clues to put together to form a conclusion. And of course helps induce phobias and other emotional states. Okay, so the next slide we talked about previously about motivated reasoning and the two states of mind that you can be in either confirmatory thought or exploratory thought. And that is another example of an alternative altered state. So just as a reminder, when you're in confirmatory hot cognition state, you know the answer before you've seen the evidence. You confirm what you already know. You're emotional, you become more easy to manipulate because someone just needs to change your emotions rather than produce evidence for their claims. It's a closed way of thinking. You're less likely to change your mind in that state and you embrace confirmation bias. Whereas when you're in exploratory state of mind or cold cognitions, you decide the answers based on evidence. You're more intent in looking at the evidence and thinking critically about it. In that state, you're more likely to discover new things, you're more rational, you're restricted only to what reality is showing you as true. You're more open because your mind can be changed by evidence and you are attempting to intentionally avoid biases. So it's another example of an altered state you can be in. And an organization can say things and do things to put you in either one of these states, depending on whether they want you to look at the Bible teachings and how those are evidence for, you know, they're isolating all the evidence out from you and then they're putting you in front of the scriptures and the, and the general works, standard works. And you're focused on learning that. And so you're only noticing the evidence that of the script scripture quotes are producing for you. And then you're capable of learning new things and learning that and being indoctrinated. But, but then when they want you to be defensive against other ideas that are coming in that are clashing with that, then they have, they have it you triggered so that you're enter into a hot cognition or a confirmatory state in which you're like, nope, that's nope. I already know the answer. I don't need to see your evidence. Your evidence won't convince me anyway. And so those are two altered states. So they can just flip like a switch depending on what they're telling you.

John Dehlin [01:58:38] And we're going to talk about this later and I think general conference becomes a great example. But, but before we get to that, if you just think about the history of, of churches and religions in human culture, oftentimes the biggest, most beautiful building was the church in the town. You walk in. It's ornate, it's, it's got a great acoustics, it's got art and stained glass windows, it's got the beautiful organ, it's got the PR dressed up with the gold and the fancy clothes and the incense and the smells and you're kneeling and there's holiness and there's echo, echoey music with the choirs and a reverberating, you know, sort of reverberating acoustics where when the priest is talking, you can feel the power of what's being said and the modern versions of, or the, the gospel choirs and the, the rock bands. But all of that is orchestrated to induce emotion. I mean, religion has like perfected the business of eliciting certain emotions in your brain that is like they're the world's experts in doing that without drugs basically.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [01:59:56] Right? Yeah. And you get that sense of awe. You're not going to be critical in that state. You know, like, this is amazing. It's the most beautiful thing ever. And you're going to feel at peace and you're going to feel worshipful and reverent and, and that sense of awe. And in that state you're not going to be like, I don't know that what he just said is true. You're going to feel like God is there and he's speaking for God.

John Dehlin [02:00:21] Yeah. And so I'm not saying that they're all like being intentionally manipulative, but the entire church context, the worship context is very carefully. If not intentionally, it's evolved to be subconsciously, very clearly manipulative. Mm.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:43] Just. It's what works.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:45] It's what worked. And the stuff they tried thousands of years ago that didn't work, they didn't do anymore because it didn't work. The successful programs are the ones that rose to the top and begins became dominant.

John Dehlin [02:00:54] Yeah. It's so powerful to think about.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:00:57] Yeah. So first of all, the use of altered states is not inherently unethical or bad. There are many like, it's just a normal part of life. I'm a fiction writer. I want you to suspend disbelief, to go on a journey with my characters. That isn't what makes it unethical. We have to remember that all influence and education of any type is done through all altered states. So when you go to school and you learn how to read and write, very, very useful uncontroversial skills for us to learn. We were in focused learning states to get that knowledge and that, that's, I can't fault that. That's how it works. Every good movie, every story that you've read that you enjoyed, they all put you in an altered state. So it all comes down to informed consent. So the questions to ask are, do your goals align with the in influencer? So for instance, a therapist or a teacher, usually your goals are in line with each other and they're helping you accomplish your own self driven goals from that versus an abuser or totalist leader who has their own agenda that goes against your agenda and they are using this to control you. Are you being lied to? So an action movie is lying to you, but you know it's a lie it's. They tell you up front that these are fictional characters doing ridiculous things that are completely impossible, and you're there to go along for the ride versus an abuser or totalist leader who tells you fictions that are actually not true, but they don't tell you they're not true. And so those are totally different situations. And are you really free to opt out? Are you truly free to leave this system at any time? When you're watching an action movie in the theater, you can get up and walk out of the movie theater anytime you want. You can't do that when you're in the temple. You can't do that when you're sitting in general conference. You can't do that when you're in the church, as we've explored through these presentations. And the more you learn about the world, the more you can consent, the more knowledge that you have, the more freedom that you have. So I have some. I've had these. Shown these pictures before. The graphic of arrows that are pointing out every different way. Which way. That is an ethical system where you're allowed to choose any different way that you want versus the gospel. I have. All the arrows are pointing inward towards the gospel. You've always got to make conclusions that come back inward.

John Dehlin [02:03:23] Right. Yeah. It's a carefully constructed kind of system and environment that really does. Is very persuasive. It's very compelling once you're in it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:03:35] Yeah, it is. So I have a quote from Margaret Thaler, singer in Colts in Our Midst. Essentially, she's talking about dissociative states, essentially a form of highly focused mental concentration in which one person allows another to structure the object of the concentration and simultaneously suspends critical judgment and peripheral awareness. When this method is used in a cultic environment, it becomes a form of psychological manipulation and copy coercion because the cult leader implants suggestions aimed at his own agenda while the person is in a vulnerable state. All you need. And then I added all you need is trust.

John Dehlin [02:04:12] Yeah. And from the, from the previous slide, too. I love that you bring in this notion of informed consent, because that's really what it's all about. You need to have all the information. You need to know the risks and the benefits, and you need to be able to make a decision. But it's almost, you know how there's this idea. Idea that there's no such thing as drunk consent. There's. There's no way to consent if you're impaired.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:04:35] Right.

John Dehlin [02:04:36] It's. It's almost. I wonder if that could almost apply to this. If you're, if you're induced into a euphoric state with milieu control all around you, is that a little bit like, you know, a lack of informed consent? Because the social pressures and even the emotional pressures are so high. Can you make an informed, independent decision that isn't just heavily influenced by your parents, your friends, the music, the, the Jesus, you know, on the cross and the weeping and the stories and the guilt and the shame? You know, you kind of wonder whether informed consent is even possible when some of these forces are at play.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:05:21] Yeah. And I mean, it's a gray area. If that's all it was, was a euphoric state, then we could probably have an interesting debate about whether or not you can consent in a state. But it's not just that. It's pretty clear when you add all of these 31 ways to influence someone unduly, to manipulate them, you put them all together. Well, now it's, it isn't a choice. You don't have informed consent that you're being lied to. First off, I mean, that's the number one biggest one right there. That makes you. It not informed consent. If you're being lied to, It's. It's not consent. Flat out. Yeah. Margaret Thaler Singer has more to say on this. She says we slipped from an active into a passive, receptive mode of mental processing. We listen or look without reflecting or evaluation. We suspend rational analysis, independent judgment, and conscious decision making about what we are hearing or taking, taking in. We lose the boundaries between what we wish were true and what is factual. Imagination and reality intertwine and ourselves and the selves of others seem more like oneself. Our mental gears shift into receptivity, leaving the. Leaving active mental processing in neutral. Some of this may seem repetitive and I'm, I'm quoting these to show, first of all, it could be put in other words, that might be easier to understand than what I'm saying up here. But also just to show that I'm not just imagining this stuff or making it up or saying whatever I feel like saying, I'm showing that other researchers have identified these things

John Dehlin [02:06:59] we love pushback. We're getting a comment from Brian Holly, who writes good critical thinking puts me in a euphoric state. Have I been brainwashed by rationality? Thank you, Brian, for that question. Luna, Are critical thinkers brainwashed by rationality?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:07:15] No, because all of our arrows about our choices are pointing all different directions. If they were all pointing us to the same conclusion about, like, life, about the big things the exact same conclusion. And, and we're not actually choosing based on like, what's real. We're choosing on deception and things that are imagination. Then like, that would be a different story. But each of us is allowed to independently look at the evidence from lots of different sources. And each, each of us, we might conclude similarly because evidence is evidence and it points the same thing. Like if I hold up a pencil, it's a pencil and we can all agree that it's a pencil. That's not brainwashing to agree that this is a pencil based on the evidence that we can all see and feel and hear. And so, but, but that said, like, we do out here in the secular world very clearly come with all kinds of different conclusions about literally everything. Everything. So to me, that's, that's my answer to that.

John Dehlin [02:08:17] I mean, I mean, I don't know if Brian's just being cute or clever, if Brian's being serious, but you can't personify, you know, critical thinking or rationality. It's just, it's just a phenomena of human consciousness that's very different from, you know, people who have money and power. Power, who secure commitments from birth onward and who use their money and power to consciously wield influence on their membership. They're, they're very different things.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:08:53] So get them to pay 10 of their income forever. I mean, right. That's ultimately what happens. Whereas I'm, I'm sitting here and I have euphoric states all the time, but they're not. And maybe if I might be moved by charity, which is potentially a euphoric state, to donate something to someone but that, like this one time, or even if I do sign up, it's a reasonable, you know, for a monthly recurring donation or something like that. It's a, it's usually a reasonable amount. It isn't. I can't think of anyone outside of Mormonism who's asked me for 10% of my income. Not for a gym membership, not for a cable television plan, not for even some of the most scummy, scammy things that have got gotten me, have never asked me for 10 of my income. So, you know, that's.

John Dehlin [02:09:39] Yeah. So hopefully Brian's kidding. If he's not. Brian, you need, you of all people need to read this book Recovering Agency and to go back and listen to the previous, oh, I don't know, 27 hours of, of, of this series. So is that, wait, is it maybe 15, 15 hours of this series to really understand all the ways that influence can be wielded unethically. But thanks for the question.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:10:12] Just to reiterate, no single one of these on its own, except maybe deception, except maybe demand for, for purity. Most of these techniques are just fine all on their own, not leading you into a total cycle and euphoria is one of them. I, I consider myself a spiritual person, even though I'm an atheist. I think that our, our peak experiences, as Maslow psychologists described, we can have peak spiritual experiences, we can have psychological states that seem to transcend reality. And I've had many of those experiences and I feel like they're amazing and sacred and wonderful. And I'm not against them in any way. I'm not against euphoric states. I'm just against them being used to manipulate people into like a single set course where you're obeying everything that you're told to do. That's, that's, that's, that's where I draw the line.

John Dehlin [02:11:10] Unfortunately, Brian follows up and says he's just being whimsical. So. Thanks Franks for your humor. Brian, I'm sure you rep. Your comment represents someone literally though. Somewhere.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:11:21] Somewhere. All right, so John D. Goldhammer in under the Influence said hypnosis is a major factor in the indoctrination process, especially for religious groups where members repeat mantras, prayers, affirmations, chants, songs, and practice lengthy meditations. In addition, many groups commonly have lengthy meetings, weekend conclaves and seminars which last for many hours without out a break, where people sit and passively listen to highly repetitious material.

John Dehlin [02:11:52] I mean that, that literally sounds like General Conference, like Mormon General Conference. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:11:56] Yeah. Or at the three hour block even.

John Dehlin [02:11:59] Or two hour now. Two hour now.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:06] And, and we're going to talk about this in the next slide, but let's go ahead and go to the next slide and then I'll, I'll kind of apply at the General Conference.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:12:15] All right, so here are some of the altered states that are used for indoctrination that reduce cognitive dissonance. This is not all inclusive. And again, these can all have ethical purposes, but they include singing, chanting and repeating things by rote, boredom and long meetings. Storytelling, guided imagery, appeal to emotion and vocal inflections, logical illogic, which I'll get to a little bit more about what that means. Fasting, deep sleep deprivation, fatigue, mental or physical, and a poor diet focused study, Creative acts and musical performances, meditation, speaking in tongues and repetitious movements, and certain drugs, particularly those that make you less alert. Not all of these are things Mormonism does And again, there are valid, useful purposes for all of these. Just because you sing a solo in sacrament meeting doesn't mean singing solos in sacrament meeting is inherently bad. But you are in a different state of mind when you are doing that creative act.

John Dehlin [02:13:19] And I would even go as far as to say that, like the way the cadence of speech, that a Mormon general authority or even a relief Society, you know, a general board member of the General Relief Society president presidency, we always make fun of kind of the way they talk, their speech patterns, their cadence, but I would tend to think that they are literally selected partially under that criteria, because once we become familiar with what a general authority or a, you know, Relief Society presidency board member sounds like, then when the next person comes up to give the. That talk and they speak that way, that also contributes to helping get us into the mindset to be able to hear them. And then through that association, again, tend to want to believe and infuse credibility into the words that they speak.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:14:17] Right? Yeah, yeah. It's like a condition trigger. Just puts us into that mode, you know. And for those of us raised in the church, we were told as little kids, be raised reverent, which we talked about loading the language. And reverent meant to like, be quiet and fold your arms and sit still. Reverend actually comes and we can look it up in the dictionary. If you feel free, look all these words up in the dictionary. It means to revere something like reverence is. Reverence is like a deeper feeling than that. It's like a sense of awe and a sense of worship. And I never remember being taught how to feel that way in the church. I've definitely felt that way out of the church and went, oh, okay, that's reverence. But it's just like a throwaway word used to keep kids quiet. And we're taught that, and then as we grow up, we bring that with us into adulthood. You know, fold your arms, pay attention, listen to the thing, sit still, stuff like that.

John Dehlin [02:15:13] That's kind of training you for subservience, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:15:16] Yes, exactly. See, so trans induction can create surreal or otherworldly feeling states. And it's interesting to note that the dreaming mind and the imagination actually have a lot in common. They're both operating on the subconscious, which if we're not, if we don't do like a lot of self help and therapy and meditation and that sort of thing, it can be easy to feel like our subconscious is like a separate place part of us. It can feel like the, the. The ego, the self, the thing that says I, the thing that feels like it's in charge. It's, it's easy to feel like it's the dominant part of the brain, that it runs the show. But as scientists are discovering, the subconscious and the body and other mechanisms within yourself are actually influencing the upper decision making mind quite a bit. And so are in a dreamlike state. And in our subconscious conscious states and storytelling is a similar state. We are receptive to symbols and emotions and images and metaphor and even puns. I've done some dream work and you can dream in puns, visual puns. It's kind of funny when you figure them out. And so that is a less rational and less critical state of mind where we're more receptive. Intelligent and creative people are actually more susceptible to this kind of thing because intelligent people are able to make connections, more and more connections in a more robust kind of way. And various mental states or spiritual states are very prone to fill in the blanks because they are symbolic and emotional and visual and metaphorical. It's easy for someone else to interpret what those mean. Whether or not that's what our own mind meant by giving us that idea or not. That is what. Other people can come in and explain that for us. And they can do it ahead of time too, so that we can. We're prepped when we have that. I'll get more that in a second. And just to reiterate, spiritual states are valid and precious. They are your connection to the meaning of life and the purpose of everything and how your brain interfaces with the world. It's amazing. However, they can be hijacked by suggestion from those with ill intent. Just second. Yeah, that is a tickle in my throat. Won't go away. And, and so the thing is, is dreams and promptings can be pre. Preloaded by suggestion. So our dreams and our visions and our subconscious thoughts, they are, they're gathering information from the world around us and recombobulating that and then offering us our thoughts, our visions, our dreams, our prompt promptings, if you, you will. And so someone can actually, like ahead of time, fill your head with cultural touch points that your brain then grabs onto and latches on and then reproduces in things like dreams and visions and so forth. So a manipulator can take advantage of that. And I have an example in the next slide that kind of shows it's, it's arbitrary from the Mormon standpoint, but Margaret Singer describes a cult where members were told that a vision of an orange fog would prove the truthful of the cult. So that's pretty arbitrary. An orange fog like that's not within Mormonism. It's pretty random. But one ex member of that cult describes that she actually dreamt of an orange fog that convinced her of the truthfulness of the cult. And Margaret Thaler Singer says cult members may be trained to have specific visualizations and then be praised and rewarded and feel self fulfilled when they achieve the goal. So if they can induce an orange fog, a dream of an orange fog inside someone, which is really specific, then how easy is it for a group like Mormonism when talking about the spirit, to induce the spirit and other vague sort of like visions of the afterlife in US Visions of, of the prophets and visions of scriptural things and stuff

John Dehlin [02:19:15] like that, or of angels with golden plates. I remember one of my big awakening moments was reading Grant Palmer's book An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, where you learn about this notion of, of second sight, which was a very pervasive idea in the 19th century, where you could see with your physical eyes, but you could also see with your spiritual eyes. And what was always happening was religious leaders like Joseph Smith would prime people. Here's what you're going to see in this vision. This is what's going to happen to you. If you're worthy and if you're faithful, you'll be able to see this, but you're always primed ahead of time that it'll be an angel with golden plates or whatever. And if you, you know, with, with all of these different methods of influencing trans induction and dissociative states, you can actually influence someone, you prime them with what they're going to be experiencing and then you induce and use these different tools to induce the dissociative state. And guess what? With their second sight, with their spiritual eyes, they will in fact see Moroni handling the golden plates and they'll be able to witness and testify that they're witnesses. And in fact the three and the eight witnesses, there's lots and lots of evidence to demonstrate that when they witnessed Moroni or the plates or the Book of Mormon or whatever it was with their spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:20:40] And I've had experiences like that outside of the church. I saw a few fairy once and, and it's exactly like you're describing and I've read other accounts of fairy sightings and you know, other cryptids and stuff like that. People that people have seen that, that it's like it's in your head. And it's also like it's in front of you. It's like it's both and, and, and, and. But there's still like a deep sense that what you're seeing is real and it's a perfectly natural, normal human experience. What makes it a problematic is when someone then uses that to get you to do what they, they want rather than helping teach you. What I like to teach people is that, that those symbols are yours. They are a deep part of you and they can help you understand yourself and how you view the world. But you've got to do that journey. You've got to do the exploration. The dream work that I did. My, my therapist who was helping me at the dream work didn't say, you know, he didn't say, like, you, your dream means this. Like that would be dictating to me. He would say, well, he would ask me questions like, what does that mean to you? What is. If you saw this in your daily life, how would you react? Like, he would ask questions that would evoke a response from me. And then I got to learn how to interpret my own symbols. And that is what any ethical person who's helping you spiritually is going to do is guide you on your own path.

John Dehlin [02:22:04] Absolutely. Yeah. All right. This is the last slide on trans, induction and dissociative states.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:22:11] Yeah. So logical illogic. I mentioned it before, but it turns out that when you present contradictory information in a logical format, so you're. The person is expecting it to be logical because of the form that you're presenting it in, but it absolutely is nonsense. Your rational functions actually just sort of give up. They're just like, I can't eat even with this and shut down. And you just take in everything that they say. And the more nonsensical it is, like the better it is for them getting through to what you say, for getting through to you what they want you to think. Margaret Thaler Singer said sometimes the induction method is speech filled with paradox and discrepancy. That is the message is not logical, but it is presented as though it were logical. Trying to follow what is being said can actually detach the listener from reality. And I have an example from my life outside of the church when the father of my child, my ex husband, we were fighting over. It was after I divorced him, we were fighting over custody or something like that. And he just launched in this email rant against me that were things that were about me that were completely untrue. But he's, he's doing it as like therefore, this, this, this, and therefore that, like a logical format. And I remember it just. I couldn't think anymore. I just, I. I stopped being able to think. And every word that he said just went straight into my mind and straight into my heart and just. It just got me and it didn't matter. I couldn't reason anymore. I couldn't say that's completely false what he's saying. Like it didn't matter. It just. It just took that message and sent it straight into me. So it does work.

John Dehlin [02:23:46] Sorry that happened.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:23:47] Yeah. It's like.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] So what, what is the what.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:23:51] What's that? It's just life. I've had a tough life. Thank you, though.

John Dehlin [02:23:56] Well, you're. You're clearly making lemonade for the rest of us from.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:00] I'm sure trying.

John Dehlin [02:24:01] Life has given you. Yeah. Thank you.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:02] Try to protect people from the mistakes I've made. That's what I'm trying to do.

John Dehlin [02:24:05] So what are the, what are the ways. What are the antidotes to trans induction and dissociative states used inappropriately or coercively other than like again, reading a demon haunted world, Understanding the techniques, reading your book, understanding the. I, I mean I. It seems to me like education, Education and awareness is the, is the, is the biggest form of inoculation.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:24:30] Yeah, I'd say three things. So, yeah, learn as much as you can, especially about critical thinking skills. We're not naturally born with those and they're not taught in most schools. So you've got to actually make the effort to go out and study and learn critical thinking skills. Learn about logic, learn about logical fallacies and the Ms. Biases and pitfalls that can. Can help. And then like becoming aware of yourself and taking back your right to own your own spirituality, for lack of a better word, your own subjective and symbolic and emotional world, yours. It's not for anyone else to dictate. And if you can get a sense of that, if you can develop a sense that of ownership for your own symbol and the quirky, weird things that our brains do, if you can own that, then you can be in control of it and then you can have a spiritual experience. And when someone else comes and says this is what that meant, you. Your immediate reaction is, that isn't what I think it means. And you don't get to tell me what it means. And part of that comes with us. Kind of the third thing kind of connected is self awareness. Things like meditation and somatic therapy or learning to sort of feel where things feel in your body and be comfortable with the feelings, even the unpleasant Feelings that you have can really help you just turn inward and be aware of who you really are and what you're really about. And it makes it a lot harder for other people to dictate that to you.

John Dehlin [02:26:05] Yeah, yeah. Two things I just wanted to add as a follow up is we've talked about this before on Mormon stories and even in the series, but whenever an organization wielding undue influence is. Is trying to control you, they will induce these sorts of feelings, the trances or dissociative states or what we're going to talk about in a second, which is this euphoria. And then they always tell you what it means and, and always the interpretation accrues to the benefit of the organization. Organization. It's never. There's this idea that, that oddly enough, no people has ever received the inspiration that another group of people are the chosen ones. Right. It's always, it's always the group and it's always a positive reinforcement of whatever the group standards or mores or, you know, benefits are. And, and so we should just always, never, we should never always allow an external authority to interpret our emotional states for us. And we should be extra suspicious when their interpretations always accrue to the benefit of the external authority or the external organization. Yeah, that's just Mental Health 101.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:27:21] A therapist will do. And it bugs me if you've never been to therapy or you've had unethical therapists and you're watching a movie and on comes the therapist and like 99 of the time, and I just, I'm always ready. I'm always ready to be like, look what you did. They have the therapist. You know, your problem is your relationship with your father when you were growing up was too distant. Like, if you have a therapist that's dictating to you, like why you're acting the way you're acting and what your goals ought to be and what you're feeling and all of that. Then like, unless you've asked the therapist, unless you say therapist, what do you think about this? Like, if they're just dictating it to you, then that's like an unethical therapist. And movies and TV shows get it wrong all time.

John Dehlin [02:27:59] The.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:28:00] The time. And I hate when they do that because it sets up people's expectations to be ripe for the unethical therapist that leads you around by the nose. They are there to help you figure out your own stuff.

John Dehlin [02:28:13] Yeah. And then the only other thing I'm going to mention to this, and it applies to euphoria which we'll talk about in a second as well is how many post Mormons today are experimenting with psychedelics, with psilocybin, with lsd, with ayahuasca and, and others. There are a couple things that. There are at least three things that occur to me when I think about the phenomena that is post Mormon experimentation with psychedelics. One is there's so much trauma within so many people's Mormon experience that they're seeking methods like the use of psychedelics to kind of help heal from trauma. That's the first thing. The second thing is how chemical and neurological these trans induced or dissociative or euphoric states are. They're so neurological that they can be literally induced by ingesting certain chemicals or, or eating certain substances found in nature. There, there needs to be nothing mystical or supernatural or metaphysical about achieving one of these states. That's the second thing. It literally is just what the brain does. Does, I think. And then the third thing is, is. Oh, go ahead.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:29:26] I was going to say they can induce a near death experience. Like the thing. Not that you're actually near death, but the, all of the things that near death experiencers come back and report, the gate and the tunnel and the light and the seeing loved ones, all of that can be replicated with ketamine. Like that is a fairly common hip hallucin hallucination that people on ketamine have and they can induce that in a laboratory setting. And so that to me sort of takes away from the truth like the, the objective reality of people who, who almost died and said they saw a tunnel and the bridge and the gate and the, and God and all the people that they loved and all of that. Like that's. We can induce that in a lab.

John Dehlin [02:30:13] Yeah, absolutely. And then the final thing that just occurs to me about use of psychedelics is that, is that, you know, this represents post Mormons owning their own mystical experiences. And by the way, just because an experience may not be some Holy Ghost, may not be some divine spirit or some heavenly Father induced miracle, that doesn't mean it isn't powerful. If you and I just read Michael Pollan's how to Change your your Mind, I, you know, pretty much every post Mormon friend I have at this point has, has experimented with psychedelics or almost all. And, and you know, they'll have these life changing experiences where they'll meet their inner child or they'll meet some spirit or they'll meet themselves or look in the mirror and they'll have this story and pretty much all of them, these psychedelic experiences involve themselves saying, I'm whole, I'm complete, I'm no longer broken. So it represents the undoing of the conditioning that they received since childhood, as in this case, Mormons. But even if it's just a chemical, the experiences can be still very real to them and amongst the most meaningful experiences of their life. And, and the recent interview that I did with Drew Manning is a perfect example. Example. He tells about all these traumatic experiences and then in the end, after he's left the church, he tries ayahuasca and he has this healing experience with his inner child where he's told, you're good enough, you're whole, you're complete. And he's weeping as he tells the story. A full grown man, you know, adult. And, and he's. He's weeping about this experience. And, and all I can say is it. It cannot be religious in any, any way. It can be a chemically induced neurological state and it can be life changing and miracle and miraculous and all that can be true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:32:12] Yeah. And it can still be sacred. And I. I definitely honor all of those experiences and I think they're amazing. I just don't honor them being used to manipulate people into a very. To the benefit of an abuser. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:26] Of the, of the organization, you know, the. Want your money, control you. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:32:30] Yep.

Euphoria Induction, Proselytizing, and the Group as an Organism

John Dehlin [02:32:31] All right, so we're. There's two more to go. We're the penultimate tool of influence, which is euphoria induction. And this is kind of a cousin to trans induction and dissociative states, Correct?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:32:45] Yep, it is. Yeah. It's kind of cool today, the way they've all kind of lined up. They all just kind of. It's like. It's like their spectrum of colors bleeding into each other instead of like these stark lines. Lines. So I'm happy the way that worked out. So euphoria induction is a special type of trance induction that makes you feel good. It is the same thing as cognitive consonance we talked about. When we encounter things that confirm our existing beliefs, we tend to feel really good about it. So euphoria induction can be a type of cognitive consonance. It feeds off of social cohesion, love bombing and testimony, which is a form of public commitment. It establishes and reinforces trust in the person who is doling out the euphoria. It generates shared experiences among other people in the group who might be having the same experience as you. It suppresses critical thinking and doubts. It proves the legitimacy of the group, which is a type of mystical manipulation. A lot of these emotional controls can be turned into a type of mystical manipulation again. And it's like a spiritual proof of the, of the organization or miracle. It balances out low feelings that are created by the abuse. Again, if all we felt were miserable while we were in these controlling situations, then we wouldn't, we would be more likely to give up and leave. So it does give us some high points to go with and it creates shared purpose and obscures the negative aspects of the group.

John Dehlin [02:34:15] All of those things, yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:34:17] Next slide. So forget mental gymnastics. And I have a picture of a roller coaster that I don't think is real. It looks absolutely terrifying. Abuse support of survivors Even just from domestic abuse. The report high highs and low lows. And I can tell you that as well from my own abuse experiences that there's high highs with love bombing and the attention that's being paid, they can make you feel really amazing. And then that offsets the super low feelings that we have. And so euphoria induction is part of those high highs. The roller coaster keeps you coming back for more. And that is known as trauma bonding, also known as Stockholm syndrome. They call it trauma bonding more often now. Just some lyric that you might be familiar with. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy wind your way, all is well. And that gets us to take those, those miserable experiences that we have. The unending work and demand for purity that we have and just gives us pushes the button. That song pushes the button of you actually are feeling joy right now. Everything's fine. You're going to be okay to sort of COVID up and smear over what's actually going on. These can be conditioned as triggers. And so that's why I do have a couple of song lyrics here. Because music is a really good way to make people feel things. So also through art, again, it's that subconscious part of our minds, that imagery and sounds and feelings. And so there is sunshine in my soul today, more glorious and bright, that glows in any earthly sky For Jesus is my light. And some of those songs can still bring back those warm fuzzies. That's what we call them in seminary. Warm fuzzies.

John Dehlin [02:35:58] Yeah. And, and I, you know, it's very reductive. But as I contemplated churches and religions, you know, it really does come down to the fact that life has so much suffering and uncertainty and fear and sadness and loneliness. What religions are at their most essential level are kind of happiness inducing machines. They just, they know how to make you feel happy. Happy and joyful. That's what they do best now that does. It's not all that they do. There are lots of other ways that they wield their influence, but at the end of the day they, they make you feel powerful, happy feelings. And in that way it reminds me of, you know, you know, the, the idea that, that religion is the opiate of the masses. Right. What do opiates do? They make you feel great. Who is it that said religion is the open of the masses? My brain is, was.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:36:55] Nietzsche.

John Dehlin [02:36:56] Nietzsche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My brain was having a fog there. They really literally just take the sting out of life, make you feel better and, and who doesn't want to feel great? Right. It's just the side effects. Opiates can make you feel great, but it may not always lead to the most, you know, meaningful, fulfilled life in the long run. And there are always the side effects that are, that are a problem.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:37:20] Right. And opiates make you sleepy. They make you kind of space out and sleepy and you just want to curl up and let everything be okay. And that's not an active, critical thinking, self directed sort of place to be.

John Dehlin [02:37:33] And they can be misused when you're under the influence, of course.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:37:36] Yep. Robert J. Lifton in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism said ideological totalism itself may offer a man an intense peak experience, a sense of transcending all that is ordinary and present, prosaic, of freeing himself from the encumbrances of human ambivalence, of entering a sphere of truth, reality and sincerity beyond any he has ever known or even imagined. But these peak experiences carry a great potential for rebound and for equally intense opposition to the very things which initially seemed so liberating. But rather than stimulating greater receptivity and openness to the world, they encourage a backward step into some form of embeddedness. I love the way he puts things.

John Dehlin [02:38:22] Yeah, he's so great.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:23] I think about that for a while.

John Dehlin [02:38:27] Yeah, he's so great.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:38:28] Yeah, yeah. So. And then Robert R. Martin from Recovery from Cults said the, the. Sorry, there are many group processes that can make people feel wonderful, even euphoric. And it is to be noted that these processes or euphoric feelings are not unique to cults or French churches. What becomes troublesome for the recovering ex Mormon is coming. Sorry, ex member. That was the Freudian thing. What becomes troublesome for the recovering ex member is coming to understand that such processes are not unique to their group. Mooney's have told me of the tremendous feelings of rapture, love and warmth that they have experienced at some of their services. And then he provides more examples of other people from other groups. A woman I counseled continued, continued, continued to go to a charismatic sect even after it had nearly destroyed her family. She admitted the people there skillfully used many techniques to induce guilt, even causing her to become estranged from her family. Yet she had to go to the service because she felt so good while she was there.

John Dehlin [02:39:31] Yeah, and I'll never forget watching the documentary on Netflix called Wild, Wild Country. I really do think it's probably, probably the best cult documentary ever made to this point. I mean Going Clear is clearly amazing. There are others. But Wild Wild country is about the Bhagwan, Shri Rajneesh, the Indian guru that sets up basically a commune in northern Oregon, I believe, in rural Oregon. And you know, you've got all these lawyers and doctors and dentists that get recruited. They're super brilliant people. It gets so out of control that like they're poisoning a neighborhood town. The right hand woman of the guru is super abusive to the people. You know, there's all this fraud and eventually it all implodes. And then at the very end you get this super brilliant like ex entertainment lawyer guy who says, and it was the happiest time of my life, you know what I mean? And I've never known joy like I knew when I was in this totally destructive, imploding, almost deadly cult. But it was, it was amazing. And you just, you can't base truth and reality on you, on feelings of euphoria or freaking. The worst cults you know would be true, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:40:54] Yeah, they would. And, and I'd say that you can base your own subject truths on euphoria as long as it's self guided and it's subjective. It's just about you, but making pronouncements of truth about objective reality. The reality that we all share when we can't get inside of each other's heads, that that is what we can't decide based on feelings, that feelings do not change reality, external reality, feelings can change internal reality. And so that's why I make that decision distinction.

John Dehlin [02:41:27] Yeah, totally.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:41:30] So just how good is euphoria induction? Paul R. Martin says consistently former drug addicts who later joined cultic groups refer to the experiences as a high or as getting high. The longing to duplicate such experiences can be one of the most difficult problems for ex cultists to overcome. It then resembles an addiction. Just like the drug addict. They maintain that there is no greater feeling in the world. And I have a picture on the slide of a Mormon ad with a flower growing up out of the snow, and it says he is Jesus Christ bringing spiritual rebirth and physical resurrection through him. You can be clean and whole. And that's just. There is an example of one of the things that might trigger in many people, like a feeling of, especially if you're a believing Mormon, like feelings of peace and joy in euphoria.

John Dehlin [02:42:21] And again, who doesn't want to feel clean and pure and whole? And that's the promise. But then how many Mormons or members of high demand religions walk around every day feeling whole and clean and pure? It seems like, at least for many, that we interact with, it's always like impure and dirty and broken and fallen and bad and unworthy and unclean, because who can live up to those standards that that's where the dream doesn't always become reality. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:42:51] Right. And they're always also being told that you're unworthy and unclean and a sinner and carnal. And you have to fight your carnal desires and you have to fight your body and you have to fight the flesh and the desires of the flesh and bridle your passions. And that's like constantly. So, like, we only get to feel clean and whole in those moments that they want us to feel clean and whole. And then they, they whip us right back around to like hating ourselves and self loathing.

John Dehlin [02:43:17] And it's often, I mean, Mormons don't have the collection plate, but you pay tithing while you're at church. It's kind of in that church experience where the equivalent of when you're feeling those euphoric feelings that the collection plate is passed around and you're. You're expected to give.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:43:31] Right, Right. Yep. So in the next slide, euphoria induction can appeal to our ideals or be created through our ideals. Tobias Lalitj and Captive Hearts Captive Mind says feeling you have found the ultimate answer can be a potent high. Loss of individuality can contribute to this. So Lorna Goldberg in Recovery from Cults said the recruit is unable to differentiate his or her thoughts and feelings from those of the group, as boundaries between the individual and others in the cult have merged. Ex cultists report that at this point they experienced a sense of sense of peace, a euphoric feeling. And so the double edge of that is that you lose your boundary of your sense of self as an individual and you merge with the group. The abusive side of that is that people can trample all over your boundaries and yourself and your right to your person and your property and your things. And then Kevin Garvey from Recovery, also from Recovery from Cults. It's a collection of papers and essays. So there's a lot of different authorities on that one. He says through repeated practice, condition comes into play in that the stressful sensation or idea prompts a desire to return to the solace of the trance state brought on by guided imagery. So there's that carrot and stick that, that, you know, I feel really crappy and I need to feel better again. So you can only get that from the group. They don't let you do drugs or find truth in other traditions or, you know, you've got to go back to the truth to get that relief or to the, to the organization. And there's another Mormon ad and it's a pile of balloons, and there's a yellow blue balloons, and there's a yellow balloon rising above it. And the caption says is a quote from dnc. If thou art sorrowful, call upon the Lord thy God with supplication that your souls may be joyful. That's DNC 136 29.

John Dehlin [02:45:24] I seem to remember a talk given by my friend Michael Ferguson. Ferguson called the Religious Brain. And I'm pretty sure that when they do, you know, imaging scans of the brain that the same parts of the brain that light up when you're on drugs light up when you're on religion. And it's, it's just. It's just a way for, for instead of you finding ways to achieve your own state of euphoria, there's an institution that's found a way to. To induce that within you and then to again have wield influence over you. I think very similar parts of the brain fire. That's what I seem to remember.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:46:01] I remember seeing him talking about the initial study at Sunstone a few years back. And I was really intrigued by that. So I'd be interested in finding out if he's followed up. They were planning more extended studies on that. It was a really fascinating study.

John Dehlin [02:46:14] Yeah, I think he's working with the hospital affiliated with Harvard at this point. So we'll have to get Michael Ferguson on more mysterious.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:46:22] All right, so. So yeah, yeah. For me, when I heard in the temple the first time I went through that I was cleansed of the sins of my generation. Like, I just fell into tears, basically. All of those years, years and years and years of the buildup of the guilt. I'm never good enough. I'm never going to be okay. Is this is too hard. And your generation is sinful. And wicked and everybody. The world is getting more and more evil and all of that. It was just that in that moment, being cleansed of that, I was suddenly relieved of all of that burden. But the church made the grief happen in the first place, and they weren't giving me anything I didn't like that they hadn't already taken from me. And so that's kind of how this, how this works.

John Dehlin [02:47:09] It's just this idea. Beware of any organization that offers itself up as the cure to the disease that it causes. If the church makes you feel unworthy and broken and unhole and unclean and dirty, and then it makes you feel clean and whole, you know, you have some suspicion.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:47:26] Right, Right. It's a red flag.

John Dehlin [02:47:29] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:47:29] Pretty big one. Yeah. So that's it for euphoria induction. That was a shorter one. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:35] Yeah. So I think,

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:47:38] yeah, the groundwork got laid in the trans induction one. So it was just a few extra points layered on top of that.

John Dehlin [02:47:46] And if we're grading Mormonism, I'm just going to sit that. You know, even long after I left, stopped believing in the Mormon Church, even after I was excommunicated, I went to General Conference. And when I'm singing Yelders of Israel standing up at the conference center, hearing the apostles get up in the quiet conference center and give their powerful talks with their shaky voices and their tears and the visual images up on the screen and all the members standing up and singing in unison and hearing, hearing the majestic Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I had zero distinctive Mormon beliefs at that point, and I was still caught up in the rapture of the euphoria. To this day, if I hear Mormon hymns, I get the tingling on my arms and the hair standing up in the back of my neck. It's a real thing. And like you say, I like that. You say it's not necessarily bad, but we need to be aware of it and then we need to understand how it influences us and we need to. To be thoughtful about how it can be misused to control and manipulate people. But it's a real thing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:48:53] Yep, sure is.

John Dehlin [02:48:54] It's a real thing. All right, so Mormonism gets an A in euphoria induction. And I. I think we know what grade the Mormon Church gets In the final 31st mechanism of undue influence. It's proselyting. And of course, with the Book of Mormon musical, they picked one theme kind of one setting for the what is. What is the characteristic prototypical Mormon experience. And of course, it's the Mormon missionary experience. If we're known for anything along with Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't know, the Moonies. It's proselyting, so. So I guess you picked the sweetest one for last Heluna.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:49:37] I sure did. Yeah. And, and that's kind of of what like nevermost think of when they think of Mormons, they immediately think of that, that Elder so and so in the, in the shirt and tie and Elder Cunningham. Yep, yep. So the obvious thing is that proselytizing is to bring in new members. That's just straight up. I mean the, the church needs more tithe payers, more people to control more obedient folks. So they, they need to get in more people. And they certainly do try. But there are a lot of other benefits that helps to control the missionary themselves. And since everybody's, every member is a missionary, then this applies not just to people serving a full time mission, but also to the rest of us as members. So as we're proselytizing, it helps suppress our cognitive dissonance in a number of ways. For instance, if other people are listening to us and believing in what we're saying, saying, then there must be something true about it. Just like I got a cough again, I put on some lotion earlier. I think that's it. I'm sensitive to smells. All right, so a number of ways that it suppresses cognitive dissonance we talked about in the previous presentation, we talked about public commitment. And that's one of the things. When you're bearing your testimony to someone else who's not a member, just, even, even if they don't agree with you or, or are touched by it or anything like that, there's still the act of saying it out loud is going to increase your cognitive consonants and reduce your cognitive dissonance. So it does provide opportunities for public commitment, ample opportunities for that. The time that you're spending doing missionary work distracts from your doubts that you may have. And any time that you have to read competing materials or think critically about your life or about the church itself and the doctrines, it increases a sense of group cohesion. So I'm preaching the gospel, you're preaching the gospel, we're all preaching the gospel. We're all part of the same thing. We're all connected. The doctrines are reinforced through this process. As we're teaching those doctrines to other people, it's reminding us to follow those doctrines. And Maloo control restricts the conversations that we have with outsiders to one topic. So if you're on a mission they restrict you from all media and everything else and you're always restricted, preaching the gospel. But even outside of a mission, when you're there with your co worker and you're bearing your testimony with them or trying to get them to come to a church meeting, you're still focused on the church. You're not talking with them about the game or about the movie that you just saw, or about what their life is like. And it's preventing you from being exposed to outside ideas.

John Dehlin [02:52:19] And I think, you know, two things. We all know that nowadays days missionary, you know, convert retention is so incredibly low within the Mormon Church. It's estimated to be something like 10 or 20% maximum. You know, within a two to five year period. Retention is just incredibly low and it's so expensive. Why in the world would the Mormon Church maintain a missionary program at the super high level that it does? We all know the, the answer. The Mormon missionary program is to convert the missionary to the church far more than it is to bring in converts. And so, you know, I think we all realize that's true and your bullets kind of bear that out. But I also just want to say, if there were any evidence that Joseph Smith was a prophet, so to speak, it was the fact that from the very beginning of the, the church, instead of having all these men around competing with other women, causing problems, questioning what he's doing, you know, micromanaging his attempt to control, you know, the, the towns and the people that, that he was trying to control, what did he do? He sent all these men on missions. He sent them away, sent them away from their own wives and their own children, sent them to Israel, sent them to, you know, Europe, sent them to Latin America, getting them out, getting them, you know, proselyting, converting themselves, converting others, building almost trauma, bonding with the church so that they could have these war stories of when they were missionaries and the things that they faced and they were spit on and they were, doors were slammed in their faces and they weren't thinking about their doubts. They were too busy selling the product. It built cohesion over time, the doctrines get reinforced and you know, what a better way to seal your commitment. And a lot of these people like Brigham Young didn't spend a lot of time with Joseph Smith. They were too busy in foreign lands trying to convert other people. But what a powerful mechanism for member control that the missionary program has been since the very beginning. Right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:54:38] Yeah, it accomplishes a lot with that one thing. I mean, the thing about, you know, the reason that we're sending the Youth on missions is of course, because the person doesn't have any, any ties in their life. So it's, it's logical for that reason. They don't have a family, you know, they're not having a spouse or anything like that. But the, the biggest reason is that that's the age when people naturally individuate from their parents and from their original, you know, culture that they came from. So the natural progress is like when you're, when you're a toddler, you do an individuating time at that point where you're testing the boundaries, you've learned to walk, and now you're going to test and see how far you can walk and what you can get away with. And then it happens again in your teens or it can happen later on, especially if you're super sheltered. Where, where again, naturally. Naturally. As part of our learning process, we again begin to realize our freedoms and we begin to realize that we're a separate person from our parents. And it's a natural progress. Progress to where we want to figure out who we really are. And so we're trying on new clothes and we're trying on new ways of talking and new ways of walking and new ways of socializing. We're trying on new friends, new music styles. And the rebellion that teenagers go through is perfectly natural progress, process. They are trying to figure out who they are and what the limits are on their behavior. Absolutely natural. Well, Mormonism stifles that and curtails it. And, and the time when, when you go into college, that's when you actually have like the freedom, the fullest freedom to try on all, all of these identities, to figure out who you really are. And that's when they get you. They. They are like while you're trying to figure out who you are in this certain way. And so it's not, it's not a mistake that this happens at the age of 18 or 19.

John Dehlin [02:56:33] Yeah. If you're going to college to do what most people do, which is to figure out who you are, what's important to you, what makes you tick, frankly, to figure out your sexuality, figure out what you're attracted to, who you're attracted to, what turns you on, what gets you excited, what a smarter thing to do is then to divert these people, number one, to a religious university so that while you're at the university experience, you're getting fully indoctrinated with the milieu control. But then you divert them onto missions and you can seize that identity formation opportunity as a way to make sure all your members assume the organization's identity. And of course, the short hair, the white shirts, the tie. What's more, if there were ever a Mormon experience that sort of met the 31 criteria more profoundly than any other Mormon experience, what is it? It is the mission experience to the point where up until recently, you couldn't even call home. You couldn't go home for a family member's wedding. I had two grandparents die on my mission. I wasn't allowed to go home. It is so controlling, and it's all about seizing you in that critical moment and then forging that identity while you're in that identity state. And then of course, in that vulnerable state, in that malleable state. And then of course, immediately, what do they do? As soon as your mission's over, your mission president says, what do you need to do? Go get married immediately and start having kids. And that is the way they lock you in. And if there were any other evidence, evidence that this is what's going on, you just ask yourself, in 2021, what have bishops been told their primary responsibility is? They are literally, there's no more young men's leader within Mormonism, because now the bishop is the young men's leader, because that's how critical it is that we get these teenagers on missions so that they can then get married in the temple, have kids. And that's the only way to have a shot of the locking humans into the system in 2021. And I'm sorry, this is something I'm passionate about, but we can go to your next slide now.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:58:52] Sure. No, it's all important and needs to be said. And I don't even think I had slides for a lot of those concepts. So organizations, especially totalistic organizations, can almost seem like a life form. And that could be a whole other time topic I could probably research and write about. It's really interesting to me, the idea of an organization as a life form. But the. It almost takes on a mind of its own and a drive to self propagate. So. And we are the environment that organizations live in, that doctrines live in. There's a concept called memes, not the Internet meme, that's where that word came from. But it originally described that the idea that thoughts or ideas can be a life form that self propagate through all of our minds. So that's. That's one thing that organization is almost driven to propagate itself using all of us,

John Dehlin [02:59:43] the group.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [02:59:44] This is from the Cults 101 checklist, occult characteristics the group is preoccupied with bringing in new members. The group is preoccupied with making money. Wallich and Tobias in Captive Hearts, Captive Minds said members are encouraged to spend a great deal of time proselytizing. John D. Goldhammer in under the Influence said, psychologically, individuals who identify with a group's agenda believe that what's good for us must be good for everyone else. And a 1920s anti prohibition slogan was millions of Frenchmen can't be wrong. And so there is that feeling of if everyone else is doing that social proof, if everyone else believes it, then it must be true. And so I have to believe it.

John Dehlin [03:00:27] Yeah, absolutely. So powerful.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:00:31] So just a reminder of the story that I told previously about Leon Festinger, who researched a theory that he had based on cognitive dissonance and wrote about it in the book called When Prophecy Fails. And so the story behind that was there was a group in the Midwest in the 50s that believed in UFOs and believed that the UFOs were going to come and destroy mankind. And there was a specific date that that was supposed to happen on. And Festinger hypothesized, based on historical accounts of this sort of situation, that when the date of the end of the world came and went and the world didn't end, he predicted that they would double down on their beliefs and would begin proselytizing even more than they ever had. This is based on like the Anabaptists, who after their end of the world didn't happen in the 1600s or whenever was that, that they. They began converting more and more people. And this is true of many, many groups in history. So that's the back story of this quote. And the quote, he. The quote is from Robert Cialdini and influence and the science and practice of influence. And he said if they could spread the word, then they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and if by so doing they could win new conversations, converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs would be come truer. The principle of social proof says so. The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the idea to be correct. And that is what happened in When Prophecy Fails. They in the grad students infiltrated this particular group in the Midwest and they were able to observe what happened. And they watched the group go from being very isolated, not wanting to talk to the media. The media really wanted to know what was going on because this is a weird, sensational story. They really wanted to put this on headlines. But the group became More and more and more isolated as the date started coming up on the calendar. And then when the date came and went and the world didn't end, all of a sudden they're picking up the phone and calling the media and they're calling the library looking for lecture times and they're going door to door and they're trying to convert anyone that, that they possibly can. Of course they didn't get anybody at that point. Unlike the Anabaptists who baptized a whole bunch of people afterwards, they didn't get any converts, but it helped them feel like, or they were seeking other people to agree with them, to help overcome the cognitive dissonance they had about the world not ending.

John Dehlin [03:02:58] I'm reminded of this quote and I'm going to get it wrong, but it's something like truth doesn't need an evangelist or a missionary kind of truth, you know, usually is kind of self evident and kind of wins its way. It's something else that needs a missionary. Right. It's something else that needs proselyting and convincing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:03:17] Yeah, yeah, makes sense to me. Yaniel Lalitsch in Recovery from Cults made this point. This is me talking dehumanizing in terms of seeing everyone either as the enemy or a potential convert. So, so it causes us to objectify people outside of our group and turn them into objects in our mind. So we either have to, they're either the enemy or we want to recruit them. And Janiel Lalitsch said new members were taught that previous acquaintances, no matter how intimate, were to be treated as potential recruits. If someone wasn't a potential recruit, there was no reason to maintain the relationship. And I've noticed in since leaving the church that in Mormonism service is equated with proselytizing. So they'll, they'll have a conference, talk happens over and over and they'll talk about service. And they'll quote Jesus saying love one another or some other scripture about service. And they'll get us all feeling warm and fuzzy about compassion. And then they immediately jump. What kind of service are we supposed to do? We're not supposed to clean up old ladies yards. We're not supposed to dig wells in Africa. We're not supposed to donate to feed the homeless in our town. No. What are we supposed to do? We're supposed to convert people. And they over and over and over equate the idea of service and compassion with the idea of converting people to the church. That seems to be like the ultimate act of service in the church. And it really, really Bugs me because they're redirecting the energies of compassionate, good hearted people to become their, their service people, to bring in, just to bring in people, to bring in more tithes and bring in more bodies.

John Dehlin [03:04:54] And I do remember that dynamic as a missionary. It's kind of cringy in my mind as I think about it. I'm in Guatemala. There are all these people that have these sacred religious beliefs. They're Catholics, they're whatever, you know, they have their own traditions, maybe they're secular. And it's these 18, 19 year old kids that haven't even gone to college yet. They haven't even ever been married. Many of them have never had sex, they never had kids. They, they haven't experienced in many cases a lot of adversity, let alone really have a lot of knowledge, self knowledge, let alone wisdom about the world. And here we are going to another country telling everybody what is true, what they need to believe, looking down on them as being lost or fallen and is needing our guidance. And it really is kind of cringy when you think, think about it. There's an arrogance and a superiority that's implied within a missionary context that you really, we just kind of do it. We just like oh yeah, of course I'm going to be the Mormon that changes all mankind as a 19 year old kid from Spanish Fork, Utah. But that's just, that's how we're all raised to think. Yeah, it's a lot of power for a 19 year old, you know.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:06:16] Yeah. And it's colonizing. So we get into more of the like political sciences of it. It's colonizing. It is, it is us feeling superior about our ethnicity and our culture and our beliefs and we're so superior about that because we're right and everybody else is wrong. And then we go to these countries and we, we teach them the superiority of us and we expect them to be happy about that. And it's condescending and rude and oftentimes racist and, but that's, that's, that's what Mormons are taught to do. And they believe that they're doing good. They believe that they're following the loved one another commandments of Jesus to go out and do this. And that's just how their natural instincts to empathize with others have been like totally twisted around to where they're in a position of dominance over them because they have the truth and no one else does.

John Dehlin [03:07:07] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:07:09] Yeah. Marion Stricker in the Pattern of the Double Bind in Mormonism says a Binder is concerned with numbers and must have many followers, many purchasers, as there are a few who may wake up, begin to question, find answers, and revolt by standing up and no longer supplicant. So she, she was really good at defining these dynamics within Mormonism, particularly relating to the double binding. And this is sort of the fringe of how, you know, the double bind works with, you know, it's like the, the narcissistic personality, malignant narcissist, which gets transferred onto the group. The group then becomes the malignant narcissist. The leaders follow in the footsteps of the founder. They're just absolutely consumed with the idea of getting more and more and more devoted worshipers.

John Dehlin [03:08:00] And this is a really interesting dynamic because growing up, we all learned in scripture mastery that quote from Daniel 2, 44 and 45, that the stone is cut out of the mount without hands and will roll down the mountain and consume all nations. And we had these predictions with Rodney Stark and others that the Mormon Church was the fastest growing religious movement in the world and that we were going to reach the hundreds of millions within, you know, half a, you know, a few decades. And we were all super stoked about Mormon growth. And then we'd have, you know, these missionaries baptizing 10, 20, 30, 40 people a month. And these missions that were getting 7, 800, you know, baptisms a month in the mission, sometimes over a thousand, like in Chile. And that was all kind of a Potemkin house of cards, because those are just statistics. Those were numbers. They, they motivated you, they drove you. You thought you were part of something amazing. But then you kind of learned something the church never bothered to tell you, which was all those numbers in Latin America and the Philippines. Philippines imploded. Holland had to go out and close like 30 stakes in Chile Alone Oaks did the same thing in the Philippines. We have abysmal retention rates now, and we're finding that in all these countries it's really just a function of poverty and sort of new markets. But yeah, there's a time where it was growing in Japan or in Western Europe when there was potato famines and people starving and needing to something. But once any country reaches a certain level of affluence, which we call pride or a level of education, which we call pride, then all of a sudden they don't need us, they don't want us, because they're healthy and happy on their own. And so of course, we have to retreat out of Western Europe. And missions are closing and stakes are closing and wards and stakes are being collapsed and missions are being collapsed and they're selling off church buildings and literally the church is imploding in Western Europe, in developed Asia, in Canada, in the United States, and even in Latin America. And so now of course, the church stops to publish its statistics and starts to manage the members expectations that it's no longer about numbers. We were never about numbers anyway. And of course it's pumping money into Africa and investment in Africa, because that's kind of like the last ditch era area where we can get some sort of statistical growth to fend off the reality that we really are a shrinking church. And the members don't know that, but we are literally a shrinking church. Which makes it harder to proselytize, right?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:10:36] It does, yeah. And it's. And, and they know about that feedback cycle and they were hoping to catch it at the, you know, headed off at the past, but they, they didn't. So that cognitive dissonance of the social proof of people leaving is going to cause more and more people to leave. Yeah, yeah. If they hear about it, if they get out of the Maloo control long enough to hear about it.

John Dehlin [03:10:55] Which is why we need to stop publishing statistics in General conference, which is what we did, because it was basically publicizing the fact that we're becoming a shrinking, dying church.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:06] Right.

John Dehlin [03:11:06] Not, not financially. Financially we're doing better than ever. It's winning converts where we're struggling and maintaining, maintaining our converts and our members of record.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:17] Right. Hey, they've got enough money. They could just give everybody a thousand dollars if they join now.

John Dehlin [03:11:22] I think they're going to need that in the future because tithing is going to keep shrinking and they're going to need their investments to grow, which is why they invest. Smart.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:31] Yep, smart.

John Dehlin [03:11:33] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:11:33] So if anyone's questioning whether the church is hung up on proselytizing, Spencer W. Kimball, in the incident in October 1974, said the question is frequently asked, should every young man fill a mission? And the answer has been given by the Lord. It is, yes, every young man should fill a mission. He said, send forth the elders of my church unto the nations which are afar off, unto the islands of the sea, sent forth unto foreign lands, call upon all nations, first upon the Gentiles, then upon the Jews. So I think that's pretty incontrovertible. And then he also said in the same article, I am asking for missionaries who have been carefully indoctrinated and trained through the family and the organizations of the church and who will come to the mission with a Great desire. I am asking for better interviews, more searching interviews, more sympathetic and understanding interviews. But especially that we train prospective missionaries much better, much earlier, much more longer, so that each anticipates his mission with great joy. I think that they did that. I think I heard a lot when I was a kid growing up in primary, particularly the boys. You know, the boys were supposed to go on a mission and heard it all the time. There were primary songs about it. And I think that this. Quotes like this, once you're out of the bubble, start to feel like a lot more ominous. Who have been carefully indoctrinated. Indoctrinated. They've been trained through the family.

John Dehlin [03:13:02] They.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:13:03] We should train them much earlier, much longer, so that they anticipate their mission with joy. Like that is literally mind control that he's describing there.

John Dehlin [03:13:12] I hope they call me on a mission when I have grown a foot or two.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:13:17] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:13:18] Right, yeah. And when Mormon families kneel to pray, what do they do? They pray for the missionaries. And. And, you know, when kids are taught your life plan, you're going to graduate high school, serve a mission. It's just part of the plan. And now that even the number of missionaries are in decline, that became embarrassing to the church. And so what do they do? They start emphasizing that every worthy young woman should. Should serve a mission. And that was the only way to temporarily mask the massive decline in. In missionaries that the church was experiencing. So.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:13:56] Right.

John Dehlin [03:13:57] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:13:59] And, you know, that brings to mind, too, and I don't think I have a slide for this in the idea that. Of why women weren't sent on missions. And that's because they needed to get married. And the reason they needed to get married is so they could have babies. And that is probably like the most insidious form of proselytizing that the church does is the baby factories have as many babies as you possibly can. And that's like an almost guarantee that at least half of those are going to stay in the church. Back in the day, it was all of them. All of them are going to stay in the church. And that. That's really what that is all about. It's not about populating the earth. The earth is quite populated as it is. And it's not about getting spirit children down here to get bodies. You know, you've got to wonder, like, is there a limit on how many spirits there are? And when does God say, okay, we're done, the last one's coming next week. Like, that isn't in the cards? Because that would be. We'd have to think critically in order to come up with those questions. What, what is really in the cards is more destabilized blank young slates that will accept whatever we teach them for at least a little while. That's what it's about. So that was just a side rant. Wasn't planning on talking about that. But that's, that's why women are supposed to stay home and get married, have those babies is soon as possible.

John Dehlin [03:15:17] Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:15:19] David O. McKay said every member is a missionary. He or she has the responsibility of bringing somebody, a mother, a father, a neighbor, a fellow worker, an associate, somebody in touch with the messages, messengers of the gospel. If every member will carry that responsibility and if the arrangement to have that mother or that father or somebody meet the authorized representatives of the church, no power on earth can stop this church from growing. And that's interesting in light of what you were saying about church growth.

John Dehlin [03:15:50] Absolutely. So now you've got this concept of unprofessionalizing. Yeah.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:15:58] Two slides on the antidote. Like a better attitude in my opinion to have towards the world. So I've already touched on this a little bit. But spirituality is inherently subjective. Not objective, subjective. Your personal is about your personal symbols and preferences and the things that resonate with you. It's just like a favorite flavor of ice cream. You cannot force someone to like spumoni. I like spumoni. I haven't had it in years because I'm low carb. But I do like spumone. But I noticed that a lot of people really don't like it. It's kind of the joke ice cream. And that's a preference. That is not something that you know. I'm not better than everyone because I like spumone and I'm not worse than anyone else because I like spumoni. Like no subjective preference is better than anyone else. It's just better for you. Your own subjective preferences are better for you. And spirituality is no different from that spiritual. It's like you have a spiritual path or a spiritual language and everybody speaks different spiritual language languages. Some of us speak similar spiritual languages and we can get together and we can have discussions and share with each other what works and what doesn't. But when it comes down to it, whatever you feel, the spirit, if you will, whatever resonates with your heart, that is your subjective spiritual preference, your, your spiritual language and for a fulfilling self actualized life, that is what you should follow. Again, don't harm anybody. Um, but outside of that, like whether or not Buddhism resonates with you. For me, for me, what resonates with, with me is certain LDS tenets that still resonate with me. Buddhism, the bit of Taoism, for a while it was an objectivist of all things. So some of those things are foundational for me. And just science and psychology and nature, those are all things that I can consider to be part of my spiritual language. And it's taken me many years to discover that and of study and questioning and talking to other people to discover those things. But that isn't for me to dictate to anyone else. Those are. It's up for you to decide what those things are for yourself. And so we should learn to let other people have their own favorite flavor of spirituality. It doesn't make you wrong or less good when other people don't agree with your subjective truths, just like your preferences are for ice cream. There's a saying, it's called the Wiccan Reed. I think I've mentioned it before. It's sort of the ethical construct of the religion of Wicca. And it is. And it harm none. Do as you will. So you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. You can believe whatever you want as long as those beliefs are not causing harm for other people. There are beliefs that can harm people. Racism is a great example of a belief that can harm other people. So that would be something that you shouldn't believe, in my opinion. And we should judge people when we are judging people. And it is okay to judge people under certain contexts. We should only judge them on their demonstrably harmful behavior, not merely harmless beliefs. And I included the word demonstrably there because it needs to. You can't just claim without evidence, without some kind of evidence that something is harmful. And that's what the church does. The, the church says sin is harmful and coffee and tea is harmful, and out of wedlock sex is harmful. And all of this stuff is like inherently harmful. And that is our justification for doing the things that we do even, even greater harms than that in order to propagate that. Well, that isn't. Those things aren't demonstrably harmful. There's no, there's no evidence. If you're irresponsible with drugs and alcohol, that can be demonstrably harmful. And so then we can make that. Those nuanced decisions. Okay, if I drink irresponsibly and I get in a car and drive, I can hurt someone else. That's bad. But drinking itself isn't bad. And that Allows us to make decisions with informed consent about ourselves in our own lives and other people too. And not, not trying to put our own values onto other people when, when what they're doing isn't hurting anyone.

John Dehlin [03:20:07] I mean, this is basically the opposite of sacred science, right? Sacred science is there's one true path path, and everyone needs to follow it and agree to it. And this is basically saying many, many paths. And it's basically moral. You know, some would say it's relativism, cultural relativism, moral relativism. And that's a trigger for a lot of people, but it's also, it's maybe the best we have, you know?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:20:31] Yeah, yeah. And it's about thinking for ourselves, not letting someone else dictate our values system.

John Dehlin [03:20:38] Yeah, absolutely.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:20:40] So there's some more tips. Yeah. When we find a good thing, we might want to share it. So we found a good diet or a good health technique, a good medication or something like that. And it makes us excited. We want to help other people and help other people in the same way we've been helped. But unsolicited advice is toxic. And this is thought of by many health care, mental health practitioners and support groups and other things. If you tell someone what you think they ought to do, that is generally considered toxic. Whether it's spiritual advice or medical advice or advice on how to live life. We really, if we want to treat people the best way we can treat them, we ought to wait for someone to ask or ask them if it's okay to tell them and then respect those boundaries. But there are also other ways to share the things that we're excited about. So it turns out that when we're focused on the humanity and rights of other people, how we share changes. And it might just change naturally. Once I realize that my stuff is my stuff and your stuff is your stuff, then I might naturally change my language to share that in a way that doesn't insult you. But there's, there's some tips we can follow if that doesn't come naturally to us. And the biggest one that I got was when talking about subjective truths, use first person present tense singular. And that is the grammar terms for start with the word I. So when we start with the word I, we're much less likely to tumble into dictating to someone else what they ought to do. So for instance, I feel closer to God when I pray. That is very different from you should pray to feel closer to God. I get spiritual well being from studying Eastern thought. That's different from oh My gosh. You need to become a Buddhist. I enjoy a routine of exercise and quiet meditation that's very different from. You'll never get healthy unless you exercise and meditate. And I like to read uplifting poetry. Again, it's making it about me. And I am sharing what's important to me. And now we can communicate. I'm leaving room for you to share what you want to share with me. And we can both. We can both have our subjective truths and meet each other in the middle without stepping on each other's toes or dictating to other people. And most importantly, if you're confident in your own beliefs, you don't actually need for anyone else to walk your spiritual path. The more comfortable I get with my spiritual path and how secure I am in it, I feel less desperate to try to get other people to believe the way I do because I don't need their input to feel valid for myself.

John Dehlin [03:23:19] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it. It takes away some of the simplicity of just like, here's what you're supposed to believe, and everyone line up and. And, and follow and, and believe it. But it. What it adds is this beautiful complexity and diversity of points of view in a perspective, perspectives that can just make life rich. It's kind of like, do you want to eat gruel every day for the rest of your life? It's simple, it's easy, it's quick, not super tasty. Or do you want a salad with carrots and tomatoes and onions and radishes and whatever it is you like in your salad, meats or cheeses. Like, there's so much. You know, even the principles of evolution are rooted in the. In the value of diversity. Diversity as, you know, as being a fundamental principle of life and of health and of. And of joy, frankly. And who doesn't want diversity? So.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:24:21] And it's exciting. You get to. You're not stuck in your own beliefs. You get to learn about other people's beliefs, and you get to see what their lives are like, and that's really interesting, exciting, and fun, and you don't have to adopt those beliefs, and maybe you'll get something out of it that you find valuable and you want to adopt for yourself. But I listen to all kinds of people from all walks of life, and it's been incredibly enriching for my life to learn about what other people believe. It's really interesting.

John Dehlin [03:24:49] Yeah, yeah. It becomes. It becomes a really beautiful. It takes life from being boring and stifled and stilted and uninteresting, and it makes just Life fascinating to know that instead of, instead of your job is to preach to everyone the same boring, you know, set of truths that have been handed to you. Life becomes, the world becomes this beautiful place where you can learn from everybody. A child can teach you something. A Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu, an atheist, someone from Asia, someone from Africa. Anyone can teach you amazing truths. And it just makes life so much more beautiful and interesting for me. For me.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:29] For me too. Yep.

John Dehlin [03:25:31] Spimoni for me.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:33] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:25:35] Yeah.

Is Control Intrinsic to the Church and Paths Toward Recovery

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:35] So that's it for all of the techniques. I've got a couple of slides on.

John Dehlin [03:25:39] We covered all 31.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:25:43] We made it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:25:44] We did it.

John Dehlin [03:25:45] We did it. It only, it only took like 17 or 18 hours, Luna. But we did it. Have a few final thoughts to leave with this.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:26:00] Yeah. So the last kind of thought is whether or not. Well, maybe the second to last final thought is, you know, is control intrinsic to the LDS identity? Is, does the church's like, Persona inherently require control, all of these control techniques to continue existing? And personally, I don't think so. I think that definitely the church might get smaller if they adopt more healthy aspects and dumped all of these mind control techniques. It might get a lot smaller, but they've certainly, as we've discussed, got enough money to keep going. And in a way they might get larger with people that are less involved. For instance, I would get rebaptized if the church would accept me as I I am, with all the beliefs that I have and the sexual orientation that I am and the kind of people I want to have relationships with and my gender expression and all of that. If, if they would, and all the lessons that I've learned through life and my substance use and all of that, if they would just accept me just like I am, I would get re baptized. However, I wouldn't be as involved in the church. I wouldn't go to church every Sunday. It probably would be Christmas and Easter or something. And I, I wouldn't pay tithing. I might donate every once in a while. Well, if, if I knew it was actually going to help actual people, I would probably donate a little bit, but they wouldn't have me involved. So they could maybe increase their number of people that are members of the church, but they wouldn't be as involved. I'd be okay with that. They probably wouldn't. So they could, in order to do this, they could emphasize healthier doctrines. So they get to pick and choose which scriptures they are quoting and which prophets they're quoting. They can pick and choose and they can emphasize and choose the doctrines that are helpful to people, that are actually uplifting and not controlling, that direct people on their own spiritual journey. They can interpret those doctrines healthier. So they can, instead of picking up the most draconian interpretation of things, they could do it in a better way. Rather than having top down commandments that drown out the Spirit. I'm putting that in air quotes which I'm in this moment I'm defining as a individual's own personal, still small voice that directs them on the path that they want. So top down commandments will drown out that person's own internal voice. And instead they could have bottom up inspiration, allowing everyone to follow their own spiritual guidance. That is personal revelation for, for reals. And I believe that religion should serve man, but not the other way around, God. If God is out there and omnipotent, God has everything that God could ever possibly want. The church itself has so much money and power that the church and God don't need us at all. If anything, we need organizations that help and support and uplift us. And so I believe that Mormonism should, should serve its members, not the other way around. And then the next slide, I kind of have a graphic that sort of demonstrates this. On the left is a tall and narrow pointy triangle with top down totalism, thou shalt. And the arrow points from the top down to the bottom. And that is a commandment centered, controlling, totalistic organization. Bottom up inspiration is a lower, flatter triangle and is choice centered where the needs of the flock are at the bottom with an arrow pointing up to the top or the top is responding to the needs of the flock rather than their own needs.

John Dehlin [03:29:42] Yeah, so I've heard it said the church was made for man and not man for the church. And I don't mean to be gen like gendered there, but the Church was made for humans and not humans for the church.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:29:54] Right, Exactly. That's how it ought to be. That's not how it is. Is now though, two more slides just to drive that point home. And then another point just quoting DNC 12139 through 41. We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men. As soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and meekness and love unfeigned. So that is what one of the many beliefs that the church could cherry pick that. I am cherry picking here to point at the church and saying that they need to stop practicing unrighteous dominion. It's right there in their own scriptures.

John Dehlin [03:30:42] Yeah, that's actually a scripture I love and can get behind. It's quite true.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:30:46] Yeah. And then finally, just a thought, a final word from Carl Jung. I love Carl Jung. He was a fan founder, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology. And I think that he didn't get enough credit back in his time. Freud was preferred by the community at that point and I think Freud was kind of, kind of a jerk. I don't like Freud, but Carl Jung, Carl Jung was really wise and he had a lot to say on spirituality and psychology and self actualization. And this is from his recently published Red book which is a beautiful illuminated manuscript. I own a copy of, of it. And it's like, it's like two and a half foot tall. It's like a giant huge red leather bound book. And it's beautiful, it's. He hand illuminated drew, you know, like old scripture. He drew it in there and then wrote in German with this beautiful calligraphy and he sort of wrote. It's kind of like scripture for secularists. It's very much, very mystical and it's based on a lot of dreams that he had. It's really interesting. But this of kind quote from it is really good. He says if you do not acknowledge your yearning then you do not follow yourself but go on foreign ways that others have indicated for you. So you do not live your life but an alien one. And I had that quote stuck on my monitor for a long time.

John Dehlin [03:32:04] That's a great quote to live by.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:32:06] Sure is.

John Dehlin [03:32:08] Yeah. I love it. I love it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:32:12] Yep. So that's it, that's the final, final thought. And that's all she wrote.

John Dehlin [03:32:19] Yeah. I have a, I have a quote I'd like to, to read as well. I've been, I've been reading the book east of Eden by Jonathan Steinbeck and there are so many, so many good quotes in that book. But there, but there's a quote that particularly struck me and, and I wanted to also share it. So let me pull that up now as a closing thought just because it to me really encapsulates what we're talking about. It basically says, oh my gosh, what if I'm not able to find it? Then what's going to happen? What's that?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:08] Do you want me to stall neurology?

John Dehlin [03:33:10] Why don't you, why don't you go ahead and talk about the further reading and I'll see if I can find it.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:33:15] Sure. Sounds good. For further reading, there is my book where it's basically everything that we've talked about in these slides, but more, but also a little bit less. So I did talk about things throughout the slides that I didn't get to in my book, but also my book cover stuff that I didn't get to in the presentation. And that book is called Recovering 8 Agency Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. And my name is Luna Lindsay Corbden and I also have a website@recoveringagency.com with a lot of blog posts and essays and other information links to videos. I also really enjoyed reading Captive Hearts, Captive Minds by Madeline Tobias and Janja Lallich. There is an updated version of that so that this version is out of print, but there's a new one called Take back your Life and that is supposedly just as good. I just haven't read it. I think it's probably basically the same book. And then there's Recovery from Colts, which is a collection of papers and essays edited by Michael Langone. There is chapter you'd think I would have looked this up, chapter 21 or 22 of Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton. That that chapter in particular talks about the first eight mind control techniques that were identified identified by Lifton back in the 60s and and then Releasing the bonds by Stephen Hasson. And in the back of Recovering Agency there is a longer further reading list because there were a lot of books I really loved. It was just hard to choose from them all. So that's if you want to read up more beyond my work, then totally go and you can confirm everything I've said, whether or not, you know, my citations are are correct, whether I've interpreted the quotes the way that you would interpret them. I encourage everyone, if you're interested, to go do further study on your own. You don't just have to take my word for it.

John Dehlin [03:35:06] I love it. I love it. And it's okay. You don't remember the exact chapter. Listeners of yours have to do some of their own work, right? They can't have you do all their thinking for them.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:35:16] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:35:17] Here's the quote from east of Eden by Jonathan Steinbeck. It basically says there's more beauty in the truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar. And so the unexamined in life, the life where you allow someone to hand you a worldview that is artificially constructed and that you allow them to hand you an identity that is pre manufactured for you not to serve your best interests, but the interests of the institution that's handing you the identity. I would say that's not the best life lived. The best life lived is the one that sees the world as close to, as close to being accurate as possible and that allows the individual to do the work to do that self discovery, that self knowledge. Because once you know yourself, once you love yourself, then you are more equipped to engage in healthy relationships with other people where you get to know them and you get to forge relationships with them based on your your authentic identity and interests and theirs. That's when the real living begins in my opinion. And so basically Luna, the gift that you've given us is a better knowledge of the many tools and techniques used to take us away from self knowledge, to take us away from authentic identity and authentic relationship relationships and kind of informed living. Your work allows us to gain informed consent to take our lives back and to spend whatever remaining years, days, weeks, months or years that we have with whatever relationships remain or that we can discover. It allows us to live that healthiest, best life possible. And for that Luna Lindsay Corbden, I want to thank you for your gift to all of us and for this amazing book that I want to encourage all of our listeners and viewers to purchase right now. The book is called Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden. Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control. It is a gift to us all. Buy it in paper back format, buy it in audio form format, buy it in digital format and it will help you not only unpack what you experienced in your Mormon experience, but it will help you not be fooled again. Whether it's with a loved one, a family system, economic system, a company, an educational institution, a multi level marketing scheme, a self improvement program, a Google guru, a podcaster. I, I would support the use of these principles in every aspect of your life, including when you listen to this podcast. And if I am ever falling prey to any of the techniques in this book, I warmly invite my listeners and viewers to call me out on it and I will do my best to repent in the name of Luna Lindsay Corbden. Amen.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:38:53] Yes, thank you. And, and that is my goal as well, is to put people on their own path. I'm, I'm not selling any vitamins. I'm selling a book. That's it. And, and, and the hope there is that you learn and become free to follow your own heart. And I don't, I don't have like a system for you to follow, follow. That's, that's not my goal. And if it were, then I would be a totalist. If, if, if I wanted to control every aspect of your life and have a steady flow of money from you, to me, that would be controlling.

John Dehlin [03:39:32] I love it. A couple quick comments from our listeners. One of my favorite humans, Cecile writes, my husband and I are reading east of Eden right now. What a coincidence. Cecile, I'd love to do a book club with you and talk about your reactions to the characters in the story. This is actually my third time to read east of Eden. It's certainly one of my top three books of all time. And, and Cecile, I would love to talk to you about it sometime because I would love to hear your wisdom, but all listeners should consider reading Jonathan Steinbeck's east of Eden. It's a great book. Have you read it?

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:40:06] I haven't, no.

John Dehlin [03:40:08] It's a great, great book.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:40:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:09] Great book.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:40:10] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:40:11] Tamara writes, wow, Luna, thank you so much for putting so much time in all this information. Amazing. Thank you both for sharing. Thank you, Tamara, for your comments and feedback. It's been really fun. Chad writes, recovering agency was crucial to helping me break free from the Mormon high demand, totalistic organization. I'll edit Chad slightly just so that we don't offend people who and create the backfire effect. Tamara writes, no more lazy learners here. I love that. And Chad writes, thank you, Luna. Robin writes, thank you, thank you. Such information. Wonderful. Lillian writes, Excellent, etc. Etc. Etc. Luna, on behalf of all our listeners and viewers, thank you for your epic and this was a truly epic series on Mormon Stories podcast. Thank you for your book and we hope to have you back to just comment on normal everyday Mormon stuff. I really respect your wisdom, your intelligence, your diplomacy, your even handedness. You are such a gift to us all. I don't take back what I said. When we think about some of the many great CONTROL contributors to the Mormon people, Fawn Brody, Juanita Brooks, the September 6th Grant Palmer, Jeremy Runnels, when you, you know, Brent Metcalf, when you think about the greats, Luna, I think this contribution stands with all of those other contributions as being really crucial to helping us understand what we've been through, unpack it, and then rebuild a happy, healthy, healthy life. Post Mormon orthodoxy or post Mormonism. So on behalf of everybody, thank you again, Luna. And even Kara Burrell writes, what an amazing series. Thank you, Luna. So shout out to Kara, who is. Who has joined us on the Mormon Stories podcast team to support our efforts. Anyway, thank you, Luna. You're amazing.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:42:18] Thanks so much. And I'm happy that you had me on. It was really fun to deliver this information and, and I hope it's helpful to everyone who listens.

John Dehlin [03:42:27] Yeah, it will be. Thanks, Luna. Stay in touch.

Luna Lindsey Corbden [03:42:30] All right. All right. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:42:33] And listeners and viewers, thank you so much for joining us on this series. Please support Luna and thank you for your support of Mormon Stories podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. Your donations allow us to continue. They keep us alive. All this equipment, the photography, the cinematography that Gerardo Suma has helped us up our game with is only possible with your support. Our video and audio editor, Brooklyn Alden, she's amazing. She's made possible through your donations and support, this venue that we have, Mormon Story Studios. The rent's paid for through your support. My livelihood is supported through your support. We've been able to bring on Kara to do some work with us and, and the way that we've extended into the TikTok realm with the Mormon Stories podcast, TikTok channel, which you should subscribe to, and the Dr. John Dehlin TikTok Channel, which both of these channels are getting great looks and views and follows and feedback. It's all because of your support. So thank you for the. For the support. And of course, less than one out of a thousand of our listeners and viewers are donors. We're losing donors every. Every month. People get in financial hard times, they lose interest, they move on. They decide to donate to other worthy causes. For whatever the reason, we're always losing donors and supporters. And so we want to just always make an explicit call. If you value this program, if you want to see it continue, please become a monthly donor to Mormon Stories podcast. You just click on MormonStories.org, click on the donation button, sign up for whatever monthly contribution works for you, you, and we'll keep going and doing, providing you with this programming for as long as the support continues. And we'll do other cool, new and innovative things as well. So please become a donor and a subscriber if you don't already. All your donations are tax deductible in the United States and we're transparent in our finances. We publish our 990s and other financial information every year. We're not hiding anything. We're not trying to keep any secrets from you. It's all out above board and on the table and 100% of your donations go to our programming and to keeping all this alive, supporting me and our staff in what we do. So please support us. Thank you so much. Email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com Become a member of the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook community Like Us and subscribe to us on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram, on on TikTok, wherever it is that you can find our program programming. Subscribe to us Like Us. Follow us and that helps with the algorithms and it helps spread the word. Please send links to everyone you know. I am exhausted. Now I'm ready to sign out. Thank you so much for the support. Thanks to all of you and we will see you all again next week for another amazing, empowering, life changing episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody. We love you. We'll see you guys all soon and be loving and kind and good to each other.

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