Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We're coming to you on September 3, 2015. And I have to say this is an episode that's just super exciting for me. It's one that I've been looking forward to for several years. And I'll just get right to it. Today we were interviewing Dr. Scott Miller.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] I first learned of Scott Miller when I was accepted to a PhD program in psychology. And I started reading up on psychology and I learned about this guy that was kind of a world class psychologist telling people or therapists that some of the most important things a psychologist could attend to were things that really had nothing necessarily to do with the mode of psychology treatment itself. And, and these traits are called the common factors. And they have to do with things like, you know, listening well, positive regard, empathy, belief and conviction in one's motive therapy. And what Scott was basically saying was that the clinical intervention that you choose as a psychotherapist maybe isn't as important as just some of those basic human skills that we all know are super important.

John Dehlin [00:01:20] But that was really revolutionary to me at the time because I was just about to join clinical psychology program and it was all about the intervention. And so that's when I first learned about Scott. But then later Scott was invited to give a lecture in Logan as sort of, you know, a world class specialist. And then his focus was on helping therapists become the best possible therapists they could be. And I noticed in Scott's CV in his resume that he had graduated, I believe, undergraduate from byu. Is that right, Scott?

Scott Miller [00:01:56] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] And then he got his PhD at the University of Utah. Is that right?

Scott Miller [00:02:00] That is right, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] So, so I was like, wow, this is a world class psychologist, literally known all over the world, mentioned in every psychology textbook or sort of, you know, curriculum that I had been involved with. And he came out of Utah. So after Scott's lecture in Logan a few years back, I was able to have lunch with them and I talked to Scott a bit and it turn out that Scott Miller, Dr. Scott Miller also was raised LDS. And at the time he told me about this really cool book he was finishing up about his mission of sort of a mission memoir of his time in Sweden. And I got really excited about it. And so Scott and I have kept in touch and you know, this month Scott's ready to release his book called the Book of a Mormon. Is that right, Scott?

Scott Miller [00:02:58] That's right. The real life strange times of an LDS missionary.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] Yeah. And you know, I've read, I've read probably a few Mormon memoirs over the past few years. Specifically, I can think of Elna Baker's memoir, Joanna Brooks's memoir, and Ryan McIlvaine's memoir. And this, this, this is, this book, in my opinion, is every bit worthy to stand toe to toe. And in some ways was, was much more electrifying for, because it connected with me and my mission experience with the time, kind of the general time that I was serving. I served a little bit later than Scott, but not too much later. But more importantly, Scott's missionary memoir is so candid, so real, so raw, very well written, very thorough.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] And what I love most about it is it really does a great job of capturing sort of the Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Mark E. Peterson, Bruce R. McConkie Correlation, correlation sort of era of Mormonism in the 70s and 80s that many of us, I think, believe has sort of irreparably harmed the LDS Church. And so I want to talk today to Scott about three things and we're going to try and get this done in two hours. So it's going to be really hard for me because I'm used to five or six, but these are the three things I want to talk about. I want to talk about Scott's upbringing in the church because that's what we do in Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Then I want to talk about something very important. So, you know, we're launching a new project in Mormon Stories called Mormon Transitions. And the whole purpose of Mormon Transitions is to provide support to people who are transitioning either away from orthodoxy towards more progressive Mormonism or out of the church. We know that there's a massive wave of people leaving religions over the world, especially in America, and that is in no way, Mormonism is in no way an exception to this. And one of the biggest fears that I encounter when I talk to progressive and post Mormons is sort of this puzzling fear, this paralyzing fear.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Can I become a moral person if I leave the church? Can I be a healthy person? Can I have a healthy marriage? And one of the most bizarre and potentially offensive things that I hear, but it's very common, is can I raise health happy children as a post Mormon? And here we have someone who had the courage to be, because of his convictions to leave the LDS Church back in the early 90s. Is that right, Scott?

Scott Miller [00:05:46] It would have been really, yeah, I think about the early 90s, but probably a little bit closer to the late 80s.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] Late 80s, okay.

Scott Miller [00:05:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] And. And has become a world class human being in several dimensions. And so I want to talk to Scott about that, his transition and any tips or tricks he might have or just encouragement as a psychologist and as a, as a human about transitioning away from religious tradition. And then the final thing I want to talk about, and we're going to surprise you, it's not the book. We want to talk about some of Scott's research and expertise. Now, why are we not talking about the book? We're not talking about the book because we're going to be announcing the re release of Mormon Stories Book Club.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] We've run that in the past, past thanks to the good work of Heather Olson Beale and Brent Beal and others. They may join us in the future with Mormon Stories Book Club. I don't know. But what we want to do is make Scott's book available through Amazon on mormonstories.org encourage people to buy it and to read it over the next month. And then we're going to come back in a month with Scott and with the panel of some really exciting panelists and we're going to talk about his book. And just as a little secret surprise, the one and only Hans Mattsson, who is from Sweden, who is an Area Authority, 70 in Sweden, who actually has a surprise appearance in the book. Is that right, Scott?

Scott Miller [00:07:13] That's exactly right. Actually, it turns out I met Hans Matzon while I was a missionary. He came to visit the small branch that I was working in at that time.

John Dehlin [00:07:22] Yeah. So we're going to have Hans with a few other amazing guests and maybe some of you, if you listen to Scott's book and write a review on Amazon for him, will include you guys in a panel online video discussion with Scott about his book in about a month's time. So that is one not that is one of the longest intros I've ever had in Mormon Stories, but with all that. Dr. Scott Miller, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Scott Miller [00:07:48] Thanks, John. It's really a pleasure to be here and to be speaking with you.

John Dehlin [00:07:52] Thank you. Okay, so let's start with, with your Mormon story, like pioneer ancestry. Tell us just about your upbringing.

Growing Up Mormon in California

Scott Miller [00:08:01] I was raised in Glendora, California, which is near West Covina, Pasadena, Pomona. And my parents were Utah Mormons, born and raised in Utah. My father was a school principal. He left Utah in the 1950s after school to take a job as a principal in the Los Angeles area.

Scott Miller [00:08:23] And we lived in an area where there were lots and lots of Mormons right next to Orange County. There were LDS churches everywhere in the Small town that I grew up in. The community was large and I really had a great experience. And the truth is I didn't think of my religion or upbringing as any different than my neighbors who attended different churches. So one of my neighbors was Lutheran, the other neighbors were Catholic. We all went to our various churches on Sunday and we didn't really talk about it, fight about it, try to convert one another. We were all great friends. And so I, I didn't really have a sense of us as peculiar or different.

Scott Miller [00:09:06] I have no idea how they viewed us really. I know that I was treated fairly and equitably by the people I grew up around.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] So you didn't necessarily absorb the sort of feeling of Mormon exceptionalism of like Saturday's Warrior saved to the last days to save the world.

Scott Miller [00:09:25] Well, you know, Saturday's warrior was actually a little bit after my time, so I think I was almost in college by the time Saturday's Warrior came out. So I never really could relate to that. In addition, we had a very diverse membership at that particular ward that I was in. So no, I didn't really have a sense that we were that different, that odd. And that may just be the narcissism of youth. You just don't think about that very much. And I don't think my parents were Bible toting, Book of Mormon reading kinds of folks either. We prayed at dinner time, we held family home evenings on occasion. I home taught with my dad. It was just a regular part of life. It didn't seem like anything exceptional to me really.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] I actually love that because it doesn't necessarily set you up for such a terrible fall. And it could be that you were sort of raised maybe before correlation really had its full effect. I'm going to guess that some of that Bruce R. McConkie thickness didn't really penetrate Mormon consciousness sort of in a heavy way until maybe the early 80s. And so maybe you dodged a bullet a little bit. I don't know.

Scott Miller [00:10:49] I think that's some of it. I also think my parents were for example, Kennedy Democrats at a time when virtually everybody was moving to a more conservative politics amongst. Among Mormons. My father was an educator and he was always more interested in the.

Scott Miller [00:11:11] Not so much the literal interpretation of things, but the lessons behind those, the moral lessons behind those stories that we were told. So as a young person in a story I tell, for example in the book, I got in trouble at church because I must have been nine or 10 years old when I first heard the story of Jonah and the Whale. And I came home and looked in what was the source of all wisdom in my home, the World Book Encyclopedia. And I couldn't figure out how anybody could live in a whale for that long. So I took. I actually snuck the book to church the next Sunday.

Scott Miller [00:11:47] And when I had an opportunity, apparently I have no independent memory of this, my parents report it that I asked the teacher to show us where in heaven's name a person could live inside a whale's gut. At which point this person said, well, it was a big fish, not necessarily a whale. And I said, oh, well, I got a whole set of encyclopedias. You tell me which one to look it up in on the ride home. Because I was sent out of the class and Bishop met with me and my father. And on the way home, I had a really lovely conversation driving in my father's 65 VW bug home about what the meaning of the story might be rather than the literal translation of that story.

Scott Miller [00:12:31] So I think that's the kind of people they were. Correlation, I think, was tightening its grip, but it wasn't as tight as it became during the 1980s. And certainly my parents weren't a product of.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] That sounds like a really wonderful kind of upbringing.

Scott Miller [00:12:46] Honestly, I feel very fortunate, very lucky. My parents were good people. My father served in the Second World War as a medic and saw really, really bad things happen and never. I don't have a single memory. In fact, I can tell you that I didn't know until he was 74 that he'd even been in the bloodiest battle in the Pacific. I didn't know that. So he didn't take it out on us. My mom was a very supportive, traditional housewife of the time, totally devoted to the kids, and I think sacrificing her own personal ambitions in the service of us. So, yeah, I think it was a pretty good upbringing.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] Excellent. And so as we think about your transition to your mission experience, I don't want to give away too many spoilers from the book, but I do want to give people enough of a taste so that they will want to read it, because I think everyone should. So, you know, as I. As I think about.

Mission Experiences and Faith Challenges

John Dehlin [00:13:50] As I think about your personality on your mission, you know, you kind of get the impression that you were kind of a surfer kid, a kid that liked to have fun, a kid that, you know, that. That believed in the. In Mormonism and wanted to serve. But also, when you saw things that maybe weren't right, you. You weren't just sort of the zombie dogmatic, you Know, you would just. You were honest and open about things you. You weren't crazy about. And maybe, you know, maybe you had a little bit more salty language than the average starting missionary at the time. Just paid for us a few, maybe a few stories from your mission that would just give people a taste for how wonderful this book is and then we can jump to post mission stuff.

Scott Miller [00:14:37] I. Let me think about that. I think that I did grow up in Southern California. The beach was and continues to be my favorite place in the planet, even though I live in Chicago. Kind of stuck between the two coasts.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] You can't surf Lake Michigan. You can't surf.

Scott Miller [00:14:59] Well, you can surf Lake Michigan, but it's awful cold most of the time. And I wouldn't really. I haven't tried, I guess I should say. And the waves aren't very good. So I didn't get any pressure whatsoever to serve a mission, at least from my parents. And I think that any questioning I did was often out of naivete.

Scott Miller [00:15:22] Growing up in my home, no questions were out of order. So when things came up that seemed odd or didn't square with my sense of reality, I just said them. Now, there's another family story about me that I think gives you an indication of what's going to happen as I venture out to serve a mission for the church. And apparently when I was going to be baptized, I went in for my interview and I was arguing against being baptized, so my parents say. And the reason they said was that I was saying things like, exactly what do I need to do this for? And the bishop said, to be forgiven for your sins.

Scott Miller [00:16:06] And I apparently said, what sins are those? To which he replied, something about arguing with my brothers, not being a good boy, not following the rules at home. And I said, well, those seem fairly lightweight kinds of sins. Maybe we should wait for a while so I have an opportunity to experience them in life. Now, I didn't say it exactly like that, but according to my parents, it created a huge uproar and my baptism was delayed for a while so they could decide whether or not I was ready to become a member. It's that kind of, I think, naive questioning of what people take for granted. That's part of who I am and part of what I confront when I ventured out as a missionary for the church.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Okay, so willing to question and to just bring sincerity and curiosity and even disagreement.

Scott Miller [00:16:59] I think curiosity is the right word. At one point during my mission, for example, we were told that, well, as often happens in zone conferences, there was a story Told by one of the church leaders, probably the mission president, about a missionary in another country who had begun to break the rules. And eventually, like all missionaries who break the rules, end up in bed with a woman. This is the moral of the story. And that missionary was sent home, much to his own shame and the shame of his family. And I was sitting there thinking I'd been out, I was a little long by this point.

Scott Miller [00:17:39] I'd been out about a year. And I was thinking, where is this going? Why are we being told yet again another story about a missionary who didn't follow the rules and ended up having sex on his mission? And I had no plans of that.

Scott Miller [00:17:54] So apparently what had happened is this missionary and his companion had begun to play tennis with some with each other first. And then two women asked if they could play tennis with them. The missionaries weren't in their suits, of course, they were playing tennis.

Scott Miller [00:18:10] What came out of this story was that we were still allowed to play tennis but would have to be in our suits. So I was sitting in this room with, I'm thinking maybe 60 other missionaries from our mission at the ZONE conference. And I thought, play mission in our suits. I'm in Sweden at the time. It cost about 300 crowns to clean a suit, which was an inordinate sum of money to a missionary living on $250 a month. There was no way anybody was going to play tennis in their suit. So I just raised my hand, naive person that I am, and said, you know, nobody is going to play tennis in their suit because it costs too much to have the suit clean, not to mention how crazy this seems.

Scott Miller [00:18:50] So why don't you just say we can't play tennis in our suits. And the admission president said to me, we can discuss this at your personal priesthood interview. You. Then I knew I'd overstepped the bats. So it was one sort of crazy making kind of experience after after the other. Really?

John Dehlin [00:19:11] Yeah. And I'll just say that your treatment of the mission, you, you, you incorporate a lot of Swedish into the, the book, which gives it a lot of flavor, a lot of fun experiences. And then I think, think it's, I think it's neat how you tie a lot of the stories into sort of providing the non LDS reader with a, a better understanding of many of the cultural, historical and doctrinal aspects of Mormonism. But it's just a great and delightful read. Give us, give us maybe one more story from the mission experience and then we'll just leave the book. Any, any, any favorite Sort of story from the. From the mission you want to provide as a teaser to get people to read it.

Scott Miller [00:19:59] Another experience I had at a Zone conference. You know, missionaries are always hungry. We're always starving, riding around on our bikes, traipsing around in the snow from 9:30 in the morning till 9:30 at night. And at this particular Zone conference, in the middle of the speeches and presentations, both inspirational and training speeches that were being given, the smell brownies began to waft into the chapel. And it was intense and incredible. And I hadn't had a brownie by that time for a long time.

Scott Miller [00:20:35] And after that meeting, we were ushered into another room where we all sat around a table. And there in the middle were these piles of brownies. The smell of them again, I just. I can't even capture in words big glasses of milk by each of the spots at the table.

Scott Miller [00:20:54] And the mission president gave a blessing and then said, dig in. And you can imagine all these famished missionaries. I mean, we dove in and the people were stuffing the brownies in their face, at which point people began to retch and gag. And it turns out. And I had sat there because, I don't know, by this time, something seemed wrong to me about this.

Scott Miller [00:21:19] We'd never been given brownies before, and it just. Something smelled rotten in Sweden. And so I sat there. I didn't stuff mine in my mouth. And it turns out that these brownies had been baked with salt rather than with sugar. And when people began to retch, then the mission president went on about how things are not always as they appear in the world, and how that things that look really good on the outside and even are very enticing can be rotten on the inside.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] Oh, so it's a setup.

Scott Miller [00:21:56] The whole thing had been a setup.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] Oh, man. And I'll just say there's a really fun story about pickle juice. There's. There's really fun stories about when, you know, you and your companion confronted a gang and how that turned out. He talks about you talk about sexuality and even masturbation and rules about being in the bathroom and. Yeah, and it's. It's. I don't want people to think that it's just this kind of lightweight, trivial romp through fun, silly mission stories. It's actually quite intense, gripping, serious and interesting and funny kind of sort of journey. So, anyway, I hope that's enough of a teaser.

Scott Miller [00:22:42] Thanks. Thanks, John. I think it's a really good teaser. And I can certainly say that, like a lot of people who've gone on a mission that those two years aside, died from the birth of my children are the ones that have had the most impact on the arc of my life, really. So. And the difference is that the mission experience for me was much more complex than saying it was the best two years of my life.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] Yeah. Okay, so listeners, pause your podcast. Pause YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, go to MormonStories.org click on the link in the top left. Order Scott's book, read it within a month, and then we'll come back and talk with Scott about the book. Now Unpause. And Scott, let's talk about post mission. So, okay, talk to us about how, not wanting to give any spoilers away, but talk about how you ended up leaving the church after your mission, like in the early 80s, kind of before you, you know, sort of followed the path that so many returned missionaries follow.

Scott Miller [00:23:50] I really lost my faith while I was a missionary, and maybe lost isn't the right word. What I discovered was that I didn't really have what I thought I had when I left. And I searched and searched on my mission, and then after I came home and I couldn't find it, rediscover it. And my experience as a missionary was such that I didn't really want to be a part of an organization that could treat people like they treated them and act the way that they acted towards their members, the missionaries, and the culture in which they were embedded.

Scott Miller [00:24:40] So I had put in a year at BYU as an undergraduate student prior to leaving and going to Sweden, and I had been two years in Sweden, and I had really spent a great deal of time trying to master the language. It was something that was important to me. I wanted to be a part of the culture. I didn't want to be apart from the culture. So I spent a lot of time trying to sound Swedish and make sure that my language was, when spoken, was correct.

Scott Miller [00:25:13] And I thought, I've got to go back to byu, mainly because I was going to earn nearly a year's worth of language credits if I did. They had a fantastic language department there. And so I applied and got a job as a RA in one of the dorms and finished my undergraduate education at byu.

Scott Miller [00:25:37] Did a minor in Swedish while I was there. And in the process, I was actually going to study biology. And I was interested in veterinary medicine at the time. My uncle, who was the mayor of Springville for years and years and years, and a state senator for a while, had a veterinary practice together with another veterinary physician named Pervance, just on the border between Springville and Provo.

Scott Miller [00:26:11] So I went to work there for during my first year back. And I decided that removing dog's testicles was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was mind numbingly boring to me. About that same time, I'm taking an undergraduate psychology course from a guy named Hal Miller who was in the department of psychology, an experimental psychologist, a former student of Skinner's.

Scott Miller [00:26:39] And what was amazing about Hal Miller to me was at the very first class, he told you, you don't have to come to class. He didn't care. All you had to do was read these books and turn in the assignments, pass the quizzes and you'll get an A. Here's how you can get an A, a B or a C. But his classroom was packed. People actually were there who weren't even registered for the class. Listening to these lectures. I wanted to be Hal Miller. I wanted to be that invested, interested, curious, excited about learning and knowledge as Hal Miller was. And so I changed my major to psychology.

Scott Miller [00:27:16] I worked closely with Hal and had a fantastic education, really at BYU in psychology. As I got near the end of my time, I was trying to make a decision about what I would do to make a living. Because psychology, psychology as an undergraduate really qualifies you for unemployment and very little else.

Scott Miller [00:27:38] So I had a conversation with Dr. Miller and he told me to go see another psychologist who was working over at the Comprehensive Clinic, whose name was Michael Lambert. And Michael Lambert, if you're talking about world class psychologists right in Utah's backyard, you know, it gives me chills on my arms to think about the contribution that Mike Lambert has made to the field. I went over and talked to Mike Lambert. He said experimental psych is not what you want to do. You want to do clinical psych if you ever hope to eat and have a life.

Scott Miller [00:28:13] And he said, why don't you come and do some work with me? He was writing some chapters for what is the bible of psychotherapy outcome research. It's called the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. I was assisting one of his graduate research assistants summarizing research articles.

Scott Miller [00:28:30] It was an amazing experience, Complete and utter openness to what the science was telling us about human behavior and about how to help people as well. And Michael couldn't be a nicer and more open person. For me, it was a oasis at BYU in a sea of very conservative thinkers. Michael, Hal and many of the other professors I met there were really amazing people.

John Dehlin [00:29:01] Yeah, yeah, they are. I remember Hal Miller from my BYU days and I actually was accepted to work with Michael Amber, but I went to USU instead. But great people. So tell us just a bit about, you know, when and how did you decide to sort of part for Mormonism and, and what was that like in the 80s, early 90s, when maybe it wasn't quite as cool or popular to leave the church? What was that like? Was it hard? How did you do it? What toll did it take on you at the time?

Marriage, Family, and Leaving the Church

Scott Miller [00:29:41] Well, about a year after I came home, I met, I actually married a person that I had grown up with in Glendora who was also lds. I think looking back on that, because we're no longer married, we divorced after about six years of marriage.

Scott Miller [00:30:00] I was incredibly lonely and we were so ill suited for each other. She was a very nice person, a very good person. We were like oil and vinegar, not in a negative and antagonistic way, but literally floating on top of one another rather than. Than being with each other in a real relationship.

Scott Miller [00:30:21] And I made it pretty clear from the outset that I was not interested really in Mormonism, that I would go the requisite amount to church in order to finish my education at BYU so that I could graduate, not come to the attention of the honors system there and get on with my life.

Scott Miller [00:30:46] And I think she was very understanding and supportive. I think it was quite hard for her. Her family were true believers. Although fun loving California people, they were true believers. But I, shortly after we were married, I went only to the requisite amount of church meetings. I never went back really to the temple.

Scott Miller [00:31:11] If I think about it, I never went back. And shortly after we were married, stopped wearing my garments and moved on with my life. I thought during that time several times about writing about my mission experience because it had been so pivotal in my decision that it's not a place for me to be in.

Scott Miller [00:31:36] But at the time I didn't want to invest the energy and tie up the energy in thinking about and reviewing my Mormon experience. I also wrote a paper for Sunstone, and I think this must have been 1986 or 87, where I compared the mission experience to things I was learning about in graduate school, about how people can control others through brainwashing and thought reform.

Scott Miller [00:32:15] I presented that paper, I think it was probably at the 1986 or 1987 Sunstone Conference. The reaction was really kind of interesting. And for a moment I felt like, well, here's a community that I can connect with. If I talk about evolution, for example, I'm not going to be castigated or have people raise their eyelids at me and question whether or not I'd lost my fate. It was more about an exploration and joint curiosity.

Scott Miller [00:32:47] The paper was published in Sunstone. I did a PBS documentary with a filmmaker named Bobby Berleffi called called Mormons Missionaries to the World. She had found me through that particular article and asked me if I'd talk with her about my mission experience. In the meantime, she follows several other missionaries in different parts of their mission right from before they were going to, when they went to being midway through. And then a couple of people like me who'd already finished and either had the kind of experience I had or it was, or for others who it was a faith building experience.

Scott Miller [00:33:26] I went back to Sunstone the following year and I had rewritten the paper and had further thoughts. They invited another psychoanalyst actually to comment on the paper. I'm trying to remember what his name was now. A Jungian analyst. And my experience of that experience event was that it was the same people talking about the same things.

Scott Miller [00:33:58] And that's not what I wanted to do. Now people can have support when whatever community they belong to. For me, I suddenly knew that I didn't want to 10 years, 15 years be rehashing this same stuff about Mormonism. I was ready to say, I'm going to move on, on. And so probably around 1988, 1989, I was done.

John Dehlin [00:34:23] Okay. So I think when people contemplate leaving the church, there are several sort of components to their being. There's their identity, there's their morality, there's their family connections, there's their community, their existential worldview about who they are, where they came from, why they're here, where they're going, growing so many relationships. And I think for many people those things are so significant, so binding, so compelling that they're almost like hooks.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] And just so many people I meet just say, I'm just worried if I leave the church, I'll lose control or I won't stay moral, or I won't be able to raise good kids or my family will disappoint, disown me, or I won't be respected by my peers. I imagine that you faced at least some of those concerns. Or they'll just say, I don't know where I'll go after I die. I just can't abide the idea of there not being a God or not knowing the afterlife. Like that's too much for my psyche. I can imagine that some of those hooks were in you. And I guess My biggest question is, especially in the late 80s, how do you.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] How do you. How did you overcome those barriers and say, I'm going to do this even. Even kind of against a lot of inertia, your life's inertia, let's just say.

Scott Miller [00:35:51] Well, I think as I, as I. As I sort of. A lot of those. A lot of those hooks I think I dealt with as a missionary. I had never felt as alone in my entire life as I felt as a missionary.

Scott Miller [00:36:12] I spent lots and lots of nights hugging the toilet in whatever dump of an apartment I was living in in Sweden, crying my eyes out from the loneliness. Loneliness, because oftentimes the people I was hooked up with at the time couldn't possibly understand my experience or lack of belief. And secondly, because if I told them, then in our mission, there was an organized way to report all this information back in weekly correspondence and calls with the mission president. So you couldn't trust the person that you were living with to keep a secret or have conversations about what you were really struggling with. You were to look at one another and help them stay on the straight and narrow.

Scott Miller [00:36:59] So I think a lot of this, I began to work out as a missionary, and as I say, I think I lost my faith or my faith lost me midway through my mission experience. And I stayed mostly because I thought it would bring a tremendous amount of shame to my parents and my family.

Scott Miller [00:37:24] And secondly, I really believed that if I gave up on what was a difficult thing to do, that that would set an awful precedence for me in my life. Sometimes in life you have to do stuff you don't like and do it for a long time. People do this every day when they go to jobs that aren't great jobs, but they do it because it puts bread on the table and it makes their family life possible. And so I thought, number one, it would be quite selfish of me to just go home. And number two, I worried what it would mean, you know, the next time I have a difficult experience, would I just give up?

Scott Miller [00:38:01] And one of the things that came out of my mission, I'm sort of, I guess, drifting a bit here. One of the things that came out of my mission, John, that I value is I feel like I can almost do anything.

Scott Miller [00:38:17] If I could do that and survive for that long a period of time, I could almost do anything. And so some of those hooks, some of those problems I'd worked out before, the idea that you're not going to be a moral person simply because you're not Mormon, I had a Strong sense of who I was. In the book, I do talk, for example, about the constant refrain about masturbation. I mean, it was before I left. It was while we were there constantly in every interview, the mission president looking you in the eyes, asking you if you're morally worthy.

Scott Miller [00:38:54] The code word for whacking off, you know, So I, at some point, after, I think, naively believing that this person was there to help me, it became clear that that's not what it was about. Secondly, as I. Again, as I relate in the book, I was going to the library, I was breaking the rules, and I was doing tons of research about this, this. And suddenly things I've been told and I think accepted, not believed, but just accepted on face value. Like your parents tell you stuff, you just believe it.

Scott Miller [00:39:29] Masturbation leads to homosexuality. You know, it's absolutely laughable. Even in the early 80s, it was laughable that masturbation was unhealthy, that it would lead you to have poor connections with people. If so, nobody's going to have a relationship that I know of.

Scott Miller [00:39:49] So it was these kinds of experiences and having plenty of time on myself to think that and then enduring the experience that I think had me decide that, you know what? I'm not such a bad person. I'm always. I'm conscientious to a fault. I'm just gonna have to. I'm just gonna have to trust that.

John Dehlin [00:40:17] How about the fear and concern about disappointing loved ones? How'd you surmount that?

Scott Miller [00:40:24] Well, With my folks, I decided early on because I really wanted to come home early on, really want. And beyond just the homesickness that everybody feels, I felt like a square peg in a round hole. And not only that, I felt like our whole mission program was a square peg being pounded into a beautiful round hole called Sweden.

Scott Miller [00:40:54] So I decided that I was going to do this for them. But I've got lengthy journal entries where I say that this is it. I've paid my price. When I get home, I am now an adult, and I will have to make adult decisions, and the pieces will have to fall where they may.

Scott Miller [00:41:14] I don't think my parents had any idea. In a way, many parents don't have any idea about what goes on with their kids. A lot of the time during the day, I don't think they had any idea what I was experiencing as a missionary in Sweden.

Scott Miller [00:41:32] Otherwise, they may have taken different. They may have taken different steps. So when I got home, I was fairly blunt about what I was going to do, that I really wasn't interested in Mormonism anymore, that I wanted to go to graduate school. I was going to give up veterinary science and become a psychologist. My mother's response to that was, oh God, Scott, you know, not that field.

Scott Miller [00:41:58] Couldn't you be a real doctor instead of this phony doctor? Psychology was sort of, I guess, in her mind, next to Satan worship in

John Dehlin [00:42:09] some respects, thanks to Bruce R. McConkie.

Scott Miller [00:42:11] Yeah, but you know, my parents were good people and I think they understood and interestingly enough, I think they almost stepped back and took a hands off approach. I'm not sure they knew what to say to me or how to talk about it. And I do believe that my folks believed that the relationship with me was more important than whether or not I went to church ultimately. Did it bother them? Yeah, in the same way that when your own children make choices that don't fit for you, that you hope for them in any way, that it worries you, that it bothers you. We know our way. My parents knew Mormonism, but at the same time they loved me. And that was going to be the overriding interest.

John Dehlin [00:43:03] What about the fear that if you were to have children that they wouldn't be good moral people? Did you ever have that sort of worm in your brain or did you just never?

Scott Miller [00:43:13] You know, to me this reminded me of. First off, I think on my mission I experienced. I want to be careful here because I don't just want to be inflammatory. So I'm talking here about my experience of the people that I served with. They may have a very different experience of this, but it's my experience, to me, of course, that altered the arc of my life. And so I would say I experienced a kind of sadism that dressed up in the garb of holiness, that if that was what moral meant, then I didn't want my kids to be anywhere near it. So I think. And the pickle story that you tell or that you mentioned is one example that this missionary serves me pickle juice

John Dehlin [00:44:13] as a juice for breakfast. You thought it was orange juice?

Scott Miller [00:44:18] I did and it was kind of. There was a sadistic quality to it and then just some of the interactions and the emphasis was so horribly misplaced that I decided early on that. That those people had no corner on morality either and that I had to think about for myself what was a good person and then try to convey that to my own family, my own kids.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] So as we think about that sort of. Was it a seven year marriage that you had?

Scott Miller [00:44:54] Six, about six years.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] I can only imagine putting myself in your Shoes that sort of going through a divorce as a non believing sort of post Mormon only fits the stereotype of like the life falling apart of, of choosing sin or selfishness and sort of sending this message to everybody that you kind of failed and, and we're gonna, and we're gonna choose a life of, of waywardness. Was that an emotional tax that you were burdened by or, or not so much. Did you kind of move beyond.

Scott Miller [00:45:30] Let me, let me just say that and go back to something you said earlier. Post Mormon. I don't view myself as a post Mormon and I know we have to have a language to try to describe this particular experience any more than I'm a post child now that I'm an adult. I'm not a post child. I am an adult with a continuous experience of myself from the time I was little. And, and it's the same thing with Mormonism. I would say I'm beyond my childhood, which includes Mormonism. And there are many wonderful aspects to that upbringing, but I'm not a kid anymore. I'm an adult and I'm making more adult decisions.

Scott Miller [00:46:16] And I think if you're moving away from the faith or anything that you've been committed to, including a marriage, you have to see both sides of this and see it as an integrated part of yourself. I was listening to the interview with Clark Johnson again, who was the person you interviewed, who was in the Book of Mormon, the play.

Scott Miller [00:46:42] And he has such a lovely way and such a mentally healthy way of talking about leaving the church. And the truth is you don't leave, you move on, you move beyond. Like I say in my ham fisted way here, that I'm no longer a child, but Mormonism is very much a part of who I was. Would I go to the Mormon Church now? I'm not interested. But I'm not interested in go visiting my elementary school either, you know, so.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] So you don't identify as a post Mormon?

Scott Miller [00:47:16] No, and I don't really identify as a Mormon either. I'm Scott Miller, I guess, with an identity as a psychologist and a researcher, a parent, a partner who was raised in Glendora. Now I haven't been in California. Here's another perfect example. I haven't lived in California since I moved to the Midwest, which was about what? Well, the very early 90s. But I still, if you would have seen me yesterday, I had my Newport Beach T shirt on and a swimsuit all day. Where the hell am I gonna swim? I'm living in the Midwest, so I still have that Part of my surfer childhood with me. Even though I'm not a surfer, I'm really not a Californian anymore. I've lived out of the state for longer than I lived in it.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] So when you did experience that failed marriage, it sounds like you didn't carry a lot of shame with that. You were just ready to move on, is that right?

Scott Miller [00:48:29] I struggled with that decision for several years. And I will tell you that on my wedding night, I knew I'd made a mistake. A mistake that I swore I would never make again. I had told myself as a missionary that when I got home, I had to really think through things before I made decisions that were hard to undo.

Scott Miller [00:48:55] And so I struggled back and forth about undoing this decision that I had made, because now another person was involved here, so it wasn't just me. But on my wedding night, I knew this was a mistake. So there really was no honeymoon for me. And the next three years was really trying to make something work that I had already decided wasn't likely to work.

Scott Miller [00:49:22] And so I did have guilt, but mostly about this other person that I was with being hurt by my decision, because I think her view was that this was forever and we were going to have a traditional Mormon family somehow with kids and live in the celestial kingdom. And, you know, that wasn't what was going to happen. And I knew it from the beginning.

Scott Miller [00:49:52] And so there was a selfishness, I think, in that decision that I felt guilty about. The selfishness was, I'm so lonely and I'd love to start having sex. And the truth is, my marriage didn't solve either of those problems.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Wonderful. Okay, so I don't know if this part really is going to be unique to Mormons in any way, but you get divorced, you sort of move on from Mormonism. There's a lot of people out there that are also moving on from Mormonism. And this may just be basic life skills, but let's just say you were to get. Give three major pillars of sort of transitioning away from a fundamentalist religious tradition into a life of happiness, success, health, and meaning. What would be some pillars also, as a psychologist that you would offer people to sort of frame their approach to finding health and happiness and healing. Healing. After being caught up in this religion for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, are you looking for.

Practical Steps for Post-Mormon Transitions

Scott Miller [00:51:05] You mean, like practical steps?

John Dehlin [00:51:07] Just. Yeah, just. Just. Yeah, just kind of wisdom. Like just, you know, three or four pieces of wisdom that you think helped you leave this tradition that had such a grip on you, but also succeed phenomenally in Your life. So it's kind of the Oprah meaning sort of give us three or four pieces of wisdom that we can sort of orient our lives by, kind of question.

Scott Miller [00:51:39] Yeah, well, I guess I would say I feel it would be the height of presumptuousness to advise people about that. I think each person's journey truly is unique. And I have several close friends who are still in the faith, although at different levels, and struggle. And so I have a great life. John, does that mean there are never worries or anxieties or depression and discouragement? Absolutely not. So the truth is that if you think leaving Mormonism will make you happy, you've got another thing coming.

Scott Miller [00:52:23] So the way to solve that is to have a vision, in my opinion, about where you want to go and what you want to achieve and make that decision, make that vision happen. All I did was say, I don't want this. I really want this over here. I couldn't keep saying this isn't what I want. I had to specify what it was I really did want.

Scott Miller [00:52:46] I wanted a. A career in psychology. I wanted a freedom to think and do what I wanted. So I think having a vision, not just being against what you've experienced, but being for what you want in your life.

Scott Miller [00:53:03] The second thing I think is you're going to need help. And the best help is people who don't know anything about Mormonism and who don't care about Mormonism. It's amazing how many people, when you say, I was raised a Mormon, they go, what's that? You know, if you're inside Mormonism, it consumes your entire world. Most people don't give Mormonism a second thought. And not because they're mean or rude or they don't. They're anti Mormons. They just don't think about Mormonism. We inside the faith think about it every second of every day and make every decision based on. Based on that they don't have any idea about it.

Scott Miller [00:53:45] So you need to hang around. I would say regular people, people whose entire lives aren't consumed by this activity. And pretty soon you start to find there are amazing people who live rich lives that have nothing to do with Mormonism, every aspect of it. And I been very lucky to have met people that are a supportive community to me, not the supportive anti Mormon roots community, but supportive of my vision, where I want to be, who I want to hang out with, the sense I have of myself as a person. So I would say the second piece is community. Reach out. And after you've been out of it because I've been gone a long time.

Scott Miller [00:54:38] You know, it was one of my worries about writing this book that I just haven't thought really. And Mormonism hasn't really consumed my life for a very long time. There'll be a day when you look back and you'll hear something about Mormonism. And you may. You may think, oh, yeah, I remember that. But then you'll think, wow, that's the weirdest and strangest belief possible. How could I have ever.

Scott Miller [00:55:02] How could anybody believe that? It's tantamount to somebody knocking on your door right now if you're stuck in it and saying, look, there's this blue God. His name's Vishnu, he has eight arms, and if you believe in him, you're going to go to heaven. You would go, mm. And you would shut the door.

Scott Miller [00:55:20] That's the reaction people have to the Mormons. And neither here nor there, doctrinally wise. If you want to move beyond that, you just have to surround yourself with people that are different than that, you know, as for the worries about, you know, moral debauchery, you know, I think one good thing I got from my faith was not the moral rules of Mormonism. Don't have sex before marriage, don't masturbate.

Scott Miller [00:55:53] That wasn't it. But I do think psychologically there's an important principle here for mental health, and that is delaying gratification. And being able to delay gratification is an important component of success.

John Dehlin [00:56:06] The marshmallow test, right?

Scott Miller [00:56:08] It's the marshmallow test. If you want a fantastic read, there's a brand new book out written by the person who came up with the marshmallow test. And if you don't know about that, what essentially researchers, psychologists have found, found is that if you take a younger child and put them in a room all alone, sounds like my mission. And you put a marshmallow on the table and you can say, you can eat this now, or if you wait, you can have two later, and then you leave the room. And it just so happens that kids who wait, and the longer they wait, that the waiting period is predictive of success in life in terms of income and durable relationships, et cetera.

Scott Miller [00:56:51] So I think that's what I got. And that's one of the messages I say to my own child, that it's. But it's not couched in this language, I think unhealthy language about sexuality, but more about needing to work hard to get what you want and not always getting it right away.

John Dehlin [00:57:15] So that's something that you've kept that's actually been useful to you.

Scott Miller [00:57:19] Yeah. And so the two parts for me in terms of somebody who's beginning to transition is number one, don't be against something before something. Look for the vision, where do you really want to go? And that can be a challenge because again, Mormonism is all consuming and I don't think you realize how all consuming it is until you're outside of it.

Scott Miller [00:57:40] And the second piece of this is to start to make friends and have community outside of Mormons. And I think those two pieces have really served me well. And then I guess if there's a third point, it's, I've been patient with myself because in the beginning, you know, you have feelings. And I wouldn't say my feelings were more guilty, but struggling with, how could I ever have believed this?

Scott Miller [00:58:15] What is wrong with me that I ever sort of gave this a second thought? And those negative sort of punitive, that negative punitive self talk was a struggle for me more so than oh my God, there's no God, we're all going to die and that's it. You know, that kind of stuff. I didn't really, it didn't occupy my

John Dehlin [00:58:42] mind so much real quickly. So do you. Is trying to reconstitute a theological sort of existential worldview important to you or is your focus sort of just on living your life and letting the afterlife be or not be?

Existential Questions and Finding Meaning

Scott Miller [00:59:01] Well, it's interesting to hear you use that word because I think if somebody says to me and you haven't asked, but I'll say it, if somebody says, well, do you believe in God? I usually say I don't believe and I don't not believe.

Scott Miller [00:59:16] It's just not something that I spend my life thinking of on a day to day basis. I'm trying to do the best job I can in the work that I do. I'm trying to, to improve in my relationship with my partner and be a good father to my son, that takes a lot of bandwidth just to do that. There's plenty of guilt there.

Scott Miller [00:59:39] But I think my outlook on life is more existential. Meaning that I'm trying to understand and make meaning in my own life in the here and now. But I'm not consumed by what happens after I died and I'm not worried about how I got there. I'd have to really think more about that.

Scott Miller [01:00:04] But I think I'm more interested in making meaning in the here and now and trying to be a decent person with the people that I live with and interact with.

John Dehlin [01:00:16] How have you avoided the paralyzing fear of death and possibly the termination of your existence?

Scott Miller [01:00:23] Well, this is another interesting thing that was really. That made me. Reminded me when I listened to the interview with Clark, and that is for a long while, I think I didn't care if I lived or died. And Clark says the same thing, which is kind of interesting. Here I am a member of the only true church on earth, and as the plane takes off, if it crashes, I'm thinking the same thing Clark said in his interview, which was fantastic to hear somebody who had a sort of similar experience, that if it crashes, you know, that's not so bad because life really is a lot of work.

Scott Miller [01:01:00] And I was. And I was, I think. I wouldn't say tortured, but I was before I made the decision that, you know, I'm going to move on from here, here, I think I struggled. So once I was beyond that decision, had made that decision, and I'm moving on, then it's interesting how that angst lifted, really. And I'm not worried about what happens after. If there is a God, I figure that person will take care of it. And if there isn't, it'll be like before I was born. I won't know anything anyway.

John Dehlin [01:01:41] And sufficient the day at hand, basically.

Scott Miller [01:01:43] Well, there are enough challenges about being a good person that I. I think that's enough to focus on.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] And opportunities for doing good. Right. That's how I see it.

Scott Miller [01:01:54] And. And opportunities for doing good with your. By your family, by you. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:01] Okay, so let's turn. Tell me how many minutes you have left. I want to squeeze every drop out of the lemon, but at the same

Scott Miller [01:02:08] time, I have about 20 more minutes.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Okay, good. All right, so let's jump into your amazing career. Tell us. You know, I think of common factors and I think of super shrink as just the shorthand for the. The two big things I'm aware of. Talk us through. And you know, most of our listeners obviously aren't mental health professionals or psychologists, but there are a few. But just talk us through some of the. The biggest parts of your profession and your research and your clinical work. And. And in a way that might be broadly useful to 40 to 80,000 Mormons and former Mormons and humans out there.

Career in Psychology and Effective Therapy

Scott Miller [01:02:50] Well, right out of graduate school, I took a job in Milwaukee and moved from. I did a postdoc in California in Palm Springs, and I moved to Milwaukee and I began working. I was very fortunate. Began working with two leading minds in the field at the time. And they were developing a very specific approach to treatment.

Scott Miller [01:03:15] And what was interesting about this experience is I gained immense confidence as a practitioner, because I have to tell you that when you finish graduate school, most therapists, it's an exception that you leave graduate school thinking, now I know how to help people.

Scott Miller [01:03:36] What you leave with is a ton of ideas, no practical experience, and really, you're winging it. So I got a great deal of confidence by going to this place. Unfortunately, after working there for several years and doing research, we found that the particular approach that we were working on wasn't any more effective than anything else, which, if you're trying to sell books, is not a good thing to find. You know, you want to find that your method is best. And so the question was, what to do? And it's created huge controversy in the team that was working together. But eventually the team split, and the half that I was with was going to follow where the science led us.

Scott Miller [01:04:20] And the science said, this method that we're using just isn't where it's at. I didn't say we weren't effective. What I said was we weren't any more effective than everyone else. So the question is, well, why believe that? Why believe in this method if in fact it's just as good at getting you to home base as anything else? So we began looking at factors that all approaches have in common. We had sort of an ecumenical approach. All roads lead to Rome. What are the factors that each one of these particular approaches operationally in unique ways

John Dehlin [01:04:55] and just really quickly to give listeners an understanding of what we're talking about. Just as an example, a therapist can use various modalities in their approach to treating clients. They can use cognitive therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, Freudian therapy. There's a hundred thousand different types of therapy out there. And basically what you're saying is, in many ways, there's not a lot of difference. And so I just wanted to make

Scott Miller [01:05:20] sure listeners understood, and let's even draw the parallel even closer, given that subject of your podcast. You know, there are many religions, and all of them say, ours is the one. And some of them say it more loudly. We don't have to mention who on this podcast. So essentially what we were saying was is that, look, in the end, all these different religions have a way of getting you to home base or to heaven. That's not satisfying to any of the people who believe completely in that particular

John Dehlin [01:05:53] religion or who want your time and money.

Scott Miller [01:05:56] That's right. So then the question is, well, how do we. How do we Solve this. I'm not the first person to say that. Well, you know, all of these religions sort of do very similar things and say similar things. And that's essentially what we were saying about our treatment approach in psychotherapy, which, as I've already mentioned, appeals not at all to the true believers. And it doesn't solve the question about, well, which one should I join then? Do I just roll the dice? You know, so ultimately we even gave up the common factors because it didn't convince anybody, knowing that they all preached the same thing.

John Dehlin [01:06:33] And tell us just quickly what those

Scott Miller [01:06:35] were, because listeners won't know which were

John Dehlin [01:06:38] what the common factors are.

Scott Miller [01:06:39] Oh, things like a strong therapeutic relationship with your provider. We know as researchers that most of the difference in outcome between treatments are attributable to the relationship with the provider. It's not about their college degree, their training, their certification, or which method they're using. It's really about how the patient feels about their therapy therapist and whether that therapist invites a high level of engagement on the part of the patient.

Scott Miller [01:07:15] Which also says that if you're a consumer of a mental health service and you don't like your therapist and you don't feel engaged, you feel like that they're not helping you, you should get out. They don't have any special wisdom. If what they say doesn't engage you in the process and doesn't help you, you should leave.

Scott Miller [01:07:33] And what we have done, done, I think most recently is say, how do you know when to leave? How do you know when the particular counselor or church is one you shouldn't stick with much longer? And so we developed a set of metrics, set of tools that clinicians can use that clients or their patients fill out that indicate when there's a mismatch, a lack of fit and a lack of progress, and as a result, that empowers both the consumer of the service and the provider of the service to enter into that conversation. Maybe this isn't the right one for you.

Scott Miller [01:08:17] And that in and of itself is sort of a. Interestingly enough, it's kind of a monumental finding. And I'm not the only person to point this out. I stand stand on the shoulders of a remarkably great thinker. One of them I've already mentioned, Mike Lambert, who was onto this a decade before we were. I think our unique contribution, perhaps of late, is that once we began using these metrics or these tools to measure the outcomes, we found that, interestingly enough, not some treatment approaches, not some religions were better than others, but rather some therapists some members of a religion, some ministers within those religions were better than others.

Scott Miller [01:09:06] And we wanted to find out what made those therapists top performers, how come some of them really excelled at engaging. The people that they worked with were able to engage a much broader and more diverse clientele than others. And that's what we've been trying to unpack and understand so that other therapists who are less able can improve their work.

John Dehlin [01:09:32] And that's the super shrink idea.

Scott Miller [01:09:35] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:09:35] And if you're comfortable, just share with us sort of the big secret that the super shrinks have on all the other mental health professionals out there. If you don't mind. I don't mind giving away the secrets.

Scott Miller [01:09:47] Well, I'll tell you this. It's not their amount of education, communication. It's not the technique that they use. Iq, not iq, not emotional intelligence either. It's not years of experience. It's not number of hours doing therapy. It's not prior social skills and abilities. What it is is these therapists are able to relate to and engage a broader and more diverse clientele. 97% of the difference in outcome among providers is their ability to engage clients. What it means is that the best engage more and they engage clients who have a much more diverse presentation. So I think if you tie this back to religion, it's about relationships and it's about people. And for us, what we're trying to do is help therapists let go of their dogma about what they know needs to be done with a patient or a consumer and embrace the client.

John Dehlin [01:10:59] And isn't the secret sauce of that engagement simply having a regular dialogue between therapist and client about what's working and what's not working? Just a candid weekly. Hey, how did today's session go? Was it good for you? Was it not good for you? What worked, what didn't?

Scott Miller [01:11:18] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:11:19] Isn't that it?

Scott Miller [01:11:20] Yes. In addition to having a norm reference. So not only do I have to have a conversation with the person that I'm working with and assess whether or not it's working or not working, whether they're engaged, whether I've offended them, etc. I also have to. I also have to have some norm to compare to. And therapists, because they work in isolation in their offices, their view of what's normal and not can become terribly skewed. People are not. People in general are not like patients in therapy in particular. So you have to have some kind of norm reference to know when what I'm believing is not, not actually common.

John Dehlin [01:12:07] Okay.

Scott Miller [01:12:08] And I think that, you know, again, to see, I may be stretching things to the breaking point here, but to me that's the same thing that needs to happen. If you're thinking about moving beyond your Mormon roots, you have to have a different norm reference. If you continually compare yourself to the people at the sacrament meeting, you're going to be pretty discouraged and depressed most of the time because not even they are representative of most Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:12:38] Right, right. And I just, I just have to, I'm sorry for drawing parallels here, but one of the, I think one of the illnesses probably of our, of our church culture is there isn't, there isn't a way. There is no interest in feedback. Right. I mean, from, from the general authorities down to the bishops, it's not about, how's this working, what can we do better? Let's have a symbiotic mutual relationship. It's sort of unidirectional. It's like, here's what you are to do and here's what we're going to do, and you can, you can sort of pay, pray and obey. But, but, but the, but the goal is submission. Not, not an interaction of respected sort of co. Equals.

Scott Miller [01:13:24] Right. And I can say that this is not a problem unique to Mormonism. I would say the healthcare industry as a whole has operated under this idea that the doctor tells you what to do and you either do it or not. And if you don't do it, well, then, my goodness, you're non compliant and helping therapists and healthcare practitioners shift this mentality. Thank goodness for the millennium.

Scott Miller [01:13:53] I think that the millennials are changing the shape of our culture at the present time and much for the better. In fact, I just read a stat here today. Listen to this. Let's see, where is it? It says that millennials, people under the age of 35, want feedback 50% more often than non millennials.

Scott Miller [01:14:15] It's about inequality of relationship. And I think that we need to move in that particular direction because society is changing, culture is changing, you need the other person. You don't need an authority telling you what to do all the time.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] Yeah, beautiful. Okay, so the way that we always end Mormon stories. Scott and I sure have loved our time together and I, I know that we could talk for hours more, but the way that we end is with people sharing the equivalent of their testimony. And when we say that, what we mean is if you have any parting wisdom or thoughts or experiences that you want to share, sort of as what you stand for and what you believe in and who you are. Let's even say, if you have had to give your own eulogy or write your own tombstone, what would you want kind of said or written in those circumstances?

Reflections, Legacy, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [01:15:19] I now I'm going to stall for a bit to give you a chance to collect your thoughts. But that is, that is, that's how we always end Mormon stories. And you've shared a lot of really good things with us today. You even shared your wisdom about what, what advice you'd give to people who are transitioning and in addition to your research. But how would you feel about giving us your lived sort of final thoughts of inspiration or wisdom to how you would want to be thought of or remembered or what words you would want to share?

Scott Miller [01:16:00] If somebody asked me how I hope to be remembered, I would hope they would say that Scott had an undying curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and faith that in the end it would all work out.

John Dehlin [01:16:19] So curiosity and sort of faithful optimism.

Scott Miller [01:16:25] Yeah. I think that ultimately it all works out. And if it otherwise, there's not much to worry about. You know, my mother spent the better part of her life anxious and worried. Worried about money and worried about who would get her possessions after she died and worried about what would happen to us as kids. And now she's dead. So, you know, what was all the worry about? So I prefer to live in a world of wonder and curiosity. And if I have helped other people or if I've stimulated people to think of the impossible as possible, then I think I've done my job as a psychologist, as a partner,

John Dehlin [01:17:18] the father.

Scott Miller [01:17:19] And there is so much. The world is such a large an interest, interesting place. There is so much. The minute you open your eyes, there's something to be curious about and interested in.

John Dehlin [01:17:32] Yeah. So seize the day.

Scott Miller [01:17:35] Seize the day.

John Dehlin [01:17:36] Carpe diem. All right. Dr. Scott Miller, you are an inspiring human to me. And so I'm honored to share you with your. Some of. I don't want to say your former people, but share with you a lot of my listeners. So I'm so delighted.

Scott Miller [01:17:56] I'm grateful, John. And I think that what Mormon stories does and what the community that you've created is really very important. And I value our connection and our friendship.

John Dehlin [01:18:09] Thank you. Okay, so, listeners, you have a very important duty and responsibility. You are to go to MormonStories.org, you are to click on that link. You are to purchase Scott's book, Book of a Mormon. What's the subtitle again?

Scott Miller [01:18:27] Real Life and Strange Times. Of an LDS missionary.

John Dehlin [01:18:29] All right. And you were to read that book in a four week period. It's a great read. It's a fast read. I read a third of it over just one weekend. So I know you could do it too.

Scott Miller [01:18:41] Can I say one thing about the book, John?

John Dehlin [01:18:43] Yeah, please.

Scott Miller [01:18:43] It's not a. This book is told through the eyes of a 19 year old. It's told in real time. So it's a novelized version really of the mission experience. This isn't a retrospective look at what happened on my mission and I believe you would agree, John, it's not a screed. I'm not interested in that. I was interested in simply telling the story.

John Dehlin [01:19:05] Yeah, no, I think it's a really important book. I don't know of a better book to capture sort of the Mormon missionary experience in the 70s and 80s 80s and I think that's a really important. That's when the missionary program exploded. And so I think it's just super important part of our history and culture and just great life lessons for everybody, non Mormons included. So go get the book. Go buy the book.

Scott Miller [01:19:28] Thanks.

John Dehlin [01:19:29] Start reading the book and in one month's time we're going to bring Dr. Scott Miller back to Mormon Stories to Mormon Stories Book Club. We're going to bring on Hans Mattson, the former Swedish and area authority. We're going to bring on some other guests, some of you who are willing to go up and write a review of the book. We will select you to join us and we're going to have a fantastic dialogue about this amazing book as the kickoff launch to the the New Mormon Stories Book Club. So we'll see you in a month, Scott.

Scott Miller [01:20:04] Perfect. Look forward to it, John.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] And all the listeners out there, there, Please go to MormonStories.org Please give your feedback to Scott. If you have questions or comments, maybe Scott will be able to review that and interact with some of you.

Scott Miller [01:20:17] And you can find, you can find me on the web by the way. So if you, what's your website? Well, Scott D. Miller.com and you can email me through the web. There's a Facebook page called the Book of a Mormon that you can leave messages there as well and I'll, I'm, I'm looking at those and respond. Responding in time.

John Dehlin [01:20:34] Brilliant. Brilliant. All right. And, and just finally to all of you who support Mormon Stories, especially financially, just know that, that your donations make this all possible. It's how I feed my family and it's just super appreciated. So thanks to everyone who supports us and Dr. Scott Miller. We'll see you in a month.

Scott Miller [01:20:54] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] All right, take care.

Scott Miller [01:20:56] Thanks.

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