Welcome and Introduction to Radio Free Mormon

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Belin. It is still April 25th.

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:06] It's actually not another edition. It's the same edition, but go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:00:10] It is the same edition of Mormon Stories podcast, April 25, 2022. And I am super excited to have with us in studio the one, the only, the myth, the legend, the miracle worker, the mystery, the somewhat overweight, the enigma shrouded in mystery, shrouded in a conundrum. Radio Free Mormon, everybody.

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:32] That's a lot of shrouds, but I'll take them. Thank you very much. John Dehlin. Dr. John Dehlin. It's so great to be here in Utah, where you always are.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] Yeah, it's great to have you. And of course, we're joined by the one, the only, Jen Camp. Hey, Jen.

Guest [00:00:47] Hi, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Thanks for being here.

Guest [00:00:49] It's good to be here again.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. So we have a very quick announcement. For those of you who happen to live in the Utah area, we are hosting a special event in celebration in honor of Radio Free Mormon. He didn't want me to use that language.

Radio Free Mormon [00:01:05] I hate it. If there's nothing good on tv, show up.

John Dehlin [00:01:09] That's gonna be Tuesday night here in Utah County, American Fork, I believe. And if you want to come, there are probably. We actually exceeded the capacity. Got 50 more chairs, and there's probably like 20 seats, maybe 25. Go to donorbox.org RFM if you want to buy a ticket to meet RFM in person. Proceeds from the event are going to go to rfm. So this is not a money making venture for us. It's a money making venture because we love and want to support RFM financially because we have a goal of RFM being able to podcast full time. That's a personal goal of mine. I think that might be a goal of yours. Is that true?

Radio Free Mormon [00:01:48] Haley from the prosecutor's office would probably be glad to hear that. Maybe not. We actually get along very well.

John Dehlin [00:01:56] It can be a goal of mine, even if it's not a goal for you.

Radio Free Mormon [00:01:59] Okay, very good, Very good.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] So, Haley, you. You know, you don't have to get.

Radio Free Mormon [00:02:03] John, I've got to tell you, I really, really appreciate it. It just. It embarrasses me a little bit, but I'll get over it.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] Yeah, well, we are.

Radio Free Mormon [00:02:10] Haley is sitting in her car right now eating lunch, but she will share with the rest of the prosecutor's office. Okay, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] That's good to know. Yeah. So join us tomorrow night if you can it'll be 7pm in American Fork and you can ask your questions to Ready Free Mormon. Also, if you can't join us in person, you can also get a ticket to the live stream. Again, go to donorbox.org RFM-livestream and you can sign up for the live stream because we're going to do our best to live stream that. And so again, all proceeds go to Ready Free Mormon. All right. That's the only real announcement we have today other than the Open Arms collective. Jen, did you want to mention that really quick? Super quick.

Guest [00:02:50] Yeah. Just go to mormonstories.org events and you can find all the information there.

John Dehlin [00:02:55] It's for women and gender non binary humans along the Wasatch front who want to make cakes and getting together, just

Guest [00:03:03] getting together for community and to support each other. And there's different events every month. So there's I think three or four up there right now. So go there, look for that. I don't want to waste any more time. I want to hear from rfm. So go there to find the information.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] All right. And just to give you a little bit of background, for those of you who don't know, RFM or Radio Free Mormon is a super popular podcaster. More popular than God. Did I say that the first time or this time? I forget.

Radio Free Mormon [00:03:27] I don't know if you said it the first time, but I think it's been said before.

John Dehlin [00:03:30] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:03:30] More popular, not about me. We're more popular than Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] Oh yeah. Oh, that's the Beatles. That's a Beatles reference. That's a John Lennon reference. Anyway, Rady Free Mormon is the host of Radio Free Mormon podcast. He's. He's also the co host of Mormonism Live with the amazing Bill Real. And you can check out Mormonism Live every Wednesday evening at 6:20pm Mountain Time. Mountain time. And it's an amazing weekly podcast that everyone should tune into and we are big fans of all that. So that's RFM's background. But we've had RFM on Mormon Stories podcast several times. But a few months ago we had him on to talk about his journey, kind of his faith journey within Mormonism. We call called it from TBM or True Believing Mormon to rfm. We did a part one and we did about three or four hours and then we ran out of time. So he promised he would come back to do a part two. And so that's what today is. It's part two of his story. From TBM to RFM and rfm. Where did we leave off last time.

Picking Up Where Part One Left Off

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:37] Well, it was absolutely a cliffhanger. And, you know, it seemed like it's only a couple months ago. Did you know it was in August that we did this?

John Dehlin [00:04:45] So how many months is that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:47] Eight.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:48] I'm guessing.

John Dehlin [00:04:49] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:50] So anyway, what happened is this, is that I was ready to go for the entire. The entire show, the entire story. Right. But we ran out of time. There was just too much to cover. And if we had done it that day, I was ready to go. If we done it the day before, maybe a week later, I was ready to go. But now eight months has passed. I can't remember what it is that I talked about and what I didn't talk about. So I went back and listened to the entire. Almost four hours worth of listening to me. And if you thought it was painful for you just to find out what it was that I talked about, I made all these notes in my little book. And this was on Thursday evening as I'm doing laundry and getting ready to fly down here. So I found out what it was we talked about. Then at the very end, John de Lynn actually listed everything that we hadn't talked about. If I started at the very end, it would have saved me a lot of time. So I'm ready to go on that, and I've added a few other thoughts. And just let me know when you're ready for me to start.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] I'm super ready. So where did we leave off?

Radio Free Mormon [00:05:50] Where did we leave off? That's the one thing I wasn't ready to talk about.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] So let's see. You were a convert to the church.

Radio Free Mormon [00:05:55] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Married in the temple for many, many years. You were super faithful. You served a mission in Japan, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Got married in the temple, had kids again, got married the devil twice.

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:11] Taught gospel doctrine. And you were. Became kind of an apologist.

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:15] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:15] For the church. Do we cover that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:17] Yes, we. We covered all of that. And what I'm going to suggest is instead of us recapping what we talked about, then if you want to find out, go back and listen to it.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] Yeah. So where. Where do we pick up?

Early Seeds of Doubt in the Church

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:29] All right, here's a story.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] What year? What age?

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:32] Well, one of the things that we've been talking about was the whole idea, the. The idea that how did I become who I became? Where was it that I left the rails, so to speak? And so many people have these stories where they can pinpoint where it is that they had an experience. They read something. They read the essays. They read the CES letter, they Got offended. They wanted to send whatever it was that happened that made them leave the church, right? And they can pinpoint it almost on the calendar when it happened. And I don't have that. There's no thing that I can point to that something like that happened with me. And so the whole point of this was to give me the chance to try and do some introspection, something that I'm notoriously bad at. Being self aware, you're good at analyzing

John Dehlin [00:07:18] others, but less yourself.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:20] I don't know. I just know that I'm really not very good at being aware of myself. And maybe it's because I'm always propelling myself forward to the next thing and not thinking so much about where I've been as to where I'm going. But anyway, so this has been a great, great chance for me. And one of the things that really surprises me is that when I can think of dates or years when something happened, that this has really been going on with me much earlier than I would have otherwise thought. So, 1994, we're talking about the leaders of the church who I was baptized in 1978. And I believed and sustained them as prophets, seers and revelators, all three and. But a time came, of course, when I started thinking maybe these guys are really not as connected with God as they claim and as members believe and as we're taught to believe. If you had just asked me when that happened, I would have thought much more recently. But I can tell you at least as early as 1994. So baptized in 1978, that's 16 years later. It's still a certain amount of time, but during the 80s I'm a rabid apologist, right? But by 94, I'm immersed in things enough to the point where I'm starting to question the perpetual divine inspiration of the leaders that they can get things that are wrong sometimes. And the reason I know this is because 1994, November, I'm down visiting my mom and my dad in Texas. And I remember this because I'm going through my first divorce at the time, so I can pinpoint it in my mind. And I'm down there talking to them. I'm visiting with some of my friends that I knew from the student ward at the University of Texas at Austin. And one of those people is Ronnie Garcia. Ronnie was her nickname. Veronica Garcia, dear friend, very tbm, wonderful. I hope she's doing great. I think she married another friend of mine from down there, but I was talking with her and I don't Remember what I said to her? But I know it was something about questioning the prophetic inspiration of the leadership of the church. And obviously she didn't really agree with it, but I thought, that's kind of where it dropped. Then that's over. Come back to Washington. And at some point after that, I get a letter in the mail, and it's not from Ronnie. It's from somebody else who was part of. Part of the group in the 80s who I didn't talk to when I was down there. And that is one of the Robinson brothers. That was not Ryan, but. No, it was Ryan Robinson. Ryan Robinson now had become a bishop. And apparently Ronnie had talked to him and had shared with Ryan my thoughts about the leadership of the church, which prompted Ryan, out of the blue, to write me a letter, handwritten. And I don't know if anybody else has ever gotten these letters, these kinds of letters. I'm expecting. I'm not the only one. But what it said was, in essence, this. Ronnie talked to about what you said about the leaders of the church. You are wrong. You're falling away. You need to repent. And by the way, I'm a bishop now, so I'm very busy, so you don't need to bother writing me back, because even. Even if you do, I won't have time to respond. So it's one of those kind of letters. Have you ever gotten one of those, John?

John Dehlin [00:10:32] No.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:33] I bet you. I bet you've gotten a bunch of Dear John letters, though. Maybe more than I have.

John Dehlin [00:10:38] Too many.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:40] Anyway, I think people get those letters from time to time, which is, I'm going to tell you how wrong you are, and then I'm going to foreclose you from responding because I don't want to actually interact with you on this issue. I just want to do my duty and tell you this. And I couldn't find the letter, but I remember that because I remember that in the timing, I was thinking this as early as 1994 about the leaders of the church. So I wanted to bring up that story.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] May I ask you a quick question?

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:04] You may.

John Dehlin [00:11:05] Since we're in the timeline, 93 would have been the September 6th excommunications.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] And I'm curious if that was even on your radar and if that had any influence on you one way or the other.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:16] I know.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] I don't know if we talked about this last time.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:18] I don't remember. I don't think we did.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:19] I know that I knew about it because it was in the news and it was sufficiently front page and brought to my attention.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Yes. It's national news, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:27] And I was aware that the LDS Church, or I shouldn't say that, but that certain intellectual scholar types were being excommunicated from the church all at the same time. And I remember I knew about it at the time it was happening, but I put it over here.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:45] I put it over here. I just, I figured that these are scholars who are going into things that really shouldn't be gone into, and they're wrong and they're apostate. They're leading other people into apostasy. So therefore they had to be gotten rid of and put to the side.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] Got it? Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:59] So I was aware of it.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:00] Okay. But I didn't think the same thing about it then as I do now.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] Sure.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:05] And we'll get to your excommunication here before you get done because that was very significant to me. Whereas the September 6th were not in my own personal chronology. I just wanted to mention some stories from Sunday school because I taught Sunday School from 2006 to 2010, and I've taught at different times in the church, but I had that four year block and I was able to get through all the standard works. And it was kind of an amazing thing that we had a bishop who was nice enough to allow me to teach. I studied for maybe eight hours every week to get ready for Sunday school. And at this time in my life, I'm actually going beyond the manual. I didn't. It didn't take me very long to be in the church to recognize that the manual is death. It's totally boring. And nobody wants to hear what's in the manual because they've heard it a million times before. So my goal was like Joseph Smith, remember when he said it is my province to dig up new things for my listeners to hear?

John Dehlin [00:13:02] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:13:03] That's not the, that's not. The motto today for the leaders of the church is actually the exact opposite. Their province is to say the same thing that the members have heard a million times before. That's what they do today. But he and I wanted to dig up new things and I wanted to be teaching. And my goal was that every person who's going to come to class because I wanted to respect their time. I felt like these people sort of have to come to church because it's expected and they kind of have to come to this class because it's the adult class. I mean, they could be out in the, the foyer or out in the parking lot. And somewhere there. But if they're going to come to my class, then I want to make it something that is respectful of their time. And my, my informal goal was that everybody who comes to my class is going to learn at least one thing that they hadn't heard before. And so I'm studying in the. I have my nrsv, Oxford Commentary, NRSV Bible, New Revised Standard Version.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] I'm already concerned. My TBM self is already concerned.

Radio Free Mormon [00:14:00] You should. Your Spidey sense should be going off at this point. And it was nice and it was red and it was a different translation, the New Revised Standard Version. And I didn't just stumble on it. I'm doing all this research and all this study and all this reading and it was a very highly regarded translation. And so I thought, well, let me look at this. And. And there's all these footnotes in it. And then I got the one volume Oxford Bible Commentary, which was great. And they get to read what all these experts and people who have spent their lives studying different books of the Bible have to say about things. And it was just a wonderful time for me because it's like the heavens are open. And I'm getting these. I was going to say blessings of knowledge and information that I had never thought of before because the church does not interact with textual critics, at least not in the books that I was reading in the 80s and the 90s. They may be doing it a little bit more now. But anyway, so I'm trying to bring this in and have fun with the class and make it exciting, make it interesting, being enthusiastic. And the first thing that happened was that there was at least one person. You've got one person in every class and you know who you are. Who is going to get upset if you don't go by the manual. And by the manual I mean by not bui if you go beyond the manual, then you got at least one person who is the orthodoxy police in the class. And I had that person in my class, that was Sister Waters. And she would make comments during class if I were going outside the manual and trying to get me to go back to the manual. And I found out later that she actually wore a path in the carpet, the indoor outdoor carpet from the chapel. We're having the Gospel doctrine class and to the bishop's office because she went there so frequently to complain about me. It's actually a miracle that I lasted four years. And the reason I know about that is because I had moles who were inside the bishop's office. Right. They'd be present at the meetings when people were talking about me. And these people liked the way I taught. I can mention one of their names. He's passed away. It was brother Bogart, Daryl Bogart. He was an older man. He'd fought in the Korean War. And he really appreciated the way. What he called it was the way I dug up things. I would dig up things when I was preparing for class. And he really appreciated it. He's in the executive committee. Complaints get brought up about me. And he's there to say, don't you dare. Don't you do that. Do not give this squeaky wheel the grease because there's a lot of unsqueaky wheels out there who are really liking this. So that's why I lasted as long as I did. Anyway, so that red Bible, the high priest group leader, and I was at high priest at the time, he really did not like this Bible because it's not the kjv. It is a really funny thing in the LDS Church that we have a, an article of faith that says we believe the Bible to be correct insofar it is as it is translated correctly. Right. And so the foundational principles are very expansive for Mormonism and very open to new information. And of course, you got the Joseph Smith translation, all those kinds of things. And we look at books that are outside the Bible. Well, we've got the Book of Mormon for one, and the Pearl of great price. But in spite of that, and strangely, the LDS Church has become a KJV only church. And when I say a KJV only church, that is what the most orthodox, conservative kind of fundamentalist Christian churches are. At least many of them. I don't know that they all are, but they go to the King James Version of the Bible. They. It's not just the Bible, is it? If the Bible says it, I believe it. And that settles it. Right. But it has to be the King James version of the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:17:57] There's good enough for Joseph Smith. It should be good enough for you. Rfm, I guess.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:00] And if it's good enough for, you know, pages and pages and pages in the Book of Mormon, it should certainly be good enough for me.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] God shows the King James Version. Yes, he did, when he put that into the Book of Mormon. I mean, obviously.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:11] Yes, so, but, but you go from early Mormonism and this is just a great example, right? It's so expansive. So incorporating Joseph Smith. Smith talks about truth and we accept truth from whatever source it comes. And if you don't do that Then you will not come out a good Mormon. And then, you know, 200 years later we have a church that it's the King James Version and it's not taught necessarily that way over the pulpit, but boy members believe that. And so I bring in a new Revised Standard Version Bible to class and I'm reading out of it the different passages I usually have the members try and read.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] And just to make this clear, it's because it's a better translation.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:47] Yes, right.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] It's a, it's a, it's a superior translation.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:51] It is a much better translation. The kjv, God bless. It is a difficult thing to read, especially when you get to, well, Paul, for crying out loud. He's difficult enough without having Elizabethan language, it being couched in that. But you're going to get me off on this. But I'll just say really quickly, the kjv, yes, it was based upon the Masoretic text, which is basically around 1008 A.D. i should say CE and after the King James Bible came out, which was 1611, I believe, 1947, I think dead Sea Scrolls are found. And all of a sudden with the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which has every book in the Old Testament accounted for, there was a time when it was except for ether and I'm not sure if they found ether since then. But anyway, basically every Old Testament book, all of a sudden our earliest manuscripts for the Old Testament got pushed back 1,000 years roughly with one discovery. And so there is so much more information now and so much better information and older information that we have access to since the KJV came out that it is counterintuitive to think that we can't have a better translation than the kjv.

John Dehlin [00:20:10] Earlier is better with historical documents, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:20:14] Yes, it is. Not necessarily with translations, but yes, with the historical documents.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:20:18] The closer you get them to the time that they are supposed to start, generally it's going to be more accurate and more closely resemble the original.

John Dehlin [00:20:26] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:20:26] Okay. So. Oh, the Red Bible. My gosh, I'm glad we don't have anywhere to go today because I just got this. I'm just gabbing now. That was a high priest group leader. I don't know that I'll use his name, but it was Brother somebody. That shouldn't be too specific. And he, he really hated this Bible. This, it was red. It's hard back. He just hated that I would bring that to class. That was the subject of complaints in priesthood executive committee from time to time. As the high priest Group leader, he would bring it up and I wasn't there, but my moles. So yeah, he didn't like it. But the reason I did that was not just to make a controversy for a controversy's sake. The thing is, is that we always read the same scriptures in the is in the LDS Church, we spend 95% of the time talking about 5% of the scriptures. And that's probably charitable. It's probably actually less percentage wise. And the problem is, is that we've heard the same scriptures over and over so many times that we don't pay attention when we hear them because we've heard them over and over. So why pay attention? And what occurred to me was that if I open my Bible, which is a different translation, and my experience was this too in class was that if I'm reading a passage and I say open your Bibles or whatever it is, it's got to be a Bible because it's the Bible and read this passage, right? I'm reading it. All of a sudden everybody is opening their Bibles and looking at it because they want to see where the differences are or how it compares with the kjv. So all of a sudden I've got people much more into their Bibles than they would otherwise be just by bringing in a different translation. Also the manual, there's a teacher's manual, right? Well, the great thing about the teacher's manual is that there's all sorts of room in it at the end of lessons and in the margins so I could write my notes in the manual. And yes, I did this intentionally so that I could hold the manual up for those who wanted me to be teaching from the manual and go off of my notes, which I've added to the manual in the preceding week. Right, that was a little bit of a subterfuge on that. So there was that and oh, I want to talk about translating the Book of Mormon. So I started in 2006. That was the Old Testament, so 2007 was the New Testament. It might have been 2008. Regardless of when it was, we get to the translation of the Book of Mormon, which would be at the beginning either of church history or the Book of Mormon year in Sunday school. And believe it or not, I know by this point and had known it for a long time that Joseph Smith used a seer stone in a hat in order to dictate the Book of Mormon. Not generally known. And what I did that day was I came to church with my old beat up farmer's hat. And my watch, it wasn't this watch, but it was a. It was a different kind of watch. And I talked about how when I was a kid, I had a watch, second grade, and it had luminous dials. And that was kind of a new thing. At least it was new to me. And the best thing about a luminous dial as a kid is waiting until it's dark and you're in your room and you can see it glowing. It's just a thrill for me anyway, if it's not dark, you can still recreate the same circumstances by putting it into your hand like this and then holding it up to your eye and you can see the glow. Now, the problem is when you do that during the daylight. I actually did all this in class. The problem is, is that when you do that to see it when there's light out, it's so close to your eye that you cannot read the dial. You can sort of see the. The fuzzy glowing, but you can't actually read it. It's too close to the eye. So now in front of the class, and this is in the chapel, and. And I'm not up on the. The platform. I'm down below walking around, and I've got my hat. And I said, here's how you can take care of that. If I take my watch and I put it in the bottom of my hat, and now I put my face over the hat. Now I can see the glow because of the lights excluded. And now my watch is far enough away from my eyes that I can actually read what's on the watch dial. And I came up for air, and I'm looking around and people are looking at me like I've got three heads. And Sister Waters is over here in her seat where she always sat, and her face is absolutely red. She is trying not to laugh out loud at this ridiculous sight of what I've just described and what I've actually been performing for the class. And I finally come for her. I look around, see what everybody's doing, and I say, I suppose some of you are probably wondering why it is that I've been spending this five minutes talking about my watch and the hat and putting my face up against the hat and everything. And I let it hang there because nobody answered or said, oh, I know. I said, is there anyone who knows nothing, really nothing? I said, well, I brought this up because this is the way Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. And you could have heard a pin drop. Now, I fully expected the potential for tarring and feathering at this point, and that's me getting tarred and feathered by the class. So I had in my back pocket the 1993 Ensign article from Russell M. Nelson in which he addressed the new mission presidents at the mtc, talked about this very issue. It's one of the very rare instances in which this has ever been talked about in any kind of church produced publication. And it is interesting they got published. I think that's great. But of course, the format was it's an apostle at the MTC talking to new mission presidents and their wives. So in other words, a group that would be very much on the inside anyway. Okay, so I did that. That's how I taught that. Oh, I taught about mountain meadows. Did you have something you wanted to say, John?

Teaching Edgy Sunday School Lessons

John Dehlin [00:26:33] So when you are telling us about things you taught, are you also reflecting on how they influence your faith at all? Are you just sort of giving us examples of kind of more edgier, unknown things you taught? I'm just curious as we're. I'm just curious if any of this. If you have reflections on how any of this affected your testimony or you just sort of wanting to share more edgy lessons you taught.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:06] The reason I'm bringing it up is mainly to try and fill in my life experience. So hopefully it will illuminate how I went from being a TVM to being rfm. I know at the time. I know at the time that my personal thoughts about this were that actually this makes it harder for Joseph Smith, not easier.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] The. The. The seer stone in the hat.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:30] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:30] This seems to make it much harder because what I had been taught by the missionaries and was usually taught in church is that he's sitting on the other side of a curtain. There's a table. He's on the other side of a curtain. Here's Oliver Cowdery over here with the. The quill and the paper. Right. And Joseph Smith is doing what God knows what on the other side of the curtain, but his voice is coming out of there. Right. So this is like a magic trick where you don't even get to see what the magician is doing. Right. That's not very impressive. He could be doing anything back there, reading off anything. But to have him in the middle of a room with no curtain with his face and a hat dictating the Book of Mormon, that seemed much more impressive and more difficult, and it still does. And more difficult to explain away by conventional means than the way that was generally taught in the church. So still very much apologetic.

John Dehlin [00:28:20] Did you give that year 2008. Did I mishear you?

Radio Free Mormon [00:28:23] I think it was 2008. It could have been 2009.

John Dehlin [00:28:25] So that's, that's four years after the blogger Naco kind of emerged, the Mormon Internet kind of. Really? So, wow, 2008, that's crazy. Okay, and really quickly, did you, did you have sort of a reflection on the King James stuff and the NIV and how, what, what your reflections were about your testimony? But was there anything, any reflections you had about the NIV in your testimony?

Discovering Bible Scholarship and Bart Ehrman

Radio Free Mormon [00:28:51] I am learning lots and lots of things from Bible scholars and it's just a thrilling experience. It was right during this time that the Gospel of Judas came out, was finally published after having been discovered, which I can't remember the entire story. It had been a while, but finally getting published and brought to the light of people. And I got a copy and read it. And I'm into Gnosticism, finding out what the Gnostic Christians believed, what these different kinds of Christians believed, and all sorts of things. And I'm trying to incorporate, incorporate that and bring it to my class to make it interesting. Now at the same time, there are things that I'm learning from the scholars like Bart Ehrman and other books that I'm reading. First off, there's a lot that's consonant with Mormonism in Bible scholarship because Mormonism comes from this idea of errors having crept into the text, even intentional changes being made to the text of the Bible. I remember watching Bart Ehrman give a lecture on videotape once where he's talked about there are, there are things that got changed by accident, inadvertence, or things that were actually put in there, like the Yohanin comma in First John that were put in there for a specific person in order for. Excuse me, I'll slow down. For a specific purpose in order to support a specific doctrine that had been developed later, which is why it appears in later manuscripts and not in earlier manuscripts of the Bible. So that, that's very, very consonant with Mormonism. Joseph Smith is 100 correct. But then there were other things that were also brought up which were not as faith promoting to Mormonism. I'll just give you one example. I've talked about it on other occasions. But one of those things has to do with the backdated prophecies and the Book of Daniel being a classic example, because it's not all just the, the three Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, or Daniel and the Lion's Den. There's apocalyptic prophecies in the, in the Book of Daniel. And he did a very, very good job of predicting what it was that happened around the second century bce of course, Daniel would have lived in the, I think you call it the, the six. Six, the sixth century bce. So this is amazing. He lived centuries before this happened, and yet he's able to predict it with such accuracy. Well, unfortunately, what Bible scholars figure is that, no, this really wasn't written by Daniel. This is written by somebody who lived in 200 BCE who actually saw what happened. And then he cast it, this author, as a prophecy and put it back in the mouth of Daniel in order to give it added emphasis.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] Pseudepigrapha.

Radio Free Mormon [00:31:27] Yes, that's exactly what it is. Pseudepigrapha. And on top of that, it's a backdated prophecy. Because if I, if I'm allowed, as I sit here Today on March, April 25, 2022, if I'm allowed to go back to the year 1900 and predict everything that happened in the, in the 20th century, I am really going to astonish people, okay? Because I can hit a lot of stuff really, really good, a lot better than I could if I actually lived in 1900 and didn't know everything that happened in the 20th century. So that was the thing is it's a backdated prophecy. And what they also noted, and what Bart Ehrman is telling me is that you'll notice that this person who's writing this prophecy in Daniel is extremely specific up to this point in time. And then after that point in time, it stops being specific. It's just sort of generic kind of stuff. And yeah, more like a horoscope. You know, it's vague and anything could fit until you get to the, the final, the coming of the Son of Man. And that's what scholars say is that's the point where we can identify the author lived, because he's really specific up to the point where he lives. And then after that, it gets very vague. And although Bart Ehrman is not as familiar with the Book of Mormon, I think as am I, I could not help but think about Nephi's vision in First Nephi, chapter 11, verses 14, which I had done a paper on at some point before that. And so I was pretty familiar with it, more so than I otherwise would have been. And the problem is, is that the same thing happens. And you have the vision Nephi, who lives in around 600 BCE right, who is very specific about things happening with Columbus, discovering the New World, with the Revolutionary War, with the Native Americans or Lamanites. Right. Being smitten by the Gentiles. And so you've got the Rev, you got Columbus, you got the Revolutionary War, which happens. Well, let's see. Joseph Smith is dictating this in 1829. And I think we all know the Revolutionary war started in 1776 and it took a number of years. But this, that's basically recent history for him. That is as far in his past, even though he was younger when he did the Book of Mormon than I am now. I'm 62. But that's like the 1970s when I'm in high school is how far back behind him the Revolutionary War was. But all of a sudden what happens is very specific, very specific in Nephi's vision. And then all of a sudden you get to the Revolutionary War and things start getting very general. And then Jesus comes again and then we. And it's like, okay, John covered that. John the Revelator covered that. Right. We don't need to talk about that here. And I did notice it, and I did make that connection that if you look at Nephi and you apply these same scholarly tools that are used to date the prophecy in Daniel, if you use those in the Book of Mormon, then you can say, you know, the person who wrote this probably didn't live in 600 BCE. That person probably lived in the United States not long after the Revolutionary War.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:46] And that was disappointing. I didn't like that. That did not make me feel good. And therefore, even though I put the dots, connected the dots, I put away the drawing so I didn't have to look at it.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] Yeah. Okay, so in the early to mid 2000s, 2000 decade, 2000 to 2008, you're teaching gospel doctrine or high priest group or whatever. And, and you're really studying the gospel super earnestly, learning about historical criticism, biblical criticism. And, and yeah, that. That wouldn't be conducive to faith. You're. You're teaching about the stone in the hat. We, we were probably teaching. I was probably teaching elders quorum the same time you were teaching. Was it gospel doctrine?

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:35] Yeah, because I was. When I moved to Logan in 2004, I taught elders corn for like three years.

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:40] For those who don't know, like Haley, Gospel doctrine class is the term that is used in the LDS Church for the adult class, the ones who have been members.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] Sunday school for adults.

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:48] Sunday school for adults. Right.

John Dehlin [00:35:50] Yeah.

Guest [00:35:51] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:35:52] Well, I can see why the. But I mean, deep study is counter indicated for orthodox Mormon faith. I would Say so. I'm already worried for you. Well, you should be.

Radio Free Mormon [00:36:03] And what the other thing that happens, and I don't know if I use this terminology, trigger warning for the term I'm going to use, but I had studied and read all these doctrinal books in the LDS Church. I was fascinated with it in the 80s and the 90s to the point where they're just repeating themselves. They're saying the same things over and over again. There is a certain discrete amount of information that is allowed to be taught as doctrine in the LDS Church and published in church books at least. And I knew it out the yin yang because now I've read it over and over again. So I was very surprised to find out this was my whole world. These are the prophets and apostles of Jesus Christ and people quoting them. So that covers all truth. Right. But now all of a sudden I encounter Bart Ehrman and these other scholars. And what I'm finding now is that actually my whole world is this tiny little circle on a very large graph. And the tiny little circle is way over here on the left. I don't know if I'm out of the picture, but regardless, there's a circle. It's over here. And actually there's this vast world out there of knowledge about the Bible. And it's not new stuff. It's been around for hundreds of years, actually, I think mainly starting in Germany, where all good things come from. And. But it had been added to things, things discovered since then. And what I realized was how small, how pale, how anemic. And now the term. And how incestuous was the term that came to my mind. Mormon scholarship was. It's just. They're just always quoting each other. That's what I mean by the incestuous part. Right. It's just always. They're always itself and totally ignoring this whole world out there to the point I didn't know the world existed. And then I find the world and I realized that my whole world was just this tiny little dot on a map. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:38:01] And I should tell my listeners and viewers that we've interviewed Bart Ehrman on Mormon stories. It's a really good overview of his main books and we'll include in the show notes a link to that. Jen, were you going to say something?

Guest [00:38:13] I was just going to say it sounds like general conference. Like the same thing happens. Like it's the same principles taught over and over and over again.

John Dehlin [00:38:21] Authorities quoting each other, basically, yeah.

Guest [00:38:23] Quoting each other and like talking about the same things when everyone in the Church is like, where is this new? Where's the revelation continuing? Yeah. Where's. Where's this, you know, new, important information? But it seems like it's just repeated over and over and quoting each other.

John Dehlin [00:38:42] So always milk, never meet my favorite Richard Bushman. One of my two favorite Richard Bushman stories to tell is when he told me that Mormon Gospel doctrine class is more a ritual than it is an education. That we go there to affirm each other's orthodox beliefs, not to actually learn anything. And that was Richard Bushman. Anyway, right back to you. Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:04] He would know. Absolutely. By the way, it's interesting the way this is developing because you mentioned that same story back in August.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] Oh, fun. So I basically repeat myself and don't remember. No, I basically have dementia.

Guest [00:39:18] No.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:18] A similar prompt brings up the same kind of story for you. Like me, like anyone, one, Right.

John Dehlin [00:39:22] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:22] And the only reason I know that is because I just listened to all

John Dehlin [00:39:24] four hours, which I didn't, because I was on vacation, gosh darn it.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:30] And what I'm trying to. And I'm making a point of not repeating me in this outline for today, what I talked about back in August.

John Dehlin [00:39:37] That's kind of you.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:38] Yeah, thank you. I worked hard not to do that. So can I just tell you about my attempts to get class members to think in Sunday school?

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Very dangerous, sketchy stuff. But yes, absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:48] It is so difficult. It is exhausting. And so what happens is, is that in the typical correlated church class, you have your.

John Dehlin [00:39:58] You.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:58] You don't even get to ask your own questions. Not only do you not get to teach the subject because it's laid out for you and you're supposed to teach it the way it is in the manual. You don't get to ask the questions because after the end of the lesson, they have questions that you are supposed to ask the class. And these are horrible questions. They're always leading questions. They always assume the truth of what it is you're asking about. For example, you know, how does reading the Book of Mormon every day increase your spirituality? Okay, the question being begged is, does reading the Book of Mormon every day increase your spirituality?

John Dehlin [00:40:33] Well, there's no question.

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:34] We are not even going to allow that question to be entertained as a possibility for a yes or no answer in a correlated church manual and class. So therefore, they're always, how does doing what it is you're supposed to do as a good Mormon improve your life or make you a better husband and father? You know those things, right? I hated those. I hated those. Questions, because they are not questions that are designed to open up ideas. They are questions that are designed to shut down thinking.

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:09] So having said all that, what I would try and do is I would try and come up with questions that would open up ideas. And this is dangerous because the first problem is the original questions that are in the manual. Everybody hates them, okay? They hate them. They may not say they hate them, but they hate them. And the reason why they don't like them is because the answer is so obvious. It's like pointing up in the sky and saying, you see that cloud up there that looks sort of like a dragon eating Mickey Mouse. Okay, so what does that cloud up there look like to you? I mean, this comes from the missionary discussions, right, Mr. Brown, you know, we just taught you this, and now we're going to ask you and try and get you to parrot back what we just told you. So they. They do this in. In regular classes in Mormonism too. So the problem is, is then, have you ever had this experience where the teacher's up there trying to do their job, trying to do as best they can. They ask a question at the end of the lesson and they get no response. Nobody raises their hand, and they think this must be the stupidest class on the planet because it's so obvious what the answer is and nobody gets it. No, I will tell you right now, the problem isn't that nobody gets it. The problem is nobody's going to answer a question that everybody already knows the answer to. There is no benefit to answering a question that everybody already knows. In fact, you'll usually find someone if you wait long enough, right, basically, to move the class along. But the. On the other side of it, if you're coming up with your own questions, which I try to do, you can go too far and ask a question that really genuinely nobody knows the answer to, and then you get the same result. So what I always tried to do is hit that sweet spot. And what I tried to do was have a principle or concept or an idea that was actually taught in a scripture that's in the reading material. And I would usually pick a scripture that taught something that was different than the correlated answer. Everybody knows what the correlated answer is. So this happens like once a week. I have the class open up to a certain scripture, read the scripture, and then I ask them the question. And the question, honestly, is right there in the freaking scripture that they just read. It's that obvious. And I say, okay, so what do we learn about this from the scripture? And the hands start going up and the answers are the correlated answers. It doesn't make any difference what the scripture says. It doesn't make any difference that they just read it. The answer that comes out is the correlated answer. That's how well trained and indoctrinated. Some would say brainwashed. We are in the LDS Church, so brainwashed is a harsh word. Indoctrinated is, is a nicer word and I think it describes it accurately. But that would happen every single time. And then I would stop, say, okay, let's go back to the verse. This is the question. Please read the verse so you can know the question in advance. Now what's the answer? Eventually, if we played with it enough, somebody would come up with what this verse was actually saying, which was not necessarily the correlated prescripted answer. Boom. This happens every week, at least once every week for four years, John. And by and large, it's the same people. And my, my goal was not only to get people excited about the scriptures and about learning, but also to give them the tools that they needed in order to look at the scriptures and try and understand more about what the scriptures are saying instead of imposing what they already believe onto the scriptures. It was an absolute disappointment because I was doing the exact same thing at the end of four years with the same class as I was doing at the beginning of the four years. Virtually nobody. There may have been a couple, I hope, I pray there were, but basically, no, nobody got it. They were still giving the correlated answers to the verses we were reading. And I was still trying to get them to look at the verse itself.

Guest [00:45:02] I think that in classes, like we would say the primary answers, like the primary school answers. Primary is the little kid class. So pray, read your scriptures, go to church, you know, those are always the answers in some form to every question that your teacher would ask you.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] That's right, the primary answer.

Guest [00:45:22] And yeah, and so I remember in class, just like everyone would just respond to those or we would just be quiet because we all knew that those answers were what the response was supposed to be according to the manual. And to be honest, I think there was a. There's a fear in class to say something different. There's a fear to have a different opinion or to go to a different area than you're supposed to, than this, like, straight path of answers that you've been told to say, you know, your entire life. So the teachers that I enjoyed would be teachers like you, rfm, that would kind of take us somewhere else than this same mundane, you know, class that we had every, every week though, you know, leaving and having my faith crisis, it still was shocking everything that I didn't know. Like you were talking earlier with Joseph Smith and the scriptures. Like, I always remembered seeing the, the art, the artists, you know, painting of him reading the scriptures or the gold plates reading the gold plates right in front of him. You know, I never saw a picture of a hat with a rock in it or anything like that. So if you were my teacher and you said that, that I would, I would be shocked and I would probably, you know, definitely have conversations after that with someone because I would think you were lying because that was, that wasn't taught to us. So, so yeah, that's just where my, my thoughts are going. Just the primary answers. It's, that's what we're. So it's not shocking to me that four years later they're still like, your class is still not getting it, like not thinking critically in a different form than they're used to. So.

John Dehlin [00:47:15] And Mike, and thanks, Jen. And my, my experience parallels yours, RFM, because I, I started teaching Elders Corman 2004 and, and my goal, it's still to be faithful. I had lost my orthodox, literal Mormon faith, but I still believe that there was value in the church and some truth. But most importantly, I believe that we're all going to get stronger and better if, if we're, if we're basing our beliefs on what's real, not versus on false, correlated, you know, whitewashed history. So I would teach these elder cores, Elders Quorum lessons, and I always joke that a third, a third loved it, a third were angry about it, and then a third were asleep. And the third that were angry about it would constantly complain to the bishop. And so I ended up just telling the bishop just to go and release me because I, I ended up feeling so rfm, I like you, I had the goal that people would think and learn, right? Which seems like a laudable goal, especially with the Mormon Church being so adamant about truth being important and honesty being important. But what I found was I was, you know, that most people didn't come to church to learn. They came to church to have their faith affirmed and strengthened. And we all know that learning is, is antithetical to testimony to faith within Mormonism, I believe, at least orthodox Mormonism. And so what that amounted to for me was I was ruining people's day. I was spoiling their day. I was making them feel uncomfortable, and that's not why they were going to church in the first place. And that's why I asked to be released, because I realized I was kind of just being a jerk, even though my intentions were to teach truth and have people think I was just being a jerk and ruining people's Sunday. And that's not why they were there.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:02] No, it's not. But on the other hand, you were making the Sunday work and valuable for the 1/3 that liked it.

John Dehlin [00:49:08] Yeah. So I was going after the 1 and forgetting the 99 or the 1/3,

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:13] forgetting the 66 and 2/3. No, but by the way, you also mentioned that part and. And

John Dehlin [00:49:21] next time I'll listen.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:22] It bears repeating. But one thing I wanted to bring up, because I also brought up one of my favorite sayings, which is, in the LDS Church, you never really graduate from primary.

John Dehlin [00:49:31] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:33] It doesn't make any difference how old you are or what callings you have.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:36] Yeah. Or what you studied. You never graduate from primary because it's the same thing that you're taught as a kid that you'll be taught as an elderly person. The way through womb to tomb, cradle to grave, birth to earth, sperm to worm. That's the way it is in the LDS Church. And the only thing that makes it funnier is what I was thinking of while you were talking there, Jen, is that even though we all recognize, I think, at least in this room, that that is the way things are in the LDS Church with the. The primary answers that you talked about over and over and over and over and over and it's so boring. And please don't make me go to church anymore when the idea of teaching something different comes up. The most common response that I've heard from TBMS is, well, we don't have time to do that in the class structure that we have in the LDS Church. Have you ever heard that we don't have time to do that? And it just blows my mind because that's really all they have is time because all they're using with their time is doing the primary stuff that you learned when you were a kid.

John Dehlin [00:50:44] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:50:45] All they have is time. And I frequently think it used to be three hours that the LDS Church had. President Nelson, of course, shortened that to two. And what is probably the best argument? That he really is a prophet of God. There are other things that might cut the other way, but that's his best one, I think. But still, it's an awful lot of time. And you got general conference and all these meetings. And it finally came to me that, you know, when I go to a church meeting and we even call them meetings, for crying out loud. When you go to a church meeting. We don't have church. Okay. We don't have church meetings because we have something to say to the members. We have something to say to the members because we have a church meeting. We're just filling up the time is all we're doing. It's not like, oh, I've got something to say. Like, for tomorrow night. I have worked on something and I have something to prepare. I have something prepared to say which I hope will be significant. I know it is to me, and I hope it will be to the audience as well. But it's not like, okay, well, we've got a meeting that is part of the schedule, and therefore I just got to get up there and say something that's been said 100 times before. So having said all of that, did you have anything else you wanted to add to that?

John Dehlin [00:51:57] No, no. John, this is great. And so do you. Well, were there other gospel doctrine experiences you wanted to share?

Radio Free Mormon [00:52:06] Those will do you sure? Yes.

Mormon Online Discourse in the Early 2000s

John Dehlin [00:52:08] Okay. So do you remember the years, the year you ended?

Radio Free Mormon [00:52:12] 2010.

John Dehlin [00:52:14] Okay, so I. Yeah, I have to ask. So between 2000, 2004 is when I remember the Mormon blogger Naco really emerging. Obviously, I leave Microsoft, come here to Logan, and I notice by common consent, Times and Seasons, and then eventually Millennial Star. And that was. You know, there were some discussion groups before then, like New Order Mormon, View from the Voyeur, ZLMB. Were you aware, starting in the early 2000s, of any of the Mormon Internet dialogue that was happening? Were you around when the Mormon blogger nakhli merges in 2004? Were you paying attention to that? Or when. When the Mormon Stories podcast starts in 2005 or were you oblivious to that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:52:58] I was not on board when it was all beginning.

John Dehlin [00:53:01] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:02] But after it had started, I did become aware of it. Message boards, a couple, and also Mormon Stories podcasts, which was very influential to me. And if you can date this for me, I would say that I started listening about the time that Richard Bushman was on.

John Dehlin [00:53:16] Yeah, that would have been in the first year, too, for sure. 2007, probably.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:21] That may be.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:22] Of course, I could have also been listening to it in your archives.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] Sure.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:26] So I'm not sure, but it was. Let's say it was around there.

John Dehlin [00:53:28] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:29] So probably in the same time period.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] Okay, so you. So, all right, so you start becoming aware. Were you involved in Fair Mormon? Were you involved in Maxwell Institute or its predecessor farms? I'm sure we talked about that. Last episode we did.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:46] And the answer is yes. And if you want to find out about that, we. In part one, go there.

John Dehlin [00:53:50] But during this time, during the mid-2000s.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:52] Oh, yes, I had. I had paper. My first paper was published with farms, the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, in 1993.

John Dehlin [00:54:03] Right, but. But during those 2000s years, between 2000, 2008, what were you doing apologetically?

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:09] And you mean 6 and 10 when I'm doing the.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] No, I mean between 2000 and 2008, were you still involved in apologetics?

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:18] If you remember, I had left that behind pretty much with the 1980s. So I still dabbled in it from time to time.

John Dehlin [00:54:23] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:24] I mean, I am watching Bart Ehrman in this time period, the mid 2000s, and he is saying things that are supportive of faith in which I'm going to try and use if I can, or if it's desired by anybody, or if anybody needs it to help support their faith. I think that's kind of part of being a. A Mormon, isn't it?

John Dehlin [00:54:41] Yeah, can be.

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:43] We're all sort of apologists in a way. Probably every church is. We have certain doctrines that we believe, and here's the proof texts and here's the ways of explaining the scriptures that contradict what we believe. Because no matter what we believe, the Bible's going to have things that are for it and against it.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] Yeah, I'm just kind of wondering, like when I first got into podcasting or even before I joined the FairMormon email list. So I was on that. I knew about Scott Gordon, I knew about Daniel Peterson, I knew about Lou Midgley. And I'm wondering if you were involved in. I know you really like now being on the Mormon discussions chat board, you know, that David Bacavoy and others have been on for decades. I'm wondering if you were plugged into that Internet scene.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:31] I was. So there was the old MAD board, which is associated with Fair Mormon, and we say the MAD Board. The aptly name MAD Board because that was their own acronym. They didn't call it the MAD Board. It's sort of like tits. But MAD Board was Mormon apologetics and discussions. Right, the MAD board. And so this is very much for the apologists to come in, and sometimes people who have questions or they try and answer them. And that was where I first started, was on the MAD board. And that was probably right around this time period. Okay, and. And then.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] And do you share your handle, your private handle on the.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:09] You mean My name or my handle?

John Dehlin [00:56:11] The. The avatar. Do you share your avatar publicly and associate with rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Okay, so tell people what that was, consigliere. Okay. Because you still write good stuff on Mormon discussions.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:23] Well, thank you for them. That is very kind of you.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] Oh, of course.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:26] So anyway, they had board wars because there's the. It's now the Discuss Mormonism board. So I'm not going to say what the old name was to try and avoid confusion. We don't need to do that. Discuss Mormonism has been around for a long time. These are people who are super smart, who are post Mormon generally and they are just so articulate and. But they're anti Mormon in other words, from my point of view then. And there were board wars between them. So I became aware of the discussed Mormonism board.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] So it's like Daniel Peterson on one side and, and Lewis Midgley and Bill. What's his name?

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:05] What was the Bill?

John Dehlin [00:57:06] Bill Hamlin. And then the other side there's like Dr. Shades and you and.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] A bunch of other people.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:13] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:14] And so I mean Peterson, Daniel C. Daniel C. Peterson would go over to the Discuss Mormonism board too from time to time. He usually held forth on the, the safe ground over at the MAD board where the apologists are, the fair board. But he would go over here in enemy territory until I think he finally got tired of getting his ass kicked and so he just left and stopped going there.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:40] And that, that has happened to a number of people.

John Dehlin [00:57:43] It was that engagement of yours on those boards also influential to your faith deterioration?

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:52] It was very influential. So I come into it on the apologetic board and then I find out about this other board and I initially went over to the other board to try and just be, I don't know, smart and make smart ass comments. Right. About you guys being so stupid. And I'm not proud of that. But it's still there, probably in the telestial form if you go back far enough. But then the strange thing started happening, which was I started realizing that over here on the MAD board, the Fair board, that it's very constricted in its thought. Surprise, surprise. And over here you have these very, very intelligent people who are much more open about what it is that they are willing to contemplate. And two things happened. The first thing happened that was very significant to me is that I am asking questions, serious questions about Mormonism that I would like to know what people think about it. And I'm asking these questions over here on the Fair board, the MAD Board with the apologists. And I am being told, no, these are the answers. You don't go beyond them. If you go there, it's danger. You need to stay here in the boat. And I started having difficulty, I started having questions with my testimony and these questions were becoming more and more pressing upon me. And what ended up happening is now a member of both boards and I'm asking the same question on the Fair board as I am asking over here on the Discuss Mormonism board with the post Mormon. And I had the most remarkable experience which is that I have people on the the fair board, the ones who are members and apologists who are telling me I should leave the church, that the church does not need nor want people like me in it. And I'm asking the same questions over here on this board full of post Mormon. And I'm almost going to get emotional here. I apologize. They're trying to help me find ways to stay in the church. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, this does not make any sense at all to me. And yet that's what was happening. And of course that made me certainly more drawn to people who are trying to help me out and help me stay in the church. Then the people are saying, the church doesn't want people like you. So that was one thing. Second thing had to do with this issue. And the issue has to do with spiritual experiences. And there was a person on the Discuss Mormonism board who I don't think post there anymore. I haven't seen him in forever. His nickname or moniker was Seth Bag. It's one word, I have no idea what it meant, but it was Seth Bag. He was very important to my, my spiritual growth. Because the whole issue comes up about spiritual experiences and that they're not exclusive to members of the LDS Church. There are members of other religions and even outside religions that have spiritual experiences. And therefore Mormon have to come up with some way of distinguishing their own spiritual experiences which are the correct ones, which lead them to understand Mormonism is true as opposed to everybody else's. All the billions and billions of other people in the planet who have their spiritual experiences which are not telling them that Mormonism is true. And in fact they may be telling them that a church or religion that is different than Mormonism is really the true one. This is a massive issue. It's a difficult issue. It's an issue that Mormon, or at least I had typically dealt with if I had to think about it. It's not a good One to think about. If you think too far, you're going to get into trouble. And that's what happened to me. But usually what you do is, okay, well, those other people who have spiritual experiences, either those are from Satan or they're mentally deluded. Right. Or they're making it up. I guess there could be three things. They could just be lying. I'd gotten to the point in this time period that you're talking about where I'm starting to really think about it, and Seth Bagg is making me because I am being open enough, to my credit, to entertain the idea instead of just shutting it down like that letter from Ryan Robinson. But I'm really starting to think about it. And I'm starting to think, you know, the problem with saying that everybody else's spiritual experiences is either from Satan or made up or they're deluded is that all three of those undercut my own spiritual experiences. Because how do I say that my spiritual experience is not caused by any of those things? There is no way to differentiate. So that was a huge problem for me. And I thought about it. Some people get to that point and what they do is they just discard spiritual experiences completely and say, this is just something in the brain, in the chemistry or elevated emotion or something that doesn't have anything to do with anything outside. I didn't do that. And I still don't. But what I did was I said, okay, you're right, Seth Bag, you're right. I understand what you're saying. So what I have to do is, how do I prioritize my spiritual experiences over yours, John, if they're different? And the only way I can do that is by saying, your spiritual experiences are just as legitimate as my spiritual experiences. But the only difference, and the critical difference is, is that my spiritual experience is my spiritual experience. And therefore I have to prioritize it for me personally, but not say it's better than your spiritual experience for you thoughts.

John Dehlin [01:03:32] Yeah, makes sense. Beautiful.

Radio Free Mormon [01:03:35] That was a huge turning point for me.

John Dehlin [01:03:39] Yeah. Because you're raised Mormon, believing that everyone else is deceived or wrong. And once you start making allowance that they actually arrive at the same conclusions you do in very similar ways. Different conclusions, but in almost identical ways. You know, it's like that. Is it Richard Dawkins who said, isn't it convenient that God always, you know, blesses? You know, the true church is always the one that happens to be where you live? Right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:04:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:06] Yeah, something like that. Jen, were you gonna say something?

Guest [01:04:08] I was just gonna Say that it was something that. That was something I had to come, like, think about, too. I thought about that too, during my faith transition that, you know, other religions say theirs is true and, you know, they have these spiritual experiences and. And I feel like I had spiritual experiences that were my own during my time as an LDS member. But then I also had spiritual experiences, which I still call them spiritual experiences as a no religious, no religion person. And so that was. That was a new way of thinking for me, that I didn't have to belong to something for there to be a spiritual experience within myself. So that was a. That was something that was good to find because that's something that I worried about as I was losing my faith, that that would be not part of me anymore. But I didn't. I found that that's not true.

Radio Free Mormon [01:05:19] So it's very good. It's a liberating kind of thing.

Guest [01:05:24] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:05:24] Mormonism has taken spiritual experiences and made them change to bind people to the church.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Yeah. A lot of my Christian friends are angry about that because so many Mormon, when they leave Mormonism, they just. They deconstruct all their past spiritual experiences and then don't trust anything resembles a spiritual experience because they don't want to be fooled again. And it can spoil spirituality for many people. Are you feeling something, Jen?

Guest [01:05:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:50] Do you want to share?

Guest [01:05:54] I'm just getting a little emotional. It's just that, you know, it's just I don't think anyone should claim spiritual experiences. There should not be a religion that claims that and that those can only happen within that because that takes God, whoever God is, to whatever individual, it takes God away from them. It's like you're removing that connection that they would have with God, whoever that is to them, and however they name that, and that is not a power that should be given to any human being. They shouldn't be able to claim that. Like, no one should be able to claim that. That's something within every individual human. And no other human has a claim on that. So that's just where all my emotions are coming from. I just think it's a very beautiful thing to see in another human being the spiritual part of them or whatever word that you feel comfortable using. It's what connects us all. It's like the love that we feel inside each other and can see in each other. And I don't think anyone should have claim on that.

John Dehlin [01:07:12] Yeah,

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:15] I think the spirit is present in the studio

John Dehlin [01:07:20] in this fairy room. There's quite enough.

Guest [01:07:26] John can always, like, pull Out a song for any situation.

John Dehlin [01:07:31] Oh, that was beautiful, Jen. Jen, that was beautiful.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:33] Thank you.

Guest [01:07:34] That's my own thoughts.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:35] That's for me.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] Yeah. And I. I felt the same thing, Jen. And also I just divided the number of Mormon in the world by the total number of people in the world. And I'm just like, man, God is the most inefficient engineer in existence. Like, he's not even getting one half of 1% of his children. If Mormonism's the only place where valid

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:55] spiritual experiences happen, narrow is the gate and straight is the way John Jesus called it. We just didn't know it was going to be that narrow and that straight that you need an atomic microscope to see the opening.

Encounters with Ex-Mormon and Doubters

John Dehlin [01:08:07] I have a quick question.

Radio Free Mormon [01:08:08] Yes?

John Dehlin [01:08:09] I wanted to follow up on this, but I took a note and then you had gone to the next story, going back to your experience that you got a little emotional talking about the Mormon Apologetic board wanting you out of the church and the ex Mormon trying to talk you into staying. How do you make sense of both of those motivations? Start with the apologists. Why were they wanting you out of the church, do you think?

Radio Free Mormon [01:08:34] Well, although it calls for mind reading, I will speculate, because they're supposed to

John Dehlin [01:08:39] want everyone to be in the church. That's supposed to be their job, right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:08:41] I know it's supposed to be their job, but I think that when a person asks a question and is given the apologetic standard response and it is not satisfying to the person who asks the question, and they continue to persist in the same question now, they become a danger, and therefore they need to be gotten rid of. Done away with is too dramatic, but put away, put to the side where they can't be dangerous. So that's outside the church. I mean, you know what that's like, right?

John Dehlin [01:09:13] Yeah. And from a Christian standpoint, that bothers me because Christ literally said, be long suffering, not like, oh, you didn't like my one answer. Get out of here.

Radio Free Mormon [01:09:23] Right.

John Dehlin [01:09:23] I mean, you're making us uncomfortable. Yeah. Okay. Why would ex Mormon try and talk you into staying in the church?

Radio Free Mormon [01:09:30] I think because even though we're just talking as I'm consigliery, not as a. We're all human beings behind the avatar. And I think they cared about me. They're pretty much all post Mormon. They've been down the road that I am traversing. They can see my pain, my concern, my confusion, and they're trying to remedy it for me by helping me find a way to make it work in the church. For these people, converting me to their way of thinking was not as important as trying to help me where I was as a human being.

John Dehlin [01:10:14] Yeah. Yeah. I can say I've counseled tens of thousands of people regarding their faith crisis. I don't believe I've ever told someone to leave the church. Not once. If I'm wrong, I'd love to see it, but I don't believe I have because I believe that's a personal decision and I believe it's really hard to leave the church. So unless someone really makes that own decision themselves, I wouldn't want to push them personally.

Radio Free Mormon [01:10:42] Yeah. And I have never, ever told anybody to leave the church. In fact, I find to this day that if someone leaves the church or I hear about someone leaving the church, I feel there's a twinge of sadness. I feel.

John Dehlin [01:10:52] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:10:52] And I have no idea why that is because my experience certainly has been, over the course of a long period of time, very much beneficial. Graduating from sixth grade, which is the analogy that I introduced in part one of this back in August of 2021, hugely beneficial, liberating, freeing. There is nothing bad about it. It's all good. And yet there's this. Still this. This twinge of sadness that I feel when I hear about it. And I'm certainly never going to be someone to try and get somebody to make a decision about their life based upon my advice. No, I would never do that. But, however, if they are already traversing that path and they come to me with questions or want to watch the show, yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to talk to them and share with them my experience and what I think about things, just like I am now with you. I will tell you one other thing, which is this idea that I learned from Seth back about. I can't prioritize my experiences over other people's and allowing them the grace or the courtesy or whatever you would call it to have their own spiritual experiences, even if their spiritual experience conflicts with me or my spiritual experiences or whatever. I believe this is a few years ago. And, Bill, real, I hope you will forgive me for mentioning you. I think. I think you'll be okay with this. We're on the phone. This has got to be four years ago. And the subject of Denver Snuffer comes up. And as you know, Denver Snuffer has claimed to have visions of Jesus Christ. And Bill Rheal's talking to me about that. And just. Well, let's put it this way, Bill Rio does not believe that Denver Snuffer has had any visions of Jesus Christ. Okay. And he's. He's mentioning that it's very clear that he feels that way on the phone, but he's also expecting that I'm going to feel the same way that he does about Denver Snuffers visions. And I kind of give him one of those. And he goes, what, what, what are you talking about? Rfm? You don't actually believe that Denver Snuffer has had visions of Jesus Christ, do you? And I said, well, I don't know. I'm not him. I haven't experienced what he's experienced, and for all I know, he has had visions of Jesus Christ. I just didn't feel like I needed to judge one way or another on it. On the other hand. Oh, that's right. That's right. Because then Bill says, well, if you think that he's had visions, then shouldn't you be lining up to be a member of the. The Remnant and join that group? And I said, no, no, I don't feel that way at all. Because here's what I think. If Jesus wants to appear to Denver Snuffer, that's between Denver Snuffer and Jesus. And then I told Bill, look, if Jesus wants to appear to me, he's got my address, he knows where I live, and I'll leave the light on. But this is sort of the natural progression of what I learned from Seth Bag manifesting itself in a discrete instance of a conversation with Bill Real about Denver Snuffer. If Jesus wants to. To come talk to me, he knows where I live. Just because somebody else has had an experience, and even if it's a real experience, it's not binding on me in any way. It might be for them.

John Dehlin [01:13:58] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:13:58] But not for me.

John Dehlin [01:13:59] Sure. And that's just being respectful of other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, where does your faith journey go next?

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:09] Here's the. I got to show you this. Here are my notes. Right. I'm this far in my notes. Okay. From the top.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] Let's not rush it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:16] No, I feel like I'm Joseph Smith translating the book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] Okay, I get it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:24] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] That's a curly Egyptian papers or navu Egyptian papers reference.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:29] Yes, absolutely. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] One scribble, five pages.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:35] Yes. Joseph Smith would have been a great guest on your show. I think

John Dehlin [01:14:41] it would have been a 50 hour episode.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:43] Yeah. Have you ever thought about if you could interview Joseph Smith?

John Dehlin [01:14:46] Man, dark, dark thoughts.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:50] Okay, well, we won't. You know, we don't have to go there. So can I just tell You a little bit. I'm gonna skip a couple things.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] No, no skipping.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:57] No, no, because that's okay. Believe me, it's not all ready for prime time.

John Dehlin [01:15:03] It's all truth and wisdom.

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:04] Yeah, well, we're not in a hurry.

John Dehlin [01:15:07] Keep going.

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:08] Oh, I took my watch off because I left it in the hat. Okay, so it's like 10 till 3. I've got so much more to go.

John Dehlin [01:15:16] Couple hours. A couple hours.

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:18] All right, so don't rush it. All right. I want to say a couple more things about Shakespeare. Okay. We talked about Shakespeare in Part 1. Shakespeare has been very influential to me. And I talked all about my studying of him over the course of two years back, starting in 2009, and all the things that I had to do in order to try and understand what the heck it was he was writing and talking about. Because it was not easy for me and certainly not easier for me than other people. So I had to have all these helps and all these handbooks. And what I found out was that if I was going to understand what Shakespeare was saying in a play, I had to know in advance what the play was about. I couldn't pick it up. I'm better now. Of course, I also know all the play, so it's not like he's got a bunch more that I. I haven't read. So I'm familiar enough with him, but took years of me doing this, of my doing this. One of the things about Shakespeare is that there are definitely different levels of quality of his place. And I think most people would generally agree with that. It's like you've got Marvel comic book characters. You got Spider Man. He's at the top, right? He's. He's there at the top tier.

Literature, Shakespeare, and Rethinking Scripture

John Dehlin [01:16:27] I mean, it depends on who you ask, but.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:29] Yeah. Well, I'm just talking about sales of comic books as manifested in some kind of discreet way. So he. He's got a bunch that are down here that he's got some that are second level, which are very, very. I mean, they're incredible. It's like these are better than anybody's ever written where you've got Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, Much Ado about nothing. And that's the second tier. Right. There's one play at the very top that out Shakespeare's Shakespeare, which is kind of a Hamlet joke, because that's the name of the play, Hamlet. And you hear that right here's the old joke. I hope I haven't told it too many times. There's a. The Story, which I read in a book that Isaac Asimov wrote about Shakespeare's plays a long time ago. And he was talking about this lady who was maybe 80, maybe 90, she's getting on in years, she's never read Hamlet and she thinks, you know, I really should read Hamlet because everybody talks about it. So she reads Hamlet, she tells her friend she's going to read Hamlet. She gets done. Her friend says, well, what did you think of Hamlet? And this old lady says, well, you know, it really wasn't that good. It was just a bunch of famous quotes strung together.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] Is it?

Radio Free Mormon [01:17:48] There's no laugh track anyway, it's a great, great story. But, but Hamlet is head and shoulders above even these other tier of plays, which are head and shoulders above what any other playwright has ever written, generally understood and accepted. Not. I'm sure there will be people who differ with that. But here's the thing about Hamlet, okay? And here's the thing about Shakespeare, which is it is common for people, some people, a small number of people, to want to attribute Shakespeare's plays to an author other than Shakespeare. And those are the kinds of news stories that seem to get the press and the kind of news stories that people hear about. Well, as I got into Shakespeare studies, what I began to understand is really that's a fringe position. And the vast number of Shakespeare scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays. There's a couple of them that maybe there was somebody else that he wrote with, but basically he wrote his place. The thing that's interesting to me and where it intersects with Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon is the reason for it, the reason that some people think that Shakespeare did not write his plays is because they were beyond his ability. Because he has only a limited amount of education, which they know about. They can document it to some degree over there in Stratford on Avon. And he didn't go that far in school. And so how do you take a person who has a very limited amount of education, who is writing plays and poetry like Shakespeare does, How do you make sense of that? And the way they tried, some try to make sense of it is try and describe his works to somebody else who was much more sophisticated and had a lot more education. Does that sound like Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin [01:19:45] Sounded a lot like Joseph Smith. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:19:48] And so what they're leaving out of the equation of is of course the, the inspiration. And here I'm using it in a non religious context. So we talk about it in Mormonism and in religion. This inspiration that seems to come from outside. It's not something that one has learned in the schoolroom, but there's an inspiration. And people talk about that with Mozart in music from a very young age, that it seemed like there was a conduit from heaven, and the angels are just beaming down this music into his head and is flowing through him, and he's writing it out in the manuscript form. That happens to people. It happens to me every now and again. When we have an insight or an idea that seems so novel and so creative that it couldn't have come from inside of us, Our temptation is to ascribe it to something outside of us. And the Greeks had their muses, Right. So that's the idea of this muse outside of you who's giving you information because it's part of the human experience. Stephen King wrote a short story about. It wasn't one of his best. But this idea about. Where does he get all the ideas for his stories? Well, you know, he doesn't really know either. They seem to come from outside. And so he did a little short story about a little gremlin that lived in his typewriter. Like I said, it wasn't the best, but that's where he's trying to deal with the issue. He's. It's coming from outside as well, and it's associated with his typewriter.

John Dehlin [01:21:13] So the musicians say that, too. They, you know, like you said Beethoven or the Beatles or whatever. They're like, I don't know where it came from. It just came to me. Well, that implies it was somewhere, and then it came to you, right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:23] Yes. And whether that's true, I don't know. But it gives that. It has that feeling to it. And then there's other things that they seem so pedestrian. And so I felt like the idea

John Dehlin [01:21:34] of Mormon stories came to me.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:35] Oh, tell us.

John Dehlin [01:21:36] Inspiration. No, no, no, no, no. It's your story. I'm just saying I relate, that's all.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:40] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:21:41] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:42] This is the deal. When we have two interviewers in the same room, you can interview me anytime you want, brother.

John Dehlin [01:21:47] This is your time.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:48] All right. Well, okay. Because I want to hear that story.

John Dehlin [01:21:51] Okay. Another time.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:52] But here's the thing about Shakespeare. And this idea did just come to me more recently as I'm thinking about it, because Shakespeare inspired low education. Joseph Smith inspired low education. The Book of Mormon is really, in many circles of apologetics, the last stand of Mormonism

John Dehlin [01:22:20] or the keystone of our religion.

Radio Free Mormon [01:22:22] The keystone of our religion. Right. So this is. This is when the back is up against the wall. It's the Book of Mormon. How did Joseph Smith come up with this? He couldn't have done it on his own. There must have been divine inspiration. And without addressing that directly, I'm going to compare that to Shakespeare, because I think. And this is part of my. My story. Okay, I will link this into me. Part of the growing in the story is being able to be exposed, exposing myself not publicly, but to great authors like Shakespeare, and taking the time to do this and being able to compare Hamlet. We'll just use Hamlet as the example with the Book of Mormon. I don't think, and I could be wrong, that there's going to be anybody who reads Hamlet and reads the Book of Mormon and finds them both on the same level of inspiration. As a tbm, I was not able to do that, and I wanted to. So we have Shakespeare with Hamlet. We've got Joseph Smith with the Book of Mormon, and Shakespeare is producing something so much more inspired than the Book of Mormon. Even granting the Book of Mormon its own level of inspiration, it's less than right. Hamlet. And so what came to me more recently was this thought. And I will read this now because I wrote it down. It's in the form of a question. If Shakespeare can be more inspired than the Book of Mormon and Shakespeare not be a prophet, why does Joseph Smith have to be a prophet? Because he produced the Book of Mormon. And the second question is like unto the first. If Shakespeare's plays and Hamlet are more inspired and inspiring than the Book of Mormon and Shakespeare's plays are not scripture, why does the Book of Mormon have to be scripture?

John Dehlin [01:24:35] And you're writing this when?

Radio Free Mormon [01:24:36] A couple days ago.

John Dehlin [01:24:38] Okay. Yeah, but. But you're not reflecting on thoughts you had back in the mid-2000s.

Radio Free Mormon [01:24:44] No, and what I'm doing here, I think, is I am allowing to bubble up into my consciousness the unconscious thoughts that I had when I was reading through them.

John Dehlin [01:24:52] You're reflecting. You're. You're doing introspection. That's beautiful. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:24:56] And that's. That's part of the thing, is that I can have things happening subconsciously and maybe not exactly putting them together as to why it's making me feel this way or move in this direct. Yeah. But it's very real. And now I'm able to put it in words.

John Dehlin [01:25:11] Love it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:25:12] For the show.

John Dehlin [01:25:13] Love it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:25:13] And if we stopped here, that'd probably be better than going on completely.

John Dehlin [01:25:17] We're done with the interview.

Radio Free Mormon [01:25:18] No, but it would be better. This would be a good time for people to leave because I think that's a really strong point.

Guest [01:25:25] I like that thought, though. I like how you compared it to Shakespeare and. Because I'm just thinking that the church as a whole pro. It would be a lot. It would feel a lot more like love if it didn't say it was the only true or it was the only doctrine or you had to follow it, you know, to be with God again. If it was just a beautiful thing that was written that people could, you know, get spiritual, spiritually fed from, or that we could meet with each other and, you know, we could give tithing and we would use that tithing for good and things like that. That's a beautiful thing. That's, you know, if it was set up more like Shakespeare, that would be a beautiful thing.

Radio Free Mormon [01:26:16] I think so. I think it's a great, great comment, great insight and actually leads me to my. Another story. It's out of the sequence, but that's okay. No, I believe in doing things organically, John.

John Dehlin [01:26:27] No, I'll say. I have a lot of Christian friends and probably other religions that are like scriptures were never meant to be historical documents. They're never meant to be taken literally. They're like myth and fable and legend. And if you can hold them in that realm, then they can give you inspiration and even spiritual nourishment and you don't get caught up on, did Noah really live and did he really put two of every animal in the ark? Because you're in trouble as soon as you go there. You're in trouble if you can just keep it as myth inspiring stories meant to be a spiritual book as a jumping off point for your own spiritual adventures.

Guest [01:27:06] And then it takes away all the shame and the guilt and the, you're not good enough and, you know, all those things that come with having to check all the boxes instead of it just being a connection to God.

John Dehlin [01:27:22] But it also, I'm guessing Mormon church leaders found at some point that you lose a lot of the power if it's not real, if Adam and Eve didn't really live, if Noah didn't really

Guest [01:27:30] live well, and you can't have, you know, make more stuff up, you know, as Joseph did. Well, how I feel he did now, you know, you can't add to it, you know, you know, with polygamy or things like that, you can't. If you're not speaking for God and this is the way you have to do it, you can't add to it

John Dehlin [01:27:51] all those things and you have more power over people. If you're claiming that you're communicating directly, literally, for God.

Guest [01:27:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] They have more power over people.

Guest [01:28:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] Okay, you're jumping. Where are we going next?

Radio Free Mormon [01:28:03] I was just gonna say what's coming to me from what you're saying is that this is one of the problems with literalism.

John Dehlin [01:28:09] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:28:09] Is that what you're doing is you're immediately creating us and them. And the us are the ones who agree with your literal interpretation, whether it's Noah really existed and two of every kind, and the six days or seven days of creation, all those things you create us versus them. And us is the ones who believe the right thing, and them is the ones who don't believe the right thing. So it's a boundary, Creator, as opposed to thinking that we can all have our own understandings that are equally valid and maybe even share our understandings with other people and grow from things other people have to share.

John Dehlin [01:28:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another way I heard it said once was no group has ever received the inspiration from God that that other group is God's chosen people. It's always your group. Whatever God tells a group who shows that. It's always the group receiving the inspiration. That's kind of convenient.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:05] So here's what happened to me.

Guest [01:29:06] Hey, excited.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:08] This is actually a spiritual experience. Death defying. What happened was this is that I've gone through. Look, I went through the Bible. I've studied the heck out of the scriptures to the point where I'm really kind of ready to put them aside.

John Dehlin [01:29:26] Is this a moment? Like a. Like a.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:28] There's going to be a moment here?

John Dehlin [01:29:29] No, but is this a specific year? Like, where in the timeline are we. That's. You may not even remember.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:35] It's going to be after Sunday school. It's going to be after Shakespeare. It's going to be. Because after Shakespeare, then

John Dehlin [01:29:45] 2009. Around then.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:46] That's gonna be more toward 2012.

John Dehlin [01:29:48] Oh, wow, okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:49] Or 2013.

John Dehlin [01:29:50] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:51] Because now I'm past Shakespeare, which ends in 2009, 11.

John Dehlin [01:29:58] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:58] August. So it'll be 12 or 13.

Guest [01:30:00] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:01] And I stopped going to church in 14.

John Dehlin [01:30:03] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:04] Okay. So there are things that are happening here, and this is a critical time, but I am very, very moved by Shakespeare. I start reading works of classic literature. Can I mention Moby Dick for just a second, please? Moby Dick is the most fantastic book in the world.

Moby Dick and a Spiritual Reckoning

John Dehlin [01:30:16] Herman Melville.

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:17] Yes. But you have to be ready for him. My mom, rest her soul, she passed away in the year 2000 on October 10, day before her birthday. And she would frequently, as gifts, get Nice volumes from collector's editions, you know, their different publishing houses that put them out. And she had gotten me a version of Moby Dick. And I decided I would try and read that back in my late 30s. And I was not ready for it. I mean, I am really a slow developer and a late bloomer. I wasn't ready for. He's got this chapter, and there's like, chapter seven about cetology, cet about whales. I went, that's like Isaiah and Second Nephi in Moby Dick. I didn't know it at the time, but there's not that much that's going on. I'm not gripped by the narrative. I go into this chapter where he's going to tell us about all the different kinds of whales that exist. And I was done.

John Dehlin [01:31:27] It's like the sewer chapter in Les Miserables, but keep going.

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:31] There's a sewer chapter in Les Miserables,

John Dehlin [01:31:32] as I understand that there's an entire chapter on what the sewers were like in France.

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:36] I know there's a sewer chapter in it, but I haven't read Les Mis. Okay, well, see, there's always things to read. Honestly, the more I find out, the more I realize that there's so much more to find out.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:49] So in the 30s, in. In my 30s, in the 1990s, I try and get through it. It's not happening. And I know that Moby Dick is supposed to be phenomenal, but. Okay, I don't like it. It's like, what was it Mark Twain said about Huckleberry Finn? And he said, I don't want this called a classic. Never call this book a classic, because a classic is a book that everybody's heard of but nobody reads. And that was what I was thinking back then. So this is in my 30s, and I put it to the side, and there's this nice inscription that my mom had put in there. You know, it was like, you know, dear RFM Happy birthday and much love, Mom. And she'd write it in her little fuchsia RF mom pin.

John Dehlin [01:32:32] What? RF Mom.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:33] RF Mom.

John Dehlin [01:32:34] Yeah. I mean, we got to give her.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:36] She's the M. Yeah. M is for the million things she gave me. Yes. But anyway, so I put it to the side. I said, yeah, I agree with Mark Twain. Classics. Everybody's heard of, Nobody's read. And then I go on through all this stuff, through my 40s and into my 50s, and now I finally come back to the same volume of Moby Dick. And this is after Shakespeare, and I'm reading other things, and I. I got to read Moby Dick. I got to give it another try. But I know what I'm going to do. You know what I'm going to do when I read Moby Dick the second time? Right, John?

John Dehlin [01:33:08] You're going to approach it with the tenacity of Ahab.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:11] No, I'm going to skip that freaking chapter on seatology. So anyway, but good tenacity of Ahab. And I read through it, and now the difference. Obviously, the book has remained the same.

John Dehlin [01:33:26] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:27] It's even the same book.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:29] I'm the one who's changed. 20 years of difference. And now this book that was the most boring thing. And I couldn't even get through

John Dehlin [01:33:39] very

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:39] many chapters of it in my 30s. Now I am engrossed by it.

John Dehlin [01:33:42] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:43] In my 50s. And I am seeing so much about the human experience, and so much is resonating with me. And all of a sudden, I realize why this is considered to be one of the greatest works of American literature. And so that's what I wanted to say about Moby Dick. And then the other thing was, is that. When I got done with the book, I would always put the date that I got done, mainly because I can't remember if I read something. So if I find it, I go back and I say, okay, I read it, and I, you know, just put my little initials there. Well, I got to done with Moby Dick and had this experience I was talking about, and I was going back to the fly leaf to put down my initials and the date I got done. And I saw my mom's inscription. Again, this is stupid. I'm sorry. But I wrote down under it, I said, thanks, Mom. I finally got through it. It's stupid because she'd passed away a long time before. Anyway. Well, that's embarrassing.

Guest [01:34:51] Stupid.

John Dehlin [01:34:53] What? What. What were some of the things that moved you most about Moby Dick?

Radio Free Mormon [01:34:56] It is such a spiritual book, and Ahab is the hero. And so many things that Ahab was saying resonated with me, because I'm ready to hear them.

John Dehlin [01:35:06] Ahab's the captain. Going after the whale. Trying to. Trying to kill the whale, Right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:10] Yes. He's Quint.

John Dehlin [01:35:11] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:11] Right. Going after the great white shark. There is a resemblance, but. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:15] Because he's from Jaws.

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:17] Okay. As a Jaws reference, y' all know me, you always have to have a 70s or an 80s reference with our family or 60s, 60s, 70s or.

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:25] Oh, my gosh. There's so many things that are going on in this book, and I am realizing what it is that Herman Melville is putting into this book, and now it's speaking through the mouth of Ahab to me. And I just want to share one of those things, if that's okay, because there are a lot of them. And I did write a number of them down in my book because I started to be so impressed with things that were speaking to me from literature that I would mark them as I read through them. Then I would try and go back and I would write them down. So I had it in one volume. So let's see if I can do better now than I did back in August at finding this. Because it's, of course, a huge sea voyage, right? Starts in Nantucket, probably, and they go all around the world searching for whales and then finding this particular one. So they never quite make it back. At least the Pequod doesn't. But here it is, all right. And our whole life is a sea voyage, and it's perilous and bad things happen and beautiful things happen. But what happens here is they're in a bad spot. Let me. Let me back up for a second and talk about life again. There are things that happen to us for bad or good, and the tendency is to want to find a meaning or a purpose in it or some message or some other power orchestrating things, because sometimes it seems that way, that things are being orchestrated. They say life has to be lived forward, but can only be understood backward looking back on it. And I think it's in the retrospective that we start to envision these ideas about design. Okay, so having said that, they're in a really bad spot. And I can't remember what the spot is that they're in with the crew. And Ahab, of course, is the leader of the crew. And they're trying to find omens because very superstitious group by a lot sailors, right? And there's something that's happening that's an omen. And I can't remember if it's the will o' the wisp incident on board the ship when they're like, in this fog and chilly waters and it looks like they're lost and they're trying to find some kind of source of inspiration to give them a sign that they will make it through. And that's what the sailors are doing. And they're sharing this with Ahab. Now, here's what Ahab says back to them and see if you can imagine what this is saying to me as a member of the LDS Church. It's a very short quote, but he says he's very dismissive of omens. He says omen, omen. And then he says the dictionary like it's an, it's an exclamation. I don't know exactly what that means, but he says omen, omen, the dictionary. If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright, not shake their heads and give an old wives darkling hint. So of course what he's saying there in beautiful language is if God wants to tell me something, he can freaking tell me, not sit here and do a will of the wisp thing or some kind of a. An omen. He says, don't give me an omen. If God wants to speak to me, he'll speak to me like a man will not speak to me outright. And I'm reading this and it's resonating with me because I'm thinking about my experience in Mormonism and how it is that everything that's a positive elevated emotion experience. And I believe I've received very spiritual experiences. But why is that the way God communicates when if he's God and he knows my language and he wants to communicate a message to me and he's

John Dehlin [01:39:12] all powerful and all loving.

Radio Free Mormon [01:39:13] Yes. Tell me what the freak you want me to know so I'm not sitting

John Dehlin [01:39:17] here guessing and you're his child.

Radio Free Mormon [01:39:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:39:21] Yeah, I'm not the favored child, but we'll patch that up later. Anyway, so that was a remarkable thing to me and the book is full of things like that. Anything else you want to add to that?

John Dehlin [01:39:36] Well, I'm just. I know in my Mormon story I was always praying to get witnesses that never came. And then I have to talk my kind of gaslight myself into belief by saying, well, I knew all along or oh, I felt good at youth conference, so the church must be true. I'm trying to remember in your story if you had also been trying to receive that witness, which we're also ironically taught in the scriptures that it's evil to seek a sign.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:40:00] So we're supposed to say that it's true somehow. We're all supposed to say it's true, but we're not supposed to seek a sign to know it's true. In other words, we're just supposed to say it's true without knowing it's true.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:11] It's a strange thing. We have so many conflicting ideas and I expect different religions have similar things like it. Conflicting ideas going on in the same religion, which is, you know, it's a. What is an adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign and.

John Dehlin [01:40:23] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:23] Verona, chapter 10, verses 3 through 5. How to seek a sign. And you're supposed to seek it and you're supposed to receive it.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:32] And I felt like I did. But we've covered that before.

John Dehlin [01:40:35] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:36] Not last August, but when we talked in Kirkland back in November of 2019.

John Dehlin [01:40:42] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:42] So, like, once again, I'm trying not to duplicate.

John Dehlin [01:40:45] Yeah, but that touched you. That Moby Dick touched you in a way. You're basically saying, God, my faith is. This is me trying to put words to summarize what I just heard. God, my faith is slipping away. If you. If, If. If you're really there and if Mormonism is really true, I'm here. Come tell. Come talk to me.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:07] I don't know if that's a little different than that.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:10] But that's certainly one interpretation of what I said. What it meant to me was, was that my entire experience in Mormonism is based upon omens.

John Dehlin [01:41:20] Oh.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:21] That even though I felt that I had legitimate spiritual experiences, they are omens that must be interpreted instead of just having God. Tell me something.

John Dehlin [01:41:29] So you're recontextualizing what you had previously determined were witnesses from God.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] You're saying they may have just been omens or whispers or whatever.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:39] What I'm saying is I still believe they were legitimate experiences.

John Dehlin [01:41:42] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:43] And yet the interpretation is given to me to put on them.

John Dehlin [01:41:47] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:47] By the church. And we all know what the interpretation of any spiritual experience is in the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [01:41:51] Any good feeling, any positive feeling at all.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:53] Right.

John Dehlin [01:41:54] Is obviously the church is true.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:55] Church is true.

John Dehlin [01:41:56] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:41:56] Something good happens to you, it means the church is true. Something bad happens to you, it means the church is true.

John Dehlin [01:42:00] Or you weren't doing it. You weren't doing it. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:02] Right. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:42:03] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:04] And which actually means the church is true.

John Dehlin [01:42:06] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:08] You may not be true. This church is true.

John Dehlin [01:42:10] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:11] So that's what it was doing for me. And I'm just starting to see this, and I'm starting to see it in such wonderful language. Oh. The story that what you said reminded me of Jen was about. We had the timing down, right. It's around 2013, maybe 2012. And I'm starting to read these kinds of things, and it's resonating with me. And there's this whole concept in Mormonism about the hidden books. The Book of Mormon is a hidden book of scripture. It came forth and it talks about that there are other records that will come forth in the last days. And of course, it's probably President Nelson who's going to be interpreting them. No, it's a pipe dream. They're never going to come forth. The article on faith says that there are many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God that will be revealed. No, they're not. It's a nice article of faith, but that's one of those things that, like the Second Coming, will be perpetually in our future just because of the way things have turned out.

John Dehlin [01:43:03] Unless you follow Denver Snuffer or that other guy, Christopher Namelka.

Radio Free Mormon [01:43:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:43:08] Then new scripture has been revealed.

Radio Free Mormon [01:43:10] Right.

John Dehlin [01:43:10] Sorry, I don't mean to derail you, but.

Radio Free Mormon [01:43:11] No, that's the appeal.

John Dehlin [01:43:13] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:43:13] Because people are starting to get wise to the fact that the leaders of the church who sit in the seat of Joseph, if I can put it that way, which just came to me, so I must be speaking by the Spirit. They sit in the seat of Joseph, not the seat of Moses, but the seat of Joseph. And yet they claim the authority of Joseph and they claim his heritage and his right to lead and the keys, but they've got nothing. They've got a banquet and a table that has no food on it. And they come and invite us to eat, and there's nothing but air. And then they tell us that we've been spiritually fed. And we nod our heads and we say yes, and we say we've been spiritually fed. And we all tell each other that we've been spiritually fed, while every one of us knows that we're starving to death.

John Dehlin [01:44:08] Wow.

Radio Free Mormon [01:44:09] I was in a totally fruitless tangent.

John Dehlin [01:44:11] Super powerful. Jen's nodding. Jen's nodding.

Hidden Scriptures and Fading Belief

Radio Free Mormon [01:44:14] So the story, though. The story is I'm going through all this, and all this is happening. Oh, the hidden scriptures, they're going to come forward someday. Yeah, Right. But there are these books. And I am up in the barn on this particular day, which is probably in the summer. And we'll just say it's the summer of. And I am up there trying to find something in a box. This is like a storage area in the loft, and there's all these boxes, and they are on this ledge where the boxes go. And whoever built this barn did not put any kind of a protective banister along this. This area where the boxes were. And it is straight down 15ft to a concrete foundation. And so the boxes are up there. Yeah, I got to take fault for putting the boxes up there. So there's this narrow ledge that I can walk along to look in the boxes. And on the other side is the drop off of that ledge. And I'm trying to find whatever it is. And I'm thinking about these. These thoughts are circling in my head, whatever it was I was looking for. And all of a sudden, the beam that is holding up this platform that the boxes are on and that I'm standing on breaks. And it sags like this. And it probably wasn't that much, but it felt more like that to me because all of a sudden I'm in the position. Not every beam broke, but this one did. And it doesn't go all the way across, right? It's just there. Obviously, I need to lose weight, but it breaks and it sags. And it's only being held up by what's attached to it. And now I'm in this position of, okay, if this goes any further, what's going to happen is that all of these boxes, which are full of heavy things, are going to come sliding off the edge. And I'm the one who's on the ledge, and they're going to take me with them. And we're all going to go down 15ft onto the concrete foundation. And that's where I will be underneath all of these boxes. And I don't know what the had to do with anything, except all of a sudden, I mean, it's just like, okay, don't move. You're out on the icy lake and it cracks and it's like, okay, don't move. And then just slowly, slowly start going sideways along this ledge until I got off of this danger area. So I got out of it. I have no idea what that had to do with the insight that I had that came to me. It's like an nde. But all of a sudden, the insight came to me very strongly that I realized where the hidden books were, where the hidden books of scripture were. And they weren't something that was going to come out of Salt Lake City from the president of the church or the apostles. These books were hiding in the stacks of the library in your town. These are the works of the poets and the prophets and Shakespeare and Herman Melville and so many other people that I could name.

John Dehlin [01:47:18] John. The Steinbeck.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:20] Yes, John Steinbeck. You've done that before.

John Dehlin [01:47:24] The Brontes.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:26] I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Because of Jonathan Streeter and all these other. But, yeah, John Steinbeck. Yeah, he's wonderful. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:47:32] Just the classics.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:34] So many people who write on a different level and they are funneling and channeling inspiration, which can resonate with me. And some resonate more than others. And different people have different responses to them. But there's a reason that they are literature and not just books.

John Dehlin [01:47:49] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:49] Or novels, but they're considered to be literature. And all of a sudden I understand these hidden books already exist.

John Dehlin [01:47:56] Fon Brody. No man knows my history.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:59] I haven't read that one yet. Oh, but I want to.

John Dehlin [01:48:01] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:48:02] I want to. So I can't comment on it, but it just all of a sudden occurred to me that there are these books out there that are the hidden books of scripture. And then the second thought that followed on that was that the authors of those books of scripture on the stacks in your local library are prophetic who write scripture prophets. And so then it opens up this world to me of all these additional prophets and all these additional books of scripture that I can learn from and that I can grow through and that I can, in my own way of thought, become more of a person through reading and incorporating as best I can. There was this one person who worked at an old law office I was at, and I would talk a little bit about Shakespeare, and she would say, why do you spend your time memorizing Shakespeare? I was at memorizing Shakespeare. I mean, reading it's bad enough, but who wants to spend time memorizing it? And I tried to explain to her, and it's hard to explain in words, but reading Shakespeare is more than just reading. It's like what he writes is more than words. It's like the opposite of what the LDS Church does where they give you nothing and claim you've been fed. He gives you plays and I can cram them into my mouth and be fed and grow from them.

John Dehlin [01:49:32] Well, they're meant to be read out loud. Right. His words are written to be read out loud.

Radio Free Mormon [01:49:37] They are scripts. Yes. And so taking that one step further, if I take the time to memorize parts of it, then that is a way of incorporating it into my being that is more effective to me than just reading it. Even though that's wonderful enough or watching

John Dehlin [01:49:54] it, it's also a cool party trick. Makes people think you're smart.

Radio Free Mormon [01:49:58] Absolutely. Getting people to think that I'm smarter than I really am is something that I have. Is your attempted to cultivate over time

John Dehlin [01:50:08] because.

Radio Free Mormon [01:50:09] No, no, I do not think I'm. I'm smart if I know something about Shakespeare. Well, Shakespeare is a smart one. It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence just to read or learn from what someone else has said who is smart, blah, blah, blah. Did you put that yourself on the screen when you did that?

John Dehlin [01:50:23] Because you're saying you're not smart and we're all just going. Yeah, right.

Guest [01:50:26] Yeah, that's what I was saying, too.

Radio Free Mormon [01:50:27] Can I just be totally honest with you right now?

John Dehlin [01:50:29] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:50:29] You look marvelous. No. Can I be totally honest with you now? Really? No, I. I don't look marvelous. You do look marvelous. And if people could see how you look in those shorts, they would understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, I do not have that feeling about myself.

John Dehlin [01:50:55] Oh, okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:50:55] I do not have that feeling about myself at all. Excuse me. If I cough, can I turn this off?

John Dehlin [01:51:00] She'll. She'll mute you.

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:01] Can you mute me?

John Dehlin [01:51:02] Yeah. So, yeah, while you're coughing. All. All monologue. It's fine. We're resilient. You need to read. No, man.

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:10] As my history brother, I do, and I want to.

John Dehlin [01:51:13] Yeah.

Guest [01:51:13] And are we gonna do a book club on that?

John Dehlin [01:51:15] Maybe. Maybe RFM will be a part of our book.

Guest [01:51:17] Yeah, we should do that.

John Dehlin [01:51:18] I think that would be a massive Internet sensation.

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:21] I love books, but what happens is I. As I read and I study more, is that I. I become just too. It's too obvious to me that I'm never going to be able to read all the books that there are. I mean, who can do that? Maybe one person or two people can. It's not me. So the more I learn, the more I realize. I don't know. It's trite.

John Dehlin [01:51:47] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:48] But true.

John Dehlin [01:51:49] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:50] So does that answer that question you had?

John Dehlin [01:51:54] Yeah. That's good. So we're. We're Post Gospel Doctrine. Post Moby Dick, Post Shakespeare 2013, 2014. RFM.

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:06] And at this pre.

John Dehlin [01:52:07] RFM.

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:08] Oh, yes. RFM in embryo. Who are these podcasters? Coming down

John Dehlin [01:52:19] like gentle rain through dark

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:21] and sky let's head through darkened skies

John Dehlin [01:52:23] with glory trailing from their feet as

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:26] they go Some of their body part

John Dehlin [01:52:28] and endless promise in their eyes. Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:31] They're wonderful. Who are these podcasters? Growing strong, Tall growing strong. Okay. But last time I had talked about Epictetus and Stoic philosophy, because I got a book that had some sayings of Epictetus in it, and I'm just casting about at this point. It also had Marcus Aurelius and Plato, but it was a. One of these kind of cheap knockoff editions that's supposed to look like it's leather and it's not. And I got a used bookstore, but I started reading through that. I'd never heard of Epictetus, but I started, like, reading some of the things he's writing, and they just really resonate with Me, I don't even know that he's Greek or Stoic or whatever. And I want to mention. Here we go. I had looked for this last time, too, and was not able to find it, so. Oh, that's not good. Oh, here it is. Here it is. It is good. I found it because the idea behind Stoicism, fundamentally, is that what's going to happen to us is what's going to happen to us. I mean, we have the ability to. To do things, but still, it's. What's going to happen to us happens. There's going to be good things that happen to us and bad things that happen to us, and that's part of the hu. Human situation. And the idea of Stoicism is to realize that all of this is part of the entire deal and that we need to try to be as grateful for the good things that happen as for the bad things that happen. Because everything has been organized. There is this idea of a plan, whether it's God or a universe or a provider with a capital P who is organizing this for our benefit. And we need to understand that and recognize that. And so here's what he says. This is. It's very short. He says, lead me, O God, and thou, O destiny. Is that me?

Stoic Philosophy and the Happiness Trap

John Dehlin [01:54:29] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:29] That's cool.

John Dehlin [01:54:30] Somehow, Siri started playing.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:33] I've interrupted other people frequently, but I've seldom been interrupted by myself. Lead me, O God, and thou, O destiny. Same thing. Lead me, O God. Be what it may. Okay. Be what it may. The goal appointed me, so lead me to whatever that goal is that's appointed me bravely. I'll follow whatever that goal is that has been appointed to me. And then it says, nay, and if I would not. If I would not follow, I prove a coward, yet must follow still. That's the part that really got me. That's the idea of Epictetus and Stoic philosophy. Lead me, O God. Whatever the goal is that you have provided for me, whether it's something positive or negative, something that hurts or makes me feel good, I will follow you bravely. Because if I refuse to follow you, I would prove a coward and I'd have to follow you anyway. So it's the way of trying to take control of the situation philosophically, because bad things are going to happen anyway.

John Dehlin [01:55:38] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:55:39] And then there was one other thing. Oh, okay. Another short one. It was good enough to get in my book, True Instruction. Is this ready for True instruction? Verily, verily, I say into the John de Lynn, to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does.

John Dehlin [01:56:03] Yeah. It's acceptance.

Radio Free Mormon [01:56:07] And how does it come to pass? As the disposer. That's the capital D. As the disposer. The one who disposes. The whoever's organizing all this. As the disposer has disposed it. That's how it comes to pass, as the disposer has disposed it. Now, he has disposed that there should be summer and winter and plenty and dearth and vice and virtue and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole. And then. Can I just read this one other

John Dehlin [01:56:40] one that sounds like there must needs be opposition in all things.

Radio Free Mormon [01:56:42] And of course, that's what I thought, too. There must needs be opposition in all things. Second Nephi, chapter two. Right. I want to read this last one. I want to hear what Jen's thinking. Okay. Because he talks about this banquet, by the way, when I came up with that whole idea of the banquet analogy that came to me before, this is probably what prompted it. But it's not talking about an empty banquet. He likens life to a banquet. And he says, when we are invited to a banquet, invited, Remember, we're a guest. We take what is set before us, and we're one. To call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. So you go to a banquet. There's a beautiful banquet out there. You're eating, and you don't go to your host, hey, where's the fish? I want some fish. Or I. I need some ice cream here. Where's the ice cream? No, you eat what's put before you. Otherwise you would be a bad guess and everybody else would think you're. You're rude, you're absurd. Yet in a word, this is the analogy. Yet in a word, we ask the gods. We ask the gods for what they do not give. And we do that, although they have given us so many things. So he likens life and Stoic philosophy to a banquet where you go and you have these wonderful things set out before you, but you want something different, Jen?

Guest [01:58:05] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:58:06] Well, tie that to your faith journey. First, all those quotes, what do you. How, as you're experiencing your faith journey, how are those quotes tying to it, make it fill in those. Connect those dots for us.

Radio Free Mormon [01:58:20] What I'm feeling is that these ideas are filling me in a way that Mormonism does not or has not for a long time.

John Dehlin [01:58:27] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:58:28] And I have been prepared, Moby Dick, over time, to receive things that I could not receive before and not because they were not valuable to me. But because I was not ready to receive them, because. And now I can understand in my 50s what I could not understand in my 30s. And I'm reading this, and it's just resonating with me, this philosophy. There's no direct tie that I saw with Mormonism, except for the fact that this is one of the themes from the first part. Not only graduating from Mormonism, but the reason for graduating from Mormonism is that as I get older and hopefully more mature, that Mormonism becomes more and more insufficient to me. And I read this. Go ahead.

Guest [01:59:14] No. Go ahead. No, I. No, I'm just interested. What. What came. How. The banquet, what that meant to you? Because I have thoughts running through my head, but I'm wondering what you. What that meant to you.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:29] I really did not take it and apply it to my life as much as I applied it to being so much more fulfilling to me than the Mormonism. I'm getting over here. And actually, when I was reading part of it, I started to get a bit emotional, but held it back because for a second there, I was starting to apply it to my life. Now. There are things that are going on in my life that are not making me happy. And

John Dehlin [02:00:06] that's probably why we're celebrating you

Radio Free Mormon [02:00:08] tomorrow, by the way, because you're celebrating my unhappiness.

John Dehlin [02:00:11] Because we want to bring. We. I knew that, you know, you've been having some hard stuff, and I wanted to bring you some mirth.

Radio Free Mormon [02:00:19] Thank you. RFM is unhappy. Let's have a party.

John Dehlin [02:00:21] Let's throw a party for our family and give them some money.

Radio Free Mormon [02:00:25] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [02:00:25] Money buys happiness.

Radio Free Mormon [02:00:27] Like my dad said, money can't buy you happiness. No, he said money can't buy you love, but it can rent it. Okay, so what I get from those quotes. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:37] Is that. And Jen, I don't mean to step on you.

Guest [02:00:40] No, you go first.

John Dehlin [02:00:41] Epictetus, Stoicism, all that is basically secular Buddhism. Mormonism is. Mormonism sells itself as this great. It's got. There must be opposition in all things, but it. It sells itself as the great plan of happiness. And that men are. That they might have joy, but the truth is men and women are. That they also might suffer a lot. And they suffer. We do suffer a lot. And something that's selling you joy and happiness perpetually, that's called the happiness trap. And secular Buddhism talks about this. Acceptance, commitment, therapy talks about this. The more you're chasing happiness, the more it eludes you because you're expecting this constant joy. If you just are Obedient enough, if you just pay enough tithing, if you just serve in your calling, if you have prayer and family meeting, you're going to reach that pinnacle of happiness and you never do. And instead, a lot of bad things happen, but you're told that you will eventually achieve it. But really what you're on is this hamster wheel of paying, praying, and obeying to serve and build up the kingdom at your own sacrifice. And. And you're probably even more miserable than if you had not been on the hamster wheel. So what's the alternative? The alternative is what stoicism and secular Buddhism and other philosophies teach you, which I think there's probably some Jesus, some Christian philosophy in there, too, which is accept that life, accept the good and the bad of life, stop chasing happiness, accept what is, including the suffering, and you'll find yourself, on average, not always happy, but probably on average, a little more content. Because. Because you won't be as dissatisfied when life shovels you a big pile of theses. Right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:02:26] Right.

John Dehlin [02:02:26] You'll say, that's. That was always part of the deal. And it's not when life shovels me feces, it's not because I was doing it wrong. It's because life shovels everybody feces. And it's no longer. The feces is no longer personal. Whereas if you're Christian, you're like, God, what the freak? It's like Tevye, it's like, hey, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Where's the blessings? And then they're not coming. Yeah, that's. I don't know if that's what you were trying to articulate, but that's.

Radio Free Mormon [02:02:51] I think you did a great job. I will tell you, though, I think that Second Nephi, Chapter two, that talks about opposition in all things and man is that he might have joy is read in a overly simplified way by most modern Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Sure.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:05] Because I think that what it's really saying is that joy is a term of art as it's used there, and that joy is what is experienced by the positive and the negative, and that you can't have one without the other. It's a little bit of yin and yang there. But joy isn't just good things happening to you. Joy is what you get when you experience all the extremes on both sides of the coin.

John Dehlin [02:03:28] But like Steven Pineaker taught, like book of Mormon, 1830, it represents a much better version of Christianity than maybe the way it's evolved in the modern Mormon Church.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:40] I think so. I'll have a quote on that tomorrow night.

John Dehlin [02:03:41] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:42] I'm not here.

John Dehlin [02:03:42] Okay. Jen, did you have reflections or reactions?

Guest [02:03:46] I don't know. I don't know if I should go. Go anywhere.

John Dehlin [02:03:49] People always love your wisdom.

Guest [02:03:51] I was just thinking of the. The banquet quote or story that just. It's kind of like, I don't know, I might be on my own little thought here. But just that that's kind of like the church like it. It has this banquet of all these things, you know, you can come and be spiritually fed from. And it might be okay for a while. It might feel, you know, that spiritual side of you for a little while, but eventually it's not. You know, the people come to the banquet and are just sitting there and not wanting really anything that's there and needing to maybe go somewhere else, go somewhere else to, you know, be fed in the way that works for them. So I don't know. My mind's going to its own little place. Kind of just thinking about.

John Dehlin [02:04:51] We have a. It's beautiful, no?

Radio Free Mormon [02:04:54] It is. Very much. And this is one of the problems with the LDS Church and any church that considers itself to be the end all of answers, which is there's only a finite amount of things that they can give you and a certain amount of things they can teach you. And I was so excited to learn about these things when I joined the church when I was 18. But then they want to keep you and they want to trap you and they want to prevent you from going anywhere else to learn what anybody else has to teach you. And that is the mark of a bad teacher. We talked about this back in November of 2019, but I wanted to bring it up with you because I think I said that you said, well, what kind of church would appeal to you? And I said, well, here's what I'll tell you, is that any church that says it is the only true church can't be disqualified. They are. They already disqualified themselves because what they're saying is what we have to teach you is everything you need to know. You stay here. I told you about. Remember Kwai Changane with Master Po at the Shaolin Temple? Snatch the pebble from my hand, then it will be time for you to leave. And we know that so well because it was in the opening credits. They played it every. Every week before the show. And for Kwai Chin Kane, the student, to snatch the pebble from the master's hand symbolized that he had learned everything the master had to teach him. And As a true master Poe says, once you've learned everything that I have to teach you, it's time for you to leave. And not only is it time for you to leave, you've got to get out, because there are other things for you to learn that I can't teach you. And that's what a true teacher does. I think Mormonism doesn't. We've got it all. It's all here. And we're going to continue to tell you that. And that there is milk before meat, and the meat is really kind of like the carrot in front of the horse, trying to keep it going, but you'll never arrive there because it doesn't exist. It is the myth of Mormonism. One of the myths of Mormonism, I think. But that's how they try and keep you locked in to their system. And any church or organization that does that, I think, has shown that it is. It's not looking after the best interests of its members.

Blogging at Rational Faiths

John Dehlin [02:07:21] It's also lying. There's a quote from one of our viewers who calls himself other sheep. They call it a banquet of milk.

Radio Free Mormon [02:07:33] A banquet of milk. I know other sheep. I think I've met other sheep. You are not other sheep.

John Dehlin [02:07:38] I'm not.

Radio Free Mormon [02:07:40] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine?

John Dehlin [02:07:43] That should be a website.

Radio Free Mormon [02:07:44] Banquetofmilk.com I just think that, you know, I like a glass of milk every now and again, but I think a complete diet of milk is probably gonna result in some bad things.

John Dehlin [02:07:53] One of the, you know, Buddhism, secular Buddhism is, like, explicitly in the name, not a religious religion at all. It's secular, but. But there's this saying in Buddhism. If you meet Buddha on the road, say it, complete it.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:08] Kick him in the nuts, kill him. Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [02:08:10] Kill Buddha. There's this idea, if anybody ever claims to be Buddha, get rid of them.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:16] That's why that saying. I actually knew what the saying was, but that's why the saying is, I think.

John Dehlin [02:08:21] So anyone who says, I've got it all, get rid of them.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:25] Very interesting.

John Dehlin [02:08:26] And that's the. That's the real. That's the religious philosophy saying that. And that's why Buddhism is a little bit cooler than a lot of other traditions, because they're saying things like, if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:39] It's like, it took me decades to work my way up through the mountains and along this trail and come back to this point that you just said.

John Dehlin [02:08:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest [02:08:48] And I love how that. Like the Secular Buddhism podcast, he says, come here to be a better Whatever it is, you already are.

John Dehlin [02:08:55] Not to be a Buddhist.

Guest [02:08:56] Not to be a Buddhist. Yeah, yeah, I love that, how it starts like that.

John Dehlin [02:08:59] Shout out to. No Rashada. Secular Buddhism. Go ahead. Let's get back to your story though, your timeline.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:04] Okay. Can I mention my story, my experience blogging at Rational Faith?

John Dehlin [02:09:09] Please, please.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:09] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:09:10] What. What is that?

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:11] Rational Face is a blog where they have different bloggers. It's sort of a.

John Dehlin [02:09:14] It was. It kind of was. Is it still around?

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:16] I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:09:18] Yeah. So there was this, there was like this early blogger knackle, Times of Seasons by Common Consent, Feminist Mormon Housewives. And I, I helped create one that started out as Mormon Mormon. Dan Witherspoon's podcast, Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:33] It's like yours. It's under your umbrella.

John Dehlin [02:09:36] What was it called?

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:37] I'm not gonna help you. I'm enjoying this too much.

John Dehlin [02:09:39] It's called Mormon Matters.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:40] There you go.

John Dehlin [02:09:41] And then it spun off to be a different blog anyway. Lots of Mormon blogs. And during this time, Rational Faith emerges. The Barker brothers and others.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:51] My nephew Thomas, half it hadn't was in it.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:54] Yes. And I think his brother's Paul.

John Dehlin [02:09:55] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:09:56] And Mike was the one who reached out to me because I had now established a sort of a reputation in the blogger NACL about being Book of Mormon Bullseye Guy.

John Dehlin [02:10:05] What was that?

Radio Free Mormon [02:10:05] Apologetics, Things that the Book of Mormon Gets Right or Other Things in Mormonism. And that's from the MAD board. Right.

John Dehlin [02:10:12] So you were. You were known as the Book of Mormon apologist.

Radio Free Mormon [02:10:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:10:15] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:10:16] And so my understanding from what was going on back in 2012 is that Mike Barker has a number of bloggers, regular bloggers on his website, Rational Face, and they're basically to some degree critical or at least not supportive in an apologetic fashion. So he saw that lack and wanted me to fill that for him and asked me if I would do a guest blog about Bullseye's for the Book of Mormon or Evidence is for the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:10:40] So he brings you on to be the faithful contributor. Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:10:44] And I say sure. I mean, I've never written a blog. He had to explain to me, I'm sure, what the heck a blog was. I'd probably heard the word. And so I do a two part blog about Evidences for the Book of Mormon and I put it all out there as best I can. I thought I did a pretty good job. And so there are a bunch of comments from people who read it. And one of the people who commented said, okay, you did a good job, but can you do the other side of the argument. And I thought, well, I'm a lawyer. I mean, that's what I do. That's what a lawyer would think of as a good lawyer, one who can argue both sides of an argument equally as well. So I said, yeah, I'll do that. And I said, mike, is that okay? He says, okay, yeah. And I became a regular blogger there for two years, as it turned out that. But I said, okay, so what is the bullseye? What's the reverse of a bullseye on the Book of Mormon? What is the smoking gun on the Book of Mormon? And it really wasn't that hard for me to figure out because apologetics, it's the King James version in the Book of Mormon of the Bible being quoted in the Book of Mormon. So I wrote a piece about this, which was the third piece I published there. And what I found out was that this is really, really bad for the Book of Mormon, the King James Version being in it. And as an apologist, I had tried not to deal with that issue because it's a bad issue for the Book of Mormon. And I had read the things that Hugh Nibley had written about it. And one of the things that he had said about it, by the way, was that, well, when an angel comes in the New Testament to give a message to Mary or Martha, depending upon the message, they're not coming up with something original. They're quoting the Septuagint. In other words, they're quoting the accepted scriptural version that the people of the day accepted and believed was true. And I said, okay, Hugh Nibbly, super smart, that makes sense. I get it. But I'm not going to think about it beyond accepting what he said. And the problem was that this blog gave me the chance to reflect. It made me reflect.

John Dehlin [02:12:54] Oops.

Radio Free Mormon [02:12:55] And I started realizing that that is really, really a dumb argument because we're not talking about Moroni showing up and quoting the King James Version to Joseph Smith. Right. It's one thing for that to happen, and that isn't outlandish that Moroni would do it. The problem is, is that we're talking about a historical record, regardless of what President Nelson is saying now, that it's not a historical record, but a historical record. What is presented as a historical record in the Book of Mormon, quoting from the King James version of the New

John Dehlin [02:13:31] Testament, spell out why that's a problem.

Radio Free Mormon [02:13:36] It shouldn't be there. It is an anachronism to the 10th degree. You cannot say that this taper or this horse is a taper. All right. You can't get around it that way. And the whole thing is about first off. And I'll just go really briefly through it. Okay. First thing is King James Version should not be there. King James Version comes out in 1611. Even if they have the same book that is in the King James Version, we'll talk about Isaiah. Even if they have that same book, it should not be translated into the King James Version. Translation, you would take a Hebrew text, and even if you have two different people who are reading the same text at the same time, interpreting it independently, it's going to have the same message, but it's not going to be the same language verbatim. And it's not going to be the King James version from 400 years ago. All right.

Book of Mormon Origins and 19th Century Context

John Dehlin [02:14:27] That Joseph Smith happened to have in his possession.

Radio Free Mormon [02:14:30] Yes. That makes it bad. So that's the first thing. And that's just the entree, right? Because then you get to Isaiah, then you get to second Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah. And of course, they. Everybody knows this, right? I don't have to say this.

John Dehlin [02:14:43] Nephi, Deutero Isaiah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:14:44] Yeah, you don't even have to get to Deutero Isaiah is the problem. It's so much worse because if you say deutero Isaiah. Well, some scholars believe that, but others don't, right? Well, most scholars do, but there are a few. You're always. You're never gonna have any subject that all scholars believe the same thing on is what I've come to understand. So you have to go usually with a. The. The majority, the consensus. Right. And so. But you don't even have to hypothesize about a deutero Isaiah. You've got the freaking New Testament in the Book of Mormon. That should not be there, regardless of whether there's one Isaiah or two. You shouldn't have the King James Version of the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon, and you should not have in two separate chapters of Moroni, almost verbatim quotations from First Corinthians chapter 12, which I believe shows up in Moroni chapter 10, and First Corinthians chapter 13, which I believe shows up in moroni 7.

John Dehlin [02:15:41] Why not?

Radio Free Mormon [02:15:42] Because the Book of Mormon is supposed to be written in the Americas in the. In the New World, in the Western hemisphere, in the New Testament in the Eastern hemisphere. And there is no way that there would be access from one to the

John Dehlin [02:15:59] other, because that would be Paul's writing somehow showing up Paul's writings, which would have been happening over there somehow. Showing up in the hands or the minds and the writings of Native Americans.

Radio Free Mormon [02:16:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:16:14] Here within 400 years of, you know, Christ dying.

Radio Free Mormon [02:16:21] Yes. And the similarities are so obvious that even the apologists can't say, oh, well, it looks the same, but it's not really.

John Dehlin [02:16:26] It's.

Radio Free Mormon [02:16:27] It's too different. It is so obviously coming from or the same as the King James version of the New Testament that they don't even go there. What Hugh Nibley. Where they have to go, and the only place you can go from this point is what Hugh Nibley would say is that there is a third source. There is an or text, there is some book that predates both, that would have been on the brass plates, that is not in the Old Testament that both the Nephites and Paul had access to. They both quote the same parts without attribution. And then the urtext disappears.

John Dehlin [02:17:08] It's like the missing scroll. Yeah. You create something that. That must exist fictitiously.

Radio Free Mormon [02:17:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:17:14] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:17:15] Necessity is the mother of apologetics. And I bought it. I actually found something at one point, but we won't go there, which tends to just. Just marginally support that idea. But regardless, it is the. It's the most ridiculous argument, but there is. It's conceivable, it's possible, something like that probably has happened and maybe you can give an example of something like that happening. But no, the reason they have to go there is because there's nowhere else to go. Because it's obviously the most reasonable, obvious understanding is that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon in the early 19th century is depending and relying upon and incorporating directly from the King James Version into the text of the Book of Mormon. That's what's obvious.

John Dehlin [02:18:02] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, just. Just Alma or sons of Mosiah or whoever Waters of Mormon baptizing people in the name of Jesus in the new world. Hundreds of supposedly as Jews before Jesus had even been born, before anyone else knew his name. Somehow Nephites knew the name of Jesus before the Jews themselves knew the name of Jesus and his mother. And you know, like. Right. No.

Radio Free Mormon [02:18:31] Well, I just. You're taking me back to my apologetic states and the ridiculous responses to that. I'm sorry. I believed it. I taught it it, I promoted it. But it's ridiculous.

John Dehlin [02:18:41] You're at owning now. You're atoning now.

Radio Free Mormon [02:18:43] Yeah, I hope so. So I've got a lot of sins to atone for, and we only have so much time on the show. But the idea is, okay, the Jews were either so wicked. Remember the fall. The Fall not the Fall, but the, the. The Mount Sinai and the Golden Calf thing and the lesser law. Right. So they weren't allowed to know, and the Nephites were more righteous. And then there's the alternative, which is they did know, but it was either secret knowledge or that knowledge got lost. Right. And then you have Justin Martyr being quoted about how they actually did talk about Jesus in these old books, but they got lost and it's like he knew and. Right. But that was promoted. So everything ends up become. Not everything, but more and more things end up becoming an argument from the absence of evidence.

John Dehlin [02:19:30] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:31] And that is notoriously the weakest kind of argument there is. Now, there are some things where there is an absence of evidence, and absence of evidence is not what John.

John Dehlin [02:19:40] The evidence of absence.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:41] There you go. So absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But when you keep coming back to different issues and you don't know and you're arguing based upon evidence that has not been found over and over and over and over again on all these different issues related to the same religion and scriptures, then you start thinking, maybe there's a problem here. At least I did. And you know what? I was just talking about that blog at Rational Face. So I write this, I find my voice, and I start realizing that this argument I'm making as the smoking gun showing the Book of Mormon was written in the 19th century is much stronger than what I'd written about showing that it is from the old world. There are still some things that I have difficulty explaining about old world connections. But the one thing that came very clear to me was that regardless if there's still links or connections or echoes in the Book of Mormon, that it is clearly and predominantly, if not exclusively, though I wouldn't allow myself to go there at that point. Point a product of early 19th century America. And it's indisputable because the text is right there. And the text tells you that if you bother to look at it, read it and think about it and give myself permission to think about it and what those thoughts lead to and actually go to the conclusion.

John Dehlin [02:21:17] So rational faiths drops your keystone. The keystone falls out from your arch by blogging irrational faiths.

Radio Free Mormon [02:21:24] Yes. And it does. And I find my voice and I'm start. I'm going, wow, this makes sense. I don't really like it, but it makes sense. Okay. And so then I start doing more blogs. And I think I was writing a blog once every three weeks, it might have been once a month on a regular basis. And now I'M exploring other things that I would not allow myself to explore before. And things are making more and more sense. And I'm finding more and more power in what I'm saying because it's making sense. It's not trying to do, oh, bright shiny things over here, or let's find a clever way to go over or around or under the Book of Mormon. Right?

John Dehlin [02:22:02] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:02] Let's just go straight into the evidence and see what happens.

John Dehlin [02:22:05] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:06] And it all seemed to be lining up in a certain way. And all of a sudden I'm getting all these insights that I never allowed myself to get that before, never dreamed they existed, but that's because they're on this side of the coin when I would not look at that side of the coin for all the time I was a tbm. So that was rational face. Anything about that?

John Dehlin [02:22:25] I mean, yeah, that I. I've. I've just identified a problem because I went to put your. Your blog posts in the show notes.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:32] Don't do it.

John Dehlin [02:22:33] Okay, Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:34] I know the problem, okay. Because I, like, Jesus can read minds.

John Dehlin [02:22:38] Okay? So, Jen, delete that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:39] Delete that line or like Diego and Ice Age.

John Dehlin [02:22:42] So do not go look for RFM's old posts on do not look in the closet.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:47] You can look all you want, just don't talk about it or the name at the top.

John Dehlin [02:22:51] All right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:52] It's like Sid the Sloth says about the saber tooth cat. Diego and Ice Age. I don't like this cat.

John Dehlin [02:22:57] We don't talk about Bruno.

Guest [02:22:59] I was just gonna say that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:00] Were you?

Guest [02:23:00] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:01] Oh, my line was, I don't like this cat. He reads minds. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:23:06] So RFM shall remain RFM is what we're saying. Okay. All right. So what's it like for you, rfm2013ish. You're becoming a blogging sensation. What's it like for you in your personal life as your. Your faith is starting to fall away? Is it exciting? Is it terrifying? Are you scared? Are you worried about the personal consequences? Are you getting positive feedback from friends and Internet friends? Are you getting attacked? Like, what's that like to be losing your faith as you're blogging? You know,

Graduating Beyond Faith Rather Than Losing It

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:45] by this point, I'm really not seeing it as losing my face so much as I am going beyond. I am graduating grad school now. Yes.

Guest [02:23:56] He's going to the other buffet.

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:58] He's actually where they actually serve food at the table.

John Dehlin [02:24:01] You're actually eating the meat.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:02] Can you imagine what it's like, just to use that analogy further, to be always Eating air and being told that you're being filled.

John Dehlin [02:24:10] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:10] And then finally getting to another table where there's food.

John Dehlin [02:24:12] Yeah. You're feasting.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:14] It's crazy.

John Dehlin [02:24:15] So you're enjoying the feast.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:17] Yes. And it's from that second table, you can look back at the first table and says, there's nothing on those plates. I don't care what you say. There's nothing on the plates. So I do this for two years, by the way. I do have. It was December of 2013, and that's why I can remember when it was that the essay came out about blacks in the priesthood.

John Dehlin [02:24:36] So the Gospels topics essays start coming out.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:38] Oh, yes, they do. Thank you. Good timing. LDS Church. And the thing that struck me about it, there was no apology for the priesthood band.

John Dehlin [02:24:48] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:48] We call it the Priesthood and Temple ban.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:50] Now, I think this is the Race

John Dehlin [02:24:51] in the Priesthood essay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:24:53] We'll include that in the show notes.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:54] Okay. Because that doesn't have my name on it. Actually, it doesn't have anybody's name on it. And so there's no apology. And it's just like I wrote, I felt inspired to write a blog. And by the way, inspiration has helped. When you have a deadline, there's a lot. Usually a lot more inspiration if there's a deadline by which you've got to. To submit something. And. But if. Why is there no apology for the priesthood ban? And there needs to be an apology. And this is why it has continued to haunt the church. Why they've never been able to put it in the past and they never will, despite how many decades roll by, and even centuries, because you cannot get rid of it. It's like Banquo's ghost without an apology. You have to take responsibility for it and apologize, and then you can put it in your past, and then other people will allow you to put it in your past. But anyway, that's what that was. The reason I mentioned that is because that one went viral.

John Dehlin [02:25:54] That post.

Radio Free Mormon [02:25:55] Yes, that blog. And that was not too long after one of my. It's early on in the process, and

John Dehlin [02:26:02] you're basically saying, Mormon Church, you blew it. You should have apologized.

Guest [02:26:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:26:04] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:26:05] And I actually did do a podcast, an RFM podcast, back when I was doing the nine weeks during the first part of COVID And I think I performed that for one of the podcasts. But, yeah, that went super viral. And it was just very exhilarating. And that people. Okay, this. This continues up to today, but I'll bring it up now that I have been A person who has really tried my best to study, to find out things about the church and the truth that it holds and the facts and read and study. And only to find out. Because remember I was told when I joined the Church in 1978 by church leaders that they want everybody to study the scriptures and learn about church history. They want people to be scriptorians. This is back when we actually had scriptorians as leaders of the church, as examples like Bruce or McConkey. I was a little late for Joseph Fielding Smith, but Bruce McConkey carried on the banner. There were. He was a colossus that bestrode the earth. And everyone was enjoined to be scriptorians too. And I took it seriously. That was my mistake. Yeah. And then I worked and worked and worked and worked for decades to do that, only to find out at the end that they didn't really mean it.

How Law School Shaped His Perspective on Truth

John Dehlin [02:27:15] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:27:15] They didn't really want you to know about the church and they didn't really want you to know about the scriptures. What they were talking about was really just take those first six baby steps, learn what the correlated doctrine is, and that's really all they meant. But they didn't tell me that.

John Dehlin [02:27:32] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:27:33] At the time. And what I found out was that by doing that and wanting to share that with other people, that I became more and more marginalized within the church that I thought wanted me to do that in the first place. So I begin to be shut down at church. And it was a very frustrating thing that I'm reading and studying so much and it's just like, why am I even doing this? There's no outlet for it. There's no purpose for it except for my own personal benefit. That seems kind of like throwing all the stuff into a cul de sac. It's never going to go anywhere or an oubliette. Why should I be doing this? But I still did because I was interested in it. There was a genuine fascination that I had. But it's like, what is the point of this? Beyond myself. There should be some point beyond myself. It's not a church. They don't want to hear it. And then I start doing this blog post. By the way, thank you so much, Mike Barker, for giving me that opportunity because it was very important to me. And now I start finding that there is an audience that does want to hear what I have to say, that is interested in finding out what I found out or seeing how maybe I connect certain dots and they're responding to that in a positive way. Not Universally, by any means, but a lot of people are. And it was very emotionally satisfying to me to finally have people who wanted to hear what I had been spending decades learning within the context of a church that told me to do this, but then ended up wanting to shut me down and shut me out because of it.

John Dehlin [02:29:04] Yeah,

Radio Free Mormon [02:29:07] I doubt I'm the only person that's happened to.

John Dehlin [02:29:12] And one of the beautiful things you bring and one of the reasons you're so loved, I think it's. It's not only your decades of study, but I think it's your legal training. Is that fair? And how do you bring your legal training to your analysis of Mormonism? And if so, how?

Radio Free Mormon [02:29:30] I think I do. I think I do. Law school. I hated law school. I just hated it. Fortunately, I was a member of a. A dance company on the side to keep my sanity and also doing all this apologetics that's during the 80s as well. So I've got all these things going which helped me graduate. Not at the top of the class. I don't know if I would have if I've been spending all my time studying law school, but I was very comfortably situated right in the middle is where I graduated in class. But yeah, I think so. Law school's there. It's supposed to try and teach you how to think about things from a legal point of view. And from a legal point of view, if you're not a lawyer. That could sound all mysterious and everything, but it's not. It's really a common sense kind of point of view and it's factually driven and it's rationally driven. The reasonable man could probably say person now. Right. It just seems so strange when you're in law school and they're talking about a reasonable person, because that comes up all over and over again in the law. You're making me think of this while. Because you asked the question, by the way, and like the definition of reasonable doubt that we use in the state of Washington. Well, what the heck's a reasonable doubt? Well, a reasonable doubt is a doubt that a reasonable person would have after fully, fairly and something else that I can't remember. I've only been doing this for 32 years after fully, fairly and you know, considering the evidence or lack of evidence, that's what the reasonable doubt is. It's based upon the idea of a reasonable person. So you've got to try and think like a reasonable person, which generally means that you're going to go where the evidence leads you. So you're right. I do want to tell this one story about my dad, which goes along with this. But this is from high school. I was the kind of kid, I did pretty good in high school without too much effort. And you were one of those people, John, you're over there nodding your head no.

John Dehlin [02:31:30] I had to work super hard.

Radio Free Mormon [02:31:31] Okay, okay, I'll keep going. And so what happened was, is that where I met my Waterloo was in physics. And I can't remember if that was 12th or 11th grade, but it doesn't make any difference because all of a sudden, I mean, I'm usually good for an A, A minus. My mom starts asking questions and a B plus, I get the frowns. But this was a C, and I was at C because it wasn't. Because I wasn't trying or thinking, although I was goofing around in class like I usually am. It's because I couldn't grasp it. I didn't understand it. I mean, you're supposed to take these formulas or formulae that are established, right, for calculating things having to do with force or motion or mass or whatever it is, right? And you take your numbers, you plug them into the freaking formula and you calculate it, and that's the answer. And I would do that. And I thought that's what I was doing. But every time I came up with an answer, it wasn't the right answer. So it was extremely frustrating to me. I finally gotten to the point where now I'm to the. The I can't just do this by my natural abilities. And hopefully everybody gets that point somewhere in their life. It was good for me, although it wasn't good at the time. So I had to. I had to go to my dad. My dad is or was a rocket scientist, so he knew about physics. But the last thing I wanted to do was to go to my dad to ask for help. Because although he was quite brilliant, he was not a good teacher. A good teacher, as I've understood, starts you at the bottom where you are, and then build you up to help you understand things, which makes a lot of sense. But if you've ever encountered a bad teacher, what they do is you're here and then they start up here and you're going, what the heck? This doesn't make any sense to me because you haven't built anything. Well, regardless of that, we're sitting at the kitchen table one night, I said, dad, can you help me with this? He said, oh, sure. I never asked him for help or homework in my life. And I'm sure he was excited to help.

John Dehlin [02:33:30] Help.

Radio Free Mormon [02:33:30] So he's explaining this to me and I'm not getting it, and I'm not getting it. And he's my last hope. And I'm in despair and I'm probably crying tears of frustration. And I finally said to my dad what every kid probably says to one of their parents sometime in their life is, why do I have to know this? I am never going to use this in my life. And I will always remember what my dad said. My dad said, it doesn't make any difference. Of course he did use it. And it's like he's. But he says to me, it doesn't make any difference if you're not going to use it.

John Dehlin [02:34:00] It.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:01] This is teaching you how to think. And I wish that that piece of wisdom suddenly made physics make sense to me. It did not. But I remembered that from physics more than I remembered about the actual formulas I was trying to learn but could not. It's teaching you how to think. It's not important what this subject is or whether you can use it. This is teaching you how to think. In law school was similar to that as well, I think.

John Dehlin [02:34:29] Is it also true that law school teaches you the rules of evidence, the rules of gathering evidence, how to lay out the evidence, how to analyze the evidence, critical thinking skills? Because it seems to me like that's a lot of what you bring you. You, I've collaborated with you on episodes. You write out seven, eight page outlines and you follow them meticulously and you think them out deeply before you know, you, you ever start the podcast. And I just think that, that I think that preparation, the gathering of evidence, the sequencing of the evidence, the teaching and the analysis of the evidence, along with the humor is a huge part of what people love about you, I think.

Radio Free Mormon [02:35:14] Thank you. The only reason I'm making this expression on my face, which I don't know if the audience could see, because hopefully it was on you. Where I'm thinking going is because I appreciate that, but you're linking that with law school. And the reason I'm making the fake.

John Dehlin [02:35:25] You don't think that came from law school. That's fine, doesn't need to.

Radio Free Mormon [02:35:27] There's a lot of things that come from law school and I hope that I don't offend any of my past professors or anybody else in law school. But I think most lawyers recognize the fact that law school is three years of hell for no purpose really whatsoever, because, sorry, that might be overstated a little bit, but you go through law school and you're not a lawyer. You go through three years of law school, you're not a lawyer, you have to take the bar exam.

John Dehlin [02:35:53] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:35:53] And in order to take the bar exam, at least me and most people who take the bar exam, you don't go from what you learned in law school and take the bar exam and pass it. You have to take a two month course to prepare you for the bar exam. That's not part of law school. This is what you take after you graduated from law school. So you have to learn these nuts and bolts to take to pass the bar exam. Which one would think you could probably do without having gone to law school in the first place and spent all that money and all that time.

John Dehlin [02:36:20] Some states you can, I think, right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:22] There are certain like Rule 9 Interns Ways of doing it, but it's not easy. You have to find someone who's going to mentor you.

John Dehlin [02:36:27] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:28] So there are exceptions to that rule and probably because of that. But what you find out is that when you really learn the law is when you're practicing it.

John Dehlin [02:36:36] So has your, your practice of law helped you with the things that I said before?

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:41] Yes. So I'm going to agree with you in those lavish compliments about me.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] So we just wasted five minutes basically, so you could agree with me.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:47] Yeah,

John Dehlin [02:36:50] but gathering evidence, laying out evidence, like. Yes, explaining it, all that stuff. Right?

Guest [02:36:56] Yeah, yeah, I think that does help with. Because that's like an excuse that I hear too, with a lot of believing members is like, well, he's a lawyer and he believes. Or he's a, you know, he's a doctor, he believes. You know, so they don't, they're like, well, if, if he believes, then that's all I need because I really love them as a person and instead of using their own mind and, and looking into things and things like that, they

John Dehlin [02:37:29] just appeal to authority.

Guest [02:37:31] Yeah. They're like, well, how could he not see it if that is who he is?

Radio Free Mormon [02:37:37] Although Hugh Nibley has somewhat disappeared from the scene. That is one of the main things and functions that Hugh Nibley performed in the church. Though I don't know that he intended it to be that way. But even my institute teacher, Bill Sill back in the 1980s talked about Hugh Nibley when he was a big deal and still producing books like Abraham and Egypt and still writing. But he referred to Hugh Nibley as being like this wooden war horse that the church would trot out from time to time just so you could see it and recognize it's okay. You don't have to understand what the war horse is saying or writing. But the fact that you've got this brilliant individual who is writing things that maybe I can't understand even though I try, but because he's so dang smart and so well versed and so well, so knowledgeable about Mormon, Mormonism and other religions and history and languages and all this stuff, and he believes so ever. Everything's okay.

John Dehlin [02:38:32] Yeah. These are not the droids you're looking for because she nibly got a Ph.D. from UCLA or wherever, and I think. Berkeley. Yeah. And reads UCLA. Berkeley. You know? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin's Excommunication and Its Impact

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:48] So we've gone through that now. That takes us up to 2014, because I blogged it. Rational faiths for two years.

John Dehlin [02:38:53] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:54] And then I stopped and I took.

John Dehlin [02:38:56] Why'd you stop?

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:57] I don't want to talk about that.

John Dehlin [02:38:59] Okay. That's cool.

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:59] Is that okay?

John Dehlin [02:39:00] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:00] Okay. Let's just say that.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] So you stopped.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:04] I. I had said everything I had to say. And there may have been different visions of my role.

John Dehlin [02:39:08] No worries.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:09] Okay. So. But it was. It was amicable.

John Dehlin [02:39:12] Well, you certainly. You certainly didn't end with. With the. With the positions that they brought you on for if they brought you on, to be fair, faithful.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:21] I did not.

John Dehlin [02:39:22] You didn't end being faithful.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:24] And. And Mike and Paul did not tell me that they were disappointed in that. They're saying, what the heck's going on? You need to get back to this faithful stuff. I think they liked what I was producing. I don't know. They may have been having little parties seeing me go that way, but. But it was a real fun collaboration with those two. I dealt more with Mike than I did with Paul, but sometimes I talk with Paul. I hope that's your name, Paul. And they were both really, really nice people. There are some other stories that happen there with us that I'm not going to share with you, and there's a reason for that, and I'll share it with you later.

John Dehlin [02:39:56] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:56] In private, after administrating. Excuse me. Administering the. The necessary blood oaths. Secrecy.

John Dehlin [02:40:03] Yes.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:03] From you. So.

John Dehlin [02:40:05] So you stop blogging. That means that this source of encouragement and positive affirmation and, well, the audience.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:13] My ideas and creativity. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:40:15] Yeah. You lost your outlet.

Guest [02:40:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:40:17] And your audience.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:18] Yes. And so I go on for a while. And in the meantime, you get excommunicated because you got excommunicated in 2015. Was it?

John Dehlin [02:40:26] I got. I got the letter in 2000. Kate and I got our letters in 2014.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:29] Yeah. They activated her on her Kate was

John Dehlin [02:40:31] excommunicated in summer, fall of 14. Yes, I was in the winter of 15.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:40:37] And you. You blog about that? Actually, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:43] When were you. Hang on a second here, because I actually brought it up. I did a blog about John de Linz excommunication, and I'm pretty sure it

John Dehlin [02:40:50] was February of 2015.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:52] Was it 15? So then I was blogging longer than I thought.

Guest [02:40:54] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:55] See, this is how, you know, my memory is helped.

John Dehlin [02:40:57] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:58] By things like this. Oh, by the way, Haley had. Haley, the prosecutor had texted me an hour ago, two hours ago now, saying, hey, okay. It says, okay, I'm back at work, just in case you think. I listen to podcasts all day at work.

John Dehlin [02:41:15] She's trying to keep her job, basically.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:17] I'll have to watch the rest later. Okay, Haley, so you'll be watching this on the delay.

John Dehlin [02:41:21] She's. She's gonna listen view later.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:23] Can I tell you something? She is very, very hard working, and she's extremely diligent as a prosecutor. She's a formidable opponent and really a nice person.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] She's getting a ton of airtime on this podcast.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:35] Yes, she is. She's great. By the way, I want to talk to you about the case we have, and hopefully I'll get a good deal now. So what am I doing? Oh, I'm looking up the thing I did for you. February. February 10, 2015. Yeah. So this. So I may have gone into 2015 blogging.

John Dehlin [02:41:53] Yeah, I think you did.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:54] Which actually makes it a shorter time before. Between ending my blogging and starting the podcast for Radio Free Mormon, which was in. Toward the end, October of 2016.

John Dehlin [02:42:06] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:07] Unless something else comes up as far as you remember. Wrong. Yeah. Okay. And you're gonna see. I want to read this. Okay. And I sent it to you. You didn't know me.

John Dehlin [02:42:15] No.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:16] You didn't know me at all. You didn't know what you were missing.

John Dehlin [02:42:19] Well, I knew that there was some lawyer ut guy that was blogging some stuff. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:26] So I wrote this in your honor.

John Dehlin [02:42:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:28] And send it to you.

John Dehlin [02:42:29] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:30] As hopefully an entree of sorts, which obviously has worked out pretty well.

John Dehlin [02:42:34] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:42:35] And. But the thing was. And I may say it in here, and I hope I. If I do, I do. But the thing that was so significant to me about you getting excommunicated is this, is that I had started following Mormon stories. I was also listening to Mormon discussions with Bill Real. And, you know, he's more faithful than leading with faith. Remember, that was the tagline For Mormon discussions. Bill Real has such an interesting podcast in that you actually, if you listen to it, you can listen to a person, an intelligent person, slowly going through a faith crisis.

John Dehlin [02:43:06] Yeah. What people won't know who didn't live it is the. Bill Real reached out to me. He was a listener to Mormon Stories back in the day as a active sitting bishop, and he was the first sitting bishop to come on Mormon Stories podcast. Probably the only sitting bishop that's ever come on Mormon Stories podcast.

Radio Free Mormon [02:43:23] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:43:24] And. And then as he was no longer a bishop and as I got less, you know, I got excommunicated, he filled in that role of a progressive Mormon faithful, but. But liberal podcaster. So he basically, with his podcast, slipped right in to the. The spaces that I abdicated kind of.

Radio Free Mormon [02:43:47] Yeah, I know. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, okay. But the thing was, I resonated so much with you. I'd listened to your podcasts, and even though your podcasts are not really focused on you, except on those rare occasions when they are, but usually you have guests and you're interviewing guests, and it was very appealing because you're talking in an intelligent way with intelligent people who know what the hell they're talking about, about issues related to Mormonism on a deeper level, much deeper than you're ever going to get at church. And so this was what I'd been dying for. This is what I've been starving for. This is what I've been going to church for, but not getting. And so I'm out mowing the lawn. Excuse me. Out mowing the lawn or whatever is I'm doing outside, and I've got my ipod Classic. Which my daughter.

John Dehlin [02:44:30] Wasn't even an iPhone.

Radio Free Mormon [02:44:31] No, no, no. It's an ipod Classic. I think she got it for me for Christmas one year. And I said, what the hell is this? And she. She told me how to do it and how to download things from the computer, which is all new to me, but I so downloaded music. But then I podcasts. Oh, I can download some podcasts. And so I start, this is how I got into you. And it was just so wonderful. And it's just so intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying to listen to these podcasts that you were putting out. Okay. And I began to identify with you. That was the problem. I didn't know that I was identifying you, but I know that you were very similar to me and wanting to pursue these discussions about Mormonism on a deeper level. Devil. Is that fair to say?

John Dehlin [02:45:17] Yeah. We were both trying in Church and it failed. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:21] And then you got excommunicated.

John Dehlin [02:45:23] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:23] And the thought that came so strongly to me, as if it were a voice from heaven, was that if the church doesn't want John deland in it, it doesn't want me. And I know I'm not the only person who thought that. Because you had other people telling you that. Probably lots of them. Didn't you?

John Dehlin [02:45:41] Thousands.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:42] Yes. That's the identification. If the church doesn't want members like you, and I am like you, then obviously the church doesn't want members like me either.

John Dehlin [02:45:52] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:53] So I wrote this thing, and this is back when I'm reading all these different things in classics and I. I really. I do too much with it. Okay. I'm going to acknowledge that at the outset. All these references to classics. Okay. But here's John Dehlin. And you got that beautiful picture with your. Your arms folded in that smiling, boyish face. Oh. I started off this way. I am incensed about the events surrounding the Inquisition of John de Lin. That's what I titled it. The Inquisition of John de Lin. Ah. The more I think about it, the matter I get. And then it hits me. I am the one to blame. I haven't read this in a long time, so this will be as exciting for me as it is for you. Why? Why am I to blame? Answer for thinking. If there is one thing the LDS Church does not want its members to do, it is think. Any organization that depends for its success on strict conformity finds thinking a risky proposition. That is why Shakespeare has Julius Caesar tell Mark Antony. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. It is safest if Mormon do not think, but only obey, as Tom Joad put it. You see, I'm dropping all these references in this course. Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad.

John Dehlin [02:47:19] Steinbeck.

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:20] Yes. Not Jonathan. John Steinbeck. As Tom Joad put it, you're bound to get idea. Excuse me? You're bound to get ideas if you go thinking about stuff. This is a great saying. The same thing between Shakespeare and John Steinbeck. You're bound to get ideas if you go thinking about stuff. But isn't it enough to let the leaders do the thinking and then simply follow the. Follow their lead? Thoreau answered that proposition. No doubt another may also think for me. But it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself from Walden. And this was John Dehlin's cardinal sin. Not only that he thought for himself, but that he invited other Mormon to do the same. Wow, I'm good here. And then okay, so John Dehlin is a Latter Day Plato. I really put you up on the pedestal there. John Dehlin is a Latter Day Plato. Because I I have little titles for the different subsections. This is called Life Outside the Cave. John Dehlin is a Latter Day Plato coming back into the cave to tell the benighted occupants about the blazing sun outside. And though most disbelieved him and called him mad, not all did. And the few that went outside came back and told their friends until so many were leaving the cave. Something had to be done. But the something that had to be done was not to introduce everyone to the sun or even to the fire burning behind them, but instead to brand John de Lynn as an apostate, to give him the official imprimatur of a madman in hopes no more Mormon would listen to him and would just be content with viewing shadows on the wall. And so John de Lynn had to be disciplined while all the world looks on in wonder. And many Mormon wonder too. What do they wonder? They wonder why it is a church that claims to teach the truth is so afraid of those who pursue it. Why is the official response to marginalize those who seek it out? Surely if the information John Dehlin is digging up and making easily available is not truth, that fact should be readily demonstrable. But no such demonstration is forthcoming. Parentheses Some Mormon are even wondering how it is the same church Elder Oaks assured us last week does not ask for apologies, nevertheless demands one from John de Lynn, and many Mormon wonder why it is the church is lashing out at its own in this way. Why does the church kill the messenger instead of dealing with the issues? The answer seems obvious. The church is disciplining the messenger because they have no response to the message, because the message is true. So we are left with the spectacle of an institution claiming to be the only true church disciplining a member for speaking the truth. What are Mormon to make of this? That maybe the pure and undiluted truth the church claims to possess is something different from the truth the church teaches? That maybe what the church teaches is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That maybe it has holes in it. That maybe some things have been changed. That maybe the church has kept a lot of the truth from its members. That when Elder Packer said some things that are true are not very useful, maybe what he really meant is the church will tell only one side of its story and keep the less useful truths hidden. But John Delint wanted to tell the other. Are you enjoying this at all?

John Dehlin [02:51:24] Sure, of course.

Radio Free Mormon [02:51:26] Okay, good.

John Dehlin [02:51:26] I'm grateful.

Radio Free Mormon [02:51:28] But John Dehlin wanted to tell the the other side of the story. He dwelt among the untrodden ways. Sorry. He dwelt among the untrodden ways. He dealt in the truths less useful. And for that John de Lynn had to go. Oh, and then I do a quote from a poem which I just realized, so I don't reference. I recognize it. Okay. By the way, Randy just landed at the airport. Um. I walked. This is words I'm putting in in your mouth from I walked with other souls in pain within another ring and was wondering if the man had done a great or little thing. That's you. When a voice behind me whispered low that fellow's got to swing. It's a ballad of reading jail. And now the next subsection over the mountains of the Moon. There's all these references here. I apologize. The problem with John de Lynn in this regard is twofold. Not only does he show us truths sometimes. Oh, this is truth possessive. Not only does he show us truths possessive sometimes less attractive aspects, but his revealing of the dark side of the moon suggests to some Mormon that the church has not been straight with him. That the church that demanded so much time, money and sacrifice was holding out on them and giving them only a one sided and much abbreviated version of the story. Some Mormon even got sore about it. Imagine that when John de Lynn. What John de Lynn has done is make available to the general audience the truth about the LDS Church that the LDS Church should have been making known to its members all along. And now John Dehlin must pay for it. And he must pay with even the potential loss of his salvation. Why, as Orwell put it, in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. By disciplining John de Lin, the Church has shown its moral bankruptcy. How is it I haven't been excommunicated yet? This is seven years ago and under my name more words of Shakespeare come to mind. That England that was wont to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest of itself. There I'm likening the Church to England in that line. And again from the Bard. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen. Then I and you and all of us fell down whilst bloody treason flourished over us. Mark Anthony, Julius Caesar. Why should I speak of treason? This is me again. Why should I speak of treason? Surely that is too Harsh. Is there any treachery afoot? I think there may be. Next subsection. Treachery. Seek it out. The treachery is in betraying the cause of truth, the very cause for which the LDS Church claims to stand. The treachery is in dividing up the truth into different parts. One truth that is permissible for Mormon to talk about and the other truth that Mormon will be disciplined for bringing up. The treachery is in taking a whitewashed, correlated and sanitized version of the truth, then capitalizing it, underscoring it, putting a copyright symbol next to it and claiming that is all there is. The treachery is to John Dehlin, who sought truth out of the best books and then is disciplined by the very Church who taught him to do so. Some will say it wasn't John de Lynn's beliefs or opinions that got him into trouble, but in speaking out about them or in letting others speak out about their about theirs. I have had enough of church leaders telling questioning members they are welcome to have their doubts and opinions so long as they keep them to themselves. As if the freedom to think is some kind of boon bestowed by the Church. You mean we can actually think for ourselves? That is no gift. For what you cannot give me nor take away is no gift at all. I may think what I like and there is nothing another can do about it. But the right to think is worthless without the right to speak. This is why the U. S. Constitution says nothing about the right to think, but only about the right to speak. Right, worship and assemble. The right to think is a given for the rest, and the right to think is meaningless without the rest. This is why Joseph Smith wrote. I quote Joseph Smith in support of you. This is why Joseph Smith wrote not of just a right to religious conscience, but clarified that this was manifested in the right to worship. How, when, or what they may. This is why Joseph Smith referred to the US Constitution as an inspired document, a sentiment repeated by countless church leaders since, and a sentiment that would presumably also apply to the First Amendment. I had a lot to say about you. Next subsection. Infringing the right to think. Did I say the Church cannot take from its members the right to think? I was wrong about that. There is one way. By withholding information. Only with all the information can one make a knowing, intelligent and voluntary decision to pursue a certain course. But the Church wants its members to make the most important decisions in their lives with only partial information, and they are put out with John Dehlin for providing the rest. So he must be put out too, of course. And then I had to go to Othello, put out the light, and then put out the light right before Othello kills testimony. Okay, it is John Dehlin who is allowing Mormon to think by providing the rest of the story. It is John Dehlin who is allowing Mormon to think by providing the rest of the story. And it is the Church that is trying at all costs to put the brakes to it. And the Church has decided that putting the brakes to it means disciplining, delin, and yet, making matters stranger still, John Dehlin is being disciplined for the crime of making generally available information that the LDS Church has now proudly published on its own website. Or at least reluctantly buried there. The official church essays say pretty much everything that John Dehlin is being disciplined for discussing that is very strange. Indeed. It leads some Mormon to wonder, who is in charge of the church? Why is the Church clamping down on the free flow of information at the same time it is being more transparent than it has ever been in its history? And then the question are the inmates running the asylum? Two factions seem to be fighting for control of the LDS Church. One faction backs the essays published on the LDS website, essays which John Dehlin was ironically, largely responsible for in the first place. Another faction backs the discipline of those who talk publicly about the content of those essays. At the same time, as we are seeing an unprecedented openness about history and doctrine in the LDS Church, we are seeing a retrenchment, entrenchment reminiscent of the Mormon reformation of the 1850s. These two factions are like elephants battling for supremacy. And there is an old African saying that when elephants fight, the grass suffers. The grass that is suffering while these factions duke it out is John Dehlin. And not only John Dehlin, but his family. And not only his family, but the tens of thousands of listeners to Mormon stories. The power of Mormon stories. Listeners to Mormon stories have found a fast. By the way, I know this is very laudatory to you, and I think it's worth reading, performing for that purpose alone. But it also is a huge benchmark in where I was in 2000.

John Dehlin [02:59:58] What I love about it, although I'm grateful for the kind words, it's showing me the birth of rfm. One maybe important moment in the birth of what becomes rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [03:00:07] A hugely important.

John Dehlin [03:00:08] Like a treatise or your theses.

Radio Free Mormon [03:00:11] Basically, yes. And it's all coming forward and it's coming together and it's spilling out and I'm finding I hope the people who are hearing this are hearing the power in this that I'm experiences experiencing as I write it. And that power to me is telling me it's truth. Yeah, all right. The Power of Mormon Stories Listeners to Mormon stories have found a fascinating world of Mormonism exists outside the staid and watered down version repeated ad nauseam at church. Listeners have found there are other Mormon like themselves with questions and issues about the church. Listeners have found other Mormon intelligently and articulately explaining their experiences and insights and have found their souls expanding and minds being enlightened in the process. And all that of course is me and I'm sure others. All this and more John De Lin has given to me and to so many others. Isn't that weird? I have not read this in years. This is what happened earlier with you, right? I'm reading through it and the thought comes and I find that when I was writing this originally the same thought came to me. So I just said what I was what I read without reading it. All this and more John Dehlin has given to me and to so many others. I have mowed the summer lawn while listening to John Dehlin interview Terrell and Fiona Givens. I have collected firewood while listening to John Dehlin interview Richard Bushman. I have laid in a hammock under a sky full of stars. While listening to John Dehlin interview Joanna Brooks. And on and on and on. John de Lynn has breathed new life into my experience with Mormonism. Mormonism's response is to take all the oxygen out of the room. The only good Mormonism for some, it seems, is a dead Mormonism. John de Lin's leaders don't want Mormonism to be interesting or vibrant or too circumscribe all truth into one great whole. They want Mormonism to be torpid, banal and vapid. Only a moribund Mormonism will do. These are Mormon who have defined damnation as lack of progression and then created a church to match the definition.

John Dehlin [03:02:37] Wow.

Radio Free Mormon [03:02:38] And that's the way they want to keep it. They want a Mormonism that fits Paul's description of ever learning and never able to to come to a knowledge of the truth. Next subsection A Place for us west side Story Reference the question remains for the rest of us whether there is oxygen enough, whether there is oxygen enough in the church to continue to exist, to live and move and have our being. In personal terms, the question is whether there is room enough for me in a church that does not have room enough for John Dehlin, in disciplining John Dehlin, is the LDS Church serving notice on me and all Mormon like me that we are not wanted either. This is the question many Mormon are asking themselves today. Do they even want to be associated with an organization that will discipline members for seeking out the truth the organization has systematically kept from them? Do they want to continue sacrificing their time, talent and money to a church that seems to value them for little else? Or like Maria at the end of west side Story. Well, they leave Tony's still cooling corpse to try one more time to get the Sharks and Jets to hold hands and dance off the stage together. I don't know where the path will lead me, much less the thousands of John De Lin's followers who must each consider these questions for themselves. But I do know John Dehlin has been a most welcome guide to me on my spiritual journey over the last several years. And something tells me he isn't through yet. I want to give John Dehlin a personal thank you for a job well done. For not compromising his values. For not allowing the cause of truth to be trampled by its most. I'm sorry. Oh God. For not allowing the cause of truth to be trampled by its most vocal promoters. And finally, I want to leave John de Lin with the following words that conclude Thoreau's Walden. Words that seem to have a singular application to John Delinquent and his work. Here's the quote. Such is the character of that morrow, talking about tomorrow. Such as the character of that tomorrow, that morrow, which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. Okay, I'm sorry. Sometimes it's easier for me to understand things when I'm reading them, when I then hearing them, and I'm aware that I'm losing things by speaking it. So he's talking about the character of tomorrow. And he's saying, the mere lapse of time does not make the dawn come. Such is the character of that morrow, which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes from the dawn is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a rising star. And then I end it by saying, godspeed, our friend. Hi, Mr. Delin.

John Dehlin [03:06:06] That's beautiful writing. What's that?

Radio Free Mormon [03:06:08] Your thoughts, Mr. Delin.

John Dehlin [03:06:09] Beautiful. Beautiful. And thank you. And what the immediate thought that came to my mind was Obi Wan Kenobi when Darth Vader's about to strike him Down. Do you remember what Obi Wan tells Darth Vader?

Radio Free Mormon [03:06:25] Before or after he kicks him in the nuts? That's something. If you strike me down. Go ahead. If you strike me down, then it's not going to help. That's gonna. I'll be more powerful if you strike me down.

John Dehlin [03:06:35] Yeah. Say it. I shall be more powerful than you can imagine. Imagine.

Radio Free Mormon [03:06:39] You can possibly imagine.

John Dehlin [03:06:40] And I. I don't think that's. That. It's not that I became more powerful, although I think Mormon stories has become way more powerful since they excommunicated me in many ways. I mean, obviously, we've been less effective at immediately reaching orthodox and questioning believers to some extent, but I think our impact has grown. But what. What is most powerful to me is that whether it's Jeremy Runnels or Bill Rio or. Or RFM or, you know, lots of other people, they're. They just create. They. When they strike us down, they just create more. Sam Young. You know what I mean?

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:07:22] They just create more adversaries when they strike down their true tellers. They're. Like you said, they're. They're messengers. When they kill the messengers, they just create more. More messengers.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:37] Well, they do. And that.

John Dehlin [03:07:38] That's. This is the birth of rfm, basically.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:41] Yeah. And let's. Let's call that the birth of rfm, because I think that's a really good place to end. No, I am moved by that. I wrote it, but it's almost like it came from outside of me to the point where I read it later for the first time in years, and I find myself being moved by it and surprised by the power of it.

John Dehlin [03:07:57] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:58] And that's why I think, you know, it comes from outside of me. But that's the birth. That's the birth of rfm.

John Dehlin [03:08:06] Well, thank you. And we still have a little bit of time left before we got to get you out of here, if it's okay.

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:12] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:08:13] So can we. Can we have you take us from there to how you became, you know.

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:21] Yeah, and I'll be happy to. I've told the story on a number of other occasions, so I'll try and keep it brief, but it's about Bill Real. And so what happens is, is that one of the blogs that I write is about the atom God theory, and I study it and I find out more things, and I'd already studied it at the yin yang back in the late 80s, early 90s, so I'm going to write a paper about it, a blog about it really quickly.

Mormon Expression Podcast and Early Mormon Media

John Dehlin [03:08:43] Had you been on Mormon Expression already by this point?

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:46] No.

John Dehlin [03:08:47] Okay, keep going.

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:47] I was in no connection with Bill Real. I'd never met him. Never reached out to him.

John Dehlin [03:08:51] No. The John Larsen's Mormon expression.

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:54] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [03:08:55] That affected your faith at all, or no?

Radio Free Mormon [03:08:57] No. Okay, okay, no. And I can tell you that story really briefly. I think I mentioned it back in January of 2019, but the whole thing with John Larsen, he's got his Mormon Expression podcast, which I am listening to as well. And the thing about John Larsen is that he has this native kind of genius which allows him to cut to the heart of the issue with very few words. And he did that over and over and over again as I was listening to his podcast. And I was blown away by his ability to do that, just to cut through everything and just capture the essence of an issue. And I think that takes a definite kind of genius. And he's very, very intelligent. So, anyway, he's got this podcast, and I'm on the Fair Mormon Message board, I think this was 2014 or so. And he's trying to get a Mormon apologist to come on his show, and he cannot find a Mormon apologist to save his soul. Who will come on his show? Daniel Peterson? Oh, no, no, much too busy. Bill Hamlin? No, no. And he's actually on the message boards with the same. These people who are post there as well. So he's. And he's out there saying, will anybody come on the message board? Will you? Will you? Will you? Everybody's turning him down.

John Dehlin [03:10:17] What podcast?

Radio Free Mormon [03:10:18] And it's because they're all chicken. They do not have the courage of their convictions. Their courage that they present is merely an act. If they really believe that they had the better argument, they would come on somebody else's show and they would teach John Larsen why it is that he's wrong and his arguments are inferior to the arguments of the apologists. This they refused to do. They will never do it in a million years. And he couldn't get anybody to go on the show. All he wanted to do is have a discussion with a Mormon apologist. And I said, hey, John, look, I don't know him. He's. He's John Larsen on the message board. And he's got a little Fozzie Bear avatar that I remember. It's very cute. And I said, look, if you can't get anybody else, I used to be an apologist. I'm really not there anymore. I'll come on your show. And I was as good as he could get. So I Go on the show and it's about Book of Mormon bullseyes. Oh, this is all coming together. That's what Mike Barker probably heard. And it was probably before 2014. Okay, yes. Cause, effect. It was about Book of Mormon bullseyes. So I go back and I go back to my notes and I come up with all these evidences of the Book of Mormon. But the thing that was beautiful about it, I am no longer committed to these. I am no longer believing that this shows the Book of Mormon is true, is ancient, is authentic, is divine. It's an academic exercise for me. So I'm not emotionally invested in the discussion the way I would have been at a previous time. So now when we talk about these things, any pushback on any of these issues is not translated by me as an attack on myself. It's something that we're talking about that's here on the table. It's not here in my heart where you're going to dig it out and just crush it in front of me. And that's going to make me emotionally react. So we have this wonderful discussion. I present all these things. He pushes back some. It is the most friendly discussion you could ever hear between two people talking about this. And John. I almost said John Dylan. John Larsen was an absolute gentleman. Oh, my gosh, he was so courteous. I think he was more courteous than he needed to be. It was probably because he wanted to make me feel welcome. And he knew this was a difficult situation being on his show as a Mormon apologist. And we didn't. I. We didn't prove anything one way or another. That's one thing that arguments and religious arguments especially will never do. But we had a nice discussion and it was friendly. And then all these comments start coming into his webpage and all these people, and they're listening to his show. So they're generally not faithful Mormon. They're post, and they're just saying, oh, this was so nice to hear two people just talk politely and courteously about these issues. And the biggest criticisms that came up were about John Larsen for being too easy on me. Right. Those are the most criticisms. But everybody liked it, and they said, we need to have more. We need to have more consiglieres back on the show or have consigliere back on the show. And that made me feel good. Okay, so we did that.

John Dehlin [03:13:30] And that may have gotten you the Paul and Mike Barker gig. I'll bet on Rational Face.

Radio Free Mormon [03:13:34] I'll bet. Okay, so that come. That leads to that. And Then I write on Rational Face about the Adam God dilemma. It's about Adam God. I can't remember the exact title. And I find out as I'm doing the research that not only is the Church still hiding the fact that Brigham Young taught the Adam God theory, which was doctrine and revelation necessary to salvation at the time, it's only in retrospect that it becomes a theory because that doesn't sound quite so final. But in their new manual where they're have doing about the presidents of the church at the time, and the first one was Joseph Smith, guess who the second manual was? I pray. I think it was Brigham Young. I think they went sequentially. Yeah, they were still hiding it in that manual.

John Dehlin [03:14:19] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:20] Because I had studied Brigham Young enough to know that anytime he's talking about Adam or God, the Adam God theory can't be far away.

John Dehlin [03:14:31] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:33] And what they did was they have a section about all the different gospel subjects. Okay. And this is, this is what the Church does with all of its manuals is we're not studying Brigham Young's teachings to find out what Brigham Young thought. We are using Brigham Young's teachings as an excuse to teach you the modern Mormon doctrine.

John Dehlin [03:14:53] Edited excerpts of what Brigham Young taught, cherry picked with motivated reasoning to justify modern doctrine.

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:00] Yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [03:15:02] Modern correlated whitewashed doctrine.

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:05] Yes. And so now they're taking it to another level. They're continuing the COVID up. It's not just Spencer Kimball in 1976 implying strongly in priesthood session in General Conference that, you know, people say Brigham Young taught the Adam God theory. Well, that's false doctrine. And we admonish you against any false doctrine. Okay. It's not just that. Now they're taking it into the current, into the present, and they're taking what Brigham Young taught and in order to have him say something about God that fits Mormon doctrine and actually be quoting him, they have to actually take it right out of the sermon right in the middle of where he's talking about Adam is our Father and our God and the only God with whom we have to do. And I recognize this because I know the passage and I know the Citation Journal of Discourses, Volume 1, pages 50 and 51, which is 1852. It was the initial big, you know, bomb about the Adam God theory which he continued to preach for the rest of his life. And they got instituted, incorporated in the temple, the lecture at the veil in the St. George Temple after he died. So it would continue after him because it wasn't universally well received, believe it or not. Okay. So having said all that, I write that article about the Adam God theory and how this deception continues. And as blogs go, they will have whatever popularity they have. This one was kind of popular, but they die off. I mean, time goes on, new blogs are written. People are not continuing to read these old blogs. Oh, hang on a second here.

John Dehlin [03:16:35] You can't answer the phone while you're.

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:37] Hey, Randy, how you doing? Yeah, I'm alive, but I'm right here. I'm with John Dehlin right now. We're in the studio. We're actually recording live.

John Dehlin [03:16:46] Sorry, everybody. Randy, we'll call you back, okay?

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:51] He thinks that's funny. He's laughing.

John Dehlin [03:16:52] Hi, Randy.

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:53] So, Randy, I'm gonna have to put you. I'm gonna have to hang up here. But I wanted to. I didn't want to be rude because I love you dearly.

John Dehlin [03:16:58] That was rude.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:00] And you are a great guy, and you mean a lot to me, and I appreciate everything you've done for me. Well, I don't know, but I tell you. Do you want him to swing by and take us to dinner?

John Dehlin [03:17:09] Let's talk about this in just. We'll Finish in just 10 minutes.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:12] John Dehlin is trying to be professional.

John Dehlin [03:17:13] Tell them we'll call him back.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:15] Okay, bye. Yeah, it's like Bill Murray says in Ghostbusters. Okay, guys, whatever happens, let's try to be professionals. Anyway, so you write the blog post and then Bill, really, you know that I did that for a specific reason,

John Dehlin [03:17:30] because Randy's awesome and you're working.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:31] Okay, that's one of the reasons. That's not the only reason I did it. The reason I did it is because I was doing a Mormonism live show a year ago. It's live because that's the name. Mormonism Live. Like, this is live. My phone goes off, I look down, it's Robert Rittner. And I thought, he doesn't call me every day. We had. We had contact, you know, on the phone, but he's calling me. I called him back after the show, but I didn't pick it up because I didn't want to put him in an embarrassing position or anything. You know, we're live and everything. But then I thought, of course, now he's passed away, and I wish I had done that. So, not wishing anything bad to Randy in the near future. But anyway, so that's why I did it. Also, it gives us immediacy to what we're doing. You know, this is really live.

John Dehlin [03:18:19] We love you, Robert. Rest in peace.

Guest [03:18:21] Yeah,

Radio Free Mormon [03:18:23] he became my friend. Yeah, I think. I like to think I became his too, for sure. Okay, what were we talking about?

The Birth of Radio Free Mormon

John Dehlin [03:18:34] So Bill Real finds.

Radio Free Mormon [03:18:35] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [03:18:36] Bill Real post about Adam God.

Radio Free Mormon [03:18:38] Yes. Blogs, they come, they go, they become popular, they become less popular. Well, unbeknownst to me, because I'm not even on Facebook at this time. I mean, it's undiscovered country, but apparently somebody somewhere saw that blog about Adam God, put it on their Facebook. It achieved a new life, a new birth, it became newly popular, and the. The views reflected that. So what happened is Bill didn't see it the first time. Bill Real. Bill saw it the second time when it became popular, which is like. Like a year later or whatever it was. Yes. 2016. Calls me up, finds out who I am because my name's on it, calls me up, says, hey, this is Bill Real. Oh, I'm so thrilled because it's Bill Real. I love his show. And he says, it's obvious that I saw your piece about Adam God. It's obvious you studied this. I've always wanted to do this on Mormon Discussions, his podcast. You want to come on and talk about it?

John Dehlin [03:19:30] What did you love about Bill as a podcaster and about a show?

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:35] I. I love the way he tried. He really tried to be honest with the evidence. He was very knowledgeable. He studied a lot, did his homework, and then he tried to be honest with it. And there were times where I felt he was trying to put. There's one specific time where he tried to put maybe too faithful a spin on it, but this is early on, and it is part of his faith transition.

John Dehlin [03:19:57] In 16, he was still try. A progressive believer, correct?

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:00] Yes. Although I don't think it's a secret now, though. He told me that he was presenting. I mean, there's definitely an arc, a story arc that goes there from believer to being doubting, questioning, and then losing faith. But I believe it's safe to say that he was intentionally presenting as continuing to be more believing than he really was feeling in his heart for a period of time.

John Dehlin [03:20:26] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:27] Who doesn't do that?

John Dehlin [03:20:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:30] Yeah. That's not unusual at all, is it? No, no. We try and act like we feel like we should be acting, even though maybe inside we're going, oh, I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:20:38] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:38] Okay. So I go on the show, we talk about Adam God. It's. Is it October of 2016 or August or something? No, it's August of 2016, and it becomes very popular. And I was happy when he told me that this was actually the most Popular podcast of any of that year.

John Dehlin [03:21:00] Did he call you.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:01] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:21:01] Ready for Mormon at the time.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:03] No. No, because I'm not. I don't. I'm not a.

John Dehlin [03:21:05] He called you by your.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:06] This is my name. I appear there under my name.

John Dehlin [03:21:08] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:09] And this was one of the big clues that people picked up on in putting two and two together and figuring out who I really am.

John Dehlin [03:21:17] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:18] Oh. So. Because he says, this is great. You did really good. Have you ever thought about doing a podcast? And I said, well, I've been thinking about it for years, but I don't know how. He says, I'll teach you, and you can use this if you want as your platform. More discussions. He already has an established audience. Well, I'm thrilled. And I don't know how to do it. And he says, okay, you get this microphone, you get this software. I'll teach you how to do it. It. And he did that for me. And he says, what do you want to call it? I said, well, I've had a name for years. I already know what the name is. What is it? I said, it's Radio Free Mormon, which comes from just my idea of it being, okay, we will get there. We will get there. I know, but it comes from the idea that.

John Dehlin [03:22:00] Well, there's Radio for Europe, right?

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:02] Radio Free Europe, yes. I'm sorry. That's where it comes from. Sometimes people want to put a lot more weight on that. That I'm trying to be more.

John Dehlin [03:22:08] Yeah, that.

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:10] There's more symbolism Right. In it than there is. It's. It was more of a lark than anything else.

John Dehlin [03:22:15] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:15] But Radio Free Europe. Radio Free Mormon. I liked the sound of it. And I also like the fact that it didn't start with the word Mormon, because there's Mormon stories. Apologies. There's more that you're one. They're the first. But then there's Mormon matters. There's Mormon discussions, there's Mormon expressions, There's Mormon everything. So to have another one that started with the word Mormon was not going to make it stand out about. So I. But you got to have Mormon in there somewhere, because that's what it's about. So it's Radio Free Mormon. And, yeah, it ended up being more apropos than maybe I originally intended, because, of course, Radio Free Europe in the Cold War is. Well, they're. They're behind the Iron Curtain, so they're being fed the propaganda of the Soviets, which is not necessarily the truth about what's going on in the outside world, but they're in a closed System, like, I don't know, an LDS church or something. And so. But there were people in England or in other places in Free Europe who were doing radio shows and broadcasting because an iron curtain cannot be built tall enough or thick enough to prevent the radio waves from getting in. And so if you know the frequency and you're behind the Iron curtain and there's no, you know, spies around and you're in your closet and you're safe, you can turn it on and find out what's really going on in the outside world as opposed to the propaganda you're getting from Pravda. That's what Radio Free Europe was. And it ended up. It's. It's one of those things. It's a happy accident. Like Jackson Pollock would talk about his paintings when they went well. A happy accident. This was a happy accident because it ended up being really a good fit and much more meaningful than I intended it to be when I came up with the idea because I thought it sounded good.

John Dehlin [03:24:03] Did you do several episodes with Bill on his show before you broke off to do your own?

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:07] No, we did the one. Oh, we did the One. And the thing was that that surprised Bill is that it became the most popular show he had done in the entire year, even though it was recorded after the halfway point of the year.

John Dehlin [03:24:22] So. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:22] Yeah. It was more popular than once from January for the entire year.

John Dehlin [03:24:26] They've been collecting views and downloads all year long.

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:28] Yes. And he. And the thing that really surprised him was that he had had Patrick Mason on the show.

John Dehlin [03:24:33] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:33] Prior. And this eclipsed Patrick Mason.

John Dehlin [03:24:36] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:36] So, you know, stars are lining up. He says, you want a podcast? I say, yeah, Radio Free Mormon. He shows me how to do it. My first podcast goes up. I think it was October of 2016, and then I was off and running. And I owe it all to Bill. Real well. I. I owe it all to a lot of people because I just said that after reading for about half an hour.

John Dehlin [03:24:59] But. But, you know, we stand on, like, there's that quote. We stand on the shoulder of giants. It's Fon Brody, it's BH Roberts, it's Leonard Arrington. It's the September six. It's. You know, there's so many people that we all have been influenced by.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:12] Yes. Yes. I think that's Isaac Newton. If I see further than others, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants.

John Dehlin [03:25:18] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:18] Which is a real thing for a super smart person to say in a humble way while acknowledging the truth of what's being said about them. But giving credit where credit is due.

John Dehlin [03:25:27] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:28] To those who have gone before.

John Dehlin [03:25:29] But Bill Real is a freaking legend and he's brilliant and he's good hearted and he's a good man. And I'm so, I'm so grateful to Bill for helping discover you.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:40] Oh, well, thank you.

John Dehlin [03:25:41] And for the brilliance that he's provided without you.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:44] Yes, both. You know, something I'm so excited about. Can I talk about something I'm excited about? Dinner. I have meat to eat. Whereof, you know, not. Okay. What I'm excited about. And this is a little bit, you know, I hope it doesn't come across as egotistical, but I have been. First off, this one won't. I have been so, so blessed to be able, through this podcast, to be able to make acquaintances and associations with people that I have admired for so long, like you through your podcast or Bill Real through his podcast, or God forbid, Brent Metcalf, Dan Vogel, David Bachavoy, and there are Robert Ridner, for crying out loud. Can you imagine how I felt when you invited me to come on your show to be part of an interview with, let's face it, one of the, if not the top Egyptologist in the world today, Robert Rittner. I mean, I felt like I was a kid who just got dropped in the candy shop. And I was so flattered and so thrilled and had such a wonderful time. And I want to thank you for that opportunity. But I've had all of this happen. But what I found out is that there was this debate back in November. I don't know if you heard about it, John. It was with the Three Amigos, otherwise known as the Midnight Mormon, and me in Salt Lake City. Yeah, south of Salt Lake, wherever it was. It was at Sean McCraney's church, who was nice enough to do that. And I really, really wanted to debate these guys because I thought it would be fun. And by fun, I mean fun for the audience. Because it's one thing for people to listen to you and me talk, right? And I hope it's beneficial. But as I learned in drama school, acting school, you have to take some acting if you're a dancer, is that conflict is the essence of drama. If you don't have conflict, you don't have a play. Nobody's going to watch a play that doesn't have any conflict in it. There's no point. Right. And that's why debates are so interesting to people, because there's conflict. And so I wanted to set this up and I did. And frankly, I worked long and hard to force them to go to the debate that they had committed two months before, because lots of people were saying they're going to back out, they're going to do this, they're going to do that. And I strategically and frankly manipulatively made it so that they could not back out of the debate.

John Dehlin [03:28:22] I remember.

Radio Free Mormon [03:28:23] And I was doing that on my Facebook page, you know, and if you want to see how I did it, you can go back and look, but I was doing that intentionally because I wanted this to happen, and it did happen. Now, getting to the debate, if you want to watch that debate, you can go watch the debate. But the thing that was so great about the debate was not the. The bulletproof vests that they all wore. It was the fact that this debate, after it was over, it became viewed quite a bit, maybe 40 or 50,000 views. But what happened as a result of that is that there were certain people who were really, really smart people, intelligent LDs, academics, who had written major things about Mormonism and Mormon studies, who just because of that debate, it sparked their interest and renewed their interest in Mormonism because they faded away from it. Right. To bring them back into the scene and to make them want to become part of that scene again. And so I was really, really thrilled about that. And they told me that I'm not, you know, I wouldn't make that up or guess, but they told me that. And so I was so happy that I had done that debate, if only for that reason. And I brought Bill Real back. I was so happy about that. I'm going to tell you the true story right now. Bill Real has a different perspective on this, and I've heard him say it a number of times, but it's about Mormonism live. Bill Real had spent all this time doing, you know, Mormon discussions and learning all this stuff, and oh, my gosh, how many podcasts did he do? And he got burned out and really disaffected. He was disaffected before. Now he's really disaffected. It had something to do with November in 2015, I don't know. But he stopped podcasting and he went on to do other things that he has an interest in on podcasts, because there's other podcasts that he does that are not specifically Mormon related, that more reflect his. His interest. And I think that's great. But it was a huge loss, I thought huge to the Mormon podcasting world that he wasn't doing this. And of course, I'm already Doing my podcast, we're already friends. And then he gets burned out. And the way that Bill real tells the story is this is that sometime toward the end of 2000. And this is. This is the Mormonism live creation story, okay? The Mormonism live creation story, which started in December of 2000. And we're 22 now, 19. So it's 2020, because it's been a year plus. So December of 2020. And the way Bill remembers the story and tells the story is that he finally decided he wanted to come back to Mormonism and talk about Mormonism, but in a different format. So a live format, okay? Now, I cannot prove to you, Bill, that this is what happened, okay? But I will tell you my recollection. And my recollection is, is that I came up with the idea sometime around the summer of 2020, and I broached the idea with you, and then it sat and it fermented in your head for a number of months until you came up with the idea yourself and called me and said, why don't we do a live show with call ins at the end? And I said, bill, that is a great idea. Let's do it. Oh, my gosh. So I can't say what's true. All I can say, people will have different perceptions of something, but that's the way it really happened Anyway, so I was so thrilled that we got him back, regardless of how it happened and whose idea it was. But that this idea of doing a live show and the immediacy of it, because, I mean, who else was doing, I don't know, live shows? Maybe there were people I wasn't aware of. It's usually recorded and then edited and released. But a live show, because there is that. The. The danger, it's a difference between watching a movie and going to a theater performance, is that there are things you can do on the screen with special effects you can't do in a theater performance, but we can never do on the screen is capture the immediacy of what's happening on the stage, because that's live. And even though you know your lines, hopefully, and you know how to say them, and you're gonna. You've practiced, you've rehearsed. Excuse me, I should say, you never know what's going to happen because anything could happen. I mean, one of the stage lights could fall off and come down and crash on the stage right behind a. And I saw this happen one time in the middle of a show and just didn't even phase this person. Of course, it might have if it landed on their head. And it was close, but, yeah, shocked. So anything can happen. And then we up the ante by saying, well, let's have people call in. What could go wrong. But that makes it interesting for people, and it certainly makes it interesting for us. So we're doing, like, live TV back in the days of Milton Berle, and we continue to do it today. We have a great time doing it every week, thank goodness. This next Wednesday is Bill's show. We alternate weeks. One of us will be in charge of the show. If there's a guest, we're in charge of the guest or the subject matter. The other one will sort of try and help along, come up with ideas to add, maybe be a color commentator. And I was last week. So next week is Bill. This next Wednesday. It's already Monday, isn't it? So I'm so glad it spills because today I'm doing this with you. Tonight I've got an event that I have to go to, which fortunately doesn't involve me. In other words, I don't have to do anything except show up and enjoy. Then tomorrow morning, I'll be back here with you and Randy Bell, who, by the way, has just landed at the airport. He may be coming through the door at any moment. And I'll be back here. And then tomorrow night I've got this other thing. So I've got these three presentations I've got to do. And I am constructed in such a way that I could never bring myself. It would never actually even enter my mind to talk about the same thing on three presentations, even though they're over the course of two days. Because it's kind of like Joseph Smith. I mean, it's like, like, I want to be new. I want to try and be fresh. I want to try and be creative and not just keep saying the same old thing so I get the chance.

John Dehlin [03:34:35] It's awesome.

Radio Free Mormon [03:34:36] Thank you so much.

Reflections on Mormon Podcasting and Collaboration

John Dehlin [03:34:38] So let me. Let me maybe end with. With this final set of two questions. I remember when Mormon expression came out around 2010, 2009, 2010. And I remember going, oh, my gosh, John Larsen's so good. Could this be the end of Mormon stories? And I remember just feeling afraid and

Radio Free Mormon [03:35:03] competitive because you're the first one. You're the first person on the block to do this. And really, you had had no competition or alternate voice up until John Larsen.

John Dehlin [03:35:14] There were a few Mormon themed podcasts before mine that I listened to just a few months prior. Like, Mike Norton had a podcast called the church is not true.

Radio Free Mormon [03:35:24] I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [03:35:25] Yeah, but they, they petered out within a year. I mean, the hardest thing about a podcast is not quitting, right? For sure. That's if anyone has a superpower, if anyone's successful, it's because they haven't quit. And most people quit. But anyway, when, when. But. But I. Certainly the longest, one of the longest running podcasts in the world because we've been going since 2005. Not a lot of those, but here

Radio Free Mormon [03:35:51] comes John Larsen with Mormon John Larsen.

John Dehlin [03:35:52] Yeah, it comes out with Mormon expression. And I'm terrified and competitive, but I'm also insecure. And we kind of even have this tension between us where people start saying they like his podcast more than me and that hurts my feelings and blah, blah, blah. And maybe he feels threatened, maybe he doesn't, I don't know. But fast forward to now. I, I often read on Reddit, for example, that you're people's favorite podcaster. So I think a lot of people feel that way. There are a lot of people that listen to you that stop listening to me. How does it feel to have kind of. This is a two part question. The first part is how does it feel to have ascended perhaps to the top of the hill in the Mormon podcasting world into being one of, if not the most popular podcasters? How does that feel?

Radio Free Mormon [03:36:41] Feel? I tell you what, when my downloads start reflecting what it is you've described, then we can talk.

John Dehlin [03:36:50] But you're. You're freaking super loved. How does it feel?

Radio Free Mormon [03:36:56] I appreciate everyone who listens to the show. I appreciate all their positive comments. I really, really do. And I couldn't do this without you. I'm about to say something personal here.

John Dehlin [03:37:12] Good.

Radio Free Mormon [03:37:13] That was personal, by the way. But the personal part about me is that it's probably like you, is that I'm going, if there's a hundred comments and 99 are positive and 1 is negative, I'm probably going to focus on that negative comment and start obsessing about it. And my mind will tell me, hey, stupid, there's 99 positive comments over here to this one. Negative. Maybe you should, like, take that into account and have some balance in perspective. And sometimes I can talk myself out of it, but I am the first person. If somebody says something nice about me, I have a lot of trouble believing it, no matter how sincere. And I know it's sincere, no matter how many, because that's just sort of the way I'm built. And can I tell you about the, the debate this. This folk. This is like the debate. Okay. And I. I'm not getting totally off your question. How much time do we have, by the way?

John Dehlin [03:38:11] Well, it depends on what time you want to go.

Radio Free Mormon [03:38:13] Okay, well, I don't want to be too late, so we'll make a fashionable entrance. No, it was with the debate. The debate. November 2021. I went down there and I did this thing, and I had a good time, and I got the splitting headache right in the middle of the scre. However long it was, two hours, three hours, it seemed to go on forever. And I became aware that my headache was. And the fact that there's three people over there and Sean being the moderator, and they're them throwing all these different things at me, and I'm trying to make notes and trying to be organized and trying to respond to what I think are the most important things. But there were some points, places where I'm aware that I'm going through this train of thought, and my. My ending point isn't like where it should be ending. You know what I mean? I hadn't quite made my point.

John Dehlin [03:39:02] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:39:03] But I don't remember what the hell the point was in the first place. And my head is killing me, and the lights are bright and I've got a suit coat on. So anyway, I go back to the motel room afterward and I'm looking at the comments, and there's all these people who are saying, oh, that was a good job. But a lot of people saying, ah, he. You should have said this. Talking about me. Should have said this. He should have said that. He missed this, he missed that. And that's what I'm seeing. And I thought, I did the crappiest job in this debate. I did the crappiest job. This is my conversion story about how I became converted, that I did an okay job in the debate. I'm reading all of that, and there are people over at the Discuss Mormonism board, and they're talking about it because they knew. Because I'm like, you know, a native son over there. And. And some people are saying good things, some people are saying bad things. But the people are saying bad things. I'm going, oh, no. And I think they're right. And it was actually Carrie Shirts who managed to preach to me in such a way to finally get me to believe that I didn't totally suck in that debate. And he did an entire podcast about the debate and playing clips from the debate. I have never gone back and watched that debate. I cannot bring myself to. And that's one of the reasons why it's so surprising. I went back and listened to part one of this episode back from August, because I don't do that. And. But he played clips from it. And then there were some TikTok things that went up with clips from the debate which came to my attention. And I saw those, and I remember looking at those and thinking, did I say that? It was almost like the experience I had reading this blog, which I actually did write, and being surprised and even impressed and going, wow, I said that. I said that. That. Well, oh, man, no wonder they were walking funny when they left the building. And it's just like, smack, smack, smack. Whoa. And. And Carrie shirts. He's just such a great guy. I really appreciate his friendship. He's another guy. He's one who's come back because of the debate.

John Dehlin [03:41:06] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:41:07] That was his impetus coming back into the arena.

John Dehlin [03:41:10] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [03:41:10] And he's brilliant.

John Dehlin [03:41:11] We're having him on Mormon story soon, by the way.

Radio Free Mormon [03:41:14] Is that me first?

John Dehlin [03:41:15] Sometime soon.

Radio Free Mormon [03:41:16] We haven't talked about it. Anyway, so he does this thing and he talks to me about it, and he finally is able to convince me that I really didn't do as anywhere near as bad a job as I convinced myself I had done. I really appreciate him for that. But that whole process illustrates my character, and it's not easy for me to believe something that's good about myself. I will tell you what happens when I do a podcast regularly. I record and I. I have to edit after I record. And usually the editing takes two to three times longer than it does to record it. Is it standard? Because, of course, I'm doing the research first, then the recording, then I've got to do the editing afterwards. Oh, my gosh, I've got to edit this thing. And the editing usually takes off about a third of what's recorded, maybe more if I'm really bad. But what happens so regularly is that I record something. It doesn't happen every time, but it happened just this last time about, what was it? Jesus. How Jesus became the Savior. And I record this thing and I hate it. I just think, this is a steaming pile of caca. And I stop recording and I leave and I go for a walk. And this happens on a regular basis. It happened the very first time. It's happened just recently. And it happens all the way through. Is that is crap. I need to do that again. It is so bad. It is irredeemable. But what I've learned is that once I go back and I edit it I can take that turd, and through the editing process, I can polish it to a high sheen. And that. That's how I envision what I do with podcasting and editing, by the way. It used to take me even longer because it's the Audacity software and it's what I know. I think there are things that may be more advanced than that now, but of course, what I know is easier for me to use. But what was I gonna say about the Audacity? Oh, yeah, it used to take me forever because I wasn't aware that there was a little function that I could speed it up that. Oh, at the top bar.

John Dehlin [03:43:27] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:43:27] So I can put up to 1.63 or one listening. Yes. So I can go through it much faster and then edit out. And every episode I have has hundreds, literally hundreds of edits that I go back and make individually. All right, Bill. Bill Real once asked if he could hear one of the My shows before I edited it, because I told him, man, I have to edit out lots of things. Stumbling, stuttering, saying the wrong thing, having to repeat something because I wasn't clear enough the first time, adding in audio or other things that I might want to say, and definitely editing out the swear words because I told him there are times when I get so frustrated, I just paint the. The air blue in that underground bunker. It's like, was it Christmas story where he's talking about his dad and all the swearing he did, fighting with. What was it, the water heater or the. Just the heater and his swear words creating some kind of a. A cloud that's still hanging out there over Lake Erie today? That was me. And I've never. I've never allowed him to listen, though.

John Dehlin [03:44:30] But.

Radio Free Mormon [03:44:31] So anyway, that's just saying that. What am I saying? What I'm saying is that through the editing process, I am able to make something that is listenable out of something that I view as absolute garbage just through editing. So I'm very glad that he taught me how to edit. And the fact that now I know that I can speed up what I'm listening to. To edit to 1.5 means that it takes less time for me to polish that turd than it used to when I had to listen to it at regular speed.

John Dehlin [03:45:02] And what I just heard is RFM has a hard time accepting compliments.

Radio Free Mormon [03:45:05] Oh, man. Yeah. And you do, too, by the way. How did it feel sitting there while I read you this? Pay on. Super awkward or is it a peon?

John Dehlin [03:45:12] Super awkward. The only reason I let you do it is because I really felt like it reflected your process.

Radio Free Mormon [03:45:18] Thank you. Yeah, I think a peon is a low class person and a peon is a hymn of prey. So I think that was a pay on.

John Dehlin [03:45:25] Thank you.

Radio Free Mormon [03:45:25] That's okay.

John Dehlin [03:45:26] Anyway. Well, you're super loved. And I do think your preparation, your wit, I think it's your humor, I think it's your preparation, I think it's your intelligence, your ability to gather evidence, your analysis, and also your editing. Editing. Because I'm the opposite. We'll go five hours and we won't edit a second out of it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:45:44] I hadn't noticed.

John Dehlin [03:45:47] But you still sometimes listen to Mormon stories, which is a huge honor to me.

Radio Free Mormon [03:45:51] Well, I listen to Mormon stories all the time. One of the things about Mormon stories is that there's a certain bread and butter thing that you do, which is talking to members of the church who have gone through a faith deconstruction to tell their story. You've done a number of those. But there's also this other thing that you do, which is talking to people who are really scholars and know stuff or have experienced stuff in Mormonism to come on to tell their stories where it's not just, okay, this is how I was. And, you know, this is what set me off or made me rethink my position. Was it the CES letter? Was it the essays? Was it polygamy? Was it the book of Abraham? And you have been putting out such incredible material, I mean, the last months. Is it years now that you have, like, amazingly re. I won't. I don't want to say reinvented, but reinvigorated your entire brand. And you've got so many things going on. And the other thing. Let me see if I finish that compliment enough. I. Anybody who's listening to your show, I think knows what I'm talking about. And having people on to. Oh, Rod Meldrum. Rod Meldrum.

John Dehlin [03:47:01] I lost a lot of donors on that one.

Radio Free Mormon [03:47:04] I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. But I thought it was important because, I mean, what is one of my problems with the LDS Church was the only people that they want to express themselves in the LDS Church are the ones who will say what they're supposed to say, what they're expected to say, what everybody already believes and agrees upon the correlation. Right. And Rod Meldrum is obviously not going to be saying the things that you believe, and he's probably not going to be saying things that the vast majority of your listeners already believe. But he is a person who represents a very important component of Mormonism right now. And so to have him on to express his opinions and his beliefs was hugely significant. I thought. And I thought that you could probably have done it in less time if Rod Meldrum would simply answer the freaking question. Right, yeah. Instead of, well, here's the question here. And he wants to go. I don't know how many times up and down he's gonna. He wants to get to the answer to the question, but he wants to do it in such a way to show you that. That he's right and that he's correct instead of just answering the question and then saying if he has to say anything about it. Saying, and this is why I think this way. I mean, I talked to Kara before the third episode. It was like, okay, we're bringing him on. Here's episode number one. It's gonna be Rodney Meldrum, and it's the Heartland model. And the Heartland model never gets brought up in episode one. Okay, well, we're going to bring him on in episode two, and we're going to talk now about the Heartland model. He comes on in episode two. We never get to the Heartland model. And so. And now we get to episode three. And I know even though you weren't talking to me, I know you're, like, saying, okay, we are going to get to the Heartland model today if it kills me. And he's doing everything. Once again, he doesn't want to answer the question. You finally got some stuff out of him by allowing him to go on and on. And it's very painful to listen to, but finally you gave him the opportunity to say things that you go, oh, my gosh, really? So there's this huge water crystal in the inside of the Earth, and the flood is accounted for by the fact that the flood was caused by God spinning up the rotation of the Earth on its axis. So the water that's inside by centripetal force is forced to the outside. And then when the flood time is over, we'll just slow the Earth. Yeah, yeah. So it can go back down and inside. And I'm going, that was gold. That was worth listening to several hours just to hear that he held that point of view. Because, of course, if you spin up the. The rotation of the Earth on its axis, it's not going to hurt anything. I mean, it's not going to be any problems that are going to be caused by that. Right. Like with the Earth itself and everything on the face of the Earth. But it was Great to hear that he believed that. All right, this is where he's coming from. So I, I. Let me just express my appreciation to you, you for getting him on the show because that was probably risky for him to come on the show. And I think there was a certain element of risk that for you to have him on the show, which may have been manifested in the. The donor situation that you talked about. But I really appreciated being able to hear what he had to say because he has a lot of followers.

John Dehlin [03:50:20] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:50:20] Among Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:50:21] I mean, he can get three to four times the audience that we can. You know, our thrive was 1700. His Book of Mormon evidence evidences conference gets 7, 500 people. Like, he's a huge deal.

Radio Free Mormon [03:50:33] He is a big deal. And I actually would be of the position that it would be remiss of you, though. I sound like somebody getting up and bearing their testimony. It would be remiss of me not to bear my testimony today. It would be almost remiss of you not to have somebody that's that important in the Mormon community to be able to come on your show and talk. I think that was a big coup for you.

John Dehlin [03:50:55] Thank you. Well, I just felt like it was important to get him on the record.

Radio Free Mormon [03:50:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:50:59] You know, and I was grateful that he came. You know, he's very likable.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:03] He is a very likable.

John Dehlin [03:51:04] Super likable.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:05] Yeah, he is very likable.

John Dehlin [03:51:06] I think he's sincere.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:07] I think he's sincere, too.

John Dehlin [03:51:09] He's pure. I think he's kind of pure of heart. He's actually just living true Mormonism.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:14] I think that's right.

John Dehlin [03:51:15] Yeah. And it was beautiful. It was really validating and beautiful in a weird, twisted, dark way to see it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:22] Randy and I are actually going to talk a little bit more about Rodney Meldrum tomorrow. Cool. So I don't want to steal your own thunder. Yeah. I've already interrupted myself on the show. I don't want to steal my own thunder for tomorrow's show, however, it was really, really good. And I thought you did a really good job of asking him questions and pointing out the strange position he's in, that he has a universal theory that is totally. Is different and challenging and contradicting the entire scientific consensus of the 21st century. Plan it.

John Dehlin [03:51:54] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:51:57] But that's okay because he's right.

John Dehlin [03:52:01] Well, this was all a way to explore how awesome we think you are. So I'll just reflect the comments that I'm getting by my listenership that, oh, yeah, people love you and people are grateful for you, and your contributions are amazing. And, you know, Dan Vogel and Brett Metcalf will listen regularly to you. I'm. I'm not sure it's the same with me, and that's. I'm actually. This leads me to my next point, which was my closing point for me. Isn't it Beautiful now in 2022, to live in a podcasting world where we just adore each other and there's not this scarcity mindset? There's not. I don't feel a competitive. Like, if you and Bill do amazing, I'm thrilled and I'm super happy to promote you. And you guys have been generous with me and supportive and. Isn't it. I just. I'm loving. This is a really rhetorical question, but if you want to comment on it, isn't it great to be in a world where we're, you know, Jonathan Streeter or whoever, where we're just looking at this as an abundant, expanding, rising tide that lifts all ships and we can just be supportive of each other and not have to feel competitive or maybe there's some friendly coop petition kind of stuff going on, but we don't feel threatened or antagonistic towards each other.

Radio Free Mormon [03:53:20] Yes, it does. Of course you don't know what I say behind your back, but really, I do, actually.

John Dehlin [03:53:26] People tell me.

Radio Free Mormon [03:53:27] Oh, do they?

John Dehlin [03:53:28] Yeah, they do.

Guest [03:53:28] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:53:29] Sorry.

Radio Free Mormon [03:53:31] Loose lips sink ships.

John Dehlin [03:53:32] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:53:33] No. What happened? I don't know if there was a certain period in your life. Okay, look, it's nothing for me to be collaborative with other people who are more popular than I am, because that obviously benefits me. The thing that is remarkable is when the person who is the most popular. I'm talking about you. Is collaborative and supportive of lesser lights. And I just want the audience to know that that's not something you're just saying for the show here today to paint yourself in a good light, even though you were saying it about everybody, but you were the one to whom it is important and significant in my mind, because you are the Godfather. You're the most popular. But I don't know if there was a certain time that you made this conscious decision to change, to be reaching out and supportive and helping like you've been to me. I know. To me and to Bill and so to so many others. I don't know if there's a certain time where you made that decision or if it's just I became aware of it. Did you decide that at some point that you just wanted to really help the other people who are out there.

John Dehlin [03:54:53] I mean, in some sense, that's. I've, you know, I tried to get Lindsey Hansen park on after a year of polygamy. Like, I've always wanted to showcase good work in our community, but I do think something different happened with Bill and with you. Like, the Robert. The Robert Rittner episode was a real watershed moment for me because I. I knew that Robert Ridder was a special thing, and I knew that there was no way I could do it justice. And I didn't know anyone who. Who could do that interview better than you. And so it. It probably. There was probably a part of me that's like, do I really want to share this? Is it. What's it going to be like if I give this away? This is an important moment. And then I'm just like. Like, for the good of everyone, it must needs be that RFM is a part of this. And so that was hard. That was hard. But it was the smartest thing I could have ever done. So in some ways, it was beneficial. It was clearly beneficial Mormon stories, but it was just the right thing to do. And it was. It was a really. That was a special. That's a special bond you and I will always have because he's now passed away, but we got 13 hours. We probably got 16 hours of Robert. There's some stuff with Robert Ritter we haven't shared.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:07] Right. Bonus material. Patreon account.

John Dehlin [03:56:11] That was a special thing.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:12] It was very special. But it's really interesting to me to. To hear you say that, because, yes, that would be difficult. And when you say having me on, what I hear is you having someone else on to help you with an interview in an area where you did not feel necessarily you had the. The breadth of background to conduct it yourself.

John Dehlin [03:56:29] Not even close.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:30] The utmost efficacy when you have Robert Rittner on the show. And I don't.

John Dehlin [03:56:34] I know it's not just you. I listen to you and Bill.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:36] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:56:37] Doing stuff about the Book of Abraham that helped me prepare. So I'm like, how can I not include them? You know?

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:43] See, that was. That was big of you.

John Dehlin [03:56:45] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:45] Well, no, it was.

John Dehlin [03:56:46] It was also smart for the podcast, but.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:48] All right. But smart for the podcast. And.

John Dehlin [03:56:49] And I could have overridden that. And. Yes. And just Absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:53] Robert Ridner on. Just ask him the questions. Let him answer.

John Dehlin [03:56:55] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:56:56] It would have made complete sense. There's two stories that I want to tell about that, that. Oh, by the way, let me. Let me make this connection, too. Do you think that that is the point at which you. You began opening up to more and more people and involving them in your show.

John Dehlin [03:57:11] I mean, I think it was a new level. I think it was a new order of magnitude of cooperation. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:16] Yes, for me.

John Dehlin [03:57:16] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:17] Well, I just want you to know I've seen that, and I doubt that I'm the only one who's seen it. And I think it's great. It shows your bigness of heart and just that you're willing to help out people who are. Are. I mean, you're the mentor. You're the Gandalf. Okay, and I'm just a hobbit. But you're willing to help, you know, and you don't have to. You don't have to help a hobbit, for crying out loud.

John Dehlin [03:57:39] You're Frodo.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:41] Okay,

John Dehlin [03:57:45] Frodo or Bilbo? Who do you want to be? Oh, Frodo's cooler than Bilbo.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:48] Frodo has three books. Bilbo has one.

John Dehlin [03:57:50] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:51] I guess he shows up in the.

John Dehlin [03:57:52] I'll be Gandalf.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:53] Okay, good.

John Dehlin [03:57:54] That's a real compliment.

Radio Free Mormon [03:57:55] Yes, it is. As for the incident with a dragon, I was hardly involved. So that's that part. Now, the other part, I can just tell two stories that I always tell about Robert Rittner.

John Dehlin [03:58:08] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:58:08] And one of them's actually very positive about you. And I hope you've heard this through other channels, which is we're talking about what we're going to cover. And of course, I'm more listening and giving my ideas because it's your show and you're going, oh, my gosh. What we have to do is we have to go through every freaking facsimile and every figure in every facsimile, 1 through 3, and every translation that Joses gave of every figure in every facsimile and put down what Joseph Smith said about it and then ask Robert Rittner what he says it means in Egyptian.

John Dehlin [03:58:42] Because we only have one time. We only have one get. You know.

Radio Free Mormon [03:58:45] I know. And what I want to say is, I was against it. Do you remember that? I said that is. That's going to kill it. I mean, total death. Nobody's going to be interested in that. It's going to be boring. And you said, no, I really think we need to do it because we only get this one chance, and it's Robert Rittner. So, of course you went and did. It's your show. You make the executive decision. The thing I bring up is that you were absolutely right. And time after time, people who make comments about the 13 hours are focusing in on that and saying, that was the most important part to them, the part that you insisted on doing and that I thought was a bad idea. So that's one story I tell, second story I tell. And I always think that this is on the part that we didn't air the. Oh, I want to say another thing about Robert Rittner before I get to that story, and that is that people don't know this, but I think every one of the three times, at least once and probably twice, if not every three. Robert Rittner was so ill that he did not know if he could go on the show.

John Dehlin [03:59:46] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:59:46] And he would show up, and we'd be talking, and you'd be doing the prep work, and I'd be playing solitaire on my computer while you're doing the prep work with him in the slides. And it's like, okay, well, Robert, you were saying, we'll just. We'll start. We'll see how far you can go. Because he was feeling so badly, and every time he would start, and then it's like he would. Would get rolling, and then he would get a second wind, and he. It never happened that it stopped at 15 minutes, if I'm recalling correctly, or half an hour. He kept going and going and going, and he renewed that energy. Just like, what is it? Section? I can't remember. Is it 84 of the doctrine and Covenants talks about being renewed in this discussion. And, yeah, it was so wonderful that he did that, in spite of how he felt, but I think that it helped.

John Dehlin [04:00:36] Help.

Radio Free Mormon [04:00:36] Helped him feel better.

John Dehlin [04:00:38] He was dying of kidney failure and cancer.

Radio Free Mormon [04:00:41] Yeah, the cancer came out later, and I was sworn to secrecy about that when he called me on the phone, because he was waiting for the kidney donor. And we're trying to line up the kidney donor, and it's so great that we're gonna be. I talked with someone about donating my own kidney, and I said, no way in hell are you doing that. And. But other people were willing to. And then he's waiting for the call, because what happens is he gets the call on the phone, and boom, he finds out it has to happen really fast. Kidney donor. At least that's the way they do it. And then he has to go to the hospital. So he's waiting, waiting, and he knows everything's set up, and we have people who are. Who have volunteered, and then testing has to be done, and he gets that call. He picks it up. Mr. Rittner. Yeah, we've you need to come down. We have some news we have to share with you. You okay? He was just doing some more tests of your blood, and there's cancer, which means we can't do the kidney transplant. It's leukemia, I believe. And now we have to deal with the cancer first. And if you can beat the cancer and if we can treat it, then you can go back on the list for the kidney if you're strong enough. Did I say kidney? Yeah, kidney. It was kidney, right? Yeah. And he was telling me this on the phone. He didn't want anybody to know about it, so I didn't tell anybody about it. But there was that huge question, right? Everybody's wondering, did he get a kidney? Yes. How's it get doing? Yeah, I couldn't tell.

John Dehlin [04:02:18] So he died of leukemia or kidney failure. Do we know?

Radio Free Mormon [04:02:25] I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [04:02:25] Yeah, we don't know.

Radio Free Mormon [04:02:27] I'm not sure. All I know is that we were in somewhat frequent, frequent regular phone contact, and there was a time when shortly before he died and, you know, he was in the hospital. I would call him. He'd be in the hospital and he would talk, and maybe a nurse would come in and have to stop the phone call. He wasn't up to snuff or he wasn't feeling 100%. An understatement. But he told me, he said, Radio Free Mormon, of course, he called me by my real name and he said, do you think I will be remembered? And then I told him, absolutely, you're going to be remembered. My gosh. And of course, my mind immediately goes to Egyptology, right? And I think I probably made some reference to it because a new empire, a new ruler, new dynasty comes in that's taken over a former dynasty. And what you do is you erase their names from the monoliths, the obelisks, right? They become erased from history as if they had never existed. So they are not remembered. And of course, his love for Egypt and Egyptology made me think that that might be on his mind too. But I told him, no, you're absolutely going to be remembered. I mean, I can't talk about the Egyptology stuff, but I understand you're pretty good at that. But here in this world of Mormonism and the. The steps and the efforts and the work and the time that you have given to helping us understand the book of Abraham and understand the apologists and why what they're saying either doesn't make sense or is just flat out not true. You have changed the lives of hundreds and thousands and countless people. And you will continue to do that through this podcast that you did on Mormon stories, as well as your writings. And, and then I said, I got his permission to say a little bit more about his medical condition and to post something, I think it was on Facebook. And then it got on Reddit to tell people, to give people the opportunity to write to Robert Ridner and tell him what he had meant to them. And so he got hundreds and hundreds of emails and I was very glad for that.

John Dehlin [04:04:51] Meant a lot to him. Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [04:04:53] And then the next thing I heard was that he had passed away and his obituary was up at the Oriental Institute website, the University of Chicago. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:05:05] What an honor.

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:06] Yeah. Oh, the funny story.

John Dehlin [04:05:09] Oh, really quickly.

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:10] Yeah, the funny story. Okay, what.

John Dehlin [04:05:11] Okay, we, we should go. But. Well, go ahead. I, I was just going to say 1700 plus hours of Mormon stories, podcasts. There's only like, I mean, five come to mind. You know, it's like Tom Phillips, you

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:24] know, Michael co. Radio Free Mormon.

John Dehlin [04:05:26] Radio Free Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:28] Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:05:30] But, but, but Robert Ridder is probably, might be the, the best one, one of the most, if not the most important episodes ever. And we, we shared that together. And Robert Ridford, we love you. Rest in peace.

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:05:43] Your memory will live on your influence on hundreds of thousands of Mormon lives. Yes, Will. Will is indisputable and we're unimpeachable and

Radio Free Mormon [04:05:55] we're going to end up ending there. But I just want to tell this story because I thought it was so delightful and it was during the prep time, I thought, although I thought it was something we did before we broadcast, but then other people that I tell the story to seem to be familiar with it and tell me, no, that happened on the air. So regardless what happened was, is that you had facsimile number two, the hypocephalus. And what you had was that image that I think is off the Internet that somebody had put together that on one side of the hypocephalus has what Joseph Smith said about it. It with little arrows in the numbers. Right? And on the other side of the hypocephalus has what Egyptologists have said about the same symbols. Okay, so you have this one image, you have the circle, the hypocephalus in the center. And then you've got the different contrasting and dare I say, sometimes completely unrelated interpretations between Joseph Smith and Egyptologists. Okay? So you are reading through this with him, them, and you're saying, okay, so this is what the, this is what Joseph Smith said this, said this particular image, and this is what Egyptologists say it said. And then you'd give them a chance to comment or something. You had done this like three times. And finally when you got to the point, you said, this is what Joseph Smith said it said, and this is what Egyptologists said it said. Robert Rittner sort of says, john. And you go, yeah. And Robert Ritter says, you know, I can read this. Yeah, that was so funny because I actually hadn't even thought of it at that point. Maybe you hadn't either. But here you're telling this world renowned Egyptologist what it is Egyptologists have said about this particular image. And he's going, john, you know, I can read this.

John Dehlin [04:07:35] That was awesome.

Radio Free Mormon [04:07:35] He had a really nice sense of humor.

John Dehlin [04:07:37] He did. That's a great story. Okay, rfm, the net of today is we love you, we adore you, and you are doing amazing things. And I think the future is even brighter than the past. Maybe we need to have a part three. I don't know. But today, what, What?

Radio Free Mormon [04:07:56] We'll have part three when the future arrives.

Closing Gratitude and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [04:07:58] Okay, well, let, let's close today, number one, by just saying thank you, your viewers, my viewers, your listeners, my listeners, the Mormon world owes you a huge debt of gratitude for all you have done and all you are doing and all you will do. So thank you. You're the, you're the, you're the mensch.

Radio Free Mormon [04:08:19] Thank you so much and thank you for having me on the show. I'm glad to finally be in the studio where so many luminaries have sat before me. Yeah, you are the man. I may be the mensch, but you're the man.

John Dehlin [04:08:30] Well, for today, I think it's you. Okay. And we're having you back tomorrow morning with Randy Bell. So tune in Mormon Stories listeners for an episode on Critical Thinking.

Radio Free Mormon [04:08:41] Is that going to be live as well?

John Dehlin [04:08:42] I don't know. Probably. Okay, we don't have a thumbnail yet, but look for that episode soon. And if you want to meet RFM in person and you're not listening to this, the day after tomorrow or later, you can still buy tickets to meet RFM in person. The money, the proceeds from the episode or from the event are going to go to rfm. So it's a way to put a few bones in his pocket. He doesn't make the money that he should. I want to help change that. I know Bill does too. So you can go to donorbox.org RFM and right now there's like 20, 30 tickets left you can buy a ticket and come tomorrow night, American Fork, 7pm and meet RFM and give him. Slip him a hundred $1000 check, whatever it is you want, support RFM financially. But come tomorrow night and he'll give a talk and we'll do a Q and A. And. Yeah, so that. And if you can't join in person tomorrow night and you want to join the live stream, you can go to donorbox.org rfm-livestream and sign up for the live stream. And the reason why we're putting all that behind a firewall, a paywall, is because we want to help RFM make more money. And so this event, again, is to show him our appreciation and to throw them a little bit of cheddar cheese, as they say in Guardians of the Galaxy. Cheddar cheese.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:07] Well, I will tell you, and I want to. This is honest, this is so nice of you because this was your idea to do it and it was your idea to charge, and we had that discussion. You said, how much should we sell tickets for? I said tickets? I mean, come on. Just. Nobody has to pay anything. But you insisted.

John Dehlin [04:10:22] Yeah, man.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:23] And so I appreciate that from you. And by the way, a lot of people have been asking me, where is this taking place? We know it's American Fork, but what's the address? And then I have to explain to them that actually it's like, not revealed until you buy a ticket.

John Dehlin [04:10:36] That's right.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:36] That's a way of crowd control or something.

John Dehlin [04:10:38] Yeah, I don't. We don't have staff to pay people to control.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:10:42] Who comes and who doesn't? Who paid and who doesn't? So we're just gonna. You sign up for the event, we'll give you the address.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:48] Okay. And if you do the live stream, because there's so many people.

John Dehlin [04:10:51] Same thing. We'll email everybody.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:10:54] Great. The link to the live stream.

Radio Free Mormon [04:10:57] I'm glad to say that I. I have my. My outline for what I'm going to say tomorrow night. I've been thinking about it for a long time. I wrote it this morning at the hotel before I went on a little hike before coming over here. And strangely enough, what I ended up writing down is completely different from what I had planned on writing down. Now, if I were still a tbm, that would be the Holy Ghost, as it is, is probably just a manifestation of my. I don't know, add, adhd, something. Yes.

John Dehlin [04:11:26] All right. Well, we love you, rfm. We will always welcome you back on Mormon Stories. Keep doing the great work. Check out radiofreemormon.com.org.org radiofreemorman.org Become a monthly donor there that also supports Bill Real and his good work. And check out Mormonism Live every Wednesday at 6:20pm Mountain time on YouTube, right?

Radio Free Mormon [04:11:51] Absolutely. We got our own channel. Thank you so much again, John.

John Dehlin [04:11:55] My pleasure. You're the man.

Radio Free Mormon [04:11:57] Talk to you later.

John Dehlin [04:11:58] All right. Love you, brother.

Radio Free Mormon [04:11:59] Bye bye.

John Dehlin [04:12:00] Viewers and listeners, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for your support. Support rfm, Mormonism Live and Bill Real. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.