Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's February 26, 2025, and today we are going to be having a classic Mormon Stories interview where we interview someone who is an active, faithful, attending member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who is aware of all the problematic history and the social issues, but has developed kind of a nuanced or progressive testimony, I would say, and who has chosen to remain affiliated and attending the church. So think Patrick Mason. Think the Paul Brothers. Think Dan Witherspoon, Jim Bennett, in the sense that Mormon Stories has always tried to have people along the faith spectrum, and. And we value those types of discussions. I don't see Mormon Stories as being anti Mormonism, as anti lds. I actually don't have as a motivation eroding faith or taking people out of the church or keeping them in the church. I literally just want people to know as much truth as they want to know and find as much healing and joy as they want to feel in or out of religion, full stop. So. So today's interview is with Dave McKenzie. Hey, Dave.

Dave McKenzie [00:01:28] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Thanks for coming on.

Dave McKenzie [00:01:30] Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:01:31] Yeah. And is it true that the Paul Brothers interview was a motivator for you to apply?

Dave McKenzie [00:01:38] Yeah. So watching that. Gosh, was it September of last year? I think somewhere around there, I felt like they did a lot of good for those of us who understand some of the complications of the history and the doctrine and theology of the church. But there were a lot of frustrations as well. I gathered that maybe they were still a little young in their sitting in the crucible, as it were, in understanding some of these complications. And it didn't necessarily allow for the type of conversation that it possibly could have been. And I think I've seen some other responses or comments on that particular episode that were saying the same things. And so that prompted me, and I wrestled with it and ultimately threw my hat in the ring, and here we are. So I'm excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Fun. Well, thanks for being here.

Dave McKenzie [00:02:29] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] We also hope they'll be like with Patrick Mason, you know, back and forth, Q and A on both sides. I know that these types of interviews can be triggering for people who've left the church and feel harmed by the church. I just hope people can understand that. I just believe it's important not to be an echo chamber. And I also just want to provide role models of support for healthy engagement in life, in or out of Christianity. In and out of organized religion, in and out of Mormonism, and that's just what Mormon Stories is about. So one of the ways we like to start, Dave, is by having people state an intention of why they want to do this interview. Do you want to start there?

Dave's Intentions for Coming on the Show

Dave McKenzie [00:03:16] Yeah, for sure. So as I've thought about this over the past handful of months, I think the biggest thing that I would say for my intention is to come on and talk about the power of ownership, both from an apologetic side and from a critical side, and where I tend to sit somewhere in between. I've come to understand the power of owning what it is that we are as members of the church. And I try to conduct my life in that way, raise my kids in that way. And ultimately, if we're going to decide to stay in and continue to be engaged, that we know what we're really a part of, in many ways it can help defend. In many ways it can help us grow when we accept and acknowledge some of the challenges as well. So. So I hope throughout this story that we've been through and we'll meander through a lot of different things that we can get to that point for sure.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Me too. And for those of you who haven't ever watched or listened to an episode like this, two things are particularly interesting. One is, you know, some would argue there's a lot of people questioning and or leaving, not just Mormonism, but organized religion these days. And some would argue once they've discovered problems with the church's truth claims or with its positions on several social issues that like, it's almost impossible to stay. But that's not true. I think they're just. I think there's a double digit percentage of active faithful Mormons who are anywhere from pimo physically in, but mentally out, to nuanced and progressive. And that number is probably growing, not shrinking. So it's always interesting, but it's always interesting to hear how someone deals with problems with Joseph Smith, problems with the Book of Mormon, problems with the Book of Abraham, problems with LGBT issues or women's issues or whatever, and find a way to stay faithful. Plus, you know, how people are able to stay active in attending church without some would say going crazy or without it degrading your mental health.

Dave McKenzie [00:05:44] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] So that's one thing to kind of listen for today. Yeah, I think those are two things. So how does someone stay in spite of the issues and then how do they make it work, you know? Oh, and how they deal with the fact that for some coming on Mormon stories is A very risky endeavor because it signals a lot to family and friends and to church leaders. So it is, no matter what, I don't care where you are. It's an act of courage to just speak publicly anywhere, but particularly on a podcast that can be viewed as controversially as Mormon Stories does. So for all those reasons, I'm excited for today's episode.

Dave McKenzie [00:06:28] Yeah, me too.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Okay. So any other thing you want to say about your intention of coming on?

Dave McKenzie [00:06:36] No, I just, again, I agree with you. There is a lot of, I guess, courage and boldness and vulnerability, I guess, to come on in a platform like this. And I know there's a lot of people in the church, I think, that would love to be able to speak more openly like this. But many of them are employed by the church. And in my experiences in talking with people who are in those positions, it's a very challenging. As much as all of us want those of us who are seekers for truth and will continue to seek and tell that absolute truth can be understood, I think that we have to manage our expectations about what the church is doing and its overall role. And I do believe that there is an evolution and a migration towards increased transparency. You've said for years you simply just want people to be able to be informed and have an informed consent to be able to know what they're a part of. And I feel, as I've taken up that encouragement from you over eight and a half years, that has been empowering for me, and I hope that more people can do that and as a whole, that we can come to greater ownership.

John Dehlin [00:07:54] Beautiful.

Dave McKenzie [00:07:55] Yeah.

Family Background and Growing Up Mormon

John Dehlin [00:07:56] All right. So I usually like to start with parents and kind of, you know, were your parents LDs? Where'd they meet? Do you have pioneer ancestry? Let's start where your Mormon stories begins. With your parents, for sure.

Dave McKenzie [00:08:10] So with my parents, from what I understand, on the McKenzie side, we're really third. I'm probably third generation as far as activity goes. My grandpa, I know his father became baptized, but really was never active. My grandpa became active. He and my grandma were sealed in the temple after they were initially married. They have five children. My grandpa became a bishop, and they served in the temple and became beautiful, beautiful people in the church. On my Rigby side, my mom's side, I think that there are some deeper roots in pioneer ancestry. But even, you know, looking back, a lot of the roots from that side come from my grandparents. My mom's dad died at age 35. He was a dentist. Died of leukemia, if I remember. My mom was age two.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] Where was this?

Dave McKenzie [00:09:09] This was in Layton, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] Where was your dad growing up?

Dave McKenzie [00:09:13] My dad was also in Layton.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] Oh, okay.

Dave McKenzie [00:09:15] Both in Layton.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] Is that Davis County?

Dave McKenzie [00:09:18] Davis County.

John Dehlin [00:09:18] All right.

Dave McKenzie [00:09:19] Yep. In that. I think it's Davis County. It's part of Davis County. And so my mom's experience was to grow up without a dad. And my grandma was actually pregnant with our fifth child when my grandpa passed away at age 35 or 36 as a dentist. And it threw their family into some difficulties, but they remained faithful to the church in those early years. But on my mom's side of the family, there are some siblings that have left the church from a young age. But one of the greatest and probably one of the most beautiful people that I do know is my Aunt Georgie. And I'll say her name. I love her dearly. And one of the greatest things that she. She's not an active member of the church and hasn't been for most of her life, but she is one of the most Christlike. If there's a definition of somebody who just loves people, that's who she is. And so even in the absence of somebody, you know, not having the influence of the church throughout their life, I've been around that since I was a young child. And one of the things that she would always say is variety is the spice of life and just understanding that there's a lot of beautiful ways to live life. So on my dad's side, they also had five kids. My dad was the second youngest. He was the only boy out of five. There's four girls, one boy. And where'd your parents meet? They. My dad was, I think, two years older than her. They would have known each other late in high school. Back in the 70s, my dad served a mission in Geneva, Switzerland, and then came home and married my mom. I think my mom had just barely turned 19 when they got married, and then had my older brother and then myself. I'm second out of five. So one younger brother and then two younger sisters.

John Dehlin [00:11:00] And where were we all raised?

Dave McKenzie [00:11:02] Raised up in North Ogden, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] North Ogden.

Dave McKenzie [00:11:05] Harrisville was the city. That's where we moved to when I was five. So.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] Okay, so your second of five.

Dave McKenzie [00:11:13] Is that what you said, second of five?

John Dehlin [00:11:14] Second of five, yep. And North Ogden. How traditional was your Mormon upbringing?

Dave McKenzie [00:11:20] Very traditional. So my dad was an Elders Quorum president. My mom served as a Relief society president. Our ward was very active. There was a lot of boys in our neighborhood, so we were all just playing sports. Playing. Played a lot of sports at the church on Saturday mornings, football, you know, soccer, everything like that. Played a lot of volleyball growing up. Ruined my dad's grass in the backyard because we played so much volleyball from age 13 to 16. Just had a great time in Scouts. I was an Eagle Scout as far as activity, we went to church every Sunday. We really didn't ever miss. Prayed every single night. And it's interesting to look back now as a father of I've got six children and see the importance and the power of gathering on a daily basis. We would kneel down on the ground and we would hold hands and pray almost every single night for my entire youth. And just to look at the power of the gather, what that provides and otherwise. Family home evening was hit and miss. Scripture study was hit and miss. But it pretty much always is otherwise. Traditionally. Yeah, I haven't heard anybody who comes on here and they're like, we were consistent for 20 years. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So very, very traditional in that way.

Teen Years and Early Religious Experiences

John Dehlin [00:12:34] Okay. Any traumatic things happened in your childhood and then any religious or familial or personal conflict in your teen years?

Dave McKenzie [00:12:45] Nothing in the teen years. I mean, I was basically just a regular kind of dumb teenager like many of us are, just trying to figure life out. Had some very good experiences with bishops. Never really did anything that would keep me from going on a mission, but had very good experiences with just the standard that they would try to pull me towards as I talked with them and things like that. I know a lot of people come on and, you know, recall some, maybe some traumatic experiences. But my experience, maybe from a bishop roulette standpoint, was very positive, you know, traumatic experiences. So probably the most challenging experience that happened when I was 18 was when we had an accident with my older brother. And like many people do, we go on senior trips when we graduate from high school. Right. So my brother was a year older than me, so he'd already graduated in 1998. And some buddies and I. So there were three buddies and myself and then my brother. So five of us total. We decided we wanted to go on a long backpacking trip. Somebody told us about this really cool 40 mile loop hike down in the San Rafiel Swells, which is in southern Utah area. And so we said, okay, let's go do this. And it's funny to look back now, you know, I've done a lot of hiking and backpacking in Utah, and I. I would Never recommend an 18 year old to go and do that, that particular hike because there's no trail. You just have to use a map and all those kind of things. But we were excited. And so we met at my Buddy's house on July 12, which was Sunday of 1998, and checked all of our gear, made sure we had enough ramen noodles, had our filtration systems. And right before we went to bed that night, my friend's mom handed us one of those old Nokia cell phones with some phone numbers on there to the local search and rescue. And we woke up the next morning and it's funny because I remember thinking, what do we need that cell phone for? Nothing's going to happen, right? But that proved to be very instrumental in what happened next. So Monday we got up, headed down south. It's about a five or six hour drive. You head on I15 down to Spanish Fork, head over to Price, you get down to the south end of Price, you head down towards Castle Del, and then there's a dirt road that you travel on. You take a left onto a dirt road and travel on that for about an hour down to a place called Fuller Bottom. Fuller Bottom is the beginning of a beautiful float through the San Rafael river. That's about 14 miles that I have done since this. But that's where the hike began. So the hike was to hike in this section of the San Rafael called the Little Grand Canyon. And you hike in there about seven or eight miles and then hike up and out of what's called the Box Canyon. And then you get up on the rim and then you go hike up another mountain called Sids Mountain. And then you're supposed to come back around and it's about 40 miles of hiking and that takes you back to your car. So that was our intent when we left on July 12 or on July 13. So we show up at Fuller Bottom about noon and start hiking. We hike in that day probably about five or six. It's starting to get a little dark. We haven't found this box canyon. And so we decided to make camp. And at that time I was huge into rock climbing. I still am, but I had brought my rock climbing gear and I wanted to climb. And we found this really cool crack that I climbed up without ropes, which was really stupid, but I should have been, you know, I was the one probably doing some risky stuff, not my brother, which ultimately he had an accident that we'll talk about in just a second. But we made camp that night and ate our ramen noodles and all that kind of stuff. Woke up the next day on July 14th, and at 10 o' clock in the morning, my buddies and I were out in the middle of the river. The river is up to our chest in the middle, but it was a little more shallow on the side. And my brother had got done doing his morning workout routine and push ups and sit ups and those kind of things. And he came over and took a picture of us with one of those old disposable cameras. Put the camera down, and then he stepped into the water and he proceeded to do a shallow water dive. All of us, most of us in that group had worked at Laguna beach in Farmington. So we were lifeguards. We were round water all the time. We were always out in the sun playing volleyball and things. And so we were very confident. And I remember when he began to dive, I don't know if I said it audibly or in my own head. I just said, oh, Rich, don't dive. But he was always. He was already in the air. And when he came down, he hit a sandbar underneath the water about 6 or 8 inches that couldn't be seen because the water was so murky. And he just kind of stuck in the mud. And we kind of laughed for two seconds and then realized that he wasn't moving. And so we waded over to him and used our lifeguard skills to roll him over. And he just kept looking up at us and saying, I'm drowning. I was drowning. I couldn't push myself up. My arms weren't working. And so we got him over onto the bank of the river, built some shade for him, filtered water. My buddy Pete had just been ordained as an elder. He was going to serve a mission a couple months later. And so he had the Melchizedek priesthood. And so he gave Rich a blessing. And then we got that Nokia cell phone out and decided to try those numbers. So there we were in the middle of the little Grand Canyon on the San Rafael Swells, about six miles in on our hike, an hour in on a dirt road in between Price and Castle Dell. Right. And I don't know that I'm naturally a fairly skeptical person, but if I've ever experienced anything that was a miracle in my life, this would probably be that thing that in that situation, somehow we got cell phone coverage. And maybe there's a difference between analog and digital cell phone towers and how they work nowadays. That explains this. But we were very fortunate that somehow we were able to call out in that dire situation because ultimately Richie had become a quadriplegic. I didn't understand what that term was at that time or in that moment. I was hoping that that Maybe he was stunned and he would start wiggling his toes and stand up and we could hike out, but he just remained there, crippled. Right. So my buddy called and we were able to tell the local search and rescue what had happened and kind of give them a coordinates of where we were at. And they dispatched life flight from LDS Hospital. So all of this is going on about 10 or 10:30 in the morning and over the next five hours after they dispatched Life flight and they told us that they were on their way. At around 3 or 3:30 that day, we heard the helicopter coming, and then we saw it come over the horizon. And we were just in a section, kind of in a bend of the river where there was a lot of land on the left side. And they were able to land just 30 or 40ft from where we were at. And they came out and gave him a steroid shot, put him on the stretcher and then flew him away, took him up north to LDS Hospital. And I wasn't able to go with him. I remember asking, can I go with him? He needs somebody there with him. And due to weight restrictions and gas consumption, they had to leave me behind and even all of his gear. And so we distributed all of his gear. Rich loved the Kokopelli. And so we drew a Kokopelli. We went around the corner where we were camping and we drew a kokopelli and wrote his name in the wall. And. And that still exists there today as we've taken our kids back and shown them this area. And then we hiked out and we showed up at LDS Hospital around 9pm that night and learned the fate of Rich, that Rich would be a quadriplegic. And so he. I think he fractured C5, C6, which meant that he could still use his deltoids and his biceps and then his neck muscles, and he could breathe on his own, but otherwise anything else was paralyzed from the neck down. And so he stayed at LDS Hospital for two months in rehabilitation. And it was beautiful to see the support from friends, the support from the church. It was amazing to see the professionals in the rehabilitation center just work with him so well. And after he left, he came back to our home. And at that time, our home had many stairs. It was one of those California splits. And so we had to build an apartment on the back of the house. And we experienced a tremendous amount of love from the ward in people donating their time and their talents and their money to the cause of my brother's need at that time. And so ultimately, Rich, as A quadriplegic. His story is so amazing and inspiring in that he. Despite his limitations and having an excuse to not progress in life, Rich made so many great choices to just deal with the lot of his life. He told me one time, he said, you know, Dave, I give myself about one hour once a week to go in my room and close the door and just yell. And I know nobody's at home because I don't want anybody to hear me. And he said, I eventually roll out of that room and then I just continue on. Rich got two bachelor's degrees. He held down a full time job, and he graduated from Utah State University in speech pathology with a master's degree. Go Aggies. And that was probably one of the most beautiful things that our family was able to witness was him rolling across that stage receiving a master's degree. And when you think about how much writing you have to do to do your bachelor's degree and then your master's degree and all of these things you have to do to think about doing that with only about 10% of your body. Right. It was just so inspiring. Rich would go and speak at these various talks to talk to people about, hey, there's a lot of beauty in life as long as you make a choice to just create that beauty regardless of your circumstances. You know, and especially in today's age where there's a lot of mental health issues that go on. Rich just was such a beautiful example of how to progress on. So we'll swing back around to his story a little bit later. He did end up getting married. He was able to foster a child, was able to have those types of experiences as well. But we'll swing around to his story a little bit later too.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Beautiful.

Dave McKenzie [00:24:07] So that happened at age 18, and that was traumatic to lose my brother. It was a very difficult time. And as I look back on those experiences now, obviously the challenges help you grow, but I wouldn't wish that on anybody. You know, it was a very difficult time for our family and caused a ripple effect that continued.

John Dehlin [00:24:27] So definitely.

Dave McKenzie [00:24:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:29] Yeah. That just sounds incredibly hard. But also inspiring.

Dave McKenzie [00:24:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Reminds me of Michelle Stone's interview yesterday about which adversity she's experienced, but with her.

Dave McKenzie [00:24:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] How she's tried to channel that into growth. Yeah. Reminds me of that. Okay, should we talk mission next? Is mission your next big thing?

Mission to Poland and Formative Experiences

Dave McKenzie [00:24:50] Yeah. So mission 1999 to 2001. I served in the Poland Warsaw mission. There's basically three things that I'll share from the mission. One is at the beginning of My mission, one's at the end and one's right in the middle. So at the beginning of my mission, going in, it was very difficult for me to be in the mtc. I just recall sitting in the rooms and we're trying to learn Polish and we're trying to learn the gospel and things. And the room would start spinning and I would just go sit outside at breaks and look east towards Rock Canyon in Provo, trying to calm myself as I'm trying to navigate through this new experience. And looking down that road of two years worth of this difficulty was really challenging. But what I learned in those first two weeks about myself was that if I dig in a little bit more and I get up a little bit early and I have a plan for the day to study to the language and study the gospel and utilize my time instead of goofing off with the other 19 year olds as missionaries do, you know, at lunchtime and stuff that I found myself, you know, going in a, in a room and memorizing more words and memorizing the cases and all those kind of things. And little by little, as I put that energy and effort into experiencing the mission at a very deep level and owning that choice that I made, I caught the fire of being on the mission at the end of my mission. I was able to serve as an assistant for my final four months. And I recall in our particular mission, we didn't have elder missionary couples to manage the logistics and the apartments and the car, we didn't really have cars, but those kind of things. So as an assistant, my job was basically like a 9 to 5. And during that 9 to 5, I would listen to Truman Matson and I remember him lecturing on the first vision.

John Dehlin [00:26:53] For those who don't know, he's a Joseph Smith historian that was famous for telling faithful, inspiring Joseph Smith stories.

Dave McKenzie [00:27:03] Yeah, right. He was like a Harvard graduate in philosophy and those kind of things taught at byu. Charismatic dynamics, Very charismatic, very proliferative in the church back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, I guess, somewhere in the early 2000s. And so I remember just recognizing the power of the first vision story, that it defined who God was, how God was, and with whom God speaks. Despite all of the other, you know, descriptions of God throughout the course of human history. It just hit me so heavily at the end of my mission how important the first division was. And it became really the cornerstone of my testimony at that time. And then so I got home in 2001, President Hinckley in October of 2002 gave a talk I think called a marvelous work and a wonder. And he also spoke about the first vision in that way, kind of gave a do or die. And he said if this first vision really happened in the way that it did, then this is the most important thing that we should all be a part of. If it's not, then this work is a fraud. Right. Those were his words in general conference talk. And so at that time I was so inspired to think, oh, I had the same feeling about the power of the first vision as the prophet did. And it remained a very powerful part of my testimony. And we'll swing back around later as that started to be processed a little bit more. The third thing I'll share was an experience that I had in the middle of my mission. So I had been in the country for about 10 months on my mission for 12 months and, and I was called to be the branch president of Krakow or Krakow in the southern part of Poland. And it was a great experience overall, I think I was the, I was there for seven or seven months I believe as the, as the branch president. And the night of the going away of the previous branch president, he and his companion had just barely baptized a couple months prior. A family, a mother and a father and a 14 year old son, which was unheard of in Poland. And the night of his going away party, the mother of that family came up to me and she said, have we got some questions for you. And they didn't want to engage with those questions with the previous missionary, the ones who had actually taught them and converted them and baptized them because he was going home. And so I was their new ecclesiastical leader again. I had been on the mission for 12 months and my companion at that time had only been in the mission field for two months. And so he didn't speak well or understand anything. And so it was me to go and speak with them. So we went later that next week and sat down with them and they looked at me with these forlorn eyes and just said, what are we a part of? We've just learned about polygamy, about Adam God doctrine, we've learned about the Negro doctrine. None of these things were taught to us during our missionary discussions. So what are we a part of? And you're our leader, Help us. What do you have to say for this? Right? How can you, can you answer these questions that we have? And so there I was as a 20 year old and I had never been taught these things in seminary and I'd never learned these things. I was never exposed to them. And so all I could sit there and say was cheva pokora, cheby cher plivos, which means you got to have humility and you got to have patience. That's all I could say. Long story short, they end up leaving the church while I'm the branch president. My recent convert, who was a young 21 year old, also was taught some of these challenges as well. And he asked me the same things and I had no answers and he left the church. And then a couple of our longtime investigators who had come but hadn't been baptized yet, they also left the church. And so our branch that was, you know, 20, 25 people, there was six, six of us missionaries there. And then we'd have however many baptized members, then we'd always have a few investigators dwindled down to maybe 10 or 12, and that was six of those were missionaries. So psychologically that was very difficult for me to experience that. But even more so, I just felt so inadequate because I myself as a missionary wasn't prepared to answer those difficult questions. So those are the three things that kind of stick out about the mission.

John Dehlin [00:31:48] If I could ask a question about that.

Dave McKenzie [00:31:49] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:31:50] If I'm thinking back to my time as a missionary, there are a couple ways to kind of deal with that cognitive dissonance as a missionary. One is to get mad at the anti Mormon and I'm saying in air quotes, source of information that Satan is working to spread anti Mormon lies. Er, frustrated. That's so terrible. Is that what, is that what you felt at the time?

Dave McKenzie [00:32:17] I, I think at the time I, I, I had heard about these things about polygamy and the Negro doctrine and such and so forth and we had our standard answers of, for polygamy it was always, well, there were more women than men and the women had to be taken care of. Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] Which isn't true.

Dave McKenzie [00:32:35] Which isn't true.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:32:37] The Negro doctrine was simply, it just wasn't time, which isn't true. Right. And so at that time, in my mind I was appeased by that and I did try to explain that to them, but in the end they felt betrayed. And you can perceive how somebody who grows up in a Roman Catholic church who's willing to listen to the missionaries and accept the Book of Mormon and all these things to be taught, all of the kind of the narrative of the church that missionaries teach, which is good and right and beautiful. Right. But then to find out some challenging things that they weren't talked to again about this concept of informed consent, they felt a Little betrayed. And there wasn't really a great answer other than, yeah, that's not how this is set up. Right. The missionaries aren't really set up to be taught the challenges that might come to you.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] So, and, so how did that. What did you do with that in terms of your testimony and your, you know, commitment to the mission and how you felt about your mission?

Dave McKenzie [00:33:40] Yeah, and interestingly enough, I just moved on. I was committed. I continually, you know, got up every day and knocked on the doors. And at that point, I didn't try to understand those things or those questions. And even when I got home from my mission, which is probably going to be. Your next question, is like, well, did you look him up when you got home? No, I didn't. It was just kind of. Well, I guess I'll find out someday. Or maybe they're not that important, you know, or even just. I felt like those answers that I had been. I had been given were the right answers and it was resolved at that time.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:12] Until 15 years later.

John Dehlin [00:34:14] Sometimes we call that putting it. Putting things on the shelf.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Yeah, sure.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:19] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:34:19] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:20] Okay.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:21] So that. So that's the mission.

John Dehlin [00:34:22] But you served the full mission.

Dave McKenzie [00:34:24] Full mission. Loved it. It was. It was transcendent in my life. It was beautiful. My mission presidents. So as I was an assistant, the one left, and then the next one came in for one month. And so I was there during that transition. I love both of them. Just great, great men. And my first mission president will come back up a little bit later in the story, but loved it.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] Okay. So a college and marriage, I think, comes next.

Marriage, Education, and Life After Mission

Dave McKenzie [00:34:50] Yeah. So 2001, I get home at my homecoming. This beautiful girl that I've known since seventh grade was there. She came and talked to me afterwards, and we set up a date for the next two or three weeks, and we went on that date, and then we went on a couple more dates. And she told me after our second or third date or so that she was also going on a mission. And I was super excited about that.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] Oops.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:19] Yeah. And so she left and she served in Arizona at the Temple Visitor Center. And that was in.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] I was in the Tempe, Arizona Mission, so.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:32] Oh, I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:34] Oh, my God.

John Dehlin [00:35:35] For the last four months of my mission.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:36] Okay, so. Yeah, because you were in. You were in Guatemala.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] Yeah. But I got sick towards the end, and I got sent home partly because I was sick, partly for other reasons, but I didn't want to end my mission early, so I went to.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:50] So you went To Tempe for four months.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] Okay.

Dave McKenzie [00:35:52] Yeah. So that's. Those were her stomping grounds. Yeah, absolutely. So. So. So she was gone from 2001 to 2003. I dated while she was gone, and then she came home and dated and got married pretty quickly after that. And when we got married, we had a child nine months later. And what she says is, like, ever since we got married, it's been all gas and no breaks. And so this is. So after that first child, we had twins, our second pregnancy, so three girls. The twins were born just before our first child was two. So we had three children under two. And then we had another child, a boy, two years later, and then another child, another boy about three years later, and then another child,. Another boy about five years later. So we've got three boys and three girls.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] Okay.

Dave McKenzie [00:36:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Six kids.

Dave McKenzie [00:36:46] Six kids, Yep.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] Okay. And you pursued medicine?

Dave McKenzie [00:36:51] Yeah, yeah. So went to college, did all of the undergrad stuff. And there's a couple stories I'll share during this time frame that are. That are very relevant as well. So as we all are very poor in those college days, my wife and I found this opportunity to go work at a mortuary. Work. Live in a mortuary. So this was up in Ogden. I went to Weber state. And on 36th street, just below Harrison, there was a mortuary that we were able to live at. And the way it was set up was every other week we were on call, which meant that I had to be home by Monday at 5pm and had to remain there until 8am the next morning. And we had to do that the entire week when we were on call. My job was to be kind of partially a janitor, to go clean up at the end of the business day. I would help with funerals on Saturdays and things like that. But the most important job was to go help pick up deceased persons. And so, which was fascinating for me, and being pre med, I was totally all over it. It was totally fine. But so anytime we would get a phone call from the family members of this deceased person, my wife would answer the phone, and then I would call the mortician, and we would go prepare the van and go to the home and pick him up and bring him back to the mortuary, and I'd help him get him down on the table and start the embalming process and things like that. So as you can imagine, I'm spending a lot of time with these morticians. Well, one of the morticians was a homosexual man in his early 30s, and he and I became good friends. And this particular man was a member of the church. He'd grown up in the church, he went on his mission, got married, had a daughter and then eventually divorced. And at the time that I knew him, he was living with his partner. And so as you can imagine, a young 23 year old, I was 23 at that time, who's in pre med and I'm an active member of the church and so on and so forth. And this is my closest interaction with a homosexual person. My will start running, well, is this a nature or a nurture thing? How is this man homosexual? And obviously he's able to have a child. You know, he was able to. There was some attraction to the opposite sex because he got married and had a child. So how does all this work? All of this is going through my mind at age 23 and 2003 and I'm trying to figure out some of those things in the grand scheme of the plan of salvation and my understanding of the church and God and all of those things. Right. So pause that. The other story that I'll share is that brings us back together is in my undergrad I worked with the great Kent Van de Graaff, who was our anatomy professor, who, you know, it sounds like.

John Dehlin [00:40:03] Yeah. So just to give a background, when I was at byu I had this really formative set of courses called Honors Colloquium where it was basically super liberal nuanced BYU professors introducing us to all the controversial, problematic elements of modern Mormon belief. And they would bring in super progressive, liberal, intelligent, science loving guest speakers. So like Samuel Rushforth would come speak about the environmentalism and Bill Bradshaw would come in and talk about evolution. And Vandergraaaff was an anatomy professor, much loved anatomy professor and, but also like science loving pro evolution. I think he's the one who gave us a speech about vestigial elements of anatomy that, that, that buttress claims of evolution basically.

Dave McKenzie [00:41:06] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] Parts of the body that are no longer used but probably were used hundreds of Absolutely. Thousands of millions of years ago. Yep. But I do remember one story he told. He said testimonies should be, they shouldn't be like soap bubbles that you protect in the palm of your hand so that they don't pop. Amazing. He said testimonies should be like jackhammers that divide rocks. And so his idea, the idea he was conveying is don't shy away from controversy, don't shy away from science or problems. Confront them head on and ultimately you'll be based in the truth and you'll have the strongest possible testimony.

Dave McKenzie [00:41:50] Amazing. Amazing. And that is the man that I knew for sure. So when I knew him, he was our pre med advisor. He ran the anatomy class, obviously.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] Is this a Weber?

Dave McKenzie [00:41:59] This is a Weber State, yep. And it's funny here and there. Dr. Van de Graaff, again, this is 2003, 2004. He would say things like, I defected from BYU and things like that. And I remember thinking at that time, well, why would you do that? That's the Lourdes University or those kind of things.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] I'm guessing it was after the Purge, the September 6 in 93, and then the Purges with Gail Houston and Cecilia Farr and others. And then Eugene England left. There's a wave of BYU professors that either went to UVU or retired. I'm guessing it might have been during that wave.

Dave McKenzie [00:42:36] Yeah. And I had no idea about any of that stuff then. But as I've learned about these things from you since, all of these things have clicked in my mind since. Oh, that's what he meant, right? Absolutely. And even though he was still a faithful member of the church.

John Dehlin [00:42:54] Oh, he was.

Dave McKenzie [00:42:55] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:42:55] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:42:56] He had a son on a mission that came back while I was there. And. And so again, I didn't get into a discussion with him about his own personal activity, but my assumption was that there was still some connection to some degree. So my experience there was that once you pass the regular anatomy class, you can apply for the advanced anatomy class, which is really only 10 students. And so I applied for that and got in. And the nature of that class is that one day a week, for two hours in the evening, we go and dissect the cadavers for the anatomy class, which was amazing for me. I wanted to go be a surgeon of some sort and things. And so that was a great opportunity to just go. Two of us were per cadaver, and we got to learn the human body with hands on experience that way. The other part of this advanced class was that once a week we would sit with Dr. Van de Graaff in a very intimate setting, smaller classroom with just the ten of us, and be lectured by Dr. Van de Graaff. He had written his own textbook that we used, so he was at least nationally renowned, if not internationally renowned. He was amazing. And so one particular day he got done with his lecture a little bit early and he put down the chalk and he looked at us and he said, all right, I'm done. Do you guys have any questions? So there I was, living at the mortuary, hanging out with a homosexual man all the time, bringing in bodies and having them processed. And I kind of timidly raise my hand and I say, I have a question. How does homosexuality work? Is it nature? Is it nurture? What's the biology of it? You know, how am I to understand this as a budding scientist and pre med student and so on and so forth. And he got this very solemn look on his face and he looked around at everybody and he said, is everybody okay to talk about this? Everybody in the class said yes. And he proceeded to tell us about his brother. I think it was his older brother who had committed suicide in his 50s because he was a homosexual man. And at that time, Dr. Van de Graaff was probably in his early 70s. So his brother, you know, would have been close to 80 or something like that had he not committed suicide. So all of that would have happened back somewhere in the 80s, 90s, or somewhere around there. And Dr. Van de Graaff talked about the challenges of trying to understand same sex attraction. And he didn't expound on the challenges of the church that led his brother to feel that way about himself or the miracle of forgiveness or those kind of things. That was a lot of the rhetoric that you've spoke so much about that are challenges to the same sex attraction conversation. But he just said that this is a very difficult thing as part of our humanity. Absolutely. And then he proceeded to talk about the Wolfian duct and Muellerian duct and kind of talked about the spectrum of sexuality that many of us are placed on. And ultimately at that time, for me, what that did for me was opened up my mind a lot more to the nuances of the lived human experience beyond the dogma of the church. I wouldn't even use that word back then. But just understanding that what I understand as part of the plan of salvation and God, that there's some other ways to look at it, that kind of opened me up to that nuance.

John Dehlin [00:46:53] Did you just name some anatomy parts or some scales or something?

Dave McKenzie [00:46:57] That was just a description of the zygote. Right. As it's developing. And I don't remember.

John Dehlin [00:47:02] What terms did you use?

Dave McKenzie [00:47:04] Oh, from what I'm remembering, it was something like the Wolfian duct and the Mullerian duct and those kind of things that. And again, don't quiz me on it because I don't remember all of those details. But in essence, his point was that at that point, what he had learned and what scientists had learned about sexuality in the zygote. Right. In the womb Basically that there very much is a spectrum of sexual attraction that everybody's born with.

John Dehlin [00:47:38] Also, my. My memory. It's been a while since I've dug into this literature.

Dave McKenzie [00:47:42] Me too. So I.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] But the, the hormonal balances or imbalances in the womb.

Dave McKenzie [00:47:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:49] Are associated with a probability of. Of developing same sex sexuality.

Dave McKenzie [00:47:56] And, and that's what he was describing

John Dehlin [00:47:57] is the more male children that are born, I guess, the less testosterone that remains in the womb for the woman. And so there's a higher scientifically higher probability of being gay or bisexual as a man, the more older brothers you have.

Dave McKenzie [00:48:19] Yeah. And again, I.

John Dehlin [00:48:21] That was a scientific finding.

Dave McKenzie [00:48:23] That's a very deep scientific discussion that could be had. And there's obviously going to be a lot of opinions out there. And I'm not putting my opinion out there, other than just saying for me at age 23, to be taught about that challenging aspect in the human experience in society. It opened up my mind to other alternative understandings that came in handy in the defense of homosexuality, the LGBT community. Throughout the course of my life, that I've been a lot more open, I should say.

John Dehlin [00:49:02] That makes sense. Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:49:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Okay. So I. So as far as you and your wife go, I'm going to just assume that you had the same sort of marital, Mormon marital contract that most orthodox Mormon couples do, where you're going to both remain believers till you die, raise the kids in the faith, be temple worthy, attend the temple, serve in your callings, accept all callings, if possible, serve a mission when you're older. Just the train, I call it the train.

Dave McKenzie [00:49:34] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And obviously I don't put myself on a pathway and just let it happen to me. Right. But yeah, the vision I think that many of us agree with, especially back in the early 2000s and things, is that you just, you go and you plug in and get all of the things done that you got to do, check all the boxes, and then endure to the end in faith. Right, yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:49:59] So I think now sort of we. Well, all along we've been exploring where questions have developed or, you know, cracks, as sometimes I say, not cracks overall to faith, but just to maybe a certain version of faith. I just had the idea that I remember Esther Perel talking about marriages that everyone's gonna have at least 3 Mar. This is generalization, but everyone's gonna have at least three marriages. It's just a matter of whether it's with the same person or different people. It's almost like everyone's gonna have if they stay religious long enough, then maybe you're gonna have two or three testimonies. One, testimony will die. And.

Dave McKenzie [00:50:42] Well, and I mean, you listen to Richard Rohr, for example, right. First half and second half of life, Carl Jung. Right. All of those things are very real. When we get married at such a young age, really, that perspective of what it is that you're entering into shouldn't remain the same. Right. It should advance and grow and become deeper.

John Dehlin [00:51:03] So we'll talk about maybe the death of Testimony one and the emergence of Testimony two.

Dave McKenzie [00:51:09] That is a beautiful way to look at what we're talking about today. Right. As this, the Fowler stages of faith. Right. Most people remain in a stage three. I know many people that remain in that stage three until they die. Right. And some enter into the stage four, the dark night, and some retract back into three, because that's too tough. And some continue to push through and get into five and. Absolutely. I think that's the lived experience for sure.

John Dehlin [00:51:35] And some jump off the Fowler track altogether.

Dave McKenzie [00:51:39] Yeah, well, and there's the other models of simplicity, to complexity, to perplexity and harmony and. Right. They're all designed to say the same thing, that we just don't stay stagnant, you know. And one more experience that I'll share, so that's in the undergrad now. We move down to Arizona. We take off at that time we had a two year old and our twins were just three or four months old. And I haul them down to Arizona and the first Sunday we show up at church, we're warmly greeted. And again, this is talking about and acknowledging the beauty of the church. Right. And you've mentioned this so many times that you acknowledge the beauty that the church provides in the community. We moved down to Arizona, we don't have any family down there. And we buy this, we rent this condo and we show up at church and we're warmly received. And there's these two beautiful little 12 year old girls that come and hang out with my wife basically once a week for the next three or four years as we're down there and give her support and those kind of things. So during the medical school time, I'll share a couple of experiences as well. Overall, the biggest thing was that we survived with kids and we made a conscientious decision at the beginning that I wouldn't study on Sunday. And that wasn't necessarily from a religious standpoint as much as it was a familial standpoint. And so during that time I would wake up at 5 o' clock in the morning and study for a couple of hours. When I was at school, I'd make sure I didn't waste my time and I'd just go study. When I had free time, I made sure I was done by 5pm every single night, Monday through Friday, Saturdays I would wake up at 5am and study till 6pm because there was a test every single Monday, but I never studied on Sunday. And it gave our family the stability to be able to remain a family during the course of that time, that was very challenging. And my wife was amazing. To be able to handle our two year old and our twins. And then two years into med school we had another kid. So we had four kids. And people are just amazed to hear about that anybody would even dare do those kind of things. And all I can say is that to the power of a strong, amazing woman, my wife and I have to say, to the power of God and belief, we made it through and thrived and grew through the challenges. I've got the best GPA during that time that I've ever got in my life because of, I think, a lot of the choices that we made. But while I was there, this was down in Arizona.

Medical Career and Intellectual Development

John Dehlin [00:54:25] Can I just say that?

Dave McKenzie [00:54:26] Yeah, of course, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] I recently have read a new book by Yuval Noah Harari.

Dave McKenzie [00:54:31] Yeah. Very familiar with, called Nexus. Yeah. About AI.

John Dehlin [00:54:36] Well, at least half of it's about AI, but weirdly, there's a couple chapters at the beginning that are about religion and church and faith. And he talks about this tension between people in society needing truth, that it's good for people to base their lives on and understanding of the universe and how everything works and how things are real. But also people need structure and that to have structure and even bureaucracy, he would call it, you need myth. And he talked about that in Sapiens as well, that shared heroes, shared myths, shared stories help create a shared culture, that then helps create trust and I would say commitment and identity and unity that then allows for people to all feel compelled to be a part of an organization that then provides structure. And you want both?

Dave McKenzie [00:55:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] You don't want to live in a world void of truth and you don't want to live in a world void of community and structure. But there's a tension there because truth can kill myth and truth can hurt order and structure and structure and order can sometimes want to encourage people to avoid truth or dismiss it. So it's just a constant tension?

Dave McKenzie [00:56:10] No, absolutely. And that's something that we'll definitely talk about in this conversation today. And we tap into Harari a lot where basically he said, you know, religions and corporations, specifically religions, they are interested in power, order and control over truth. Right. They're interested in the truth as much as it supports the narrative that they want to give. But ultimately that narrative is to provide the structure. And he talks about where religion is a deal, right? Religion is a deal.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [00:56:42] I have something that you can only receive from me, Contractor burden. And as long as you do these things, you're going to receive those things. Right. And the church is very powerful from a standpoint of the power of myth. And as I've spoken to some, I know we're kind of getting ahead a little bit, but like, as I've spoke to some friends about that, that's a little uncomfortable at first with people, but as I kind of help them understand what Noah Harari is talking about and Joseph Campbell. Right. And all of these people that talk about those kind of things here with a thousand faces, right. Like, we need these stories to cooperate. There has to be a shared understanding in the metaphysical realm that's more than dirt and weeds. That is the reality of life to help us all cooperate to progress. I mean, we're talking into cameras and microphones that come from people. Come from people's cooperation. Right. So those things are very important, for sure. So.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] So back in. Back in med school.

Dave McKenzie [00:57:38] Yeah, so. So med school, I. There was this opportunity to run for the delegate of my class that is part of a national student organization that ultimately became this opportunity that I had to go travel back east to Washington D.C. and New York and so on and so forth over the next four years, four times a year. So every quarter I would go travel. So I was part of this national student organization that was the house of delegates among all of the other podiatric medicine, foot and ankle medicine colleges that are around the country. So this house of delegates was made up of about 60 or 70 people. And so the first thing I'll talk about with this, just from a relevant standpoint is that in rubbing shoulders with people from around the country. So, yes, there were other LDS members that were part of this national student organization, but there was maybe three or four or five of us out of 60 or 70 or 80. Most everybody there that was part of this national student organization were not LDs, and most of them were, you know, Christian of some sort. But there were also other people from other religions. And what I experienced for those four years rubbing shoulders with these people was getting out of the bubble, right. Getting out of the bubble of that we are peculiar, right? And that we're special and we all grow up hearing from the pulpit. You're a chosen generation. And I'm not saying that we're not, but I'm just saying that you start to, when you hear those words as a younger person, you start to think that you're something more than other people or that your experience is greater or that you have access to something that makes you better and stronger than other people. And although that can be true in many ways, I came to realize that, man, there are amazing people in the world that don't know anything about our church. So again, this is me at 25, 26 years old when I'm having these experiences. And so as I look back on that, it was just beautiful to perceive that, yes, I do have something special that I'm a part of, and I'm thankful for that. But, man, I'm very interested in your story, you know, somebody else's story. How did you become so great in the way that you were? As I collaborated with these people. And then at the end, my final year, I was elected to be the president of this National Student Organization. And I was able to speak at national conventions and those kind of things. When we would go, you know, March on Washington, D.C. and Do House of Delegate things and legislative things and those kinds of of and whatnot. But in my role as the president of the National Student Organization, I got to know the executive director very well. Her name is Dorothy. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a beautiful white woman, Roman Catholic, and she is one of the most Christlike people that I've ever met. Her love for all of us young medical students and things that are part of that House of Delegates, the way that she interacted with us, the way that she carried herself, was so inspiring to me. The other fascinating thing about her is that she is married to an African American man. And I met him as well. We slept at her house. At one of the last meetings that we had, I met her children. And so again, to be exposed to a person who comes from the Roman Catholic Church, which our church, well, I should say a voice in our church, a prophet, sterian, revelator in our church, said that that is the abominable church, the Roman Catholic Church. And he rescinded that. We've got to be okay with that. But that also that she was married to an African American man. And to see how beautiful they were and that their family was. And then to come to realize again later in Our. As I learned about our church history later to recognize that that misogynation. Right. That interracial marrying was talked about in very, very harsh ways by, again, prophet seers and revelators. It created some dissonance. Right. To experience for myself real people in real situations that are living real beautiful lives that don't match up with what a prophet, seer and revelator has said. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:02:25] Yeah. Yeah. I'm reminded of the quote by Mark Twain that all travel is fatal to prejudice.

Dave McKenzie [01:02:33] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:02:34] And I think a cousin to that is I think travel and exposure to other people is fatal to, like, superiority complex. Right?

Dave McKenzie [01:02:42] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:43] And I. Back when I was still trying to keep people in the church stale DS years, I made a list of all the reasons that people develop doubts and meeting really cool and smart. Never Mormons made the list even back in like 2007.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:01] Absolutely, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:03:03] Because at Microsoft, I met so many Sikhs and.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:06] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] Muslims and Hindus.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:08] You're incredible.

John Dehlin [01:03:09] Way cooler than me and most of the people I go to church with.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:12] So, yep.

John Dehlin [01:03:13] Even atheists and Jews and, you know, so that.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:15] So that was my eye opening experience. And all that happened at 26 through 30. The prefrontal cortex, as we seem to understand, seems to be developing at that time, which opens you up to things outside of your own echo chamber and your own experience. Right. So that's what happened to me during that time.

John Dehlin [01:03:31] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:33] Great.

Dave McKenzie [01:03:33] Yeah.

Seeds of a Faith Transition

John Dehlin [01:03:34] All right, so what comes next?

Dave McKenzie [01:03:36] After med school, we do residency. We lived here in Utah during that. And then really this next segment is 2013 through 2016, which is kind of the faith crisis years.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] I think that period of time is going to go down as some of the most significant times in the history of the modern church. Just because Deborah snuffer's excommunicated in 13. Kate Kelly in 14. The gospel topics essays come out in 14. CES letter comes out in 1415. I'm excommunicated in 15. The November 2015 policy.

Dave McKenzie [01:04:13] A lot of stuff's going on.

John Dehlin [01:04:14] I don't know if you were plugged into any of that stuff.

Dave McKenzie [01:04:16] So not during all of that, because mine really happened in 2016. But there were a lot of things that led up from 2013 to 2016. So that's kind of our next step.

John Dehlin [01:04:27] But let's hear it.

Dave McKenzie [01:04:28] Yeah. Okay. So we graduate from residency and we relocate to where we're at now. And there's three things that led up to eventually what many people call a faith crisis. I still do call it that. I know a lot of people kind of shy away from that after they've been through it, because it can be very beautiful and growing. And so I'll acknowledge that as well. But I like to call it kind of a faith interrogation process. Right. Even not knowing that there was anything to interrogate. Right. So three things led up to that one. And I'll be very superficial with this one. So at my employment at the time, I had some difficulties with my employers that were higher level leaders of the church. And just my understanding of transparency versus theirs just kind of led to some questions from that standpoint. So that's as much as I'll say about that. The second was, now this is where we bring my brother's story back in. So I was heading in to do surgeries on a Thursday in June. I believe the day was June 25th of 2015. And as I'm heading into work, my younger brother Dan calls me. And the first phone, he calls me twice. The first phone call was informing me that the paramedics were at my brother Rich's house, that Rich's wife woke up and Rich wasn't responding, and that they're working on him. That was the first phone call.

John Dehlin [01:06:13] This is your paraplegic?

Dave McKenzie [01:06:16] This is my quadriplegic brother. Yeah. So this is Rich. Yep. So that was the first phone call. He hung up. And then five minutes later, I'm still driving. And Dan calls again, and this time he's just bawling and kind of in hysterics, and he's just saying, rich is dead. Rich is dead. Rich is dead. And so Rich had gone to get a deviated septum surgery the night before, the day before, as a quadriplegic, your diaphragm is paralyzed, your intercostal muscles and your ribs are paralyzed. So you don't breathe very well as it is. And then Rich had a deviated septum, and so he had sleep apnea. And so one of the solutions to that obstructive sleep apnea is to go and have your deviated septum repaired. And in that surgery, the surgeon puts gauze up both of the nostrils. And so that removed a potential airway for Rich. And then always after a surgery, you take a narcotic for pain. And so here's my quadriplegic brother. And ultimately, as I look back on it now, this was a medical and surgical oversight that they didn't perceive his needs as a quadriplegic versus somebody else's. But when Rich took his narcotic the night before, the opioid will Blunt the respiratory drive or the respiratory response. Right. So in sleep apnea, people will wake themselves up because they become apneic or low oxygen level. Carbon dioxide develops in the lungs, and there will be a response to wake up the person so that they can breathe off that carbon dioxide. When you have an opioid on board, that will blunt that response. And so ultimately, what happened was that Rich succumbed to the very thing that he was trying to be treated for through the deviated septum surgery, and he passed away in his sleep on June 25th. So quadriplegics, their life expectancy is always less. But, you know, he was only 36, and we probably still had another 15 or 20 years with him. And so we didn't, you know, pursue any legal action, but it was devastating for our family as kind of a second ripple effect for myself, for my siblings, and for my parents especially. And I. For my parents, you know, as clarity kind of continues on throughout life, you know, if you have. And even for myself, if you've never had to deal with the death of somebody that is very close to you, you don't really know what that pain feels like. Right. And so, especially for a parent, to lose a child kind of twice in the sense of the quadriplegia and then ultimately, you know, death, it was very devastating for our family. Now, due to the way that Richie handled himself, we pulled through. You know, his funeral was beautiful. It was very well attended, and healing eventually came, but it didn't come for a while for sure, because that was. Even though we'd lost Richie and who he was physically 17 years prior, this was a very definitive experience. And I just recall being there at the mortuary very soon after he had passed, and we're there crying as a family, and everybody leaves, and I'm left there with him alone. And I just bent down and I kissed his forehead and just feeling the cold deadness of his body. And it didn't throw me into a question about God or anger towards God or anything, but it was very much just okay. Do you believe in the resurrection? Do you believe that this really can rise up again? Right. This crippled body of your brothers? And is that really possible? And at that time, I was the elders quorum president, and I remember having an elders quorum lesson. We had two elders quorum presidencies because of the amount of people that we had in the ward at that time. And we had this big, mega lesson with both quorums and just talked about the challenges of life and hardship. And I really opened up about that. And again, it's not that that threw me into a faith crisis in any way, shape, or form, but in conjunction with everything else that is going on at this time, challenges at work now this happens, that kind of safety net of a family and of life and those kind of things starts to become compromised. So. But ultimately we made it through and we were able to, you know, just deal with the tragedy of it.

John Dehlin [01:11:17] Yeah. Losing a sibling or a loved one is a big deal stuff. And it's like, you don't have to think about death until it really stares you in the face.

Dave McKenzie [01:11:27] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:11:28] And all the things you learn to help you cope with the prospect of death can just. All those things can just go out the window once you're staring in the face.

Dave McKenzie [01:11:38] And I've heard a lot of people in these situations, right. That they talk about the beauty of the plan of salvation and the gospel and how thankful we are to have the knowledge that we have. And I would say that I agree with that, that there is a lot of comfort in having kind of that certainty that comes from the message of the church in regards to eternal families and things like that. So that definitely helped get us through at that time, for sure. So the third thing, and this is really what kind of propelled all of this, happened in February of 2016. So my buddy Chris, who was there with us in 1998 when Rich had his accident, he sent out an email to all of us, to my buddy, to my other buddy Pete and Steve and myself, and said, hey, just letting you guys know, my wife and my four kids and I were leaving the church. So this is February of 2016. And he said, I don't. This doesn't change anything with our relationship, but we just. I want to let you guys know that we're leaving the church, and if anybody has questions, feel free to ask us or whatever. And when I got that, again, in the wake of the difficulties at work and the difficulties of Richie's death, looking back on it now, I think what I was really trying to do was to gain control of something. Right. These things are kind of going out of control in my life. And the thing that kept going through my mind when Chris had sent that was if I remain silent right now in this moment of most important missionary work, right. As members of the church, to testify of the truthfulness of the church, if I remain silent right now, I am a hypocrite of my testimony. If I am not courageous enough or solid enough in my own belief and my own testimony to be able to talk with my friend now, then it really doesn't mean anything at all. And that kept going through my mind. And so at that time, I just said, well, okay, well, what am I going to do? How do I approach my friend? And it's very difficult. We all go on missions and we talk to people for two years and things like that. But when it's a family member or a close friend who's having a testimony issue, it's difficult to know how to engage into that. And that's why we don't.

Leaving Activity and Communicating with Family

John Dehlin [01:14:21] The most common response to a I've left the church email or letter is no response.

Dave McKenzie [01:14:29] Correct?

John Dehlin [01:14:30] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:14:30] And that's what most people did.

John Dehlin [01:14:33] Siblings, best friends, friends, loved ones. I call it crickets.

Dave McKenzie [01:14:37] The crickets effect, and this is a part of this whole interview, is that we gotta stop being afraid. If we really believe, again, this concept of ownership, if we really believe in what we say that we believe in, why are we so afraid in those situations to go and engage in a healthy dialogue? Right. So those were my thoughts at that point, but I didn't really quite know. Okay, how do I approach this? Right. Even though I'd been a missionary and I talked to multiple people about the church and stuff, this was a different situation. And so I knew that I couldn't just go and bear a testimony and just say, hey, I want you to reconsider. I needed to come with something of substance. And so. But I had nowhere to go to receive that deeper substance. So I just started listening on YouTube at that time. And honestly, what I would do is I would type in general conference talk and I would listen to it on the way to work. And like, for example, Elder Holland's Safety for the Soul about the Book of Mormon. That's. That's a. That's a classic one where he gets deep into. If you leave this church, you got to step.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] Somehow you got to crawl through the

Dave McKenzie [01:15:47] Book of Mormon or whatever, Right? He said like over, over, under, around, Right? Yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] So, as if the Book of Mormon is this invincible piece of work.

Dave McKenzie [01:15:56] Yeah. So I'm listening to those types of conference talks. Elder Oaks, the challenge to become President Hinckling's marvelous work in wonder. Those kind of talks to prepare myself to go talk to him. And as it so happens, the algorithm of YouTube eventually will present you with a video based on your searches.

John Dehlin [01:16:16] Right.

Dave McKenzie [01:16:17] And so in 2016, I don't know. I know that in 2016, it wasn't like it is now, where every corner you turn, there's some Christian or religious related Podcast or channel. But I was presented with a video that said something like 10 truths about the Mormon Church. I was like, oh, this doesn't look insidious. And so I clicked on it. I don't remember nine of them, but the one that stood out was about the Book of Abraham. And it was like, okay, here's Michael Chandler. Here's the story. Joseph Smith buys these mummies and he gets these, you know, scrolls and. And, you know, and he translates the Book of Abraham from it and stuff like that. So it was. It was an exposure to this intellectual side of the church that I had no idea was a. A place to tap into. Right. Even though there was years of dialogue and years of Sunstone and Mormon History association, all those kind of things, the Tanners, and on and on and on and on, none of those things were on my radar as anything that existed at all, right? And so I clicked on that and I said, okay, this is the pathway that I need to go, is to develop my intellectual understanding of the church, to be able to go present the facts of truth to my friend so that I can encourage him to reconsider. Here's the proof, right? Well, it didn't take very long that I was exposed to Grant Palmer's aha moments. And probably the biggest one that threw me out was his description of his experience with the First Vision, and in particular, the 1832 First Vision account. And Grant talks. And this is. You know, you've interviewed Grant. This wasn't your interview that I listened to, but he talked about, you know, going and seeing the First Presidency's vault and seeing that letter book that was kept in there, or the piece of the letter book, I guess, the page where the 1832 count existed. And. And as I'm. As I'm listening to this, again, my testimony being very founded on by the First Vision, and everything just begins to crumble. And I recall going to a. But obviously during this time, I'm still going to work. I'm not depressed. You know, I'm still going to church and things like that. My wife and I went to an adult session at state conference. I think this was around October of 2016. So I'd been dealing with this kind of stuff for the previous three or four months. And we pulled into the driveway, into the garage, and I just opened up to my wife and I just said, I am very concerned that the stories that we understand about our church and the. And the truths about our church, they may not be exactly what we were taught that they were. And so the crisis ensued deeper and deeper and deeper. And I, like many people describe on your show where you're just like, I'm floundering. My existential understanding is I'm completely unmoored from what I thought was reality and the plan and everything else. And just as I'm, you know, struggling with all of that, I come across a video with this tall, dark, handsome guy. This guy I'm sitting across from, that you were standing, and I don't know when this was recorded, but you were standing in front of a group of people and you start singing three or four primary songs. I don't know if you remember that

John Dehlin [01:19:46] presentation called How Mormonism Led Me out of Mormonism. Probably it was after my communication and I spoke at a Kansas City Oasis meeting where I just talked about things like a love of truth and a value of courage, you know, caused me to start caring about marginalized people and seeking truth. Yeah, right.

Dave McKenzie [01:20:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:12] But also tried to convey my love for the church.

Dave McKenzie [01:20:15] For sure. For sure. And the thing that was so disarming for me was that you didn't look what you didn't look the part of what I would think an anti Mormon would look like. Right. Or nor did you present any information that was challenging. But what it did is it helped me recognize, A, that I'm not alone. Right. And that B, that there might be a way to navigate through this somehow, you know, So I began going back to. I didn't even know what a podcast was, but I eventually tapped into your interviews with Richard Bushman and Greg Prince, and I think I found one about Terrell Givens, but it was a little harder to find. And then. And then, and then kind of the rest is history as far as just going down that hole. And, you know, so that. That was. This is 2013, 2013 through 2016. This is how it all began. Don't know if you have any questions more about that as we go into the funny here.

Understanding the Faith Crisis Experience

John Dehlin [01:21:11] It's so often referred to as a rabbit hole or a hole, and it's also referred to as a faith crisis. But then I have a lot of people who hate that term. They call it like a truth awakening.

Dave McKenzie [01:21:23] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:21:24] Or a truth crisis.

Dave McKenzie [01:21:25] But in the moment, in the moment, it feels like I don't have any footing anywhere. How do I proceed? Right.

John Dehlin [01:21:33] And to call it like going into a hole, that implies going into darkness. But there's another way to look at it, which is like you've been in darkness because you didn't know the factual things about the church. And so you're actually leaving a cave, kind of like Plato's cave. You're leaving the cave and going into the sunlight. But if you have not been exposed to the sunlight, it may not always feel good.

Dave McKenzie [01:21:56] And I think going back and tapping into Richard Rohr, it is that second half of life, right? It is that. And even if you look at the concept of baptism, and I don't mean to get philosophical, but what was that trying to represent? Was it an ordinance of salvation or was it a moment in your life that you say that you're going to leave behind the old person and rise anew into something new? Right. So it was basically a baptism into. It's hard to say truth, but baptism into the contraries. Joseph Smith at the end of his life said, by proving contraries, truth is made manifest. We had really only been told one portion of the possibilities of the story through the correlated narrative that we existed in, and we didn't even know it. Right.

John Dehlin [01:22:57] Yeah. So, yeah. So do you want to explain really quickly Richard Rohr's first and second half of life in terms of why we have a first half of life, how regardless of what our first of half life is, we're going to lose faith in it and have a crisis in it and why, you know, how Mormons do in the first versus second half of life relative to others?

Dave McKenzie [01:23:26] So to answer that, and there's probably very specific things that Rohr talks about, but let me incorporate the Hayphens simplicity to complexity to simplicity, and Brian McLaren's simplicity to complexity, to perplexity, to harmony or harmonization, and Fowler's stages of faith, one through six or whatever, you know, and first half, second half of life, which is a Jungian type of a thing, a Carl Jungian type of thing, and even a little bit tap into kind of shadow work that Carl Jung talks about. Right. All of these things I think I have drawn into over the course of these last eight and a half years of just understanding that we all are born into a situation that is not of our own making, and whatever that situation is becomes our paradigm and our narrative until we choose to step out of it. Right. And I can even bring in the whole matrix story. Right. Of the matrix. Whether we like it or not, we exist in a world that was created for us by generations before us, and the mode and the social cognition that we're all being born into, which is not of our own making. And so that paradigm and that lens through which we see the world is dependent upon somebody else's experience. Right. So when you step into from the simplicity to complexity to simplicity, or into from a stage three to a stage four, quote, unquote, dark night of the soul that Fowler talks about, or you step, or you turn and interrogate your assumptions about life, that begins a process of being able to open your eyes to the ownership of the contradictions and the contraries against what you thought was absolute. Right. I love that line in whatever. Star Wars. I think it's the third one, Excuse me, where Anakin's on the lower ground and Obi Wan's on the higher ground, and Anakin says something like, if you're not with me, you're against me. Right. And Obi Wan's line is, only siths deal in absolutes. Right. So we grow up in this world where we think that everything that we think that we know is absolute. And many people don't really ever break out of that until something tragic happens that makes them interrogate their assumptions. And so my experience happened, that was my experience in 2016, is that it sent me into a space that I didn't ever know existed. That helped to open up and expand my mind to things that were far beyond the Matrix in which I was born into. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:26:40] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:26:40] So you probably have stuff to add to that.

John Dehlin [01:26:43] Yeah, if I can just. If I can just complement what you're saying. Richard Rohr is, and I'm going to remember this very crudely, but Richard Rohr, basically, when he talks about first half of life, he basically says, you're going to be raised in some paradigm because parents are going to have to raise you, generally speaking, and they're going to have a paradigm, and they're just gonna naturally raise you in their paradigm. So that's most people's experience, but that's not particularly bad. Like going back to the Yuval know, Harari, you know, people need structure, they need identity, they need morality, they need spirituality, they need community, they need connection. And, you know, and religion is just a really. Or churches are just really easy ways. Like we say, getting on the train, it's like, here's your. Here's your handbook. Here's the instruction manual. Yep, here's.

Dave McKenzie [01:27:43] And don't ask questions.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] Yeah, yeah. Well, just, you know.

Dave McKenzie [01:27:47] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:27:47] It's kind of like ikea. It's like, here's all the raw materials. Here's the screws and bolts. Here's the tool. Here are the instructions. Follow it.

Dave McKenzie [01:27:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:56] Build your thing. Right.

Dave McKenzie [01:27:58] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:27:58] Get on the train. But that's. That's not bad. It's just, it's actually healthy. And I don't. I don't think we have a better way of raising kids unless we're going to, like, do what Pol Pot did in Cambodia and dissolve all families and have the state raise children. Like, that's what we've got as humans, as parents raising their kids the best they know how. Yeah, but the point that's kind of eye opening is that inevitably, you could be raised atheist, you could be raised hippie, dippy, liberal. You can be raised Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Mormon. Doesn't matter. Ultimately, if you're paying attention and if your personality is inquisitive and if you travel enough and have enough life experiences, you're going to find either inadequacies with how you were raised, or you're gonna have experiences where you come to think and feel differently than how you were raised. And that's when the first half of life starts to end. And as Richard Rohr calls it, or Carl Jung calls it, the second half of life begins. And that's what some call the dark night of the soul. Maybe that's what Jesus calls the. The being born again.

Dave McKenzie [01:29:17] Being born again.

John Dehlin [01:29:18] Right. Yeah. And, you know, that's why we called the podcast, we did the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. The gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis is the rest of your life living a life, building a life, constructing a life in or out of the church. That's more in line with who you are, what is healthy for you, and what's right for you. The final thing I'll say about what Rohr said about Mormons is that in his view, working with people who have had faith crisis of all different religious traditions, he says that Mormons tend to do first half of life better than almost anyone else.

Dave McKenzie [01:29:56] Yeah, absolutely. I remember him saying that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:58] And that's. And so you think about.

Dave McKenzie [01:30:00] And again, because of the absolutes that are part of our story, right. Like, we live in a very formulaic, covenantal, functional theology that creates a tremendous amount of cooperation. And this is what Harari talks about. Like, the greatest myth that's ever been perpetuated is a rectangular piece of green paper that has numbers on it and all these symbols. The dollar bill. Right. And he just describes this so well of like, how have we been able to learn to cooperate in the way that we do and not kill each other and not, you know, be guilty of tribalism and so on and so forth as we have progressed? It's because we all agree that this little piece of dollar has meaning and value. And we will do anything to go do that. We'll go dig ditches, we'll go flip hamburgers, we'll go spend hours and hours in textbooks and so on and so forth, you know, to exchange our time for this myth of the dollar bill that has function and value. Right. And he just, he, he uses that so powerfully to show exactly. What you're saying is, is that you need, you need both. We need the power of myth, what he calls also the imagined order. I have my own take on what that means according to the gospel that we'll talk about a little bit later. But we need that aspect in our life to be able to cooperate with people and live something more than just the dirt and the weeds and the grass that we. That is reality. Right. The problem is, is when those things are utilized to manipulate people and remove their ability to think. Right. And this is where you've talked about the bite model and those kind of things where in cult like situations, restricting access to information and especially telling the adherence to that particular philosophy or mindset or religion or whatever to not ask questions outside of what's being taught. That's when the power of that imagined order begins to be deleterious. And what's happening and what I'm perceiving is happening in religion in general. Right. Christianity, but also within the church is that more. And a critical mass of people are awakening, are having this second half of life experience due to the advent of the information age and so on and so forth. Right. And religions in general are trying to do the best that they can to navigate through that. And we'll talk a little bit later about my perception of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is navigating through that. But that is the reality of the human experience, right?

John Dehlin [01:33:02] Yep. It's a human experience to have a faith crisis in whatever you were raised in.

Dave McKenzie [01:33:08] But not everybody has it, but not everyone does. And there are so many people like my grandparents and probably my wife's grandparents that just stayed in that stage three. And that simplicity of the formulaic, functional covenantal gospel that has all the answers and all the certainties. And there's a lot of people that still exist in that today as I continue to attend church. And I'm finding in the beginning of all of these difficulties that was really bothersome to me where I'm just like, everybody needs to know the truth. But I'm finding that that's a very fragile bubble like Van de Graaff talked about, Right. That we who have stepped in Maybe into that second half of life a little bit more. We've got to be careful of how we approach and present the things that we've come to learn, maybe to those who haven't yet. It's hard to thrust somebody into the second half of life. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:34:04] Yeah. And Fowler, to just be jumping back and forth between developmental. Fowler, you. Even though he numbers these stages, Stage three, he calls orthodox faith belief.

Dave McKenzie [01:34:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:16] Four is kind of doubt, dark night, soul. Then five is reconstruction. He's very clear, as I understand it, to make sure it's understood that the numbers don't mean higher or better or worse superiority. In my experience, there's just certain brain types or personality types or situations, whether it's socioeconomic or just need or again, personality type, where it's just not gonna happen. Healthy or desirous for someone to ever leave stage three, that doesn't mean they're lower than or inferior. And like you said, I am against trying to force someone out of a stage three into a stage four.

Dave McKenzie [01:35:07] And I'll admit in these years from 2016 to 2022, which is kind of what we're going to talk about next, I was probably guilty of trying to do that.

John Dehlin [01:35:16] Yeah. It's the most natural thing in the world to try. The second part that Rohr says that I didn't mention, I think he says it as well, is that Mormons tend to. The Mormon Church tends to not be supportive of second half of life. In other words, if the Mormon Church gets an A in the first half of life, it might get a C or a D, according to Richard Rohrer, in supporting and facilitating the second half of life. Because the second half of life, or Fowler stage four or five, it's where you're dealing with myth, you're dealing with nuance, you're dealing with complexity, not with absolutes. Metaphor. Right. And a more universalistic kind of worldview. And I think with Terrell Givens and Patrick Mason and Spencer Fluman and a

Dave McKenzie [01:36:15] lot of the neo apologists.

John Dehlin [01:36:18] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:36:19] The whole restorement, as you call them,

John Dehlin [01:36:21] the Faith Matters movement. They're successfully now ushering the church into carving out a space for that. Still young, but way stronger than when I was trying to do it back in the thoughtful faith stale, the S years, I'd say between 2005 for me and let's just say 2007, 2008. But the Mormon Church still has a long way to go. But it's certainly better in 2025 than it was in

Dave McKenzie [01:36:52] for sure. And there's you know, this is something. When we get to the part of this interview where I talk about why I stay, but I'll just do a little teaser here, but I really do believe that there are things going on in a very calculated way to heed the efforts that people like you have put in to be able to have the acknowledgment that there has to be some progression of ownership. Right.

John Dehlin [01:37:24] Okay, so where's your story going?

Disillusionment and Doubt from 2016 to 2022

Dave McKenzie [01:37:26] So this next segment is 2016 through 2022. I've got a list of kind of experiences and stories that I think are relevant and interesting. So along this way, I remain very vocal with my experience. I, during this course, I speak to three different bishops, two different stake presidents, speaking about leader roulette. They all were very, very good and open to my frustrations with the church and in my less sophisticated days of talking about things, even to my more sophisticated days of talking about things, and every single one of them. And, you know, these bishops are some of our best friends that we go to Lake Powell with, you know, and gone camping and those kind of things. So maybe my situation is different than most, but my experience with dealing with church leadership was very healthy. Between 2016 and 2022, I did have an experience with one stake president that was a little, A little older, that struggled with what I was expressing to him. And even the week later in Stake Conference, his talk was addressed to and even specifically mentioned like the CES letter and was kind of addressed to the challenges, some of the challenges that I brought up. But otherwise my experience as a whole was very positive with leaders along the course of this time frame. So during this time, my parents divorce a lot due to the challenges of my brother's death. And again, like applying a lot of grace to my parents. And I don't blame them for, you know, going through that. It's absolutely heart wrenching to think of losing a child. And if you never have, and if you're a parent watching this, just go and take a look at your kids and try to think of one of them not here. Right. And it's a very challenging thing. So I don't blame my parents for the challenges that kind of led to that for me and my wife, we navigated through as you would probably expect. I know you've had couples on here that live in kind of a mixed faith marriage, and I would say for that time period, we really did. And I won't go into deep detail, but the interesting thing that I experienced was that my wife is angry at me. For being angry at the church. And maybe angry isn't the word, but she's frustrated and confused and hurt by me being frustrated and confused at the church. And so our conversations were very interesting from a standpoint of me just trying to say, but this is the truth about our history that doesn't square with what we were taught and heard. Trying to navigate through her own experience of stepping into that space, of looking at things differently. Right. But as much as I'll say is, ultimately, she was a huge help along the course of this, both in her power to listen. I mean, we're talking days of, you know, many late nights talking and just processing and trying to figure out. But all along the way, I still went to work and she still did her motherly duties. We still had a functional family, and we still went to church, and I still pay tithing and all these things. But to kind of express kind of that difficulty from a spousal experience. But we navigated through.

John Dehlin [01:41:14] Yeah. Well, this is the type of thing that caused me to start Mormon stories, because inexplicable to many, never Mormons who aren't part of high demand religions, A simple faith crisis can end a marriage in Mormonism and in many high demand religions. And if it doesn't end the marriage, it can break a marriage that stays intact for whatever reason, but it can cause one spouse to disrespect and devalue and view as a disappointment the other spouse. And it goes both ways. The person losing their faith can look at the believer as naive or as an ostrich with their head in the sand, as weak, as dishonest, or as unwilling to face the truth. And the believer can view the doubter as an apostate or is an unfaithful. So it's a real serious thing. It is, yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:42:09] Absolutely. And I'm thankful for a wife who, in her wisdom, but also in her strength. And this is a part of my story as to why I stay as well. Right. Is that I did have a spouse that was able to sit in the crucible with me, even though she didn't want to be there. And in many ways, she still does. We still do, you know, but we've come to a much healthier place, too, so.

John Dehlin [01:42:38] Well, I'm glad that worked for y'. All. We should have her on.

Dave McKenzie [01:42:41] Yeah. It would be an amazing conversation.

John Dehlin [01:42:44] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:42:45] So, moving forward, some other experiences. I had a very interesting experience with the. With the belief in the power of the priesthood in my practice. I. There was a gentleman that. Who was a Very faithful member of the church who had significant gangrene. So gangrene is where your toes turn black, or at least a body part turns black. And in this particular scenario, he was a patient of my partner who didn't do some of the bigger surgical cases that I do. And so my partner invited me in to go and speak with this man and try to. Try to help him understand what we can do for his medical situation. And so my first visit to go in there, I looked at his toes and I just said, we need to get you revascularized, and we need to go and amputate half of your foot to save your life, because this gangrene will go this dry. Gangrene will go on to wet gangrene. And if we don't do this, this is going to kill you. And he kind of got frustrated at me. This patient did. And he looked at me and he just said, listen, I have received a priesthood blessing through the priesthood of God, and I have been promised that I will recover, that I will be made whole. And so I am showing faith to that priesthood blessing by maintaining the course and waiting upon the Lord. And I said, okay, I can understand that. And I said, but let's go get you revascularized. So we sent him to the vascular surgeon, and he was willing to go do that. And inside of me at that time, I'm like, wanting a miracle to happen. I'm wanting something to happen through the power of the priesthood, through the power of the message and the story of the church and so on and so forth in my experience. And so I'm like, hoping that this patient will show up the next week with beautiful, pink, healthy toes that this is, like, something that I can't explain in any other way. There's lots of stories out there about a priesthood blessing that was given, and people healed through certain ways, but oftentimes there's a way to explain it other than the miraculous nature.

John Dehlin [01:45:00] But have you heard the does God cure amputees Argument?

Dave McKenzie [01:45:04] No. No.

John Dehlin [01:45:05] Oh, it's a thing.

Dave McKenzie [01:45:06] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:45:06] Well, back when.

Dave McKenzie [01:45:07] What, like regrow a limb or something or.

John Dehlin [01:45:09] Yeah, yeah. Because back when, like, the. The atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrison Hitchens were kind of going outrage and pretty impressive.

Dave McKenzie [01:45:19] The new atheism. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:22] One of the issues they had to address was, like, Christian faith healings, and they would always make the point that, can he recover? People should pay attention, that when someone's healed, it's likely a misdiagnosis or something that would have spontaneously Resolved on its own, which happens. But you never hear about God restoring a limb.

Dave McKenzie [01:45:46] Yes. These are what I call the New Testament outcome outcomes. Right. And my take on the New Testament outcomes is that you read about the story of Lazarus and Jesus in that story, literally says, I prayed to God verbally or auditorily, basically. He's not saying those exact words in the passage, but basically says, I did this so that you could believe. These miracle stories that are in the New Testament are literally there so that people will believe in the divinity of Christ. And I wish that if these New Testament outcomes of that level of miracles are happening, that we would hear about them more. And I also know in the New Testament, Christ tells the blind man or the lepers or whatever, tell no one. And maybe that's what he's telling these people today. Maybe they really are happening. So I'm open for that. But I just. I don't know that we see those same kind of New Testament outcomes. When my brother, just freshly after his accident in quadriplegia, I got home from my mission, and we tried to perform healing blessings through the power of the priesthood. And I was. We were all very faithful, you know, and so on and so forth. And so in this instance, I'm hoping that this patient shows up the next week and his toes are pink. And I'm like, cool. I don't worry about any of these things that I'm learning about the church, all of the contradictions and whatever else, it doesn't matter, because this just happened. And the only way to explain this is through the power of the priesthood. Well, what ultimately healed this patient was that he went on wet gangrene. And his wife just looked at me and she said, it stinks. Go take care of it. And the patient finally consented. And what healed him was bright lice and cold, hard still. Right. We took him into surgery and we did the amputation. And after a couple months of wound care, that foot healed two months. Very shortly later, the opposite leg started to turn gangrene. His toes went gangrene again. This is a faithful member of the church who hasn't smoked a day in his life. He just has diabetic diabetes and has kind of a genetic predisposition to vascular insufficiency and those kind of things. And so that second time, when that other foot turned into that, he was just like, yeah, let's go do it. Right. So that experience is contrasted with another experience at the place I used to or that I do surgery at the director of nursing, she and I became really friends, really good friends. And she told me about an experience with her dad. Her dad was in his 70s or so and had some type of a cancer where the best treatment was found down in Texas. And so they sent all the labs over down to Texas and he was able to qualify for this particular treatment. And so when you're dealing with an immunocompromised person to go fly in an airplane, you just know that they're going to get sick. And so this was a risky thing for her and her family to go do with her dad. And so they were very trepidatious about it, but they made the trip down. Sure enough, he got sick. And when they showed up at the clinic, they were told that somebody had made a mistake actually, and that he actually doesn't qualify for the treatment. But now there they were down in Texas and he had gotten sick and they admitted him to the hospital. And it should be known this particular friend of mine, nurse friend of mine, is not a member of our church. And in fact, she has mentioned, she has made some antagonistic comments about our church. I don't associate with her. Now, this was years ago, back in 2018, 2019. And so not only is she not a member of our church, but she's not necessarily friendly to our church, but she is a believing Christian. And so they're down in Texas and her dad is now admitted to the hospital. And we've heard this story before. The hospitalist comes in and says, I'm so sorry, but your father is, you know, on his last limb. He's going to die. You need to come and say goodbye. And so as she's telling me the story, she just, she's crying and she just said, we all gathered around him and said our final goodbyes and we said a prayer that night and then we went to the hotel and we prayed again, just fully knowing that we were going to go to the hospital the next day and dad was going to pass away that night. Well, they show up at the hospital and Dad's sitting up in bed and Dad's taking on nourishment and eating breakfast and, you know, and he had a miraculous recovery overnight. The point is, is that hearing this story from my friend again, in this moment of dealing with this patient of mine and then hearing her story, I'm now contrasted by, here's somebody who does believe in God and prayed to God, and in this moment when her father was going to die, something happened, some miracle happened, but that man didn't receive a priesthood blessing, right? And There wasn't any faith in the power of the priesthood like there was in this other experience. And so the contrast between these two stories was just an interesting kind of. Okay, well, how are we really to understand the power of the priesthood from a standpoint of what our privilege is in giving these blessings? And I've actually kind of struggled with that for years, just understanding what is my privilege in giving a blessing. Can I command the will of God to heal, or am I just giving a blessing of comfort for the person and for anybody listening or, you know, what is that? And so again, just kind of wrestling with that formulaic or covenantal type of approach to even priesthood blessings was something that I experienced in those earlier, those earliest days.

John Dehlin [01:52:02] Yeah, go ahead, totally relate. No, that's good.

Dave McKenzie [01:52:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:05] If Mormon priesthood power to heal had the power that I taught it had as a kid, sure. Utah and parts of Idaho and parts of Arizona, sure. Would have off the charts, better outcomes,

Dave McKenzie [01:52:20] healing rates, and so on and so forth. Right.

John Dehlin [01:52:22] Well, as I understand that they don't.

Dave McKenzie [01:52:24] And it's. And it's interesting, too, because you're like, well, why, if Christ sent his apostles out to go perform the same miracles that he did 2,000 years ago, you know, when Covid hit, why weren't our prophets and apostles in the wards laying on hands? And you know what I mean? Like, and again, there's obviously a lot of.

John Dehlin [01:52:50] We're calling up FAUCI and saying, develop a vaccine now.

Dave McKenzie [01:52:53] Yeah, right. I don't mean to get into. That's another difficult discussion. But just in the end, like, when you're looking at this power that we claim to have, what is that power? Are we giving blessings of comfort or are we giving blessings of healing? Is our faith maybe not enough that these things are happening? So it's an interesting conversation.

John Dehlin [01:53:16] Or is that blame reversal, where when a promise isn't and it doesn't happen,

Dave McKenzie [01:53:20] then it's always this person wasn't faithful or this person wasn't.

John Dehlin [01:53:24] If the person's healed well, it's faith and priesthood in the church. If the person's healed, they didn't have faith.

Dave McKenzie [01:53:30] There's always that alibi.

John Dehlin [01:53:31] The Lord didn't want it to happen.

Dave McKenzie [01:53:32] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:53:33] They were needed on the other end.

Dave McKenzie [01:53:34] Or that there's a greater purpose through the suffering that's meant to remain, and so on and so forth. So again, and we'll talk about these things a little bit later, like, you know, the church wants to constantly put God in a rationally ordered universe, and then the outcomes of priesthood Blessings that aren't necessarily rationally ordered. Right. In a formulaic or covenantal fashion, it can start to help you ask questions. Right. That can help you grow and understand things even more than what you may think that they are. Right. So this next story is an interesting one. So I remember listening to your episode with Greg Prince on Leonard Arrington, and I bought the book about Leonard Arrington. And as I'm reading this, the Prince puts in the book the list of the scholars that were a part of Leonard Arrington's new church history that he wanted to write for the sesquicentennial celebration of the church in 1980. And as I'm looking at this list, I see my first mission president on that list. And so as I see him on that list, it kind of prompts me, man, I should go talk to him about some of these things that I'm experiencing. But then also ask him about his experience with Leonard Arrington. And so I get on the phone and call him up, and I just said, hey, what do you think about me coming and bringing you dinner one night? And I've kind of got some questions that I'm learning about the church that I'd like to ask you. And then also I'd love to talk to you about your experience in those Arrington days. And. And he said, yeah, sure, come on over. So my mission president at that time was a stake patriarch. He still is just less active now because of his age. But brought him over some dinner, and we sat down and we chatted. And that experience was so amazing for me in these early stages. So this would have been 2019 somewhere around there. And I sat with him for about four hours at his house. And I just, again, in my unsophisticated understanding at that point, I just asked him about polygamy and the Negro doctrine and the first division issues and all those kind of things. And his answers were very similar to my bishop's answers and my stake president's answers. But in the end, one thing that he did say that stuck with me, he just said, Elder McKenzie, as he still called me, Elder McKenzie. He said, if you can find a way to continue to remain faithful despite these challenges, it will bless you and your family. And so I didn't really take it super hard at that point because I was so frustrated and angry by these things. But as time has gone on, I often think back on that. And then I asked him about his experience with Leonard Arrington. So, again, for those who don't know, Leonard Arrington was the church historian in 1972. I think he ended in 1982. And thanks to John for helping to bring a lot of these things to light and for Greg Prince for putting his story together. The hope was to write an updated church history with Richard Bushman writing about Joseph Smith. And there was a whole list of other people. My mission president was going to write about the European saints. His specialty was European history at byu.

Church History, Priesthood, and Institutional Tensions

John Dehlin [01:56:59] Remind me of his name?

Dave McKenzie [01:57:01] Tobler.

John Dehlin [01:57:02] Oh, Craig.

Dave McKenzie [01:57:04] Doug.

John Dehlin [01:57:04] Doug Tobler.

Dave McKenzie [01:57:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:05] Okay.

Dave McKenzie [01:57:06] Yeah, yeah. So he, as I sat with him with President Tobler and asked him about that, he just, he looked at me and he just said, Elder McKenzie, when those first manuscripts were presented to the brethren from Richard Bushman, they just felt that it wasn't time to be that transparent.

John Dehlin [01:57:27] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [01:57:28] He said they just felt that it. It wasn't time to talk about our history in that way. And I think you've pointed out that I think those manuscripts ultimately became Rough Stone Rolling, you know?

John Dehlin [01:57:40] Yeah. Bushman published Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Early Mormonism back then that then he imported into Rough Stone Rolling, available

Dave McKenzie [01:57:51] at a Deseret book near you.

John Dehlin [01:57:53] Right.

Dave McKenzie [01:57:54] So even though that's not the official church history. Yeah, there seems to be. And that was back in. When did you write that? In 2006 or seven. Rough stone rolling or something like that. Right.

John Dehlin [01:58:03] Five, four and five.

Dave McKenzie [01:58:05] So there has to be an acknowledgement to a certain degree of. Even though officially that history wasn't part of the official church history, that in time, at least a Deseret book, there's an openness to say, hey, here's, here's this. Right. So. But in the end, my mission president, recollecting back to the 1970s, just acknowledged that. Yeah, they weren't quite ready for that openness.

John Dehlin [01:58:34] Yeah. Just like we learned from Matt Harris, second class saints that there were apostles, even for the 1950s, like Hubie Brown and others that were fighting for the priesthood ban on. And the temple ban on black people to be lifted as early as the early 60s. But there were holdouts. There were more conservative members of the quorum of the 12 or the first presidency that just were never going to allow it. Literally. Those people had to die off. And while the church deserves credit for creating a church history department in 1972 and calling a professional historian like Leonard Arrington versus like Joseph Fielding Smith, who was not a professional historian and was more of an apologist than a historian, they deserve credit for opening up the church history department. Clearly they got cold feet and. Or they saw so many problems emerge in the 70s and early 80s that

Dave McKenzie [01:59:34] recognized the error of their choice.

John Dehlin [01:59:37] It was two steps forward, one step back.

Dave McKenzie [01:59:39] Yeah. And so. So that brings into this discussion.

John Dehlin [01:59:45] Because we wouldn't have Michael Quinn.

Dave McKenzie [01:59:46] Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:59:48] If we didn't have Leonard Arrington.

Dave McKenzie [01:59:50] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:51] Literally, Arrington hired Quinn.

Dave McKenzie [01:59:53] Absolutely. Yeah. Helped him get into Yale and all those kind of things. Yep. And so you can see also around this time, I was exposed to by you Elder packers, the mantle is far, far greater than the intellect, written in 1980, which literally says, all things that are not, all things that are true are useful. Right. 1985. Elder Oaks, reading church history. It is not the official mission of the church's education or publications to be unbiased and balanced. Right. And so that helped me come to understand the mantle of these leaders in presenting the information the way that they do. Right. And also coming to understand that really, in essence, for a seeker like myself and like yourself and many nowadays, there has to be a recognition that what we were taught really wasn't the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Right. And really coming to recognize that this is my type of education, that it was very protected and privileged and very specific to grow the narrative of the church in the way that they wanted to talk about it. Right. And that became bothersome for me at that time as well. And even just the concept of a church history department that's led by Elder McKay today, who's a lawyer. Right. And has been led by a lawyer for all of these years, Kyle S. McKay, I think is his name.

John Dehlin [02:01:34] Before that, was it Snow? Before that, was it Marlon Jensen?

Dave McKenzie [02:01:37] Yeah. And Turley. Turley's part of that. And things. And so just the concept of understanding that the history department, where our theology is our history. And was it one of the RLDS leaders that said that history is theology is perilous. Right. That the church understands the importance of protecting the nuances and the contraries of the history. For me, having that recognition back in 2019, 2020, as somebody who thought I was always part of that truth was challenging to come to realize that. And it is challenging today for a lot of people when I talk to them about that, for them to kind of be like, no, I don't necessarily believe. I'm like, well, go read these talks that were given by these apostles. The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect. Reading church history. And you decide what he's saying in that. And he's saying that the mantle is so important as opposed to the intellect. Right. The contraries that come from historians who want to tell the truth, like a Richard Bushman. That's not the MO of the church. Right.

John Dehlin [02:02:45] It kind of goes back to the beginning of this episode when we talked about Yuval know Harari, truth versus structure. They're basically saying structure is more important than truth. If you have to pick, I think they would all say truth is important. But if you have to pick between order, structure, cooperation, authority, unity, they'll pick those things all day long over truth,

Dave McKenzie [02:03:09] over the amount of truth that's possibly available. Right. And as I've grown and matured, I've just come to understand when you're running an international church and those kind of things, that cooperation, that order, that control is important, especially when it comes to the beauty and the goodness that the church does provide. Right. So,

John Dehlin [02:03:42] yeah. Okay, so where do we go next?

Feeling Released from Authority and Navigating Criticism

Dave McKenzie [02:03:46] So probably the next thing to talk about is this concept of. And I know you've had Brit Hartley on this concept of feeling a release from authority. I remember just feeling this feeling of. Because of understanding a lot of the complications of the truth claims of the church, which basically are the foundation of why this bishop is a bishop and he has authority over me, or the stake president is a stake president and so on and so forth. I recognized this concept of feeling almost a release from that authority, which was helpful. But then it kind of quickly went into a mindset of nihilism, of just feeling, okay, well, there really is no order then, and there really is no substance or purpose or meaning or so on and so forth. And that didn't last very long, but it was a handful of months. I know you've had people talk about that on the show. That that is a very real thing. When all of these things start to get disrupted, right? Every. All of the pieces of that, of the foundation of your existence and everything else get disrupted. That it is easy to kind of tap into that mindset of, well, then nothing matters, so I may as well live according to my carnal desires. And even though I didn't ever act on that, it was scary enough at some point that I recognized I need to find something that can give me a foundation again. And so I started tapping into concepts like stoicism, reading Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca, and really gained a lot of beauty and strength out of this concept of virtue and righteousness for their own sake. Recognizing that in my role as a father and as a husband, as a physician, that there are many people around me that are dependent upon my mental health, my physical health, and my dialogue with them that I can't simply choose to lose. I can't simply choose to live a life of meaninglessness. And so tapping into, again, Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and things like that really was helpful for me in gaining some footing again, becoming moored again to something that had substance.

John Dehlin [02:06:17] For me, it was Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, and Secular Buddhism that are cousins of Stoicism.

Dave McKenzie [02:06:25] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:06:25] I think Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and Stoicism are kind of cousins.

Dave McKenzie [02:06:29] Yeah, absolutely. So to kind of end up this 2016-2022, leading into 2022, I've felt the weight of criticism, of constantly being critical. And I think I remember you talking about this. I even think I remember Nemo talking about this. How challenging it is to have this be your job, where you're constantly analyzing. And I know criticism being critical isn't the best way to describe it, but living in a space where you're constantly analyzing things that people say at church, which I was, or reading things in the scriptures like I was, and constantly looking for the contradictions and how this could be possibly made to not be true and. And always on the lookout for somebody who's lying to me or whatever else. Right. That living in that mindset can be very heavy.

John Dehlin [02:07:36] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:07:36] I don't know if you have something to share about that over these years that you've done this, but.

John Dehlin [02:07:40] Oh, yeah, like, I mean, I like to think of myself as someone who's optimistic, is happy, is positive. I think people who know me think of me that way. But if you look at maybe the thumbnails and the titles of many of our episodes, it's Polygamy and Abuse and.

Dave McKenzie [02:07:58] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:07:59] And that's not because that's what I care about. It's because, you know, we have a certain set of goals or objectives with the podcast, but dwelling constantly on things that are controversial or critical just isn't necessarily good for your mental health or your outlook. Just the energy of it all can definitely weigh you down.

Dave McKenzie [02:08:23] So how have you managed it over these years? What do you do to kind of manage that?

John Dehlin [02:08:31] Margi's really good to be married to because she's not interested in ever dwelling in negativity. When she realized that for her, the church wasn't true, let's just say that was 2001. She's just like, okay, now I'm moving on, and I'll do Buddhism and I'll read books and I'll do yoga and I'LL ride bikes and have fun. And it's just like, what?

Dave McKenzie [02:08:53] How nice would that be?

John Dehlin [02:08:54] Yeah. And then I spent the next 20 years deconstructing and processing, you know, but also it's not true because part of how I dealt with the faith crisis at the time was to make meaning out of it and to help others. So that's how I frame what I do. And that's why I endure the negativity and the critical stuff is realizing that the Eyes on the Prize is just helping people not have their marriage blown up or not blowing up their own lives. Healing and growing. That's why I do what I do. Now people ask all the time, how do you just survive from the boredom of doing this for 20 years?

Dave McKenzie [02:09:44] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:09:45] And the answer is, I don't have a desire to ever read another book about Mormonism or ever talk about abuse again. But knowing that if the church puts out a really harmful polygamy cartoon for children, that kind of sets kids up to be groomed, that isn't good for the church and it's not good for church members. If we do an episode saying, hey, this is probably not gonna end well. You may need to revise or take down that polygamy cartoon for children. And then the church takes it down or edits it significantly. Yep.

Dave McKenzie [02:10:23] Which. Which they did recently.

John Dehlin [02:10:24] Which they recently did that. You just feel great. It's win, win.

Dave McKenzie [02:10:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:29] I, we don't like, haha. We, you know, it's just like, hey, great, good job church. Like, good for the membership. Like, so that's. That's part of how I do what I do.

Dave McKenzie [02:10:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:40] And I turned down. And part of how I do what I do is to have people like you on the podcast and where it's. Or Michelle Stone. It's not always controversial, adversarial or negative. I turned out like, I could do 10 episodes a day on abuse stories of people who experienced sexual abuse or ecclesiastical. I could literally do 10 a day. Most of those I turned down because I'm just. It would not be good for me

Dave McKenzie [02:11:05] or my audience to do all those episodes again. Speaking about principles. The principles have already been talking about you. You've talked about.

John Dehlin [02:11:13] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:11:13] How it's not okay to hide abuse.

John Dehlin [02:11:16] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:11:16] And you've made. And. And you in. In who you are and how you are and the way that you've grown. You have the platform that the church listens.

John Dehlin [02:11:26] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:11:26] The Christianity listens, the people listen. Right.

John Dehlin [02:11:28] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:11:29] Which is powerful.

John Dehlin [02:11:31] Another, Another. Another thing that really informs how I do what I do. Because by if the church thinks of me as its number one enemy, they could do a lot worse than me. Because I have the benefit of having seen 20 or 30 years of people leaving the church and see how it's not all rainbows and lollipops and jelly beans and unicorns when you're out, when you leave, to some degree, wherever you go, there you are. And to some degree, you know, faithful Mormons can mess up their lives and do damage, but ex Mormons can mess up their lives and do damage. And there's no magic pill to just losing your faith in your religion and then happily ever after. That's just not what a lot of people experience. Some people blow up their marriages, some people become alcoholics, some people become addicted to drugs or psychedelic experiences or sexual experiment in ways that become destructive to them or their loved ones. All sorts of things. Ruined relationships. And again, all that stuff can happen in the church too. But the other thing is, I just have come to see that many people are better off. Many people are better off with some sort of faith or with some sort of community or with some set of packaged morality and identity that is just offered to them. The simplicity of like, here's a. Here's a structure. Yeah, just follow this.

Dave McKenzie [02:13:09] Yep, yep.

John Dehlin [02:13:10] Many people are better off with that and many people without. Many, not all, but many of people that I've known without any sense of spirituality, any sense of the divine, any moral boundaries, any community or moral structure, they don't do well, they don't thrive, and they get lost and they get unhealthy. So I'm not anti Mormon, I'm not anti Mormon church, I'm not anti LDS church. I'm not anti Christian, I'm not anti theist. I'm like, there's a whole toolbox of things that can help people enhance their lives. And I'm for just that full toolbox being made available. And then people using, whether it's stoicism or Buddhism or Mormonism or atheism or secularism or skepticism or science or Christianity, big, beautiful toolbox or buffet, whatever you do, construct a healthy, meaningful, joyous life where you're doing the most good for yourself and others and doing the least harm. That's my worldview, and that's why I do what I do. And that's how I combat the potential negativity and the weight. Sure of what this job could very easily be.

Dave McKenzie [02:14:31] Yeah. And that's a perfect segue into 2022-2025, feeling weighed down by just constantly being Critical. I had a conversation with my dad and was able to square some of the difficulties that I had with him and their divorce and so on and so forth. And I just looked at my dad and I just said, dad, I need to tell you that I forgive you and that I am thankful for you. And he looked at me and he's like, well, forgive me for what? Right? And what dawned on me, it was around 2022, was that so often and so easy, especially as we, you know, get into our 30s and, you know, become parents of our own and things like that, that it's. It's very natural to criticize parents for things that you feel that they didn't do in your growing up years, or things that you don't feel that they're doing right now. Right. And so on and so forth. And there's a. There's a tendency naturally, maybe to be hypercritical and negative. And I just realized, again, with my own parents, relationship with them, that I wanted to choose to move forward in a way of gratitude. And so a lot of my conversations with my parents since then, 2021, 2022, have just been talking about the things that I'm grateful for that they do, and things that they provided for us in the younger years and so on and so forth. But that kind of translated over to the church. It planted a seed of, okay, yes, I am frustrated at so many of these things that I'm learning about the church that I haven't really known before that are true. I'm feeling weighed down by constantly being criticized and then experiencing that with my dad and feeling the relief of choosing gratitude, began this process of kind of looking towards the church more in a, in a method of, of gratitude as opposed to criticism. And that didn't happen all at once. It's been this, this slow process over these years. But, and, and I think ultimately what spurred me on to really step into that next space was an episode that you did. I think it was like a. It was like the state of the OSF probably in the summer of 2022 or something like that, where you said, basically, hey, all of my listeners out there, and I'm paraphrasing, if you are simply tuning in to watch this just to just to continually feel critical and to be justified in your feelings and your sorrow and your frustrations and so on and so forth, if that's all you're doing and you're not doing anything, to move forward in a healthy way, whatever that may be, whether you stay in or you get out or whatever it may be, then you're missing the point of Mormon stories. And that was like a big slap across the face because I realized that for those previous four or five years or so, as I had just dug so deeply into all of the Mormon stories episodes and criticism and all those kind of things, even though it was good to learn and process, I realized that I wasn't doing anything. I. I wasn't utilizing this new birth, this new information to. To be a better person. So.

John Dehlin [02:18:05] Wow. I never. I didn't know. I don't think of those updates, those transparency updates or whatever as ones that are necessarily influencing people in their lifetime choices of all.

Dave McKenzie [02:18:18] So there's been many great and influential episodes that I've watched. The Tom Phillips amazing, you know, Richard Bushman, Greg Prince, Jeremy Runels. Right. Over and over and over again. It's weird for me to sit here and be like Dave McKenzie. Right. But that was one that kicked me in the pants. And I'm like, okay, what are you going to do next? So. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:18:39] Yeah, thanks.

Dave McKenzie [02:18:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:41] People often apologize once they've stopped listening, and they'll say, I'm so sorry, I don't listen anymore. I'm like, dude, pat yourself on the back. This is the time for celebration. Like, it means you graduated.

Dave McKenzie [02:18:53] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:18:54] Like, the purpose of.

Dave McKenzie [02:18:55] What are you doing next?

John Dehlin [02:18:55] The purpose of your faith transition isn't to constantly, always obsess about Mormonism, unless that's fun for you.

Dave McKenzie [02:19:02] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:19:02] But the purpose is to give you the gift of the rest of your life. And that's what. That's the goal. And if that means leaving Mormon stories and not donating, whatever, that's success for me and Margi.

Dave McKenzie [02:19:16] So in that year, I donated $1,000.

John Dehlin [02:19:19] Oh, thank you.

Dave McKenzie [02:19:20] You're welcome. And I just. And I just kind of marked that as a. Okay, here's for, you know. Well, probably well over a thousand hours. So Maybe it was 50 cents an hour or something like that. Right. For all of that. And I probably owe you more, so. So I'll pay you later today. It was almost just this, okay, moment of what's next? Let's go. What's next? And I remember listening to Terrell Givens talk about his experience with that. I think it's called the Mormons on Dateline. That was done years ago. Or Frontline, maybe pbs. Pbs. Pbs with Helen Whitney, I think. And he was describing this experience, talking afterwards. And Helen Whitney's, you know, sat with critics and apostles and Terrell Givens and Intellects and stuff like that. Oaks and Holland and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [02:20:07] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:20:08] At the end, she sits down with Terrell, I think. Yeah, maybe. And. And I. And she. She looks at everybody and she's just like, you know, you Mormons have an amazing religion, but you need to own it. And when I. When I heard that. When I heard Terrell tell that, I. I realized, okay, this is. This is the next step. What are you going to do to own this? Right. And so I. There were other things that led to this as well. Just the concepts of. I've got some quotes here. Before the truth sets you free, it will make you miserable. Right. Just understanding that, okay, I've been miserable. Now let's let it set you free. Right. What are you going to do next to set it free? Know thyself. Top of the Temple of Delphi. Understanding the shadow work that Jung talks about, what influences are behind you really turning into who am I really? This moment in 2022 where it's like, who am I and who am I going to be next? Right. For those who feel, I think this is Voltaire. For those who feel life is a tragedy. For those who think life is a comedy, again, this concept of I don't want to be subservient necessarily to my emotions all the time that are based upon everybody else's story or everybody else's paradigm, Right. I want to own what it is that I. That I am. That I am being a part of. Right. And interestingly enough, as you do step into that mode of just contemplation, these concepts of meditation and contemplation, you do kind of recognize there's a lot of things that we build up in our life that aren't really that important and that become a comedy. Right. The cave you fear to enter contains the treasure you seek. Joseph Campbell. Right. There's A quote by C.S. lewis that talks about something to the effect of, if you exist in a religion, the most challenging doctrines and theological premises in your religion are the things that you should study the most because in them you will find your religion. Right? Oh, there's another quote. I think it was T.S. eliot where he says, we shall never cease from adventure, and after all of our exploration, we will return back to where we started and know it for the first time. Right. So I guess I just realized that this was kind of coming around full circle, and it's time to step in and own that from that standpoint. So I decided to begin the process of writing a book. And I don't know what this will eventually become. But it's also said that if you want to learn about the world, read books. If you want to learn about yourself, write a book. And so I sat down and began this process in October of 2022 to take everything that I'd learned and try to put it into a relatively concise book that can act as a primer for anybody who wants to understand, not from a critical and not from an apologetic standpoint, but anybody who wants to understand and own and begin to own their membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but also in Christianity in general. Because there's a lot of overlapping concepts, right. And so this has been quite the thing for me since October of 2022. And it's been in many ways life saving. That intensity level, the critical level and everything else began to drop after the first months after October of 2022 and being allowing myself to process a lot of these things.

John Dehlin [02:24:11] Did you publish the book?

Dave McKenzie [02:24:12] It's not completely done yet. I'm to the stage where I'm getting all of the references put in because I want people to go through and when they're reading. So basically, the book is set up like this. So the first chapter is about the church and what the church claims to be. Second chapter we talk about epistemology. Third chapter we talk about. It's called the Crucible. So we talk about all of these stages of faith and so on and so forth. Richard Rohr and really just the progression of that first half to second half of life. The next chapter is about. It's called the mantle. And so we talk about the charted course. The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect. Reading church history, the evolution of how the church has presented its history to its members and so on and so forth, and ultimately helping the reader understand that what you know is only one side of the coin. Right? But also talk about the challenge of the leaders who are tasked with running a religion, running a worldwide religion. Right? That there has to be, like you said, there has to be myth and there has to be structure. And so how do they navigate that?

John Dehlin [02:25:25] Also all. I've repeated this on Mormon stories before. I heard it said once that the opposite of a small T, truth is a lie. The opposite of a big T, truth is another truth. In other words, there are tensions that emerge when you have any set of values. So you may have a value of honesty, but you also may have a value of compassion. And sometimes the most compassionate thing to say is not the most honest thing to say, for sure. Or you may or you may have a value of truth and honesty, but you also may have a value of community and of. Of order and structure and authority. And sometimes if you're trying to maintain structure and order that requires a respect for authority, you're not going to be able to have truth or the health of minorities as the highest value. You have to line up these values and decide which ones you're going to turn the volume up on versus which ones you're going to turn the volume down on just to kind of achieve for the appropriate situation, objectives in a certain situation.

Dave McKenzie [02:26:58] Absolutely right. And in essence, that's wisdom.

John Dehlin [02:27:01] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:27:01] That is exactly the application of knowledge is.

John Dehlin [02:27:04] That is wisdom. Wisdom and the harmonization of occasionally conflicting values.

Dave McKenzie [02:27:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:27:11] Right.

Dave McKenzie [02:27:12] Yes. Because as much as we want the brethren to stand up and say, you know, we were wrong about this or that or the other, and give an apology, which Elder Oaks says the church doesn't give apologies. Right. In the end, it's not going to move the church forward. That's what you're saying. Right. So they're kind of stuck in a pickle of how do we now navigate through the challenges that exist as a lot of these difficulties of our history, doctrine and theology are coming forth? How do we carefully navigate through this while trying to keep in as many of the brightest and best, but then also not lose the stage threes. Right. The more simple testimonies that are still beautiful and powerful. Right.

John Dehlin [02:27:58] And this is probably the most difficult conversation that I have with people who have left the church, people who have been traumatized by the church, because there are many who feel so harmed by the church, so disappointed by the church, so angry at the church, that any discussion that the church has value for some. Or the church has some good, or the church shouldn't just be flattened in the. Leveled and raised. And, you know, they're coming from a place of so much pain and trauma.

Dave McKenzie [02:28:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:31] That they just can't abide this discussion. And all I can say is I've just seen too many people who need it and want it.

Dave McKenzie [02:28:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:44] Sure. And with the church being $300 billion in assets strong.

Dave McKenzie [02:28:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:50] It's not going anywhere.

Dave McKenzie [02:28:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:52] So it's just ridiculously silly to think that you're gonna ever do a thing that's gonna make it go away. But also it's presumptuous to assume that you know what's good for other people, that they'd be better off without it, that somehow the world is gonna erupt in jelly beans and lollipops and rainbows and gummy bears if all organized religion disappears, peers. No. Because that creates a vacuum. And there can be a lot, believe it or not, I tell people this all the time. There are a lot worse things than being an orthodox Mormon in the world. Yeah, there are. And nature pours a vacuum and just look around the world right now at what's out there. There are a lot of worse things than being an orthodox believing faithful Mormon. So you got to be careful what you wish for. And I totally validate and get people who have been or feel traumatized.

Dave McKenzie [02:29:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:29:53] Where they can't hold space nuance about the harm the church can and and has done and sometimes still does. But I, I, I'm not willing to just than say they're right.

Dave McKenzie [02:30:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:30:11] No one can find meaning and joy and happiness in the church and there's no good that the church does and that the church should be burned down to the ground.

Dave McKenzie [02:30:20] Right.

John Dehlin [02:30:21] I'm just, I'm not, I'm not willing to hold that position because I don't think it's right and I don't think it's ethical.

Dave McKenzie [02:30:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:27] I don't think it's respectful and I don't think it's true.

Dave McKenzie [02:30:29] Yeah. And that's so going back to the book, you know, the next chapters are the five truth claims of the Church. First Vision, Restoration, Book of Mormon, Prophets, Temple. And then we get into a discussion on the plan of salvation and the Godhead and the evolutionary nature of the Godhead throughout Mormonism as well, leading up talking about, you know, the 1916 exposition right. On the Godhead, which was kind of the, the Mormon Council of Nicaea to define what, well, what is the Godhead and what do we say about it, you know, and so we get into, tap into those things. So the book is probably still four or five months out. But that process led me to really come to own more and more by looking into source documents from the Joseph Smith papers, challenging my own assumptions. Even after all of these years of just learning kind of piecemeal all of these different types of information and to bring it into one book that is kind of designed to be a primer for anybody who wants to dig deeper into. And as I've presented this concept to people over the years, I've had a lot of people that are very, who are members of the church, very interested and excited to be able to read in one book. Right. And process, I guess through one book as well, some of the things that you've spent that you and Dan McClellan and you know, so on and so forth, all of these different platforms, Faith Matters and Tara Givens and that you guys have been trying to talk about for years and years. So who knows what it'll turn into? If nothing else, it's a process for me, and it's at least something for my kids at some point, if they want to understand things on a deeper level, that there's a space to go, do that.

John Dehlin [02:32:30] Yeah, well, I like that. Just urging to all of us, I want to write a book. I've wanted to write a book forever.

Dave McKenzie [02:32:34] I've heard you say that. I'm waiting for it to come out.

John Dehlin [02:32:37] Yeah, well, I got to write it first. All right, so what, you know, before we talk about kind of how, you know, why you stay and how you stay. Any other final parts of your story you want to share?

The Endowment and Present-Day Church Involvement

Dave McKenzie [02:32:49] So, I mean, the next thing I would talk about about is just kind of bringing us up to present moment, right. It's 2025, and my. My oldest daughter had said she wanted to go on a mission. And so in preparation for that, I. I went and got my temple recommend, had a good conversation with the. With the stake president about that in 2022. She received her endowment in 2023. And I had a very interesting conversation with her. We had this drive that we were going on that was about two hours, and she just looked at me and she said, hey, dad, what am I going to go do next week? What is. You know? And she'd been through temple prep and those kind of things, but she wanted to ask me about it. And I just said. And she was speaking about the endowment, and I just said, well, there's an intellectual answer, and there's a. And there's a devotional answer. Which one do you want first? And she said, well, let's talk about the intellectual answer. And so on that drive, I opened up and I talked to her, and I said, listen, here's what a lot of people nowadays are calling the presentation aspect of the endowment. And we talked about masonry, and we talked about the platform that that ultimately became for the endowment. I didn't get into deep details with her because she was only 18 at that time, 19. But I just helped her understand from an intellectual standpoint that this is where this came from, and there's more to learn about all of this. And then we talked about the devotional aspects as well. And we talked about the five different covenants of obedience and sacrifice and the law of the gospel and chastity and consecration. And we just had this beautiful conversation where I acknowledged to her and I just said, listen, for anybody who's in their 20s to learn the importance of sacrifice, the importance of obedience, the importance of being part of something that's bigger than yourself through kind of consecrating yourself to something bigger, the importance of keeping your body chaste and so on and so forth. For anybody inside the church, outside the church, it doesn't matter. Learning those particular principles is very powerful. Right. And I understand there's a deep conversation we could go into about the temple, and we certainly could. And I understand there's a long history of it that's very challenging, and I understand a lot of that history, and I'm trying to understand more. But for the. For my daughter to be able to have that conversation and help prepare her in that way from a place of ownership was beautiful for me to be able to have that experience. And then when we actually went to the temple, I remember just sitting there in the chapel before, and this is still at a very angry phase. I'm not resolved necessarily in the way that I come across right now back in 2023, and I'm kind of shaking a little bit or whatever. And all I could tell myself was, you need to be open for things that are not written upon a page. You've studied, you've listened, you've read, you've done all of these things. Are you now ready to listen and experience something that is beyond anything that you can read? Right. And I admit that there wasn't this amazing experience of angelic visitations or anything like that, but basically the end of that experience with my daughter, it was there. There was a feeling of holiness and a feeling of beauty and a feeling of goodness that I was willing to continue to engage with for myself and for my daughter and for my family. My twins are so. My daughter served in the Philippines, and she just got home a couple months ago, and her experiences on the mission were amazing. And my twins are going on a mission now. They got called both to Germany, one in Berlin and one in Hamburg. And so we went through the temple with them just a week or so ago, a couple weeks ago. And we had the same conversation with them the morning of them going through. And I just hope that. And they were super excited. And we talked about things that they had never heard of before, even though they'd been through the temple prep course and things. And a lot of the things that we talked about with the masonry and those kind of things. And we didn't get deep into all of it, but just started planted that seed, they weren't freaked out by it. They weren't made nervous by it. They didn't want to run and hide. But coming from parents whom they trust and them recognizing our ownership of what it is that we were choosing to go do took away a lot of the weird things that we experienced, that our generation experienced. Right. Going through for our first time where you kind of get done and you're a little freaked out. Right. And so both of those experiences have been very positive moving forward.

John Dehlin [02:38:07] It's. I don't want to say triggering is the right word, but like, I was thinking about when I would, you know, Margi and I stayed in the church 13 years after we completely lost our faith in orthodox Mormonism. Yeah. And I kind of feel like I wrote the book before Patrick Mason ever wrote Planted. I wrote an essay called how to Stay in the Church after a Crisis of Faith and posted it to the stale ds.com website, which I still own. And in there was like a guide to passing the temple recommend questions and getting a temple recommend as a nuance, as a non literal, you know, Fowler. Four or five more. And. But, but towards the end of my time as a member, it became hard because like, there were changes to the temple ceremony and I really, I didn't go to the temple a lot, honestly. But you know, I had always talked about problems at the temple ceremony and then I hear they're making improvements. So I wanted to go, Yeah, I go to my stake president and he's like, there's no way I'm giving you a temple recommend because you do Mormon stories. You know what I mean? And that put me in the position of feeling like a second class citizen where I'm like, man, I don't know if I can feel good about being part of an organization where I'm treated, where I have to sit at the back of the bus.

Dave McKenzie [02:39:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:39:29] Or when I wanted to baptize my son, my stake president was like, I'm not sure I'm going to let you baptize your son. Because you do Mormon stories. Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:39:37] And because you think differently.

John Dehlin [02:39:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:39:41] You speak differently.

John Dehlin [02:39:42] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:39:43] Like.

John Dehlin [02:39:43] And you know, there have been all sorts of people that God Temple recommends or got to participate in ordinances and maybe they drank beer or maybe they didn't wear their garments or maybe they, you know, looked at porn or whatever. Yeah. I like, I think there's always been the roulette aspect to worthiness. Interviews forever or, you know, leniency or, you know, that sort of thing. But, you know, Matters of, like, candor around truth claims and faith and apostasy. You know, I think that's more of a modern phenomenon where these sorts of conversations would happen where you're like, I don't know that I believe the Book of Mormon is actually historical. I don't know if I believe in a God the same way the church did. Anthropomorphic God, the way the church teaches. I don't believe this is the one true church. And, you know, I don't know that I believe in that the priesthood is really necessary. Priesthood ordinances are necessary to make it to heaven, but I want to baptize my son and I want to go to the temple with my daughter when she's going on a mission. And I think we've really come a long way because not only am I hearing all the time of bishops and stake presidents that are totally cool with people that say, I'm not sure I believe in God or I don't believe in historical Book of Mormon, the Church is super happy to have them have temple recommends as long as they're kind of quiet about it and they don't make a big mess about it. But I've heard about people who self identify as atheists being called as bishops or being called the bishoprics or stake high councils because they identify as atheists. Now, of course they don't. The leaders don't want them saying that over the pulpit, but they're like, we need people like you to support people in the church that probably feel or have similar concerns. So there's a part of me that feels envious that you have a temple recommend. Yes, you got to have a temple recommend that you get to.

Dave McKenzie [02:41:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:58] Because for many, that's not a luxury they have had historically or maybe still do, but I think it's more and more common.

Dave McKenzie [02:42:06] Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and obviously there's sacrifices along the way of any enlightenment throughout history. Right. And unfortunately, you were. You have been a sacrifice or a martyr, whatever you want to look at it, however you want to look at it, for a lot of the progression that we're heading in. Along every step of enlightenment and progress, there are. Somebody has to stand up and sacrifice themselves in a way.

John Dehlin [02:42:35] Yeah. So, yeah.

Dave McKenzie [02:42:38] And there needs to be acknowledgement of that ultimately to get to the point where we, where we can sit and have a conversation like this. Galileo, Copernicus. Yeah, yeah. In my, yeah, in one of my chapters too, we talk about Copernicus and Galileo and then apply it to the current situation of J. Reuben clark. In 1932 in the charted course. And, you know, basically saying, like, well, if J. Reuben Clark was Copernicus. Copernicus ecclesiastical leader, he would have burned Copernicus book. That's the, that's the analogy here. Right. So along the way towards continued enlightenment, unfortunately, there's sacrifices, so.

John Dehlin [02:43:21] Well, I'm glad you and daughter had that. You and your daughter had that experience.

Dave McKenzie [02:43:24] It was great. It was beautiful from that standpoint. And so we're progressing along. I served in the Young Men's for a couple years and was able to, you know, be kind of the camp guy, and we went and did some great things. And then now, interestingly, I'm called as the gospel doctrine teacher. Whoa.

John Dehlin [02:43:39] So, I mean, I was elder scrum Instructor back in 2004.

Dave McKenzie [02:43:43] In your phase. Yeah. So how was that for you?

John Dehlin [02:43:46] I mean, I would always joke a third loved my lessons because I was teaching about the Stone in the Hat and the priesthood band back in 20, 22 years ago. Yeah. Polygamy and all that. And before that I was in seminary. I was teaching that to my seminary students. But I would always say a third loved it, a third were sleeping and bored and a third hated.

Dave McKenzie [02:44:10] Struggled.

John Dehlin [02:44:11] Yeah. And then they would go tell the bishop or, you know, and then I'd get reported and have to go talk to the bishop and. And I concluded that it wasn't really appropriate for me to spoil people's Sunday experiences. Yeah. Because that. That's kind of selfish.

Dave McKenzie [02:44:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:28] So I just, I. I was at peace with. I couldn't give the standard Sunday school lessons out of the manual, which is ultimately what they wanted me to do.

Dave McKenzie [02:44:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:39] So I'm just like, I'll serve at nursery. Yeah. Just call me a nursery. And then by that point, they wouldn't let me near the youth.

Dave McKenzie [02:44:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:45] Because the youth are like the cherished. Which makes sense. But how could I hurt a two year old? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, because we don't hurt two year olds.

Dave McKenzie [02:44:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:55] Yes. There are people that hurt two year olds, but that wasn't me and Margaret. Yes. Yes.

Dave McKenzie [02:45:00] But no. Yeah, exactly. And that's been my experience so far, too. You know, I've only done two lessons, but there are a lot of people that are in, you know, in the pews. Right. Chapel Mormons that do struggle with getting into some of the challenges that are very real. But then there's a lot of people that feel so justified and feel engaged in the discussions that can come through the concept of discussing, you know, gospel doctrine. What is gospel doctrine? Right. And so we carefully and slowly navigate through that, for sure. So. So I, I mean, where do we go from here? So I, I think it's. There's probably two things I would love to talk about in relation to the truth claims. And then we can move on to my brother's, my younger brother's experience that we just had in 2023, and then talk about why we stay. And then if you want to, if you wanted to, we could kind of tackle some of those Paul brother experiences that I had when I was listening back in September. So. So you tell me where you want

John Dehlin [02:46:13] to go for it.

A Meaningful Missionary Story and Spiritual Experiences

Dave McKenzie [02:46:14] Okay, so. So that probably the first thing I would just share is there was the Elder Holland greatest missionary story of all time experience. So to kind of recap on that. And I think you talked about this a little bit, but so Elder Holland, back in 2010 or 11 or 12 or something like that, shared this story about an Idaho missionary. And I think he shared this story at a mission president conference or something like that. And it got printed in the church news 2019, maybe 20. I think it was around 2018, 2019, if I remember right. And the story goes basically like this. So there was a missionary from Idaho and he was called to California. And he one day he and his companion got up and they went hiking the streets and walked down the street, one particular street and they walk by this one particular door and these Doberman pincers start barking at them. And so they just continue to walk past. The spirit tells them to stop and go back. And they go back and they start talking to this man who's sitting on the front porch. And this man, as they continue to talk to this man, this Idaho missionary asked him, well, where are you from? I'm from Idaho. Oh, which city? From so and so city. Who are your parents? So and so parents. And the story goes that this Idaho missionary said that those are my parents and I've been called by God to come and find you. And the story continues that they spoke into the night with that man and that this man ultimately was this Idaho missionary's long lost brother who had lived a life of ill repute, you know, 15, 18 years ago prior and was lost to the family. Family didn't know where he was. And that this miraculous story brought this Idaho missionary to his brother and found him. And when Elder Holland tells the story and it's printed in the Church News that he says specifically the Lord through the Holy Ghost inspired one of his apostle brethren to assign this Idaho boy to California, the Lord through The Holy Ghost inspired the mission president to assign this boy to this area. The Lord through the Holy Ghost, inspired this young man to go walk down that street that day when his brother would be outside. And then all of this was by divine design. All of this was divinely orchestrated. And so I remember hearing that story because I think the church news published it on a Saturday. And then the next Sunday, it was at the beginning of the month, the next Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and my bishop got up and bore his testimony and he spoke about this. So this is now my experience with that story. My bishop stood up and bore testimony of this story and he's, you know, weeping about it and utilizing it obviously to show how God's hand is in this work, right in his work and especially his missionary work. And for me, as I'm sitting there in the pews and I'm kind of at the height of my frustration of what I'm learning about the church and my faith crisis, I remember leaning over to my wife and saying, I don't think that that story's true. And she just, you know, kind of, I said things like that in sacrament meeting before and she just kind of said okay or whatever. And it bothered me. But I'm looking around and everybody else is kind of crying about this. That night we went to first Sunday dinner at my in laws house and my mother in law, who also reads the church news, sat down with my kids and told them this story and with tears in her eyes bore testimony to the truthfulness of this story and how it represents God's hand in his work, that this is such a miracle, and so on and so forth. And again I felt, I just, I can't believe that this story is true. And I had no other reason to believe that it wasn't true other than just what I was feeling. So I'm bothered why everybody else around me is crying over this story and feeling the spirit over this story. But I'm not, I'm feeling that it's not true. So that bothered me for about two weeks. And then there was a letter that came out from the desk of Elder Holland rescinding this story and basically saying this story is not true, although there are principles in the story that are true. I'm requesting that people no longer share this and somebody in the family made up the story and so on and so forth. And so what I experienced at that point was this concept of how can we trust simply our emotions and our feelings to witness to us the truthfulness of something especially A story, Right. And the church's way that it talks about how truth can be found is by, you know, reading something out of the Scriptures or a story or whatever it may be and paying attention to the feelings that you have while you're reading it, maybe praying about it, and that the truth will be made manifest in that, in some sort of an emotional way. A burning in the bosom. Right. And it was just an experience for me to recognize. Well, now how am I supposed to deal with the story of the first vision? For example? It's a miraculous story. When I read the 1838 account in the Pearl of Great Price, and I feel good about it, is that the Holy Ghost telling me that it's true, or is it me just responding to a beautiful story? Right. How did everybody hear this miraculous Idaho missionary story from an apostle who also apparently felt the spirit about the truthfulness of this story? How is everybody feeling the Holy Ghost to the point of weeping when the story isn't true? Right. And then even more so, why, why did I perceive or feel the real truthfulness of the story as a semi apostate thinking member when I'm very angry and frustrated at the church? Why was I privileged to feel the real truth of that story and all of these other people are feeling something different? And then even the question of if an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ as a prophet, seer and revelator, didn't have the capacity through the gift of discernment, to fill the truthfulness of the story, which is that it's not true, then how, how can we trust the potential revelation that is received by these men based on their councils and the feelings that they get about which way to progress? Or even from a concept of revelation of prophets from the past 195 years that are responding to a question that they have and utilizing the emotions that they experience to tell them whether the question that they have or the answer that they're getting is, is truth. Right. So when that's applied specifically to the first vision, it. It makes it difficult to understand how we are supposed to come to a knowledge of the truthfulness of a story that somebody said, especially a story that has very apparent contradictions. You know, when you compare the. The 1832 to the 1838, almost everything is. Is fairly opposite, right? The 1832, Joseph Smith doesn't even mention a grove. He says, in my wilderness. And that could be metaphorical or that really could be in my wilderness. Right. Joseph Smith was 15 years old, says it took place in 1821 Specifically, Joseph Smith went to the grove to pray because he wanted to be forgiven of his sins. And through reading the Scriptures, he says specifically, he came to be convicted that to understand that none of the churches could give him that forgiveness or that God wasn't to be found at any of those churches. And so he went to the grove knowing ahead of time that none of the churches were true According to the 1832, and specifically to be forgiven of his sins. As we've talked about before, there was no adversarial experience in the 1832 that Joseph felt that he was going to be destroyed. And then the biggest of all, as anybody who's actually read the 1832 account in the Joseph Smith papers, is that Joseph Smith specifically said that Jesus Christ is the only one who came to visit him and not God the Father. And it's interesting if you read it closely, Joseph Smith does mention God, but all he says is that I was filled with the spirit of God in that moment. And so you take that and you take, you know, lectures on faith 5.2, where they teach that God, you know, is a body of glorified Spirit, and you begin to compare and contrast and try to realize the contraries. And then you take into consideration, how can I trust my feelings? And then for me, I reach back to the foundation of my testimony being the first revision that I experienced on my mission. It just became increasingly more difficult. So the reality from the truth claim standpoint is that they're very complicated. Right. And I guess that's my point from a first vision standpoint that is one of the five truth claims of the church. It's a very difficult discussion to have when you consider all of such things, even this apologetic response of that Stephen Harper has proposed, for example, of shards of memory, that any story that we do tell, we're going to tell it based on those shards of memory and interacting with our current state of mind and our current experience. Right. Which I think is true. But I just find it fairly disingenuous to say that Joseph Smith was sharing his story in a natural way, in that we would expect there to be these types of discrepancies and contradictions from story to story. So I just find it fascinating that with Joseph's experience, especially the 1832 versus 1838, that there is such an acceptance of it in the church. And I don't know how to really to handle it, I guess, moving forward from that standpoint. But it is also a struggle to just constantly teach the 1838 First Vision account as an absolute experience, an absolute cornerstone of our church that absolutely happened. And look at what happened from it. When Joseph Smith himself has a contradictory description of it. And when you think about the 1832, the context to it is that he's traveling with Frederick Williams, and Frederick Williams gets bucked off a horse and he's convalescing, and Joseph is sitting there and he has time to breathe. It's been two years in from the time they started the church. And I can perceive of Joseph just sitting down in the quiet of his mind saying, what was that experience like? And I just need to get it down. I'm not telling it for any other purpose. Right. 1838 is kind of in the wake of the Kirtland crisis. And so he might have had a purpose to tell it in a certain way, but I can perceive the 1832 being the most pure description of what Joseph Smith really experienced. And the challenge to it is it's the only one that he himself writes, and it's the only one that really tends to be fairly contradictory to the rest. And so that's a struggle for me still. I think it's a struggle for the story of the church.

John Dehlin [02:59:41] Ah, well said. Yeah, that's a big one for a lot of people.

Dave McKenzie [02:59:46] It's a big one. Yeah, it's a big one. So the only other truth claim that I think that we probably have time to tap into is to talk about the Book of Mormon. Are you okay if we talk about that for a minute? So the Book of Mormon, I wrestle with still the church's perception, and I brought this up in Elders Quorum a couple weeks ago, that so much of the power of the Book of Mormon is that it has to be historical somehow. It has to be proven to be historical, that we can't just simply push that aside. And to be honest, when you research back and study back to the things that Joseph Smith was saying and Parley P. Pratt and some of those earliest converts that really got the church off the ground. The power of the book itself was that it was historical. They all believed that it was historical. Right. And it's only since obviously the things you've talked about, you know, DNA studies and so on and so forth, that that aspect of its historicity is being challenged. Right. And so at the same time, for me, I'm less concerned about the archaeological anachronisms. And I know I've listened to the Michael Koh episodes, and you talked about that with the Paul brothers back in September and tried to get deep into that. And I still do struggle with the archaeological anachronisms, but for me, the things that are most challenging and most fascinating at the same time, and in my opinion, can be the most critical, but it can be also the most apologetic, is the literary anachronisms. And have you listened much to Royal Skousen out of BYU and what he's saying now about the Book of Mormon?

Truth Claims, the Book of Mormon, and Lingering Questions

John Dehlin [03:01:48] No.

Dave McKenzie [03:01:49] Can I share a couple of his quotes? Sure. So this is. This is something that's really held me and helped me process, but also, like, has been challenging for the nuance of understanding the Book of Mormon. And to be honest with you, I honestly haven't heard many platforms talking about this. And so I wanted to bring this up. So for background, Royal Skousen is a linguist, and he has. Of all the people in the world, he has studied the original documentation and transcripts of the Book of Mormon more than anybody else, and he's studied them linguistically. So the church has owned the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon for years. They recently bought the original manuscript, of which there's about 28% extant, because it was buried in the. I think it was placed in the Nauvoo Mansion cornerstone. And it, you know, succumbed to yeast or not yeast, mold and water and those kind of things. The community of Christ, I think, had it. They purchased the church, purchased it for $32 million or something like that recently. And so Royal Skousen has been able to go through the printer's manuscript, which is a direct copy of the original manuscript. They took the printer's manuscript into the printer when it was being processed so that they could maintain the original manuscript so that it wouldn't be stolen or altered or changed or whatever right after the 116 page debacle. And so Royal Skousen has studied this original and printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon with a fine tooth comb for the past 20 or 30 years. And he's written extensively about it. And so after all of his studying of these manuscripts, this is what he said. I believe this one's back in. I've got a quote from him from 2016 and a quote from him from 2024. And specifically, one of the biggest. And you've talked about this, John. One of the biggest challenges of the Book of Mormon is the presence of the King James Version Bible in the Book of Mormon, from Isaiah passages to New Testament passages. And it's one of the things that makes it the most challenging for me. And we're talking proto and Deutero and trito Isaiah and all of those kind of discussions that you've had, that from a deutero Isaiah standpoint, for those people who don't understand that, obviously those are writings in Isaiah, anywhere from chapter 40 through 55 would be considered deutero Isaiah from a scholarly standpoint, meaning that those would have been written during the exile of Israel into Babylon. On anything 1 through 39 is proto Isaiah and would have been written possibly. And I know David, you had David Bachavoy on, he spoke extensively about this, that there are still some chapters in those first 39 that may have also been written in the exilic period. And then anything that's 55 through 65, I believe, or 66 is written post exilic. So that would be Trito Isaiah. What that means is, is that anything potentially written anything potentially in the Book of Mormon that is part of an Isaiah chapter That's past chapter 39. So 40 through 50, 40 through 66 would be anachronistic because it wouldn't have been written yet because those things didn't get written at least until 530 BCE or so. Lehi left Jerusalem in 600. Right. So this is a major problem for the potential historicity of the Book of Mormon. But Skousen even speaks even more about what he calls periphrastic phrases and paraphrastic verses in the Book of Mormon that are 270 words long and they are identical to what is found in the King James Version Bible that Lehi Nephi. Any of the prophets during the Book of Mormon time from 600 BC to 400 AD that they just simply wouldn't have had access to and they wouldn't have even in many cases been written yet. Right? So this is the challenge that exists in the Book of Mormon. In addition to the fact that Joseph Smith changed the Book of Mormon from 1830 to 1835, I'm trying to remember who wrote new approaches to the Book of Mormon. He was the security guard for the church.

John Dehlin [03:06:32] Brent Metcalf.

Dave McKenzie [03:06:33] Brent Metcalf, right. So when you get into Brent Metcalfe's work as well, he gets deep into one. Nephi 11 first Nephi 13. There's very specific changes where the Son of was placed in where the original Book of Mormon. You can go read this on the Joseph Smith Papers, right? Go look up the original, the first edition of the Book of Mormon where you will read where in First Nephi 1113 it says that God the Eternal Father will come down and be born of mary by the 1835 edition, Joseph Smith added the Son of in order to indicate that this is Christ. Another fascinating one change was in 1st Nephi 20, verse 1, which is an Isaiah chapter, and it says out of the waters of Judah in the original Book of Mormon. In the first edition of the Book of Mormon, that's all it says. It's identical to Isaiah. I can't remember what chapter it corresponds with. It's identical to the KJV Isaiah. But by 1835, Joseph Smith adds out of the waters of Judah or out of the waters of baptism. So we have to be open to this concept that Joseph Smith is still working with the Book of Mormon and making changes to it from 1830 to 1835. This is demonstrable. You can get on and read it, read these things on the Joseph Smith papers and look at it for yourself. Right? But from a. So those are problems in and of themselves as far as a tight translation, right? You guys have talked about tight and loose translations and the stone in the hat versus, you know, some other. What does Blake Ostler say, the expansion theory and so on and so forth. But for the Skousen stuff, what he's done is try to identify why it is that there are biblical passages found in the Book of Mormon that is supposedly an ancient book. And this is what he said. Okay, so that's a big buildup. Sorry for that long build up to this. But that context is important. So Royal Skousen said this at BYU. I think this was in 2016, and I think this is telling for his research. We don't have the time to get into it more deeply than this, but we'll share these quotes and kind of see what your thoughts are and maybe have a little bit of back and forth. So Royal Skousen said this. All of this quoting from the King James Bible is problematic, but only if we assume that the Book of Mormon translation literally represents what was on the plates. Yet the evidence in the nature of the original language, parts three and four, which are his books, argues that the Book of Mormon translation is tied to early modern English. And even the themes of the Book of Mormon are connected to the Protestant Reformation dating from the same time period. What this means is that the Book of Mormon is a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one. Based on the linguistic evidence, the translation must have involved serious intervention from the English language translator, who was not Joseph Smith. Nonetheless, the text was revealed to Joseph Smith by means of his translation instrument, and he read it off word for Word to his scribe. To our modern day skeptical minds, this is indeed a marvelous work and a wonder. Here's a Second one in 2024 that kind of piggybacks on top of that, what I have and this, this was again at a conference at byu. He says, what I have found. If you look at the Book of Mormon, you will find that the Reformed Protestant issues from the 1500s and especially the 1600s is what the Book of Mormon is about. It wasn't written for our time, it wasn't written for Joseph Smith's time. It's written about the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in particular, the ones the Reformed Protestants were thoroughly interested in based on their reading of the Scriptures. What's your initial thought?

John Dehlin [03:10:41] There's a lot there.

Dave McKenzie [03:10:42] There's a lot there.

John Dehlin [03:10:43] But the first, basically the idea that it's not just simply golden plates written in Reformed Egyptian that Joseph Smith translated into English sentence by sentence. I won't say, you know, I've done it. I speak Spanish. I know that you don't do word for word translations, but you do sentence by sentence translations. Right?

Dave McKenzie [03:11:07] Right.

John Dehlin [03:11:08] And the fact that he's trying to say it's something other than that just feels like obvious motivated reasoning where he's just trying to do mental gymnastics. Not. No, I don't these words sound disrespectful. I mean, I think he not only has a lot of social, emotional reasons to support the divinity of the Book of Mormon, but it's also his paycheck. Yeah, so. And his reputation and his genuine belief. So he's trying to manage cognitive dissonance by creating an explanation that allows it to be what Joseph literally claimed it was, which is a translation of golden plates written in Reformed Egyptian translated into English of historical figures. That's what that's the claim was. I don't think there's any real escaping that. And I think everything he said after that is literally motivated reasoning to try and. To try and close the gap between what Joseph claimed the book is and all the problems that science and literary criticism and everything have exposed so that it can be a creative work of inspired revelation and still what Joseph claimed it was. So with all due respect, I don't buy it at all. But I get why he's doing it. I don't judge him for it. I don't think he's being deceitful. I think he's literally just trying to manage cognitive dissonance and help others manage their cognitive dissonance in the direction of remaining faithful.

Dave McKenzie [03:12:59] That's What I think, yeah, no, and I think that's an appropriate initial response. Right. Obviously, this is a faithful member of the church. He works at the byu. He receives his paycheck there. I guess for me, and the reason I wanted to share it was that one of the biggest challenges that I've heard you bring up and many critics of the Book of Mormon bring up, and this is what I bought into in the initial stages too, which is still very difficult, is one of the ways to prove the Book of Mormon wrong is to simply say. Is to simply say Joseph Smith wrote it, and when he was ready to put in whatever aspect of the KJV into it, he handed the Bible to Oliver and said, okay, now copy Isaiah 12, now copy Isaiah 53 or whatever. Right? And that in Joseph's genius in writing the Book of Mormon that he. That that's kind of what he simply did. And what I think that Skousen is doing. A couple other points that he brings up specifically is you've mentioned a lot about the italics, the italicized words, and how did Joseph Smith not know that or sometimes did know, and he basically just changed the italicized words because he knew that these were not part of the original and so on and so forth. And so Skousen, through his research, found that there isn't a 100% changing of the italicized words. Right. Like, there's some that are changed and some that are left unchanged. The other thing that he brings up about the concept of Joseph just handing the Bible to Oliver and saying, here, copy this down, or even Joseph, possibly the only other alternative explanation, maybe that Joseph Smith was reading out of the Bible on his lap or whatever, or

John Dehlin [03:14:45] had a super good memory, or had

Dave McKenzie [03:14:46] a super good memory, had it memorized, is that Oliver. Looking at the portions in the Book of Mormon that Oliver was writing that are directly from the kjv, there's a lot of misspelled words, right? So however Oliver was receiving it from Joseph, it was auditory and not. Not visible. Does that make sense? Because if it was visible and he's just reading it off the. Out of the kjv, he's not going to misspell those words. Right? And there's always potential for that. But so. And then he brings up a very interesting one verse in particular. This is in second Nephi 12:16, that corresponds with Isaiah 2:16. And this is one. When I saw this, this was something that just kind of helped me open up a little bit more to, okay, there's probably something more going on with the Book of Mormon than either it being purely a historical book or that Joseph Smith was just, you know, a pious fraud and creating it. And Skousden talks about this, and I'll try to describe it as succinctly as I can. So in second Nephi 1216, if you look at the verse, it says specifically, upon and upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish and upon all the pleasant pictures. So if you read the Book of Mormon today and even the first edition of the Book of Mormon, that's what it says. It has both upon all the ships of the sea and upon all the ships of Tarshish, okay, In the kjv, it reads only, and upon all the ships of Tarshish and upon all the pleasant pictures. So it's missing that line. And upon all the ships of the sea. And so what Skousen says, he says, listen, one of those lines comes from the Masoretic text, the Bibles that were dependent upon the Masoretic pathway. One of those lines comes from the Septuagint pathway. And in none of those Bibles that are dependent purely upon the Masoretic or purely upon the Septuagint are both of those words, both of those lines in them. Does that make sense? Am I explaining this where you can understand this? So the fact that both of those lines upon the. Upon all the ships of the sea and upon all the ships of Tarshish, the fact that both of those lines exist in the Book of Mormon, for that to have to be in there, Joseph Smith would have had to go and find the Septuagint based text. And he talks about the Coverdell and the Geneva, and I don't remember which is which. And all those kind of things, Joseph Smith would have had to know, would have had to have known that the discrepancy between those two particular lines and go and find that other line and then purposefully put it into second Nephi 12:16, with the intent to throw people off of his trail. If he's simply just writing this and making this up, does that make sense? It adds a level of complexity

John Dehlin [03:18:17] to

Dave McKenzie [03:18:18] the concept of the Book of Mormon being purely dependent upon the kjv and that Joseph Smith was purely just copying from the KJV when he was creating the Book of Mormon, right? So even though, for me, as I still wrestle and struggle with all of the challenges to the Book of Mormon from a literary anachronism standpoint, the Deutero Isaiahs and so on and so forth, and I do theology. Exactly. I still struggle with those things. What Skousen has done and what I think is something to be explored, it would be interesting to maybe considered an episode diving into. What he's saying is that Skousen is opening up this concept of the Book of Mormon being whatever it is, a marvel and a wonder. You even have Elder Soarez, what was it, 2021, in his general Conference talk, said that we should probably be looking at the Book of Mormon more as a revelation than a translation. And so.

John Dehlin [03:19:24] Which I think he probably got from Spencer Fluman.

Dave McKenzie [03:19:26] Yeah, probably right. So I guess my point is, is that. Are we open to own the challenges that Skousen is saying? He's literally saying that there's enough challenges to the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Here's a guy at byu, he's a faithful member, he's paid through the church, and he didn't get excommunicated for these statements, but he's saying very difficult statements to the standard narrative of the church. Are we getting to a point, even at BYU and maybe eventually through the church, to look at this as what Joseph Smith himself said is like, well, the Book of Mormon came through by the gift and power of God, whatever that is. And whatever the Book of Mormon is, is what it's supposed to be and not even necessarily what the church, in its desire to have a rationally organized, you know, view of God, saying that the Book of Mormon is purely historical for all those years and then changing in 2006, that, you know, the Nephites or the Lamanites are among the ancestors of the Native Americans and stuff, that there's a growing acceptance of what the book really is, as opposed to even the narrative that we were taught that it was what it was supposed to be. And are we, to a point in our lives as members of the church and even those who aren't members of the church, are we at a point where we can engage with that mystery as well? I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

John Dehlin [03:21:01] Yeah, yeah. Well, my thoughts would be one. Why are you laughing?

Dave McKenzie [03:21:08] No, I'm just saying it's a lot. I just threw that on you and.

John Dehlin [03:21:11] No, it's good. I'm sure my thoughts are predictable, but I'll say them anyway. I think, number one, I think that's a useful way to look at it.

Dave McKenzie [03:21:18] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:21:19] To still find it to be a useful and a valuable source for inspiration and meaning and purpose and morals and values.

Dave McKenzie [03:21:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:35] I think we need sacred texts as a species.

Dave McKenzie [03:21:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:40] And if you consider Eckhart Tolle or the Dao de Jing or secular Buddhism sacred, great. If you think John Steinbeck is sacred, great.

Dave McKenzie [03:21:48] Right.

John Dehlin [03:21:49] Or Brene Brown or whatever, Quran, Bible, Book of Mormon, like find. Find scripture that makes you lead a healthier, happier life.

Dave McKenzie [03:22:00] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:22:01] So that's like, I'm going really high level there.

Dave McKenzie [03:22:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:05] And I mean, it's indisputable that the Book of Mormon has meant a whole lot to millions of people over the years and always will. So do I think that Skousen is responding to an onslaught of Internet attacks and of scholarly attacks on Book of Mormon historicity for 100 plus years? Yes. Do I, do. I think that the reason why he's able to say that now is because of all the attacks and the people that have gone before and been punished, like Brett Metcalf and others to search out from very faithful positions, say, hey, like I was. It was interesting to talk to Brett Metcalf and in that, in that new approach to the Book of Mormon, like, I think in the preface, it's like, hey, the Book of Mormon's valuable.

Dave McKenzie [03:23:00] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:23:00] Let's keep it. You know, let's just have new ways to look at it so that we can still hold it as scripture. Like, that's literally in the book that he got excommunicated for producing. Like, it's thanks to people like that and others that led to Skousen needing to. And being able to give theories like this. Sure, sure. So there's that. And then from there, I mean, I don't. If you're asking me what I think, you know, there is this idea of parallelisms or coincidence that we will find these. It's a natural part of. And I don't mean, I think some could say, think that if I talk about cognitive dissonance management or motivated reasoning, that that's a pejorative in some sense. We all do it. I do it.

Dave McKenzie [03:24:00] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:24:01] Like when I'm mad at Joseph Smith and I want to, you know, and I want to take him down if I'm in those moments.

Dave McKenzie [03:24:07] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:24:08] Every girl he looked at, he was a predator too. You know what I mean? But that's not fair. It's not true. It is not fair.

Dave McKenzie [03:24:14] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:24:15] So people on all sides of the spectrum use motivated reasoning or cognitive dissonance management.

Dave McKenzie [03:24:21] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:24:23] So, yeah. Do I think they're like, it's possible that God and I mean, first of all, we could go back up a little bit and just say, what does God mean to you? But like, if God's an anthropomorphic bearded dude up there, like, orchestrating all happenings on Earth. If that's what God means to you, then. Okay, then when Joseph Smith was producing the Book of Mormon, was God like, okay, here's a Urim and Thummim, and here are these gold plates under a cloth. And, okay, now let's have Joseph. Let's integrate as, like this cake, your understanding of frontier America and Protestant Christianity. Christianity, but with things I want to tell my people. And let's merge that. And once you get to the point where you talk about what were the words with the two different words, the sea and the ships of the sea,

Dave McKenzie [03:25:25] and upon the ships of Tarshish, God's

John Dehlin [03:25:26] like, joseph, make sure and put these three different words in there to make it miraculous and inexplicable. I mean, yes, that's. That's in the realm of possibility. And I'm not even doing this to, like, mock you. Like, it depends on your view of God. And it is a stretch to think that the book's still divine and that God would do that, but then still allow all the problems and have it be so far from the way, just the simple way. You know, there is Occam's Razor, which is like, the simplest answer is the most. Like is often the most likely. As soon as we're getting into Royal Skousen, Blake Ostler, Terrell Givens territory, we're moving quite far away from Akiv's razor.

Dave McKenzie [03:26:17] Absolutely. And I'll be clear. I'm not even, as I sit here in this interview, I'm not an apologist.

John Dehlin [03:26:24] No, I don't think you are.

Dave McKenzie [03:26:25] And this.

John Dehlin [03:26:26] I'm just answering the question.

Dave McKenzie [03:26:28] And even. And bringing this up about the Book of Mormon is not designed to be an apologetic response. I came up with this term. I call it keystoneism, meaning that the way that we taught it on my mission and the way that we tend to teach the Book of Mormon is, is that, look, if you're worried, if you're confused about which way to go and how to tap into what it is that we're trying to teach you in the church, read the Book of Mormon. It's something tangible. And there's a promise at the end that as you read these things, ask God and he'll give you an answer. And if the book is true, then that means that everything else is true. Joseph Smith is true. All the other prophets are true. Polygamy is true. Even with its challenges on and on and on and on. And I can See why a religion that's interested in order and control to bring about its goals would try to give something that people can grasp onto. The problem is, and this is where this concept of keystoneism is, and I feel that we're guilty of it as a church, is that that premise of just saying, look, all you gotta do is read the Book of Mormon and get a warm fuzzy and everything's okay and you've learned everything and you don't need to ask anything more questions? That, that's, that that is shrinking the intellect of the church as it continues on, because there obviously is more to learn about the Book of Mormon itself. It's difficult simply to say that it's just, you know, 19th century fiction from a very precocious young. How old was he? 20, 29 year old or whatever he was what, when he wrote it? When he wrote it? 23 year old or 20. Let's see, he was born in 1805. I always get these dates wrong. Born in late 1805.

John Dehlin [03:28:31] 25.

Dave McKenzie [03:28:32] Book of Mormon, 18. 29. He would have written 24. 25, right, 24. So we can say that it's so easy to simply say that the Book of Mormon is 19th century fiction written by this guy. But at the same time there are aspects to it. And if we just say that and leave it there, we potentially miss out on. The crucible that it itself can put you into as you choose to continue to engage deeper and deeper with it. Now, I will admit that, you know, the Dan Vogels and everybody else out there that have written extensively about the Book of Mormon and the way that it's come forth, and specifically the way that the Church has presented the Book of Mormon as a historical book, and because it's historical, then all of these things are true and right and real. That that is increasingly problematic as we have the capacity to understand it more and more. I acknowledge that. But also at the same time, I still believe that there is an openness to understand God in a way, to understand the potential of God in a way that we've never considered before outside of the absolutes that we were all raised with. That's all I'm trying to say with it is that I believe that in general, religions want to hold God into a space that is rationally ordered and rationally organized, always as much as they can. But when you dig in deeper into some of these miraculous things that happened to Joseph Smith, I mean, he wrote voluminously for a very. He was only 38 when he, when he died Right. So.

John Dehlin [03:30:29] So

Dave McKenzie [03:30:32] if, if we simply just step out of the wrestle early because we come across something that's different than the way that it was presented to us, then we miss out. But also if we remain in the simplicity of the narrative, that we also miss out on that potential of taking steps into the darkness and seeing things that we've never seen before. And I think that the Book of Mormon can be a tangible product of what Joseph Smith experienced that can help us do that. That's all I'm saying.

John Dehlin [03:31:15] Yeah. And if I can just maybe riff in a different direction, I gave the straw man of the bearded anthropomorphic God that's like, you know, gerrymandering everything.

Dave McKenzie [03:31:29] A moral accountant or a truth accountant.

John Dehlin [03:31:32] There's a way that I could still call the Book of Mormon divine, which is, and to me is actually more useful and meaningful. And I don't mean this to weaken. For me, this strengthens the value in the narrative. It's Santa Claus versus like real, you know, and so for me, and this, this goes all the way from, from God, you know, down to the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. But like that, there's clearly some power or energy or force that drives creation, that drives nature, that drives the human experience. And I don't know exactly what that means. It could be very, very cold and secular, or it could be something warm and beautiful. But like, why isn't there just constant entropy? Why isn't there just total entropy and no life?

Dave McKenzie [03:32:28] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:32:29] So like, there's gotta be some organizing force and some order, some laws that lead to life and things other than entropy, which is like nature and organization. So whatever that is, call it God because it's something.

Dave McKenzie [03:32:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:32:46] And then fast forward hundreds of millions or billions or hundreds of thousands of years. You get sentient creatures who are self aware and they're just trying to like, live healthy, happy, meaningful lives, alleviate suffering and do good in the world. And that's a miracle. Full stop, absolute miracle. Spend some time in space and you'll see how much of a miracle life is, let alone sophisticated, complex life.

Dave McKenzie [03:33:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:17] So we're, we're swimming in constant miracles every single day. Even though some of us don't want to live anymore, like, it's still an incredible miracle every single day, every piece of life from the bumblebee to the grass, blade of grass to the human right and everything. So then you've got like, what's going to move the needle to help humans do more good and find more meaning and find more purpose? Well, it's going to be text, texts, stories, myths that emerge that lead to that end. And those are going to be sacred. If they do that, if they make more people be kind, more people have healthy families and social groups and relationships.

Dave McKenzie [03:34:08] Cooperation. Social cooperation.

John Dehlin [03:34:10] Yeah. Then they're good and they're divine and they're sacred and they're healthy. And as problematic as Joseph Smith may have been, or as problematic as the Book of Mormon is or the Bible is, if the fruits are, you know, better families than happened before 1820, and better humans in many cases that existed before 1820, more kindness, more compassion, more love, less war, then it's divine.

Dave McKenzie [03:34:43] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:34:44] And. Or it's healthier, it's good, and it's been meaningful to people. So in that sense, if Joseph used the whole momentum of human history and civilization, combined with his own personal experiences, combined with what we would call inspiration, what makes Mose Mozart create his stuff and Beethoven create his stuff, and what made Harry Tubman do her stuff and like, whatever that inspiration is that helped Joseph create this work. It's. It's sacred for a lot of people.

Dave McKenzie [03:35:25] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:35:25] And that's good.

Dave McKenzie [03:35:26] And it's. And it's. It's functional and cooperative until it's not. And when it's not, then what do you do next? Right. And that's the question that people who like me and you and many people you've had on here is. It's all great until it's not. But then what. What's next?

John Dehlin [03:35:51] Yeah, hopefully people. If people aren't able to view Joseph Smith as a prophet, which I can, if I have a very loose, broad term of what prophet means, and. Or if people aren't able to find the Book of Mormon as scripture, which I still can if I have a very broad, loose sense of scripture, then they just need to go on and find new scripture and new prophets or new sources of inspiration to help them live the happiest, healthiest life they can live. Yeah, that's how I see it.

Dave McKenzie [03:36:24] Yeah. Well, this is a good segue into, very briefly, my other brother's story. We mentioned that we had another tragedy in our family as well. So maybe let's tap into that briefly and then we'll move on from there. Is that okay?

Personal Loss and Reasons for Staying in 2025

John Dehlin [03:36:39] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [03:36:40] So briefly, my younger brother Dan, and I'll speak about this very briefly and respectfully, passed away in December of 2023. And Dan's story is a long story. It's a complicated story, but I wanted to tap into this a little bit in this conversation. So the long and the short of it is that Dan lost the connection of two of the most important things that somebody can be connected with. One was with his spouse due to some illnesses that she had, and Dan waiting upon the Lord through priesthood blessings to try to help heal her. That didn't come to fruition. And ultimately one day, Dan had a dissociative experience where he basically just yelled at the ceiling as he's laying on his living room floor and basically said, God, Lord, I believe, help mine unbelief. Help to heal my wife after she had some health issues. And basically he didn't receive any answer from that, and nor did his wife become better from that. And so that led to an eventual nihilistic perspective on life that ultimately led my brother to commit suicide in December of 2023. The fascinating aspect of the whole story, too, is where at Dan's funeral, his former mission president, which is Elder Suarez,

John Dehlin [03:38:30] who's a Mormon apostle, Mormon apostle, 12

Dave McKenzie [03:38:32] apostles, Elder Suarez was able to attend his funeral. And Elder Suarez is one of the most loving and compassionate people that I know. At my brother's funeral, it was very interesting to experience and listen to how the atonement was utilized from a point of justice, but also from a point of mercy. On the one hand, President Sawarez mentioned that my brother was in the arms of Jesus after his death, and Dan had made some choices in his life that would have made that difficult According to our doctrine in D&C138, where Christ went not unto those who made certain choices in their life. Right. But there was a tapping into the merciful side of the atonement, but also in the very next sentence, tapped into the justice side of the atonement, where Elder Soarez said, if we all continue to remain faithful, then we will see Dan again one day. And it was an interesting experience for me, especially tapping back into an experience that Dan had told me before he passed away. Dan and I went hiked the Grand Canyon and May of 2023, and we had a very long conversation about a lot of things. And one of the things that he talked to me about at that point was the experience where his best friend, which just happened to be his wife's brother, also passed away at a young age. And at his best friend's funeral, the leadership in the church stood up and said that this person, I won't mention his name, is also in the arms of Jesus. And when my brother Dan was at that funeral of his best friend, he said, well, if he's okay and he's in the arms of Jesus, then I'm okay. And this is when Dan had stopped going to church, because I think Dan wrestled with not going to church. And he said, if he's okay and he's in the arms of Jesus, then I'm certainly okay because I haven't done the things that he did before his life. And if he's okay in the next life and in the arms of Jesus, then. Then there's no reason for me to try to be obedient and try to go back to church and so on and so forth. Right. And so that added into Dan's, you know, continual nihilistic view on life that ultimately. And there's a long story of reasons that he ultimately succumbed to suicide. But. But I wanted to share a portion of this story because we need to be careful in the church about how we approach the atonement. Understand the atonement, talk about the atonement, especially as it pertains to the doctrine. For example, in, like I said, DNC138, where it says that really this isn't quite possible for somebody to be in the arms of Jesus. But. But unfortunately, we tend to kind of just use it as we need it in the moments along the way. So that kind of ends.

John Dehlin [03:41:59] Yeah, that's. How was that for you to lose your brother?

Dave McKenzie [03:42:03] It was very challenging. Right. And that's what I wanted to kind of end with, was just to have that experience where you lose another loved one, especially in the way that he did. And there's no heartache as deep as dealing with somebody who had committed suicide. And I guess in the end, I just. What I would say from all of that is that I recognize. And you mentioned this earlier, John, I recognize that in how I was approaching my frustrations with the church as I'm talking with him, talking with my sister, talking with my wife, talking with friends and dealing with some of the challenges that I was having. That it really does have an effect on people around us. And I. And I don't know that I was helpful in the way that my brother needed me to be when he was going through the difficulties, even though I would take him and go skiing with him, and I would take him and go on these hikes and different things like that. Approaching. Approaching other people and bringing them into the crucible that we may exist in can sometimes not be as helpful as we think that we're trying to be. Does that make sense? Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:43:23] Well, thanks for sharing.

Dave McKenzie [03:43:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:43:24] I'm sorry that happened.

Dave McKenzie [03:43:25] Yeah, we're getting by and time Heals all wounds eventually, but it's still a, a challenge to all of us. But you know, he was a great man and his funeral was amazing. It was held at the Ogden Tabernacle. There was a couple thousand people there. And to have President Sawaras be there with us and share that with us was, was beautiful. So again, from a standpoint of, you know, the beauty of the church, sometimes we look at these men and we just see them at general conference and we don't really fully understand that their, their role also is to go in and touch the one and for him to come and show up at the funeral. We had a kind of a vigil and a meeting at my brother's house with his wife and family after the suicide. And to have Elder Soarez be there and show that love and compassion was amazing.

John Dehlin [03:44:16] So that's the church at its best.

Dave McKenzie [03:44:19] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:44:21] Well, if it's okay, let me just do what I do and ask you a series of questions.

Dave McKenzie [03:44:25] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:44:26] Just to kind of maybe as a final little section.

Dave McKenzie [03:44:31] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:44:32] So let's just go direct. I thought that the title of this might be why I stay Mormon in 2025. So if you had to give three to five reasons why you've decided to stay active in the church, temple, quote worthy temple, recommend holding gospel doctrine teacher. I mean it sounds like you understand just say the LDS discussions library of content better than me at this point. I couldn't have recited the.

Dave McKenzie [03:44:59] Rattled off.

John Dehlin [03:45:00] Yeah. So like, what are the main reasons you've decided that I choose to stay active as an active Mormon in 2025?

Dave McKenzie [03:45:08] For sure. So first and foremost is the love for my wife. She is, she is far more important than the failures and the shortcomings of even prophets and apostles for 195 years. Right. So as frustrating as all those things are, our relationship is more important. Second, for my kids and I've.

John Dehlin [03:45:32] Wait, can I ask about that?

Dave McKenzie [03:45:33] Absolutely, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:45:33] I mean, there's an implication there that she would leave you or you wouldn't be married if you weren't staying active. So

Dave McKenzie [03:45:42] we never really got to a point in the depth of our struggle and the inner faith marriage that we kind of existed in and still kind of do exist in to a certain degree. But we experience the potential. Right. From a standpoint of how would we navigate through it.

John Dehlin [03:46:02] Well, I should give a context that I don't think there's anything wrong with staying active in the church if the alternative is ruining otherwise healthy, happy marriage.

Dave McKenzie [03:46:14] Absolutely, absolutely. But also I know that there's people out there who do live in faith or interfaith marriages or whatever that make it work. And so from my standpoint, the courage that she exhibited for those years and the darkest of the years just drew me closer to her and closer to our relationship. And even though I don't know that she would say that this was a, that this was a net positive experience, she. She currently serves as the stake Young Women's President. And she is not somebody that just goes in and sits and is quietly a sister. You know, she didn't do that when she was the, the ward Young Women's President.

John Dehlin [03:47:01] She doesn't keep sweet, is that what you're saying?

Dave McKenzie [03:47:03] No, she does not. She. She has a very powerful voice and it's beautiful to see the modern day leadership recognize and understand the power of the, of the female voice. And she is not afraid to share that. And she does it in a very tasteful and beautiful way. But through this experience, she herself has come to understand what a lot of people are probably silently going through, both as couples because she's experienced her herself, but also as individuals. And it pains her. And she's even brought this up in ward councils and probably even in state councils of like, well, what do we do with guys like Dave, what do we do with guys like John Dehlin that are faithful, obedient, you know, full fledged members of the church and they begin to come across these things. There's no avenue to help these people when they start coming across the reality of the complexities of the church. And she's been very vocal about that. And you know, what it seems like

John Dehlin [03:48:11] you're speaking to is maybe aside from having doing the healthiest thing for your marriage, a second reason many people stay is to be a positive change to help to be a positive influence from within.

Dave McKenzie [03:48:27] Absolutely, absolutely. There's that concept of being on the inside of the outside. Right. And I felt like I've been like that for so many years and in many ways still am.

John Dehlin [03:48:37] Or on the outside of the inside.

Dave McKenzie [03:48:39] On the outside or sometimes on the outside of the inside.

John Dehlin [03:48:41] Right, so I'm on the inside of the outside. Sounds like you're on the outside of the inside.

Dave McKenzie [03:48:46] Yeah, I don't know. That's the one. On the outside of the inside. Yes, that's the one. But yeah, absolutely. And the reality is, like you've mentioned multiple times this interview, is that there is power and beauty in the church and I think continuing in a world that is moving away from ritual and rite, rites of passage, a world that's moving away from the power of myth and so on and so forth, and heading in a direction, really, towards maybe some meaninglessness or at least some differences in what that meaning is. I can't help but perceive the beauty of the rites of passage that exist in the church still. So this leads me to the number two is like, I stay in for my kids.

John Dehlin [03:49:31] You're on four, actually. Cause the beauty, the marriage, making a difference.

Dave McKenzie [03:49:37] Yes. Okay. Yeah. Number four is for my kids. Right. Like, my mission was transcendent for me. It was a beautiful rite of passage. I'm a firm believer. I take my kids all at age 12, and we go on these big hikes to Mount Whitney or, you know, King's Peak and stuff like that to say, hey, you're moving into your teenage years. Let's leave behind these childish years or whatever. And the mission is that potential constant in this world of going and having that rite of passage. And in our experience with my daughter and my daughters and their friends and things like that, this can be a very powerful and beautiful thing. And I know you've had people on, and I recognize people's challenging experiences on missions and in the temple and all these other kind of things. And so I don't. I hope I don't offend people who've had challenging experiences. But as I've contemplated this over the years, I acknowledge the beauty that these things provide in our family, for sure.

John Dehlin [03:50:39] So those are. Those are the main ones.

Dave McKenzie [03:50:41] So for myself, we'll talk about now. For myself, how do I. Because I'm okay to morph myself, hopefully for the betterment of others, or at least put aside some of my difficulties for myself. I guess I've just come to a realization that with God. And this taps in a little bit more into kind of my journey with understanding the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? And why do good things happen to bad people? Right. And I've really just tapped into Job and that wisdom, literature. And the message that I get out of that is that I feel that we need to get away from the simplistic belief of God being a moral accountant. What I mean by that is that I feel like, you know, the church teaches so much on this concept of the covenant theology. Covenant. The. The covenant path, which means the formulaic gospel, right? We have these verses in Doctrine and Covenants that say, I, the Lord, am bound when you do what I say. When you do not what I say, you have no promise. There's a lie irrevocably decreed in heaven. That every blessing you receive is based upon, you know, obedience to a law upon which it's predicated, right? We. So we have this very formulaic understanding of God. And although I do believe that God does work in that way for myself and through my experiences with the death of two brothers, one being a suicide, with the death of my testimony of what I thought that I was a part of, and even a rebirth of that, I guess I just come to an understanding. And this isn't an understanding of God for everybody. I come to an understanding that. That Job came to. That God doesn't. Whatever eternity that he lives in. And we could talk about the moral objectivity question that you and the Paul brothers talked about and stuff. But whatever existence God lives in and out, however that is rationally organized in his realm. And I'll say this. If God does exist, right? And I choose to believe that he does. If God does exist, whatever existence that he lives in, there is a nuance to it as far as him allowing difficult things, almost just allowing for life to run in many ways, the ways that it runs. That he's not a moral accountant, always blessing those who are obedient and cursing those who are disobedient. Or always swooping in when a prophet is about to give a doctrine or a truth or a sermon that isn't eternally true, that however he functions. And again, when you read the whole story of the book of Job, you have a perfect man who represents somebody who's living his side of the covenant perfectly. Which means according to the covenant and the formulaic gospel, Job should never have received the death of his children and the removal of his land and the death of his animals and the removal of his prosperity and his posterity and the boils on his skin and all those kind of things. If God only functions according to formulaic covenantal theology. And so apparently God wanted Job to learn something deeper about himself. And this is assuming that the Job story is even real, right? And this is where a Dan McClellan could come in and say, well, you know, there's a lot of myth to that, and it's wisdom literature to prove a point. But the thing that I love about the story of Job in general is that after all of Job's heartaches, as he continues to choose to be virtuous and righteousness to be virtuous and righteous simply for the sake of being virtuous and righteous, at the end in chapter 42, he says, and after a conversation with God where God chastises him, Job Says, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes seeth thee. And for me, what that portrays is that however God works, if his goal really is to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man, a part of that goal is not being a moral accountant and stepping outside of our perception of that covenantal, formulaic A plus B always equals C type of perception about how he works among us and how he works among his own church potentially. And again, I'm not trying to be apologetic for this. I'm just describing. For me, what helps me kind of hold on is being open for those things that are not written upon a page, being open for those things that are not coming from the mouth of somebody who. Who is a fallible being, even a prophet, and existing inside of the potential of what the church can provide, along with all of the beauty and the goodness that it does. And in many ways, stepping into that darkness. There was a great paper written out of BYU that talks about how to deal with these difficulties. One way is dropout doubt. One way is denial doubt, which most people do. The third way is to move forward with humble uncertainty. And so I guess I can say for me, why I stay is that I want to continually walk in that darkness with humble and patient ownership of what I'm a part of. And I encourage anybody else who is wrestling with this to consider that pathway and not. And I think the Paul brothers talked about. They gave this example. It's kind of gross about, you know, a baby being born and the challenging aspects of religion are the afterbirth, but the beauty is the child. And I, you know, I think that that is a fairly decent representation, that there are some beautiful things that can come from traumatic experiences. And if you hold on tight like Job did, and remain virtuous and righteous for the simple sake of being virtuous and righteous without reward, the unrewarded good, that there can be some potential to experience God in a way that we haven't yet experienced. But it has to be. We have to be willing to step outside of the formula or outside of even the concept of what we think a covenant is. So,

Responding to Concerns About Church Harm and Ethics

John Dehlin [03:58:03] All right. So one thing that I feel like I need to respond to just for those that either don't want to or literally can't follow the path, is the obvious fact that I think you would agree with, which is that you can. If I'm going back to your original reason, you can have a healthy, happy marriage, even a mixed faith one. You can raise good kids. You can find community you can find meaning, you can have moral structure, you can find beauty, and you could even experience the divine. All outside of Mormonism and, or outside of organized religion.

Dave McKenzie [03:58:55] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:58:56] And, and I accept that there are plenty of people that do that and do it beautifully.

Dave McKenzie [03:59:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:59:02] Would you agree?

Dave McKenzie [03:59:03] Yeah, absolutely. When I have similar conversations with, with a lot of my friends, I tap into sort in our family, we love basketball and we love Steph Curry. And I look at Steph Curry and he is like one of the most beautiful human beings, I think, out there. And he's loved by all of his teammates. He's loved this recent All Star. He bought gifts for all of the other All Stars because they were in his hometown. He's just this amazing being that isn't lds. And so there's many people that are represented by him as well that can live a beautiful life outside of all of the doctrines and the edicts and even a lot of the complexity of Mormonism. And I absolutely acknowledge that. So it always comes down to, well, is there only one way? Is there only one church? And how do you substantiate that? And I ask my friends that all the time. DNC section 1, verse 30. This is my one and only true living church. How do we, how do we describe that in understanding the difficulties that you and I've talked about today, even just in small part or that you've talked about for 20 years? How do we still substantiate that claim? And what does that really mean? I'm very open to what that may be outside of what everybody assumes that it may mean. Right. And even being open specifically to, for the beauty of other people's experiences with divinity, you know, and this is again, this is where the Fowler Stage 5 comes along. This is where the harmonization stage comes along. Right. I feel like I'm stepping into that stage where I own and accept and acknowledge the beauty of my own faith tradition. But I certainly own and accept and acknowledge the beauty of other people's faith traditions. And so it's a very comfortable space to get into.

John Dehlin [04:01:08] Yeah. And that's what I hope for, for any Mormon that I talk to, that they can just acknowledge that there are many ways up Mount Fuji versus the exceptionalism and the, you know, that sort of thing, the exclusivity. But to flip it around, and I think there's on, let's just say on the other side of the secular ex religious or ex Mormon perspective, there's sort of this like it's an invalid choice to remain within as a nuanced Believer. And I don't like that either.

Dave McKenzie [04:01:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:01:50] And so that's, again, one of the reasons why I like bringing people like you on, because I think it is a valid choice. Sometimes it's a necessary choice.

Dave McKenzie [04:01:58] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:01:59] I think of a close family member whose wife is super in, and he just goes to show her love.

Dave McKenzie [04:02:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:02:07] What's wrong with that?

Dave McKenzie [04:02:08] Sure. Nothing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:02:09] Yeah. Or people that live in Utah and they're just like, I don't want my kids to be excluded, so I'm gonna raise them in the church. What's wrong with that? You know? Or, you know, my business depends. My job depends on the church, so I gotta fake it.

Dave McKenzie [04:02:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:02:27] Well, I mean, some.

Dave McKenzie [04:02:29] It's understandable.

John Dehlin [04:02:31] Making a living is not a trivial thing.

Dave McKenzie [04:02:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:02:33] So, you know, we need respect for various paths all across the spectrum.

Dave McKenzie [04:02:43] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:02:43] Now, having said that, the question I always ask people in your position is when. What about the ethics of knowing that the church does harm, that it probably intentionally deceives people, withholds information, hides things, earns a bunch of money that it doesn't need from the widow's might, and then, you know, whether it's the marginalization of women or the subjugation of women or of the mistreatment of LGBT people or the racist teachings or the exclusivity, the lack of informed consent, many would say there's just an ethical problem, that it's an unethical, excessively unethical organization, and that it's therefore to give any money or time or reputation to it is unethical or a function of privilege.

Dave McKenzie [04:03:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:03:37] How do you.

Dave McKenzie [04:03:38] What do I say about that?

John Dehlin [04:03:39] Yeah. No, I just had.

Dave McKenzie [04:03:40] No. And thank you. Well, no, thank you for asking.

John Dehlin [04:03:42] How do you yourself work here?

Dave McKenzie [04:03:43] For sure. So going back to 2023, when I learned about the SEC at the beginning of 2023 and I read the report, I put my tithing into my savings account because I was still unsure for the whole year if I was going to pay or not. And In October of 2023, I was so frustrated by reading that report and seeing what I felt to be very dishonest and unethical that I almost wrote a letter and presented it at fast and testimony meeting and handed it to my bishop and I. And, you know, and said, hey, will you take this to your higher ups, because I need my voice heard. I didn't do that. But I was so hurt by being distrusted by the church for putting the LLCs together in the way that they did to spread out that money and to make their reporting in the way that they wanted to do it for the reasons that they felt were necessary for the protection of the church and for the progression of the church. And so, yes, for me, I've dealt with those types of things on a very deep level. One of our friends works for Ensign Peak, and we had a deep conversation about that. And. And it took about 10 minutes for him to finally realize that I actually had read the report and that I could read and understand the report and that I knew what the report was saying. And ultimately it was a challenge. And so I do struggle with these things, and I acknowledge people's struggle with these things. I acknowledge the challenges of the LGBT issue. I acknowledge the challenges of the Negro doctrine. I back in the past, I acknowledge the challenge, the challenges of the way that the church has presented itself and its information in a very correlated, protected manner. I acknowledge all of those things. And I guess the only thing that I can say in how I deal with them is to say, first of all, that I don't. I'm not the leader of a multi billion dollar organization that is worldwide, and that I don't have all of the knowledge and understanding as to why they do what they do. Secondly, I guess I've learned to think slowly as much as I can when things like that come up and the realization of those things come up, and in the end, it does it. But you can ask my wife, it pains me. And I've wrestled with the challenges of the Negro doctrine and the changes to the temple and the evolutionary nature of something that we're told that is ancient, and so on and so forth, and I still struggle with that. But in the end, I can't help but think that. The meaning of the name Israel Yisra' El means to contend and to wrestle with God. And that whenever all of that began, and whatever the traditions that evolved and the remythologization that evolved over time, that has become what you and I have experienced and what I'm receiving today. That. That God requires a wrestle. He requires the challenges to all of this. And that he's not a moral accountant, always swooping in to save the day before something erroneous gets said or false gets said or whatever, that this existence is to move forward with faith, move forward with patience, think slowly. And I was going to say this too. I. I can't help but believe that the brethren under the administration of President Nelson recognized the need for a change in 2018. As we know, President Nelson changed the name of the church. And that's not exactly accurate, but he removed, by removing Mormon from the church, he changed its name to the Church of Jesus Christ, even though eight years prior the church spent millions of dollars on the I am a Mormon campaign. Right? And we all know in the church the meaning of a name change. Receiving a new name is to step into a new existence. 2024, April 2024. Elder Holland, you know, he's still recovering from his illness back in, you know, late 2023 or whatever it was. And he's interviewed after general conference and the interviewer asks him, what keeps you up at night? What is the most important thing that you brethren the First Presidency in the Quorum of the twelve. What do you talk about? And Elder Holland's response was, our number one goal is to identify what is culture and tradition and what is pure doctrine. I believe that they get it. I believe that all of these things that we're frustrated about and I, I came to this concept and understanding that as they have you talked about turning down certain things and turning up certain things as they've turned up the volume on everything being revolved around Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ being the name of the church and the rock of the church is Christ. What it's done and what it's doing at byu, when I listen to Casey Griffiths and Anthony Sweatt and Spencer Fluman and so on and so forth, is that, that it's allowing a healthier discourse on what used to be the truth claims of the Church as absolutes, First Vision, Book of Mormon, restoration, prophets, temple, so on and so forth. We're discussing these things in a more open way than ever before to allow that new name to come forth, which is Jesus Christ. You know, this lesson I taught in Gospel doctrine last week was on D&C, 10 and 11, D&C, 10, 67 and 68. It says, this is my doctrine to repent and come unto me. Anything that's more or less than this is not of me.

John Dehlin [04:10:11] It's the very smallest of doctrine.

Dave McKenzie [04:10:13] Correct? That's exactly right. And the 195 year history of the Church is full of doctrines that are not that and that are exclusive, that are the Negro doctrine, that are polygamist and man. We could have a crazy conversation obviously about, you know, the new and everlasting covenant and the evolution of that and all that kind of stuff, but you've already had these. The reality is, is that we're coming into a point where we are receiving more ownership and that there are more opportunities. But the purpose and the goal of the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 is to not engage with those difficulties. Their job is to be representatives of the name of Jesus Christ. And the duty of navigating slowly into an increased ownership and an increased understanding is out of BYU and out of and in somewhat into the church education system. And more and more of those voices are being heard to talk about the very things that you want people to talk about. So it's happening, just not happening as fast or in the way that we want it to, again, because of the carefulness of being transparent and doing it in a way that's very wise. And so for me, once I've come to recognize that and realize that that that's what I'm a part of now, ethically, that's something that I can contribute to because I do perceive that there are advancements that are happening in this regard that are very good, that are the very things that you want, that you've been preaching about for over 20 years. And it's not complete and it's not absolute and it's not perfect and it's not as transparent as you would want it to be or what people who've been harmed by it would want it to be as well, the acknowledgments and the apologies and those kind of things. Sure, I want those kind of things. But as you mentioned before, sometimes that comes at the expense of a lot of collateral damage that, that I think the church and the leaders, in its wisdom aren't willing to deal with. And so they're navigating in a way that is careful. So.

John Dehlin [04:12:18] And if somebody says, well, you're not Mormon, that's not. This isn't Mormonism. Right.

Dave McKenzie [04:12:22] Which you've said before. That's not the Mormonism you grew up with. Right.

John Dehlin [04:12:25] Well, I don't. I don't like to say that.

Dave McKenzie [04:12:27] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:12:27] So, sure. I more like to say that some people think that or feel it.

Dave McKenzie [04:12:32] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:12:33] Because I think there's many ways to be more novel.

Dave McKenzie [04:12:36] For sure. Yeah. I would say to. That is we have to grasp and understand. And again, this is the whole purpose of this discussion and own what a living church is and what it was meant to be in the beginning. My understanding is that somewhere along the way it traveled down a very authoritarian and dogmatic pathway, some could say cultish pathway, where it fit a lot of those things in the bite model. Right. But in the beauty of a living church, I perceive. I mean, President Nelson in 1992 gave a talk about the name of the church. He has wanted to do this for years. Wendy Nelson said, he's unleashed. What does that mean? He's unleashed because he's recognized a lot of the challenges that we're existing in today, and he's doing something about it in a beautiful, wise, courageous, careful way. What's going to happen with the LGBT stuff? I know that's probably one of the biggest reasons why you got excommunicated, I think wasn't from a TED Talk, you know, that you gave about that and all these other things. I don't know what's going to come of that. And it hurts my heart. That Gerardo. I love that guy. Every time he talks, I'm like, man, that guy is a cool dude. I would love to go hang out with him, you know? Super cool. How my friend, the mortician, Travis, and the heartache that he had and Dr. Van de Graaff's brother who committed suicide, those things are not okay. And I perceive, Obviously, from the 2015-2018 change of the policy of children, of homosexual parents and things, that the church is trying to do the best that they can but still obviously maintain. What do you call it? I don't know. It's so hard to call it a standard or truth, because obviously truth, whatever that is, can tend to be evolutionary. Right. But I would say more so that the church is trying to maintain the power of its functional theology. That is what they're calling the covenant path. Right. And that's a very difficult road to walk on. It's hard to strike that balance.

John Dehlin [04:15:02] Yeah, I mean, I think that's valid. I think that's valid to say, I'll use different words, but you won't find a perfect organization. Sure, there's good in this, but there's also bad. But it's getting better. And by being in it, I can both help make it better and get benefits from being a part of it.

Dave McKenzie [04:15:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:15:23] And give and have it be a place where I can give and help other people. Right?

Dave McKenzie [04:15:28] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I also think the other thing to acknowledge is, like, President Nelson and previous prophets have inherited a church. They've inherited a responsibility that they themselves didn't create, that they have to navigate. Whereas, like, you know, Joseph Smith, he just kind of started and created and just had.

John Dehlin [04:15:49] He's the og.

Dave McKenzie [04:15:50] He's the og and, yeah, there's challenges,

John Dehlin [04:15:53] and we all are living with that,

Dave McKenzie [04:15:54] and we're all living with it, and we're living with this conversation you had with Michelle Stone yesterday. Like, did he practice polygamy? I don't know. There's so much evidence on both sides. And in the end, if God is an unchanging God and he's not a God of confusion, he is that in, in ways that are different than what we perceive. And so I think that there may be some misunderstandings about God that, for example, the book of Job, that ancient wisdom literature talks about, that whoever he is and whatever he is and whatever he's really like and however he has to function is different and has to be different than the formulaic covenantal modes that a religion has to present. But the power of the religion is that everything is rationally ordered. But can we step into an acknowledgment that we don't really understand the rationally ordered universe that God may exist in and how he functions to help us grow in life? Right. And again, when you talk about the problem of evil, which I've heard you talking about and a lot of people talk about, and it's probably one of the reasons why many people are atheist, is that everybody wants God to be a rationally ordered God. And because you can't square that based on the history of suffering of innocent people throughout the history of time, then is God not God or does God not exist? And it's easy to fall into that and say, well, okay, I can't square that. But more so what I'm trying to tap into is that from my existential experience with God that I inherited from people before me, I may not fully understand who he is. Even what I've inherited through scriptures before me, I may not fully understand who he is. And am I open to step into that darkness and be humble and patient and, and open to my personal experience with him? And I think that this is what President Nelson is really trying to say when he says, I need you guys to receive your own revelation. I really believe that's what he's trying to say, but I don't think he can be as open about what he's trying to say.

John Dehlin [04:18:17] I'll never forget that second lunch I had with Elder Holland where I finally came up with suggestion and I said, tell believing spouses that they shouldn't leave their non believing spouses just because they lost their faith. Yeah, just do that.

Dave McKenzie [04:18:35] Yeah. In a general conference, that's one thing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:38] And his response was, maybe someday when the church is a little more mature, I'll be able to say something like that.

Dave McKenzie [04:18:46] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:18:47] They're like, whoa, you're an apostle, you're a province here in Revelator. You want to say something. But for Whatever reasons you, you recognize, you can't say it.

Dave McKenzie [04:18:58] Well, you experienced that in your Matt Harris discussions. Right. They knew in the 1950s that, or they, they recognized that it was, that

John Dehlin [04:19:06] there was no, that it was a

Dave McKenzie [04:19:07] policy or no revelation and so on and so forth. And David O. McKay, in his wisdom, he's like, well, we can't.

John Dehlin [04:19:15] Yeah, right.

Dave McKenzie [04:19:16] So, yeah. And I'm experiencing that as a gospel doctrine teacher, you know, like when I try to bring up certain things, the reality is some generations that built their faith and life upon Mormon doctrine, doctrines of salvation and all of those things have a very difficult time. My own in laws haven't spoken with me about these things. There was one time that my mother in law did and, and, and it was very, very brief and, but they haven't even, you know, they, and I love them to death. They're serving a mission in New York right now and they're, they're amazing, amazing people. But just in general, that generation didn't, they didn't grow up in the type of world that we are now where we talk about things and we talk about hard things. And, and so, you know, so Elder Holland's right. From that standpoint. Right. There's just certain evolutions of social cognition that have to take place before advanced conversations can occur and recognitions can occur and realizations and ownership. So.

John Dehlin [04:20:29] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [04:20:30] Yep, yep.

John Dehlin [04:20:32] And then maybe the final question I'll ask is there's just the mental health tax of going to church on Sunday when people will say wrong things or harmful things or toxic things where you don't feel like you can really correct them without being a jerk or without causing problems for you or them or being contentious, but you have to just sit and listen to stuff that feels damaging or harmful or racist or bigoted or just factually incorrect, misleading.

Dave McKenzie [04:21:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:21:09] And the tax, the psychological tax of staying quiet when other people get to say whatever the freak they want. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you could say that's actually more thoughtful, more informed, more ethical, more compassionate, but you can't.

Dave McKenzie [04:21:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:21:25] And over time, add a year or 10, or in my case, 13 years to that, it can really affect someone's mental health for some people.

Dave McKenzie [04:21:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:21:35] How do you deal with that?

Dave McKenzie [04:21:36] Yeah. And I've experienced that right in the dark Night of Soul era, 2016 through 2022, and it was challenging during that time, and it still is to a certain degree. I'm trying to continually navigate because I do notice when I make comments in gospel doctrine or I give a certain Talk or something like that is a little deeper and maybe is a little more challenging that I do get people who come up and say, hey, that was kind of challenging, but it helped me understand something in a new way. So thank you. But also, at some times, I do recognize when I make a comment to somebody else's comment or to a lesson that's being taught or whatever it may be, and kind of the air gets sucked out of the room. Right. And so that's just something I've had to learn to navigate and be patient with along the way. Again, this. This concept of moving forward with humble uncertainty, you know, humble patience amid all of this and tempering myself and knowing. Knowing my place because I'm choosing to continue to remain that I can't expect everybody to have studied the hours that I've studied and written the, you know, six or seven hundred pages that I've written and processed the things that I've processed. And so it's not my job and my role to correct and be the policeman that's there. But at the same time, like, I do feel that these things have happened to me for a reason, that I do have a space that, you know, potentially God is directing, that can be part of the ongoing improvement of things in the church and in relation to him too, to a certain degree. Again, if all of that is something that actually exists. Right. For me, myself, and you asked me earlier, I could ask you a question. Do you believe in God or what God is? And all I can say is I don't know as much now as I thought that I once did. And I'm open for an increased understanding of who God is, what God is, how he is, with whom he works. And one thing that I do say is when I watch and pay attention to these, you know, men in Salt Lake, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, is. There is. There is something beautiful about them. There is something that is unique about how they present themselves and having. And you've probably experienced that with Elder Holland and I've experienced that with Elder Suarez, that there seems to be something going on with their calling and how they. And this concept of authority and holiness and apostolic succession and so on and so forth that I'm. That I'm open to be. To listen to, you know what I mean? Amid their weaknesses and frailties as men. But I can't help but perceive my interactions with them in the little bit that I have experienced them. But even watching them on general conference and watching how they speak among, you know, these Devotionals for my kids and things like that. That these really are men and people that have a deep desire to try to do what's right and what's best and to. To tap into a revelatory experience that that is beyond something that I can explain and that I can describe. And so there is an openness to that as well.

John Dehlin [04:25:40] And can you say that and acknowledge that it's probably fundamentally wrong on some level that it's not women sharing that leadership and power and authority as well?

Dave McKenzie [04:25:53] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:25:53] Just because people are going to say privileged white men.

Dave McKenzie [04:25:56] Yeah. Here I am, white Utah guy. Why wouldn't you love the Mormon Church? Say all these things?

John Dehlin [04:26:00] Yeah. Like you're a straight white guy.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:03] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, and I. And yes. And I.

John Dehlin [04:26:07] Man.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:08] And those are such difficult conversations. Right.

John Dehlin [04:26:11] No, you don't have to. I'm really okay ending with that. Yeah. You know, and I wasn't trying to neutralize.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:17] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:26:17] Or diminish what you were saying, but

Dave McKenzie [04:26:19] to acknowledge others, it could be beautiful

John Dehlin [04:26:22] and still have work to do.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:26] And I believe, I truly believe that they also wrestle with exactly what you said. Of course, the most beautiful blessing that could be given to one of my children is from my wife.

John Dehlin [04:26:38] Yeah, right. Oh, of course.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:41] And to like, tap back into that old school, women giving blessings to people like, oh, my gosh, I'm waiting for that to happen.

John Dehlin [04:26:48] Possibly make Mormonism great again. No, I'm kidding.

Dave McKenzie [04:26:52] That's kind of funny. But it is. But that's a very real thing to say is that there are voices and leadership opportunities that are not being tapped into from the female standpoint, that who knows what will happen in the future.

John Dehlin [04:27:09] And I just meant that as a proxy for the fact that we can say there's beauty and we can say there's problems.

Dave McKenzie [04:27:15] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:27:16] We can say there's good and we can say there's harm and there's need for change.

Dave McKenzie [04:27:22] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:27:23] But that it can be. Is as legitimate decision to stay engaged as to leave.

Dave McKenzie [04:27:32] And I don't chastise anybody who chooses to leave. I wanted to leave. Like, I gotta get that point across.

John Dehlin [04:27:40] No, you made it.

Dave McKenzie [04:27:41] This was not. It was so challenging from that standpoint that I didn't know which direction to go. And so I acknowledge I've been there. I felt those difficulties that people have. Maybe not the LGBT or the Negro experience or whatever back in the day, but yeah, it's tough for sure to know that there are people who don't fit into the mold, but yet they're still children of God. And what is God's answer for them now? I don't. All I can say is that I'm thankful for the potential of, you know, the eventual understanding of all things, whatever that may be. Right. And the eventual restitution of all things, however that will be, too. I don't know what that may be. Right. Also, while saying, having dealt with such a couple of deaths in my family, this may all just be that we go in the ground and it just ends. I'm still open to that as well. And this concept in stoicism. Right. One of my favorite philosophers, Seneca, talks about, how do you die? Well, memento more. Know that you will die. Right. Amor. Fate. Just love. Fate. Love your fate. Love, love the adventure of the life that you're on. I still greatly and deeply tap into that aspect of the metaphysical world as well. As much as I want to say. I know it's hard to say that. But also as much as I. As I. As I want to say that. That. I don't know. It's hard to say that too, so. And it's an adventure, and I think that that's what makes it so exciting is that the more you think, the more all of these things that are so tragic can become comic a little bit. And it's enjoyable to tap into the adventure of humanity and the human experience. And I just so happened to choose to continue and have found reasons to stay in the church and experience my life experience in this adventure through this pathway.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [04:29:59] So beautiful. Yeah, beautiful. Well, so you love Stephen Curry. What about Jimmy Butler?

Dave McKenzie [04:30:06] Love.

John Dehlin [04:30:07] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:07] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:30:08] Are you excited about that?

Dave McKenzie [04:30:09] Oh, man. His story. Jimmy was adopted. Whatever.

John Dehlin [04:30:13] However it all was, I'm just glad Steven's got some support.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:16] Me, too.

John Dehlin [04:30:17] Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:17] I. I mean, Draymond Green support said it's a guaranteed championship. Oh, did you hear him say that?

John Dehlin [04:30:23] This. This year?

Dave McKenzie [04:30:24] Oh, dude. So at. At the All Star Games, what do

John Dehlin [04:30:27] Luke and LeBron think about that?

Dave McKenzie [04:30:29] Man, I. I am. I'm. It's kind of fun.

John Dehlin [04:30:31] This season's shaping up to be kind of fun.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:33] It's becoming fun. It was kind of sleepy. It was. But then all these trades and stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:30:39] You know, so. Yeah.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:40] No, Draymond was a. He was a commentator at the All Star Games. And he's like, I guarantee that the warriors will win the championship this year. And I'm like, bring it on. Let's do it.

John Dehlin [04:30:48] Sorry, we just slipped into NBA mode, everybody.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:51] John's a basketball player. I play.

John Dehlin [04:30:52] It's.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:53] Yeah, we can talk about this stuff.

John Dehlin [04:30:54] So I can't wait for your book to come out. I hope you release it.

Dave McKenzie [04:30:58] Yeah, we'll see. I've never done it before. There's still a lot to learn and I have a handful of people that said they're interested and we'll see how it goes. And I'll send you a copy and we can keep in contact that way.

John Dehlin [04:31:11] All right. Well, Dave McKenzie, thanks so much for being willing to come on Mormor Stories and thank you and give sort of the 2025 update on why I Stay Mormon, which is a series we'll continue. I'd love to get some women to do the same thing. If you're a woman out there or an LGBT person or whoever, and you're finding ways to make Mormonism work. I love to do these types of interviews every once in a while. It may drive some of my ex Mormon viewers and listeners crazy, but I'm always going to do it.

Dave McKenzie [04:31:40] And I recognize that, too. And there's a lot of people screaming at the screens and I understand that

John Dehlin [04:31:44] there'll be some hate comments, there'll be

Dave McKenzie [04:31:46] some good comments, but Stockholm syndrome, that's,

John Dehlin [04:31:49] you know, that's what they always go

Dave McKenzie [04:31:50] to, is that, yeah, privilege Stockholm syndrome, which is, you know, and I get that. And I knew all of this. I knew all of those things. I've been around this for long enough. I've never tapped into this social media side of it. And thank you for being gracious that sorry this went longer than you wanted it to. I'm sure you, you can do some editing and crunch it down. But no, we appreciate it. Thanks for listening and yeah, so hopefully there's some people out there that this did some good and move the needle in a positive direction for as many as can.

John Dehlin [04:32:19] And your wife's here in the studio. Thanks to her for supporting you because that's a real act of support for orthodox believing Mormon spouse to support their spouse going on morbid stories.

Dave McKenzie [04:32:33] You know, it's been an amazing experience and I'm thankful to her and I hope that anybody else who runs into this type of an experience in their life that they have somebody by their side and that they can trust. A John Dehlin in many regards. And I know you've been criticized for being, for getting hot and heavy in certain aspects and being frustrated. But. But my perception of you is that altruistically you want as minimal sorrow and as much joy. And what this provides is manifested in my own life. And your goals have been experienced in my own experience. So I appreciate that and I thank you so much.

John Dehlin [04:33:20] Yay. Well, thanks. Okay, thanks, Dave.

Dave McKenzie [04:33:23] All right, we'll talk to you soon.

John Dehlin [04:33:25] Thanks for joining us for Mormon Stories. We do this because of our donors. If you value this type of content, we lose donors all the time. Our YouTube revenue is tanking for some reason and donations are always kind of trailing off. So if you want to see this type of content continue, if you value it, you can go to mormorestories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor and we'll keep providing content like this and Michelle Stone and LDS discussions and all the things. Big thanks to Brooklyn and Gerardo and Julia and Maven, the staff, Margi, and also our board who make all this possible. Thanks to our viewers. Please subscribe to this episode. Please like it, please comment on it, please share it. I'm totally fine with people sharing this if somebody's struggling with the church and struggling to stay in the church. I'm super fine with these types of episodes, helping people find ways to stay, if that works for them. So please do that. We love your email@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have feedback. And also we're always looking for new people to interview. So if you've got a great story and you want to share it, you just go to MormonStories.org, find the apply to be on the show, fill out the form, record a three minute video. That's how Dave got on and that's how you can get on. We can't accept every application, but we will do our best. Just make your story compelling and make a compelling video. Anyway, so glad you joined us. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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